SINGLE CHARACTER RPGS: HOW CAN THEY WORK?

Posts

Pages: first 12345 next last
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
I've been replaying Iji, which if you haven't played you better fucking play it right now. It's a platformer with non-linear elements, even if the game's broad areas progress linearly.

In Iji, you can distribute your stats to make your cyborg very customized. Different play styles play, well, differently. It's pretty cool, and lots of fun to mess around with!

How can this translate to a traditional RPG (not an action RPG) with a single character?

The game could have customization, or a few main characters to choose from, but needs to only have a single character playable at a time. How would you make this work? Do you think it'd be any fun? Is Dragon Quest I a good game or not? If you're making one yourself, I'd like to hear about your design process (F-G, I'm looking at you).

Some of my own rough ideas:
-Break the PC into a number of parts; his/her body, mind and soul, or something along those longs. That way, hits can still be spread out in combat
-Very deep customization available
-A focus on dueling instead of taking on hordes of enemies

LouisCyphre
can't make a bad game if you don't finish any games
4523
(not an action RPG)

I almost said TWEWY. Real thoughts later.
LEECH
who am i and how did i get in here
2599
Damn, im making a single char rpg.

Im gunna give myself a time limit. (30-40 days)

It hasn't started yet, im still getting scripts working.
A game about a hero. Instead of one adventure, make it 3 or so epic short adventures. 1 in his teenage/ student years. 1 in his prime hero years. 1 in his declining, downward years.

In each of the adventures, the hero would get an item he uses in his next adventure. There are items for the path he takes (super heroism, mediocre heroism, wimp, dragon slayer, slime camping, well stoked, etc.)
The game I'm working on is like this, and I'm still trying to figure it out myself. I've pretty much decided I can't have any battles where the player must fight more than 3 monsters at a time, and as far as skills and things go, I'm trying to just condense each spell to do multiple things. Healing+stat boosts. Damage + disable. Things like that.

With skills, I try to do multiple things with each spell. Like, there's the basic damage skills, (ie a fire spell, a frost spell etc) but spells will usually have added buff benefits, like a chance for increased attack damage, reduced incoming damage, speed boosts or positive stat modifiers.


Another thing I find helps balance things is giving the player preventative healing. The hero has skills and items available that provide "barriers", which are a status buff that absorbs X amount of damage. This way the player can prevent damage, instead of relying on a separate healer for when he incurs damage.

Along those lines, I've got in place a set of skills I call "wards" for now, that work over several turns instead of all at once. Like a spell that heals you for so much every turn for 4 turns.. or a spell that deals damage to all enemies every turn... or a spell that prevents/removes status effects for 4 turns, etc. The hero can have 3 wards down at a time. This will hopefully make battles where the player is outnumbered a little easier to bear, as he can potentially have four different actions going in a single turn.

Also I have many measures of disabling the enemy. Slows and Stuns will become not only useful, but integral in some battles, and will be included as an added effect of many damaging spells available. For example, there's a battle planned where you're fighting two enemies, and you have to stun one at the right moment to prevent them from doing a devastating attack that requires both of them to use.



Frankly, I don't know why I didn't consider stat customization before. That's something I'm going to implement as soon as possible. I've been trying to figure out how to handle player growth, but I think giving them 5 stat points to spend each level would be just perfect.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Examples of single-character RPGs:

- Pokemon. Yes, technically you have a party. But you only control one at a time. If the different pokemon were instead called "classes" or "souls" or something, then it would fit just fine.
- Most MMORPGs. For most of the advanced challenges you do usually have to join a group, but the vast majority of the game is balanced for single-player play.
- Disgaea and other NIS games work the other way around - once you get past a certain point in the game, all the advanced challenges are normally (though not forcibly) done with only one character.
- Many western RPGs, though you can often get a henchman/pet that is automated.
- Many roguelikes, though ditto.

I don't think it's necessary to give the player multiple types of turns to mimic the effect of having multiple characters. All you need is a good variety of abilities, and ideally a system that doesn't encourage the player to do the same thing every round (or every battle).

I think a great plan would be to let your main character class change in battle. That way they have access to all their powers, so you can throw all sorts of variety at them to keep the game interesting, but they can't do it all at once so they're not overpowered.

