RUSTYDUST'S PROFILE

I like in New Horizons that it used the real world map and had all the real port cities (circa 1700). Coupled with the fact that all the discoveries you made were historically accurate it made the game god forbid...EDUCATIONAL and FUN.

I think to make a more RPG themed version would mean involving some fighting and story. A good way to do that and stay with the educational theme would to make the fighting/story parts based on real wars from the period. Like say in 1668 you could go to Haiti and fight in the slave revolts with Toussaint L'Ouverture, and in 1775 you could go to America and take part in the American Revolution, and then in 1789 you could go to France and be part of the French Revolution...etc. Since so much data is around on those wars it would be easy to write story archs and dialogue for them.

I just downloaded Taipan and am gonna play it now...

One thing that I think would translate well to a RPG style game would be a more citizen production approach like in Sid Meier's Colonization. You make your colonists lumberjacks or miners or soldiers or cigar makers etc. That way you can give the production multipliers some character depth too. I was thinking something along the lines of a town where you assign your villagers jobs and that would be how the economy multipliers would be based on. The people you find to hire around the game's world to live in your town would have set variable skill set values as well...like say you see a recruitable character in a neighbouring town and you select a hypothetical option of "see skills" and you'd get a variable display text box of say: Mining: 10, Farming 6, Fighting 3, Banking 4, etc...so all the recruitable characters in the game would have different effects on your town's production depending on which roles you assign them too (ie if you assign this example character to mining he'd yield a 10x multiplyer on ore production yet if you'd assign this character to farming he'd only give you a 6x bonus to food production).

All kinds of other fun equations would have to written in like Food Production - Population(x2) = Food gained per turn...and all kinds of other fun math stuff. If anyone loves math out there I think this game could be a very fun and creative idea.

Oh wait I know where the Ghostbusters thing comes from. In the audio folder is a an mp3 of a heavy metal ghostbusters theme song cover by a band called xentrix. It is a battle themed used when you fight one of the 13 ghosts that Vincent wants to seal.

I had originally planned for Vincent to enlist Winston Zeddemore in a side quest to seal the second to last ghost but never got around to it. In fact that sidequest isn't in fact done (currently only 5 ghosts are available to seal), i put two more on a haunted train but never put the option up at the train station for some reason (forgot). As for the last 6 of the 13...heck there's plenty of room to involve the Ghostbusters in Vincent's sidequest still...when I flesh out some detail they'll probably make their way in. Thanks for reminding me about that.

This game is in the same vein as "Takeshi's Challenge" for NES. That game is cool.

http://www.goodtimeretrocafe.com/nes/takeshi.html

That's a cartoon version of Vincent Price who appeared on Scooby Doo....

Vincent Price is the baddest mage around.