So I'm thinking about making a "Roleplaying Game" book based on a fictional MMO. It will be a little bit of a parody off of the games like Warhammer Age of Reckoning, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings MMO, and of course World of Warcraft.
It will be written with the idea that you are actually playing the game on your computer. What this does is change how the world works, a lot. For example, people might have icons floating over their head. You will have to compete with NPCs who are fictional people playing the fictional game (so you might be fighting over the same resources for example) It will also allow the chance to play as the more evil races (Orcs, Minotaurs etc.) Just like in WoW. No idea what the fictional game is yet, but it will even have it's own fictional real world history!
What do you think? good idea? or waste of time?
I had an interesting idea this morning and I want to bounce it off the Internets first. Everyone has said that 4th edition is too much like the MMOs like World of Warcraft. Back in 3rd edition, White Wolf produced a World of Warcraft Roleplaying Game with their Sword and Sorcery company. Frankly, I was disappointed. It didn't really capture the essence of World of Warcraft. To me, it felt a lot like they were hammering a triangle peg into a round hole.
So I'm thinking about making a "Roleplaying Game" book based on a fictional MMO. It will be a little bit of a parody off of the games like Warhammer Age of Reckoning, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings MMO, and of course World of Warcraft.
It will be written with the idea that you are actually playing the game on your computer. What this does is change how the world works, a lot. For example, people might have icons floating over their head. You will have to compete with NPCs who are fictional people playing the fictional game (so you might be fighting over the same resources for example) It will also allow the chance to play as the more evil races (Orcs, Minotaurs etc.) Just like in WoW. No idea what the fictional game is yet, but it will even have it's own fictional real world history!
What do you think? good idea? or waste of time?
Dot Hack imo
Not sure if I get what you're saying. Are you saying I should look at Dot Hack? or that this is just a rip off of Dot Hack? or what? I personally think this is a ripoff of the MMO as an entity.
I wasn't really saying much. Just throwing out the idea of Dot Hack. Considering, at least in the first game in the series, you play a person who is playing a person in an online world.
Oh yea, I read all about it, it's definitely a great source of information for me. I like that idea a lot. Although there are some elements I probably wouldn't use, like the Virtual Reality or the fact that the viruses can affect people in their real life.
I had a kinda similar idea once to what your thinking of with the MMO concept. After watching Nightmare on Elm Street 3, I thought what if players just played regular people who were complete badasses in their dreams. The dream world would be where most of the adventuring took place and things that occured in the dream world would affect reality.
Roleplaying should be about talking jobberish, aka l33t-speak. There could even be a reward system for this "roleplaying" :P
That's not a bad idea. I was thinking that there would be really powerful NPCs who are players who play the game all the time and are super-l33t and hates you.
The real game will start at the level cap. :P
Also use loot tables and make dungeons farmable. :P
The real game will start at the level cap. :P
Also, you could let the players hire Chinese people to come and get their characters to level 30 for them.
You just have to remember to make it easy for your players to pretend that what happens to their characters actually matters somehow. My suggestion would be to make sure that the players understand that they're really playing two characters, the "MMO" character and the "player" character that is operating the MMO character. Does that make sense?
white wolf or 3.5 for the real world
4.0 for the world.
If dot hack can pull off a decent story why can't a good dm use it? I think this is a pretty good idea if your players are into multiple platforms. Combine any two by playing the game in one or the other. Pretty intense.
Whether it's for reputation of a certain faction or the hunt for a type of item that only drops of certain enemies 0,1% of the time
An interesting proposition. I would suggest a combination of two systems:
white wolf or 3.5 for the real world
4.0 for the world.
If dot hack can pull off a decent story why can't a good dm use it? I think this is a pretty good idea if your players are into multiple platforms. Combine any two by playing the game in one or the other. Pretty intense.
Or F.A.T.A.L. for the real world?
Seriously, it would invoke that "depressing, harsh reality" that makes "the world" addictive to them.
I had an interesting idea this morning and I want to bounce it off the Internets first. Everyone has said that 4th edition is too much like the MMOs like World of Warcraft. Back in 3rd edition, White Wolf produced a World of Warcraft Roleplaying Game with their Sword and Sorcery company. Frankly, I was disappointed. It didn't really capture the essence of World of Warcraft. To me, it felt a lot like they were hammering a triangle peg into a round hole.