Allowing a lot of customization that can only be done outside of battle is very difficult in a single-character game. The player has a far higher chance of messing their build up and being unable to continue, because the choice isn't "do I want one wizard or three?" but rather "do I want a wizard or not?". And if you're giving them that choice, as a real choice, then you can't ever make a battle that depends on having a wizard.
post=211321
Allowing a lot of customization that can only be done outside of battle is very difficult in a single-character game. The player has a far higher chance of messing their build up and being unable to continue, because the choice isn't "do I want one wizard or three?" but rather "do I want a wizard or not?". And if you're giving them that choice, as a real choice, then you can't ever make a battle that depends on having a wizard.


That's why you don't balance battles around having a certain build of character, but rather having the intuition to use certain abilities at the right time, and giving them all the abilities they'll need at their disposal.

Basically, "Class" based games don't really work in a single-player game, unless each class is as capable as the next.
Customizable single characters do pop up in some oldschool CRPGs, if you want to look that way. (I feel like I am making this statement from experience but can't actually remember very well the games I played that did this, other than arguably roguelikes.)

I have some stuff in The Notebook for a two-character RPG, which has similar issues. Instead of making a few characters each with pretty simple options, you need each character to have the opportunity for more complexity. One of the ways I figured I could do that was to give each character multiple actions, with a planning component: a character always gets to choose to do something right now, but sometimes also gets to start working something on the side that will go off in a few turns.
Oooh, an interesting concept!

I'm doing something similar to FF13's ATB stocking commands deal, but with a single playable character.

She's joined by guest NPCs in some battles, but she can also summon monsters to the battlefield to fight with her so it's not a "true" single-character RPG, but pretty damn close.
They don't work. You always need someone to talk to or save.
My current game only has a single playable character. Combat would be overly complex to add more, since you'd have to keep track of combo points on multiple characters. You have enough things to be mindful of with a single PC.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
post=211348
They don't work. You always need someone to talk to or save.


...
post=211321
I don't think it's necessary to give the player multiple types of turns to mimic the effect of having multiple characters. All you need is a good variety of abilities, and ideally a system that doesn't encourage the player to do the same thing every round (or every battle).

I agree with this. I also think giving a character multiple parts with separate HP and skills defeats the idea of having only a single character. You may as well declare the character a summoner and have it accompanied by summons.

However, what could work for me is if the character is able to take multiple actions a turn, but still has only one HP count and skillset. As long as the system doesn't encourage the player to use all actions for the same skill over and over, that could work.

The initiative count for the skills should lower with every action. Let's for simplicity sake say that the character has an agility of 100 and takes four actions. The first action may happen at initiative count 100, the second at 75, third at 50 and the last skill at initiative count 25.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
post=211310
(not an action RPG)
I almost said TWEWY. Real thoughts later.


TWEWY has two people in your party at all times. You control both of them. =P

(I will respond more earnestly to this topic after class.)
Heh; I totally get Narcodis' and LockeZ's posts.

I tried this some years ago. But I guess it wasn't much of an rpg because there was no leveling up or stuff like that... what inspired it was the Max Payne games, but since I suck at making complex action engines, I ended up editing rm2k3's default system for the hero to have a kind of "bullet time" ability, in other words, tons of speed so he could get many turns in a row, cheap, I know, but at the time I thought it was genius.

Other key elements of battles were the ability to 'break' the enemies pretty much a la Xenosaga in order to dish heavy damage faster, and the learning of skills with combined effects based in the frequency usage of the basic ones, for example using 'Accuracy Up', 'Kinetic Up' and 'Headshot' many times each one would eventually teach you 'Boom headshot' an attack which could 'one-hit' pretty much every enemy while in 'break' status... see what I mean? Genius!

The problem was that pretty soon I found myself doing the same thing on every battle and sometimes for lengthy periods of time in the case of bosses: Stun-attack-stun-attack... But regardless, I still think it was a decent enough try, just not so well executed.
Single Character RPGs


Vagrant Story
post=211388
Single Character RPGs
Vagrant Story

Which was a horribly balanced game where everything was harder than hard. Everything took hundreds of hits to kill, "exploiting" weaknesses didn't seem to do that much, and the bosses were just insane. Not the good fun kind of hard, it was the more annoying broken game kind of hard.

That's too bad because the weapon customization and level exploration is amazing.
Morrowind and Oblivion are single player RPGs right? Just let the player do everything they ever wanted.
Craze
why would i heal when i could equip a morningstar
15150
post=211392
Morrowind and Oblivion are single player RPGs right? Just let the player do everything they ever wanted.


What if you want a focused narrative? A linear game? A detailed PC backstory? Something you can fucking finish?

I have not been impressed with your responses in this topic, Shortstar.
Pages: first 12345 next last