I figure that an RPG like the old Shadowgate and Deja Vu would be something to work with. You had to punch somebody in a couple of them, but combat wasn't done by HP either you won or died. It was pretty simple. You didn't really level, but you needed KEY ITEMS (an RPG staple) to advance in the game. If you didn't have that item you were going to fail in whatever the hell the game had you doing. I am pretty sure it has been done. Besides if you manage to come up with a video gameish system that can give you points based on some random conversation. I think the Thief or maybe even Splinter Cell types of games where you pretty much sneak and such. I get bored with those. I would love to see a politically motivated RPG, but alas the general public who are in love with shooting police and killing hookers won't even look at the game.
For example, think of an RPG where you're a politician. You have to manipulate public opinion in your favor, you accumulate facts, you decide which ones to say, which ones to distort, and what lies to say. Then the game system crunches some numbers and then spits out the results of the latest opinion poll, along with new headlines (including some surprise events, such as, say, a school shooting, or a successful Space Shuttle mission.)
That strikes me less as an RPG though, and more as a strategy game. In fact, that almost fits the description of the video game "Republic" that Eidos put out a few years ago.
For one thing, the player needs to have a role assigned to him or her. The player then needs to be placed in some sort of situation that requires that player act and react according to the assigned role. (I need to put in that last bit, otherwise almost any old action game could fit.)
In general, a role-playing game tends to be about placing the player/character in a specific situation and environment, and then provide an abstracted level of interaction with that situation and environment.
I think your definition in this case is somewhat incomplete. In order for a game to be an RPG, the player needs to have a role assigned to him or her within the context of a storyline or plot. The game needs to possess a sense of drama that draws the player into the perspective of his provided role, otherwise the game could very easily be mistaken for a strategy or adventure game. Moreover, unlike an adventure or strategy game, a player must have control over the character's development of his or her abilities.
Are you dissavowing even the presence of cambat and conflict in the game, or does it just have to be seperated from the player.
For example, in our detective MMORPG our player charecters would travel our vast simulated city searching for cases and solving crimes. The NPC actors would be commiting crimes and so forth, and other NPC actors would report them and be witnesses etc. The primary purpose of the game would be finding witnesses, solving interesting cases, searching for clues and piecing together the case. However the computer actors might well commit violent crimes, and surely the player would want to be there to arrest the villains meaning the NPC police would have to able to fight. The player, being caught up in all this might well experience combat, even if there was no included reward for it.
Also imagine an Evolution RPG where you manage the growth of a species on a planet, like spore but imagine every species has its own player running it. The primary focus would be success, increasing your biomass, becoming dominant in an eco-system and repelling competitors. however individual species members might still need to hunt and fight.
What about a "Home on the Range" style frontier MMORPG. You play the role of the head of a settler family travelling to the wild west, determined to live off the land and make a success of your new life. You could farm, fish, and make crafts. You would have to manage your family, and build your home and plan to survive the winter. Survival and such would be the goal, but hunting and skinning animals would clearly be part of the world. What if a bear attacked while you were chopping down trees in the woods? What if you were taking your goods to town and natives raided your caravan? Would you simply remove these elements, making the setting unrealistically tranquil?
One possibility is to replace the gameplay element of combat with a more subtle kind of character interaction - something like negotiation or persuasion. You arrive in a new town and instead of fighting lots of enemies, your task is to, say, convince the population to join you in overthrowing their tyrannical ruler. That would involve setting up a network of people, meeting in secret, etc.
I don't know. It would be hard to design well, and it starts to sound like something else entirely - an adventure game or a sim. What's the point of this question again?
One possibility is to replace the gameplay element of combat with a more subtle kind of character interaction - something like negotiation or persuasion. You arrive in a new town and instead of fighting lots of enemies, your task is to, say, convince the population to join you in overthrowing their tyrannical ruler. That would involve setting up a network of people, meeting in secret, etc.
I don't know. It would be hard to design well, and it starts to sound like something else entirely - an adventure game or a sim. What's the point of this question again?
