Bouncin' a map idea offa u peoplz.

So i had an idea about a map; the idea came from some classic warhammer games, like Hero Quest, Gorkamorka (probably spelt wrong) and of course the classic Chaos warbands.

The Main Idea So what i wanted to make is a save game PvP RPG in which the player would control their own warband of ... people. i was thinking having a few races, especialy the cool ones, like trolls and kobolds, and other little mentioned races. This RPG would focus less on getting to a certain level, but more on finding a good interaction between your warband, and gaining more experience for your loyal troops. At the begining of the game (/ when u start a new dude) you will create a leader for your warband. You will chose your race, maybe a starting skill or two, and then you will go onto recuiting some soldiers. You will have 100 points to spend on upgrades, troops, skills, equipnment etc. After you have set up your warband you can begin hunting the country side for creatures, doing quests for people, or challenging other warbands to try gain control of the map.

But this lead me to a problem...

The Save System That would be a long code if you were going to save 10 charcaters, plus equipnment, xp and skills. So i thought that every time you save your leader (and possibley his right hand man) is actualy leaving this warband to control the territory, and going to expand by moving to a new town. So your leader takes a fair cut of the gold (ie part (70%) of the total points value of the warband) and can be loaded to start a new warband. This way i save only 1 hero worth of stuff, some points, and then the name encryption. Nice and easy! This will also mean that when the person loads they will have to work a bit to regain the points they lost. This will stop people form being bored, and over powered.

Then of course, the other random stuff, like how to keep the game interesting and fun for newbies.

Fun for everyone! The best way to do this is to limit the deviation between pro and newbie, i wanted most of the advantage to lie with the skill of the player, to encourage people to start new warbands often. So i think the best thing to do is limit the max points value to something not too high, such as 500 (5 times the starting warband size). The max leader level will be harder to reach, but not much more powerfull as the levels continue. So something like a quick growth of power for the leader that flattens off around level 15, and then its a hard and not very gaining journey to get the last 5 level so level 20. This should help encourage people to start new often, and newbies will want to play! The hero levels is especialy a good system, newbies will want their dude to be awesome fast, so they can fight their friends and hav their leader chop. But pro players will be able to appreciate the small differences between a level 17 and 18 player.

Some more random stuff There were a few more things that i thought would help make this RPG unique, the first of which is autocasting abilites, but these ones will effortlessly fit into the game. During a battle one of your troops may chop the leg off a running archer, hes obviously attained a veteran skill somewhere along the way! Such small details like this will help to make combat more exciting. With the control of the abilities removed from the player, its up to the triggered AI to find the best time to cast. And of course every one will have critical strike and evasion (to some degree...) as in real life! Of course there will be other skills that will be cast by players, such as spells and the more exciting abilties, more then the "target has a 20% chance to miss" and other boring spells... I will also have ability learning systems that are more then just "level up this ability", including an 'item style' spell system (where u can move chose which abilities to use in a battle, and train specific ones). Which will be very useful once ur leader has accumulated many skills from many battles. And the last thing, there will be different senarios in which u can battle in PvP, some in which you try to gather loot, or rush to fuffil and objective, or try race to catch up to some magical beast (catch up to sumthing neway;...)

So yeah, you get the picture!

A warband RPG, filled with Veteran skills, special PvP and other crazy features that will effortlessly be integrated into the map.

Hopefully you will get the feel that you are the leader of this warband, ordering them to do stuff, and all that!

Please tell me what you think, and ask about anything that you think will not work well / is confusing. Complements are good, but criticism is better. =D

BTW, im thinking of themeing it around the struggles of the smaller races of WC, and how they struggle against bigger armies, one of those underdog type stories.

PvP + significant save codes == ewww....

Snowballs in a single game is bad enough...

what do u mean?

Wouldnt the limits and the other stuff i put on stop this?

I say this sounds pretty interesting. To make things easyer, you could just make players start with they're "hero" or main character, and have a warband form along the way, either by bribing people or people wanting to join your effort becouse you're so awesome, kinda depending on the kind of leader you want to play.

A morale system would be quite crucial for such a feat, though.

Say you want to be the rigeous leader, that is good for his troops. You'll have to spent regulair money on them to feed them, maybe let them rest and have fun every now and then. When you do a quest for someone they might be so elated they deside to join you! Perhaps random people that are ambushed could join you.

On the other hand you could have a mean fucker, like a slave driver. He'd force people to join your fight, and you'd keep them allied to you through terror. Whip 'em, whip 'em good! Problem is that your troops would escape when given the chance, and would definetly change sides to a more rightfull treating when given the opportunity.

