SHADOWTEXT'S PROFILE

Usually I would be excited about a topic like this, but the problem with this one is that it stems from a deep flaw in design.

The reason the player should feel the need to branch out in terms of skills / classes / builds / whatever is because there are two assumptions that should be basically a given in a game that has any basis on strategy: characters who don't specialize are noticeably penalized (not by some sort of explicit penalty, but because they just don't compete as well as specialized characters), and each area of specialization should be necessary to survive.

The old healer/tank/nuke trio is the easiest example: characters who only dabble in healing aren't going to keep up with the HP amounts (or whatever) that the other units are going to be losing. Characters who only dabble in tanking are going to survive a bit longer against the tough-hitting enemies, but they definitely couldn't survive using techniques to draw most attacks to themselves. Nuking is less necessary in general--it speeds up battles, but it's not necessarily required to survive (unless your tank's or healer's resources run out before the battle has ended)....an exception exists for enemies with high damage absorption: if only attacks that deal greater than X damage are effective against the thing, not having a nuke is suicide. That's where a nuke dabbler really shows how useless he is.

Obviously, if every character has the option of taking any skill they want and having access to all of them in battle (which seems like a bad idea in the first place), enough grinding is going to make them game breakers even if the system isn't inherently unbalanced (unless there's some sort of guard against that in-game), but you can't prevent munchkins from munchkinning. The main thing you have to focus on is to get as much playtesting as possible to try to make sure game breakers aren't built in that will make players flock to particular, generic builds.

1. What weapon selections are available in your RPG's ?
None. I don't have any games in the works or waiting in the wings where the player gets to choose the characters' weapons. Simeon in Hurricane Simeon uses an umbrella, the leads in Taret Blade wield a hammer (or occasionally, wrench) and a scythe respectively, while the lead in Anything Under the Sky isn't a fighter at all. But AUtS is more of an adventure game than an RPG.

2. Do you plan to break away from the stereotypical “boy with a sword” in your RPG, if so then why. If not why do you believe that a sword is a useful choice of weaponry even in an environment ruled by futuristic technology?
More by accident than anything else. I choose the characters' weapons based on their personalities, and sometimes that means swords. In this case it doesn't.

Not using a sword just because other people have done so a lot in the past is ridiculous. It's like how you run into those writers who try to come up with different synonyms for "said" to pepper into their dialogue ('"Yes!" confirmed Shadowtext.') even though it comes off as forced and awkward. Use a sword when it fits, or when it would be cool. All other considerations are unnecessary.

See my answer to the next part for my response to the latter question.

3. Why do you believe swords constantly appear with RPG's despite the innovation seen in our modern day?
Swords are fairly simple to use with at least a little effectiveness even by amateurs, and they're significantly cooler than most other simple weapons that one might give a young adventurer. Most other weapons have a steeper learning curve, where people who suck at them are basically completely worthless--Bows and Arrows for example. If you're not already a good shot and very strong, giving you a bow is going to leave you completely worthless in combat, unless you've got a whole army of worthless archers firing wildly into the air.

Guns aren't much better--unless we're talking shotguns, people who don't know how to use them aren't going to do anything other than scare people, unless they're at point blank range. And if you let someone get that close to you, you've already lost whatever advantage wielding a gun would give you in the first place. That's not to mention the trouble of reloading (especially reloading quickly).

But this is all unimportant. What it comes down to is this: swords are cooler than guns, because kicking someone's ass with (in large part) your own strength and agility is more badass than letting chemically-propelled projectiles do it for you. You can have a badass wield a gun (Ash Williams comes to mind), but giving them melee weapons makes them even more badass (Ash + Chainsaw). Especially if they're facing a foe with more traditionally dangerous weaponry--a guy with a sword taking out a guy with a gun is way cooler than a guy with a gun taking out another guy with a gun. Always.

And I know someone's about to scream "realism!" But if I wanted realism I'd....uh....actually, I can't think of any medium or situation where I would consider realism an important element. So just screw realism in general.

author=GameOverGames Productions link=topic=1683.msg26641#msg26641 date=1218086466
-Its becoming way to hard for new small game making companies to form and make new games and still get a profit out of it, and its absolutely impossible for them to meet todays extremly high graphical standards that all the big companies make or for the most part make actual games for consles that aren't 5 dollar downloads in the online consle stores, and any good ones that form are taken over by EA(Last seen trying to take over Take2Studios so they can get the Grand Theft Auto Series). That needs to change.

Funny, I keep hearing how we're entering a golden age of independent gaming because what with digital distribution on all the major platforms, the entry costs are becoming incredibly small. Plus most gamers don't expect state of the art graphics from XBLA, WiiWare or PSN titles. I have no idea about the expectations of PC Gamers, but I think Steam attempts to create the same sort of environment there.

But then PC gaming has always been sort of schizophrenic, so I imagine you could find an example of any point you wanted to make about PC gaming.

I think that people who want their games to be mostly brown and gray probably have no souls. Or maybe they have souls, but not human souls. Like maybe they got goat souls by mistake or something. I'll bet goats like limited palettes and hate saturation. Also joy.

author=halibabica link=topic=1644.msg26217#msg26217 date=1217760571
For some reason, I have a really terrible time picking last names for characters, which is why most of mine don't have any (and what ones that do haven't been revealed yet). I'll have to play at the game of naming a bit more so my names don't suck too badly.

With last names, I tend to just borrow them from authors, artists, directors, performers or even fictional characters I enjoy, (or in the case of villains, sometimes the ones I hate) or who are thematically appropriate. So like I've got Simeon Adams (last name from Douglas Adams), Alyson Yeats (W.B. Yeats, with whom I have a love-hate relationship), Prynn Thatcher (named for the lead character from A Knight's Tale), and Willow Dawkins (named for Jack Dawkins, the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist).

Those characters are all basically modern humans in Urban Fantasy settings, though, so I don't know if that works as well for High Fantasy or Science Fiction.

An interesting technique, although one that should be used in small doses, is using a naming convention--this shows up a lot in anime, but it's hardly the only place you see it. You set some sort of rule (though probably not explicitly in the work itself) that all characters who have Trait X or belong to Group Y are named after....well whatever. Have a bunch of characters named after fruit, or classical composers, or german numbers, or tribes of Israel or something. It can make finding names a lot easier....it's got a danger to it, though, in that if the audience recognizes that you're using a naming convention it can A.) destroy their suspension of disbelief, B.) clue them in to plot twists that occur later on (like an enemy whose name fits in with the naming convention of the heroes), or C.) make a work seem silly.

A and C can be gotten around if the work actually is fairly silly, or if there's an in-universe reason for it. Like if all the characters are using fake names and the naming convetion is spelled out-in universe, there's no reason that would break disbelief, and depending on the convention used, wouldn't seem all that silly.

It's an idea to play around with, but not haphazardly.