The Ultimate Blockland RP - A Theoretical Discussion

[Wedge]

Character development is a core part of RPGs but it's abstracted to the point where numerical gibberish is being thrown at you. You are now level 500. You are now 2% better than you were a minute ago.

I think randomly generated prefixes, suffixes, and nicknames are a great way to do character development. I'm going to throw out a lot of examples here of different stuff so don't get confused. I'm not proposing that the perfect RPG would let you go fishing and then make fish pie out of what you catch (actually I take that back, that would be the perfect RPG), these are just examples of how the system would work.

Give away a lot of stuff and you'll be Wedge the Kind. Kill everything and you'll be Wedge the Terrible. Use primarily melee attacks and you'll be Wedge the Brutal. Build lots of stuff and you'll be Wedge the Builder. Cheat in cards enough and you'll be Wedge the Cheater, etc. Start chaining them together and you'll get things like the Bloodthirsty Lumberjack of Magnolia Street, the Benevolent Prince of Brawls, and so on.

Now start assigning traits to each of these, some would be purely good, some all bad, some a mixture of both. Being altruistic could mean monsters are less likely to attack you and you get less cash from stuff. Being terrible could make npcs and monsters like you less (and maybe that'd be a good enough reason for people not to be mean to everyone).

Then you could start adding more skills to these things. Break enough trees and you'll become a lumberjack, and now you can use a two-man saw to cut stuff down faster. Get in enough fights and you'll become a brawler and you can use improvised weapons like pool cues and broken bottles. Some jobs could compliment each other, being a miner and a demolitions expert would be handy because you could blast out tunnels, being a farmer and a cook would be handy because you could turn your crops into more valuable food or something. I would encourage people to explore different things and try mixing abilities or using them in unexpected ways, like cutting down trees by blowing them up or using their faster driving ability from being a taxi driver to drive a getaway van for a bank robbery.

You shouldn't be told how to earn these things, but once you check out your profile the game should tell you exactly what titles you have, how you got them, and how you can reverse it if you don't like the effects, want a different job, or want to get a new nickname.

There's no experience, no levels. It's all based purely on how you play and deal with others.

[Ad Bot]

[Ministry]

Without a doubt, all thats been said here today resembles the best RP that we could probably/possibly come up with. (If theres a possability of this happening, most of us would be happy to help produce such a thing.)

[Wizard]

If someone thinks of a way to put this all together I'm going to brown townly rape spock until the craftsmen make it.


and I'm also going to put what I can into my upcoming (hopefully) rp

[Burger]

I like ephi's idea for objectives. Like the bridge. And wow wedge, I wish all RPG games were like that.

[Niblic]

An EvolutionRP is great, you start out as someone without anything in possession and later on they establish an empire.

[Bushido]

just throwing this idea out there based off of ephi's example

the point of this game is to get a small ready-made town as 'built-up' as possible, by electing officials, researching technologies, BUILDING UP stuff, etc: when the game first starts, the town itself is visually wrecked, doesn't function properly (IE: no running water, electricity, that kind of thing), and there's no government involved anywhere, so random AI bots appear regularly to forget stuff up even further

enter the players, who's job it is to (as i said earlier) build up the town. some people waste the bots, some people start rebuilding, some people make sure everything is connected properly, and other people sit in a little chair, pet their little cat and twiddle their fingers because they're just that kind of douchebag

every round 'ends' at some point, at which time parts of the town randomly explode (or are otherwise affected by a natural disaster, like a storm): any buildings or services (like the aforementioned water or electricity) that are too affected by nature will be 'wrecked' and become dilapidated ruins again, which can be re-built repeatedly

if the town manages to get through a BUNCH of rounds without being totally wrecked, stuff like wars come into play: on top of natural disasters you have to worry about airstrikes, soldiers, etc, coming in and trying to wreck the town further. once they do their job though, they disappear and you don't have to worry about them until they come back and try to fix stuff again

and of course wedge's idea kicks ass too, so maybe we can incorporate that...

actually wait does this even sound like an RP gamemode anymore

hm, weird. either way, we should totally loving make this

[comr4de]

I like bushi's idea a lot

[Gadgethm]

Wow, this is great.  I love the ideas, and especially the character development.  What I've always found I liked in game modes is teams, especially being able to make and join your own.  This is what attracted me to SurvivalRP and to Fort Wars.  The main problem with the whole team thing is that no one wants to join one, just make their own.   As an idea to combat this, I think that having advantages for joining teams and disadvantages for making them be put into effect.  For instance, a team leader would not be able to go out and fight, but would have to direct his/her teammates.  A teammate, depending on status would have more/better weapons, more health, speed, climbing height and other things. 

