What makes a great RPG?

On that note you can kind of make the case that Crusader Kings 2 is an RPG. This opens up a whole new world of moral grey areas! What could possibly be a better place for disobedient, wrong-religion children than the oubliette?
 
trying to maneuver yourself into command of the faction provides an added facet to the game that is fun as well.

Go to the family tree thing
Click your character
Select "make faction heir"
Boom

Much harder in Medieval 2 which follows actual rules of succession to determine the faction heir. Had to kill a lot of the king's older siblings and whatnot to make sure the teenager with all the command stars and dread became the faction heir.

Seriously tho I had a fantasy of a massively multiplayer game like Rome Total War where each person played a family member and there was Intrigue and stuff.
 
Yeah, I was also thinking about Crusader Kings II as a kind of "pseudo-RPG." However, I'm not sure what elements of it would translate well into a traditional RPG. Something about shifting the player from one character to the next in a way that makes sense within the story and in the setting. There was a tabletop RPG many years ago called "Paranoia" which, iirc, involved the player-characters getting killed mercilessly, but reviving in the form of a clone. So you could get stuck in a trap or some kind of difficult situation and return with a "new" character. I once ran a Call of Cthulhu campaign - a challenging game in which characters died or went insane regularly - in which I allowed for the characters to leave journals, notes, books and newspaper clippings for their next character. A single plotline might involve a couple of "generations" of characters; one player had his new character, a newspaper journalist, interview his previous character, a university professor, in an insane asylum, thus picking up the trail and continuing the investigation. I think the newspaper reporter got eaten by a monster, so in a way, the first character outlived the second, albeit spending the rest of his life in an asylum.
 
Go to the family tree thing
Click your character
Select "make faction heir"
Boom

As in any good RPG, if you don't exhibit some self control you can exploit all the fun out of it. I considered naming the faction heir to only become an option once "my guy" was the faction leader. Then, of course, I would name whoever I planned to take up as upon the sorrowful death of my character.
 
As in any good RPG, if you don't exhibit some self control you can exploit all the fun out of it. I considered naming the faction heir to only become an option once "my guy" was the faction leader. Then, of course, I would name whoever I planned to take up as upon the sorrowful death of my character.

So what did your maneuvering consist of? IIRC you can't use assassins on your own characters in that game.
 
So what did your maneuvering consist of? IIRC you can't use assassins on your own characters in that game.

Well, being a highly persuasive member of the family, sometimes the strategic deployment of forces did call for the faction heir leading a somewhat over matched army into battle...repeatedly.
 
Ah, the old Lexicus one-two. A venerable tactic.
 
Ah, the old Lexicus one-two. A venerable tactic.

Picking the right time is challenging. The strategic game gets a lot harder when you brothers are all getting auto resolve results. Enemy armies don't get routed badly enough to just disappear, and your armies, even when they win, take massive casualties. So the throw aways to climb to overall command can tip the whole balance against you if you get too...exuberant.
 
Yeah, I was also thinking about Crusader Kings II as a kind of "pseudo-RPG." However, I'm not sure what elements of it would translate well into a traditional RPG. Something about shifting the player from one character to the next in a way that makes sense within the story and in the setting.

What about this: Instead of improving our own character to ridiculous levels, you have to spent the resources you earn during questing to train and educate your kid. After some time has elapsed or after a number of quests, you switch over to continue as your offspring. This might mean that you could switch from a warrior to a mage without either having to start over or training your juggernaut in the finer arts of magic. You would just have the drawback that the young mage wouldn't have much use for the +10 Sword of Awesome you found in a random cave (but the grandson might).

And you would travel the whole game world to find that genius NPC to marry, of course.
 
The similar idea was in Sunless Sea. You could pass some of your resources to your son and if you die, continue the game as him.
 
What about this: Instead of improving our own character to ridiculous levels, you have to spent the resources you earn during questing to train and educate your kid. After some time has elapsed or after a number of quests, you switch over to continue as your offspring. This might mean that you could switch from a warrior to a mage without either having to start over or training your juggernaut in the finer arts of magic. You would just have the drawback that the young mage wouldn't have much use for the +10 Sword of Awesome you found in a random cave (but the grandson might).

And you would travel the whole game world to find that genius NPC to marry, of course.
The similar idea was in Sunless Sea. You could pass some of your resources to your son and if you die, continue the game as him.
Allowing the player-character to train an heir or apprentice could be an interesting approach to a "perma-death" game, so the player doesn't just have to start over or reload an old save file. iirc, Path of Exile allows you to transfer equipment from one character to another, although the characters have no connection to one another (it's not really an RPG, more of an action game, it just means that you can hang on to the nice pieces of gear that your current character can't use).
 
There was a tabletop RPG many years ago called "Paranoia" which, iirc, involved the player-characters getting killed mercilessly, but reviving in the form of a clone.
I was just thinking of the scene in the first season of Preacher, when Fiore and DeBlanc and the Seraphim get killed over and over again, and keep reviving and jumping back into the fight. :lol:
 
What do people think about the importance of plot vs. setting? How important is it that the world be detailed and constructed vs. the current narrative of the protagonists?

Just to give some examples, Dark Souls is 99% setting, Skyrim 80% setting, Baldur's Gate 2 is probably 66% plot and KOTOR is a near 50/50 imo.
 
I must have played easily a third of all the Fighting Fantasy titles. I have multiple editions of various ones. I've played all but one of the Lone Wolf books though - amazing series.
 
What do people think about the importance of plot vs. setting? How important is it that the world be detailed and constructed vs. the current narrative of the protagonists?

Just to give some examples, Dark Souls is 99% setting, Skyrim 80% setting, Baldur's Gate 2 is probably 66% plot and KOTOR is a near 50/50 imo.

"Setting" is a two edged sword. I know that you are pretty much saying "quality of game world" when you use the word here, but for a lot of players that might not come up as much as the more literal meaning of setting does. To make another foray into the use of BethSoft examples, the quality of the post apocalyptic world in Fallout, for me personally, might never be able to get past the fact that I just didn't like a post apocalyptic setting as much as I liked a medieval fantasy setting, period. So plot becomes a lot more important, and so does the quality of the game world. In the reverse, I will forgive a lot more in a space/SF set game than I will in a medieval fantasy set game.
 
That said, I'm going to risk a tangent and say that one of the most fun games I've played as an RPG has been Rome:TW, which of course was never designed to be an RPG. Picking a single family member to "play," and using auto resolve for any battles when "my character" isn't in charge makes it very challenging in terms of the strategy game, and trying to maneuver yourself into command of the faction provides an added facet to the game that is fun as well.
Ah, fun times. Like the time I turned my alcoholic, depressed, henpecked, crossdressing, probably gay general in Medieval 2 into the most feared commander in Europe who single handedly cut a bloody swathe to Jerusalem.
 
What about this: Instead of improving our own character to ridiculous levels, you have to spent the resources you earn during questing to train and educate your kid. After some time has elapsed or after a number of quests, you switch over to continue as your offspring. This might mean that you could switch from a warrior to a mage without either having to start over or training your juggernaut in the finer arts of magic. You would just have the drawback that the young mage wouldn't have much use for the +10 Sword of Awesome you found in a random cave (but the grandson might).

And you would travel the whole game world to find that genius NPC to marry, of course.

Well in Pendragon you played a noble in Arthurian Britain, got married, had kids, got old, then played as one of your kids.
I once ran a campaign where some players were playing the great grandson of their original character.

I always thought Pendragon would be easily adaptable to a computer game.
 
Take the Seduction focus and start fostering a bastard in each court. That'll do in a pinch. :)
 
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