I love the guy to the right fighting the giant scorpion wearing modern jeans and shirt. He looks more like a Indiana Jones guy than a fantasy character.
I am fairly sure there are more profession available in DnD than there are in real life.
Edit: I think the bards have the silliest subclasses; Jongleur (doesnt all bards know how to juggle?), Thespian (see previous), Charlatan (fairly sure pretty much anyone can be a charlatan), Gypsy-bard (I guess they use an accordion instead of a harp or lute?), halfling whistler (I guess,,, eh you get the point).
2:nd edit: Wait, I take it back. The silliest class is Village Druid. Is it a regular druid, but with crooked teeth and an alcohol problem?
Mine would definitely have Elder Scrolls type skill progression... using a skill is the only way to improve it. I never really liked the way that murdering folk with a bow can suddenly make you a better pickpocket.
Ok, so it promotes grinding, but so do most other RPG systems anyway.
I think there is a middle ground between dnd's super strict class system and an entirely classless system that is the sweet spot. Something with archetype classes but which offer wider choice for how the character can grow.
I think there is a middle ground between dnd's super strict class system and an entirely classless system that is the sweet spot. Something with archetype classes but which offer wider choice for how the character can grow.
Maybe something along the lines of what Neverwinter Nights had? You could take a thief and develop her into a shadowdancer after a few levels by picking the proper skills/feats/whatever, or a dwarven fighter into a dwarven defender
I don't think there is a "sweet spot". The one thing this thread has shown is how different everyone is, with people listing as "must haves" things that I absolutely loathe, and, I have no doubt, visa versa. So I have tried to refrain from commenting: everyone's "dream rpg" is different.
This be a long read, so get comfy because you are going to be here a while
every once in a while i dream about this fantasy, being the producer of my own RPG game, making an RPG game that would end all RPG games, so lets say if i win the 55 million dollar lotto max lottery here is how i would go about making mine:
first on how it looks:
i would use the same perspective as the BG series, the full 3d that the NWN series does i find it way to hard to find where im going and i get lost easy, plus you can still make birds eye view look good ( just look at starcraft 2, birds eye view with 3dness plus i think pillars of eternity did the same thing ) also another reason why i want to go with that perspective is because i want it to be more strategy based ( like how BG is ) and i believe it's way easier to micromanage in BG perspective, and even with that said, the game can still look real nice without nay sayers saing that 3d is the only way to look good
gameplay:
#1 i want your alignment to dictate how your character actually acts in the game BG2 and NVN did this a little bit but made the game more for players how choose good characters, in my game, there will basically be 3 different paths; the good path, the neutral path, and the evil path, your actions will have a big impact on how the game progresses and over time your alignment may switch around and the game would compensate for it, i would make it possible that if you played a good character one play through then played an evil character it would feel like a whole different game because you are talking the evil path instead, it could even be possible that your character becomes the antagonist and you rule the world, not some other schmuck, or maybe you dont care about being a hero or villain and want to tell everyone to go pound sand, that to could be an option and also be a different experience altogether
#2 i want to make sure that ability scores especially the INT WIS CHA scores have a huge impact on how you converse with NPCs and the like, i like how in NWN if your INT was low you spoke as if you were slow, stuff like that i would have in my game, if your INT was high your character would use fancier bigger words and talk in a more intelligent tone with NPCs, a character with low CHA would be very rude or shy while a character with high CHA would be very polite and easy to talk to and good at getting what you want, while WIS would dictate if you could catch if someone is trying to trick you or possibly trick someone else into giving different information without them knowing sort of deal, and not only this, but i would want the NPCs to recognize these capacities, so for example if you were talking with the professor at the local bard college and start talking like you had a high INT score the professor would notice and comment about it, things like that
