general questions/settings when building a world:

- difficulty settings(agressiveness of certain NPCs, strength of NPCs)

- memory of NPCs(do they still care you broke in their house an hour later)

- size of the world

- timeflow(day/night cycle, maybe the night only takes 1/4th of the time of the day or vice versa)

- population-density(maybe broken down for specific types of population)

- something about advanced skills availability,

basically character-creation but without balancing out the characters between each other, some are supposed to be hard/easy.

Lets say for a quest A you need item A. But item A was randomly placed in castle B. The guards block you from entering castle B until you complete quest B. You because this is random can't get quest B until you finish quest A. If this scenario or one like it was generated randomly the player would be stuck. There are many things you need to look out for when generating quests, have you thought through what you need to look out for or even how to represent quests so that you can check for situations like the above?

Yes, I think that it is possible, because the survey is just a hidden configuration (in ultima you configure your character). The best and most deep world generation (including history generation and conflicts etc.) is used by dwarf fortress.

I would check out dwarf fortress, I think it is mod-able and you can quickly test-out your survey idea. Dwarf fortress is although a good game to compare your goals. Does DF deliver what you have in mind ? If not, then you will have a problem, if more than that, you could be lucky. DF is by far the most complex fantasy world simulation I know and implementing such a beast is one of the most challenging tasks in game development.

Thanks, for the help! Dwarf Fortress carries alot of the same ideas for generating this stuff, though it seems this is more is about a sandbox world generation, that is on a 2d plane.

For anyone still confused on what exactly I'm looking to do, you could say it could be the same type of "Random" generation.

Have you GM'd any roleplaying games before? I think that's great practice for thinking about this particular design problem. Or even just finding a forum or blog on the topic and reading what people love and hate in a GM. Since the game is being run by a human, you do get to tailor the world to your players. With something like this you can try to capture some of that flexibility a human brings to the role of running a game.

You mention favorite stat and giving a bonus to it: Advice I've taken to heart in GM'ing is to try to give everyone a chance to use a skill of theirs every session. Did somebody spend points in 'swim'? Then they're going to have to cross a raging river. Diplomacy? Ok, cancel the ambush, the bandits will bar the way forward and give an opportunity to convince them otherwise. Rather than just giving a bonus to strength, face the player with gates to pull down and arm wrestling contests and having to hold back an avalanche of boulders.

At one point I GM'd a game with first time players who turned out to really, really enjoy being petty criminals. In the first session the crown prince was escaping from an evil uncle. The players were supposed to help smuggle him from the city, and then go on quests for him to consolidate some power, and then he'd rise up and seize his rightful crown. Instead the players promptly sold his location to the city guard. Ok, fine, I took the information about the players and learned I had to lead this group with promises of ill-gotten gains instead of calls to their sense of right. Can your game learn similar things? Give the player an opportunity to help the princess with a minor problem. If they jump at the chance, great, start a love story. If not, are they interested in the prince instead? Or maybe love stories just aren't there bag, and let's get back to the dungeons.

You can get some of this stuff from a survey, but you can also just observe the player for much of it. Instead of saying their favorite stat is strength, you can just see which stat they improve. Instead of asking for alignment, you can give them good and evil choices and see which they take.

You can get some of this stuff from a survey, but you can also just observe the player for much of it. Instead of saying their favorite stat is strength, you can just see which stat they improve. Instead of asking for alignment, you can give them good and evil choices and see which they take.

You can get some of this stuff from a survey, but you can also just observe the player for much of it. Instead of saying their favorite stat is strength, you can just see which stat they improve. Instead of asking for alignment, you can give them good and evil choices and see which they take.

Thanks for the advice, but sadly some of this stuff would have to be known as the game is created, though yes, some of it can be observed.

Why? Until a player talks to the merchant they don't know if he wants them to protect him or assassinate a rival. Until a player enters a dungeon, they don't know if it's filled with devious traps or hulking trolls.

Even the world map doesn't need to be set, strictly speaking, until its observed. If the player sails away from island 1 at the first opportunity, lay down island 2 at that point and keep it low level. If they stay on island 1 until the endgame, make island 2 a volcanic fortress for the big fight at the end.

You can get some of this stuff from a survey, but you can also just observe the player for much of it. Instead of saying their favorite stat is strength, you can just see which stat they improve. Instead of asking for alignment, you can give them good and evil choices and see which they take.

Thanks for the advice, but sadly some of this stuff would have to be known as the game is created, though yes, some of it can be observed.

Why? Until a player talks to the merchant they don't know if he wants them to protect him or assassinate a rival. Until a player enters a dungeon, they don't know if it's filled with devious traps or hulking trolls.

Even the world map doesn't need to be set, strictly speaking, until its observed. If the player sails away from island 1 at the first opportunity, lay down island 2 at that point and keep it low level. If they stay on island 1 until the endgame, make island 2 a volcanic fortress for the big fight at the end.

In the cases you speak of it is true, but it certainly is not true about other mechanics of the game, like which types of weapons to use, and which time period you choose to play in. Though that does simplify a lot of the questioning that has to be done at the beginning of the game.