Again our "Against the system" concept sounds like it would be fun. Players would have to work hard to pursuade people to support their cause, to donate money and time to undermining the system. They couldnt fight openly, until they had overwhelming support in the miltary since the Dictator at the start of the game would be in a nearly unnasailable position.
Intimidation, corruption and negotion would be the order of the day. Find out what people want, and try to pursuade them that your plans are the best way to do it. All while escaping from the secret police and while competing against other players who are also trying to gain power for their groups.
However combat and violence is still inherant, even if it is neither the purpose of the game nor rewarded. It would be unrealistic if you couldnt threaten a shopkeeper who refused you support, or if the secret police couldnt arrest you and try to get information out of you. If the army turn up will you just surrender, or do you at least have the option to flee? What if there are lots of you, could some of you stay to slow them down?
To have no combat at all in a game with many players and an interesting setting is complex to say the least. You can have a lot of interesting settings where combat is inadvisable and unrewarding, but the threat of player death is a useful tool for creating panic.
Because if you count Uplink as a combat-less RPG, then I think that in this thread the RPG label is only holding us back. We might as well ask about fresh new ideas for combat-less games.
I'm interested to read this thread, because it comes up quite often during conversations about JRPGs, in which folk often say they'd like to see non-essential encounters removed as a method of advancement, but no one really seems to know what you'd do while the plot unfolded.
I entered a Photoshop contest with a similar entry, with the idea of blending Loom with Guitar Hero. While the idea has elements of straight substitution, I'd like to see more of a focus on the role of a Bard - making other people look like the heroes.
The bulk of the game would be coming up with material for your heroic verses - basically exploration of a world where there are a bunch of heroes tackling quests. The environment would present more of an obstacle than active enemies, like in the 2d Zelda games - you'd need to be a certain level to break rocks with your songs, for example. On the successful completion of a mission, you'd be presented with the music and lyrics of the hero's accomplishments, to be played like a regular Guitar Hero song - your grade would then be translated to character points, to be used on stats like Agility and Charisma.
The world itself would be free-roaming, but when you attached yourself to a specific hero it would become more linear. When not following a hero, you could explore for better instruments, unlocking more powerful spells to allow yourself to explore different areas.
well, I remember Fallout 2 could be combatless for most of it. I couldn't figure out how to get the president's keycard without killing him at all though. of course people say to OD him with stimpacks or plant dynamite on him, while completely missing the entire point.
since I doubt anyone is going to come up with a design doc for you to use yourself anytime soon
The first Fallout could be done without any combat. Fallout 2 forced you into it at a few points, though.
Only once. A lot of side quests were pure gunplay, but it's possible to make it all the way through the main quest to the final boss without firing a shot, and you can kill him without drawing your own weapon.
Anyway, am I still the only living person who thinks a MacGuyver game could be made to work? That might meet the requirements.
And lastly, I hate to admit I know this, but Japan's already put out at least a few stat-based RPGs that don't involve combat, but instead trying to have sex with anime girls.
One possibility is to replace the gameplay element of combat with a more subtle kind of character interaction - something like negotiation or persuasion. You arrive in a new town and instead of fighting lots of enemies, your task is to, say, convince the population to join you in overthrowing their tyrannical ruler. That would involve setting up a network of people, meeting in secret, etc.
I don't know. It would be hard to design well, and it starts to sound like something else entirely - an adventure game or a sim. What's the point of this question again?
Replace "overthrow the ruler" with "make friends and buy stuff" and you've pretty much got The Sims.
NPC Interaction and inter-character relationships
Player choices that impact the outcome of the game
Skills and levelling
Clearly defined in-game player avatar or group of avatars
Creation or following of story
Completion of assigned goals
Non-combat oriented. I think there's options where you can slap or punch other people, though.