You could always have the way in between, the guy that bribes his way through troops, you could have the necromancer that sais fuck all to alliances and just summons his own army of the dead from the corpses of slain foes, and ofcourse a beastmaster that would rely on taming the hearts of the wild to aid him in his battles.

nice erwt, i didnt realy think of making it that diverse. It would be interesting to make a system to work like that.

My initial ideas was that every one would be kinda the same, like troll tribes fighting over an area, but diversifing it like that would be much more interesting.

I love the idea of a 'good' mage forming a warband, only to take up necromancy in the heart of a battle, raising his own troopers as undead warriors =D

ne one else feel like commenting? ...

EDIT: i forgot to mention another feature;

Giving units orders In normal games units will do what ever you say when ever you say. My idea is that the units will consider what you are asking them to do first. For example if you order a footman to charge into a giant horde of orcs, hes not going to want to. But this isnt the only effect of this system, you can teach your units to fight in a certain style. If you order ur footman to attack one unit, that doesnt mean that hell only attack that unit. Hell probably try to kill that unit, but he will still aide others if they need help. Of course this will work perfectly with Erwts idea for a morale system, as a Vampire lord will get more obedience from a skeleton then others would =)

You play too much a) Dawn of War or b) Warhammer Tabletop.

Moreover, you guys are pretty much describing the map I started a few days ago.

In mine, I went even more hectically into the Warhammer idea and now everything is using dice rolls and random stuff.

My idea was simple:
1) choose a hero
2) buy some hirelings in wc3 style
3) pwn stuff
4) build up a campsite or rent buildings in a city/town (foodcap)
5) they will require money over time

New combat system:
All units have Skill, Defense and Strength (hero stats, so all units are technically heroes). Each attack, the attacker randoms a number between 0 and his skill, and the defender between 0 and its defense, and the highest obviously wins, the attacker dealing 1 - Strength damage. Missing, failing and critical strikes are also included.

This way, you can also level up all of your units. A friend and I played it for about an hour on 2 creep camps, making our skeletons attack our necromancers to level up, so yah, you can also have your units train against each other.

Since yours sounds better I might have to rename mine, lol. Or maybe work together on one?

That idea is terrible. Dont take away control from the players man...

I've been thinking about a game idea where you expand/gain an army by exploring the world, reather free-roaming.

But when implemented in a wc3 map its best to keep things on the simple side. You'd just be able to pick from a couple of pretty much pre-determained characters that have they're individual ways of gaining an army.

I'd change the current stats to three other ones:
Charisma, Force and Will.

These stats would influence spells and abilities in diffrent ways, but generally speaking Charisma deals with things like persuation, morale and likelyness of being found hostile. Force would enhance physical abikities, and will magical ones. They'd also form a triforce of resistance; a high will stat makes it harder to be charmed, a high charisma stat makes it easyer to avoid physical combat, and a high physical stat will allow you to live through more powerfull spells.

The way diffrent characters are effected by these stats depends on the character as well.

You would also need a couple of diffrent groups in the map. You would for example have nobles (generally "good" people), believers (zealotic religious guys), Peasants (neutral), heretics ("evil" people) and wildlife... These are purely theoratical, offcourse, but are archetypical factions i'd want to include. Some can freely interact, some are innately hostile to eachother. (most obviously heretics and believers)

When you start, depending on the hero you have chosen, you'll be more liked by some groups and less liked by others. When walking around "the world" your charasma score vs. NPC will score augumented by default alleagence will determain the likelyness that computer controlled entities will attack you. You can decide to attack people who are not all that hostile to you; this is where "morale" comes in.

Your "armies" morale goes up when you do deeds that your troops perceive as "right". Ther is also a passive morale gain or loss depending on how well your diffrent troops get along. Recruit people from diffrent alliances and your morale count will go down.
Morale basically works like a kind of upkeep; if it drops too low, your troops may leave or turn against you.
A high morale will eventually give benefitial buffs to your troops. However, it can also serve as a buffer to have them do deeds that they perceive as wrong; morale will go down if you do so, but if its high enough this wont result in any loss of troops.

