| Thursday, October 22, 2009 |
  Links: Economy, Quests, and News | 
Posted - 10/22/2009 4:29:51 PM | Some interesting links for this week:
Shamus has an interesting article about broken economies in RPGs:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/experienced-points/6660-The-Broken-Economy-Is-Your-Fault
I found this really interesting, because I've been trying to design and balance the economy in SENG. The point of the economy in a single player RPG is:
- Let the player get some reward from all of his loot.
- And let the player acquire some items (but not too many, and not too good) by spending those rewards.
It's tricky. I'm almost at the point where I want to bail and just make the items available for purchase depend on the player character's level, so I don't have to worry about the pesky economy balancing.
Andrew Doull has started a new series on Quests in RPGs:
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/10/quest-for-quests-cast-part-one.html
http://roguelikedeveloper.blogspot.com/2009/10/quest-for-quests-puzzle-part-two.html
Also very topical. In RPGs that try to allow the player to direct the plot, quests are probably the most important storytelling tool. Getting them done well is important, and difficult.
(When I say "allow the player to direct the plot", I am trying to exclude RPGs that keep the player on rails with extensive cutscenes, or RPGs that basically have no plot, like action RPGs).
And last, Coyote has a nice roundup of news on indie-RPG projects:
http://rampantgames.com/blog/2009/10/indie-rpg-news-round-up-22-oct-2009.html
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Comments
 | LachlanL GDNet+
Member since: 11/30/2005 From: Sydney, New South Wales | |
Posted - 10/25/2009 11:02:30 PM | To me, the usual RPG inventory system is what allows the economic craziness. If they limited what a character could carry to something resembling reality then it would be much more difficult to sell every item you come across. For example, carrying much more than a spare sword on your back should encumber the character terribly and make them perform much worse in combat. Without a train of pack-animals waiting outside the gates of the dungeon, selling off the 20-swords on the 20 dead foes inside would be a highly impractical notion. The first random encounter would result in the player being slaughtered before they can take their backpack off (assuming they can even lift the weight).
With such a change, weight-to-value would begin to take on a more important role in deciding what loot to bring back to town. Coins, jewellery and other small valuable items would be considered worthwhile (ye golden flasks, for example). Stripping all of the weapons and armour off the dead-guys would not.
I mentioned pack-animals before and maybe you could have a train of animals (or a wagon or two) to carry your stuff for you. But these come with their own problems. Animals die or run away in fright in some situations. Wagons can have their wheels damaged or items can be jostled off on the road (which is a must-have btw, there weren't any off-road wagons in those days!). Plus having such a large baggage-train will slow progress down exponentially and make you into a merchant (Ie, an awfully tempting target for your garden-variety thug or brigand). With decent AI, aggressors could be trying such things as luring your party away from the train while others make off with the goods.
The other thing that is lacking in RPGs is a more accurate system for determining safe storage places. Dropping things on the ground in a crowded city should be an excuse for that item to be gone forever (or at least gone until you see it at the local pawn-broker). Unless a location is untravelled, you'd expect items that are lying around to be disappearing into the pockets of people nearby. unfortunately, RPGs are usually rife with items that the character doesn't feel like they can part with, but don't use on a regular basis. Potions, valuable one-shot items you're waiting for the right situation to use, that-key-that'll-open-the-drawbridge, that-armour-I-don't-have-the-prereq's-to-use, etc. Diablo 2 addressed this with a chest you could store things in back in town, but even that wasn't enough some of the time. Really, the character should be able to hire "secure" storage to service these needs, or otherwise have a secure place to put things long-term. That way, the need for a vault-like on-character inventory would be lessened and the game could even use storage robberies as a plot device (foozle has minions break into storage & steal the uber-powerful magical item, now you have to chase them down, etc).
One of this replaces a working economic model, but it does help with the excessive amount of goods that the typical RPG lets the player spam at the local merchants.
</rant>
Yeah, I know, tldr. 
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