FHIZBAN'S PROFILE

After having played so many RPGs, i get tired of the good old combat system and the game system in general. I would like to give something completely different a try: The Action Resolution System. Inspired by the days of the old pen-and-paper RPGs, this could be a new approach how to control conflicts in computer games:

My only question is: Would it be fun?

The Idea
First of all, imagine that there would be no battle system, there would also be no magic system. Oh yes, there will be skills, spells and weapons but all those things geared towards highly detailed realtime/turnbased combat would simply be cut out.

Instead, the game (wich would clearly be some kind of storytelling/adventure game) uses an action resolution system to handle all the things that happen to a player. Whenever a player fights, tries to pick a lock, sneaks past a guard, haggles with a merchant or tries to interrogate a witness - its always the action resolution that is used.

The system makes no difference between combat or non-combat, the framework is always the same. This waters down the game a lot, as it cuts out the enormous detail many games spend on combat and replaces it with a much simpler "general system" that focuses on the diversity of options.

How the System Works
Whenever the result of a situation is unclear, a ringmenu appears, showing the players choices. The number and type of choices are regulated by the situation itself. Each choice has a different success rate that depends on both: the players skills and the difficulty of the situation (or the skills of an enemy/NPC).

Different choices require different forms of energy like Healthpoints or Mana. Other choices require a certain item (like attacking, wich requires a weapon / or bribery wich requires money). All choices have a special result whenever you are successful or fail to accomplish the task.

The different choices are color coded to show you roughly the success rate: choices in grey are disabled and therefore not selectable (because of lacking skills or missing items), red is very hard to accomplish, then orange, then yellow, then dark green (very good chances of success) and finally bright green (piece of cake).

Examples

Situation: PC touches a motorbike
Choices: Ride (Driving skill required) or Cancel
Effect: PC rides the motorbike

Situation: PC convinces a doorman to let him in
Choices: Persuade (Fast talk skill required), Psi (Psi Ability required), Attack (Melee combat skill required)
Effect: Persuade - doorman lets PC in / or

Situation: PC tries to avoid a trap
Choices: Sneak past (Agility), Disarm (Technology), Psi
Effect: Trap succesfully avoided / or taking damage from it

Conclusion

I would like to see the system in action to finally make up my mind. But I would have to code it, as it seems no one has done something like this before. It reminds me a bit of Shenmue (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shenmue). I just cannot predict if it would work - this is why i post it here. The game would be so much simpler, faster, and more shallow due to the fact that "heavy impact parts" like the Final Fantasy battle system would be completely missing. No 3000 weapons, No 2000 armor, No 1000 spells & skills and instead just a simple ringmenu that lets you interact with almost every object in the game? Hmmm......

My current tought is that it would be rather lame. To make this system interesting the degree of interaction has to be increased a lot. Making it possible to interact with almost every object/scenery/terrain/NPC/enemy in the game. And alltogether with different specifications, choices and outcomes. So, it could work in a way that we remove the ultimate focus from combat and shift it something like "equally focusing on all aspects of a gameworld on a simpler base".

And there would have to be many of those aspect to be fun (driving your bike, getting your train, avoiding a trap, defeating your enemy, bargaining, interrogation, subterfuge, stealth, perception, gambling, drinking, balancing on a pole, catching flies with your bare hands, running faster than gunfire, jumping over pitfalls, convincing people, driving a tank, operating machinery, hacking computers, casting shamanistic rituals, calling the rat god, arm wrestling, playing billiard, convincing the taxi driver to drive you for fee, getting information out of hostages, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.)

Just everything. Everything made simple. Everything equally simple. Combat just one feature among many.

Thats it. Feel free to discuss.

-Fhizban over and out