Drethon

I suspect I'm not along in that my favoriate type of game is RPGs but I don't really like completing them.  I like enjoy creating a building a character.  I just kind of hit a brick wall when the character improvement ends.  This is kind of the same both for single player and multiplayer.

 

To create a game that focuses more on my favorite part I've been thinking about a "generations" game.  With this game when your character dies, instead of the game ending it continues with the character's offspring or close reletives.  In this way there isn't just one creation and building of a character but many.  On the other hand it seems all it is really doing is taking the normal begin, build and end phases of an RPG and repeating them.

 

So I'm wondering what others think about this.  Is there a way to focus an RPG more on creation and building as well as extending that part of the game?  Or is this something where existing games have already made the most of what is possible?

The Thief series was an excellent example of alternate gameplay IMHO.

I don't have a lot of time to read this over in detail so I apologize if I'm saying something that is already stated.  To me the biggest thing for a designer beyond the basic of a game that can be reasonably developed is sufficient detail.  Programmers can determine how to implement the game rules but while we can design the details of game logic, that is a design detail, not an implementation detail.

One thing you can do is instead of making a character stronger during leveling, make them specialized.  When the player uses specific skills improve those skills and lower opposing style skills.  Now the character is no stronger than any other character in the game but is still better while using the skills that player likes.

Would you need to represent all the planets at all levels?  The trade needs of a star (supply and demand) would be the sum of the needs of all the planets in the system.  As long as you are travelling between stars you don't care about individual planet needs as much (yes you might miss out on some deals).  Once you enter the system it could then be broken apart into the different planets and then on down to the different cities.  You could even show supply/demand for each items as an average of the system then show the planet/city with the highest/lowest supply/demand along side.