A WW1 game set mostly in the trenches. You would start out as a young recruit with little skills. One of the skills would be foraging. It would increase the likelihood of you noticing that something is edible. There would also be cooking. It would allow you to prepare food to prevent you from going hungry. The food could also be used to bargain for items with other soldiers. Another important part of the game would be speechcraft. The skill would be used sort of like the conversation and item presentation system in Phoenix Wright. The main use for the skill would be bargaining with other people and convincing officers to allow you not to be in the next charge against the enemy. If you attempt to kill the enemy, you will be killed. The only way to survive would be to find some cover and wait until you are allowed to come back without being considered to have cut and run. Another important part of the game will be preventing yourself from getting a disease. It would sort of play like a puzzle. For example, in order not to have to walk over the decaying bodies without any boots on, you would have to get a plank and use it to walk over the dead bodies.
OK, I'll add to my definition of RPG that there needs to be a story or plot. It doesn't have to be completely linear, like the Final Fantasy games; it can be highly non-linear, like Morrowind and Oblivion.
That's what I meant when I brought in the sandbox idea: there's a storyline, with non-linear quests and subquests, but the player isn't being led from one chapter of the story to the next all the time. Anyway, neither linearity nor non-linearity are requirements for an RPG.
I love Uplink, and I agree that it's got most of the requirements to fill my initial challenge. I never thought of the game as an RPG, but that's probably the most accurate classification for it.
OK, here's one idea that might work (although hard to do):
You're a "spirit" or "angel" without a physical body. You can "possess" humans for limited intervals, which lengthen as you progress through the game. Your main goal throughout the game is to help make the world a better place.
The world is full of "angels" like you, as well as "demons", who are your enemies. Since you and your enemies are immaterial, you can't fight directly, and neither of you has enough control over the humans you possess to actually fight it out that way either (a possessed human who gets hurt causes whatever is possessing him to leave.)
Humans, left alone, would be neither good nor evil. They only do good or evil deeds when possessed. People who seem particularly good or evil are people who are possessed with a very high-level angel or demon who is particularly attuned to them.
The story would take place in the "present world", in some big city's neighborhood, where the player could roam and find good situations to strengthen, and bad situations to turn around. As the player gets better at this, his angel spirit becomes more adept at staying longer and influencing his possessed target better. The player gradually learns of a plot by devils to completely corrupt this neighborhood and then have all the evil spread from there.
So the player must work, sometimes with other angel spirits, to prevent this, and eventually the player will find one important human character who is in tune with his angel spirit and start possessing that character more and more, for longer and longer. This will provide that character with the means to turn the situation around in the neighborhood, as that person is either a (good) politician, a (good) policeman, or perhaps, in an ironic twist of fate, a nice mob boss who dislikes violence and has more of an economic control over the neighborhood, and who rules out of benevolence and not fear (only the people working for and with the other mob bosses fear him.)
Anyway, something like that. You don't fight, you just try to make humans do good deeds.
Also, since you didn't mention CRPG or JRPG specifically - FATE. Some flavors of GURPS. D6 Generic. (Well, they all have combat, but you don't need to utilize them).
Munchkin (the RPG) - you'll be too busy arguing with your DM to actually get combat done!
Eela6 on
I took three ranks in Craft - Technobabble last level.
I don't know if this technically counts as an RPG or an adventure game, but Wonder Project J2 was non violent:
Oh, man, I remember Wonder Project 1! It was in an old old old gaming magazine I had, like... pre FFVI because that was another story in there... Didn't you lead some kid around and teach him things? I don't know if counts as combat, but you could smack him on the head if he misbehaved...
Oh lordy, hotlead, I can't stop laughing. Street slang mixed with Final Fantasy terminology. Dance offs between the main hero and the boss. LOL.
I'd play it, that movie was just so hilariousy dumb and the final Fantasy battle system where characters jump forward to do their thing in front of an opponent would look perfect for a 'you got served' battle system. I'm imagining the battle victory poses now.
I'm not completely sold on this, but what if you were dropped into a huge ocean similar to the one in Wind Waker. The goal is to find home, along the way you meet new people that want to join. Using the tools around you, you must face against waves, whirlpools, hunger, and warmth.
