CLEST'S PROFILE

The problem with cutting the middle man is that it just doesn´t seem make sense. NOW if in game you were informed that "you earn spoils from monsters which are used as currency, we at the market have specific values for then, so you can just count then as money based on this table" the NPC hands a plot only written table of prices and whenever you muder an innocent monster you get "you received 5g equivalent in monster parts according to the table".

And I think coherence should be there as long as it won´t cut then fun, and that all depends on creativity.

Regarding novels: Simple, The difference between RPGs and novels lies in interactivity and setting scope. Both of then have narrativedevices to ensure the reader/player gets the best from the book/game, however in both, coherence is diferent from narrative devices.

Turn battle system is pretty much the same you have when you read a book narrating a battle between two groups of 4 ppl. The author will separate the events happening in a way that the reader can understand what each character did in the scene, just that the narration flow won´t exactly follow a turn order, but it will follow the order that the author preceives as best for the situation.

Same as in: RPGs characters hardly eat, but it is assumed they do eat and tend to woulds when they sleep at an INN. In books you sometimes has that too "The night has passed while our heroes had a relaxing time at the jumping taurus INN and the morning came..." unless something relevant happened at that night, the author would just write something like that, specially for novels which spam years of story in a single book.

My point with that is: diferentiating what is fictional aspect (Magic), what is narrative mechanics (turn based system/menus) and what is just coherence hole (finding gold coins inside a wild wolf without any clear reason).

author=Max McGee link=topic=2577.msg48139#msg48139 date=1228094364
NEXT ANNOYING REQUEST: Does a script exist that prevents RANGED weapons from being effected by an actor's attack (strength, whatever) parameter? How difficult would this be to script? I.E. I mean some way to make attacks with a gun or whatever have their damage ignore the basic attack parameter and rely only on weapon damage.

Damn, good point Max, it should be a default option in RM... so will keep waiting to see if anyone posts to this :P

LWG: you, as most ppl who discussed against me when I promoted topics like this one in other forums have a misconception: we are not talking about REALISM but COHERENCE TO YOUR OWN SETTING/WORLD :) Not screaming, just making it really clear on the difference.

I play RPGs to virtually live in another world different exactly from our real world, to do that I need that world to be coherent within itself as much as world is (think laws of physics here, they will always work one way or another, cause and consequence etc).

I don´t mind monster dropping currency if it is well elaborated in detail inside the game in a way that regular villagers would say to each other.

The problem is: People prefer to just ignore those aspects of coherence instead of trying to turn then into FUN systems or aspects, which is possible, just takes effort which is never a bad thing, specially in RM when all we have on our side compared to commercial games is creativity.

After ppl ignore those coherency holes, they make even more holes by creating completely new systems which doesn´t make sense with the rest of the setting plot. Why do that if they could just make a system to represent something useful that had fun potential?

As for turn based combat, if you read any table top RPG book, they will explain that turns are just a form to represent the flow of battle in gameplay and most of then have even a defined tima value for turns (like 10 to 60 seconds) so in practice, characters aren´t waiting each other´s turns, it is supposed to be happening all at the same time. More or less like a movie or even a book.

Now you never see ppl finding money inside forest wolves in fantasy novels and less the wolf ate a wallet/sack full of gold from a traveller :P

As for floating continents and magic: again, not realistic, but coherent. In fact I hate it when a game presents magic laws in X way (having for elements for example) and its sequel changes it to Y way without any explanation as to how the magic flow was shifted or how come ppl learned about new elements or forgotten about others. Chrono Cross raped Chrono Trigger magic system in that.

My my McDohl, we suffer from the same symptoms.

However in my game civilization is more advanced so they don´t need to survive on killing savage animals, in fact savage animals are free only in areas where humans don´t even visit often. For food and organic materials, there are farms.

My point is that I find killing animal life for exp and model anti-ecologic, I think it is far more correct to terminate inteligent bandits who do bad stuff consciously then to butch ramdom animals.

So in my game you hardly face wild monsters, most of the time, the monsters you do fight are mutations who broke out from labs and even so, only to control crisis. Most of the time you spend fighting humanoids or machines really. Monster´s might drop itens but it is usually cheap stuff. However you may be rewarded later for saving a village from mutations with something nice.

As for the main point: Standards

I don´t mind games like Hero´s Realm (yes Kentona, I don´t hate you or your game XD) who try to hold to standards INTENTIONALLY in a way where it is made to be fun. But I do have a beef with ppl who does things without thinking and claim "but Final Fantasy did that, so it is fine!" no it is not fucking fine unless you find YOUR OWN reason to note why in hell do that work on your game since your game is not Final Fantasy.

It is not because companies are lazy and just want to rip your money with anything uber flawed that you should follow in and limit your game to their shitty standards.

Each game is diferent and things work different for each game, just note the differences between McDohl concept and mine around the monster drop issue.

LOL Asa is picking Max´s habit of uber promoting his stuff in other topics (or was it just to give Max a taste of his own medicine? :P)

Nonetheless, playing this one SOON (again meaning after exams... u.u)