a few idea about my one player rpg (which still needs proper name)

Submitted by James Simon Faust on Fri, 2008-01-25 11:42. Design | Off-Topic

So I've decided to get down a campaign/adventure/story thing for my one player game... http://www.rpglaboratory.com/james_simon_faust/one_player_game_ideas

I've written down a few character type ideas and thought up a lot more that may or may not get into this particular adventure.

The setting is a world not that unlike our own save for magic, robots and monsters. A world ruled by a king known as the Agkmari. The adventure focuses around the player, a young student who has one dream in life... TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD! so with only a few points and a bat our young hero and his/her friends (guided by a wisecracking narrator!) set off to beat down the King and rule the world!

as the story progresses you will be joined by a number of allies that will have effects on story events based on their character type. races/classes seemed to specific. character type seemed more fitting for the mechanics of the game. Powerful Yetis, agile cat-girls, dark magic using devils and infamous bad-asses are just some of the characters ready to drop what ever they were doing to join you in the battle for world conquest. having members of different character types in your party can trigger different story events or give you an advantage (or disadvantage) fighting certain powerful enemies.

The game is played in chapters that must be cleared by the player finishing all the events contained within, earning a certain number of points or laying the smack down on a major enemy. I'm not 100% how many chapters the game will have, all i have right now is a beginning and 2 or so alternate endings. Also the mechanics have been altered a bit from the ones in the vague rules in the link but they still work to get an idea of how the game is played.

and to end this i ask a questing... should party members be swapped out at a library, since theres really no taverns or inns and i kinda like the idea of a library (thats where I'm posting this from actually)

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Infinte options?

Submitted by Chainsaw Aardvark on Fri, 2008-01-25 17:50.

Well, it depends on where the library is, how many potential NPCs there are, and how they affect the story. What happens if two or more NPCS apply to the situation, or if you have conflicting personalties (a demon and a priest for example)?

In a conventional RPG, the GM could just rulings on the fly about this, but as a single person adventure, you need to program each deviation... which could be a lot of work.

My suggestion would be that the chance to alter party composition comes at the beginning of each chapter. This helps enforce a little tactical thinking and caution, since you can't backtrack to pick up a replacement (right?) It also means the chapter only needs to account for NPCs you want available for that chapter, rather than any met so far.

I'd also probably argue that the easier approach would be for each NPC to be part of a category - ie the dark, the athletic, warrior - so that the responses can be "if you have this type of person in your party, then..." rather than a response for each individual. Once again, its the potential for dozens of branches to form off the line much like ripples in the dirac sea or certain theories about quantum physics and infinite universes. (Time travel... paradox in a can)

Story wise, meeting in a library seems like a good choice.

There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

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"I'd also probably argue

Submitted by James Simon Faust on Fri, 2008-01-25 18:33.

"I'd also probably argue that the easier approach would be for each NPC to be part of a category - ie the dark, the athletic, warrior - so that the responses can be "if you have this type of person in your party, then..." rather than a response for each individual." --Chainsaw Aardvark

well my idea for "character types" is a bit more specific than your category idea I suppose, since the story is about world conquest I think things like priest or angels and such things wouldn't quite want to join you, but I may decided that certain character types wont join you if you have certain other characters types in your party (angel not wanting to join if you have a devil,priest not wanting to join if you have a thief). There will be a number of each type willing to join you but their starting stats/equipment/skills/ect. wont all be the same.

my idea was that the character type (wizard, yeti, devil, bad ass) would trigger certain events. the idea was never that a particular character would trigger an event (well for the story i had in mind there is ONE optional party member that could make a major event at the end happen)

I'm not really thinking about branching story lines just yet, but maybe if i ever get this done I'll start work on a more complex story with branching chapters and a different set of character types.

and as for picking characters to use in the start, that was kinda my idea with going to the library to swap characters at the start of a chapter, but i wanted to add a bit of challenge by not having ever chapter have access to a library.

Character example:
Name (doesn't have anything to do with the game other than when she joins): Rosette
character type: devil (affects any events that might say something along the lines of "devils can not use magic in this battle" or "devils stats are -1 on this sacred ground")
stats: 3 strength 5 mind 5 talent
weapon: butcher knife (normal weapon no special features)
spells: fire ball (normal attack spell nothing special, not to say all spells will be like that)
skills/special attacks: none (just because she has no skills doesn't mean Rosette cant use her talent stat for any talent challenge, just like a character with no magic can still use his/her mind stat for challenges or a character with no weapon can still use their strength, they just cant use it in battle)

i hope i cleared stuff up...

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A quick Question

Submitted by NoobHealer on Sat, 2008-01-26 00:05.

First off, this sounds pretty good. I'm looking forward to playing this. I made a chapter based solo game in the past so I'm wondering how you're dealing with one issue I dealt with.

I just want to know how you're looking to deal with death. Is it Game Over when your die, or can you restart the chapter?

PS: The library sounds like a fine place to plot world domination. Lord knows I've used it for that purpose once or twice.

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hey noob healer

Submitted by James Simon Faust on Thu, 2008-01-31 11:44.

Death isn't permanent, the only way you can really lose is to run out of points. characters who are defeated in a battle normally cant take part in the next event that follows the battle as in, if your thief gets pwned in a battle with ogers in the next event following the battle the thief cant be used to make any challenges.

As for if the game is over, that all depends on if the player is still willing to put up with the game, once you run out of points the game is over but if the player wants to restart the chapter I'm really in no position to tell him/her/it not to. heck the way i see it you can start over the chapter any time you want if you feel like your starting to fail at every thing (I've had to do that a few times when I started)

That may change in the next story line I have planned out with slightly different rules (a parody of "The Hobbit" with an insane halfing ranger i play D&D as taking the place of Bilbo and various other reoccurring characters of mine in the other supporting rolls)

Also unrelated, I'm going to post one of my older one player games when I'm back at my lair. It's more of a battle game but I rather like it and wrote a series of modules for an on going adventure in between the battles. depending on how its taken I'll post the adventures after that. but beware 'cause its more of the hyper cuteness that I'm way to into.

And finally some one (in this posting mode i cant look back to see who he was and my memory is crap) said there was no DM, the way the story is going to be written out, the Narrator is the DM in a sense and hes pretty fair because he's really hopping you get to the end. the next game would have a different DM/narrator who won't be as nice to the player but its really in an much earlier phase.

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