Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Ideas Guys Thread: The Big Thread for even Bigger Ideas

Humbaba

Arcane
Joined
Aug 12, 2021
Messages
2,939
Location
SADAT HQ
Dump all your general ideas, proposals, suggestions, pieces of advice etc. for game development, writing and such in here. Don't be shy, no matter how big or small, at least someone might be interested in hearing them.

Let me start with a couple of mine, concerning settings:

1. Theming is the most important part of every project you'll ever start working on as it is a big part of immersion. If the player is not immersed, there can be no meaningful roleplaying.

2. Immersion goes hand in hand with the believability of your setting. Remember that in order for the world to feel real it does not need to be realistic but internally consistent.

3. There's nothing wrong with making "kitchen sink" settings i.e. throwing in every reference to pieces of media you like. If you wanna have medieval fantasy with space ships go for it as long as you can make it internally consistent.

4. Careful with adding every single fantasy race you can think of, lest you run the risk of redundancy. I personally would stick to the classics (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit) and add some regional variants. Yknow blacks, snow elfs etc. Add gender stat mods, with women getting minuses to things like STR, CON and DEX while men get minuses to WIS, INT and CHA.

5. If you insist on adding OC races, make sure that they are actually different from the races they are meant to replace. PoE had those weird orlan things or whatever they were called that were just furry hobbits. Githzerai and githyanki on the other hand are an example of a good OC race. Make giths, not orlans.

6. Be careful with how you handle the undead. If necromancy exists and is capable of raising skeleton armies then there better be a good reason as to why the world has not yet been taken over by necromancers. Because an army that can't be killed should be able to do just that. Maybe most undead just suck, being little more than twitching rotten flesh or maybe they are very easily destroyed by clapping your hands. Whatever it is, come up with something.

7. Don't make vampires mooks. Vampires have too much character potential to be used as anything less than a main villain.

8. Either have a reason why resurrection spells are not commonplace or do not have them at all. This is something that has always bothered me about D&D style settings. In a world where you can bring people back to life, death is meaningless. Do not limit the accessibility of resurrection to wealth or status because then you get immortal god kings who just get revived every time they die. I personally would just introduce permadeath in order to disincentivise frequent combat, giving combat in itself more weight and shifting the focus onto actual roleplaying.

9. Careful with any sort of Lovecraftian cosmology. The whole point of Lovecraft's writing is that we and the world are meaningless in the face of far larger things we cannot hope to understand. You however do not want your setting and adventurers to be meaningless. Feel free to have fish monsters, refrain from having fish gods.

10. Try to find a happy medium between low fantasy and high fantasy. High fantasy may suffer from magic ultimately feeling dull because it is so commonplace and low fantasy may feel a bit bland because of the relative lack of magical elements. Up to personal preference though.

Happy idea sharing everybody :happytrollboy:
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
11,006
Location
USSR
You have the worst ideas, my dude. I could easily argue (and win) against most of your points, but as counterexamples to your theories I'd have to reference interesting and successful works with which you're obviously not familiar, so I'll just leave a pitypost here instead.
 

Humbaba

Arcane
Joined
Aug 12, 2021
Messages
2,939
Location
SADAT HQ
You have the worst ideas, my dude. I could easily argue (and win) against most of your points, but as counterexamples to your theories I'd have to reference interesting and successful works with which you're obviously not familiar, so I'll just leave a pitypost here instead.

No please do go ahead, if you got cool ideas post them, that is the whole point.
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
11,006
Location
USSR
Alright, I'll just debunk one.

8. Either have a reason why resurrection spells are not commonplace or do not have them at all. This is something that has always bothered me about D&D style settings. In a world where you can bring people back to life, death is meaningless.
Fixed in Gold and Glory.

4bb08412e698fd442bd8d1c96c0168f1.png
 

Humbaba

Arcane
Joined
Aug 12, 2021
Messages
2,939
Location
SADAT HQ
Alright, I'll just debunk one.