Another problem I have found with every RP I've been to is the player count.  What happens if there's only one or two players in the game?  It sort of ruins the fun because everything is player-based, so nothing goes on when there's only a couple people.  This is also why single player campaigns are more fun, because they can be played at any time.  I think that if an RP was AI-based instead of player-based, it would be a lot more flexible, and definitely more fun for the players involved.  This is shown by the zombie mods, because no matter how many people there are, there's always fighting to do.

Finally, there is the massive problem of the people who don't try.  There needs to be a way to control the server easily, as well as offer many roles so that everyone is happy.  I don't know exactly how this can be done, except maybe devising roles in each team, or in the RP itself.  This way, the noobs get to shoot as much as they want, and the experts can build or event whatever they want, without interruption. 

Well, I guess that's my piece, though it has a lot of holes in it and needs work, I sort of hope that the RP makers out there get a good look at this topic (And this post).

Ninja:

I like bushi's idea a lot

I agree.  Great idea Bushi

[Thorax]

actually wait does this even sound like an RP gamemode anymore

That's the thing about RP's. Give the players no objectives and they'll become bored and not follow rules. Give them too many objectives and it stops being an RP and becomes more of a TDM or something of that sorts.


Anyway, this is my idea. It's more of a "land grab" minigame than an RP, but so many RP elements could be incorporated into it that I thought it would be to type out. Sorry if it is a bit confusing as I'm not very good at getting my ideas into words in logical order.

When the player spawns, a GUI appears on it's screen. The player then has to pick 3 colors that will make them unique. These colors are used in everything, from player appearance to buildings. Once a player picks it's colors,  nobody else is able to use those same ones. The rest of the GUI looks like the "Player Appearance" GUI, save that it has only Medieval stuff. This is what you're avatar will be wearing. The colors for each appearance item will be the 3 colors you chose. The last thing on the GUI is a text box labeled "Country". This is where you put the name of the area you will rule over. To give you a better understanding of the GUI process, I'll give you a few examples.
Say I pick Brown, Light Grey, and Light Grey as my 3 colors. He'd look like this:

Green, Green, Red:

Red, White, Brown:

The first color is the Torso, Arms, and Pants (The first picture has the pants messed up). The second color is the Hat, Backback, and Shoulder. The third color is the Hands, Feet, and Accent.
The country will be added behind the name in chat and will appear in other things. So if my country was "Dagorhir", my name in chat would be "Thorax of Dagorhir".
Together, all 3 of these options (Colors, Appearance, Country) make up a player's faction. I'll explain factions later on.

Now that Players have made their way through the GUI, they are ready to start playing.

Players will find themselves in the spawn area. All players in this area are invincible which will help control spawn killing. The spawn area is a 64x64 baseplate that has 3 tool spawns (An Axe, a Plow, and a Pick). Also, the spawn area is surrounded by randomly generated land.  It will look something like this:

The "S" is the Spawn Area. The light green is a field and are found the most. Dark Green is a forest. Brown is a cave and found the least.
Now players must claim land for their faction. They do this through a 100-click challenge. I'll start with the Field.

To conquer a Field, a player will need to harvest crops from it. First, the player must grab the plow tool from the Spawn Area. They then head to the field they want to conquer and, using the plow to hit, start clicking on the baseplate. After 15 clicks, they will have plowed one row of dirt. They need to plow 4. By 60 clicks, they will have plowed 4. Now they must plant seeds. This is accomplished by clicking twice on every row, bring the total clicks to 68. Now they need to water the seeds. By clicking 3 times on each row, the seeds will have sprouted and their total clicks should be up to 80. Now the player must harvest it's crops. There are 20 in total. After they click on each one (making it disappear), everything on the baseplate will disappear and the player will now own that land.

To conquer a Forest, a player will need to clear the trees from it. First, the player must grab the axe tool from the Spawn Area. They then head to the forest they want to conquer and, using the axe to hit, start clicking on the trees. There are 20 trees per baseplate, so 5 clicks will chop 1 down. After all the trees are chopped down, the player will now own that land.

