New genres and settings for RPGs you would like to see.

[KapnKerfuffle]

Well Fallout 3 is almost here and Daddy likes. Fallout has done a lot to break up the market stranglehold held by the classic "Orcs, swords and magic" Western style RPGs. It was a breath of fresh, irradiated air for those people who played the crap out of your Baldur's Gates and Elder Scrollses.

What type of settings, genres or twists on the classic settings for RPGs would YOU like to see translated into a cRPG?

I'll start it off:
I would like to see a computer conversion of the PnP game Deadlands. Never played the PnP but it just looks good on the face of it. Western mixed with steampunk, ghouls, monsters and weird magic. I'm down with that.

What yall think? Feel free to discuss games that DID break the mold (i.e. Arcanum) and definately post your own original ideas.

 

[Altorin]

truly, I just adore the Bioshock/Fallout aesthetic so much , that at this point, I don't want to see anything else.

I'm sure eventually I'll want to see a cowboy shoot a dwarf in the face with a magic 6-shot, but the day is not today.

 

[runtheplacered]

It takes a lot for an RPG to break the mold. All new lore has to be created, from scratch. That's a lot of work, right there. You have to create a believable, living, breathing world. It'd be nice to pretend like I can just come up with some "weird crap" right off the top of my head, but it's just not that easy. It's much easier for a designer to take lore that's already been established by a community as "good" and build off of that. You've also probably just shed a half a year or so off of your development time. And if you wanted to make it outstanding, it would probably take even more time then that.

Even if you managed to do all of that and have it be successful, your franchise would then be hit-up by some money hungry corporate suits who will come in and be sure to suck every last bit of soul from your lore. Alien is a great example of that. A good film that created some fantastic lore... and was then raped of all value as a creative outlet.

It's hard to make things last very long in this dog eat dog world, but fantasy-style RPG's are one of the things that seem to work.. and work well. So, as much as I'd love to see creative ideas coming from every direction possible, I can also understand why that's infrequent.

 

[ThaBenMan]

More sci-fi like Mass Effect would be cool. There's a game called Alpha Protocol coming out that will be a spy/secret agent rpg.

Ooh, I just had a pretty sweet idea - a caveman rpg. You could be a warrior that needs to help bring down a mammoth and defend your tribe from sabretooth tigers, or you could be a shaman and discover the secrets of fire and healing herbs.

 

[RedElectric]

Truly what i want to so is an RPG based more or less on reality. And by that i mean no fictional skills...or even supernormal skills (such as some of the skills found in Fallout). I want to see a game with say...a film noir stlye a la max payne, however let's throw in skills a detective would have and need to grow in in order to be a better detective. Also taking the focus off of combat and placing it more on actual role-play would be nice.

Hmm...perhaps I'm looking for a console style MUD...

 

[-Seraph-]

I like RPG's that are a mix of sci fi and fantasy. An RPG that can meld those 2 together to form a truly awe inspiring and fantastic world. I guess that is why I am excited for Phantasy Star Portable for the PSP, it sci fi and fantasy melded together into a unique world. Having a mix of swords, guns, magic, and technology would be my ideal RPG world. I just love the melding of new and old to create something in between and just unique.

 

[minoes]

I would love to play a RPG set in the UK or italy of the 70s. And like RedElectric said with no supernatural powers.

 

[Rocksa]

I wouldn't mind seeing something along the lines of a Deadlands rpg myself, maybe give it a combat system like Mass Effect, let the character do stuff like rob/defend trains and the like.

Also wouldn't mind seeing a kind of steampunk/magicpunk rpg with mechs. Something along the lines of Iron Kingdoms or DragonMech. Giant steampunk warmachines bristling with weapons with a battlecrazed dwarf at the helm, what's not to love there?

A call of cthulu rpg wouldn't be bad either, set it around the 1920's-40's.

 

[varulfic]

Often, it's either set in the dark ages or the future. But there are so many cool historical periods to explore!

Like the age of enlightenment, not to mention the french revolution - I'd love to see an rpg set in France during that time.

Or how about the Industrial Revolution? You play as guy new to the city, poor, taking any job he can get, eventually working his way up to getting his own company and his own poor employees... it could make an awesome setting for a Grand Theft Auto game aswell.

