A pre-word:
The game is not going to be launched for the next week at a minimum. I've worked every single one of the last 14 days, I work each of the next 8, and both of my two jobs are stretching the staff thin just now for various reasons, so time off is hard to find. I'll run a forum game when I have the time and energy, and not before. As of now, that looks like Friday next week. Maybe.
Ahem. I feel like running a forum game. What kind of forum game? Well, discussing that very issue is the point of this thread. Think of this as the Meta-OOC thread.
Now, I'm not much of an artist, and by that I mean I can't draw for crap. But I do know a thing or two about Maptools, so regardless of what theme I/we end up going with, it's going to be a play-by-post format Tactical RPG, with battle maps made in maptools and sprites... ehh... I'll think of something. Luckily I can't make money off of forum games, so if I can't find anyone to help me make simple combat images for the characters and monsters and such, there's always Google Images and TokenTools.
As for combat mechanics, that's
TBD, based on the theme of the game (for instance, Mass Effect obviously plays very, very differently from Final Fantasy Tactics), but character creation and levelling up are likely to be done similar to FreeFormSchooler's Mario-'verse RPG. Pick a race, pick a specialty, etc. etc., and then you'll get to pick between some thematically-appropriate extra abilities every few levels.
I've compiled some ideas for settings; read 'em over, tell me what you think, vote in the poll for what that's worth. Bear in mind, the poll is very definitely not the end-all deciding factor of what kind of setting we end up going with; if absolutely everyone and their dog wants to play Fire Emblem and not anything else, we'll do that, but as the GM I have the final say regardless, and a narrow victory for one theme is going to boil down to "Shoruke goes with his gut".
(more the GBA version than Tactics A2, since I've beaten the former and only ever got about 1/3 of the way through the latter)
It comes with a somewhat light-hearted setting, due to the presence of judges who prevent anyone from dying (outside of the Jagds, which are rare). The law system will force the players to keep a diverse roster (I'll probably just let anyone join and end up with something like 18 players, and then randomly pick which 6 go on each mission, with the option to sit out for an engagement you aren't suited for in exchange for being guaranteed a spot in the next one). Dispatch missions may or may not exist, and Mission Items are likely gone. I will probably have to do away with the Speed system entirely; as much as I like having a clear picture of where everyone is and who goes next at all times, and also speedy units, having each update deal with only 1 person instead of all 6 would slow the game down waaaay too much. And the Jump stat would likely be gone. Hills and houses and stairs are nice when the computer can track all that for you automagically, but a play-by-post game doesn't necessarily have that luxury. Or detailed enough maps.
I do rather like how the job-changing system allows the players to decide, "what I've been doing isn't working, I'm gonna switch".
Communal AP; the healer's don't get left behind in terms of growth. Woo. Of course, communal exp is possible too.
The Judge Point system has SO MUCH room for improvement. I'm thinking of adding a Destiny system to the game; on character creation, give me a 1-to-3 word description of your job-disregarding specialty, and you can use JP to use new skills.
The pub-based missions system is kind of a mixed blessing. Players can decide what to do next, but on the other hand, that's a bit of writing for me. Wait a second, I don't have to actually construct the missions until you guys go pick it, so that's fine.
The one thing that worries me is the equipment-based abilities, which don't really make much sense in-universe, and the fact that I would need to make a lot of very long equipment lists with lots of details in them in order for you guys to have any kind of versatility.
I've only played the original for PS1, but I watched the cutscenes of War of the Lions on Youtube, and I actually kinda like it. So if we pick this the tone would probably be a mix of the two, with the grittiness of the original offset by the Shakespearean floweriness of WotL.
Everyone is human! Makes the job system so nice and easy to memorize.
The waitlister problem will be solved with the standard procedure. Dead for 3 turns? Dead forever, call next waitlister. Don't let it happen in a marathon dungeon, because no Recruitment Offices.
The plot is going to be easy to write: "Ramza's dead, Zodiac Stones are gone, everyone with a name is dead, wtf. INSTANT CONSPIRACY, go investigate. And then plot twists all over the place." Expect to fight a bunch of dudes wearing robes and
miters who are totally not Roman Catholic priests.
You know what I can improve over the original game? The forum game won't have Ramza's BIG POOFY METAL ASS in your face all the time
Also I can probably put in more than 2 blue magic spells... I'll probably end up making an
actual new class out of them, foly huck.
Increased character customization in the form of giving everyone a special job (in place of squire). Use it if you want, don't if you don't.
May or may not include a Birthsign system. Birthsign would be more like a meta-job specialty, rather than which of 12 dudes you have an advantage against.
My only experience with The Elder Scrolls series is Skyrim (yeah yeah, I'm a bad gamer, don't judge), so if I were to make an Elder Scrolls game, it would obviously be based on that. Our intrepid heroes may or may not actually end up being Dragonbornses. It would take place within the actual province of Skyrim, and the plot would likely start shortly after the main plot of the video game ends; Dragons are stopped, temporarily, maybe, but nobody cares because of all the civil war. Go do whatever the fuck you want, because absoluetely everything in the universe is willing to wait decades for you to give half a crap.
