RPG questions, part ye seconde

Thanks to all who helped me with my first set of questions! I checked out Dark City, Toxian, and many others, but they use an arcade style combat system, unfortunately. I also checked out Darkfire, which was better from a mechanics point of view, but has a medieval setting.

My questions now are:

* does anyone know of a horror/supernatural type RPG that uses a turn based system more like Darkfire?

* is there a commercial RPG system that is skill based, uses turn based combat and is customizable for any genre?

Thanks!
SJ

ps: I tried posting this in the game forum, but with no luck

I think you've found a near-perfect market niche, should you choose to go into it!

I think you are just:

- a group of 25 people with land willing to go in on a private sim, and,
- one enthusiastic scripter on board,

...away from realising this yourself in about say, 3 to 4 months*.


* beware the very non-turn-based Internet Drama Monster




Or, you could hire these two!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmgLOKRl5J0

Hehe, I have seen those videos, they crack me up

If no such thing exists in SL yet, I may take a stab at it myself. I am not much of a scripter yet, but I have done scripting like games for NWN, so I figure I can learn fairly quick. Say maybe six months instead of three or four.

That sounds like a good idea. I mean lots of MMOs use turn based when encountering monsters. Heck, all the big ones do. I read before in the forums that there are a lot of combat systems out there so maybe someone has done this or maybe willing to change their system to make it turn based.

I hope so, I did a lot of searching in SL and only found a couple of systems. The only ones I could find were DCS2 and CCS, both seem to be arcade style.

The actual combat system isn't really important with Roleplay. Take Midian city for example, if you read their blerb you'll see that actually using it isn't encouraged. They'd rather you RP'd out confrontations.

This go's for many sims, Toxian is probably the most combat orientated, but many only use the combat system as essentially a last resort to solve conflicts.

Regarding specific systems the makers usually have a list of compatible sims however my advice is to not worry to much.

Concentrate on finding a sim with the RP that matches what you want and with people who RP how you want as priority.

Supernatural sims are in a minority though, wicked city I think has a little bit of a supernatural theme but most sims are post apocolyptic, Medieval or Futoristic. Some have a fantasy element, 1 or two some demon/vampire element (strangely a lot of vampire places don't seem to be proper RP environments) but supernatural is rare. I know only of one that shouts about it and that seems to be very BDSM themed.

Thanks for the reply and the suggestions, Katier. However, combat is a very important part of an RPG to me, and handling it well is essential. RPGs in SL have a lot of limitations, but I think something like what I want is doable.

You mean supernatural and BDSM together? What's the sim?

I do, I've not investigated particularly I just came accross it in my search for RP sims for articles.

Just put Roleplay in the search and you'll find it.

Turn based RP is certainly doable although I'm not sure, given the fluid 24/7 nature of SL RP, quite how it would work.

I've not heard of darkfire (strangely given the number of sims I have covered) so can't comment on that but many RP systems are trying to get away from combat bias and more onto people developing their characters etc.

Might be something you have to create yourself.

NoR is Vampires, Demons, Angels, Lycans, Neko's, Humans in a mature setting <wink> there are factions and some own land in one of the 10 or so sims.
Very popular and more RP, because XP and leveling is gained purely by just being in the sims with your Hud on, hence the only good reason to attack someone is for RP purposes
Camping to level is obviously not allowed and people will dob you in to GM's inworld who can penalise you XP. There are skills/powers you recieve and choose from as you level too depending on your race.

Hrm. Don't think I spotted it.

Sorry, I meant Darklife, not Darkfire.

As Katier mentioned, in Midian City the emphasis is first and foremost on roleplay, and while there is a combat system, its use is heavily played down. In fact, it is required that confrontations are RP'd out first and foremost, and the combat system used only if both parties prefer that method or simply cannot RP out who wins the confrontation. In time, many of the residents have found that they prefer to RP the entire combat scenario on a turn based basis, similar to many of the MUDs MUCKs, MUSHs etc. There has been some discussed of upgrading the current combat system to more of a skills/turn based system, but that depends on what the residents want. Right now many seem to enjoy the freedom and creativity that text/turn based confrontations brings.

That is exactly what I am looking for Jade, something that gives the freedom of pen and paper without the headaches. The system I am looking for would be an actual RPG system rather than just a combat one, so a game host can easily add things like skill checks (lockpicking or computer use, for example) to a game with minimal effort. By going turn based you avoid a lot of the lag problems, which is why games like WoW use a turn based model.

Hmm, I wouldn't say WoW is turnbased, neither is CoH, if your character doesn't do anything the game continues regardless, in turnbased everyone else would stop and wait till you had your action as in pen & paper RPG's. The actions do go in a loop but that is because the processing appears slow.

