[Freeciv-Dev] Re: 4X TBS as driver for RPG

[Mark Metson <markm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 21 Dec 2003, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> > In FreeCiv the kind of thing I'd want to do would be to compute a
> > character's chance of surviving, or, better, generate a detailed
> > character-level scenario for the player of the character to
> > play, based on
> > which unit the character was part of (or encountered) and
> > what happened to that unit.
> 
> That sounds like a special kind of unit, with a special unit script.
> Not a big deal.  Of course, you realize you are doing this
> implementation work, right?  :-)  But I'm saying, it would be easy to do
> in Python.

I doubt you would need a special unit. You could just assign various 
outcome chances to characters within a unit a la "En Garde!", in "En 
Garde". Admittedly in "En Garde!" the player might have some small effect 
on the outcome if the player is in command, as if in command the player's 
military ability would be involved in computing the outcome, but for 
lesser players they have no effect on the outcome, they just get to choose 
whether to be extra brave or cowardly then roll for survival and promotion 
and loot. One could go further though such as providing a FPS in which 
they get to fight their way out, set up in such a way that even if they do 
max kills on their way out they still wont actually change the larger 
scale outcome they will only be determining how many of the known enemy 
dead were killed by them rather than by NPCs.

> > Eventually it would be nice to also allow the individual
> > characters to somehow effect the larger scale, such as maybe
> > count a party
> > of players as being effectively a "diplomat" or "spy" unit so that if
> > their character-level play succeeds then that diplomat or spy
> > action on
> > the Civ scale would succeed whereas if their individual
> > character play
> > field that failure could be plugged into the Civ game as a
> > failure on the
> > part of the corresponding diplomat or spy unit.
> 
> But diplomats and spies aren't important in Freeciv.  They accomplish
> trivial tasks, nothing so dramatic as a RPG would portray.  Here, you're
> talking about adding a lot of rules detail to some section of the game.
> If you are asking for a 4X TBS to be driving your RPG, you will be
> writing a *lot* of stuff.  One would call it a major game version.  Ok
> in my world view, it's supposed to be a game engine, not a game.  But
> realize, a lot of work for yourself you're talking about there.

The kinds of things that diplomats and spies do in FreeCiv seem pretty 
comparable to most of the strategic-scale-related things that players have 
done in my (pencil and paper) RPG.

Maybe it might make a difference to keep in mind I am thinking of one long 
long long term (decades and decades) RPG campaign, not some throwaway 
oneshot "RPG game" especially not some SOLO oneshot RPG game. I guess it'd 
be more along the lines of a massively multiplayer long-term 
(never-ending) game. Basically a game that tried to swallow "all" other 
games into itself... :)

-MarkM-

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