The Perfect Game

[NickD]

And now for the third and final chapter of my game thread trilogy!

Describe what would be the perfect game for you. It doesn't have to be possible with today's computers, but it does have to be on a PC (with a monitor, keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc.). I'm sure we all want to play in a photo-realistic RPG in virtual reality, but that's not allowed! If your perfect game has a heavy story element, then please give a synopsis of the story.


I'm going to cheat a bit, because I have 2 perfect games. Both are rather complex, so I'll start with the less complex one first.

Total: Total War: This game is basically a Total War game with aspects of Empire Earth and Civilization. The game would start from the stone age and go up to somewhere from 1900 to 2100. For those that would want to play a specific era, there would be a number of preset eras that the user could select from with the factions all set up appropriately and they can play from there. There's a bit more to it than that, though.

Feature List:
* Settlements can be established by the player and would be very similar to how Civilization handles them. Once a city is established, it would have an area of influence around it, depending on its size and population. Winning the game would be about the total area of influence within the world (or preset part of the world, depending on the era selected) rather than the number of settlements.
* When buildings are built within a settlement, they can be placed by the player. With walls, the cost of the wall would depend on how much wall is built (and size and materials, etc).
* Multiple buildings of the same type can be built within the same settlement with stacking effects, so a settlement could have multiple walls, or multiple barracks, which would decrease training time of units.
* The number of people within a settlement or satelitte settlement determines how much work can done, so building multiple lumber yards is pointless if there aren't enough people of working age to work in them.
* Within the area of influence, the player can build other satellite settlements or structures. These include such things as mining settlements, forestry settlements, farming villages, forts, watch towers, walls (such as Hadrian's Wall or the Great Wall), fishing villages, canals, trenches. Would not need a general to build any of these.
* Satellite settlements, forts and watch towers can have slots to hold units, the number depending on how big it is. Typically one for a watch tower or village, and up to 4 for a fort.
* Satellite settlements have their own populations, which initially come from the main settlement. Only building related to that settlement can be built within the satellite settlement (more farms, mines, lumber yards, etc.). Once a satellite settlement gets to a certain population, the player can convert it to an independant settlement by giving it a leader, and it would develop an overlapping area of influence of its own.
* Players would have a number of resources. Money would be universal. But the rest: Stone, Wood, Bronze, Iron, Food, etc., would all be on a settlement by settlement basis, and used to determine what buildings can be built and what units can be trained within that settlement.
* A settlement unable to produce enough food on its own will automatically gain excess food produced through trade with another settlement, but if no food becomes available starvation will occur. Granaries can be built to hold an excess of food for sieges and having a food supply cut off.
* Units are user defineable. i.e., instead of units becoming available after certain buildings are created, the player can design their own units, determining armour, weapon, shield, secondary weapon, mount, artillary, experience, number of soldiers in the unit, special ability and whatever else. The cost and time to train them depending on how powerful they are.
* Army stacks have food resource as well. The food is automatically refilled in a friendly area of influence, and can be refilled in exchange for money if on a friendly or neutral trade route, or with a slower refill on enemy trade routes, but without cost. Army stacks can also have supply units, which can be used to hold excess food when an army is in enemy territory - like mobile granaries. Armies can also occupy enemy satellite settlements to cut them off from the enemy and gain a one off collection. This would make defending your borders more important that just sitting all your units in your main settlement and waiting for the siege.
* Units can be altered to other unit types, cost and time depending on how similar they are, and changes in equipment.
* Can have transport units, which are units capable of carrying other units. Primarily this will be ships, but could include things like battle wagons or tanks. This could possibly be how cavalry is implemented.
* Non combat units are treated as normal units, in that they can be attacked. Non combat units include diplomats, priests, spies, assassins and supply trains.
* When a diplomat is in a foreign faction's area of influence, that faction's relations to yours improves.
* Soldiers age normally like generals and special units. Each unit has a flag whether to replenish or not. When soldiers die or retire, they are replaced with other soldiers - when they are in a settlement that can replace them - who start at the minimum age (so the retiring of soldiers in a unit becomes staggered after some die in combat or sickness).
* Units can Occupy buildings, which will give them protection from missle weapons, and more range if shooting from higher than ground level.
* When an army Sieges another, they must set up the siege. i.e., they must place their units. If the army does not cut off the roads into the settlement, it will still be able to get goods in and out. Those settings will be what they are if the settlement sallys forth, so a small army will not be able to effectively siege a large settlement.
* When an army is attacked on the field it gets a certain number of build points to build defenses (spikes, pits, walls, buildings, etc) on the map. The number of build points depends on the make up of the army (with some units and generals giving bonuses) and how many move points it had remaining. If the army has expended all its move points, the build points will be very low. If the unit did not move at all on its last turn, it will have plenty of build points.
* When an army is defeated, and it retreats, it will only be able to move as far as one turn worth of movement, and will not be able to move the next turn. Likewise, if an army withdraws from combat, the distance it moves will be taken off its next turn's movement.
* The map will only cover the known world for the player. It will grow the more the player explores, up to including the entire world with a black border indicating unexplored areas if applicable.
* The campaign map can be zoomed out to view the entire known world.
* The amount of time for each turn is alterable within a game, so you can start out with 2 year turns and slow it down to 6 month turns (minimum) later in the campaign. The amount of time set for the turn determines the building times, unit training, unit movement, income, etc.
* Research trees will be implemented. This will include social (monarcy, environment, democracy, religion, gender discrimination, etc.) and technological (weapons, artillery, riding, armour, shields, improvements, buildings, health, education, naval, etc.) research.
* Once research is completed it will spread from the settlement it was researched in to other settlements based on distance and connection.
* Once social research is complete it is optional whether it should be implemented, and it will cause the populations to reach differently to events. e.g., Higher educated populations in a democracy will expect more freedoms, but generals and leaders could be picked from the general population instead of being nobility.
* Instead of researching meta technologies (bronze, iron, farming, mining, establishment of religion, gunpowder,etc.), they happen at semi random date, partially influenced by the level of technological advancement, but mostly close to real life.
* Bandits and pirates would handle differently. Bandits would not be part of the rebel faction per se. They would attack roads and steal incoming resources, making dealing with them more important. Rebel cities would form their own faction. The occurance of bandits would depend heavily on the happiness of the area. And creation of bandits must come from somewhere, so bandits popping into existance means population of where they pop up from is reduced by an equal amount. Normal population will not create cavalry bandits, but they could occur when an army is routed and dispersed, or if a unit is broken up (to free up costs) in an unhappy region.
* Hotseat mode.

