A versatile online tabletop with the ability to basically re-create any game, and it doesn't suck. The closest we have is Roll20, which is primarily for RPGs.
Even with funds, do you think that would be possible? And if possible... fun?
Possible perhaps, fun definitely.
For me playing RPG's has always been about the story telling aspect and no amount of processing power can yet reproduce the output of a good storyteller. WoW, LoL, etc are supremely boring because there is no personality behind the plots and they are always available. If, however, there was a chance that I coud get caught up in a one of a kind elaborate murder mystery (literally the quest/plot never gets repeated), or just discover a "Passage" style mini plot or similar little gem, I would be playing all the freaking time.
The real problem is that you would have to design an extremely flexible game engine and have a team of programmers for each GM, so that if the story requires new game world elements they can be made up on the fly. I think you'd run out of talented programmers and GM's before you run out of the unlimited funds if more than a few hunderd people played this game :-).
Yeah, I think that's the problem you're going to bump into all the time. No matter how much money you have, you can't buy talent that doesn't exist. If you're the only person running the game, you may find a team to service your needs only, but not many others are going to get any benefit. If they turn left where you turned right, none of the content tailored for you will be any good.
We saw with Sleep Is Death that personal GM's can work, but the graphics weren't anything to write home about, no matter how talented the GM. Throwing a ton of money at that isn't going to magically make the tool set better looking.
We saw with Sleep Is Death that personal GM's can work, but the graphics weren't anything to write home about, no matter how talented the GM. Throwing a ton of money at that isn't going to magically make the tool set better looking.
Man, I had forgotten about Sleep is Death. Graphics are not that important to me, in fact something completely abtract like Urban Dead could work better as it is easier to modify in game content (i.e. text descriptions).
So you make a party or get sorted into a party of, say, 4-8 people, and you get shuffled online. You are in a procedurally generated city block, inside a building. Doors are locked, or you are high enough up that getting out will take some legwork. You are fairly slow and pretty squishy; you need friends to help treat your injuries and watch your back. There are several escape roots, but nothing is obvious. Proceeding requires you to unlock doors, make improvised escape roots, all sorts of stuff like that. These are designed so that the players must frequently separate in order to activate them or get the full effect, or simply that it would be most convenient to do so, especially for searching for items and such. It is dark, but you can find and reactivate generators for lights. Weapons, flashlights, and other items are scattered around.
There is one other person on the server.
He plays a monster.
The monster's exact attributes are not known to humans. It is not fast enough or strong enough to solo the group, but it is stronger than any one individual. It has a very long health recharge time, so it typically needs to pick targets off one at a time. It can grab, slash, and drag bodies and incapacitated humans away.
You know there are categories of monster with a list of, say, twenty potential weaknesses, and at the start of the game, three weaknesses are chosen randomly. Things like "It becomes weak in the light" or "It can be killed with silver" or "It cannot open doors from the outside to the inside." Three powers from a similar list can also be chosen by the monster player. "It can become invisible.", "It cannot be killed if only one person can see it.", "It can climb on walls." "It can take the appearance of those it kills."
The monster has to kill the humans. The humans must escape.
Now, there is a twist. Every time the monster kills a human, one of it's attributes becomes known, scrolling across the screen. So with every kill, the monster gives away part of it's advantage. So, it must be patient. It must be methodical. Because every time it gets closer to it's goal, it gives the humans another tool to fight it with. If you are the last one alive, you know everything about the monster, and have the best chance of killing it.
That is the game I would make if I had the budget for it.
Yeah, that game sounds pretty awesome. Would you ever be able to kill the monster? It sounds a bit a Alien vs Predator multiplayer game I managed to make work once. There were 8 of us marines, 3 Aliens and one Predator (numbers may vary). It was the scariest videogame I've ever played!
The humans could kill the monster, but as long as the monster player was of at least basic intelligence, they would need to know the weakness of the monster. Most of the time they would simply force it to retreat by hurting it enough that it needs to back off and take a few minutes to let it's health recharge. A very stupid player would get mobbed, yes, but anyone not a total moron could use the greater speed and maneuverability of the monster to escape and begin stalking again.
