Bright (or not so bright) Ideas

SNARES!

Simply enough, it should be possible to lay snares for your opponents. This would work well in both single player and MMORPGs. You basically are able to place certain types of physical or magical snare around the map, and these snares can affect the whole game. 'Traps' is also a term that is used when referring to "Game-Designer placed Puzzles" where the game-designer has placed a puzzle in the game which is a trap. So as not to confuse traps with these 'puzzles' or 'traps', we will refer to the player placed trap as a 'snare' instead. Skills should also be available that allow the player to search for snares and therefore ensure a bit of safety. This has various ways of being implemented, but basically allows the character to 'see' snares more effectively with a higher skill level.

Note: Snares can also be useful if eating is going to be implemented in your game. Catching food may be another use for snares. See "Linking eating and sleeping with energy" for some information on eating.

Running for mayor and running a town

I would like to see RPGs where a character could run for mayor in a town and start running it on his/her own. This means that they can build up the town to their specifications, and they would also be required to protect it from nasties. I think if you had a MMORPG (Massively-Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) then this could work with heroes saving the town at the request of the mayor. I think this could add a little bit of fun into the game. People can do something that suits their personality a little more. This also allows a sim game to be brought into the RPG realm and allows a player to make their character rich and prosperous by doing different kinds of work than just hacking and slashing.

Combining RTS and RPG, A simple harmony

Using fairly simple methods, it should be possible to combine RTS and RPGs into one game. This would allow for a person with more of a mind for strategy to be able to play out their role in the RPG. There could be generals that have gone up through the ranks that could direct a battle, other players may be in the battle themselves and could choose to follow orders or to take on a personality. This allows for a lot more scope in games. A player may look at the world in a very small view, or look at it in a larger view, and maybe even look at it in an Epic view. Truly it would be difficult to implement this effectively, but we are game designers right? Anything is possible!

Transportation or "A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!"

There is far too little use of transportation methods in RPG's today. I would like the ability to buy a horse that I could ride everywhere. This would allow a player to charge into battle on their battle hardened war-horse and trample foes. It would give advantages of speed of travel and would give an attacking advantage, but it would make the character easier to hit (or at least the horse). It may also build a bond between the horse and the character which could allow them to do other things together, like a horse and rider that were well trained with each other may be able to jump over a fence that other less trained characters-horse combinations could not. This is not limiting transportation to only a horse though, why not have magic carpets, dragons, bulls, mules, wagons, whatever your imagination desires. It is just too unimaginative to have a medieval setting without a hint of transportation. This should not be too hard to implement because all it is, is a few more statistics and a new image sequence. Not a real challenge, but a worthy one.

Idle actions, "Eating, sleeping and relieving oneself"

(Thanks to Taharez). Just one of the bits of candy that are placed into games really. This is mainly about adding in a feature that has the character doing some amusing things when they are bored. If the character has been idle for a while they could lay down, take an apple from their bag and take a bite, or relieve their self behind a bush. It would be location based, but it would add a small bit of amusement for curious players. It is location based because the character should not be relieving themselves in public (in the street) or in the presence of a king. They should not be napping or eating in the presence of a king either for that matter. Other suggestions for idle actions are cleaning of weapons or armour and polishing of these items.

Beggars and thieves, preventing the player from leaving cash lying around

After a rather amusing post by MadKeithV (in "RPG's – When Is There Too Much Role playing?") that suggested: Any character that wandered around town without at least 1 Gold Piece was to be considered a beggar. This was to do with some old traditional law, but I think that it could easily be used in games. The main reason for this digression was due to the fact that in some games, I would drop coin on the ground in town so that I would not lose it in the event of death when fighting some bosses. The enforcement of the 1GP rule may be difficult, but if you set it up so as your character entered the town, s/he takes out a coin and starts tossing it in the air. It may not be a great implementation, but you could add in some fun features if the character was ever caught out of cash. The main thing that I wanted was, if the player was to put a pile of gold on the ground, then the beggar's scramble in and take it. If the player objects to this then the guards can say; "The law states that any coin that reaches the ground is property of those who gain possession of it first. They call it the Beggar Law". This would at least make the player think twice about leaving gold lying around. It may even increase the status of the NPC Beggar to become a "more acceptable" member of society.

Automating tasks: How players can implement scripting

Having just written a lot about triviality in games, I can see that people will be thinking "but it is boring to have to eat and sleep all the time". I do not know if it is possible to automate sleeping, but eating certainly seems likely. Scripting is something that is behind the scenes in most games. It handles the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and sometimes the definition of objects and their purposes. It should be possible to allow the player to write their own custom scripts to deal with certain events. For example, you have an eating script that will check the supplies of the character and if they have enough supplies and they are also hungry enough, the character decreases the supply and reduces their hunger. I am not going to provide a scripted example because I would prefer to generalise instead of localise the issue. The scripting language would have to be very strict so as to combat cheats in the game. You could provide default scripts for the game, and allow advanced users to update these scripts to aid them more effectively.

Dynamic game-worlds - Watching the grass grow and the search key

Already I have written about a game world that is non-static. This was discussed as towns that could be built and destroyed, but now I take a different step to non-static game worlds. I was recently thinking about items that are dropped on the ground and also about mowing the lawn. These two things came into a reasonable partnership. What is needed is for the grass to grow, so to speak, and cover up lost items and bodies. These items would only be visible to a player who was within a certain distance of them and would become more visible as the player got closer. Thinking back to the original Diablo, items could be lost under dead bodies and behind walls, but now they changed that so that you can always find an item by the shining/glittering in the corner of it. This may have been a great addition for the player, but I think that it detracted from the gameplay. What made it glitter in a dark tomb and why was it so visible after being hidden under a huge pile of bodies? This is why I suggest that there should be a search key.

The hobbit and the hole

Digging should be available in games. Uses of it are for digging traps and making tunnels. It would be great to have an "underground" syndicate that was accessible by a tavern in which you must prove to be a member before entering. This idea (of the "underground" syndicate) is from "Magician" where there is an entrance to the "Hall of Worlds" in the back of a Tavern. This was only accessible by those who asked of its whereabouts. It is also an idea that would allow for a tunnel system under towns and cities (such as the thieves' network under Krondor).

(New) Bartering and the abolition of gold

It was recently stated that gold was not something easily come by, and as it is the peasants were unlikely to ever see a gold coin. They mostly traded by methods of barter with one another and if anything were more likely to have coppers than any silver or gold. I think that even if this is true that it could complicate the game world with adjustments to a barter system and possibly combination gold, silver and coppers system. Anyway, to expand upon the bartering idea, the feasibility works like this:

Each item is given a "weighting" as to its actual value in a credit like system. Each item is then compared to another based upon this weighting. There is also a random element that makes the values appear fuzzy to each other. By this, I mean that if you are trading a pair of gloves with a slightly more expensive pair of boots, then the shopkeeper has a random value that could allow such a trade to happen. Also, greedy shopkeepers could only trade for items when they had a clear profit over the player by doing so. It could also lead to a system where a character gets goods for providing services (both by the player-character and for the player-character) and could allow things like debts and repayments. Because you add in new elements, the game can become more enjoyable or challenging. Budgeting could be fun.

Bartering also solves the problem of carrying around gold all of the time. It just adds the new problem of carrying around items, and if the items are valuable then you might have to trade for a LOT of crap if you really wanted something cheap (like food). Anyway, that is enough for this rant.