Learning to build an OPEN rpg

i know that just by putting the the word OPEN that i'll be able to grab quite a few peoples attention. Though the point of the thread is this. What are the do's and don't of an open RPG. Also submitting any possible themes or systems that would work greatly with an OPEN RPG would be much appreciated. I'm doing this so i can compile a small reference of information so when *i hope so* get to putting together an OPEN RPG premise i'll be able to incorporate *or cut out* any ideas. I'll start the list.

1st thing to remember is that complete lack of direction is what kills an OPEN RPG. In order to prevent this from happening have a few goals that the players must try to attain in order to finish a map. Otherwise it becomes a senseless build and kill game that doesn't't have the ability to stay interesting.

2nd is that making your environments as immersive as possible will make the player feel like they have much more control over the game they are playing. Such examples would be that by having a certain item you could cross a bridge or something.

3rd, Code Save System, this giving the map much more re-playability. If you wanted to get creative you could create an arena map where players would just go head to head for NO exp. That way players couldn't't just kill each other . Then save, then go back all big and buff after doing nothing.

4th would be to make sure and have a creep re-spawn trigger that isn't't just.
Every 2 minutes
Re-spawn ________

5th Create a small map *i don't care how big* of how you want the ACTUAL map to look. This small map is just basically a lay out. If you wanted to have it a little more planned out you could have labels indicating certain parts of the map and what they could do in the game world.

6th Size matters, or in War3's online experience, smaller===fast and more fun for a LARGE majority of bnet players. Make use of your terrain. Make stuff twisty and even overlap. An idea for how to do this would be to make a bridge going over a pathway. While this sounds easier said than done i'm very close to getting it to work...... well.



PLZ!!!! contribute your ideas or suggestions for creating a well done OPEN RPG.

Don't get lazy and create a "unit spawner" for every player, make it able to place units all over the map, and call it a "roleplay map".

God, I hate those maps. And I love RP games, too. :P

I was just about to post a topic about making bridges over pathways... How are you doing that?

And another open rpg style of game is where one (or a few players) put together the game world then direct the other players around in it. This has it's ups and downs, but Neverlax made a pretty decent one that got around quite a bit so I know it's an option. Er, unless you want to redefine "open RPG"...

yeah neverlax was the bomb. Only problem was placing units. Maybe if there were unit spawners instead? That could make it intresting. The only problem with neverlax was that too many newbs...... would do stupid things. Also theres already a GREAT DMmod out there and all this would do would add a couple players.

Please don't tell me with unit spawners you meant the kind of maps with a single spawner you can move about... and say -footman to create a footman at that location?

If I want to RP, I'll play a REAL rp map, thank you very much. :P

I am dying to know what you consider an RP map, GA. Though I agree that the everyone has a spawner and just makes what they want doesn't fall into the category.

What I consider an RP map has AT LEAST some guidelines. The "roleplay maps" I've experienced sof ar are more or less Worleditor made into a map. :)

Dungeons and Dragons maps. Now those are awesome.

A map with a spawner for everyone, and no guidelines whatsoever? Definatly not an RP map. Nicely done trigger-wise, but not an RP map.

you cant make bridges overlap terrain, because of the stupid pathing map it has, i tried it before.

lol that was the problem i was having. I got some cool cinematic stuff though at the expense of an actual bridge..... Owell What about custom pathing? or is it impossible to set the pathing on a 3rd dimension?

This isn't about RPs, its about Open RPGS. So quit wasting your posts on those Oh-So-Boring RPs. You play them for 15 minutes then get bored. In case some of you are thinking "OMG TH1S d00D DO3SnT Kn0W h0W 2 ARE-PEE1!!1!1" I do know how, it just gets boring after about 20 minutes.

Anyway... back on subject.

1. Make it original, a trigger-based trade system, building a base makes trade or whatever. Make it so you can buy a town for an outrageous sum of money to keep people going. I'm tired of this "Build a base to level then backstab your friends" "Open" RPGs. Those aren't open. The whole point of "OPEN" is to make it so you can do anything.

2. No "Build-A-Base-To-Level-Then-Research-Grant-Of-Gods-To-Level-Up-Further" type Open RPGS please.

3. No "God units" in the corner of the map that you can kill to get "Lucifer's Sword of +9999"

4. No super-items, Waugriff's RPG is crap. I'm tired of seeing level 77s with 7000 damage from only 2 or 3 items.

5. Scale down HP and damage. Instead of making footmen do 15 dmg and 400 HP, make him do 7 damage and 200 HP or 3 damage and 100 HP.

6. Balance it. If you have an "End of the World" spell that does 400 damage to all people on the world, then give it a high mana cost and very high cooldown.

thanks someone who got me back on track *sigh*.... Anyway i was thinking.

something that would be nice would be a time system where certain events would happen determined by the time of day. Or certain events could happen. I remember fiddling with an RPG where the final temple turned out to be in this pond in the starting town *gasp* I had this cute little cinematic trigger. The players would wait on 2 pads with a certain item each. Then when the time became like 18. It checked for players then if there were players it checked for items. If there were the items it would ask them a question in some crazy madeup language. That created a teamplay value.

Oh yeah and i started making a book trigger. Though i abandond it due to the fact that ALOT of copy and paste triggering was involved. Player could read books. I thought this would be a more immersive way to educate players on the game.

Finally i want to know how much of the story the players would have to stick to. Like in morrowind. Open RPG but a story none the less. Should the story be available when the player wants? Or should the ability to change a few things in the game world while being pushed along a pretty rigid story be used? I'm quite curious about this.

#1: branching storylines. Make it so every time you play, it is GAURENTEED to be different every time.

I am making an open rpg.
But, I think I'm trying to introduce new style to open rpg. It's a combination of RPG and open RPG. look at what I mean in my sig.

Making a lot of quests is essential, so that everyone gets a share. making some kind of scoring system is also good so that player feel special :). make sure that your quests go with the story or at least make a few required quests. you can let player unally each other, but i'm not doing that since all players are on same race and following same goals.
but what i'm doing is following. I'll let players ally or unally other races.

Hugeness would be great in an open RPG, so far all the ones on battle.net can be completely explored in 20 mins or so. Would be great if you had too play the game 5 or 6 times just too have seen all of the map.

And be carefull with air units... they screwed over most of the open rpgs I've played

hugeness always brings lag. So what about multiple maps instead?