The very start, the Stone Age, would play a little differently than a normal Total War game. For a start the faction will begin without a settlement, and possibly without the technological ability to make a settlement, making them a nomadic faction with maybe 100 people. Their units will be limited. Mostly I envision creating hunting party units who are used to hunt for the food and fight predator factions. Probably have to move a lot... may make hunting only viable for one turn, or all the animals get wiped out. Fights could be with predators. Depending on the part of the world the player starts on (Random start location option), they may need to take environmental considerations into account. The map would be a lot closer, so maybe one square currently would be 10x10 squares at the beginning with only 10x10 squares visible and the map shrinking gradually as the faction grows. At this point there would be thousands of factions around the world...

Otherwise it would be basically the same formula as other Total War games.

Would need a lot of play testing to get it right.

I would think this would be possible to develop now, but perhaps only just, so not for another 2 or 3 years realistically.

[ThinkTank]

[Grand Fromage]

Mine would start off as a free-roaming RPG, with your main character wandering about completing quests and recruiting party members and such. Gradually you would gain more and more people, equipment, notice, etc. Your party can then begin moving onto some sort of more formal business, whether it be financial, mercenaries, whatever. This gradually transforms into a strategy game, where you can still personally oversee missions in RPG mode, but you're largely building up your own little empire. There are no specific goals anywhere, you can do anything from just exploring the world to total world conquest. It would be the kind of thing where you can play a single game for months on end.

Almost any setting would work, but if it's my dream we'll be going with a dark postcyberpunk like Deus Ex, or a space-based game. Or both. Or ideally and since reality doesn't matter, it would come with multiple settings that work like mods, you can just select whatever you're in the mood for. Realistic medieval, fantasy, cyberpunk, modern, Roman era, space opera, whatever.

