SPELLBINDER'S PROFILE

I hope no one minds if i open another topic. I have a few ideas on my mind and like to discuss them with the community to get a better picture of what players like and what is disliked in RPGs.

I am facing a problem when designing a Non-combat skill system for one of my side-projects. There are a lot of non-combat skills to spice the game up a bit and I wonder how the party members get involved in the skill-check mechanism. I better explain using an example:

Imagine you have a party of 4, standing in front of a locked door. you dont have a key but some of your party members are able to pick locks. picking locks is done by a simple skill check (skill VS lock difficulty). but its 1 lock and 4 party members, so what do you think is the best solution for this situation?

1. all party members work together - but their skills are treaded individually
Pro: Relatively easy and fast
Con: As all skills are added together, the single skill value of a hero becomes less relevant. In fact you could simplify it down to have only one "pick lock" skill for the whole party. otherwise you have to do book-keeping for 4 skill values, that are practically treated as one.

2. all party members work together - there is only one "party lock picking" skill
Pro: Very easy and fast
Cons:
* when we use only one skill value for all members, what about skill advancements in general
* a thief joins your party, the party lock pick skill has to be increased.
* the thief is leaving again, the skill has to be increased (what happens with meanwhile skill advancements?)

3. you select a party member of your choice from a dialog.
Pro: Freedom of choice and all party members can develop their skills individually.
Con: I have to script a select dialog for every skill and the player has to make a boring dialog choice every time he encounters a non-combat-skill-check.

4. the best party member is automatically chosen.
Pro: Easy and fast
Con: The other party members never have the chance to test their skills, in fact their skill points are absolutely useless.

Any thoughts on this one? As a scripters note: When every character has skill values, i have to do book-keeping for all skills *4 - wich enormously increases the variables i have to manage. in addition to that: a select dialog makes more work and is (in my oppinion) game-play-wise not really interesting to the players (= "oh no, lock nr. 15 on this dungeon level and i have to click to chose my thief again and again!")

I really appreciate every helpful comment.

@LockeZ Thank you for the first really constructive post. Well, the basic thought was to actually design a lot of non-random dungeon floors and link them together randomly. but as seen in the screens above, the placement of dungeon interior should still be random.

im also thinking about other ways to make this "semi-random-dungeon" more attractive. are there any?

Edit:

I like to expand my vision a bit more, maybe a few others are getting interested...


MODULES

As we are somewhat forced to the solution of linking pre-mapped dungeon floors together in a semi-random way, i would like to introduce many randomly placed objects to compensate the lack of real random dungeon floors.

The idea is to break all the dungeon interior into smaller modules wich can be varied individually by changing a few variables. Typical objects would be enemies, traps, items, wandering npcs and so on.

I played a bit in rpgmaker and would like to explain one sample module: the traps.

each dungeon floor has a TrapLevel, represented as a number from 0 to 100. this number can be preset, but it could also be random or depending on the current dungeon type. on the map there are various events marked as "trap". when you step on a trap the system checks if there is a trap or not, depending on the trap level. if there is a trap, various effects can occur. it should also be able to disarm the trap if the player has the right skill. should the trap be triggered, the trap effect could also be depending on the TrapLevel (higher means more deadly traps), and the effect could be adjusted to the current dungeon type (in fire dungeons there are fire traps, in ice dungeons more ice traps, in a swamp there could be more poison traps).

this way you have a simple module, controlled via a variable and a common event. the functionality spreads out on all trap events in the game, making them easier to manage. every time you enter a map, its up to the random engine if a trap is actually there - and what type it is.

So, this sample module could also work for monsters, items and all other dungeon objects as well.

@LightningLord2 Granted!

@All To be honest, random games are dead nowadays - undeserved. Here are just some links to wet your tastebuds, to show the beauty of randomness in pictures instead of words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh3-VgZxhCU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCQOa592ies&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbhnG2FtvM&feature=related

Hey there,
I just needed some distraction from my main project - and was brainstorming with some friends about dungeon design in RPGs. Our current topic is random generation and the granularity of monsters/items/traps/objects encountered. maybe you have some thoughts about this - as we would really like to broaden our scope by hearing them.

Being a fan of traditional rpgs as well as rougelike and semi-random games, i was always wondering about how random dungeons could be generated that are really fun. i like to cover the various aspects of a random dungeon seperated into layers of design in this post - hopefully i hit the mark.

PS: All my thoughts are focused on the RPGMaker2k3, as I am a real retro game fan. Of course, all ideas could be translated to other Makers/Programming languages as well - but every technical consideration is done with 2k3 in mind. True to the old-school.

PPS: As i cannot stress this enough: before you say "this is too complex/ambitious for rpgmaker" please note that this is a GENERAL discussion.

1. Dungeon Geography/Layout
#Fact 1: The random dungeon generator in 2k3 just sucks.
#Fact 2: Generating random dungeons via script in 2k3 is practically impossible.
#Solution: Pre-Map all possible dungeon layouts by creating more than just one version for every dungeon floor. Players then access a random subset of pre-generated maps and are led through a series of randomly selected subsets without repeating a single map.
#Pro: Dungeons look different all the time, while being locically layed-out.
#Con: this means when you create 30 dungeon floors, it is possible that your players only encounter 20 of them. thats 10 leftover useless layouts you spend lot of work on. Plus: When you replay the game, dungeon layouts tend to be repetitive.

I have attached a picture of a random dungeon layout, just imagine more of these. Upon entering the game, the player is thrown onto one random starting map:



2. Objects placement
#Fact 1: Random Object placement is possible in 2k3.
#Fact 2: Random Object placement with logical chains between single objects is necessary to increase fun and replay value.
#Solution: Place a maximum of every object type on the map. upon entering the map, a script calculates wich events are removed. this creates a semi-random patch of items/monsters/traps/npcs and more.
#Pro: Randomized dungeon object placement
#Cons: You have to define the maximum number of dungeons objects per map, they are also limited to their fixed locations and tend to repeat when you replay the game.

I attached the layout <A> again, with possible placements on the left, and actual placements to the right. depending on the difficulty of the dungeon, the script chooses only a certain numbers of events to be actually turned into items/enemies/traps etc.



3. Adding more fun
We already thought about some concepts wich make this somewhat simple system more fun:

A. Objects within placements are randomized, what was a item in the last placement, could be an enemy in the next game/placement.
B. Add more object types. there could be NPCs like wandering merchants and healers who sell you goods/services depending on the current difficulty/dungeon level. Expanding on the "more objects" idea, there could also be:
* Quest NPCs wich give you simple quests to solve on the map you are on. There could even be two NPCs on a map, tied together - where you have to ask the first (randomly placed) NPC to bring her/him to the second (also randomly placed) NPC on the map.
* Mid-Boss-Monsters, limited to just a few per map, much harder to beat, but provide more treasure.
* Treasure chests, like normal treasure but more limited and with the possibility of being trapped/cursed.
* Random entrances/exits to other (randomized) map levels, besides the standard exits
* Random puzzle pieces that have to be moved like sokoban boxes to solve a sub-quest
* parts of the map only being accessable by boat/coal lorry
* random weather effects upon entering the map
* random map themes like fire-dungeon, water-cave, forest-dungeon etc. that affect the monsters, traps and items placed in the dungeon
* Changed dungeon geography, more rooms/less passages or more passages/less rooms (well, this is up to the developers)
PLUS many many, uncounted ideas more - just squeezing everything fantasy into a random world-generator to create something unique, everytime you play it.

Possible or impossible?
Fun or no fun at all?

Thats the eternal question.