You get hit by a wave. Not only do you have to get back in your boat, you must bail the boat before it starts to sink. You find out a clue to the way home is on some secret island, so you must find a compass, follow the sun. You've been stuck in the ocean too long, so you must find someplace where you can find nourishment.
I'm not completely sold on this, but what if you were dropped into a huge ocean similar to the one in Wind Waker. The goal is to find home, along the way you meet new people that want to join. Using the tools around you, you must face against waves, whirlpools, hunger, and warmth.
You get hit by a wave. Not only do you have to get back in your boat, you must bail the boat before it starts to sink. You find out a clue to the way home is on some secret island, so you must find a compass, follow the sun. You've been stuck in the ocean too long, so you must find someplace where you can find nourishment.
Does that sound close?
That sounds sorta like Lost in Blue, which besides the hunting parts also seems like it would qualify for combatless RPG.
Love the Final Fantasy / You Got Served mashup, even though it does go against the "rules of the challenge". Dance "battles" end up being no different from actual battles. The simple fact that most of the 8- and 16-bit Final Fantasies already made it look like your characters would stand in front of the enemy and "dance", thereby causing "damage".
If the dancing weren't directly confrontational, maybe it would fit within the rules.
I love most of the other ideas, too. Keep it up, people!
how about something completley abstract? I think of Rez, it was a shooting game, but you didn't really kill anyone.
I allways imagined an RPG where, it was controlled by a mouse. And for random battles, you were presented with a screen which was mostly one colour, and you have to change it all to another colour (kind of like that mode in Bomberman on the GC) you have certain attacks/comands/techniques to change the colour, like paint brush, bombs you can drop, things like that. And there could be environmental factors that effect the colour. I've probably described this really badly, since it's 1:45am and I have been working hard today, but there might be some sense in that.
how about something completley abstract? I think of Rez, it was a shooting game, but you didn't really kill anyone.
I allways imagined an RPG where, it was controlled by a mouse. And for random battles, you were presented with a screen which was mostly one colour, and you have to change it all to another colour (kind of like that mode in Bomberman on the GC) you have certain attacks/comands/techniques to change the colour, like paint brush, bombs you can drop, things like that. And there could be environmental factors that effect the colour. I've probably described this really badly, since it's 1:45am and I have been working hard today, but there might be some sense in that.
Maybe this could use the Plasma Pong engine, but with more complex game mechanics than Pong.
I like this idea of a completely abstract RPG. How about this: you're a vibration. Your goal is to make the whole universe around you vibrate in harmony with you. But the world is huge, so you have to travel in lots of different abstract landscapes and try to impose your vibrations, while other vibrations try to do the same.
Posts
.hack
right?
That strikes me less as an RPG though, and more as a strategy game. In fact, that almost fits the description of the video game "Republic" that Eidos put out a few years ago.
I think your definition in this case is somewhat incomplete. In order for a game to be an RPG, the player needs to have a role assigned to him or her within the context of a storyline or plot. The game needs to possess a sense of drama that draws the player into the perspective of his provided role, otherwise the game could very easily be mistaken for a strategy or adventure game. Moreover, unlike an adventure or strategy game, a player must have control over the character's development of his or her abilities.
Yep that fits that bill. :P
I never asked for this!
You do know that you can and must fight in them, do you? (at least the GBC version)
For example, in our detective MMORPG our player charecters would travel our vast simulated city searching for cases and solving crimes. The NPC actors would be commiting crimes and so forth, and other NPC actors would report them and be witnesses etc. The primary purpose of the game would be finding witnesses, solving interesting cases, searching for clues and piecing together the case. However the computer actors might well commit violent crimes, and surely the player would want to be there to arrest the villains meaning the NPC police would have to able to fight. The player, being caught up in all this might well experience combat, even if there was no included reward for it.
