I have just finished a book called Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 24 hours. I was wondering what I would do with my knowledge and I thought I would make a Text Based RPG. I wanted it to be fantasy and have a combat system like that of Final fantasy(the clssic ones) or Pokemon. I know how I'm going to program it. I was planing to use RNG and things of that sort, but what I really need help with is Ideas. Not just story(but I need help with story too) but with different gameplay mechanics.
Thanks for your time.

Here is my advice:

• Start small. Pong small. It took the game industry 40 years to get to where it is today, and you'd do yourself a disservice by trying to make a modern game for your first game. Slowly work your way through the decades and generations of games. You have to learn to walk before you learn to run.
• Your first 30 or so games are going to be terrible. You've never done this before. You're new at developing games. The more you make, the better they will get and the faster you will develop them as your skills improve and you learn from experience. Make sure all your first projects are very small. Try a 48 hour game jam or limiting yourself to 1 week of development time.
• You can't learn to program in 24 hours and any book that purports to be able to accomplish this is lying to you. You can learn the basics, but it takes about 10,000 hours of deliberate practice to master any skill. Teach yourself programming in 10 years.

EDIT: The Global Game Jam is coming up. You might want to look into participating in it to get a feel for what development of a small 48 hour project entails.

I was exploring the idea of a single Energy bar instead of HP and Mana. Obviously damage would diminish energy but the use of any skill drains energy as well, along side these roll of the dice single hit to the energy I'd add states and buffs to increase or decrease it over time. Not a ground breaking idea but it makes for an interesting level of strategy when choosing skills in combat that won't kill you.

Something else I considered was desperation skills that become available when Energy is low, these leave you with 1 energy remaining but roll the dice on a one hit kill. As well as skills that are only available when energy is within a certain range. For example if the character has 1000 energy max a fireball skill could only be available when the characters energy is down to 200. This creates good escalation during battle.

Let me know what you think.

Seems like you have two different things on your mind: You have a plan for a text-based RPG, and you want to make a combat system. Why not split that into two projects, and keep them separate to avoid the snowball effect of complexities arising from interactions between the two? Acharis' advice rings true about deadlines and focus. Take a month to work exclusively on the text-based RPG, with short and long-term goals. Whatever you make in that month, even if it's a pale, deformed shadow of your original vision, becomes your finished project.

Your situation is universal among all creators. Whether you're writing a book or making a game or building a house or painting a landscape, the creative process can be grueling. Make sure you keep your chin up and learn from your mistakes.

Here's a piece of advice that I've heard given by successful people to upstarts time and time again: Find the one thing that you're most excited about, and remove it. Don't throw it away, necessarily, just excise it from the project. If you get fixated on polishing that one idea, then it'll starve the rest of the project like a cuckoo's egg. Remember: This doesn't have to be your masterpiece. If you finish the first job, you will get to do this again and again, and sooner or later you'll find a home for that great scene, or that great mechanic, or that great interface element, or that great special effect, or whatever you're in love with. Kill it for now, make the whole project your baby. Set your sights on the finish line.

Ok, I'll throw my suggestions into the mix.

I'm going to suggest the opposite of a lot of people so far.

Start with big ambitions, and dont have a finish line.

It'd you're first game, it doesn't need to be complete, it's all about learning, if you restrict yourself you'll learn less.

Set out a list of things you wish to achieve and then tackle them 1 at a time, eg....

Main Task: Create Text Based RPG Game with battle element.

1. Allow user to customize character at start of game.

2. Vast world which allows for different explorations and increased gameplay time.

3. Encounter random battles whilst exploring.

4. Shops to upgrade equipment, powers, buy health packs etc...

5. Hotels to rest to recover energy.

Work through your list and tackle the issues step by step, breaking them up into smaller tasks at the time.

Main Task: Allow user to customize character.

1. Set Gender.

2. Set name.

3. Set traits (inteligence, stamina etc...)

With specific goals it will (in my opinion) allow you to progress at a much faster pace, and allow you to have a much bigger goal, and once you do reach the main goal, add more stuff, no game is ever complete. :p

I will throw in my two cents.

If you want a text-based RPG with a combat system, go for it. Do break up your tasks, into pieces, however. Your combat system can stand alone while you work on it, and then the rest of the RPG features can be added.

This advice does come with the assumption that you are doing a choice style RPG and combat system (like FF and Pokemon where you just choose what action and the result is calculated).

• Show List of Options
• Get User Input
• Process Input
• Repeat Until Finished

This can be used for both parts of the game.

Perhaps try for this for a list of "major" goals:

• Character Creator -- Handles creating "stats" and other character information
• Inventory/Story System -- Gives players the option to buy and sell items, equip weapons, handling any monetary transactions (and saying when they can't buy something)
• Combat System -- Takes Characters (and Monsters which are Characters), uses their stats, and handles combat/use of items and weapons (Your battle finish can give experience/up stats)
• Story interaction/Encounters -- This is where the rest of the game takes shape, where you add dialogue, perhaps towns/areas, and can do random and planned encounters like surprise enemies and boss fights.

Each goal should be a "complete" portion of your game. You should be able to use everything up to the point you have reached. The Character Creator and the Inventory/Store System can be done in either order. Perhaps you may prefer to have the player select or purchase a starting inventory, so you do that system before the Character Creator.