Would you play a text-heavy RPG?

Hi,

I am currently working on a hobby project that I don't foresee being complete any time soon (probably not even this year), but since I lack the skill to create my own quality artwork (as many programmers do), and since this is strictly a one-man project, I was wondering what other people thought about playing a game like the one I am working on.

It is a very text-heavy RPG (like the Exile series, at least in the amount of text). You have a party of 6, and these are set characters (like the older console JRPGs). If the story was actually of novel or literature-quality, and not written by a 15 year-old who never learned proper grammar or spelling, and if it was interesting enough to be compelling, would you actually -want- to play it?

The mechanics are very deep compared to many hobby-made games, including an exploration / mapping mechanic, traps in dungeons, boss encounters, and upgrading / managing a home base for your party. Each character has two distinct fighting styles that can be switched during battle, and which give access to specific skills, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. It is a fairly complex game in terms of statistics, with 8 base stats, and a dozen or so "derived" statistics.

This is basically the game I have always wanted to make, and since I am a bit of a math nerd, it is really about managing all of these statistics, managing the different sections of your base (upgrading, researching, unlocking things with money / special materials).

Each character has their own strategy when it comes to skills. For example, one character fights by memorizing rune combinations to cast spells (there are four schools of runes, which basically act as skill trees, and a rune symbol for each element. You will be able to set up combinations out of battle and then use them in fights).

So, anyway, I just wanted to get across that, while it is a hobby-made game, it will be a reasonably complex game.

I believe that these kinds of games, if they are ever made, are by definition rejected by most people, since they prefer casual games, or games that don't necessarily have any depth, but have a certain aesthetic appeal.

But I'm sure there are other math nerds like me out there, who grew up on the Wizardry games, and I really enjoy the idea of blending the open-exploration of the old western RPGs with the linear storytelling of JRPGs.

I have been working on this for about six months now, and while I have nearly completed the editor, the game itself is like… 5% completed.

I think I would. Someone here has even posted recently about a similar creaion he id many years ago … Unfortunately I've forgotten where that was …

I'm planning to do a kind of text adventure one day, too.

I think most people around here are interested in text heavy games - Planescape: Torment is a very highly regarded game on the Watch and it has a word count of roughly 800.000 despite being a 30 hour game (significantly less if you start skipping dialogues, obviously).

In any case: Good luck and welcome to the Watch.

If it has a good story, why not.

It depends on the execution, though I personally prefer less text than something like Planescape.

I like the story to be "available" rather than "required reading", so to speak

I actually enjoy more the games where there's a lot of reading, as long as it's a game (meaning that I actually have some impact on the story) and not an interactive novel where all I can do is exactly what the story says I have to. Give me hidden stuff, interesting dialogue trees, and you can go Tolstoï on your game. Obviously, for this kind of game, good writing is really important.

I would play it, but please don't hire voice actors to read the dialogue

Well, given that you said you don't have artistic talent? you mean the game would be only text?

While there are people who play such a games, I think your target group would be extremely limited.

Lots of text is fine with me. I consider PS:T my all time favourite, and I usually read every book I come across in Morrowind/Oblivion. So, yeah!

Originally Posted by EvilManagedCare
I would play it, but please don't hire voice actors to read the dialogue

At least not from Eastern Europe.

I don't mind playing text heavy games but party based? mah

If I spend more than 25% of game time reading, it's an immediate uninstall for me. I hated Planescape: Torment because it was an interactive novel and the writing was nowhere near as good as most books. A question that wasn't asked that I'll answer anyway: I definitely wouldn't pay for an interactive novel.

I'm a sandbox gamer that doesn't really need a story to play. I'm in it for exploration, character advancement and loot acquisition. If there is a good story along the way, that's just a plus. I do enjoy lore that you come across while playing. I always read all the books in TES or Div2, etc. that you come across while doing more active things. As long as it doesn't interrupt the flow too much, I'll stop and read the text.

Sure why not, if the writing will be good enough I'll definitely play it. The best graphics we have seen so far is the imaginations we create in our minds. Like mentioned above Planescape Torment is the best example of quality writing. It was like reading an interactive book. If that's the case I'm always in.

For me read text during a game isn't the same than read a book. Dialogs with long trunks will hardly capture me fully during a game, I'll read them but most often in diagonal is they are too long.

But there's one text element that disappeared from RPG and that I regret a lot, but I noticed few modern RPG tried bring them back. It's small text descriptions of a place, a room, an event, a meeting, a npc met, and so on. Again the style need be very concentrated and efficient to avoid long trunk. But when well done and short enough no graphics can setup as well the mood of a place, to contribute to building the story or the background, or even sometimes to build a puzzle or to throw some hints, and so on. The difficulty is that this require a high level of writing mastering to combine efficiency and shortness.

There's a sort of exception of what I wrote above, I bought and played few interactive books on the iPad and this was great and this was mainly reading with elements of gaming. In that sort of stuff a more classical writing works much better than in game, at least for me.

Originally Posted by GothicGothicness
Well, given that you said you don't have artistic talent? you mean the game would be only text?

While there are people who play such a games, I think your target group would be extremely limited.

It isn't -only- text, but, for example, the party is represented by a marker, the tiling is pretty basic. The framework of the game is very abstract in this way, representing most things by text rather than sprites. The battles are turn-based (kind of like the early Final Fantasy games), but I haven't really figured out what to do in terms of battle graphics. I may end up using free resources… who knows…

I think the mistake most text-heavy RPGs make is having all of the text in huge paragraph blocks, as if it doesn't matter if you're staring at one huge wall of text or bite-sized pages.

I plan to make the text separated much more, maybe a paragraph per page, and you would advance the text with the space bar.

I believe it's all about implementation, but I am worried that my game will end up being boring as hell just because I couldn't hire someone to draw some sprites for me. However, I may end up doing that when I get some money together later in the year.

On the voice-acting: I always hate voice actors in low-budget games. I don't understand why anyone would think an RPG absolutely needs voice in it, especially games with a lot of text to read through. I would never make that mistake

An alternative to voice-acting:

Go the "DDO-way" and just have a single DM-voice. You don't even have to be a good actor, just don't completely fumble it.

Given how most fans of these games have experience with PnP campaigns, even an average DM-voice will seem surprisingly appropriate, and it really does help with immersion.

Just a thought

I plan to use it myself, for my own game.

Not me. My memory is not stellar, so usually by the time I'm reading the 3rd line of text, the first one is forgotten, and after a few NPC interactions I find myself just surface reading (the words form in my mind, but if you ask me what I just read, I'd look at you with a blank stare)

This game already exists…check o ut syrth.com (I believe thats the link)

Originally Posted by Jogurt
I actually enjoy more the games where there's a lot of reading, as long as it's a game (meaning that I actually have some impact on the story) and not an interactive novel where all I can do is exactly what the story says I have to. Give me hidden stuff, interesting dialogue trees, and you can go Tolstoï on your game. Obviously, for this kind of game, good writing is really important.

Honestly I prefer reading dialogues to having to listen to them.. I turn on subtitles and tend to skip the long-ass voiced dialogues in Dragon Age (also in games like BG2, I would click 'next' on the dialogue if I was finished reading it, but the voiceover wasn't finished yet), but pretty much read all text dialogues.

Well, I grew up playing RPGs and other games that were nothing but text, so yeah of course I'd play another if it was worthwhile.