Also imagine an Evolution RPG where you manage the growth of a species on a planet, like spore but imagine every species has its own player running it. The primary focus would be success, increasing your biomass, becoming dominant in an eco-system and repelling competitors. however individual species members might still need to hunt and fight.
What about a "Home on the Range" style frontier MMORPG. You play the role of the head of a settler family travelling to the wild west, determined to live off the land and make a success of your new life. You could farm, fish, and make crafts. You would have to manage your family, and build your home and plan to survive the winter. Survival and such would be the goal, but hunting and skinning animals would clearly be part of the world. What if a bear attacked while you were chopping down trees in the woods? What if you were taking your goods to town and natives raided your caravan? Would you simply remove these elements, making the setting unrealistically tranquil?
I don't know. It would be hard to design well, and it starts to sound like something else entirely - an adventure game or a sim. What's the point of this question again?
ps. Just because RPGs without combat exist, doesn't mean it isn't worth creating more.
Again our "Against the system" concept sounds like it would be fun. Players would have to work hard to pursuade people to support their cause, to donate money and time to undermining the system. They couldnt fight openly, until they had overwhelming support in the miltary since the Dictator at the start of the game would be in a nearly unnasailable position.
Intimidation, corruption and negotion would be the order of the day. Find out what people want, and try to pursuade them that your plans are the best way to do it. All while escaping from the secret police and while competing against other players who are also trying to gain power for their groups.
However combat and violence is still inherant, even if it is neither the purpose of the game nor rewarded. It would be unrealistic if you couldnt threaten a shopkeeper who refused you support, or if the secret police couldnt arrest you and try to get information out of you. If the army turn up will you just surrender, or do you at least have the option to flee? What if there are lots of you, could some of you stay to slow them down?
To have no combat at all in a game with many players and an interesting setting is complex to say the least. You can have a lot of interesting settings where combat is inadvisable and unrewarding, but the threat of player death is a useful tool for creating panic.
Because if you count Uplink as a combat-less RPG, then I think that in this thread the RPG label is only holding us back. We might as well ask about fresh new ideas for combat-less games.
I entered a Photoshop contest with a similar entry, with the idea of blending Loom with Guitar Hero. While the idea has elements of straight substitution, I'd like to see more of a focus on the role of a Bard - making other people look like the heroes.
The bulk of the game would be coming up with material for your heroic verses - basically exploration of a world where there are a bunch of heroes tackling quests. The environment would present more of an obstacle than active enemies, like in the 2d Zelda games - you'd need to be a certain level to break rocks with your songs, for example. On the successful completion of a mission, you'd be presented with the music and lyrics of the hero's accomplishments, to be played like a regular Guitar Hero song - your grade would then be translated to character points, to be used on stats like Agility and Charisma.
The world itself would be free-roaming, but when you attached yourself to a specific hero it would become more linear. When not following a hero, you could explore for better instruments, unlocking more powerful spells to allow yourself to explore different areas.
Only once. A lot of side quests were pure gunplay, but it's possible to make it all the way through the main quest to the final boss without firing a shot, and you can kill him without drawing your own weapon.
Anyway, am I still the only living person who thinks a MacGuyver game could be made to work? That might meet the requirements.
And lastly, I hate to admit I know this, but Japan's already put out at least a few stat-based RPGs that don't involve combat, but instead trying to have sex with anime girls.
Replace "overthrow the ruler" with "make friends and buy stuff" and you've pretty much got The Sims.
NPC Interaction and inter-character relationships
Player choices that impact the outcome of the game
Skills and levelling
Clearly defined in-game player avatar or group of avatars
Creation or following of story
Completion of assigned goals
Non-combat oriented. I think there's options where you can slap or punch other people, though.
That's what I meant when I brought in the sandbox idea: there's a storyline, with non-linear quests and subquests, but the player isn't being led from one chapter of the story to the next all the time. Anyway, neither linearity nor non-linearity are requirements for an RPG.