8. Either have a reason why resurrection spells are not commonplace or do not have them at all. This is something that has always bothered me about D&D style settings. In a world where you can bring people back to life, death is meaningless.
Fixed in Gold and Glory.

4bb08412e698fd442bd8d1c96c0168f1.png

That's not a debunk, that's a good example of an in-universe reason why resurrection isn't OP. I'm not here to debate after all. Good contribution :thumbsup:
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
11,006
Location
USSR
I did. You can have resurrection spells be commonplace and have them everywhere. As long as resurrection rules are different. Word your issues correctly.

Besides, some of his points are wrong entirely, others go on talking about irrelevant things missing the point, others are self-contradictory. What's the verb to point out all these types of errors? I'm gonna call it debunking, cause nobody's posting here anyway.

that's a good example of an in-universe
And what universe is that? It's a rule book.
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
11,006
Location
USSR
4. Careful with adding every single fantasy race you can think of, lest you run the risk of redundancy. I personally would stick to the classics (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Hobbit) and add some regional variants. Yknow blacks, snow elfs etc. Add gender stat mods, with women getting minuses to things like STR, CON and DEX while men get minuses to WIS, INT and CHA.

5. If you insist on adding OC races, make sure that they are actually different from the races they are meant to replace.
First of all, what the hell is racial redundancy? A world can have a million races. Races don't exist to fit some mechanical roles. They exist for flavor, themes, exploration of ideas.
- A humanoid-looking race that exist since the beginning of time - when they die, they're reborn into babies to random race parents, in a random place in the world. Nobody likes it when their kid is an eldritch being of a foreign race. Their memories of previous lives unlock only at the same age as when they got them, so as kids, they're still just kids. As adults, they have a lot of mental baggage and knowledge. A lot to work with here.
- A race whose biological processes are a 100 times slower (they're still teens at 1300 years old, they sleep 3 months instead of a night). When they wake up, everyone already did a ton of stuff. They always feel left out.
- A race that can clone itself at will, which they do all the time due to harsh conditions they live in, e.g. to provide themselves with food. They use their dead clone's bones as weapons or tools. As soon as they clone, they immediately fight to the death, because both had the intention of creating a clone, not being one.
- A race of gold elementals. They think all gold is dead bodies of their race.
- Centaurs who keep horses as their sex slaves.
- A race of necrophiliacs who reproduce by fucking corpses.
- A race of milk elementals.

What roles do those races fill? What the hell are those original races meant to replace? If you think of races only in terms of "who's the nimble elf", you've built a box inside a box, and this is your home address now. You are the Sawyer who replaced tieflings with godlikes and halflings with orlans. You're the idiot designer here, blaming Sawyer for doing exactly what you want to do.

"I'll add some variant, like black elves". WOW. Mind blowing originality.

6. Be careful with how you handle the undead. If necromancy exists and is capable of raising skeleton armies then there better be a good reason as to why the world has not yet been taken over by necromancers.
How did polity X survive the assault of a necromancer? They used their own undead, problem solved.
You missed the forest for the trees.
The most important implications of necromancy is free labor, which impacts the economy like nothing else.

1. Theming is the most important part of every project you'll ever start working on as it is a big part of immersion. If the player is not immersed, there can be no meaningful roleplaying.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
What's a theme? For example, you want to explore the subject of memory modification, which effectively modifies the person, effectively killing the original person in a way. Is heavy memory modification an act of killing? That's an example of a theme.
Themes develop during writing. You can only make a commitment not to go into certain themes, for example because you want to keep the story light. So you're gonna avoid themes like depression, death of companions, etc.
But deciding on themes early on, like a shopping list? Sure, if you want to work at Obsidian. And no, themes do not immerse the player. It's a much more complicated subject than that. Any random western has "western themes". That doesn't mean I'm gonna enjoy it. While a goofy western like "the quick and the dead" is gonna be one of my favorites, even though it's basically braindead.