[Mayhem]

A 3rd person RPG (similar in outlook to NWN), but based on a typical zombie apocalypse setting.

You and a handful of other survivors have been holed up in a secure area, but now its time to venture out to gather supplies. You have a whole bunch of people with you, and can choose who comes with you on any given foraging mission, and who gets left behind to guard your compound, but each has their own distinct personaliy and needs, and those needs have a *big* impact on the game.

Like any good disaster movie, this would be more about the tensions created by people in extremis, not a shooter game by any means.

Do you forage for food or ammo, or building supplies? Communications equipment? Medical supplies? Maybe you need baby-formula for the infant daughter of the groups only doctor, but the two red-neck hunters are insisting you need to find ammo, first. Maybe the guy you send to get medical supplies is secretly an alcoholic, and will spend foraging time seeking out booze (and subsequently making a lousy sentry).

The zombie virus is a 24 for hour effect - so when you find other survivors, do you let them in, or quarantine them? Have you the space to quarantine them separately, or the spare people to guard them? Do you turn them away, thus adding fully intelligent humans to your list of enemies?

The initial phase of the virus turns folks into crazed "28 days" style psychos, but slightly more humanly intelligent. Only when they actually die do they become outright zombies. So simple barriers may not be enough, nor can you rely on outrunning the zombies.
An unlike the Living Dead series, there will be a lot more property damage as the crazies tend to smash things up just for the hell of it. No nicely undamaged, unlooted shopping malls - though such a place might well form the best initial setting for the game.

[NickD]

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

[NickD]

@ GF & Mayhem.

Both your games sort of sound like the UFO series, but with a RPG interface on the missions instead of strategy. Or have I misinterpreted?

[Mayhem]

There would be a *massive* emphasis on relationships between people.
Ideally each of the survivors would be more like an AI than a scripted NPC.

You'd need to be able to persuade, cajole, inspire, threaten or bribe, read their body language, spot the liars, know who was reliable, who could lead, who could follow orders etc etc.

In addition, when you have set out the "duty roster" for the day, you would only get to go along on one duty. The other teams would be acting independently, and what happens to them you will only get back from talking to them afterwards. So if the guy that thinks he had been treated unfairly finds a food stash, he might keep it for himself. What are you going to do about it, when you find out? What if the base camp is attacked whilst you are away. Can the folk you left behind protect it adequately? If one gets a scratch, he might not tell you, depending on how you have acted when dealign with other potntially infected folks.

It would all be about the group dynamics of a disparate group of people in crisis.

[NickD]

Fantasy Worlds (Working Title): This game is beyond a tad ambitious. I don't see it being possible for at least another decade. Basically it's a persistant world builder server and client in a fantasy setting with the rules of my own design, which would be similar to a cross between D20 and GURPs and some other stuff thrown in. I won't go too deeply into the rules, as that's a whole lot of information. Basically it's a skill based system rather than class based, HPs are based on creature size and armour is more about damage reduction than AC.

Creating the world in the first place will be relatively simple for the user, but can still be quite an involved process.

There would be a basic bestiary set up, with animals, humans, elves, dwarves and the standard monsters, but the user will be able to create their own creatures, with a system similar to what I envision Spore will have. The user will also set up their dietary habits, interactions with other creatures, gestation periods, whether they're nocturnal, their base personality/behaviours/stats and limitations on skills and other AI relevant information.

The user will also be able to determine which skills are available in the world, and to what level. This way they can make a no magic world, or a no ressurection world, or a world where there is a cap on the kind of buildings that can be built.

The land would be set up like older sim games where land mass, percentages of mountainous, forested and water areas and several other factors would be entered and a land would be randomly generated based on that.

The user would then select how common each creature in the bestiary is, and the land will be automatically populated based on that.

Tools would be provided to move creature population bases around and change the random personality bases for the population bases, and once approved that will be set with buildings constructed.

Then the final stage of the world building would be the history. The user enters a time, say 1000 years, and the world will go through 1000 years of ingame time, with the option to pause on demand or at certain times. When paused, the user will be able to manually effect events in the world, such as wars or the like. This will all give the world a "lived in" feel rather than a brand new fresh feel. This process will basically be like the in game processing of NPCs, but without players to affect it, so it will be able to be sped up, but it would still take quite a long time to process. Maybe hours or even a day or two.