To conquer a Cave, a player will need to dig enough dirt and gems from it. First, the player must grab the plow tool from the Spawn Area. They then head to the mine entrance they want to conquer and, using the pick to hit, click on the hole. This will teleport them to the mine. The mine will be like the "Infinite Mining Mod" except players won't be able to dig up or down, only outwards. The mine will be in the sky out of any other player's way. It will also make the player invincible as it is a community mine. Each time a player clicks on dirt, it counts as 1 click. After 100 clicks, they head to the exit and click on the hole to go back to their entrance, which they now own. The mine entrance will not be there when they get back.

If all squares adjacent to the spawn are conquered, the spawn will move where it is at least 3 spaces away from the nearest owned land. This makes it so that new players don't have to fight their way through empires just to start their own.

After a player conquers land, they are awarded 10gp (Caves are the exception to this as gems are small multipliers). They can use this however they like. Also, a flag with 3 stripes with their colors (First color on top, last on bottom) is placed in the center of the land, letting everyone know that they conquered it. At the base of the flagpole will be a "totem pole" of buttons. These will determine how the land is used. 4 options will be available: Hut, Farm, Tree Farm, Mine Entrance. These are all "Level 1" builds, meaning they can be built with little to no requirements. Huts can be build anywhere you've conquered. They cost 10gp to build. Farms can be built anywhere for free. Tree Farms can be built anywhere except on caves. Mine Entrances can only be built on caves and cost 5gp to build.
Farms, Tree Farms, and Mine Entrances work exactly like a field, forest or cave except they are reusable, meaning you don't have to build it every time after you finish the challenge. These areas also have the player's flag on them with a "reset" button. The reset button "unbuilds" your land to it's last level.

If the player builds a hut, the player get's a few perks. The hut is the gateway to all other buildings. The hut also becomes your spawn point so that if you die, you don't have to search for you land. It has a bed in it (Players could have an exhaustion meter that would prevent them from working/walking too much unless they slept). It also has a table with 3 buttons. One is for a stone house, the other is for a weapon's forge, and the last is a reset button (Start assuming all builds will have these). The stone house costs 15gp while the Weapon's Forge costs 5gp.

The Weapon's Forge has one purpose, to make weapons. This will be a Basic Weapon's Forge. It can only make one weapon and that weapon is a sword. It costs 5gp to make and possible has a click challenge that goes with it. Aside from weapon making, it has 2 buttons, an UPGRADE button and a reset button. By upgrading the Basic Weapon's Forge, you get a Normal Weapon's Forge capable of making more than just a sword. This upgrade costs 15gp. It also has an UPGRADE and reset button. By upgrading the Normal Weapon's Forge, you get an Advanced Weapon's Forge capable of making stronger versions of the same weapons the Normal UPGRADE had. This upgrade costs 25gp.

Stone houses UPGRADE into a variety of things, ranging from towers to stables to castles. I won't go into that because this is all just an idea and I haven't really got everything worked out. Also, everything above a hut earns a small amount of gp per minute. A stone house earns 1gp per minute while a castle could earn 5gp.


Now lets talk about factions. Every player that enters has their own unique faction. This faction is capable of supporting itself using a one-man army. But what if you want a bit of help? You can request that another player joins your faction in order to grow stronger. This will become essential to maintaining your land. When a player joins another player's faction, everything about the joining player changes. The colors and appearance looks like that of the faction head. And their country now reads that of the faction head's country.

Now a hierarchy system comes into play. The creator of the faction AKA the faction head is know as the "King". Anyone joining the faction is known as a "Peasant. Kings can upgrade and downgrade members between a range of different positions. Higher positions get higher perks, so it pays to be loyal to one faction. The position order is as follows:
King/Queen
Heir
Knight
Tradesman
Subject
Peasant

Peasants have no real perks except that they can move up in position. They have to give 40% of what they make to the rest of the faction.
Subjects are a step up from Peasant. They only have to pay 30% of what they earn to the faction.
Tradesman only pay 20%
Knights pay 10%
Heirs pay nothing.
The King receives 50% of what the faction receives. The rest goes into the "Faction Bank".

The Faction Bank is known by your country's name. For example, mine would have been "Dagorhir National Bank". This bank can be build from a stone house somewhere down the line. Workers can deposit their money in the Faction Bank to avoid losing it in case of death. They are also able withdraw up to 25gp every 3 minutes unless the king grants them a larger amount. The king can withdraw as much money has he wants.

