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[Derekristow]

Unfortunately, that level of randomization is incredibly difficult.  Not impossible, but you have to keep in mind things like the number of art assets required.  It would take quite a lot of effort to get the amount of content you would need to call it done. 

Also note that it started out being in large part a parody of overcomplicated RPGs.  I've been thinking about how someone might actually implement alchemization, for example, and it would be quite complex, especially given the new information that different item combinations that lead to the same item can cost wildly varying amounts of grist.  The best I've been able to come up with is a web of items and recipes, where each item has a list of recipes it is in, and each recipe has a grist cost, a final product, and the item combination itself.  Rather than basing item combination off of the codes, which would be basically impossible, each item would have a list of tags distinguishing what it is.  A program would be have to be able to add new items to the web automatically using the tags, as doing it by hand would become highly impractical as the number of items exploded.

I've clearly spent way too much time thinking about this.

[Johnfalcon99977]

I've got an awesome concept in my head.

Homestuck: The game.

You create your character, list your interests (kind of like a skill sheet or something) and create your house. You then choose what state you live in.

Randomly generated story, lands, and mythological roles.

The music would consist of the actual Homestuck soundtrack, and it would be dynamic. For example, as background, non-action music, it might use 'Doctor', but it might then switch to 'Beatdown' once you enter strife.

That would be awesome.

And the Travel Squences will be in an Earthbound style while Strife would be in a Two Dimensional Cortex Command like Field.

Hell yes.

[Aqizzar]

A program would be have to be able to add new items to the web automatically using the tags, as doing it by hand would become highly impractical as the number of items exploded.

Yeah, the 8x64 coding for items would be something like 281 trillion possible items, except for the caveat about different codes leading to the same object.

I still think a greatly simplified Sburb-styled game wouldn't be too hard to fake.  It would take a lot of human gruntwork for content creation, but a random-story generator, procedural enemy-art-modifier, procedural item-art-combiner, and random planet generator would not be outside the capability of a modern headliner studio.

...Boy, I hope nobody tells them that.

[SirAaronIII]

Maybe be only allowed to choose from a set list of interests? Or was that already part of the idea?
And the alchemy would have to be greatly simplified, as others have said. But it'd still be there, just not the same as in the comic. Maybe have a grid like in Minecraft no wait that only works with raw materials. Yeah at this point the option that seems easiest to me is the item tags. It wouldn't be extremely difficult to do that, seeing as we have randomly generated artifacts in roguelikes like Crawl and Dungeons of Dredmor but that's probably different oh man now I'm just rambling on aren't I

[Max White]

The really hard bit would be the time powers.
In MSPA, Dave is able to go back in time after a battle to the start of the battle to help himself fight. How do you make this work in a game? While in a webcomic the author can make the actor make choices that always lead to a logically consistent outcome, that isn't possible in a game.
Yes there are games with time fuck abilities, but they revolve around either heavily scripted acts with little control given to the player, or manipulation of the rate of time, without seperating the actor from it, such as speeding up, slowing down, or reversing.
The other big one is freezing time, and that works well against a single target, but freezing all time? That would really suck in a multiplayer game.

[Putnam]

^
http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?28824-FG-Dave-Accelerate

[Aqizzar]

That's still stupidly hard to work out in practice for a game containing more than one character.  Accelerate is a damn impressive piece of code sure, but it would have to be able to account for the entire game world.  Not to mention it would only work when the player is controlling the Time-character, which would kind of necessitate it being a single-player game.

The only alternative I can think of would be an ability to spawn a "fugue" copy of the time-character at will, which would create a random set of required time/location/equipment for the original character to meet later on.  And that would be ludicrous.  It all really comes back to the difference between a hand-written story, and the requirements of an interactive game.  Sburb would be a really easy game to lose.

[Bauglir]

You'd have to have a built-in railroading engine for a lot of things, such as the time loops requisite for ensuring your own birth. Surprisingly enough, that's actually hard to do. At least, if you can't just write it out in advance. So while you might be able to write a game of SBURB (as in a single, fixed story where failure is just written off as a doomed timeline), I don't think a properly procedural one will be feasible until DF 1.0*

*Bilious Slick is clearly a reference to Toady.[/oldjoke]

[Max White]

Or just remove the time shit, but it just wouldn't be the same would it?

[ShoesandHats]

The past-self would be an NPC that would try to imitate your previous actions, but modify them a bit to account for the fact that you're there. Not sure about the other stuff, though.

[Darvi]

Time travel would be easy. Every time you load a previous savegame, you get to keep all your shit.

[Urist Imiknorris]

Until your Time character dies.

[Duke 2.0]

 Time travel won't work in a rigid ruleset that computers kinda abide by. It'll have to be something players will have to imagine up themselves.

[Darvi]

Spoiler: Or one could do this (click to show/hide)

[Duke 2.0]

 Yes, broken images will save the day! Thank you, Thief of Hotlinking, I'll send the honors to the Land of Bandwidth and Forums.

 I guess one could give the player a certain number of chances to up and say "Me from the future appears." Every time they do that they have to roll a dice to see if they end up being the time-clone. The more time clones you make the harder the check. Then you have to accept the consequences of whatever action you tried to solve by time travel and the counter is disabled.