The skills system would be straightforward to present and follow, at least. "Here are your skills. They level up with use."
The problem is that, with a crafting system, there's the potential for someone to just say "I go and gather ALL THE MATERIALS" and get free stuff. So I may very well have to restrict your material-gathering to the insides of dungeons and loot chests.
On the plus side, unlike the actual video games, I can add a sense of urgency. Or at least have the NPCs beak at you if you decide to ignore them for 18 years so you can go join the thieves' guild first or whatever.
ALL THESE GUNS
Being forced to make use of a cover-based shooting system in a forum game? It could work.
The good: any race can be any class!
The bad: Mass Effect is about the one singular hero of the universe (Commanderp Sheppard) and his/her band of less-noteworthy tagalongs. Forum games don't work like that. So who would captain the ship and decide which planet to go to next, and be the face of the group?
The unknown: I've played and beaten Mass Effects 1 & 2, but haven't gotten around to 3 yet.
The undecided: The inventory system. Micromanage all the gear right down to each individual bullet, or gloss over it and just give everyone "the next best gun" and universal clips?
The uncharted: I honestly don't have a plot idea for this one at all, I just think the mechanics could work for a forum game if I had one.
Skyrunner tried this once. It was kinda fun while it lasted, which wasn't very long.
Mabinogi was designed as an MMO, and it works just fine as one, but... it doesn't translate to a forum game properly. Material Gathering and Item Crafting don't work properly in forum games, lack of life skills might cause balance issues, and I would have to copy over and modify several dozen tables from the wiki before we could even start playing and... *sigh* it sounds like a lot of effort for a lost cause, so we won't be going with this.
Yeah, it's been done, but it was done for good reason. The concept works absurdly well for a forum game. It's easy to scale up if the GM gets ballsy, copy/pasting enemies is easy, distinct player/enemy phases that go in no particular order, and SO MUCH ROOM for adding in extra systems for added customizability. Skills! A magic system with MP! Passive abilities! The problem is the actual Fire Emblems themselves, so you either have to all be royalty or I'm going to be doing some messing around with the lore.
See, it works really well for a forum game because it's already a grid-based tactical game.
The Disgaea series is also FUCKING RIDICULOUS, it's awesome and I love it
On the good side, the system is fairly easy to spell out in tutorials, and if the plot doesn't make any sense at all, I'm probably doing it right.
On the bad side, HOLY GODS that is going to be a LOT of data management. Luckily, I'm a computer scientist and I can probably deal with that.
Back on the good side, exploding Prinnies. Lol, dood.
And back on the bad side again, I'm going to have to come up with some way to make up for the lack of Item World and Chara World, which are fairly central mechanics of Disgaea. You'll probably just be able to improve your gear as you fight through the plot. At least the Dark Assembly is easy to deal with, since mana is awarded on an individual basis.
Also, there would be no jumping and no block puzzles. Geo panels maps yes, geo block maps no.
Now, the problem of how to deal with death and waitlisters... People don't so much "die" in Disgaea as they "need to visit the hospital", where they can patch up everything from cuts and bruises to
spontaneous combustion. And I don't necessarily like the idea of "first 10 people to post an action get to be in this fight", since people who have jobs or school or both have a disadvantage over people who are on vacation during summer vacation, and that just ain't fair. So maybe I just accept eight or so applications and nobody else gets in until someone drops out of the game for OOC reasons (or leaves the group in-universe, which would just be weird).
It would also be kinda fun to watch you silly people screw around trying to figure out how to throw each other around the map properly
And since I'm smarter than the Disgaea AI, they can throw each other intelligently, too. Be scared.
Part of me wants to do this as a forum game just because the ps1 game was so severely underrated... It was such a good game, and nobody knew about it...
The level design wouldn't be hard, just use randomly-generated map levels and loot. Very easy.
The plot would either be fairly minimal, or very far removed from the original game.
I'd have to come up with a loot table before the game starts, that's not so bad though...
Having 6 people each with their own set of monsters could turn into rather a lot of information very fast, though. On the other hand, it could also be very fun.
Sure you do.
I accept the possibility, but like I said before, a game that's run by someone who isn't into it just won't be as good, so I'll likely be sticking loosely to the theme of a game I've already played and like. So if you come up with something I haven't played in forever and I go "yeah, that could work", then I suppose it's possible we end up going with that. I wouldn't say it's likely, but it's possible.
I'm leaning towards one of FFT, Disgaea, or Azure Dreams over the other choices, but like I said, the point of this thread is discussion; what people would like to play, why things would or wouldn't work as a game, etc. etc. My mind may very well be changed over the next week.
Also, bear in mind that discussion is not necessarily limited to the game I'll be making. The Meta-OOC thread is for "what works, what doesn't, and why".
DISCUSS~
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Topic: The Meta-OOC thread, and a soon-to-be tactical RPG (Read 3006 times)