duskwind

Those would remove the XP incentive for combat etc as well, which is rather counter to your desire for XP for everything. What if he wants to cap his character by eating candy? Doing nothing but fighting random monsters isn't roleplaying, and you shouldn't expect to get it from an RPG. There are plenty of other games that are only about fighting, if that's what he wants. And if he does want to play through the story with a maxed out character, rather than grinding for the sake of it, that's what cheat codes are for. So fight stuff for fun. Why do you need fun and XP? There is no "only" alternative

My suggestion is having fatigue and wounds instead of hitpoints. Fatigue would increase slowly during combat, and drop quickly afterwards; the more fatigued you are, the more likely enemy attacks are to strike home and wound you. Using special abilities would increase fatigue, as would enemy attacks. Wearing armour would increase your fatigue faster, but reduce the severity of wounds (negating minor wounds entirely). Being wounded would apply penalties; moderately serious wounds would put you out of action temporarily, but your fatigue would drop slowly while down and you'd be able to rejoin the fight after some number of "rounds". Only the most serious wounds would keep you down permanently, requiring treatment at the end of combat to prevent death.

The only alternative is having quests that don't give any XP at all (including making all quest monsters accessible without taking the quest), which seems like a much, much worse idea.

I'm not a min-maxer; I'm in it for the story. But that's why I need a really good weapon; my character won't have stats optimised for battle, and I'm not particularly great on tactics, so using a weak weapon as well is likely to make combat too difficult.

Respawn only after leaving an area and then returning, only when it makes sense, and generally fewer/weaker encounters (wild animals will only gradually repopulate a wilderness region, replacement town guards are likely to be raw recruits).

Thanks The same general idea could work as a way to start off with the usual weird mix of individuals in a party, instead of recruiting them one by one. If there's a pre-existing party that recruits you as a member, and you take over as leader after proving yourself superior to the old leader in some way (could be various ways to achieve this; you could exhibit consistently better decision-making as the leader ignores your advice and gets the group in to trouble, or the old leader could sacrifice themselves heroically leaving you with big boots to fill). And finding out how the NPCs joined the party before you could make for entertaining conversations. Actually, I guess Dragon Age sort of does this with the whole recruitment by the Grey Wardens thing, but the Wardens aren't really an adventuring party, and you don't really get to take over because the whole lot get wiped out, not just the leader.

Or how about the player gets recruited as an effective NPC for a mission? A more powerful character takes you along as part of their quest, and they're the ones making the decisions and telling you what to do; you could voice your opinion, but wouldn't necessarily be listened to, and disobeying orders could turn the whole party against you. Wouldn't be any fun to make the whole game like that, but it might be an entertaining twist for a sidequest.

Yeah, I'd like upgrading equipment instead of replacing it to be a viable option. It kind of sucks to say inherit a heirloom +1 sword that's the only thing you have to remember your dead mother by, then toss it aside for the +3 sword that shoots fireballs you found under a rock somewhere as soon as you've gone up a couple of levels, and then replace that with something better after a couple more levels.

Urgency can be implemented purely through dialogues, not timers, eg "'please help, bandits are kidnapping my brother right now!' 1) 'Quick, take me there!' 2) 'so what, not my problem'" with option 1 taking you straight into combat, and 2 meaning the kidnap goes ahead. Being forced to make important choices in dialogue without the option of going off to do other things while you think about it is very common, even if it's not presented as being about a time limit. For less immediate urgency, trigger failure upon leaving the area. Adding actual timers like "save her before the full moon" would just allow a bit more flexibility in the implementation of urgency.

How about a fixed number of points initially allocated randomly but subject to adjustment (perhaps within limits)? So if you like having a randomly generated character, stick with what you get, otherwise adjust it to get what you want? Or closer to what you want, if you can only move a limited number of points from one attribute to another?

Or they could just make height and thickness scaleable, with different default/min/max values for each race, and automatically adjust armour to match, which means just two basic variations (male and female). How complex the scaling would need to be depends on how close up we see the characters.

Oh, totally the developer's point of view. A really good NPC is a huge amount of work to write, not just a bit of a pain. If the game had unlimited development resources, I'd be perfectly happy with a range of companion orientations, but that takes a lot of companions. Say two hetero, two homo, and one bi of each gender, that's ten companions just to give three romancable options for monosexual players. Two more than the highest stretch goal so far, and that's without any non-romancable companions (and requiring all companions to be romancable would be an unreasonable constraint on character design). And I'd rather development effort was spent on making existing companions better (more interactive, deeper backstory) than on increasing their numbers. True, but it doesn't have to be, and in a game where the character's personalities are inherently limited, I see no reason why that should be developed at the expense of other aspects of their personality. It's a fantasy world, not a historical; I think it would indeed be interesting to include that sort of thing.

