Forked Thread: GTS 2009 D&D Seminar - 4e video game

[xechnao]

I think you meant to say "relationship", but I can't be sure. Why don't you clarify?

If you like "relationship" more then go with it! Anyway the point was that to make these things possible there has to be some relationship. One kind of relationship is achieved through the respawning of random monsters when there is some kind of resource management that has to do with maps. There can be others of course (like scripts that have to do with events connected with other maps). Hope it is more clear now for you!

 

[Fallen Seraph]

You know going beyond mechanics one thing that be interesting is a different visual feel. Games today can cover a whole gambit of different visual styles so be interesting to see what a CRPG and specifically a D&D one be like in a different style then they normally adopt.

Mechanically I am fine with either real-time or turn-based. Though I do like a little bit of "twitch" in my games, even RPGs. Stuff like Witcher, AoC, Mass Effect, etc. I could see if it was real-time doing some movement and such being based on position (angle your character how you wish the enemy to move for example), or immediate interrupts to have a quick timer pop up when usable and have to decide to use it or not, etc.

I am also fine with either full-party or single-PC game. Really, lol, I am fine with just about anything as long as they keep true to the spirit and the fair majority of 4e rules.

 

[Nate Jones]

I know it would be a slight departure from the pen-and-paper game, but what if a 4e CRPG were to borrow a bit from some existing MMOs? I think we could easily avoid the problem of daily power recharges and milestones if we moved powers from a per day/per encounter system to a time-based recharge system. At-will powers would have a near instantaneous recharge time; encounter powers would have a somewhat longer recharge time (somewhere in the neighborhood of a minute? Or whatever the average encounter length happens to be); daily powers would then have a significant recharge time (15+ minutes, or maybe even as long as an hour?). If we still wanted to maintain the ability to rest-up and restore the party to full power, I suppose there could be designated rest zones that reset the recharge time. Anyway, this, I believe, is how most modern MMOs treat powers or abilities (At least this was the case in Lord of the Rings Online), and it seems to work pretty well for distinguishing between powers of varying potency. And despite the fear that 4e would be further criticized as an MMO-imitator, I think this interpretation of the power-system would be a respectable adaptation of the original to the computer medium.

Of course, this vague idea at the present rests on an assumption of real-time combat, but I have hope it could be converted easily to a turn-based combat system as well.

This idea, of course, is still in its infancy. I'm sure the concept could be further refined to adequately facilitate other desires and goals for a 4e video game.

 

[Kaodi]

I must say, I am impressed that this thread managed to balloon to eight pages in a day with only three people doing most of the posting. Less impressed by some of the squabbling, but that is a side point...

To change gears a little bit, in the rather shorter thread on 4e CRPGs in the Computer forum I mentioned that I would like to see a trilogy of games, with each encompassing a single tier. I think that the rush from wimp to superhero has been a little too prevalent in the CRPGS lately, though admittedly they borrow this fault from the tabletop game. If you draw out every level, and feature more contextual objectives and rewards, I think you could make a pretty rich, involved story without having to go through all 30 levels in a single game. And having an end game, where that catastrophe you diverted when you were "merely" a hero actually is what matters in the end game would be nice, instead of having what you did early on seeming completely inconsequential at the end of the game.

 

[Nymrohd]

I must say, I am impressed that this thread managed to balloon to eight pages in a day with only three people doing most of the posting. Less impressed by some of the squabbling, but that is a side point...

To change gears a little bit, in the rather shorter thread on 4e CRPGs in the Computer forum I mentioned that I would like to see a trilogy of games, with each encompassing a single tier. I think that the rush from wimp to superhero has been a little too prevalent in the CRPGS lately, though admittedly they borrow this fault from the tabletop game. If you draw out every level, and feature more contextual objectives and rewards, I think you could make a pretty rich, involved story without having to go through all 30 levels in a single game. And having an end game, where that catastrophe you diverted when you were "merely" a hero actually is what matters in the end game would be nice, instead of having what you did early on seeming completely inconsequential at the end of the game.

I'll very much agree with this. 3 tiers of play=3 games would be the best, especially if the games tie in to each other. Ideally I'd like to see each game feature a decent number of sidetrecks and more than one resolution of the main story (including multiple delve paths and exploration-triggered subplots) which would increase the replayability of such a game by a lot. 4E naturally lends itself to a CRPG with high replayability since even different builds of the same class can have a rather different feel when played.

Immediate interrupts and reactions are best, imo, handled as popups. I am sure that in a turn based game you can filter through available triggers and pause the game to allow an interrupt. You could even create different difficulty levels of the game by advancing the speed of turns: say on easy you get paused for triggered actions and have all the time you want to decide what actions to take in your turn, on hard triggered actions pop up and must be used in a limited time window and if you waste time playing your turn you eventually lose some of its actions.

