This document was brought about due to great many discussions over at GameDev.Net and as a result I am indebted to those who have made small and large contributions that have shaped the way that I think. I have added links to the forums that most likely aided my progression to the above thoughts, but I am sure that there are many messages to which I owe credit to which I have not included links. For example, I learned recently that the "child setup" was forwarded by Ingenu, my fellow moderator or NPCAI / IOL, (I would call him a friend now) who came up with the revolutionary idea on how to choose an appropriate character. To anybody who I owe credit yet did not credit you, I apologise and ask that you send me an e-mail stating such along with what you believe you added. If it is something that was posted on GameDev.Net then it is possible that I overlooked you (I have a rather large amount of posts), if not then it is probably likely that either I had the same idea as you or someone on GameDev.Net did.

This document is an accumulation of many threads on GameDev.Net and all the ideas that were discussed within them. I am indebted to many more people than is possible to list here. I will endevour to include all of the people who posted the most influencially, but that will have to wait until I have ample time. The following threads have been the major influences on this document, either that or I recommend that you read them. They are likely to contain the conception of some ideas that are discussed in this document. Very interesting:

There was a nice feature on Gamasutra.com that Ernest Adams wrote about "Putting the Magic back in Magic" that I think deserves a mention. Note, that I read this article AFTER writing my document (well, at least the majority of it). This man is an inspiration due to his great thinking and seems to have a lot of similar ideas that I do. (E.A. If you believe that I was trying to cheat you then I must apologise but state that I was writing my own ideas at the time, and it was rather late at night).

"GDCorner Forum FAQ" – This is the new discussion of the document. It has been reposted by dwarfsoft for any comments to be made. This is where you can have your say about what is right and what is wrong. You can add your opinions and your thoughts or even any other information that you have gleaned that you think is relevant.

For reference sake, I will list the old discussions about this document here as well as the current discussion. As time goes on and the discussions gain a few pages, I restart a fresh one so as to keep everything thing tidy. "My DOC – The future of RPGs" is the original thread that was first used to further ideas. It is where Taharez came up with his ideas about languages and idle actions. "Our DOC – The future of RPGs" was the second in the line of threads for this document. You can go here to have a look through the 6 pages of ideas and update information. A bit of a history of the doc is contained within these threads.

I have now added a dedicated site to this document. You can find it at http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1286.asp which also contains a few links to things such as the bulletin board and to other peoples HTML versions of this document. If you want to browse through this document on the net, then that is the site to go to. If you want to see the good HTML version (albeit an older version), as edited by Voodoo4 – http://www.crosswinds.net/~ancientcode/FutureRPG/

Cheers, Chris (http://members.tripod.com/dwarfsoft/)
The future of RPG – © Chris Bennett 2000