I think its time for a couple of examples:

The Noble and the Thief Say i choose to play a paladin, wich is a type of character that is verry well aligned with nobles and believers. I start off near the cathedral in the main city, where people will like you. First i go about choosing my abilities and dividing some stats, then i'll go walk around and see what kind of characters are around here. I see a priest that i would like to have in my group. With a simple point-and-click targeting system i can ask this guy to join me. Now this characters will and my characters charisma will be compared. The more charisma i have and the less will he has, the less i'll have to pay this character to join my army. I do this to a couple of characters, buy some items and potions and head out into the world, or the rest of the city. Outside i start killing some random wildlife for experience, explore, have a look around. Maybe i'll encounter a poacher or a thief. Theres a couple of things i can do now. Depending on this thiefs alleagance (wich is most likely neutral) he'll take an offencive stance to me and attack, continue about its business or flee. The higher my charisma and the lower his will, the less likely he is to attack me. My troops all being faithfull goody good guys would like to see this thief be hanged. If i hunt him down and kill him, they're morale will go up. However, this thief might have some nifty abilities such as stealth that i'd like to be able to use; i want this guy in my army. If he hasnt attacked me yet i might ask him to join me. A price check is done, again taking alligeance as a base and then augumenting the price depending on will and charisma. If everything checks out and your theif does join your troops, your morale will go down, so after having bribed this thief to jon your troops you'll have to do some "good deeds" like hunting down and killing other thieves to keep your morale up. Ther'll ofcourse be all kinds of other ways to boost morale, mostly through items and abilities.

I'll probubly explain and theorycraft more on this later.

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The biggest problem with my idea so far is that i've just got a couple of mechanics; it doesnt have a goal or a motive yet. I'm verry tempted to just place this during a war between two sides, wich has to be won.

I really like those attribute ideas Ertw:
"Charisma, Force and Will"

Perhaps going of topic, but for an AoS I've always sought for something to replace the current 3, as you can get all their bonuses already via items.
Combined with my desire to enable the ability to command/marshall troops/creeps, charisma could pump that up, force combat & will abilities.

Perhaps in this rpg if there are Mercs, charisma could come into play.

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I really like the idea of an Rpg, where you actually control a small warband.
How will the selection work?

Do you have say a few classes like warrior, ranger, mage etc. & you build a squad of 4, with a mix of your choice?
Perhaps desginate one as the leader, who becomes slightly stronger than the rest.

Nah you're thinking way too static in terms of selection. You'd select a leading character, wich is basically your hero yes? With this character you then go about enlarging your army by attracting additional men through the system i just described in my previous post.

For an AoS the charisma stat would be absolutely rubbish though. The whole thing here is that its not all just about combat, its about interacting with the world.

Wouldn't it be an interesting challenge to have to think what orders your underlings are willing to follow? It would be kind of like running a WoW raid, I thought you'd like that.

Lol anti, i liked that last bit;
"It would be kind of like running a WoW raid, I thought you'd like that."

Yes, that was my kind of thinking. If we were to take the "Charisma, Force and Will." idea (though i would probably change that, as Charisma and Will are kinda the same (Charisma is applied Will after all, and Will is how you apply your alliance to your Alliance), and Force should be change to Might.) then the higher your Charisma and Force as comapred to theirs, and also an alliance check, the more likley they are to follow your commands. So a Charismatic Priest would be able to get his loyal monk buddies to follow him due to his high charisma and also due to their alligned alliances. On the other hand an Evil Necromancer may have high charisma and high force, but when ordering a state trooper around the alliance check would be low, so the force and charisma would be the more deciding factor. He would have more sucsess when ordering his skeletons (probably 0 charisma and 0 force and alligned to him).

I would make the charisma and force checks into a factor of the alliance check. so even if a low charisma low force monk issues an order others that fullly agree with him will do it. Make sense?

Back to Erwt, I like the morale system, not hard to make, and not hard to understand. It should work very well!

I also like the idea of an RPG more centered more around exploring the world then around killing everything on the map. This links back to the idea of controlling the map as if it was territory. You would be competing against the other players to attempt to sway all the map to your side (or cleanse those who disagree).

Also, "a) Dawn of War or b) Warhammer Tabletop." A) no, B) not rly, but i hav been reading a lot of stuff about the classic Warhammer (and 40k) systems, its great what they came up with!

Also, Fulla, read my first post and look at "main idea" and "save system" that will tell you a lot about how i plan to work the 'warband'.

No its nothing like that. Aside from me never having participated in a wow raid, those are human players you are dealing with. When you give a unit you control an order, you want him to perform that order. It would be extremely frustrating to have units just ignore you. It sounds interesting on paper but it'll be ablsolutely wack in actual gameplay.

However a morale penalty is something you can count on and keep track off. Do i do something to up the morale, or do i take a chance and do another "bad deed" before morale runs out, running the risk that some of my units might disband? Now its a players choice, thats effected directly by the actions of the player. If you make units "refuse" orders, the computer AI is making decitions what the player should and shouldnt do and thats just wrong.


Yeah might is a much better name for it.

