I don't think a DCO whatever would be very good, since there's no way to do the By-Frosens justice with current game design. Veins, again, has so many good ideas, but how the fuck do you even make something like the Hand guy gameable?
Well, that's the fun part. Games like PS:T and Disco Elysium expanded what you can expect from an RPG, I would hope such a game would do the same. one thing is trying to shoe-horn the By-Frosens into Skyrim, the other is to develop a game where they play an important role.
I mean, we had rival adventurers in Wizardry VII, 28 years ago...
the by-frosens:
- attempt to outthink the players
- use undead to spy on you, ambush you in inventive ways, etc
- use this spying to figure out how to specifically counter you
This isn't really something a game has done before, at best I can imagine the Shadow of Mordor nemesis system on crack.
But if it's a CRPG, then it's not like the players have infinite options and paths anyway... it's a compromise, but you can make a few scripted encounters & ambushes along the way, some that have a chance to permanently remove them from the game if you play smart.
Again, this is not a minor thing, the whole race to the observatory is more than half of the adventure. Lots of RPGs already offer a lot of reactivity based on dialog choices, this is just adapting that to combat instead.
And yeah, KOTC2 is perfect for adapting some OSR modules. Would love to play Stonehell Dungeon in it.
If it doesnt have:
- monster reaction tables
- gold for xp
- multiple excursions, a nearby safe zone to dump your riches, etc
then it's not "perfect" for adapting OSR modules. Stonehell isn't "good" because it would be good for a popamole video game, it's good because it's Megadungeon Perfection.
Like you're clearly missing on what makes OSR games, and what makes megadungeons cool and good games to play. I'd happily run Stonehell for you in my homebrew so you could see what megadungeons are like and understand that we're way behind technologically on figuring that shit out.
Like when I ran stonehell, the players built a fuckin' castle on top of, and around it, and turned it into a full-time operation, and also friendlied up with a few factions so they'd had a personal army of what should be monsters. There was....attitude problems from time to time that needed to be corrected, but for the most part, this made them become like Dark Lords to everyone around them, eventually a small army of paladins tried to break through and failed to do so, once that party had managed to beat the dragon into submission and bind it with eldritch magics from a nearby cult and turn it into a personal, one time use(GM fiat, it was threatening to turn the campaign off the rails) superweapon.
None of the shit in that paragraph is even possible in most video games, because you cannot look at a video game, and go "hey, could I possibly...uh, enslave this dragon?" because if it wasn't pre-programmed into a limited set of possible interactions it can't happen.
I am aware of games like Dwarf Fortress where shit like this can happen, but many of those games are designed more around seeing what outlandish nonsense the game can turn your inputs into. There's no game of dungeons and dragons or tabletop roleplaying game where you can accidentally kill everyone because you didn't kill a cat and they exploded their population like tribbles, started dying, which caused your players to eat the rotting flesh, go insane, and kill one another. That's not a role playing game, that's you rolling on a table of "weird shit happens" and telling the players what went down.
Never talk to me about OSR games again or I'll have
Infinitron eject me