#3 the difficulty slider will have a huge impact on how the game is played, the higher the difficulty the more monsters may appear in different spots, stronger monsters will appear instead of weaker ones, and on higher difficulty monsters will use better abilities and tactics, plus there will be other difficulty options like a "hardcore" mode which would give enemies better to hit/ to damage sort of thing as well, or an option for enemies to do more damage, so this can give a lot of customization on how your game is played
#4 on top of all of this, there will also be 2 ways to play the game, way one is kill first ask questions later and then there is the ask questions first kill later, this is to help widen the range of players this could go for, so the players that want to do less chillin more killin i would want to make sure the pacing keeps up and no bog time, but if players want to do more role playing and less killin and more chillin then that option will also be there or even if they want to do both the option is still there, help make the game world feel more alive
combat:
this one is VERY important, because in any RPG combat is a key element of your game, and this can be the thing that makes it or breaks it, for my game i want smooth flowing combat, with no hiccups, i want the pacing to be smooth as well, pretty much never a dull moment, closer to how BG2 does combat, i notice that bg2's combat is smooth and swift, action packed and battles dont drag on forever and ever and have great pacing, unlike the NWN games on the other hand, holy crap can those battles unnecessarily drag on, and the pacing is just ugh ( especially NWN 1, man is it terrible, i had to take a break because i was tired of forcing myself to play more, just way to groggy) so i want to make sure that combat is going at a good flow and doesnt bog the game down
baddies:
this is another important one, since i would probably be using the version 5 rules, that means i can use every monster from the monster manual, i want to make sure that EVERY classic monster is in my game one way or another and i want them to look cool. I remember the first time i ever played BG1, one of the things that caught my eye was how great all the sprites looked and how awesome they looked, i liked the slick clean look enemies had, it made the game look really sharp, and then 3rd edition games came in, and they choose to go back more to their original roots and enemies just started looking ugly and groggy and it was so displeasing to the eye, in my opinion ( for what its worth comparing apples to apples) the enemies in BG2 look way more impressive than the enemies in NWN 2 for example, so i want to make sure that my enemies look great, look impressive and have a huge roster of different baddies and baddy types ( against kind of like how BG2 did it) also most important; there will be a torrasque, seriously, one of the most famed enemy of all existence and the ONLY time we have ever seen one was in starcraft brood war? unreal. Also when it comes to baddies i want baddies to be more interesting than say just be in huge groups or waves just being ready to get killed, again more BG2 style ( smaller groups more variety) but not IWD style ( huge groups of boring enemies ruining the belief that you are actually doing something probable) but if every once in a great while there be a horde, then so be it, but there be times and places where that would be appropriate, so my game would focus way more on the interesting encounter side as apposed to fighting swarms of baddies
classes/races:
i want all the options, for these 2 i want as many possibilities as possible, although with that being said, it will be a lot of work, but i want to make sure it is balanced as possible, i would work diligently to make sure that no class or race completely out powers over others, i dont think races would be too hard to balance but with the classes i think i might go a more BG2 route, where there will be X amount of base classes and each of those would have a kit, and maybe what i would do for dual classing is that you can only choose 1 and you will forever have to continue in that class and can no longer progress in the previous one ( which would help balance wise) but i will also have a whole bunch of "multi class" type classes as well so you could play fighter/mage or thief/cleric type characters as well, and sub races, bring in ALL the subraces the more the merrier, with a huge arsenal of classes and races, the replay value is immense
items:
no character feat type item creation, NWN2 has proven that is so outrageously game breaking so none of that ( aka. characters making their own custom items) although i will still have items where you need to find pieces so you can put them together to make some cool items, that of coarse will be there, plus i want to make items very interesting, to the point where you just dont want to throw anything away because you never know when you might need it, plus i will be very diligent on item placement/ power of item/ game balance wise, i want to make sure that my items are balanced as possible and also think of the future of the PCs players will be using, because one half of the reason why characters becoming brokenly strong is the abundance of insanely good items, in my opinion BG2 does a pretty good just of item balance, so my game would be more akin to something like that