So I'm thinking about making a "Roleplaying Game" book based on a fictional MMO. It will be a little bit of a parody off of the games like Warhammer Age of Reckoning, Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings MMO, and of course World of Warcraft.
It will be written with the idea that you are actually playing the game on your computer. What this does is change how the world works, a lot. For example, people might have icons floating over their head. You will have to compete with NPCs who are fictional people playing the fictional game (so you might be fighting over the same resources for example) It will also allow the chance to play as the more evil races (Orcs, Minotaurs etc.) Just like in WoW. No idea what the fictional game is yet, but it will even have it's own fictional real world history!
What do you think? good idea? or waste of time?
back in the early 3.x era, there was a d20 supplement where your D&D character was essentially a high-tech LARPer/Gladiator on Live TV in a dystopia. There was a seperate set of stats for the 'Real you'. The system was setup so your virtual self died, so did your real self.
A little of Demolition man
I think it was Dungeon Crawl X
I think it was Dungeon Crawl X
Reminds me of the ol' game "Smash! Tv". Risk your life for toasters and vacations and stuff.
For monthly subscription rates, you could demand the PCs pay some fixed amount of gp every X game sessions (real life game sessions). This isn't how it works in real life, but it gets the feel across.
For RPing the PC players, if you're going to have action happening, use the same system but everyone is Lv1 and has no powers or feats. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother with mechanics for their offline selves. You could also send "special D&D"-labeled emails to each actual player between sessions that gives them some unique information that they may either share or keep to themselves when you all convene next. Such emails could concern vaguely what the player's offline selves were doing or could be an email from an NPC's offline self to a PC's offline self. You could even have someone deceive them this way (an online scam!).
30 DB LZRCLR LFG 4 ToH
Is it bad I knew this meant lvl 30 Dragonborn lazer cleric looking for group for Tomb of Horrors?
Is it bad I knew this meant lvl 30 Dragonborn lazer cleric looking for group for Tomb of Horrors?
No, the bad part is that it's a sane person looking for a group to Tomb of Horrors.
Kind of like looking for a group to Gnomeregan, for those who know what I mean.
It will also allow the chance to play as the more evil races (Orcs, Minotaurs etc.) Just like in WoW.
In WoW, Orcs and Tauran (Minotaurs) are not evil. The Humans are the real badguys.
Pricks: Night Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Blood Elves, Draenei
Evil: Humans
However, I think it would be an interesting idea for a non rpg game like a card game or a board game. The game could be events and rolling compared to challenges and events. Each player of the game could be playing a gamer who has stats like Powerleveling and Munchie Management and Multitasking and Real World Skills and Computer Skills and Hacking and such. One such event could be "Computer breaks down. Roll under Computer Skills or lose a level." or "Bank Account Runs Low. Roll under Real World Skills or lose all levels." or "Find the Glitch. Roll under Powerleveling and Hacking and gain a level if you succeed on both."
I think it sounds fun, to be honest. I'm not sure it requires any new ruleset as you envisioned it. It's just a tongue-in-cheek way to play D&D where people's names float over their heads, people who aren't professional adventurers are terrible conversationalists, and the system is almost totally transparent to the characters.
I've had my players go to a "Final Fantasy World" where people talk in textboxes, numbers pop out from creatures whenever you damage them, townsfolk keep walking back and forth in a specific pattern and keep saying the exact same thing when you talk to them, and I even gave each PC their own unique "limit break." Again, this was only for a session or two, but it certainly spiced up the campaign since it introduced a totally new experience from other sessions.
Sounds ridiculously silly? Well that's the point. Most of my sessions are rather serious, but every now don't be afraid to toss something from left field just to give your players a sense that they'll never know what to expect next!
It needs a little bit of explaining as there was kind of 2 storylines going on at the same time... so it's long but good.
I started with a Lich prison dungeon with a bit of backstory. Inside was the evil Melech-Kal.
Originally the dungeon was made for the defence of his Phylactery. He placed his treasures down there and he put magic circles in the rooms so that his minions could summon monsters from the phylactery room. An adjacent room contained a summoning circle too and he occassionally used it to hoard gold there when he was away pillaging.
On one such away mission he was defeated by a Paladin called Voltus and a Rogue/Wizard called Tom. Voltus was trying to redeem an evildoer in mentoring Tom. After defeating Melech-Kal they sought out his Phylactery and headed straight to his stronghold.