9. Careful with any sort of Lovecraftian cosmology. The whole point of Lovecraft's writing is that we and the world are meaningless in the face of far larger things we cannot hope to understand. You however do not want your setting and adventurers to be meaningless. Feel free to have fish monsters, refrain from having fish gods.
No. Read "There Is No Antimemetics Division" for a counterexample. It's better than me explaining.

0. Try to find a happy medium between low fantasy and high fantasy. High fantasy may suffer from magic ultimately feeling dull
Uh huh, it was so """dull""" in Baldur's Gate 2 due to the absolute, orgasmic orgy of high level magic. Soooo boring, falling asleep just thinking about dealing with all those dying gods, having a personal pocket plane, zzzZZZzzzZZZzzz. Is that how you felt? Jesus, dude.
 
Last edited:

Hag

Arbiter
Patron
Joined
Nov 25, 2020
Messages
1,657
Location
Breizh
Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming!
Man, imagine a game where the NPCs also have access to resurrect spells.

You kill some dude, a moment later he comes chasing after you again.
Actually, I would be really interested in such a game where NPCs can rez their friend.
Major bonus point if said game also discuss the philosophical/mental/societal issues of coming back from death, which in our world is universally considered to be The Big Thing and from which most of our culture stems from.
 
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
1,853,654
Location
Belém do Pará, Império do Brasil
10. Try to find a happy medium between low fantasy and high fantasy. High fantasy may suffer from magic ultimately feeling dull because it is so commonplace and low fantasy may feel a bit bland because of the relative lack of magical elements. Up to personal preference though.

Could the same be said of Low Tech - High Tech settings?

Its probably why most newer post-apoc settings follow Wasteland and Fallout's cues and have some sci-fi tastic tech from the beforetimes. Going from "rock slinger" to "guy in modern combat armor" ins't as cool as teching up to "Power Armored Supersoldier".

Also it provides a stronger contrast between the "before" and after. And adds a new tier beyond enemies rocking 21th century tech. Some guys with training, rocking gear comparable to the modern-day USArmy? Dangerous. A bunch of guys walking around in armor that makes them armored tanks? EXTRA dangerous.
 
Joined
May 11, 2007
Messages
1,853,654
Location
Belém do Pará, Império do Brasil
1. Move away from a single simple pool of increasingly higher HP. There's so much better you can do, for example:
- Fixed HP (determined by character stats, can be increased during gameplay by thinks like feats/perks/quest rewards, but that's it)
- Locational-based HP (every body part has HP)
- Fixed Location-based HP

Remember, HP bloat is bad and obsolete mechanics drek, and has to go.

I think every body part having HP would be interesting, it would eliminate some of the randomness that comes from systems where crippled limbs and such are determined by dice rolls.


2. People don't fight 100% TO THE DEATH like a bunch of suicidal fanatics or robots. In the ancient eras, most battles were pretty much fought until one side broke, then the winning side pursued in order to break the enemy further, while the losing side tried to reorganize their army and flee in order. Hell, that's still very true even nowadays. The whole "KILL ALL THE ENEMY TO WIN!" is a very modern mindset.

I've never seen it, but an RPG with things like morale and bravery would be very interesting. Closest thing I have seen is how Open X-COM mods (like PirateZ and The X-COM Files) implement it. There are many situations in those mods, where you don't need to waste 100% of all enemies, you can often simply brutalize the enemy so fast that they break in a few turns and surrender. Another situation is that in both sides, higher-ranking units have a controlling effect on the morale of their inferiors - so if you kill the higher ranking units, you can cause panic. And then sometimes there's enemies who will NOT surrender no matter what - trained animals, robots, raging fanatics, ultra-violent monsters, zombies, etc.

I do think care has to be given to give the winning side all the goodies they would get if they killed their enemies either way. Loot, money, XP, quest items, the works.

This would also be an interesting way to deal with trash fights. And could spawn all sorts of different tactics involving breaking the enemy's morale.