spells:
when it comes spells, i want to go the bg2 route, where there is lots of cool and fancy protection spells and lots of cool and fancy ways to take down enemies, this is where that "strategic" part of the play comes in, where certain enemies will use certain spell tactics and it will be up to you to see if you can surpass them, in my opinion the NWN series made spells kind of boring ( although i have to admit i did like the warlock in NWN 2 ) but with that being said, to me the protection spells felt meh, the dispelling spells were even more meh, and it was all about the offensive damage, and because 3rd edition has a whacky DC system it made it so lower level crowd control spells were virtually useless against mid-high range enemies, so with that being said i want the spell casting to be more like BG2 but i would also like the wide range that the players handbooks have given, and again i would go through the arduous task of making sure spells were balanced and fair for their level so now spell is worse and better than others of the same level sort of deal
companions:
i would like a nice cast of chums ( i would really like around 30, 10 good, 10 neutral, 10 evil sort of thing) but it might be hard to implement because i want them to feel lively and have their own personal issues and quests and the like and all that romance garbage that everyone loves, plus i want to make it so PCs can grow over time, perhaps they will have a change of heart and change their alignment ( for better or for worse depending on how the player reacts to them) perhaps PCs will learn to accept or reject other PCs again based on choices that the player helps them make, stuff like that might be hard to implement over a large roster but hey, big budget so it can be done
so all in all, basically what i am saying is that i would make a BG2 just better in every way that i could, it would be the "true" successor of the bg series, i would take all the things that the BG series did right and keep that, but all the things that they did wrong i would fix, i would also need an army of writers, oh man the writers i would need, but hey at 55 000 000 bucks, anything is possible
i just know that if i ever won that lotto max jackpot i would create one of the best RPG games ever made ( worse case scenario, if you are an RPG fan, it might not be your favorite per se, but you still got some enjoyment out of it )
so with that im going to bed, it's 12:30 am and im le tired ( PS: sorry if the sentences and grammar are horribly fragmented i did this kind of late, so im just doing thing off the top of my head)
@sarevok57 You do realize that, other than a massive redundancy of NPCs, monsters and items, and battles that are over quickly, and, I guess, the option to take polar opposite paths, you just described Pillars of Eternity?
You mean that 50% of his wishlist is in PoE and 50% of his wishlist is in bg?
Something like that, yeah. But more importantly, I don't keep track of Sarevok57s gaming habits, but if he is one of the people that hate hate hate PoE, he should give it another shot. Like, I hated planescape torment the first time I played it, but then I gave it another chance and, although the combat still sucks, it is a worthwhile game.
0n an unrelated note, after much delibiration I have reached these conclusions regarding monsters; 1) The classical setup (Goblins, trolls, wraiths, revenants, werewolves, daemons, fairies etc) is the best. Why? Because these creatures exist in our folklore. You can make, like, weak lizardy runts for cannon fodder, but really, this is just goblins with another skin texture. Likewise, you can make huge fanged treemonster with snakeeyes or whatever that cast spells, but really, this is just warlocks in another skin texture. Why use a copy when you can use the real deal? 2) Less is more. The classical monsters and, of course, the traditional misunderstood but really a nice guy monster, have more emotional weight to them when there is just a few, compared to when they, and 101 similar monsters, are all over the place. Now, dont get me wrong, goblins are supposed to hang around in swarms in tunnels, but err... compare the frequency of really bad guys inthe witcher and in diablo. The witcher have a better balance. Every village is plaqued by 2 or 3 monsters or curses or whatever. Unless, of course, in the special case where the story revolves around an invasion, like the myrkrydia in Myth, then it is fine.
Yesterday I was playing solo and thought it would be a good XP farming idea to go to the map with Shoal the Neirid (sp). So what's new I hear you all say?
Well the complete f'ck up I made of it. And the fun I had playing.
