Ideas Guys Thread: The Big Thread for even Bigger Ideas

[Humbaba]

Got another one: Have paladin orders establish states. Historically speaking, basically every major chivalric order (which paladins are based off of) ruled over various bits of land. The crusader kingdoms in the middle east are a good example. Or the knights hospitaller, who ruled Rhodos and later Malta. Let's also not forget the teutonic knights, who would later form Prussia and ultimately Germany.

 

[Ranselknulf]

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.

It's a fairly commonplace mechanic in MMO's.

If you want ideas on how they are implemented I'd start looking at what's been done before. Usually the resurrections occur unless monsters are killed fast enough, or in a specific order, or using specific attacks or items, etc. I mean there are a lot of variations of this and not all of them are that interesting (which is typical of the MMO genre). One thing you don't want is every monster able to resurrect and make battles take forever.

 

[Haba]

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.

It's a fairly commonplace mechanic in MMO's.

If you want ideas on how they are implemented I'd start looking at what's been done before. Usually the resurrections occur unless monsters are killed fast enough, or in a specific order, or using specific attacks or items, etc. I mean there are a lot of variations of this and not all of them are that interesting (which is typical of the MMO genre). One thing you don't want is every monster able to resurrect and make battles take forever.

MMO "mechanic" is not what we were talking about. NPCs actually using resurrection, taking their dead friends to temples to be resurrected and being AWARE of the fact that resurrection exists in the universe. Oh, and as a bonus, remembering their deaths.

 

[Hag]

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.

It's a fairly commonplace mechanic in MMO's.

If you want ideas on how they are implemented I'd start looking at what's been done before. Usually the resurrections occur unless monsters are killed fast enough, or in a specific order, or using specific attacks or items, etc. I mean there are a lot of variations of this and not all of them are that interesting (which is typical of the MMO genre). One thing you don't want is every monster able to resurrect and make battles take forever.

MMO "mechanic" is not what we were talking about. NPCs actually using resurrection, taking their dead friends to temples to be resurrected and being AWARE of the fact that resurrection exists in the universe. Oh, and as a bonus, remembering their deaths.

Yes. RPGs with resurrection are heavily biased toward the player, since the AI cannot take advantage of it. If rez if available during fights, then monster should be able to use it on their friend to make the fight take forever, unless you kill the casters, or they run out of scrolls, or decide to call it a day and run away, or whatever.That's balance for you, and actually should be heavilly used by AI since most of the time it is lacking wits compared to the player.
If you can rez cold dead party members outside of fights at a church or wherever, even with high XP penalty, then you better find a reason why the big bad guys don't use it to rez the mid-game boss you just painfully killed, or why the king of the kingdom has not been the same guy for 600 years, being called back from the dead by some college of fanatical priests. In this case, I could see cases of people brought back from the dead without their will, even as a form of punishment. Or other creepy shit.

Accepting to have party members killed during a fight because you know you can have them back later on is a decent gameplay idea. But, baring extreme cultural changes, it fucks up any kind of realism you may have had.

 

[Ranselknulf]

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.

It's a fairly commonplace mechanic in MMO's.

If you want ideas on how they are implemented I'd start looking at what's been done before. Usually the resurrections occur unless monsters are killed fast enough, or in a specific order, or using specific attacks or items, etc. I mean there are a lot of variations of this and not all of them are that interesting (which is typical of the MMO genre). One thing you don't want is every monster able to resurrect and make battles take forever.

MMO "mechanic" is not what we were talking about. NPCs actually using resurrection, taking their dead friends to temples to be resurrected and being AWARE of the fact that resurrection exists in the universe. Oh, and as a bonus, remembering their deaths.

Ahh, I assumed they were looking for mechanics ideas and not story/theme ideas.

Do people even play RPGs for the story?

 

[Tavernking]

- 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.

Can... can I use these?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

- 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.

reminds me of lizards that will purposely attack each other trying to rip the other's tail off so they can eat it

 

[Bester]

- 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.

Can... can I use these?

Tropes aren't patentable, so even though I stole some of these, they're all usable.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Necromancers should be able to chop off their own arms and legs, Robinson's Requiem style, then reanimate their limbs to attack their enemies.

 

[Humbaba]

Have fighters attend fencing school and get a degree like Landsknechts used to do. Incorporate fencing manuals to increase fighting skills.

 

[Red7]

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.

what a retarded, neo darwinian interpretation of cosmic horror. u might as well spit in Lovecraft face. the cosmic horror is not about lack of meaning; its about the meaning itself being so fucking different than what its believed that it will drive u mad; its about that fags cant handle the truth.
https://youtu.be/V6Z4fkq3Zfc

btw, making u small does not make u meaningless. it just gives more space to conquer/grow and more aliens to purge.

 

[Dadd]

Necromancers should be able to chop off their own arms and legs, Robinson's Requiem style, then reanimate their limbs to attack their enemies.

This is a great idea, but only arms and legs?

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Have fighters attend fencing school and get a degree like Landsknechts used to do. Incorporate fencing manuals to increase fighting skills.

Good idea.

Melee combat needs to stop being about merely bashing/stabbing/punching dudes like a moron. There's way lot more involved. Even in a setting with guns and such. Things like punches, grabs, etc, should be a thing.

In melee combat, I think Dodge = Movement could play pretty interestingly here. Especially if your system is made to take space in mind. A fight in open space is very different from being ambushed in a small bathroom.

 

[Davaris]

Regarding the resurrection spells discussed earlier. You don't need those, since computers have saving and loading.

I saw a platformer that did away with death completely in certain situations. Well you could die, but it was the player's choice to do so if they got themselves in that situation. This feature would save the player from having to think about where to save their game in case they get killed. Would this work for an RPG? Probably not, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Regarding the resurrection spells discussed earlier. You don't need those, since computers have saving and loading.

Perhaps.
Or you could deal with the implications of a society where coming back from death is one fancy ritual and lots of chanting away, if you have the resources for it.

 

[Davaris]

Regarding the resurrection spells discussed earlier. You don't need those, since computers have saving and loading.

Perhaps.
Or you could deal with the implications of a society where coming back from death is one fancy ritual and lots of chanting away, if you have the resources for it.

Yep. You can choose to die and do the resurrection ritual, or skip it and keep playing. Most people will hit the load screen to keep playing. With this system they don't go to a load screen to look at their hard drive, they stay in the world. It worked for this simple platformer game, but I don't know about RPGs. The designer said he used it, because he thought dying was too harsh for the kids game he was making, but it made me think of the discussions I've seen on the Codex about save scumming. I guess checkpoints would be the same thing, but they don't work in an open world game.