Castle Paradox

[*Worthy*]

I would like to help. My main skill is programming and game design. Games I've worked on are:

OHRadius
Gargan and Troy
Custom Battle Engine *Demo*
Art of Pixel Movement
Art of Minigames

And I have made a sidescroller that is not currently on CP that I can send upon request.

Please let me know if you could use my help via PM.

Thanks,

~Worthy
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You can do whatever you want...but prison is full of people who make bad decisions.

[Gizmog1]

Actually, I'm not sure about that, because if some stranger came up to me on the street, dressed in travelling clothes, with a gun in his pocket, and asked me to tell him about my lifestyle, or my town, I think I'd probably just keep walking. I was envisioning more of people acting believably, with perhaps various things one could do to earn their trust, like Harvest Moon. Also, there was this game for the OHR awhile back, a Grand Theft Auto fangame, that had an interesting way to handle interactions with people that we might be able to use in a better way. You see, there was this item in your inventory, and when you used it, suddenly everyone you talked to would fight you instead. I figure we could do something similliar, only for talking, fighting, lying, or what have you. Perhaps we could limit the choices of what one could do to some kind of a "Class", so that only a thief could try to lie or steal, a Wizard could use magic to try and aid the situation (Like blasting some rocks out of the way, putting a love enchantment on someone, trying to impress children), a fighter or general strongman could tear bars out of a wall, smash open secure treasure chests or whatnot, and thus players would have a wide variety of ways of going about things, without overwhelming them with too many options. Some of the skills would be universal, and others would be limited to a particular class (And perhaps we could even work the classes down into various sects, like Conman, Cat Burglar, and Bandit, with the separation being that the conman focuses on lying, the cat burglar on sneaking and climbing, and the Bandit on extorting and fighting. Fighters could be broken up into Fighters and Monks, kind of like Dungeons and Dragons, and I'm sure Wizards could be divided some special way, with regards to how they cast, and what they cast) Of course, this would require a lot of work, a lot more time than I care to invest, and we'd probably only be able to have one hero (Which I rather like for an RPG, is just to have one hero, with the player having a lot of say in who he is, what he does, and how he does it.). Any of you have any ideas for what you'd like to do in an RPG?

[Uncommon]

Kinda reminds me of Majora's Mask, how you'll get a different reaction outta npcs based on the mask your wearing. But this is kinda starting to sound like a game I've been thinking about making. I'd tell you more about it if we were ever on IRC at the same time.

Pretty much, I want to make a game centered around one town, but I want that town to be incredibly detailed, down to the last man. I've always had a bit of a thing for npcs that are all different. In By the Seventh Book, everyone but the dancers were completely individual. When I was designing Magnus 17: the Director's Cut, one of my main ideas was to make everyone in Magnus Village different. Cookie-cutter npcs just aren't any fun.

[Jack]

good point. having to do something for the whole town to say that "hey, maybe that scary lookin' guy isn't so bad afterall." is a good idea.

maybe we could use a point system from 1-10.
-1:your character is a very evil person. no person with a right mind will speak with you.
-5: your character isn't really that well known. certain people will openly talk to you, others will shy away.
-10: your character has found a cure for cancer. everyone will talk to you.

i was thinking also, depending upon where your character is on the scale he is given certain options; like 'kill anyone' or 'burn down building' (just a thought). or we could go with always being able to have those options no matter where you are on the scale (which i like better).

for classes and subclasses we could use something like this:

fighter class magic class stealth class
-warrior(weapons) -wizard(staff) -thief(picks locks)
-pugilist(hands) -cleric(uses hands) -acrobat(stealth)
-knight(defense) -summoner(scrolls/vocal) -agent(smooth talker)

maybe we could still use 1 hero, but then be able to hire disposable mercenaries. they don't say or do anything except for their different skills.

also, has there been any mention of storyline, setting, characters, enemies, or anything else in IRC. i haven't really been able to get on yet so i'm really missing out.
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[Moogle1]

Separate the variables. You're thinking of two different things: fame and reputation. The way you put it, if a bad guy does good things, suddenly fewer people have heard of him.
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Jack]

i guess i wrote it up a bit too quick and wasn't quite thinking...