The game actually started lagging I had so many monsters trailing me because, through trying to kite, I kept running into new things trying to kill me.
That shouldn't have happened. Nobody would purposely create a scenario where the player can mess up that thoroughly. The fact that BG lets that happen because it isn't "the most thought out and planned RPG ever" is it's strength.
The dream RPG must have boundries for what the developers put in the game. But as few boundries as possible for how players play the game.
The more complicated the scenarios, the more monsters, the more alignment checks, the more kits, the more items ect. ect. ect., the more planning about how the game unfolds,
Oh god yes. Dual and Triple Tech for insane damage; cartoonish, Dragon Ball style graphics; a big romp through time where what you do in the past affects the future... Since I'm part of those who were dissatisfied with Chrono Cross, I'd be up for that.
However, I doubt I would find the magic of the first opus in another sequel, because the nostalgia is too strong on that one for me. We can dream though.
You make me wanna do another playthrough with a difficulty mod during the holidays...
Comments
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alternative_Dungeons_&_Dragons_classes#2nd_edition_kits
I am fairly sure there are more profession available in DnD than there are in real life.
Edit: I think the bards have the silliest subclasses;
Jongleur (doesnt all bards know how to juggle?), Thespian (see previous), Charlatan (fairly sure pretty much anyone can be a charlatan), Gypsy-bard (I guess they use an accordion instead of a harp or lute?), halfling whistler (I guess,,, eh you get the point).
2:nd edit: Wait, I take it back. The silliest class is Village Druid. Is it a regular druid, but with crooked teeth and an alcohol problem?
Ok, so it promotes grinding, but so do most other RPG systems anyway.
every once in a while i dream about this fantasy, being the producer of my own RPG game, making an RPG game that would end all RPG games, so lets say if i win the 55 million dollar lotto max lottery here is how i would go about making mine:
first on how it looks:
i would use the same perspective as the BG series, the full 3d that the NWN series does i find it way to hard to find where im going and i get lost easy, plus you can still make birds eye view look good ( just look at starcraft 2, birds eye view with 3dness plus i think pillars of eternity did the same thing ) also another reason why i want to go with that perspective is because i want it to be more strategy based ( like how BG is ) and i believe it's way easier to micromanage in BG perspective, and even with that said, the game can still look real nice without nay sayers saing that 3d is the only way to look good
gameplay:
#1 i want your alignment to dictate how your character actually acts in the game BG2 and NVN did this a little bit but made the game more for players how choose good characters, in my game, there will basically be 3 different paths; the good path, the neutral path, and the evil path, your actions will have a big impact on how the game progresses and over time your alignment may switch around and the game would compensate for it, i would make it possible that if you played a good character one play through then played an evil character it would feel like a whole different game because you are talking the evil path instead, it could even be possible that your character becomes the antagonist and you rule the world, not some other schmuck, or maybe you dont care about being a hero or villain and want to tell everyone to go pound sand, that to could be an option and also be a different experience altogether
#2 i want to make sure that ability scores especially the INT WIS CHA scores have a huge impact on how you converse with NPCs and the like, i like how in NWN if your INT was low you spoke as if you were slow, stuff like that i would have in my game, if your INT was high your character would use fancier bigger words and talk in a more intelligent tone with NPCs, a character with low CHA would be very rude or shy while a character with high CHA would be very polite and easy to talk to and good at getting what you want, while WIS would dictate if you could catch if someone is trying to trick you or possibly trick someone else into giving different information without them knowing sort of deal, and not only this, but i would want the NPCs to recognize these capacities, so for example if you were talking with the professor at the local bard college and start talking like you had a high INT score the professor would notice and comment about it, things like that
#3 the difficulty slider will have a huge impact on how the game is played, the higher the difficulty the more monsters may appear in different spots, stronger monsters will appear instead of weaker ones, and on higher difficulty monsters will use better abilities and tactics, plus there will be other difficulty options like a "hardcore" mode which would give enemies better to hit/ to damage sort of thing as well, or an option for enemies to do more damage, so this can give a lot of customization on how your game is played