Once the world is finished and ready, it can be put online (or local if the player just wants to create a persistant world for his own enjoyment) and people can play on it!

The interface will be similar to the standard RPG game, with a long range of view, perhaps limiting the view behind the player, making them turn around to see behind themselves, with indicators if they hear anything behind them.

NPCs
NPCs will have maybe half a dozen "personality indicators" which go from 1 to 10. All of these combined will determine a person's actions and what they do with their life. For example, a person who has high bravery, low greed and high aggression might become a soldier. Whereas someone with high greed and low bravery might become a merchant. Their personality indicators will be the average of their two parents' indicators +/- 1.

No new NPCs (including animals, trees and monsters - exceptions being creatures that are too populous or small to matter, such as rabbits or insects) will just pop up out of thin air. They will be born instead. When two NPCs meet and fall in love they can get married, sleep together and have children.

NPCs (and players) will have knowledge. This is a database of known stuff. When they see something, read something or are told something, this knowledge is stored against them. When nobody (including books) knows something anymore, that knowledge is removed from the database. Knowledge can include witnessing a crime or knowing who someone is, or who someone's father is, or that the ruins of the castle outside of town are haunted, or that 2 weeks ago a group of players went out to the haunted castle outside of town. And from extrapolation that they have not seen the players since (by extrapolation, I mean that they know when they last saw the players).

NPCs will have relations and property. If they see their property being taken they will do something about it (depending on their personality indicators). Property includes land and buildings.

If something bad happens to an NPC they may seek help from adventurers. e.g., a farmer is being harrassed by a band of goblins (who have come out of the hills because NPC orcs have been harrying the NPC goblins out of their home due to being chased out of their homes by PCs hired by the NPC lord who didn't want the NPC orcs living so close to his mine), and as the village militia won't do anything about it, they offer all they can afford to get rid of the goblins. Players can attempt to haggle over what their payment should be (with rewards including property as well as gold), but people will not pay over what they can afford or what something is worth to them.

NPCs will gain experience, levels and skills just like players.

NPCs will be active all the time. Not just when they are in a player's view. Effectively this will make the world a completely living world, where it is not dependant on the player's existance. This will make the game extremely processor dependant as there will be threads processing what every living creature is doing in the world at all times. Even if they will not need graphical processing when not in view this is most likely far beyond what most processors could do now.

Money will not just pop out of thin air either. It can be minted from mined gold, and enter the money pool.

The cost of stuff will depend on it's cost to make/import, it's availability, demand and the cost of living where it's sold.

Players
Depending on the settings, players create their characters and choose where they start. This could be heavily restricted. Races would be based on and optional playable race setting in the bestiary. So it's possible to have a world where the only playable race is wolf.

Ideally, players enter in an age, race and gender and they're given a list of people that meet the criteria with their current locations. The player selects one and takes over the body of that NPC and turns it into a PC, retaining all that NPC's relations, knowledge, property and last name. The player then would be able to change the NPCs stats, a number of skill points that NPC had into the skills they want and keep the rest. Less hardcore settings would allow the player to make a character from scratch appear in a port city, or more hardcore settings wouldn't allow the player to change any of the stats, skills or even the characters name.

Characters can own buildings and property just like an NPC. A character can also build their own property (if they have enough skill points in building skills) or pay to have one built for them. This would open up a mini game, where they can design their property. If a character does not own the land they build on, the owners may well have something to say about that when they find out.

A character can also have employees, who will stay with them as long as they are paid. This could be anything from an assistant shop keeper to an army of soldiers. Characters can also hire a steward to run their estates, where they might talk to this person to give basic orders, but otherwise leave it to the NPC. With an army, a character can obviously enter battles. When this happens, another mini game starts, with a map of the battlefield and markers for the troops. If the character moves markers of his own side, orders to that effect are given out, although there may be a delay between when the orders are given and received, depending on the method of delivery.

Characters can own land. There would be multiple ways of doing this. If land is not owned by anyone, they could just start lay claim to it, build on it and protect it. Otherwise, they will need to find out who owns it currently and buy it off them. This would be a generic process, like with any kind of property. Lords could grant land, as they would grant a reward for work done.

