What do you like/dislike about roguelikes

[SkeleTony]

It's not a problem in terms of how it works within the system itself no. Personally I just believe that if you are going to make all stats available to all characters then all characters should be able to at least make some decent use out of them.

I agree with you on this point, but a warning: Tom Proudfoot(famous for "Slash 'Em" Nethack, Natuk, Nahlakh, etc.) tried to do this with Natuk and P.O.W.S. and he kind of failed miserably(his games are still fun but they are broken as FUCK!). The problem was in how he defined his attributes; "Strength" represented BOTH Physique/Muscle AND Stamina. Much like the buggy early editions of GURPS this led to the 'Buff Mages' problem where one's shamans and witch doctors had much higher "Strength" scores than Half-Troll warriors and the Half-troll warriors ended up with just as high "Intelligence" scores as the casters(because Intelligence was the primary determinant of how much experience one received from battles).

The easy solutions would have been for him to do the following, design-wise:

1)NOT allow attributes to be improved via experience points - in most RPGs you need magic or tech items to raise attributes. This makes sense because generally people do not change a lot as far as how healthy, strong or intelligent or charismatic they are and there are better ways to account for PCs who DO train their attributes to gain in them. This will take care of the 'Genius Trolls' problem.

2)Define "Strength" as purely physical size and muscle, having nothing to do with fitness/stamina. Then if you want a magic system where cast spells drain from one's stamina/fatigue, you won't have the 'buff mages' problem. The attribute he had called "Endurance" made far more sense as an indicator of stamina/fatigue. Also have a separate 'characteristic' of "Hit Points"(or "Life" or whatever) that is based on "Strength" and another characteristic called "Stamina"(or "Fatigue" or what have you) based on Endurance or Health(he did not need both of those as primary attributes)


The point I am trying to make is that you should design your 'character' aspect with logical consistency in mind. In all the truly BAD RPG designs I have ever seen, logical consistency was the big reason those designs failed...be it AD&D, Marvel Superheroes etc.

 

[Yeesh]

We have to imagine because there is no game like this to my knowledge.

Actually a game that has a lot in common with my concept of a PBRL does exist. In fact, if I were to go ahead and build a PBRL game (and how could I not with Yeesh and Zomg promising to play!) I would rip off some design decisions from this game wholesale.

It's a board game called Descent: Journeys in the Dark. It features party-based dungeon crawling gameplay with no saving/reloading, limited party member resurrection, and very difficult encounters. The difference from a PBRL would be: the missions aren't randomized and you're playing against a human DM. Nonetheless, I believe a similar experience could be achieved in PBRL form with a computer AI. I played this game with friends a few times and sometimes the DM won, sometimes we won. Obviously, other changes would be need to be made as well (e.g., I like their combat system for a board game but I'd use something entirely different for a PBRL).

1) Ha, I love Descent, and if it gives you inspiration, then wonderful. However, that game is chock full of cheap deaths from beastman packs spawning around the corner and unavoidable traps. And on the herp's side, once you find a gold or even silver rune that gives blast and more blast based on surges, the rest of the game is about clearing rooms the same turn you open the door and praying you don't die to the above mentioned cheap tactics. But again, I do love it.

2) I came across this while doing my semiannual checking on GearHead:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/dmonkey/

Maybe that's similar to what we're talking about. Or not, I didn't investigate too thoroughly.

Anyway I'm not going to harp on my points because I don't want to be a negative nancy. I'm all in favor of innovation, and if the balancing issues are surmountable, then awesome.

 

[Castanova]

Hah, yeah, I totally agree. It was one of those games, for me, that I thought had a ton of interesting design aspects which I thought would be useful for other games while also failing to execute them to their potential. I actually don't really like playing the game anymore for said reasons (plus it takes all fucking day) but things like the doom clock and the semi-randomized character building are interesting. I also think their dice system is pretty ingenious although I wouldn't try to copy it for a PBRL.

 

[Alex]

Doesn't the new Warhammer RPG use dice mechanics similar to the ones in Descent? It even has the skills, items and what-not in form of cards too.

 

[Yeesh]

Doesn't the new Warhammer RPG use dice mechanics similar to the ones in Descent? It even has the skills, items and what-not in form of cards too.

That's because Fantasy Flight Games is taking over all non-computer gaming. What a juggernaut.

 

[DakaSha]

More shameless plugging:

Caverns and winding corridors:


A pic kinda showing what the engine can currently do.. Missing thicker corridors but they arent perfected yet anyways:



edit: oh.. it does have a thicker corridor.. but as said they arnt perfected and dont work in all situations yet

Here is a 'scene' that i could imagine being pretty cool with an atmospheric tileset (and lighting which ill implement at some point). Im definitely going to make room features par tof it so that cavern could contain something like a lake or whatever:

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

But is it going to feature tastefully done rape?

 

[DakaSha]

Only interracial hate-rape

 

[DakaSha]

wtf