The idea would be that the game is designed so that, given decent players on both sides, it would ultimately come down to one or two humans, informed of the monster's weaknesses and armed accordingly, going up against the monster with a toss-up of who wins. The game sort of simulates the sort of horror movie where the protagonists eventually step up and take the fight back to the monster. The best part is that the eliminated players basically get a front-row seat to watch that horror movie, complete with the game providing a series of dramatic cameras to watch the action from.
I can't really picture this being done well enough on a kickstarter budget to get the right feel to it. Not to mention I am busy making the game I'd make if I had limited money, so it's not something I could do now. If I become wildly, Notch-like successful, somehow, maybe then.
I would do my idea of the cute baby planet eater who's Dad sends him out to eat to become a big planet eater. The scenes with him are very kawaii style. However, the planets fight back and each planet is represented by a different art style. (Russian propaganda poster planet, 1950 horror movie planet etc.) So, it's a game with lots of art shifts.
You play as the baby planet eater and the planets try to kill you. It's a simple game idea, good enough for a handheld or phone.
I really would love to just make it, but I don't know anything about the technical side of these things.
While the monster hunting game sounds awesome there would need to be some way to force the humans to split up. Otherwise the humans just stick together and win.
If you have Garry's Mod, load it up and look for servers running Morbus. I like the random traits though. Here's a video of someone playing it as the alien.
Also look at "The Hidden" where the monster is acrobatic and permanently nearly invisible.
The Hidden was an inspiration, but the core of the idea really is a combination of three factors.
1) The environment is different each time, so the human players must explore. 2) The humans are squishy civilians armed with improvised weapons, not soldiers. They are required to cover lots of ground to find the gear they need to survive. There are no twitch FPS elements, it's multiplayer survival horror. 3) The hidden traits give an investigative element. It's in the human player's benefit to experiment with the monster, and in the monster player's benefit to be very, very careful in picking off humans.
There would be many ways of splitting the group up. The most simple is that the group needs to cover lots of ground to find items. Injured characters would move slowly, so the group might have to split up so one group finds medical supplies while another the other guards their friends. Some humans could elect to start separated, but with better equipment or skills. You could have dynamic situations like a floor giving way, elevator stopping, or a bridge giving out to split the group. And, of course, with the humans having no maps, you could give the monster powers that could scatter the group or pick them off one by one. (Spider webs! Flashbangs! Traps! Infection! Disorientation!)
They key would be that there would be so many different potential monster features that the only kind of planning advantage would be simple heuristics (Stay together, remember where you saw everything, keep medical supplies on hand). So you would have instances where, for example, somebody gets picked off and you learn the monster is vulnerable to silver, and everyone rushes back to the dining room to get the silverwear.
Another way you could mix it up is to give every individual human player a list of traits which form bonus objectives, but put them at risk. For example, your character is addicted to painkillers or is looking to steal potentially useful items, or you want to get another party member killed, you get bonus points (points can be used to determine who plays the monster next) for fulfilling these objectives, but those objectives could screw over the group or provoke them into splitting up. (You go off on your own to raid the clinic because you want the points bonus from eating all the painkillers rather than splitting it with the group... and the monster eats you. Classic horror movie logic.) Some of them could be individualized, and others could be universal (using up your valuable inventory slots on looted jewelry and shit instead of useful stuff would be a universal one, for example.)
Comments
For me playing RPG's has always been about the story telling aspect and no amount of processing power can yet reproduce the output of a good storyteller. WoW, LoL, etc are supremely boring because there is no personality behind the plots and they are always available. If, however, there was a chance that I coud get caught up in a one of a kind elaborate murder mystery (literally the quest/plot never gets repeated), or just discover a "Passage" style mini plot or similar little gem, I would be playing all the freaking time.
The real problem is that you would have to design an extremely flexible game engine and have a team of programmers for each GM, so that if the story requires new game world elements they can be made up on the fly. I think you'd run out of talented programmers and GM's before you run out of the unlimited funds if more than a few hunderd people played this game :-).
We saw with Sleep Is Death that personal GM's can work, but the graphics weren't anything to write home about, no matter how talented the GM. Throwing a ton of money at that isn't going to magically make the tool set better looking.
