Warhorse Studios RPG Developers Blog
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It should be pretty clear now that we've set out on a path of thinking things through in great detail and that we believe in the end this will pay dividends. We have certain experience with this kind of process from the past, but I admit that I've never done an RPG. Moreover, an RPG with these design aspects is perhaps the hardest we could have chosen. At the same time, it's an unexplored path. I haven't found many past examples that in practice my theory is the correct one. I firmly believe that it is for the reasons that I've described and not because it's impossible. Everyone can be mistaken though and there are moments when my faith somewhat falters.
For instance, a while ago I started to plan the legal system of our game. I didn't want to end up like all the other RPGs, where you are either executed for stealing a pair of socks, or nobody notices the piles of dead bodies you have killed in the town square. I wanted to create a system where the NPCs will adequately react to the player's misdemeanors and crimes.
The moment the design document reached thirty pages and I was about to consider ways of preventing the player from killing off an entire town so cunningly that nobody saw him in that and therefore nobody would arrest and prosecute him and, at the same time, so that the handful of survivors in the middle of the pile of corpses wouldn't act as if nothing was happening, it occurred to me that I might have crossed a line and I was beginning to get entangled in something that was not in the plan at all. In some RPGs, they don't worry about even much more important things and when something happens, the resolution of which makes my brain beginning to melt, the game simply stops working. My colleagues in the office had funny expressions, but they didn't try to stop me, so I persisted, though significantly concerned that perhaps I was creating something that was absolute overkill, which we'd throw out in the end and instead do what all the others do, because the result is entirely inadequate to the efforts invested in the attempt of a perfect solution to the problem.
In the end, I (may) have found a solution which also brings with it a whole range of play mechanics that subsequently can be utilized in quite innovative quests, or thanks to which, interesting situations can arise of their own accord for the player in the world. It took up a lot of my time conceiving this design path and it is going to consume a lot more time of some programmer, but theoretically it should then already work on its own without the necessity of scripting and pretense. In the end, it may take as much time as some kind cheat solution, but our method will be much more robust and essentially better. Moreover, if our game is released and works as intended, all of the other designers will see that it can be done, they will be able to use it as an argument in presentations and it will be enough for them to copy our mechanism without having to reinvent the wheel. That is called progress.
.naturally on the condition that what I have thought up works, we manage to implement it, our game comes out and somebody likes it. All of which is still quite uncertain.
It's also worth noting that we missed an an erlier post on map design for people who are interested in that.
Thanks RPGWatch.
