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Post by SHADOWMASTER89 on Jun 28, 2013 1:34:13 GMT -5
Alright, so I’ve had this idea for awhile now about trying to start up some kind of RP line that operates a lot like a real time strategy game. I’m honestly not sure if this would even work as an RP since they tend to focus more on individual characters and their actions where as my idea would focus more on the actions of groups of soldiers/creatures and up to the actions of bases and entire armies over a large battlefield.
Blood seemed to like this idea, but he suggested it might work better as a game or a contest of some kind. I also don’t feel that this is something that I could fully put together or run all on my own, so if anyone is interested in this idea post your thoughts/ideas here or pm me if you have questions or are interested in helping me set this up. I also already have a fairly general idea of how I wanted this to work, this topic is primarily to advertise the concept and to find out if there is any interest in it.
If enough people are interested in this idea then we can get further into the details of how it would work.
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jun 28, 2013 6:46:33 GMT -5
I love RTS games. Well, the Age series and Rise of Nations, at least.
I also know from her copious Facebook posts that Loogs digs Civilization V (turn-based strategy, but same idea --- anyway, this would have to be closer to a turn-based model, don't you think?).
As a game, it's totally possible (it'd be complex as hell but I would love to help you devise the rules). When you want to layer an RP on top of that, it becomes trickier, but I think that could be done. It's just that instead of trying to create one cohesive plot with a small set of characters who participate at all points, the story would probably function better as a series of vignettes in which perspective switches between numerous groups of characters: soldiers, nobles, citizens...
Could be really cool.
The biggest problem I can think of though is that it'd be really hard to do a proper strategy game without a map. Like, a grid-style map, or at least one in which buildings are consistent in their sizes and how they're allowed to sit alongside each other. You know what I mean?
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Post by SHADOWMASTER89 on Jun 28, 2013 12:45:12 GMT -5
I honestly figured you would be one of the first people to comment on this if anyone did at all and i'm glad your interested in the idea because there are alot of things with this idea that i'm not sure how they would work exactly.
Indeed it would have to be turn based, I doubt it would work any other way and I get what your saying about having a map and such, that's one of the biggest issues I was having when I came up with this idea.
I also like your idea of it being a series where perspective switches between different groups, though that isn't what I originally had in mind.
I was actually thinking along the lines of actually coming up with units and structures for different factions and races and even mining for resources, though i'm not sure if that's even practical in an RP type environment.
I was also thinking of how most RTS games work in terms of gameplay and I figured that each person involved does a turn in the form of an RP post and the post is divided into two parts.
The Build Phase This phase would come first and would be where the 'player' places structures to be built as well as queueing up units and/or upgrades to be built/researched.
Obviously there would have to be limits to how many things you could set to build each turn.
Note: I had already figured that any structures, units or upgrades you set to build/research in one turn would not actually be available for you to use until your next turn. Certain advanced structures, units or upgrades might take more than one or two turns to be ready.
The Action or Combat Phase This phase would be second and would be where the 'player' would move units around the map, defend their base and initiate any attacks.
I guess there would also have to be a limit to how much you could do in this phase as well, though i'm not sure how you would limit anything without being extremely picky.
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jun 28, 2013 14:28:00 GMT -5
I was actually thinking along the lines of actually coming up with units and structures for different factions and races and even mining for resources, though i'm not sure if that's even practical in an RP type environment. Oh, clearly you wouldn't have to narrate every single decision you made as a player. We wouldn't have to sit through a dozen posts of "Thrungg hauled rocks from the quarry to the masons' workshop again. Mostly he thought about boobs, again." It would be at the RPer's discretion to decide where they wanted to narrate and where they would rather gloss the material over and just name their actions. As for "coming up with units and structures for different factions and races", well, you just got the Aleta crowd on board. I never got into it myself but I know there are members here with a megaboner for world-building. We could actually even try to import the Aleta setting into this game, though I don't know that the different races and civilizations there were necessarily devised with balance in mind, nor do I think it's automatically a good idea to bring magic or other supernatural elements into this strategy-game idea (only because there'll already be more than enough complex shit to be getting on with). I don't know how you feel about the setting, though -- are you looking to history, fantasy, or sci-fi? (Please not sci-fi! Please not sci-fi!)I agree with the idea of using both phases in one turn so that you don't feel that exploration/conquest has to come at the expense of gathering/building or vice-versa. I was actually thinking earlier today about whether it might be a good idea to play in pairs. Wouldn't, say, four competing factions each manned by two RPers be cooler than eight factions each manned by one? Having a partner would mean that (a) you've got another brain to bounce strategy ideas off of; (b) you don't have the burden of being the sole representative in charge of fleshing out your civilization in RP terms; and (c) you've got someone else's characters to write dialogue with in scenes where your nation wouldn't be interacting with anyone else's. Seems like a lot of positives to me! And that idea dovetails in nicely with your two-phase turn structure, because the players can swap duties. Say, for faction 1's turn, first player A makes the decisions in the build phase, and then player B makes the decisions in the move phase. Then, when faction 1 gets its next turn, they'll switch. Or they settle on any fair arrangement they like, if player A happens to be more interested in boosting up the empire while player B is more interested in expanding the territory and interacting with other factions. Plus, advantage (d): representing each faction with multiple players means that if one player's gone missing, the other one can cover both building and moving in the meantime. Whereas if every faction were represented by a single player, it'd be a bit more of an issue if a player were AWOL.