Now you may be asking, "What about abusive kings that force everyone to stay as a peasant?" That's the beauty about this system, if royalty is treating you unfairly,you can join a different faction or start your own. Royalty relies on workers to make money so that they can grow their kingdom. So to keep them from leaving, they will try to treat their subordinates with kindness.

One random note I forgot to mention is that a joining faction member loses all it's land to the next leader of the faction. If there is noone else in the faction, any land that had a hut or more turns into ruins.

Now that we know the innerworkings of a faction, what about diplomacy? Kings can do 3 things to deal with other countries: 1. Request a Truce, 2. Declare War, or 3. Return/Remain Neutral.

Staying Neutral or having a Truce gives players the option to buy or sell land to other kingdoms.

Waring countries are able to steal land from eachother through battles. Now I'll explain how this works.

First of all, if you are ever to die, you are presented with 2 choices. Wait 2 minutes while someone preforms CPR on you to revive you or you can pay 50gp to bring you back instantly. This 50gp can come from 1 of 2 places. Either from your wallet, or from your Faction Bank. Any other money you had on you is awarded to the person who slew you. And to prevent random slaughterings of people, by attacking someone outside of war, you're offense will be brought to the attention of both your King and the victim's king. They are to work it out however they can, whither it be enough to pay back the death fee or if it is kicking your from the faction.

By slaying enemies, as I mentioned earlier, you are awarded their extra gold.

Until a faction has made more than 30gp, you are unable to declare war on that faction.

Attacking land is bit of a process. First you must destroy the enemy building (not exactly sure how that will work, but it involves your melee weapon hitting something). Then the land will lose ownership and go back to a neutral state. You must do the click challenge for that particular plate except that it only takes 50 clicks instead of 100.

If you stumble upon ruins, you must first clear away the rubble (25 clicks), then complete the click challenge (50 clicks).


That's basically how that works. I know there is a lot more I didn't write down because I'm pretty tired and can't remember it all, but I'll keep adding.

Also, as for RP elements, if you farm/lumberjack/mine a lot, you can use that particular tool as a weapon.
There are probably a lot more as well, but I'm not thinking to clearly at the moment.

Also, balls, this is a lot of text. Please just read this massive wall as it has taken me almost 3 hours to write.

[Oasis]

I think if you are looking for a City Roleplay Ephi/Bushi's idea is best, where it is the players job to further develop a city.

But if you are looking for a "life" type of RP then the survival Rp idea would be the best.

Just throwing my opinion out there.

[M]

Okay, Wedge's idea sounds fantastic. Other things could also be incorporated to that; a land ownership system that doesn't run on little holes in the landscape. Build the world as a giant cubescape. Players can modify the landscape using something like Lilboarder's trench digging mod (I wouldn't make it using the infinite mining system, as that makes creating your world harder) and build on land they own.

Land also isn't purely on a grid; you can claim land anywhere in any size, based on 4x units. You could claim a 4x4 area (that is, 16x16 bricks) or a 1x2 area for a tiny stall or something. Also, if you claim some land of a 16 square units of area or higher, it prevents people from claiming one unit outside of your land unless you allow them to manually ("road space"). If the area is above 64 square units, the road space allowance becomes two units, or 8 bricks, around your land. A "main road". As well as this you can also build on the road space, however the land is still unowned for all other purposes (people can dig in it, attempt to vandalize your roads, etc)

Fatigue is what makes it a longterm project like RoB. Digging out a 4x cube of dirt takes 10 points of fatigue. Digging out a 4x cube of stone takes 25 points. Placing a brick takes one tenth of a point for every 3 plates of volume the brick has. Every 1x1 brick, basically. You regain fatigue at a rate of 25 points an hour if you're not on the server, and 10 points an hour if you are. Time spent in the server through an hour length tick counts for this, so if you're on for half the tick you'll get half of each side (17.5 points). As well as this, you can eat to boost your fatigue, to give incentive to people to sell their services. Selling of services is also manual-automatic; you sell it via automated events but they won't function if you're not online or on the premises. As well as that you also need to get the goods themselves, which creates supply and demand. If you want to sell fish pies, you'll need a fisherman to get the fish, a baker to make the dough, and a cook to cook the pies themselves (yes, this would normally be the baker's job). You can fulfil these roles yourself if you want, but that's a lot of work and a lot of time you have to spend away from your shop. Food however is not necessary for survival. It's just to replenish your fatigue so you can get more done in one session. You may also only consume 40 fatigue worth of food in a tick; so if you're online for the whole tick, you can only get 50 fatigue total. However if you come online for five minutes, eat your 40 points of food and log off again, you'll get 11/12ths of the tick at the resting rate, 1/12th of the tick at online rate, and your 40 point bonus. That's 22.9 + 0.8 + 40, or 63.7 points of fatigue, of your 100 point maximum.

