The kind of RPG I would like to see

[Ken_Oh]

But what happens when the player goes to talk to that bartender, who has been randomly determined to be talkative, indebted to the town mayor and having had caught a glimpse of the mysterious murderer who is suspected to be his brother?

While, yes, that would be very difficult, you're already drafting out character dimensions and situations. If one makes a pool (huge, for sure) and then narrows results based on those specifics, maybe it could work. Of course it would be a lot of work. I'd draft out what I have but I don't want to bore anyone.

Also, dialogue would have to be very information (or disinformation) dense compared to many RPGs. I never liked long dialogue anyway; I probably skipped more than half of what was said in Fallout 3, and that's just the dialogue I've found.

I'd be interested in seeing this out, if you do plan on it. You could always start with a small village, like your example, and see if you can get the NPCs to react how you like.

Release early and release often will definitely be how this goes. If it can't work on a very small scale, then that will tell us something. Right?

[Turuk]

I'd draft out what I have but I don't want to bore anyone.

Well, do you have it in a file that could be attached to be read, or is it just in your head? It might not be for all, but I am sure some people would still be interested to see it, at least to read out your thought processes so far.

Of course, you also might not want the inevitable C&C.

[z9484]

Have you tried Scourge Heroes of Lesser Renown. Last time version I tried had some obvious problems, but its worth a look. It has some of the same goals to be a truly randomly generated RPG. The NPCs don't have much dialog to speak of and are not affected by quest events, but being an open source project(GPL) it could be a place to start from.

[Girgistian]

I don't know if it's really anyhow possible to make it enjoyable with the current technology. First I thought while reading through this is that it'd require conscious AI, and the last time I saw one was when I played Mass Effect . Completely random towns and events would sooner or later end up with making the whole thing just a sandbox-game, and it would most likely start to repeat itself after a while. Sure, it would be nice to see/experience a virtual world like that, but I doubt it's possible anytime soon.

[LemonTea]

Wait, are you saying we write an program, that can create a world, not by selecting from a list of variables, but make it up completely by itself so that it is always logical, yet no two worlds will ever be the same?

Does this program also write novels and symphonies at will?

Maybe it's do-able in the future, wait and see... (no I'm not implying I'll be doing it)

[Dave]

Automated content generation is a pretty tough field. In particular, once you get to the stage of having to dynamically generate conversation, it's going to be very complicated, and very difficult to make convincing. Good dialogue is going to have to be hand-crafted.

I think this will be an area of development, but it would be very hard to do. I think anyone trying such a thing should aim for small evolutionary improvements over past games rather than setting their goals too high.

David

[Eleazar]

I think a interesting mystery is one of the last kinds of RPG stories that will be possible to create via a procedural engine.

To do something like you've described i think you would have to tightly constrain the number of kinds of objects and actors, and the number of ways they can interact.

Also conversation would have to be carried in large part or totally via symbols and emoticons, something like the sims.

[roadkill]

I think the best way to do this would be a mmorpg, one where quests are made by human player.

With a good reward system for making good quests, it'll be as much of the game as doing quests yourself.

Even if only 1 in 10 players made quests, you'd still have an army of quest makers if the game was popular.

With an army of players making quests, you'd never run out, + since good quests will be rewarded the select few AWESOME ones will occur more often in people games. Hence high a quality, unlimited source of quests, which you don't know what to expect.

Isn't that what is wanted from a random quest generator?

[Ken_Oh]

roadkill: You're exactly right. The ideal MMORPG, in my mind, would have absolutely no NPCs other than monsters. Players would be the bandits, players would be the wizard in the dark tower, players would be the undead horde that needs fighting. Economies would be interdependent, ala M.U.L.E.

One of my greatest game dev realizations of the last year is how many "multiplayer" RPGs are in fact single player games with multiple user functionality slapped onto them. That doesn't really make them multiplayer in the same way other genres, lets say first person shooters, have multiplayer.

But, that's way beyond anything I can or want to think about attempting. At least right now, anyway.