I originally cooked up these ideas for a single-player thing. You'd be an outcast prince that has to make its way back to the throne by building an army; how you build that army would be completely up to you. The idea would be that the game would gently morph from RPG to squad to RTS game.

Replayablitity would come from saving certain army/item/spell combinations that you coplete the game with and compete with those online. The campaign'd be quite short too, but thered be such a wild veriaty of completing the objective that it would definetly be replayable.

If you're doing a wc3 map though you kind of have to squish everything into one, keep it simple and compact. I've never liked zone control kind of maps becouse it'll eventually leave players that have been beaten out of it. I prefer team games or arenas where everyne matters untill the last minute, but i'd agree that its a formula barely applicable to these ideas.

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A zone control idea could work. Inititally i thought of this world as one with one or two big cities in them (becouse cities have a looot of fun stuff) with farmlands etc. in between them. When you go more zone-controlly though it might be better to have the gam take place in farmlands with a couple of minor villages and settlements; like a monestary, a castle, a farm...

Erwt, you said that you would make units leave the warband if they didnt like the actions of the leader, this is merely an extension of that. You already have units that are 'being computer controled' in you senario, this is only a slight extension.

What you are saying is that if ordered to kill a priest, good troops would kill the priest, then say "wait, thats bad" and leave the party. In my senario i would have them query if its something they strongly protest to, or be more cautious if its something they are unsure of. You can make them still do stuff by repeatedly ordering them, but they will lose faith in you, and probably leave your warband

Its taking the same concept but pooring it into two completely diffrent gameplay experiences.

You have to think about what the game will play like, not just what would be most realistic or "fun". Units refusing your orders is just annoying, its not something you want to happen to you in a game, it'll feel just like a bug!

With my way of doing things the choice is always the players choice and never the game making a choice for you. You can keep track of "loyalty" through your morale score. With your way of doing things you can issue an order to a unit but it'll bounce back. Now you're even saying that if i order the same thing multiple times they'll probubly do it anyway; its just delaying the obvious, and gameplay-wise it results in nothing else then a small and annoying bump in the road.

I kinda like writing a breakdown on these systems. I'll be referring to the ideas i mention as "Rise to Glory" wich was the initial name i had in mind quite some time ago. If Gorman starts having a problem with me rambling all over his thread, i'll split it up into a new topic.

Main Character.
You pick one out of x main characters. You will start the game with just this character. This character can progress through levels, and become more powerfull as he does.

His Recources and attributes.
Your hero has three basic attributes over wich you'll be able to divide some points every level. These attributes focus on enhancing diffrent aspects of your characers performance. Theres Charisma, Might and Will.
This boils down to charisma increasing armor, might increasing health, and will increasing mana. Other aspects like attack speed, movement speed, regenerations and such might be altered through character-specific abilities tied to attributes.
Like in wc3, heros have a primary attribute. In addition to its default effects a primary attribute will increase damage and add a little to your charm.

Levels are gained by obtaining experience. Experience can be obtained in a couple of diffrent manners, the primary of wich is killing (enemy) units.

Secondly there is gold, also obtained in noumerous ways. Gold can be used to perchase items for you and your men, or to attract new units into your group.

Your place in the world.
Depending on the character you pick, the computer controlled units in the world will take a certain "liking" to you, wich determains the way you interact with them. units with a low liking will attack you, a neutral liking will do mostly nothing and units with a high liking might decide to help you. besides an NPC's innate liking to your character, its liking is effected by your Charm. The higher your charm, the higher an NPC's liking is. However, the Higher an NPC's will stat is the less he is influenced by your charm.
Charm is determained by your charisma and your primary attribute.

Making friends
Depending on the character you have chosen, he will have two out of x "persuation" abilities to attract units to join your group.
The likelyness of a unit to join your group is determained by its liking to you.
A couple of such "persuation" abilities are the following:

Keeping friends
As soon as you get the first unit to join your cause, morale is introduced. Morale is something all your followers share, and your actions as a leader will effect the morale of your followers.
Morale is gained when you do actions that (the majority of) your troops percieve as "just". Depending on the kind of unit that follows you, these can be diffrent things.
Morale is lost when you order your units to do things that go against what these units think is just, or when your units see you order other units to do actions they do not perceive as just.
A high morale will increase your followers performance.
Units will have a diffrent morale tolerence depending on they're liking. If morale drops beneath that variable, a timer will start on that unit. When that timer runs out, the unit will turn against you, unless you get morale up again.

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All of this is meant to build a framework on wich you can create a fun game. I have no idea how exactly to shape that games objectives just yet, and therefore cant really go into creating heros and units.