 

[HuntingWolf_01]

i'd second the more sc-fi RPGs in partcular KOTOR

 

[The Iron Ninja]

An RPG where you are a crab.
You spend your time leveling up by eating anything smaller than you, fighting anything the same size and scuttling away from anything bigger than you. And you proceduraly get bigger and bigger the more you eat. Meaning that eventually you get big enough to fight and later on even just eat things that at the start you would be running from, like dogs and people. If you kept getting bigger, you eventually get to the whole godzilla esque rampage on towns and cities, before getting big enough to eat the moon (that's right, the whole moon)

 

[42manZ]

Alright, there is a tv series that has gotten very little love in the gaming industry due to the fact that the games made about it suck (the most recent ones being made by Bethesda).
That would be Star Trek.
Here are some ground rules:
1.There would have to be a near perfect balance between space missions and ground missions.
2. It must not take place within one of the the series, and there should only be short cameos or references to the characters from the show. You start as an Ensign and go from there.

And no I'm not talking about the MMO, which I hold little hopes for.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, and it would have to be as non-linear as Es4.

 

[KapnKerfuffle]

An RPG where you are a crab.
You spend your time leveling up by eating anything smaller than you, fighting anything the same size and scuttling away from anything bigger than you...

That reminds me of an arcade side-scroller game where you start as a small predator creature and eventually get bigger and bigger to become this huge monster. The name escapes me right now.

Anyhoo, when I was playing Mass Effect I had this idea for another Sci-Fi RPG except set a more campy, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Barbarella type universe - replete with hot chicks in vinyl, pulp type dialog and crazy art-deco weapons and buildings.

 

[LewsTherin]

I particularly enjoyed the Shannara (not a game, sue me) premise of a post apocalyptic earth in which magic emerges, so there are still ruins of modern cities and wandering cyborgs and such while there still are elves and dwarves and wizards ^^. I recall distincly someone using a flashlight at one point.

Or something like Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality, where science and magic are mixed in a more modern setting.

 

[meatloaf231]

An RPG where you are a crab.
You spend your time leveling up by eating anything smaller than you, fighting anything the same size and scuttling away from anything bigger than you. And you proceduraly get bigger and bigger the more you eat. Meaning that eventually you get big enough to fight and later on even just eat things that at the start you would be running from, like dogs and people. If you kept getting bigger, you eventually get to the whole godzilla esque rampage on towns and cities, before getting big enough to eat the moon (that's right, the whole moon)

Didn't you make a spore creature that was a crab?

 

[meatloaf231]

Truly what i want to so is an RPG based more or less on reality. And by that i mean no fictional skills...or even supernormal skills (such as some of the skills found in Fallout). I want to see a game with say...a film noir stlye a la max payne, however let's throw in skills a detective would have and need to grow in in order to be a better detective. Also taking the focus off of combat and placing it more on actual role-play would be nice.

Hmm...perhaps I'm looking for a console style MUD...

That's the thing. Nobody wants to be normal in a normal setting, it gets very boring very quickly. That's not the point of RPGs.

 

[The Iron Ninja]

Yes... yes I did.
I have an ulhealthy fixation with crustaceans (but not that unhealthy).
I'm going to continuously submit ideas for crab games to developers until one of them gets made. And then, my lifes work complete, I can die.

 

[Credge]

Steampunk. Actual steampunk though, not that psuedo stuff we saw in Bioshock. I'm talking straight up clockwork computers ran off of steam created with coal and fire. Clockworks. Lots of them. Think gnomes from EQ except without gnomes. That'd be awesome.

 

[DreamKing]

How about a RPG set in a universe that is similar to Stephen King's Dark Tower series? How about a RPG in some mythical place, like Vallahla? No..........Curse you, Too Human. How about an Escapist RPG?

 

[Madshaw]

hmm, i think if you could give me a nice gruesome one set somewhere like hell, or hell spilling onto earth, start off as a newly dead criminal etc and choose either a pennetant soul that will grow nice feathery wings eventualy use a firey sword of judgement to send the demons packing back down below, or become the leather hided beast and unleash your rage upon the ramparts of heaven istelf?


i recon either that or one where you play as eddie, could get iron maiden to make a nice sound track...