-5: your not really a bad person, but your not a savior either. certain people will openly talk to you, others will shy away.

reputation and fame can both follow these lines. the more bad you are the more bad people will like you and speak with you, and vice versa.
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[Gizmog1]

Then perhaps the gameplay's theme should be relating to reknown and fame. However, I think all options (Burn the OHRRPGCE, kill the governor, etc.) should be presented to the player, with results on fame. For instance a 5 Good person doing a 5 Good deed would be treated as expected but appreciated, and an evil person doing as evil a deed as could be expected of him would go roughly the same. But, let's say that our 10 Good person does a 10 Evil deed. There could be extra textboxes and ramifications of the sudden shock of "Why, Shane?! Why?!". An Evil person suddenly doing a good deed would bring around the same kind of surprised reaction, and suspicion "The Penguin?! Running for Governor?! Surely something's amiss!". I'm not quite sure how we could center the game around Fame and Reknown, but it'd only really work well on a small scale, say, one country of various townships under central leadership, somewhat like England. And, I'm against the idea of mercenaries, because it takes out the idea of the player customizing the character, and makes it "Make a character to fill slot one, two, and three, and then get a mercenary to keep me covered against X, Y, and Z". I think the player should be in a position where he tries to decide what it is he wants to do, and is then stuck with it for the rest of the game.

[Jack]

[Gizmog1]

Why do they need help-out characters though? Why can't the player simply create his own hero, and then go through the quest relying on the skills and attributes he gave himself to begin with, and have to face the consequences of having a hard time if the only skill he has is charming barwenches. It makes it hard for the player to develop bonds with his own character, if there's an amazing new character who pops in every 10 minutes, shows off some skills the player wishes he had, and then leaves. It makes it harder to write a game when the main character is a 3rd wheel in all of his quests and ambitions. I mean, in most games, the hero isn't really going on his own quest, he usually gets caught up in the town's people's problems, or is dragged into it by agents of evil ambushing him or something.

Settingwise, I think the usual RPG era of swords and sorcery would be good, but I'd like for it to be a dark and unforgiving age. Thieves, conmen and bandits abound, most everyone except the player, some wisemen, and wizards are illiterate when it comes to anything outside of their occupation. I don't really want people to trust wizards, or the fact that they read and write, and in fact, I imagine most people would mistake the ability to read and write for wizardry, and would thus trust that person even less.

I'd like to see there being one or two kings or some kind of monarchs involved, but I think I'm getting off of the point, and most of the ideas I've just talked about wouldn't really fit the project as we're discussing it now.

[Moogle1]

Ooh, I like the way this is heading -- more into the pencil & paper realm, where nothing is off-limits.

Things that make an RPG feel like a role-playing game and not like Final Fantasy:
* Being able to make an attempt on the life of anyone, anywhere, anytime
* Being able to customize your character with dozens of skills
* Being able to do things that you'd never do in real life -- but you know you want to
* Being able to allow others to join up with you...
* ...but watching them leave if they disagree or feel they've had enough
* Controlling conversations (tricky in OHR, but not impossible)
* Making someone who's no one into a powerhouse...
* ...but still never being able to perform the impossible, like slaying a dragon or defeating the entire castle guard singlehandedly
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Slime Salad :: Independent Game Design

[Gizmog1]

Hm, you know, thinking about it, perhaps a good way to handle things would be to have NPCs suggest courses of action to you occasionally. For instance, if you had a rather good conman level, a merchant might actually mistake you for a cleric or something, and offer you a holy weapon on his own, without you having to try and trick him. Or, in my previous post, about a person who puts all his points into charming barwenches, rather than having an "ask out" item, or what have you, eventually the barmaiden would ask HIM out if she was interested. I suppose if we wanted to be really sneaky, we could have certain people be conartists, rogues, or fight instigators themselves, and thus when a beautiful girl at the bar asks if you'd like to go see her Inn Room, she very well might intend to knock you out and steal your equipment and gold.