I think a interesting mystery is one of the last kinds of RPG stories that will be possible to create via a procedural engine.

Quite right. My example was needlessly complicated. If popular games can get away with quests of the sort "Kill 10 rabbits and then come back here," I don't see why I should have to aim too high.

I think this will be an area of development, but it would be very hard to do. I think anyone trying such a thing should aim for small evolutionary improvements over past games rather than setting their goals too high.

Definitely. Release early and release often.

Well, do you have it in a file that could be attached to be read, or is it just in your head?

What I have is all on steno pads. I'll just try to get small working version as a proof of concept and we'll go from there.

[roadkill]

You gotta remember the golden rule of innovative games...
















Don't give it to EA unless you want to turn it into simplified crap.

[Lorbi]

This sounds like a very interesting idea that i definitly will keep track of that if u are to work further on it.
For those that are so doubtful about the dialogs... same of the best rpgs ever ( imho ) have very very
bad dialogs. i am thinking of early text-adventures. ( try a shot (playable) http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/ )

technically i see no problem in randomizing those a bit and add to the NPCs the capability to 'remember' things and act accordingly ...
after that, all one needs is a nice gui ... which is by itself not so easy achieved but sthg that is proven to be feasable

[Dave]

Don't give it to EA unless you want to turn it into simplified crap.

EA is a company with $20 billion in annual revenues, which invests millions of dollars into each title it produces.

We are a bunch of people on a web forum speculating on a vague game idea.

I think that EA being involved is the least of our worries.

David

[Eleazar]

This sounds like a very interesting idea that i definitly will keep track of that if u are to work further on it.
For those that are so doubtful about the dialogs... same of the best rpgs ever ( imho ) have very very bad dialogs. i am thinking of early text-adventures. ( try a shot (playable) http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/ )

They make much better text adventures now. Even though the old ones were sometimes clever, trying to guess the syntax, nouns and verbs they would recognize was usually painful. Well-made modern interactive fiction doesn't usually have that problem.

It's not really relevant to this topic, but if you are interested in checking out some text-adventures, don't try the old stuff. Browse around the site i linked to above, to look for your favorite genre.

[e7th04sh]

I had (perhaps not really original) idea for a mmorpg, where each player would be an immigrant on (at first) uninhabited land. I mean, uninhabited by men, but it would be a randomized but stable ecosystem with fauna & flora, including fantasy themed intelligent species, like goblins.

PCs and NPCs could either be definitely different creatures (so all the differences in behaviour between PC and NPC could be explained). NPCs would be filling the world, cause somebody has to build houses, bake breads and generally NPCs would be reliable, 24h/d "logged in". If player wanted to become a famous chef, he would have to cook a lot, and perhaps get parttime jobs, since he could not get employed for a full-time job (or if it was an option, i doubt many people would regularly log-in and cook for an hour, without getting fired for too frequent absence ). So, NPCs would be doing all the stuff, that PCs would rather not want to.

And PCs would not be logging out, but instead falling asleep - at first they would be perhaps using PCs and campfire to turn off dire animals and monsters, but later, when people would be starting to do some dirty politics, they would need to live in houses with sentinels That would be cool. Imagine, guy has a house filled with precious loot, and you go there, and try to avoid sentinels and guard to kill him while he's asleep, or steal a certain object, that a traitor has told you where to look for. Yay.

Perhaps SMS waking up could be added, so a player can make his guards try to wake him up when he's in danger . And this real guy there gets woken up by his phone cell, and rushes to his computer, turns it on, logs into the game and tries to run away from assasin through a hidden corridor, or perhaps is more powerful than you, and you have to make a desperate run . Yay.

Oh man, and the wars! Wars including full blown armies of dozens of NPCs suppoerted with local hero's - PCs... Capturing and killing leaders of rebel. Mage with high leveled invisibility flanking and killing leader of loyalists! Yay... If there wouldever be such game, count me in.

[MCP]

Some research at the university of cali santa cruz, just down the hall from where I was:
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~sherol/empath/
EMpath: Experience management path

Read the abstract of the pdf, or the article on the bottom.