3. Another interesting mechanic would be the possibility of enemies letting the player surrender. You could even divide it into two types of surrender: Let go with weapons, or imprisoned and stripped of weapons.
 
Last edited:

Axecack

Literate
Joined
Sep 5, 2021
Messages
10
Actually, I would be really interested in such a game where NPCs can rez their friend.
Major bonus point if said game also discuss the philosophical/mental/societal issues of coming back from death, which in our world is universally considered to be The Big Thing and from which most of our culture stems from.
You kinda have this in Asheron's call. Everybody can resurrect so people do fun things like have competitions who can hurl themselves off cliffs the furthest.
 
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 10, 2018
Messages
6,710
Location
Mouse Utopia
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
1.) No animefag/ gynocentric shit, make women WOMEN again aka witches, matrons and princesses, generally foid characters are not appropriate for an adventure.

2.) STOP making generic settings. Make the setting a weird dangerous place with at least one severe resource scarcity.
Perhaps it's a desert where settlements are all reliant on their well-drilling for water. Perhaps there is no sun and the heat comes from Earth Currents, like in the redoubts of The Night Land.
If it's a cave setting like Avernum, there should be lava rivers, verticality, giant worm tunneling, and excavated space could be a scarce resource. Light should come from burning fuel, and breathable oxygen from food crops, maybe you have to bring air bladders to sip from when venturing beyond air-sealed forts.
Perhaps the world is a dark, freezing cold flat plane, but there are Suns which traverse the land at a height of a few miles in an erratic manner. All mundane life follows these suns around slavishly, crops have to be planted ahead of their path and harvested behind them. Day is a place not a time.
Suppose the known world consists entirely of a massive cliff-face down which flows waterfalls and in which grow vast trees; and behind some waterfalls there are tunnels. High up, things start to get too cold, but the low parts of the cliffs are too steamy and full of monsters.
Perhaps this cliff-face is the inside of massive borehole, so you could walk all the way around it.

3.) No modern bullshit like expecting an ordinary PC character to be able to read in a mediaeval setting. Make literacy a skill.
Racial and sectarian segregation is the norm in history, if you have different races or faiths in a town they should be more or less segregated with prevalence in different professions, probably different rights too.
Most rulers should be despots who don't know what a constitution is, unless you are writing a setting that's really safe and prosperous, in which case it sucks and is gay.

Probably the most free or egalitarian rulership would be among nomadic barbarians when they elect a warchief. Settlements would be comparatively pharaonic.

4.) Invent some monsters and have them be relevant to the economy whether as beasts of burden (turtle ships?), or whatever else.

5.) Like OP mentions, high magic fucks with the setting's logic, if anyone can potentially learn to cast it. Relegate this stuff to items, which either need recharging or are limited-use.

6.) I agree with OP, probably Half-Elves and Half-Orcs are the worst offenders. If these are fertile offspring then their parentage isn't even from separate species. Why bother having half a dozen mostly similar races?
Do Humans, Illithids, Ogres, make Gnomes psionic but frail, Thri-Kreen, and so on.
 

Bester

⚰️☠️⚱️
Patron
Vatnik
Joined
Sep 28, 2014
Messages
11,006
Location
USSR
Major bonus point if said game also discuss the philosophical/mental/societal issues of coming back from death, which in our world is universally considered to be The Big Thing and from which most of our culture stems from.
The reaction to resurrection would depend on what's after death. But if it's paradise, what the fuck are we doing here anyway? Nobody would keep hanging around in this world full of pain and suffering. The sentient species would extinct themselves and go all live in heaven. So obviously there'd have to be no heaven, just hell in that setting.
 
Vatnik
Joined
Apr 10, 2018
Messages
6,710
Location
Mouse Utopia
Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In
As for gameplay-

I agree with Brozilian about HP bloat only partly. Trying to reconcile character growth with the same HP pool is hard, I think there should still be some HP gain per level.
Would be nice to have morale and stamina just like HP. And yeah most enemies should flee when they or their party are half-dead.

