So you want a new career, huh? (RPG)

AJ · 2001-04-23T02:32:41

Reading JSwing''s society post & dwarfsoft''s response (about being a barkeep) reminded me of something I''ve been meaning to ask: I''ve heard the desire to be able to do different jobs outside of adventuring in a cRPG expressed often enough by now (and I mean it''s *really* common IME) that I''d like to ask two questions: 1) What jobs? Certainly people aren''t wanting to be sewage treatment plant managers or grave diggers. So what jobs would people who feel this way want to do? Often, it seems to be some small entrepreneurial thing like running a shop; or leading some kind of small band or group; or being the king / emperor / el presidente, whatever 2) How deep & detailed? If you could play an RPG where you could be all of the things you''re interested in, what details would you want included and which ones left out? If you run a bar, do you want to have to keep the books? How about restock inventory ("If we''re low on ale, the Orcs will torch the place!"); want to break up barfights? Have to throw out drunkard knights? Deal with con artists who don''t pay? What would make you happy? I''ve been thinking about some generic gameplay methods that might allow for lots of different careers in an RPG, so I''m just wondering. -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Wavinator April 22, 2001 02:02 AM

13 comments, last by Wavinator 23 years ago

Saluk

127

April 22, 2001 11:47 PM

Hey, I was working on an rpg like this (inspired by Harvest Moon) a while ago and I got a pretty good list of suggestions from several people. I''ll add the ones I can remember to this list:

Job Advisor: People come in and you talk to them and tell them what job they should do. This could be cool because you amy advise someone to be a merchant, and later you may end up shopping at their store!

Transportation: The middleman. You take peoples goods from one place to another, and keep some of the profit, along with tips. Or, you could be like a taxi driver, taking people different places

Education: You could run a school! Doing the actual teaching may be hard to work into gameplay, but managing it, hiring teachers, buying books etc would be really cool

Scientist: Do different experiments with things, don''t know how this would work, just an idea

Archeologist: Sort of like adventuring, but instead of trying to defeat mr. evil bad guy, you just explore ruins and examine and study artifacts from different places

I think there were more, but I don''t remember them

dwarfsoft

1,237

April 23, 2001 12:00 AM

LOL! I was going to say Pimp, but it slipped my mind until 5 mins after I had posted

. I would like to see ''builder'' or ''architect'' as well, because creating new places in the game world would be really useful. It would mean that you have a dynamic world with all the benefits, while still limiting what can be done and where

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - The future of RPGs

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lucid

122

April 23, 2001 12:09 AM

street pharmacist?
oh wait, drug dealer''s already been mentioned

Wavinator

2,020

Author

April 23, 2001 02:30 AM

Just an add-on note:

Every job should probably have some element of risk, no?

I was going to say that people probably prefer jobs that let them be bad (hence the "street pharmacist" posts

). But this is probably more an interest in the riskier aspects of life than just wanting to be shady.

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

--------------------Just waiting for the mothership...

dwarfsoft

1,237

April 23, 2001 02:32 AM

I was also considering that... But I agree that it is probably just for the element of risk. And wouldn''t it be cool to be the first person to open a nightclub in a Fantasy RPG?

... That is something I have my sights set on