Cool ideas you have for systems in RPGs

[CHEMS]

Gonna get some hate but, if i were to make a RPG i'd make potions have expiration dates. Think about it, alchemist would probably use perishable ingredients to brew those. So makes no sense you, and adventurer, would carry around 300 potions around for years in your backpack without spoiling? Of course you can just say that because there's magic in the game they wouldn't spoil, but that's just cheaty in my opinion

This system would punish players that hoard thousands of potions "just in case" and think more about resource management

 

[deuxhero]

It mostly worked for Dragon's Dogma. With a few annoying exceptions, consumables were either light and perishable, or not and heavy (and you could make almost any consumable non-perishable at the cost of adding 0.45 to its weight (you have a max of ~20 carry weight, including equipment, before you start taking penalties). Unfortunately there's just enough items that are light and non-perishable to make this relatively moot.

 

[Axioms]

- skill hunting


Never saw this in any games except Guild Wars.

You capture skills by defeating bosses, which leads to a deckbuilding system not unlike Magic The Gathering, with 1000s of skills to choose from

Troubleshooter's mastery system is like that albeit with passive skills/buffs, but there are ones that grant additional mechanics or outright abilities.

GW1 was insanely cool and unique with the skill system. A few things that might be changed but skill hunting, double classing, 8 skills, the class specific attributes and so on were awesome.

 

[Axioms]

So my idea is mental inventory. It's like a regular inventory but instead of listing items, it lists things you've learned so far. Whenever you find out something significant (piece of obscure lore, geographic location of something important, personal information about certain characters etc.) you get an unique item symbolizing what you've just learned.

These can be used in several ways. First of all they can be sold to information brokers for money or other information. Information sold that way won't disappear from your inventory but it's value will drop down, after all the more people know about a secret the less valuable it is. The other use would be to affect dialogue choices. Some choices can only be accessed if you have a specific piece of information, like knowing about the mutant's infertility in Fallout one. Other times knowing a certain "value of secrets" will be enough. Having enough items tagged "political intrigue" which symbolize secrets you know about local nobility would be used to impress a local lord. Knowing enough "arcane secrets" would impress a wizard etc. Other times it could be used to make certain check easier. A guard will let you into a city if you bribe him or show him proper papers. But exchanging knowledge about far-off lands will lower his price.

The obvious question is: "why bother with all that crap instead of tracking everything in your journal like in a normal RPG". It makes playing a diplomat more fun, because instead of putting points into your speech skill you now need to actually think about what you're doing and play it a bit like an adventure game. You only run into a wall as a diplomat when you encounter a speech check that is too difficult for you at a given moment, the only way out of this situation is to reload and return to the conversation after you've put some more points in the relevant skill. If some additional information is needed you just need to finnish relevant subquests on your way. Now when you run into a wall you need to think about whom you're talking to and what information could this guy be interested in. Then you need to think where could you find this kind of information and hunt down relevant NPC. This would make playing a talker feel more like an actual game than a CYOA.

This is actually a solid idea. The problem with detective games like the Sherlock Holmes titles and similar, is that you typically only keep the clues that you will use at one point in your "mental inventory", which highlights their gaminess. A better way would be to pick up a lot of excessive information, many more "mental items" than you will ever actually use, but be forced to decide for yourself what is actually useful in any situation. Text information is often meta-gamed though, so you would perhaps have to attach this to a language skill with certain thresholds for when the items would be appropriately marked for usage.

A big issue is that most RPGs are not living worlds and the characters aren't really characters with individual selves, just diagogue buckets.

What OP described is actually relatively equivalent to how Axioms works, but Axioms is a map and menu game with heavy visual novel/rpg gameplay. Not sure how you'd pull off the same thing effectively in a relatively shallow narrative RPG with a few hundred characters and no actual economy.

 

[Axioms]

The thing I always wished was in an RPG was making magic more deep and interesting. Like a deeper version of Necromany or Demonology from Conquest Of Eo. Alchemy more like, but not identical to, Potioncraft. Longer more complex magical fights in turn based fashion that take dozens of turns but it is worth it cause they are more reactive/dynamic/flexible than just spamming Fireball.

I wanna see more buffs and debuffs, more status effects that take setup and which can be at least partially countered, like stacking poison, disease, corruption, and other dot debuffs but healing can prevent a DoT combo/synergy effect by undoing key status penalties.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

So my idea is mental inventory. It's like a regular inventory but instead of listing items, it lists things you've learned so far. Whenever you find out something significant (piece of obscure lore, geographic location of something important, personal information about certain characters etc.) you get an unique item symbolizing what you've just learned.

These can be used in several ways. First of all they can be sold to information brokers for money or other information. Information sold that way won't disappear from your inventory but it's value will drop down, after all the more people know about a secret the less valuable it is. The other use would be to affect dialogue choices. Some choices can only be accessed if you have a specific piece of information, like knowing about the mutant's infertility in Fallout one. Other times knowing a certain "value of secrets" will be enough. Having enough items tagged "political intrigue" which symbolize secrets you know about local nobility would be used to impress a local lord. Knowing enough "arcane secrets" would impress a wizard etc. Other times it could be used to make certain check easier. A guard will let you into a city if you bribe him or show him proper papers. But exchanging knowledge about far-off lands will lower his price.

The obvious question is: "why bother with all that crap instead of tracking everything in your journal like in a normal RPG". It makes playing a diplomat more fun, because instead of putting points into your speech skill you now need to actually think about what you're doing and play it a bit like an adventure game. You only run into a wall as a diplomat when you encounter a speech check that is too difficult for you at a given moment, the only way out of this situation is to reload and return to the conversation after you've put some more points in the relevant skill. If some additional information is needed you just need to finnish relevant subquests on your way. Now when you run into a wall you need to think about whom you're talking to and what information could this guy be interested in. Then you need to think where could you find this kind of information and hunt down relevant NPC. This would make playing a talker feel more like an actual game than a CYOA.

Disco Elysium

 

[NecroLord]

The thing I always wished was in an RPG was making magic more deep and interesting. Like a deeper version of Necromany or Demonology from Conquest Of Eo. Alchemy more like, but not identical to, Potioncraft. Longer more complex magical fights in turn based fashion that take dozens of turns but it is worth it cause they are more reactive/dynamic/flexible than just spamming Fireball.

I wanna see more buffs and debuffs, more status effects that take setup and which can be at least partially countered, like stacking poison, disease, corruption, and other dot debuffs but healing can prevent a DoT combo/synergy effect by undoing key status penalties.

You mean a more ritualized form of Magic that can take days, potentially entire months to set up?

 

[Optimist]

So my idea is mental inventory. [snip]

Cultist Simulator as well as Sunless Sea and, to a lesser extent, Skies tried doing something like this.

 

[Axioms]

The thing I always wished was in an RPG was making magic more deep and interesting. Like a deeper version of Necromany or Demonology from Conquest Of Eo. Alchemy more like, but not identical to, Potioncraft. Longer more complex magical fights in turn based fashion that take dozens of turns but it is worth it cause they are more reactive/dynamic/flexible than just spamming Fireball.

I wanna see more buffs and debuffs, more status effects that take setup and which can be at least partially countered, like stacking poison, disease, corruption, and other dot debuffs but healing can prevent a DoT combo/synergy effect by undoing key status penalties.

You mean a more ritualized form of Magic that can take days, potentially entire months to set up?

No, like in the battles themselves. Although ritualized magic warfare could also be cool.