I love Uplink, and I agree that it's got most of the requirements to fill my initial challenge. I never thought of the game as an RPG, but that's probably the most accurate classification for it.
OK, here's one idea that might work (although hard to do):
You're a "spirit" or "angel" without a physical body. You can "possess" humans for limited intervals, which lengthen as you progress through the game. Your main goal throughout the game is to help make the world a better place.
The world is full of "angels" like you, as well as "demons", who are your enemies. Since you and your enemies are immaterial, you can't fight directly, and neither of you has enough control over the humans you possess to actually fight it out that way either (a possessed human who gets hurt causes whatever is possessing him to leave.)
Humans, left alone, would be neither good nor evil. They only do good or evil deeds when possessed. People who seem particularly good or evil are people who are possessed with a very high-level angel or demon who is particularly attuned to them.
The story would take place in the "present world", in some big city's neighborhood, where the player could roam and find good situations to strengthen, and bad situations to turn around. As the player gets better at this, his angel spirit becomes more adept at staying longer and influencing his possessed target better. The player gradually learns of a plot by devils to completely corrupt this neighborhood and then have all the evil spread from there.
So the player must work, sometimes with other angel spirits, to prevent this, and eventually the player will find one important human character who is in tune with his angel spirit and start possessing that character more and more, for longer and longer. This will provide that character with the means to turn the situation around in the neighborhood, as that person is either a (good) politician, a (good) policeman, or perhaps, in an ironic twist of fate, a nice mob boss who dislikes violence and has more of an economic control over the neighborhood, and who rules out of benevolence and not fear (only the people working for and with the other mob bosses fear him.)
Anyway, something like that. You don't fight, you just try to make humans do good deeds.
Check out my new blog: http://50wordstories.ca
Also check out my old game design blog: http://stealmygamedesigns.blogspot.com
Also, since you didn't mention CRPG or JRPG specifically - FATE. Some flavors of GURPS. D6 Generic. (Well, they all have combat, but you don't need to utilize them).
Munchkin (the RPG) - you'll be too busy arguing with your DM to actually get combat done!
DP Code - 3050 4223 5906
Oh, man, I remember Wonder Project 1! It was in an old old old gaming magazine I had, like... pre FFVI because that was another story in there... Didn't you lead some kid around and teach him things? I don't know if counts as combat, but you could smack him on the head if he misbehaved...
+
I'd play it, that movie was just so hilariousy dumb and the final Fantasy battle system where characters jump forward to do their thing in front of an opponent would look perfect for a 'you got served' battle system. I'm imagining the battle victory poses now.
You get hit by a wave. Not only do you have to get back in your boat, you must bail the boat before it starts to sink. You find out a clue to the way home is on some secret island, so you must find a compass, follow the sun. You've been stuck in the ocean too long, so you must find someplace where you can find nourishment.
Does that sound close?
Wii Code: 1040-1320-0724-3613 :!!:
If the dancing weren't directly confrontational, maybe it would fit within the rules.
I love most of the other ideas, too. Keep it up, people!
Check out my new blog: http://50wordstories.ca
Also check out my old game design blog: http://stealmygamedesigns.blogspot.com
I allways imagined an RPG where, it was controlled by a mouse. And for random battles, you were presented with a screen which was mostly one colour, and you have to change it all to another colour (kind of like that mode in Bomberman on the GC) you have certain attacks/comands/techniques to change the colour, like paint brush, bombs you can drop, things like that. And there could be environmental factors that effect the colour. I've probably described this really badly, since it's 1:45am and I have been working hard today, but there might be some sense in that.
Maybe this could use the Plasma Pong engine, but with more complex game mechanics than Pong.
I like this idea of a completely abstract RPG. How about this: you're a vibration. Your goal is to make the whole universe around you vibrate in harmony with you. But the world is huge, so you have to travel in lots of different abstract landscapes and try to impose your vibrations, while other vibrations try to do the same.
Check out my new blog: http://50wordstories.ca
Also check out my old game design blog: http://stealmygamedesigns.blogspot.com