Still I see how the time management in the development of such a game may lead into a game that focuses entirely on tactical combat and skips plot. A good D&D CRPG has to have an involved plot or it will fail, at least this is how I see it. NWN worked mainly because of the toolset, the game itself was amazingly boring (I don't think I've ever even finished the campaign). Baldur's Gate was a success because it told a good story and had great characters. Indeed a good supporting cast to your protagonist (with decent AI to guide them in battle if the player chooses to let them work so) that has decent character development and helps tie the party to the game world certainly would help such a game.

As for resource management, I think the actual 4E system could work with a simple tweak. Let milestones slowly recharge daily powers and healing surges but at a slower pace than they are expended in battle. Though tbh, unless I actually see my players camp (and maybe even eat and set up lookout rotations) or the game has timeline triggers, the extended rest concept is useless and moving to cooldowns for the daily powers might be a better option.

 

[Cadfan]

I honestly think that the biggest pitfall for a 4e game would be knowing when to cut down the multiplicity of character options and when to let them stand.

There are so many powers in 4e that I am skeptical they all could be programmed into the game. So a neverwinter nights style game where you can be any class in any combination doesn't seem too plausible- each class requires a lot more design work to implement now.

But there are other options.

I'm a sucker for story lines in RPGs, so the one I'd personally prefer would be predetermining the main character's race and class, then fully implementing everything about it from that point on. Allies would follow a track specific to that ally, and it might be possible to gain or lose allies as the game progresses, giving you different tactical options in different battles. This would be most similar to Planescape: Torment, and would allow for a plotline that is relatively tied to the main character. Its sort of the opposite of the Neverwinter Nights style game, where the main character is a faceless hero.

But that's just my aesthetic preference. There are other ways to handle these things, such as simplifying the class power lists.

 

[Kaodi]

I could perhaps live with having a character with a set race and class, though personally I would prefer to have a party that you created yourself.

Something that I would like to see, but would perhaps be really difficult to pull off well, is a system where you get to set the relationships between your characters, between friend, best friend, rival, sibling, mentor, parent, "business partner" and the like. This would have implications for how dialogues would work in the game. To go with this, I was thinking earlier that it would be cool if you could have parts of the game that split the party, having portions where you control fewer of those characters, or maybe a single one. And I would not rule out that decisions could be made that actually removed a character from the party, though I think I would make this sort of thing pretty transparent, like, " Which one of your will take my offer of power? All it requires is your companions life, " and " Neither of us, you bastard! " or " I will! " In the end game, you could have the party split up into groups or individuals based on their background elements and actions during the game, before coming back together for the final encounter or encounters. So, maybe you get teamed up with best friend, or parent, or rival. Or maybe the lonely rival gets teamed up with the parent, and they come to an understanding that helps the child and the rival get along together better, and so on. This would be difficult to pull off, but it is the sort of thing you could do to make a 1-10 game rich and really replayable. And multiple final endings? Totally. Wizardry managed to tie different endings into the same sequel. So could a D&D trilogy.

 

[Kaodi]

Just to keep the thread going, the sort of thing I was thinking about yesterday that would make for a cool story based reward:

Say you are around 4th or 5th level, and you have been helping the area around one town for quite a bit. The businessman in charge of commerce for town in grateful that you have saved an important shipment of goods, which puts your reputation with him just high enough that he invites you to play in the weekly card/dice games that he and a few other of the towns elites enjoy.

Getting in on the games every week may end up being a source of valuable information, and maybe it will even allow the characters to talk with someone who plays who would otherwise not give them the time of day. But in great gambling tradition, if they manage to get one particular guy to owe them enough money, he offers them an old cottage/run down inn/mining interest in lieu of the cash, and that can lead to other rewards and adventures.

It would be cool to litter the game with these sorts of secret side quests and rewards, I think. And you could probably make a lot of them mutually exclusive, so as no one could get all of them (or even most of them, maybe) from one play through.

 

[fnwc]

I dunno. Can you think of an actual example of a game? What about a game like final fantasy only with combat being like 4e? Is this more similar to what you would like? It still has some randomness though.

If you're talking about tactical combat in a computer game that simulates D&D, you should look at Temple of Elemental Evil, made by (the now defunct) Troika.

IIRC, it used the 3E system and matched the actual tabletop rules very well, although the whole game was a buggy mess, I loved it.

To this day, there remains a fairly dedicated group of people (circle of the Nine???) who fix bugs, balance, and mod the game.

The 4E system is perfect for something like this; I'd give my left nut for a 4E game with a turn based tactical combat system.

 

[fnwc]

Well, what I would LIKE is a game that is turn-based using squares, but with the ability to use real-time for the less challenging encounters (much as you would have in a BG-ish game featuring random monsters).

I'd love a 4E game that has turn-based combat that is close to the tabletop rules (see my post above).