Also in an ideal world combat should often be a last resort, back up by threat of long term injuries. Seeking out combat for its own sake is dumb, suicidal stuff. Very gamey.
 

Humbaba

Arcane
Joined
Aug 12, 2021
Messages
2,939
Location
SADAT HQ
1.) No animefag/ gynocentric shit, make women WOMEN again aka witches, matrons and princesses, generally foid characters are not appropriate for an adventure.

I think warrior women are ok as long as they're really cool and aren't written to be overall better than their male counterparts. Sisters of Battle are the best example imo.

Ea_HkYIVcAAJgxW.jpg
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,760
I've never seen it, but an RPG with things like morale and bravery would be very interesting. Closest thing I have seen is how Open X-COM mods (like PirateZ and The X-COM Files) implement it.
10476-pool-of-radiance-dos-screenshot-did-they-all-have-the-same.gif


Pool of Radiance implemented AD&D morale rules in 1988, followed by the rest of the Gold Box games, wherein enemies would frequently break and flee during combat rather than all fight to the death.
 

JamesDixon

GM Extraordinaire
Patron
Dumbfuck
Joined
Jul 29, 2015
Messages
11,180
Location
In the ether
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
Alright, I'll just debunk one.

8. Either have a reason why resurrection spells are not commonplace or do not have them at all. This is something that has always bothered me about D&D style settings. In a world where you can bring people back to life, death is meaningless.
Fixed in Gold and Glory.

4bb08412e698fd442bd8d1c96c0168f1.png

That was present in AD&D 1E and 2E. In both, Constitution determines how many total times a character can be raised from the dead and resurrected. Each point of Constitution allows for one chance to be resurrected/raise dead. A character with a 12 CON can possibly be brought back a total of 12 times while one with an 18 CON will have 18 times.

Each time a character is brought back their Constitution score decreases by 1. It also means that hit points have to be adjusted down if the character had bonus hit points. If the character failed the raise dead/resurrection roll they were permanently dead at that point and cannot be brought back except by using a Wish spell.

All FG&G did was repeat it.
 
Last edited:

JamesDixon

GM Extraordinaire
Patron
Dumbfuck
Joined
Jul 29, 2015
Messages
11,180
Location
In the ether
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
8. Either have a reason why resurrection spells are not commonplace or do not have them at all. This is something that has always bothered me about D&D style settings. In a world where you can bring people back to life, death is meaningless. Do not limit the accessibility of resurrection to wealth or status because then you get immortal god kings who just get revived every time they die. I personally would just introduce permadeath in order to disincentivise frequent combat, giving combat in itself more weight and shifting the focus onto actual roleplaying.

In AD&D 1E and 2E, resurrection and raise dead were expensive. AD&D 1E has it listed in the DMG page 100 as costing 1,000 gold pieces plus 500 gold pieces per level of the caster. Raise Dead is a 5th level priest spell that requires a 9th level cleric. The cost for that is 5,500 GP. Resurrection is a 7th level spell and requires a 16th level cleric to cast. That means the cost for that is 9,000 GP.

AD&D 2E left it up to the DM to assign the costs and reserved the casting of the spells to only those of the same faith. See page 154 of DMG Premium Edition. Depending upon the DM it can get to be very expensive. To give you an idea on prices Regeneration was 20,000 GP, Limited Wish was also 20,000 GP, and a Wish was 50,000 GP. I would put the value of raise dead at 20,000 GP and Resurrection at 35,000-40,000 GP.
 
Last edited:

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,760
monster29.png
I'd forgotten that Legend of Faerghail ripped off Jeff Easley artwork from D&D's BECMI 'Red Box' Basic Rules:

1aa7357a2b421597e65ef795934513e9.jpg



Also the illustration for the cleric's resist cold spell
monster08.png
:
Jeff-Easley-Resist-Cold.png
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom