This seems similar to a lot of nation RP games I've played and been game master for just with greater complexity (Typically it would be some kind of fantasy setting where players create nations to populate a world and RP as that nation's government or leader), and ive always hated how in those games that the people running them tend to overly focused on gamifying mechanics and spreadsheets rather than focusing on telling compelling stories. I'd be more than happy to help with setting something like this up as its something I have a lot of experience with and have seen a lot of the traps that game masters fall into that wreck their games.
I like the ideas presented! The only issue I noted is the players, in the sense that the genre idea isn't as popular as the adventurous one for many persistent world rpg servers. And, it's hard not making a game crafting focused when you add survival aspects. I'd be very happy to see this conceptualized into something, though!
@@dight909 Well, I wouldn't call it "survival". It's closer to a DM campaign than to the survival genre as the concept heavily relies on players-DM interaction
So like some meta feudalistic organization structure. This sounds very interesting! It gets around many issues of centralized power and certain staff biases which always arise. With this, it separates responsibility and allows staff (town dms) to actually play and properly understand their "role" to their fullest extent (which is always desired!)
@@Larpushka By feudalistic, I mean more about (in a meta sense of irl organization) a decentralized structure and responsibility are distributed across multiple levels of dms. The town dms are still rping/play, but are essentially different from the players since they themselves are in a semi campaign by the "world dm". This allows local dms to hyper focus on their own specialized domain as responsibilities of dming are distributed, contributing to a much larger world sim. I think this idea (if I am interpreting it correctly) solves many issues of staff burnout, abuse, bias, etc., because the load and amount of power is local/minimal. Does this align with what you are saying?
It's not too important, I feel, to have a very complex life story for our characters outside current events. A little bit is fine, but the important thing is the present. And the relationships we make now. Making your fantasy characters too real is a bad thing, since they are supposed to be extra-ordinary people living in extra-ordinary times. That's why we read the story. Not to have twelve pages of them deciding what to have for dinner, then preparing the dinner, then washing the dishes, etc. That character description box should be quite enough to describe most of our past life, with details coming along in conversation. And then the low level and small experience gain should represent our growth. Priests who can resurrect are a very rare sight, and normally spells also have a material component like diamonds. The way I see this world, it should be for the most part a dark world. Fighting for survival should always be in the back of your mind, but you can still have all those wonderful moments by a fire, nice sunny days with no bad events, etc. Resources should be scarce, good things should be rare and expensive, so that you appreciate them. And because you have no abundance of wealth, all you have is your life which you are more than willing to trade since this isn't much of a life anyway. Experience should be difficult to obtain so that you value every level. I would not neglect the gameplay and character progression aspect. If you know what you are doing you should eventually be rewarded. You should have the best chances of success if you prepare the most, while also being easily subject to a random stupid crit that takes you out immediately. Like how people sometimes play "ironman" these games that were never intended to be so. This also is related to how people are not supposed to do homework when starting in this world. Yes, they should. A little. Although you can absolutely not care and still play, just to see how long you can survive. There is this Serbian game called UnderRail which is becoming a classic of that early Fallout genre. You have no way to respec your character. If you make a mistake, if you did not do your homework and this is your first time, you will end up with a build that cannot deal with enemies. And they never changed this aspect of the game, and people love it just the way it is. The developer is obviously losing money for not making it accessible to casual gamers, and that's fine with him. Combat should be a big aspect of why we are here, but you absolutely should have other activities, and plenty of memorable moments outside of that. Everybody is here to be the hero, and the one life makes it all the more sweeter. Players should be made aware that walking outside of the camp alone is probably a bad idea. But with high risks come high rewards. Or just death, poisonous creatures, cursed items, ambushes, disease. But also opportunities to meet new friends, or people pretending to be friends. Or not even people, just other things pretending to be people. Things that can kill you and then take your appearance, and go sleep in your bed. Things that can charm you to do whatever they say. Spirits that slowly drive you crazy, undermining the entire base from within. I mean all of these are just so cool, but it would be very, very difficult to have them play out. Thoughts are faster than the speed of light after all... . Still, this is a very ambitious project. And if it's anything like that Haze video, I'm sure it will be a lot of fun. At least I liked what I saw there quite a lot. Just a final thought. As I'm sure you know, the best stories end where they began. I'm not gonna give examples here because I don't want to spoil games and such, but the best ones have you returning to "where it all began" after a long period of absence, fighting the final fight, and reflecting on everything you learned. Now you are an accomplished hero, where once you grew cabbage.
This seems similar to a lot of nation RP games I've played and been game master for just with greater complexity (Typically it would be some kind of fantasy setting where players create nations to populate a world and RP as that nation's government or leader), and ive always hated how in those games that the people running them tend to overly focused on gamifying mechanics and spreadsheets rather than focusing on telling compelling stories. I'd be more than happy to help with setting something like this up as its something I have a lot of experience with and have seen a lot of the traps that game masters fall into that wreck their games.
Very interesting concept. Ive worked on some projects like this myself in a few different games.
I like the ideas presented! The only issue I noted is the players, in the sense that the genre idea isn't as popular as the adventurous one for many persistent world rpg servers. And, it's hard not making a game crafting focused when you add survival aspects.
I'd be very happy to see this conceptualized into something, though!
@@dight909 Well, I wouldn't call it "survival". It's closer to a DM campaign than to the survival genre as the concept heavily relies on players-DM interaction
So like some meta feudalistic organization structure. This sounds very interesting! It gets around many issues of centralized power and certain staff biases which always arise. With this, it separates responsibility and allows staff (town dms) to actually play and properly understand their "role" to their fullest extent (which is always desired!)
@@carson825 well it doesn't have to be feudalistic, it depends on the hamlet/faction. Exactly right what you said about separating dm responsibility !
@@Larpushka By feudalistic, I mean more about (in a meta sense of irl organization) a decentralized structure and responsibility are distributed across multiple levels of dms. The town dms are still rping/play, but are essentially different from the players since they themselves are in a semi campaign by the "world dm". This allows local dms to hyper focus on their own specialized domain as responsibilities of dming are distributed, contributing to a much larger world sim. I think this idea (if I am interpreting it correctly) solves many issues of staff burnout, abuse, bias, etc., because the load and amount of power is local/minimal.
Does this align with what you are saying?
It's not too important, I feel, to have a very complex life story for our characters outside current events. A little bit is fine, but the important thing is the present. And the relationships we make now. Making your fantasy characters too real is a bad thing, since they are supposed to be extra-ordinary people living in extra-ordinary times. That's why we read the story. Not to have twelve pages of them deciding what to have for dinner, then preparing the dinner, then washing the dishes, etc. That character description box should be quite enough to describe most of our past life, with details coming along in conversation. And then the low level and small experience gain should represent our growth. Priests who can resurrect are a very rare sight, and normally spells also have a material component like diamonds. The way I see this world, it should be for the most part a dark world. Fighting for survival should always be in the back of your mind, but you can still have all those wonderful moments by a fire, nice sunny days with no bad events, etc. Resources should be scarce, good things should be rare and expensive, so that you appreciate them. And because you have no abundance of wealth, all you have is your life which you are more than willing to trade since this isn't much of a life anyway. Experience should be difficult to obtain so that you value every level. I would not neglect the gameplay and character progression aspect. If you know what you are doing you should eventually be rewarded. You should have the best chances of success if you prepare the most, while also being easily subject to a random stupid crit that takes you out immediately. Like how people sometimes play "ironman" these games that were never intended to be so. This also is related to how people are not supposed to do homework when starting in this world. Yes, they should. A little. Although you can absolutely not care and still play, just to see how long you can survive. There is this Serbian game called UnderRail which is becoming a classic of that early Fallout genre. You have no way to respec your character. If you make a mistake, if you did not do your homework and this is your first time, you will end up with a build that cannot deal with enemies. And they never changed this aspect of the game, and people love it just the way it is. The developer is obviously losing money for not making it accessible to casual gamers, and that's fine with him. Combat should be a big aspect of why we are here, but you absolutely should have other activities, and plenty of memorable moments outside of that. Everybody is here to be the hero, and the one life makes it all the more sweeter. Players should be made aware that walking outside of the camp alone is probably a bad idea. But with high risks come high rewards. Or just death, poisonous creatures, cursed items, ambushes, disease. But also opportunities to meet new friends, or people pretending to be friends. Or not even people, just other things pretending to be people. Things that can kill you and then take your appearance, and go sleep in your bed. Things that can charm you to do whatever they say. Spirits that slowly drive you crazy, undermining the entire base from within. I mean all of these are just so cool, but it would be very, very difficult to have them play out. Thoughts are faster than the speed of light after all... . Still, this is a very ambitious project. And if it's anything like that Haze video, I'm sure it will be a lot of fun. At least I liked what I saw there quite a lot.
Just a final thought. As I'm sure you know, the best stories end where they began. I'm not gonna give examples here because I don't want to spoil games and such, but the best ones have you returning to "where it all began" after a long period of absence, fighting the final fight, and reflecting on everything you learned. Now you are an accomplished hero, where once you grew cabbage.
I'm in.
Haha. It's a thought experiment, I don't have time for real human players, hence began tinkering with AI.