Characters will have fatigue, which can be replenished with rest and food. Sleeping will be required, the amount based on a trait selected for the character (with a trade off between how long to sleep for against how easily they wake up). Because a character will need to sleep between 7 and 9 hours in game time, it would be recommended to allow 3 characters per player so they can play with one character while the other is asleep.

According to a setting, a character may never "leave" the world, even when logged out. When logged out, they will being to act like an NPC. However, the player can set up scripts to determine what his character does when he is offline. The default will be to stay in a town, get a job (depending on what skills they possess) to pay for expenses and maybe make a bit of money, and to stay out of trouble. A player, however, could set up a script to get the character to walk a day away from a town, and with his woodwork and building skills, cut down trees and begin to make an inn next to the road. When he sees up to x number of goblins or y number of orcs, attack, else run away. Players can receive e-mail alerts about their characters when something flagged as important in the script happens.

According to a setting, characters may pay "ressurection insurance" in a temple, where if they are killed, they will be ported back to the temple and ressurected. Might allow pure respawning as a server setting.

Settings
The game will have a number of settings outside the standard number of players allowed. These settings will allow the game the be talored to be powergaming fest to extremely extreme roleplay. A sample of the optional settings not already mentioned would be:
* How fast time moves. This could be 1 minute in game = 1 minute in real life, or 1 hour in game = 10 minutes in real life, or any other setting chosen. This will effect how fast days go and how fast NPCs and PCs age and how fast NPCs move around when not on screen. Playtesting will be needed to try out altering how fast characters move around when on screen. You don't want it to be too fast forwarded, but then you also don't want it so it takes a day to travel a mile.
* Static HPs. When they level, characters do not gain hitpoints, just skill points. But then, neither does anything else.
* Starting location. Some starting locations may be out of limits, or, in the interest of keeping characters together, there may be only 1 possible starting location.

There's a bit more to it than that, but that's most of the important stuff. As the ruleset is not strictly limited to a fantasy setting, there could be expansions to make the game work in other settings.

This games is obviously extremely reliant on very good AI.

Questions?

Edit: When in a party, the designated party leader sets up the party formation, and each individual party member can select to "join formation", where the player will not have to move themselves, they will just move automatically in formation according to where the leader moves. NPCs with the right personality can also become adventurers and players can join parties consisting of NPCs.

Inventory: Instead of just having an almost bottomless backpack, a character will have a number of slots on their paper doll. They can put things like scabbards or quivers or bows or pouches or packs on these slots. Each pack has a certain number of slots within it, depending on the size of the container, and each item takes up a number of slots. Armour is broken down into components so will take a lot of slots.

[Rotku]

Someone has too much time on their hands

[Mayhem]

Someone has too much time on their hands

That's pretty much the definition of an ALFAN

[Mulu]

Well, the ultimate game would be the holodeck from STTNG, but barring that....

Having recently replayed XCOM, I would like to see a game using an X-Files like variant of Google Earth, where you and your fellow agents monitor the planet for events, track them in an interactive virtual planet database, and investigate the alien and paranormal in a strategic manner, all aimed at trying to prevent a hostile takeover that the normal population doesn't know about. It could involve assassinations of political leaders, staging coups, funding criminal enterprises, infiltrating or destroying criminal or governmental enterprises, etc. Multiplayer would allow for coordinated actions. At all times you would be in the virtual control of an agent, first person or third person, interacting with the tools and weapons at your disposal. Throw in a research lab and alien artifacts for neato gadgets. Basically a combination of X-files, XCom and Men In Black.

[NickD]

Someone has too much time on their hands

I like to think about how things could be better.

[Nekulor]

Fantasy Worlds (Working Title): This game is beyond a tad ambitious. I don't see it being possible for at least another decade. Basically it's a persistant world builder server and client in a fantasy setting with the rules of my own design, which would be similar to a cross between D20 and GURPs and some other stuff thrown in. I won't go too deeply into the rules, as that's a whole lot of information. Basically it's a skill based system rather than class based, HPs are based on creature size and armour is more about damage reduction than AC.

Creating the world in the first place will be relatively simple for the user, but can still be quite an involved process.