#4 on top of all of this, there will also be 2 ways to play the game, way one is kill first ask questions later and then there is the ask questions first kill later, this is to help widen the range of players this could go for, so the players that want to do less chillin more killin i would want to make sure the pacing keeps up and no bog time, but if players want to do more role playing and less killin and more chillin then that option will also be there or even if they want to do both the option is still there, help make the game world feel more alive
combat:
this one is VERY important, because in any RPG combat is a key element of your game, and this can be the thing that makes it or breaks it, for my game i want smooth flowing combat, with no hiccups, i want the pacing to be smooth as well, pretty much never a dull moment, closer to how BG2 does combat, i notice that bg2's combat is smooth and swift, action packed and battles dont drag on forever and ever and have great pacing, unlike the NWN games on the other hand, holy crap can those battles unnecessarily drag on, and the pacing is just ugh ( especially NWN 1, man is it terrible, i had to take a break because i was tired of forcing myself to play more, just way to groggy) so i want to make sure that combat is going at a good flow and doesnt bog the game down
baddies:
this is another important one, since i would probably be using the version 5 rules, that means i can use every monster from the monster manual, i want to make sure that EVERY classic monster is in my game one way or another and i want them to look cool. I remember the first time i ever played BG1, one of the things that caught my eye was how great all the sprites looked and how awesome they looked, i liked the slick clean look enemies had, it made the game look really sharp, and then 3rd edition games came in, and they choose to go back more to their original roots and enemies just started looking ugly and groggy and it was so displeasing to the eye, in my opinion ( for what its worth comparing apples to apples) the enemies in BG2 look way more impressive than the enemies in NWN 2 for example, so i want to make sure that my enemies look great, look impressive and have a huge roster of different baddies and baddy types ( against kind of like how BG2 did it) also most important; there will be a torrasque, seriously, one of the most famed enemy of all existence and the ONLY time we have ever seen one was in starcraft brood war? unreal. Also when it comes to baddies i want baddies to be more interesting than say just be in huge groups or waves just being ready to get killed, again more BG2 style ( smaller groups more variety) but not IWD style ( huge groups of boring enemies ruining the belief that you are actually doing something probable) but if every once in a great while there be a horde, then so be it, but there be times and places where that would be appropriate, so my game would focus way more on the interesting encounter side as apposed to fighting swarms of baddies
classes/races:
i want all the options, for these 2 i want as many possibilities as possible, although with that being said, it will be a lot of work, but i want to make sure it is balanced as possible, i would work diligently to make sure that no class or race completely out powers over others, i dont think races would be too hard to balance but with the classes i think i might go a more BG2 route, where there will be X amount of base classes and each of those would have a kit, and maybe what i would do for dual classing is that you can only choose 1 and you will forever have to continue in that class and can no longer progress in the previous one ( which would help balance wise) but i will also have a whole bunch of "multi class" type classes as well so you could play fighter/mage or thief/cleric type characters as well, and sub races, bring in ALL the subraces the more the merrier, with a huge arsenal of classes and races, the replay value is immense
items:
no character feat type item creation, NWN2 has proven that is so outrageously game breaking so none of that ( aka. characters making their own custom items) although i will still have items where you need to find pieces so you can put them together to make some cool items, that of coarse will be there, plus i want to make items very interesting, to the point where you just dont want to throw anything away because you never know when you might need it, plus i will be very diligent on item placement/ power of item/ game balance wise, i want to make sure that my items are balanced as possible and also think of the future of the PCs players will be using, because one half of the reason why characters becoming brokenly strong is the abundance of insanely good items, in my opinion BG2 does a pretty good just of item balance, so my game would be more akin to something like that
