Project Pathetic

The RPGs to touch your soul...

Basically, a collection of short RPGs where you cannot remake decisions (no reloading, though possibly allowing you to pause and then continue at a later time), and each decision has an impact. Oh, and did I mention permament death for characters? Non-linear, emotive, and overall, involving. Each decision with repercussion; each battle with casualties. If that sergeant you sent to hold the line gets cut down, he dies; no more do you have his support or advice, and other soldiers might dwell on his death.

Relations with other characters will be multidimensional; do they respect you, do they fear you, do they like you? Or are they devoted to you to the extent that they would follow you to hell and back?

In addition, much will be randomised. Each replay would be different; each decision slightly different. Avoiding right and wrong, and perferring the gray areas. Perhaps flanking would be best, or maybe a retreat?

Planned features:

- Short, emotive and involving gameplay.
- High replayability with randomised events and non-linear gameplay.
- No reloading, to make decisions truly important (no seeing how it would turn out).
- Hopefully voiced and with music of some description.

Discuss.

But can't people just save normally in single player and then just reload as much as they want to?

General idea sounds cool though, fresh and new.

If it was anybody other than our Griffo saying this...

But nah. He'll never finish.

1) There's an 'on loading' event.
2) You can detect if a game has been loaded or not by other methods.

Title sums up your post content.

This reminds me of Fire Emblem in a way...
But why not make it a bigger picture rather than multiple RPGs in one? Maybe that's how you want to work on it, but when you start to develop and attach to something so much more can be done with it. I suggest just making it a single RPG.

It would be a series of single player maps, rather than one map with several RPGs.

"Short" generally doesn't fit with those other two words. But if you can pack enough stuff into a short map so that players can actually get attached to the game, then I guess it would. It sounds cool, but I'm having a hard time visualizing how it would turn out in reality.

Long + true non-linear == massive workload.

True non-linearity involves exponential workload. In addition, short means more replayability, and especially important without saving/loading.

Sounds:
-Cool
-Fun
-Like a lot of work

Have you done any work on it so far? And does this take place in the Warcraft world, another medieval era, modern times?

No work as of yet beyond basic planning. I don't currently have the time.

It could take place in any universe. Modern times would be rediculous in WC3 though.