[UA] CRPG

[Kevin Mowery]

----- Original Message -----
From: <rowan at media.mit.edu>
To: <ua at lists.uchicago.edu>
Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 4:40 PM
Subject: Re: [UA] CRPG


A UA game would
> have to be built on a Sims-level concept, with shifts into first-person
for
> action sequences. That way, you would spend a lot of the game with the
> deterioration of the PC's personal and domestic life being made apparent
to you
> through the interface. You could see his apartment fall apart as he
neglects to
> clean while studying mystic tomes; his wife leave him because of his
involvement
> with the mafia, and the Isolation meter begin rising; his sanity slip as
he
> neglects every facet of daily life but those that attune him to The
Executioner.
>
> Actually, I'm liking this more and more...

    This is a great idea, but instead of switching to an FPS for combat, I'd
have it shift from The Sims into a Fallout-like turn-based combat.  Fallout
had several great things going for it in combat, the most important one
being that different combat decisions made a lot of difference.  Do you
spray autofire or aim?  Do you even want to *try* for that eyeball shot, or
just aim for center mass?  It'd lose some of the frantic pace of a tabletop
UA combat, but make up for it in "realism."  By that, I mean that it
wouldn't be truly realistic, but it'd feel that way.  To keep the tension,
don't ever let the player know exactly how much damage he's taken, just have
a light that goes from green to yellow to red to black.  Implement a "pain"
modifer so that more painful attacks make the gauge go red for longer before
you get a more accurate reading.  (For instance: The character is totally
healthy, so the light is green.  Then he gets a kick in the shins.  The
gauge goes yellow for one turn--a false reading based on pain--then back to
green.  Later he gets cut with a straight razor.  It's a deep cut, enough to
take him into yellow, but it also hurts like hell, so the meter stays red
until the fight ends.)  The hopeful result would be the same thing that
happens in the tabletop game: once you start taking damage, you start
looking for a quick way to end the fight, even if it means running away.

    Naturally, in addition to studying occult stuff or spending all night at
seedy bars as a way to neglect your family, you could also spend all your
time at the gun range practicing so that you don't always get your ass
kicked by punks.  Then your wife leaves you and takes the kids because you
scare her.  Of course, by the time that you've blown away a few punks and
you've been hanging with adepts for a while, your stress meters have all
kinds of failed and hardened marks, so if you leave your little SimDuke to
do his own thing (kind of like how you can control just how much initiative
your little people have in The Sims), the game could get really scary really
fast.

Kevin Mowery________ kemowery at earthlink.net
Visit www.narbonic.com for the best online comic
about mutant gerbils and mad scientists on the
internet!  Updated daily.



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