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[Koah]

Less a game, more an idea for options in a game after you beat it: American and European mode.  American mode triples the amount of blood and increases the chances for dismemberment and other assorted nastiness but all the female characters suddenly acquire layered clothing or bulky armor (as appropriate).  European mode has the female characters wearing censor bars and nothing else but all the weapons are changed to their Nerf equivalents and anything more extreme than people just falling over is excised.  All this would, of course, be for a puzzle game.

[Disposable Ninja]

Every once in a while, I think of World War kawaII -- my strategy RPG idea wherein WWII is reenacted by adorable little girls.

I realized that I am a terrible human being while I was coming up with the Loli-versions of each head-of-state. For example: Mussoli-nee. Also: Roosevelt was a man in a wheelchair who wore glasses, I do not believe I need to tell any of you what he'd be turned into.

[A²]

Every once in a while, I think of World War kawaII -- my strategy RPG idea wherein WWII is reenacted by adorable little girls.

I realized that I am a terrible human being while I was coming up with the Loli-versions of each head-of-state. For example: Mussoli-nee. Also: Roosevelt was a man in a wheelchair who wore glasses, I do not believe I need to tell any of you what he'd be turned into.

Japan is way ahead of you

[Norondor]

There's also the BL version where it's a lot simpler as all the characters are just named after the countries they represent. America is totally gay for Britain.

[Norondor]

Well, i mean, obviously he's gay for him, it's BL, but still.

[Brentai]

Also Axis Powers Hetalia, which may or may not be what Norondor is going on about but I've never seen the thing and don't know what BL is.

[Norondor]

BL means Boy's Love. I may or may not have been being facetious. NOBODY CAN SAY

[Brentai]

THE WORD IS SPEAK EMOTICON LIKE THE REST OF US

[Bongo Bill]

In any given computer RPG... multiply the amount of experience earned by a character by the average level of the other party members, enabling you to quickly get neglected characters up to speed, and preventing high-level characters from rapidly outstripping the others, in a way that is possibly maybe more easily tuned than just having an extremely rapidly-accelerating experience curve.

[Detonator]

In any given computer RPG... multiply the amount of experience earned by a character by the average level of the other party members, enabling you to quickly get neglected characters up to speed, and preventing high-level characters from rapidly outstripping the others, in a way that is possibly maybe more easily tuned than just having an extremely rapidly-accelerating experience curve.

I'm not sure exactly how it was done, but Suikoden was very good at getting low-level characters up to speed very quickly.

[Disposable Ninja]

I thought about The Mayor Game earlier, too. The Mayor Episode 1: Doctor Strangelovecraft. You'd do battle with Kongthulhu.

[Norondor]

I'm not sure exactly how it was done, but Suikoden was very good at getting low-level characters up to speed very quickly.

It also tended to get characters of exactly the right level a literally infinite amount of xp.

[Classic]

I'm not sure exactly how it was done, but Suikoden was very good at getting low-level characters up to speed very quickly.

It also tended to get characters of exactly the right level a literally infinite amount of xp.

I'm not sure how this is a failing.
What then, is the problem with the d20 system where each level (up to 10 or 15) takes double the xp needed to make the last level? Is it that the challenges faced by a party of even one level higher than the straggler are too much for the straggler to reliably survive? Or that the process is just too slow?

[JDigital]

Less a game, more an idea for options in a game after you beat it: American and European mode.

Something much like this happened with a late Amiga beatemup called Capital Punishment, which topped Mortal Kombat with the addition of a bare-chested dominatrix ninja girl. The UK-based staff were surprised to find that the Germans wanted the blood and gore toned down but were okay with a bare-breasted woman, whereas the Americans okayed the violence but insisted that the ninja girl put some clothes on.

[Disposable Ninja]

A third-person shooter in which you play an American mercenary fighting both sides of a war between two fictional countries. Halfway through the game, CHUDs attack, wipe out both factions, and you have to lead the last few survivors in a ragtag, all-out offensive and save the world.

[Cyan Prime]

A third-person shooter in which you play an American mercenary fighting both sides of a war between two fictional countries. Halfway through the game, CHUDs attack, wipe out both factions, and you have to lead the last few survivors in a ragtag, all-out offensive and save the world.

Halo?

[Bongo Bill]

MMOs as they exist today bear the curse of DikuMUD unto the seventh generation. It's interminable iterations on "Kill X of Y" until you get to the endgame, where legend has it that the good stuff accumulates in a paper-thin layer that can be scraped off of the walls of dark, dank, dreary, drama-infested caves.

Or, I mean, that's what it looks like to an outsider.

And not that there's anything wrong with that! Sometimes all you really want is to kill X of Y. But let's assume that those who wish to grind will find a way to do so regardless of whether it's what the game is optimized for. How do you take the good stuff, the bits of planning and strategy and cooperation and arcane combination of rare ingredients that keeps people playing long after the novelty of killing boars has worn off, and give it to them throughout and from the beginning, without the pretense that killing boars was a novelty to begin with?

So here's what I'm thinking. Take the resources that go into making a vast world full of quest hooks that nobody ever reads, and epic bosses that 90% of your subscribers will not have the patience to see, and colorful animals that can be safely ignored once you've determined the amount of HP and mana you must lose in order to kill one, and put it all into making bosses. The bulk of the gameplay must be in unique, tactically interesting encounters, balanced for a variety of team sizes. The first time you kill it, you get EXP. Once per day, you can kill it to get one of its good drops (killing it more than once in a day does not yield additional rewards). Every day after the first time, you get one of its bad drops automatically. Drops are ingredients which NPCs or players of various profession can combine to make the various items that influence advancement in other ways, like gear.

Basically, if a summary of what the player is doing resembles a quest in Progress Quest, it should never be in a real game.

[Romosome]

isn't that kinda what Monster Hunter is?

[Bongo Bill]

When too many games in a given series are released in rapid succession, I tend to instinctively ignore the lot of them. Capcom does not get the love it deserves from me. I shall have to look into this series, though.

[JDigital]

The 4E Dungeon Master's Guide specifically advises that a quest never just consist of "kill 10 ogres". That might be what you need to do to fulfil a quest, but never the point of the quest. You're adventurers, not fetch-questers.

I'm surprised more MMOs haven't taken after D&D's approach. Perhaps gamers prefer the simple gamesiness of "score ten goals" to a more engaging cinematic narrative? Does the focus on grinding for drops, levelling, monster respawns and raiding take away from the more storytelling approach you see in maybe JRPGs?