There would be a basic bestiary set up, with animals, humans, elves, dwarves and the standard monsters, but the user will be able to create their own creatures, with a system similar to what I envision Spore will have. The user will also set up their dietary habits, interactions with other creatures, gestation periods, whether they're nocturnal, their base personality/behaviours/stats and limitations on skills and other AI relevant information.

The user will also be able to determine which skills are available in the world, and to what level. This way they can make a no magic world, or a no ressurection world, or a world where there is a cap on the kind of buildings that can be built.

The land would be set up like older sim games where land mass, percentages of mountainous, forested and water areas and several other factors would be entered and a land would be randomly generated based on that.

The user would then select how common each creature in the bestiary is, and the land will be automatically populated based on that.

Tools would be provided to move creature population bases around and change the random personality bases for the population bases, and once approved that will be set with buildings constructed.

Then the final stage of the world building would be the history. The user enters a time, say 1000 years, and the world will go through 1000 years of ingame time, with the option to pause on demand or at certain times. When paused, the user will be able to manually effect events in the world, such as wars or the like. This will all give the world a "lived in" feel rather than a brand new fresh feel. This process will basically be like the in game processing of NPCs, but without players to affect it, so it will be able to be sped up, but it would still take quite a long time to process. Maybe hours or even a day or two.

Once the world is finished and ready, it can be put online (or local if the player just wants to create a persistant world for his own enjoyment) and people can play on it!

The interface will be similar to the standard RPG game, with a long range of view, perhaps limiting the view behind the player, making them turn around to see behind themselves, with indicators if they hear anything behind them.

NPCs
NPCs will have maybe half a dozen "personality indicators" which go from 1 to 10. All of these combined will determine a person's actions and what they do with their life. For example, a person who has high bravery, low greed and high aggression might become a soldier. Whereas someone with high greed and low bravery might become a merchant. Their personality indicators will be the average of their two parents' indicators +/- 1.

No new NPCs (including animals, trees and monsters - exceptions being creatures that are too populous or small to matter, such as rabbits or insects) will just pop up out of thin air. They will be born instead. When two NPCs meet and fall in love they can get married, sleep together and have children.

NPCs (and players) will have knowledge. This is a database of known stuff. When they see something, read something or are told something, this knowledge is stored against them. When nobody (including books) knows something anymore, that knowledge is removed from the database. Knowledge can include witnessing a crime or knowing who someone is, or who someone's father is, or that the ruins of the castle outside of town are haunted, or that 2 weeks ago a group of players went out to the haunted castle outside of town. And from extrapolation that they have not seen the players since (by extrapolation, I mean that they know when they last saw the players).

NPCs will have relations and property. If they see their property being taken they will do something about it (depending on their personality indicators). Property includes land and buildings.

If something bad happens to an NPC they may seek help from adventurers. e.g., a farmer is being harrassed by a band of goblins (who have come out of the hills because NPC orcs have been harrying the NPC goblins out of their home due to being chased out of their homes by PCs hired by the NPC lord who didn't want the NPC orcs living so close to his mine), and as the village militia won't do anything about it, they offer all they can afford to get rid of the goblins. Players can attempt to haggle over what their payment should be (with rewards including property as well as gold), but people will not pay over what they can afford or what something is worth to them.

NPCs will gain experience, levels and skills just like players.

NPCs will be active all the time. Not just when they are in a player's view. Effectively this will make the world a completely living world, where it is not dependant on the player's existance. This will make the game extremely processor dependant as there will be threads processing what every living creature is doing in the world at all times. Even if they will not need graphical processing when not in view this is most likely far beyond what most processors could do now.

Money will not just pop out of thin air either. It can be minted from mined gold, and enter the money pool.

The cost of stuff will depend on it's cost to make/import, it's availability, demand and the cost of living where it's sold.

Players
Depending on the settings, players create their characters and choose where they start. This could be heavily restricted. Races would be based on and optional playable race setting in the bestiary. So it's possible to have a world where the only playable race is wolf.

