quote:Original post by Kylotan
kordova, I know you didn''t say anything about changing names around, but that is essentially what a lot of this comes down to. If you base your new systems too directly on a single previous system, then you''re pretty much limited to just changing the cosmetics of it. The poster who originally mentioned using innovation (Ingenu) was referring to the fact that black_mage_s seemed to be thinking only in terms of the Final Fantasy style games. In black_mage_s''s defence, I think he was actually trying to point out that a lot of these games are too similar, but then there are many systems that are quite different. There''s a large case of Finalfantasyitis in the RPG world where everything is measured against or compared to Final Fantasy in some form or other. Which is a shame, because other games have a lot to offer too.
Why do you equate innovation with realism? And why do you equate realism with needing to study to degree level? A little searching on the web, a night''s reading, and a few posts to relevant newsgroups can get you a surprising level of knowledge in no time, if you''re interested. That should be part of any designer''s skillset, anyway: the desire and ability to research and learn about new fields to apply to their game. Either way, you can do things differently just by looking at more than 1 system before choosing how to do a new one.
You also imply that there''s something wrong with building from scratch. I''ve built combat systems, among other things, from scratch several times. Not just for computer games: for tabletop wargames, and for pen/paper roleplaying games. It''s not that difficult.
Of course, very little you create is going to be 100% different from whatever is already out there. But it''s going to be more interesting than just taking a standard system and changing a few bits, which is what you get if you don''t do much research into alternatives. Which is what I think the whole ''innovate!'' comment was about.
For starters when I said "build....scratch" I was referring to when I said build and thereby saying TO start from scratch.
Second, I am speaking of innovation and ascertaining the necessary knowledge to implement it, in this case people were going off on the "realistic" tangent (i.e. health is this, no its this etc.). I also have created gaming systems etc. and I understand your approach to your response but I am referring simply to this game.
Third, as I said before, we agree nearly completely on these topics, again our conflict being misinterpretation of each others posts.