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Post by SHADOWMASTER89 on Jun 29, 2013 1:48:58 GMT -5
Wow, you've already taken this idea and run farther with it then I had even thought was possible. I'm not sure if i'm even the right person to be the head of this idea, seems like it'd get alot more traction if I just let you and others take the wheel and run with it where you like.
And yes, I was going for more of a sci-fi theme for this idea personally, but that doesn't mean that this idea has to go just along that line. Really I feel like this idea is more of a general framework that could be built on in many different ways. So if there are people on here that would like to take this idea and run with it in the history or fantasy direction that's fine with me. As well, anyone who is more into the sci-fi scene like me then they can run in that direction with me. Honestly i'd love to take part in a fantasy line of this game, I just happen to be more into sci-fi than fantasy, but i'm still up for it.
As for Aleta I honestly haven't delved much into that world so i'm not sure how well it would work for this, but if someone wants to attempt it that's fine by me.
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Post by Beelzebibble on Jun 29, 2013 8:18:26 GMT -5
Oh no, I don't want to rip this out of your hands, it's yours! We can do sci-fi if you want, I can find a civilization that makes me happy in that genre. One of these games alone would be such a massive undertaking that promising to splinter it off into multiple genres would be biting off a hell of a lot to chew.
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Post by ch00beh on Jun 29, 2013 15:13:37 GMT -5
So I'm going to look at this from a Total War, Crusader Kings, and Mount & Blade perspective because while those are grand scale strategy games, they're also the most fun I've had with in-my-head role playing. The reason for this is because of the heavy emphasis they place on noble politicking--there are peers, vassals, and lieges that always need pleasing, and they usually all have different goals that serve their best interest rather than the realm's.
Additionally, when it comes down to the action portion, there's a heavy emphasis on your generals and the relation they have with their huge battalions as well as their liege. This second part is why I kinda agree with Pohatu in being wary of a sci-fi setting: huge battalions just don't happen in the era of artillery, rapid fire guns, and super long range scanners. You may get a larger scale kinda thing in space battles, but now you lose interesting things that come about because of terrain. (no, asteroid fields like in Star Wars are not actually a thing, nebulae are so sparse that you wouldn't know the difference being inside or outside of it, and you can detect space shuttles in orbit by their passive heat all the way out at Pluto)
Of course, there are two solutions the the sci fi thing: kick realism to the curb with hand waves or reasons (Dune shields come to mind), or just make battles a numbers game like Crusader Kings and focus nearly exclusively on the politicking.
So yeah. My suggestion is that I think it would be interesting to make this take place where there's room for noble/aristocratic maneuvering while having battles focused on boots on the ground. This kinda lends itself to the Napoleonic era and earlier, but I really don't know much history so I'm probably wrong. Or alternatively, go far forward into the future and make up a thing that renders non-line-of-sight and mass anti-personnel weaponry useless, or at least less efficient.
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Post by SHADOWMASTER89 on Jun 30, 2013 2:43:35 GMT -5
See, i've never played Total War, Crusader Kings or Mount & Blade so I don't know how to work the things that your suggesting. All of the RTS game experience that I have is with games like Starcraft, Starcraft 2, Warcraft 3 and various Command & Conquer games. Because of that I kind of feel like i'm thinking more along the lines of focusing this on micro play, but at the same time I realize that micro play wouldn't really work well in this respect, it would have to be more macro based which I don't have a ton of experience with.
Also, concerning all of pohatu's suggestions, I feel almost like I would need to see actual, working gameplay examples in order to really understand how his suggestions would work. I do like the suggestion of a faction/race being controlled by more than one person so that they could cover for eachother.
I had thought of having this game operate on more than one dimension like you'd be able to do things on the surface of planets as well as in space, but after what choobs said I can see how that would be hard to coordinate.
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Post by ch00beh on Jun 30, 2013 3:42:49 GMT -5
Well, here's a video I took of a random Mount & Blade battle I had:
As you said, the commands are pretty macro--I'm ordering my units en masse rather than selecting individual ones--but the interesting thing is that I get to ride around skewering people while chaos goes on around me. This is kind of what I imagine when you talk about an RTS RP. Maybe you don't have to be the commander, but you'd be taking part in a battle that's not just between a handful of special characters.
Total War games have much the same mechanics of controlling groups of soldiers rather than individual ones, but you don't get to directly ride around as the general either, and the battles are much, much larger (biggest fight I had was my 900 men fighting two legions 1000 strong each). The extent of the role playing is that generals get randomly generated.
Crusader Kings is even farther along the macro spectrum than the other two in that you only control armies as stacks like in Risk, as well as one character from your chosen family. The mechanics are mostly about politicking (fabricated claims on land, assassinations, strategic marriages, etc) for ensuring your bloodline's survival/success.
I guess if you're more into the Starcraft/Warcraft/C&C style games, you'd be more used to smaller groups of units fighting, so that does lend itself to modern and future settings. For some reason, I feel like this would just make every engagement seem like a special forces kind of deal rather than an all out war, even though this is basically how every modern day shooter works, and they get the war feeling across pretty well.
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Post by SHADOWMASTER89 on Jul 8, 2013 0:55:45 GMT -5
If anyone has ever played Civilization 5, that is what i've begun to think of partially modeling this after, just haven't really had as much free time lately as I really need to straighten out the details.
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