As to rpg's and replayability, I want to take issue with at least two of your examples Dark.
Fallthru was replayable, but the essential shape of the game stayed the same. Once you beat it, the general plan to beat it was the same. Some locations moved a little, but the general challenges were the same, and while individual map features changed, the same strategies won the game. I think using it as an example of replayability is somewhat misleading. The Wastes presents the problem of having everything random. There's no reliability for a player to build on. You don't ever learn the map because the map changes game to game. Your tactics have to change whether you have the super overpowered weapon of death, or are fighting with your bare fist. I myself find that somewhat frustrating. It's a fun game, and I don't detract from the work put into it by any means, but it's replayable only because you're drawing random cards from a deck every time. To me, designing a single person RPG with replayability would demand some randomness of course, but you'd have to put some steady elements in as a place to start from, or you'd lose players who don't like the chaos factor. For myself, I'd want alternate reactions to different options etc for each encounter, each situation. That's a lot of work. A lot of planning. I could slap together a random generator that would produce an ok game that was replayable because of randomness, but to me that's not an RPG. That's the old random dungeon generator at the back of the first ed. dmg that people would use when they couldn't get a group together. That said, I see some ways it could be done, but the problem would be the time expenditure--to do it well. As to several people commenting on cheapness or text in place of audio etc. I agree, one can play text games just fine, but if we're going to do that we can go back to the old IF titles and forget a real rpg. If you want to have real interaction you'll end up having to create a complex interaction engine. The reason why Eamon for instance worked so well was that at the core of it were only about 40 commands, most of which you never used. As to the sounds issue: putting together a cheap game with good sounds, music, and sound scape is difficult unless you have lots of free time, a good recording set up, and plenty of stuff to provide foley effect with. For example, with Interceptor, we purchased a number of the sounds we used. That's another thing that must be taken into account. I think we need more large scale well designed RPG's but I think that we do need to go into that expectation open eyed. Entombed was a decent start and it was $40. Marty's estimate sounds high to me for an IOS app, but it sounds reasonable as a complex Windows platform game. So, we can jettison everything but text, go the random shuffle and draw approach, and produce a mildly amusing but ultimately frustrating game, or we can invest a lot of time, effort, and work into producing a complex game with good acting and music and sounds, and then we have to charge more, or somehow, sell more units. >From a developer standpoint, if you are actually trying to make a profit, the RPG looks like a bad bet. Now, that said, if you had 30 or 40 smaller games that could support you while you did it, it might be doable. If you had a consortium of small developers that could agree on a language, a story, and delegate parts of the game effectively, it might be produced cheaply. Just a few thoughts as usual. I eagerly await disagreement. Take care, Jeremy -- In the fight between you and the world--back the world! Frank Zapa --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
