An intriguing blog entry called RPG Design Seed Challenge discusses a number of variations of the all-too-common standard computerized role-playing game implementation. Might Doesn’t Make Right, Conflicted Development and NPCs Matter are three interesting ideas offered; these concepts form the basis of different types of RPG, played in different ways with different goals. I got hooked the instant I saw that he borrowed ideas from Ultima IV - which has to be one of the best games ever produced. Download it here (for free) along with an emulator for Windows. God knows how many hours I spent traversing Britannia as a wee kiddo, running away from dragons and demons.

As interesting as the design seeds may be, I also got sidetracked. This reminded me of an RPG project some friends and me started in 2003: Haphazard. If you visit the link you’ll notice a few things.

1. It’s not finished.
2. It’s not instantly impressive.

There are several reasons for this. First of all: it was just a fun thing to do while working/studying. And secondly: the impressive parts of the project isn’t in its gameplay or its representation – the underlying concepts is where the real work has been focused. The illustrious Treefinger (who quickly took over the project) used the RPG framework as a base for his research on agents implemented with the subsumption architecture. (I think there’s some specific information about the Haphazard implementations on the theory page. I doubt that this has been updated for a couple of years, though; if I remember correctly, the Haphazard engine was further improved and used it as course material in some AI course.)

Another interesting thing about Haphazard is the RPG design. I quote the about page:

[...] we’re aiming towards an open-ended adventure game [...]

Our gaming system [...] enables you to play in a class-less, level-less skill-based world. You cannot be all powerful since you “forget” skills you don’t use and the skills you do use can only reach up to a certain point.

The combat system is designed so that your skill always matter more than the weapon you wield (very common for CRPGs to become item-based instead of character-based, if you find the all-powerful weapon in the beginning of the game you are unbeatable. Here, a character who is a master with kitchen-knives would cut you to pieces while you fumble about with a sword you can’t handle).

This was a good idea, but one thing bothered me about this bit. Treefinger advocated a “realistic” system with down-to-earth battles and encounters. I’ve always fancied epic and slightly ludicrous touches in RPGs, myself. For instance, in Might and Magic VII you start on an isolated island where you have to perform certain tasks before you’re taken to the mainland. There’s a limited amount of experience and wealth you can aquire on this island, so you can’t level up infinitely. There’s also a dragon cave on this island. One of the tasks is the enter the cave, grab an item, and quickly run away. I love exploiting this by killing the dragon as a low-level character instead, and grabbing excellent loot. Mostly patience, but also some luck is needed for this; these kinds of practically impossible events were something that the Haphazard skill system would prevent.

But I digress. There were other nice touches to the design plan as well:

The economy should keep track of current supply/demand of items, if adventurers suddenly pop up and everyone wants a broadsword, broadswords become expensive and rare. If noone wants them, an oversupply occurs and they will be sold very cheap.

I was relatively uninterested in these parts of the project, so I quickly dropped out. In 2003 I was playing a lot of roguelike games – specifically Angband – and what I wanted to experiment with was the open-ended part of the game. The mechanics and economics were pretty boring, and I wanted to explore automatic generation of a world – including inhabitants and relations and plots.

In retrospect, it seems that what I wanted to explore was single-player storytelling, while the other members were interested in game mechanics and interaction.

In even more introspective retrospect, both directions were of course overly ambitious for just the few of us. But I still have high hopes for automation of plots; I’m sure I’ll have time to experiment with this sooner or later. Right?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 6th, 2006 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Games, Indie Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.