So you make a party or get sorted into a party of, say, 4-8 people, and you get shuffled online. You are in a procedurally generated city block, inside a building. Doors are locked, or you are high enough up that getting out will take some legwork. You are fairly slow and pretty squishy; you need friends to help treat your injuries and watch your back. There are several escape roots, but nothing is obvious. Proceeding requires you to unlock doors, make improvised escape roots, all sorts of stuff like that. These are designed so that the players must frequently separate in order to activate them or get the full effect, or simply that it would be most convenient to do so, especially for searching for items and such. It is dark, but you can find and reactivate generators for lights. Weapons, flashlights, and other items are scattered around.
There is one other person on the server.
He plays a monster.
The monster's exact attributes are not known to humans. It is not fast enough or strong enough to solo the group, but it is stronger than any one individual. It has a very long health recharge time, so it typically needs to pick targets off one at a time. It can grab, slash, and drag bodies and incapacitated humans away.
You know there are categories of monster with a list of, say, twenty potential weaknesses, and at the start of the game, three weaknesses are chosen randomly. Things like "It becomes weak in the light" or "It can be killed with silver" or "It cannot open doors from the outside to the inside." Three powers from a similar list can also be chosen by the monster player. "It can become invisible.", "It cannot be killed if only one person can see it.", "It can climb on walls." "It can take the appearance of those it kills."
The monster has to kill the humans. The humans must escape.
Now, there is a twist. Every time the monster kills a human, one of it's attributes becomes known, scrolling across the screen. So with every kill, the monster gives away part of it's advantage. So, it must be patient. It must be methodical. Because every time it gets closer to it's goal, it gives the humans another tool to fight it with. If you are the last one alive, you know everything about the monster, and have the best chance of killing it.
That is the game I would make if I had the budget for it.
The idea would be that the game is designed so that, given decent players on both sides, it would ultimately come down to one or two humans, informed of the monster's weaknesses and armed accordingly, going up against the monster with a toss-up of who wins. The game sort of simulates the sort of horror movie where the protagonists eventually step up and take the fight back to the monster. The best part is that the eliminated players basically get a front-row seat to watch that horror movie, complete with the game providing a series of dramatic cameras to watch the action from.
I can't really picture this being done well enough on a kickstarter budget to get the right feel to it. Not to mention I am busy making the game I'd make if I had limited money, so it's not something I could do now. If I become wildly, Notch-like successful, somehow, maybe then.
But the idea is out there now at least.
You play as the baby planet eater and the planets try to kill you. It's a simple game idea, good enough for a handheld or phone.
I really would love to just make it, but I don't know anything about the technical side of these things.
I like the random traits though.
Here's a video of someone playing it as the alien.
Also look at "The Hidden" where the monster is acrobatic and permanently nearly invisible.
1) The environment is different each time, so the human players must explore.
2) The humans are squishy civilians armed with improvised weapons, not soldiers. They are required to cover lots of ground to find the gear they need to survive. There are no twitch FPS elements, it's multiplayer survival horror.
3) The hidden traits give an investigative element. It's in the human player's benefit to experiment with the monster, and in the monster player's benefit to be very, very careful in picking off humans.
There would be many ways of splitting the group up. The most simple is that the group needs to cover lots of ground to find items. Injured characters would move slowly, so the group might have to split up so one group finds medical supplies while another the other guards their friends. Some humans could elect to start separated, but with better equipment or skills. You could have dynamic situations like a floor giving way, elevator stopping, or a bridge giving out to split the group. And, of course, with the humans having no maps, you could give the monster powers that could scatter the group or pick them off one by one. (Spider webs! Flashbangs! Traps! Infection! Disorientation!)
They key would be that there would be so many different potential monster features that the only kind of planning advantage would be simple heuristics (Stay together, remember where you saw everything, keep medical supplies on hand). So you would have instances where, for example, somebody gets picked off and you learn the monster is vulnerable to silver, and everyone rushes back to the dining room to get the silverwear.
Another way you could mix it up is to give every individual human player a list of traits which form bonus objectives, but put them at risk. For example, your character is addicted to painkillers or is looking to steal potentially useful items, or you want to get another party member killed, you get bonus points (points can be used to determine who plays the monster next) for fulfilling these objectives, but those objectives could screw over the group or provoke them into splitting up. (You go off on your own to raid the clinic because you want the points bonus from eating all the painkillers rather than splitting it with the group... and the monster eats you. Classic horror movie logic.) Some of them could be individualized, and others could be universal (using up your valuable inventory slots on looted jewelry and shit instead of useful stuff would be a universal one, for example.)