Actually, while trying to decide if an outsider is always the perfect hero, I was just thinking today of a random RPG town, and how it might be interesting to be a disembodied 3rd Party, who'd go in, and choose a random person in town, and live like them for a day, or a week. The boring people would be sleeping, and thus immune from the "posession" leaving you only with interesting people to be.

Did any of you ever play Sonic Adventure 2 Battle? There was a game in it, in which you raised "Chao", and by giving them various animals, they adapted the traits and abilities of the animals. You could give it birds, and it'd grow better wings, and be better at flying, or give it fish or penguins, and it'd grow flippers and be able to swim, or etc. Anyway, when you'd done this, you could then enter them into various races and contests, where they'd be forced to face multiple obstacles. Like, you'd start on a cliff top, running, where your speed was tested, and endurance was constantly running down. You could boost their speed by pressing A, but it drained their endurance, and if you didn't leave enough left, they'd fall down, and really severely slow down by the end of the race. Anyway, they'd start running on a cliff top, and when they got to the end, they'd glide with their wings off the end. The better you flew, the further and faster you went before you had to swim, so if you weren't a good runner you could make up here, and once they got in the water (Presuming they didn't make land flying superbly) they could make up ground on the good flyers by being good swimmers. Then they'd run somemore, and have to push crates or climb over things, or choose a good path or something.

That's kind of how this oughta work, with a balance given between Stealth, Strength and Speaking (I don't know, it started with an S). The Stealthy Player would probably be asked to fight, if they were seen, and they'd have to rely on being sneaky to get a drop on the foe, and knock them out. The Strong player would be challenged to fights , but they'd be strong enough that they'd be able to take care of themself for the most part, and the Speaking player would probably be able to charm and lie his way out of the confrontation, but if he failed to, or got caught up in a lie, he'd be mostly unprepared for the fight. Of course, the hero should never be this one sided (Ie: A strong conman, like James Garner in Support Your Local Gunfighter, A Strong Stealth man like Aragorn, a stealth conman like Robin Hood or Zorro (More on them later) , and they probably won't be as perfect as those in the example.

If I were to choose, I think I'd really like to do something in the same vein as Zorro, Robin Hood, and The Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh, in which the hero is engaged in duties for the good of the people, though he's at odds with the "good" policing forces, and makes use of stealing and other traditionally villainous ways to bring about this good, usually thorugh the use of cunning.

Edit: By the way, I don't know if this thread would be better here, or on the Game Design Forum. It's kind of lapsed past the announcement point.

[Jack]

uhm, with the recent events, where is this going to be continued after the fall of castle paradox.

ill comment on the ideas later, i really dont have time right now.
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[Uncommon]

Assuming it ends, we'll have a place for it.

Another thing about those three S's, I'd imagine the hero's position on either would be determined by how the game is played, correct? And they're be a balance to prevent the hero from having strong marks in all three?

[Gizmog1]

Well, presumably. I was envisioning a kind of Stats Triangle, and you COULD be great at all of them, it'd just take you 3x as long as it would to be great at any one thing. And yeah, it would be defined by how you play the game, I've never understood some games that make you fight monsters to level up, and you just happen to gain all these other skills while doing it. So, you get better at fighting by fighting, better at communication by communicating, better at swimming by drowning, etc.

[Ssalamanderr]

This sounds really interesting. I have to agree a small scale setting would work much better for this, as it sounds like you want fairly detailed NPCs. Maybe it could be set in a single city? You mentioned that you wanted some monarchs or something, so maybe the city would have it's "official ruler" and several other factions that controlled daily life in the city (ex, the local mage, a band of thieves, etc). This would work particularily well if you want to portray a troubled time.

Also, going with the Zorro/Robin Hood theme, you could be more friendly with some factions than others, and be able to hide from the authorities at certain NPC's houses etc.

(note: yeah I know, factions have been done before. I still think this would be interesting.)

I don't know how useful this is, but the "stat triangle" sort of reminds me of this little phrase: "you can have it cheap, fast, or good. Pick two."
So maybe the character would be good at two out of three skills, but be weaker in one other one. This way they have a backup if things go wrong, but they still have weaknessess and situations they want to avoid.
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