Ideally, players enter in an age, race and gender and they're given a list of people that meet the criteria with their current locations. The player selects one and takes over the body of that NPC and turns it into a PC, retaining all that NPC's relations, knowledge, property and last name. The player then would be able to change the NPCs stats, a number of skill points that NPC had into the skills they want and keep the rest. Less hardcore settings would allow the player to make a character from scratch appear in a port city, or more hardcore settings wouldn't allow the player to change any of the stats, skills or even the characters name.

Characters can own buildings and property just like an NPC. A character can also build their own property (if they have enough skill points in building skills) or pay to have one built for them. This would open up a mini game, where they can design their property. If a character does not own the land they build on, the owners may well have something to say about that when they find out.

A character can also have employees, who will stay with them as long as they are paid. This could be anything from an assistant shop keeper to an army of soldiers. Characters can also hire a steward to run their estates, where they might talk to this person to give basic orders, but otherwise leave it to the NPC. With an army, a character can obviously enter battles. When this happens, another mini game starts, with a map of the battlefield and markers for the troops. If the character moves markers of his own side, orders to that effect are given out, although there may be a delay between when the orders are given and received, depending on the method of delivery.

Characters can own land. There would be multiple ways of doing this. If land is not owned by anyone, they could just start lay claim to it, build on it and protect it. Otherwise, they will need to find out who owns it currently and buy it off them. This would be a generic process, like with any kind of property. Lords could grant land, as they would grant a reward for work done.

Characters will have fatigue, which can be replenished with rest and food. Sleeping will be required, the amount based on a trait selected for the character (with a trade off between how long to sleep for against how easily they wake up). Because a character will need to sleep between 7 and 9 hours in game time, it would be recommended to allow 3 characters per player so they can play with one character while the other is asleep.

According to a setting, a character may never "leave" the world, even when logged out. When logged out, they will being to act like an NPC. However, the player can set up scripts to determine what his character does when he is offline. The default will be to stay in a town, get a job (depending on what skills they possess) to pay for expenses and maybe make a bit of money, and to stay out of trouble. A player, however, could set up a script to get the character to walk a day away from a town, and with his woodwork and building skills, cut down trees and begin to make an inn next to the road. When he sees up to x number of goblins or y number of orcs, attack, else run away. Players can receive e-mail alerts about their characters when something flagged as important in the script happens.

According to a setting, characters may pay "ressurection insurance" in a temple, where if they are killed, they will be ported back to the temple and ressurected. Might allow pure respawning as a server setting.

Settings
The game will have a number of settings outside the standard number of players allowed. These settings will allow the game the be talored to be powergaming fest to extremely extreme roleplay. A sample of the optional settings not already mentioned would be:
* How fast time moves. This could be 1 minute in game = 1 minute in real life, or 1 hour in game = 10 minutes in real life, or any other setting chosen. This will effect how fast days go and how fast NPCs and PCs age and how fast NPCs move around when not on screen. Playtesting will be needed to try out altering how fast characters move around when on screen. You don't want it to be too fast forwarded, but then you also don't want it so it takes a day to travel a mile.
* Static HPs. When they level, characters do not gain hitpoints, just skill points. But then, neither does anything else.
* Starting location. Some starting locations may be out of limits, or, in the interest of keeping characters together, there may be only 1 possible starting location.

There's a bit more to it than that, but that's most of the important stuff. As the ruleset is not strictly limited to a fantasy setting, there could be expansions to make the game work in other settings.

This games is obviously extremely reliant on very good AI.

Questions?

Edit: When in a party, the designated party leader sets up the party formation, and each individual party member can select to "join formation", where the player will not have to move themselves, they will just move automatically in formation according to where the leader moves. NPCs with the right personality can also become adventurers and players can join parties consisting of NPCs.

Inventory: Instead of just having an almost bottomless backpack, a character will have a number of slots on their paper doll. They can put things like scabbards or quivers or bows or pouches or packs on these slots. Each pack has a certain number of slots within it, depending on the size of the container, and each item takes up a number of slots. Armour is broken down into components so will take a lot of slots.

Awesome nick. Here's 30,000,000 NekulorBucks (patent pending) to spend on development of this game. Start in the morning.

[mxlm]

Isn't there, like, a law against quoting the entirety of a ginormous post and then only adding one line of your own?

[Rotku]

No. As long as you don't say +1 you're fine.