It is turn based in the sense that actions are queued and happen in a procedural order. If you choose to do nothing, then that is your "turn". It may not be bthe best description but it works for me

Yes well that basically covers any game on the planet, turn based I always assumed comes from turnbased RPG's like D&D, Shadowrun, Cyberpunk and wargamming where you can't just move an character/army whenever you feel like how ever far you like and expect the other players to then chase you across the map, order of play decided by an intitiate roll goes around from player to player

Nah WoW, EQ2, LOTRO etc. are definatly not turn based.

Turns are sequential, fixed time, you move then I move.

These are real time combat where your attacks take different lengths of time to accomplish and in the mean time other things have happened. In turn based the play freezes to let you decide.

RPG systems including skills do exist but they aren't really turn based (most recent example of this is the system used in I am Legend - but that's not a RP system and unique to the sim). Turn based tend to be external to the system just like Jade said. i.e. played out using RP emotes rather than a system.

Well, call it what you like, I still think of it as turn based and there does not seem to be any such system in game. IAL is more of an FPS than an RPG and DarkLife is level-based. It looks like I may have to make it myself. I'll make one more attempt to describe what I have in mind:

1) action is broken into "rounds", I.e. turns of a fixed length

2) the player gets a certain number of actions per round, probably one.

3) actions are resolved using skills and/or powers (magic spells, super powers, whatever)

4) skills have a chance to improve with use and get harder to improve as they increase

5) combat is just another form of skill use, with bonuses and penalties applied by things like armor, range, weapon type, terrain, etc

6) players join factions at character creation. These can be races, groups, tribes, kingdoms, etc..

Anyway, I hope that clears things up. If anyone knows of an existing system like this, please let me know so I don't re-invent the wheel.

SJ

I'm not aware of any, though there probably are _some_, the Grid is a big place.

One of the reasons that systems with a more "arcade" style of RPG combat are popular is that they are often compatible with existing weapons. DCS and CCS can be used with practically anything that either fires a projectile or involves holding down the mouse and moving for a melee attack. I wasn't aware of them until I heard customers mentioning that they were using (product X) in (RP sim Y), and I'd taken no special steps for compatibility.

I think that there is a spectrum here - starting from "it's my turn, now it's your turn" which is what I would call "turn-based", then moving towards the "round-based" style as used in FF and other classic RPGs, where people select actions for one defined time period which are then carried out then selected again, then a more real-time system as in WoW where there are no defined rounds but one can queue up actions and a lot of it is automatic, to the real-time you-control-everything FPS sort of situation that is common in SL. You seem to be thinking of the second type mentioned

(Personally, as I control everything _else_ in SL in real-time, I would find the latter the most natural, though it does discriminate against people such as myself whose reflexes are not actually all that good. As someone who does not participate, though, I can only theorise. And there are ways of making real-time combat more appropriate to a character - for instance, weapons can be sensor-based and much more forgiving for aim if your character is supposed to be a good shot.)

Evil Mushroom attacks and hits you for 5 points!
Evil Mushroom attacks and hits you for 4 points!
You attack and hit Evil Mushroom for 10 points!
Evil Mushroom attacks and misses!
You attack and hit Evil Mushroom for 10 points!
Evil Mushroom dies.
You gain 130 exp points.
You have looted Evil Mushroom cap.

Exactly! Except you don't get XP or gain levels, advancement is by skills increasing through use. So to use your example, it would be something like:

Evil Mushroom attacks and hits you for 4 points!
You attack and hit Evil Mushroom for 10 points!
Evil Mushroom attacks and misses!
You attack and hit Evil Mushroom for 10 points!
**** Your Sword skill has increased to 35! ****
Evil Mushroom dies.
You have looted Evil Mushroom cap.

SJ

I have just started reading Kim Harrison's Cincinnati witch series of novels, it would make a great basis for a RP area. Vamps (living and dead), witches, weres, pixies, humans and other assorted creatures make up the population. Not gritty or even really that dark, but sexy as hell.

I think the reason you don't find SL Roleplay systems typically with this style of combat is that it's just that - combat.

Reminds me of runescape, the most non-RP, MMPOG around.

Most RP sims concentrate on the roleplay, the interactions between people etc. in fact most don't even have NPC's to fight ( NPC's are awkward at best in SL due to heavilly scripted sims often being lagfests ). The only sim I know of is the darklife you mentioned.

Some have an element of levelling but that tends to be a minor part of the sim little used.

What you want, i.e. a turn based vs NPC environment (I'm reluctant to call it roleplay because those types of environment tend to see little or no RP ), is definatly feasible in SL but would be a monumental project to do well and require a lot of money ( I imagine multiple sims to cater for the levelling side of things ), NPC interactions for quests ( assuming you have them) etc.