The stronghold was a slave based town. They snuck in and found the Lich's dungeon. They conquered it and found the Lich once again, so they killed him. The were unaware the Phylactery was the central column under the whole city. Tom wanted the gold but Voltus told him there were more important things to discover such as the nearby secret phylactery.
Tom thought about something and reasoned that there was something more important than the gold and that was the city above.
Tom sealed the Phylactery and Gold rooms with Voltus still inside searching for the phylactery. It was just as good as any other dungeon wall.
Tom freed some of the slaves. And made himself Mayor of the newly founded town of Mansworth, so named as it was founded on the worth of a man.
Voltus stayed in the lowest level. Killing the Lich every time he started to regenerate. Unable to destroy the column and town up above he lived a boring life only ever killing the Lich. Eventually he became undead himself. But his paladin mind was strong enough to stay himself.
Forget them...
The town was now ruled by Tom's son, Pugh, he was evil to and had reached the age of 55, and the town was still a slave town. Pugh had never considered opening the vault. He knew it contained money but it also contained 3 dooms which weren't worth having. Over Pugh's life he'd made several enemies. One of which was a man named Sergius Leomund, he'd been a slave for Pugh himself but he'd found out about the three dooms and the money in the vault and though of a way to exploit it.
He'd open the vault. Burn the docks and collapse the pass into the town. Then he'd use linked portal to get adventurers there. They'd find a dungeon full of money and get rich. But the town can't handle all that gold. They'd be rich but trapped, and their weath would be worthless. Fortunately Leomund would give each adventurer a Secret chest for their wife or favourite charity. Then after they'd gone off to the town he could steal the chest and hope the hero uses it.
So the PCs had shown up and opened the secret vault. Voltus deep underground was told by Melech-Kal it was his followers coming to free him and so Voltus activated the summoning circles on the path down. What he didn't know was that Melech-Kal was able to put a few gold coins from his hoard into each monster. That would encourage whoever it was to come down further...
So the adventurers would go down. Kill monsters, get loot, and level up. The monsters would respawn and dungeon would get deeper as they'd be one step closer to finding Voltus at the bottom summoning creatures with Melech Kal's magic.
And then the Sergius would be rich, Pugh's town would be ruined.
And Melech Kal might finally be able to have the paladin killed.
And that's how I turned my first campaign into an MMORPG.
In an MMO, you're *required* to metagame frequently, in that if you fail a dungeon and TPK, you're supposed to learn from your mistakes the next time around. Unless you're the first person to ever do something, there's bound to be guides, walkthroughs, and more number-crunching than you'd find in 20 CharOp forums.
How would you design entertaining encounters in 4e going off the assumption that the players know all about the enemies and the "surprise" lurking behind a door? Especially if they play through it multiple times, hoping for a rare drop? What if they want to just go grind on some greenies for a while?
It's taking these MMO staples and making them interesting in a tabletop game that's got me stumped at square one.
I've thought of doing something similar, but with no extra mechanics for the "player". I stumbled early on though, when I got to one of the fundamental differences between RPGs and MMOs: metagame knowledge.
In an MMO, you're *required* to metagame frequently, in that if you fail a dungeon and TPK, you're supposed to learn from your mistakes the next time around. Unless you're the first person to ever do something, there's bound to be guides, walkthroughs, and more number-crunching than you'd find in 20 CharOp forums.
How would you design entertaining encounters in 4e going off the assumption that the players know all about the enemies and the "surprise" lurking behind a door? Especially if they play through it multiple times, hoping for a rare drop? What if they want to just go grind on some greenies for a while?
It's taking these MMO staples and making them interesting in a tabletop game that's got me stumped at square one.
for the metagaming aspect, look at Order of the stick: ''It is a powerful enchantment that will give you a 25% better chance of hitting'' ''Ma'am, I know what it is, you can say +5 sword around me" for example.
"Dammit, I just missed a spot check" is probably the classic line
for the metagaming aspect, look at Order of the stick: ''It is a powerful enchantment that will give you a 25% better chance of hitting'' ''Ma'am, I know what it is, you can say +5 sword around me" for example.
"Dammit, I just missed a spot check" is probably the classic line
That's just using game terms, and half the time my group does that anyway. I'm talking about knowing ahead of time what's going to be in a dungeon. Like that door has a fire burst trap, there's an elite ogre ambush in the next room, and the end boss has exactly 283 hit points.