RPG opinions

[Vix]

Hey everyone!

I am interested in the community's opinion on old forum-style RPG games. I used to be an avid equine rpg player, but I am not sure if this craze has died down. I am not sure if anyone remembers my other project, Lemorsea, but I am gearing up to resume it's production in a couple weeks!

Basically, this is a fantasy equine RPG where users are the game characters! Players claim herd land, battle, and follow a fantasy story line. I will release more information in the near future, but a main portion of the game is user "posts". Traditional horse RPG games required users to write little fan-fiction type posts (short stories) which allowed their character to interact with other characters.

Do you all think this has phased out, or would you be interested in player a game like this? I can easily adapt this feature to having set "actions" a player can do which would be accompanied by a short little "post", but I am interested in the community's input!

 

[Dinocanid]

I don't think forum style RPs have phased out, in fact you'll probably still find quite a few active ones if you search specifically.

I think actions accompanied by short little post would be a good idea. Also, how long would these little short stories have to be? Is a certain word count required to progress? (Like a paragraph) Mostly because, from a personal standpoint, I'm not so good at writing. I used to RP well when I was younger, but I fell out of practice and could never regain the skill lol. I'm not sure if there are very many in my shoes, but if there are than having an action to accompany a shorter post instead would be great. It could be a thing where you do an action and it sends a message along with it, which contains what the user typed (if they typed at all), that's what I plan to do with player-to-player interactions on Wild Souls. 

[Design1online]

I started down that route with Whoa-Horsie and you have to get really good at doing regex within text blocks. One of the problems is that if you have large text blocks it starts triggering performance problems because the number of regex searches you're doing requires a lot of CPU power. Eventually what I settled on was letting the user do /action where the action is what they want to do (kick, bite, escape, etc) and then write their text. From there look for keywords relevant to that specific action and it will cut down on the churn of your regex searches.

Also, that path still got so big that I ended up converting the game to a full blow MMORPG that I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on over the years and it's still not done. Haha, just something to keep in mind when you start going that route.

Edited September 5, 2017 by Design1online

[Vix]

2 hours ago, Design1online said:

Eventually what I settled on was letting the user do /action where the action is what they want to do (kick, bite, escape, etc) and then write their text.

This is the concept I was really imagining in my head! I do like the idea of an emphasis on user-created content (the written portions).

8 hours ago, Dinocanid said:

I don't think forum style RPs have phased out, in fact you'll probably still find quite a few active ones if you search specifically.

I think actions accompanied by short little post would be a good idea. Also, how long would these little short stories have to be? Is a certain word count required to progress? (Like a paragraph) Mostly because, from a personal standpoint, I'm not so good at writing. I used to RP well when I was younger, but I fell out of practice and could never regain the skill lol. I'm not sure if there are very many in my shoes, but if there are than having an action to accompany a shorter post instead would be great. It could be a thing where you do an action and it sends a message along with it, which contains what the user typed (if they typed at all), that's what I plan to do with player-to-player interactions on Wild Souls. 

Thank you, @Dinocanid! Glad to hear someone is familiar with the roleplay idea. I was thinking maybe certain herds could be marked for the users wanting to really show off their writing abilities, and then having other herds with less of a focus on wordcount.

 

Thanks for the input! Excited to start getting Lemorsea in the works again ;)

[Flexa]

I think there's still definitely popularity attached to forum-style RPGs! The first kind that I've been involved in (and seen still in practice) are the ones for Pokemon? I was super involved in quite a few Pokemon forums when I was younger and they often worked like that.

Since there's the game and the anime to pull inspiration from, they usually have that mixture of actions/chance and longer-form writing that could also work for a horse rpg. Also, I've always enjoyed those, since the little actions usually work as a neat prompt to what I'll write in the post. Hope that helps some? 

[KingofCrows]

Absolutely still  an active Play-by-Post RPG community! There are dozens of them if you do some googling, and many are very active. There will always be people who prefer writing to playing a video RPG, and if you cater to that niche then you would end up with a healthy, active community, I would think. I was active in a couple of PBP RPGs a while ago, but university took up more time than I could spare, so I have not in a while but it is certainly something I'd pick up again, given the spare time.

[Kesstryl]

I'm developing an old school text based PBBG based on players being dragons, so I definitely don't think just because something is old, it's died out.  Just as 8 bit games came back in a nostalgia craze, any of the old school type games including forum role play games will always have a crowd.  Moving animations are not always needed to be engaging, just have a good game.  

[Elding]

I personally would not be interested, but there's probably a good.sized target market. My concern would be that it lacks the best of both types of games; in RPG's you've got a whole lot of freedom of action, but replies are not immediate and may be on hold indefinitely. In 1-person games like most pet sims, you have very little freedom in terms of actions available, but on the other hand all results are immediate, or they have a set count down. In the mix you describe, it seem the player is still held to a certain scenario that would happen regardless of the actions taken in ways that wouldn't apply in most text rpg's where the amount of posts are not set, but also lack the schedule of games that does not require mod or admin input. 

I would find a mix of these games to be really stressful, unless you've got a lot of mods on your hands with a clear schedule, answering posts very regularly. 

Edited September 8, 2017 by Elding