NEW IDEA: King of Dragon Pass-type adventures. Emergent non-combat gameplay.

[Hormalakh]

So this idea stems from a few places. Initially it came up after reading this: http://sinisterdesign.net/toaster-repairman-the-strange-and-unfinished-evolution-of-rpg-character-creation/

 

 

 

 

This last concern becomes especially problematic because skills used in emergent systems are mixed with those that can be used only at specifically scripted points in the game. Consider combat for a moment. Combat is generally an RPG’s most highly emergent system. Combat is built upon a number of actors operating according to simple rules, which then produces unexpected and complex situations. There are dozens of different factors in play at any given time in battle: a single scenario involves dozens of player decisions, and is unlikely to play out exactly the same way twice. This emergent quality makes combat a tempting choice to form the backbone of a cRPG, since it offers a much higher ratio of entertaining possibilities relative to development time spent than a more static system (such as, say, dialog trees) would. Thus, combat ends up accounting for a huge chunk of playtime, which in turn makes combat-related skills the most consistently valuable skills in the game.

 

Further, because combat skills impact an emergent system, their use offers a wide variety of possible effects. Gunplay, for instance, can deal direct damage; it can injure particular parts of an opponent’s (or player character’s) body; it can detonate explosives; it can break parts of the scenery; and so on. It offers variety and flexibility because the system it impacts responds organically to its use. This, in turn, makes these skills carry more water in terms of offering satisfying, unpredictable results across multiple playthroughs.

 

By contrast, skills that are useful only in scripted systems do not possess these benefits. A skill check or variable check in a scripted event will always produce one of two (or, in a best-case scenario, one of a few) pre-generated results. Because each result has to be hand-crafted rather than arising emergently, such skills are much less efficient at generating interesting variations throughout the game, and tend to feature less heavily in wRPGs than those skills which directly impact the game’s emergent systems.

 

 

 

 

It talks about how combat is the main emergent mechanic in most cRPGs and that is why the skills and game mechanics usually revolve around that. I started thinking about games where combat was not the main mechanic and King of Dragon Pass was what came to mind. I remembered how that game had a strong "events" mechanic where it almost seemed like emergent gameplay. If you apply the same concepts to a cRPG, could you come up with some emergent non-combat gameplay? I believe you can.

 

Imagine that while traveling outdoors and when changing in between maps in P:E (or as you get reports from the stronghold while traveling), you have certain events that play similarly to events we've already seen that play in certain locations on the maps (the drake egg, or the bridge jump). However these events are more emergent, like those from King of Dragon Pass: where a certain number of events may or may not occur (as they are random) and they would play out like the single screen stories with certain options. You make decisions that either have immediate obvious effects or events that have consequences later (which are not so obvious). Each party member acts like the clan members from King of Dragon Pass which allows you certain options/choices. Then, each of these events may affect certain other mechanics either immediately or later (reduce your health in between map movements, make you use certain limited-use spells, make you lose coin, cause you to fight a battle, gain a treasure) or they may change the ending of the game or certain other options.

 

Perhaps Obsidian has already thought of this idea and are planning on implementing it. If they haven't, they should think about it.

Edited July 19, 2013 by Hormalakh

[Flouride]

I would rather have Obsidian doing something like King of Dragon Pass as a stand alone game, not take features from it to their other games

[Micamo]

Y'all are probably gonna hate me for this, but I didn't like King of Dragon Pass. I felt like I was just watching a bunch of numbers going up and down without much understanding as to what any of them actually meant or what I could do to affect them. It's like playing Tamogachi, except instead of taking care of a puppy I was taking care of a lovecraftian horror beyond mortal comprehension.

 

"BELLKSLKJLJKSLKJSKJLJELKRLKJS!!!!"

 

"Umm, are you hungry?"

 

"LKJSFDOUIFSDUOIWREOIISDFUIOLKJSDUOI!!"

 

"Uhh, have some steak, I guess?"

 

"RJJSJSJRJREUIUIDIUIFUDUIDFER!!!"

 

"I'm so confused."

 

Maybe if I hopelessly floundered around with it for 100 hours I'd start to get the internal logic behind it and start to have fun with it but, uhh, no thanks.

 

That said, if I understand you correctly it sounds like you just want scripted random encounters like (some of) the ones in Fallout. You just want to keep the interesting ones and dump the boring "some radscorpions pop into existing around you and attack" ones.

Edited July 19, 2013 by Micamo

[Tuckey]

I liked the fallout random encounters. Baldurs gate had some as well but they weren't as diverse, hope they make an appearance in Project Eternity.

[Leferd]

Any game that takes cues from KoDP is aces in my book.

[Nonek]

Got to agree, the mix of extremely simple strategy elements, cultural detail and rich evocative events really enchanted me as a player. I'd be perfectly happy if certain scripted events in Eternity were dealt with in a similar manner, for instance where the engine cannot simulate swimming a lake, crawling through tunnels or climbing a cliff etcetera. Instead we have these wonderfully descriptive sections where fine prose paints a picture with eloquence. Throw in appropriate music, fitting to the scene, and use of our abilities and I for one would be extremely happy with the end result.

 

A Cipher's journey into an opponents mind immediately springs to attention, something like the vision quests of the Orlanthi, weird and wonderful.

[Hormalakh]

The point I was trying to get at though, was that KoDP's encounters/events weren't really scripted per se. They were random, yes, and a whole bunch of them were created, but it was emergent. What I mean by that is that there were enough variables and randomness in these events that it wasn't always necessarily going to go your way. I remember playing the same vision quest one save game right after the other, and sometimes I could go to the gods'plane and sometimes I couldn't. You could sway the decision in yoru favor, but it wasn't always absolute. Basically "you couldn't always do the same thing over and over again in every playthrough and get the same result."

 

That was what I wanted. Most of the time, combat plays like this in cRPGs. There are so many variables and variation that players find the game fresh every playthrough or with every reload. I want "scripted events" to also play like this: too many variables to take account of and "controlled randomness."

[Kjaamor]

Y'all are probably gonna hate me for this, but I didn't like King of Dragon Pass. I felt like I was just watching a bunch of numbers going up and down without much understanding as to what any of them actually meant or what I could do to affect them. It's like playing Tamogachi, except instead of taking care of a puppy I was taking care of a lovecraftian horror beyond mortal comprehension.

 

King of Dragon Pass is a game with much potential that I would dearly love to see a kickstarter project on, because I think a refined sequel of it could be a truly amazing game.

 

In other news, King of Dragon Pass is essentially death by miscommunication and RNG.

 

The idea of taking the emergent sections of gameplay from KoDP and using them in P:E also has potential, but it would need to have meaningful consequences and also provide a wide variety of scenarios that stay relevant to the story as it has progressed in the area in question. If P:E could achieve this, then I'm all for it. However it's worth remembering that KoDP, a game that dedicated itself to that system, did not.

[JFSOCC]

One game which did this well was Quest for Glory, depending on which class you were you had different solutions to the same problems.

 

For instance if you needed to get pegasus feathers, you had to get them from a hard to scale eerie. A mage could levitate, a thief with rope and grapnel and a sufficient acrobatics skill could pathfind it's way up there. Paladin's and fighters had to make use of a sort of catapult system.