Mechanics are core to war-gaming, not role-playing. In RPGs, they're merely a useful tool for helping to manage some situations. It's possible to roleplay with no rules at all (the GM decides how uncertain events play out).

Well, that's technically true (you might want to consider adding a comma to get your intended meaning across)

How is a fully developed bisexual character token while an otherwise identical fully developed homosexual or heterosexual character not? You do understand that the RP in RPG stands for "role-playing", right? A relationship simulator is an RPG, a fantasy combat simulator is not. I prefer RPGs that take place in fantasy worlds and feature combat as a major part of the game, just as I prefer fantasy novels with a strong plot as well as well developed characters over both Mills & Boon or mindless action. Absolutely. As long as that orientation is bi for all romancable characters, irrespective of the sex of the PC Well, actually I don't mind either way, they can be bi or switch orientation, whatever the devs prefer. But I seriously agree with everything else in your post.

So you're opposed to any bisexual characters at all? In an ideal world there'd be a huge range of potential companions of varied orientations giving everyone plenty of choice; but given the limitations of time and budget, player-sexual NPCs are a very sensible approach. If same-sex relationships are considered no big deal in this fantasy world, then it doesn't harm the NPC's character in any way. Or if you're a sensible businessperson, you make toys in both red and blue versions, but more of the blue; it's just a matter of changing the colour of the paint for some batches, a negligible expense that's far more than made up for by the extra sales to the red-preference minority. Project Eternity is a role-playing game. It's pretty much unavoidable to be largely railroaded along the main plot, so having as much flexibility as possible in how you interact with your companions is one of the best ways the player can be given agency in the game.

We've already got elves and dragons and magic; are bisexuals really going to push suspension of disbelief too far? No, just take it for granted, the same way gender equality is mostly taken for granted in modern games (female characters have the same stat range as males, nobody raises an eyebrow at a woman leading an army, etc). Assuming everyone has perfectly equal attraction to both genders. If Kinsey 1-2 was normal, you'd still have mostly straight couples, while same-sex couples wouldn't be unusual or stigmatized. In a world without birth control? And a high rate of orphans due to monsters eating the parents? Yeah, I don't see too few children as being a problem. I think most players who appreciate same-sex options would prefer less than optimally realistic options to no options, and understand that development resources are finite. People who don't want their PC to have same-sex romances don't have to, and there's no reason to pander to bigots who want to deny other people something that costs them nothing and doesn't affect them in any way.

The alternative option could make for an interesting story. Or lead to finding out useful information in the process (eg expository speech from triumphant villain), or great treasure (eg the village got razed to the ground, but some of the innocents who died were rather wealthy). It's common enough to be railroaded into failure (eg getting captured and locked up in the dungeon from which you need to escape); why not avoidable non-game-ending failures?

It would be nice to have more possible outcomes for most quests than "succeed; or die, reload, and then succeed".

Adding a few gender-determined variables to the conversation tree is virtually no work at all; it's standard procedure for all other dialogues. No structural changes are required at all. It is possible to put in more work to differentiate the relationship based on gender, but not necessary, and even an optimal differentiation would be nowhere near double the work. Just because it's not of interest to you doesn't make it pointless. It's a fantasy world; there's nothing unbelievable about making bisexuality unremarkable.

A linux version would be much more convenient for me.

Why shouldn't we? It's negligible extra work to make a romance work irrespective of the PC's gender, and it does no harm. Might not be entirely realistic, but we're happy to accept all sorts of other unrealisms, like carrying around a dozen suits of full platemail in your backpack. If you chose to play a fighter, you know you're not going to be casting spells; when you pick a gender, you don't know how that's going to limit romance options (assuming you're not seeking out spoilers). You should have choices with consequences when you interact with companions, not have them ruled out in advance.

I'd be happier with a resurrection-free world, with regular combat just temporarily crippling characters who get knocked out, and actual death only a possibility in special circumstances. Being able to bring people back from the dead at will rather cheapens death.

Or alternatively, design the game so it doesn't absolutely require any particular class to be represented in the party in order to play. Do you skip the chapters of A Song of Ice and Fire that feature characters you hate?

It's also a roleplaying game, and having multiple PCs isn't very compatible with that. I like games with good intra-party interaction, and that's entirely absent in a purely multiple-PC party, and problematic with a mix of multiple PCs and NPCs (how do the PCs interact with each other? how do different PCs interact with the same NPC?). Pen & paper RPGs are mostly one character per player; why should computer RPGs be different? It's good to have NPC companions participating in conversations with other NPCs, and it might be nice to have the option of asking an NPC companion to handle certain conversations where it clearly makes sense, but they shouldn't be directly controllable; they're individuals with their own agenda who won't necessarily do things the way you'd want.