spells:
when it comes spells, i want to go the bg2 route, where there is lots of cool and fancy protection spells and lots of cool and fancy ways to take down enemies, this is where that "strategic" part of the play comes in, where certain enemies will use certain spell tactics and it will be up to you to see if you can surpass them, in my opinion the NWN series made spells kind of boring ( although i have to admit i did like the warlock in NWN 2 ) but with that being said, to me the protection spells felt meh, the dispelling spells were even more meh, and it was all about the offensive damage, and because 3rd edition has a whacky DC system it made it so lower level crowd control spells were virtually useless against mid-high range enemies, so with that being said i want the spell casting to be more like BG2 but i would also like the wide range that the players handbooks have given, and again i would go through the arduous task of making sure spells were balanced and fair for their level so now spell is worse and better than others of the same level sort of deal
companions:
i would like a nice cast of chums ( i would really like around 30, 10 good, 10 neutral, 10 evil sort of thing) but it might be hard to implement because i want them to feel lively and have their own personal issues and quests and the like and all that romance garbage that everyone loves, plus i want to make it so PCs can grow over time, perhaps they will have a change of heart and change their alignment ( for better or for worse depending on how the player reacts to them) perhaps PCs will learn to accept or reject other PCs again based on choices that the player helps them make, stuff like that might be hard to implement over a large roster but hey, big budget so it can be done
so all in all, basically what i am saying is that i would make a BG2 just better in every way that i could, it would be the "true" successor of the bg series, i would take all the things that the BG series did right and keep that, but all the things that they did wrong i would fix, i would also need an army of writers, oh man the writers i would need, but hey at 55 000 000 bucks, anything is possible
i just know that if i ever won that lotto max jackpot i would create one of the best RPG games ever made ( worse case scenario, if you are an RPG fan, it might not be your favorite per se, but you still got some enjoyment out of it )
so with that im going to bed, it's 12:30 am and im le tired ( PS: sorry if the sentences and grammar are horribly fragmented i did this kind of late, so im just doing thing off the top of my head)
1) The classical setup (Goblins, trolls, wraiths, revenants, werewolves, daemons, fairies etc) is the best. Why? Because these creatures exist in our folklore. You can make, like, weak lizardy runts for cannon fodder, but really, this is just goblins with another skin texture. Likewise, you can make huge fanged treemonster with snakeeyes or whatever that cast spells, but really, this is just warlocks in another skin texture. Why use a copy when you can use the real deal?
2) Less is more. The classical monsters and, of course, the traditional misunderstood but really a nice guy monster, have more emotional weight to them when there is just a few, compared to when they, and 101 similar monsters, are all over the place. Now, dont get me wrong, goblins are supposed to hang around in swarms in tunnels, but err... compare the frequency of really bad guys inthe witcher and in diablo. The witcher have a better balance. Every village is plaqued by 2 or 3 monsters or curses or whatever. Unless, of course, in the special case where the story revolves around an invasion, like the myrkrydia in Myth, then it is fine.
So what's new I hear you all say?
Well the complete f'ck up I made of it.
And the fun I had playing.
The game actually started lagging I had so many monsters trailing me because, through trying to kite, I kept running into new things trying to kill me.
That shouldn't have happened.
Nobody would purposely create a scenario where the player can mess up that thoroughly. The fact that BG lets that happen because it isn't "the most thought out and planned RPG ever" is it's strength.
The dream RPG must have boundries for what the developers put in the game.
But as few boundries as possible for how players play the game.
The more complicated the scenarios, the more monsters, the more alignment checks, the more kits, the more items ect. ect. ect., the more planning about how the game unfolds,
the less room there is for the player.
Be careful what you wish for.
However, I doubt I would find the magic of the first opus in another sequel, because the nostalgia is too strong on that one for me. We can dream though.
You make me wanna do another playthrough with a difficulty mod during the holidays...
I also would like to see Jade Empire 2 and Kotor 3, not this MMO stuff i'll never use.