Certain jobs or "titles" as Wedge puts them would also make those things take less fatigue; if you're a cook you use less fatigue to cook things than a normal player, as well as being able to cook more things which restore more fatigue for less materials; if you're a fisherman you use less fatigue when sitting around waiting for fish to bite, as well as getting bigger fish of better types in less time. If you're a builder you use about 0.75x the normal fatigue rate to place bricks. These titles are earned simply by doing the things associated with them; you become a cook by cooking, a fisherman by fishing, a builder by building, a vandal by destroying things, a murderer by killing people, etc. to stop people from becoming invincible all-rounders who are amazing at every skill, perhaps a limit of six titles could be imposed. So you could be a rank III chef and a rank III fisherman, which would let you get good fish and cook good food with them, but you wouldn't exactly be a gourmet or pulling in sharks. Whereas someone who gets all of their six ranks in one title can offer superior services.

So you can terraform, you can supply goods, you can build. But what incentive is there to build a good structure? The answer is admin enforcement - the system can't possibly determine what is a good or bad building, so if your building is bad but tolerable, you'll get nothing for it. But you might be given bonuses by server admins for having a good build - or for just being a good friend, yes that's abuse but it also encourages people to actually be friendly with the administration. We're not monsters, please disregard that we act like them most of the time. You might get a service award for selling good products at a low price, or a master architect award for building a nice home, or a good samaritan award for giving things away or selling at a loss. Other players could see that you have these awards and choose to use you over the competition based on them; although if the competition is selling at a lower price most people will probably still use them, because they're in it for themselves anyway. No system is flawless, but oh well.

As well as all of this you could incorporate decay; bricks built on land will start to break if their owner hasn't logged in for three real days, and if no bricks are left on the land, it will declaim. If you don't fish you'll lose your fisherman title. Losing titles would basically be if you're online and active for two or three one-hour or longer play sessions without doing anything related to them, and this would accelerate if you do things inverse to them if applicable. Vandalism will decay your builder title and vice versa. Bricks on unowned land (which can only be built on by admins) decay also, however any builder can just come over and give it a quick bang with a repair hammer to reset its decay, so if people aren't fixing the bridges they'll eventually break.

Okay, so disregarding that this whole idea is mostly ranted, badly formatted and jumbled, any thoughts on it? It's all possible, obviously.

MODIFICATION: Also, if players are restricted in their avatar choice in some way, for instance clothing is an item that must be made using dyes and cloths and the like, this could also give some visual representation of prosperity; in the beginning players would have some basic clothes. Certain clothing could also offer bonuses, for example a tiny bonus to the speed that your builder skills rank up if you're wearing builder's overalls or something. If you die a lot in one session you may also get a pegleg or a hook hand at random. If you have two peglegs, you can't wear shoes, if you have two hook hands, you can't wear gloves, and these would have some nice potential bonuses (possibly a set of shoes that lets you run faster?)

[Doomonkey]

Okay, so disregarding that this whole idea is mostly ranted, badly formatted and jumbled, any thoughts on it? It's all possible, obviously.

I think it's great, perhaps losing titles should take more time, and I would want the peg-legs and hook-hands to heal eventually, or perhaps you could pay a doctor.

[Killer2]

If an RP is going to include fighting (survival rp), then you it has to be difficult for one person to go on an all out killing spree. In City RPs, one guy would just get a rocket launcher and kill everyone, and would require no effort to get another. If an RP mod was to be made and it included fighting other players, weapons should be difficult to get.

I would like to expand on that.

You also want to make the weapons balanced. This is so you want to keep some weapons and still have new ones. Abusive weapons should also not be used.

A Colonization RP, the one I was attempting to make, would feature you forming a colony by building bricks, but bricks cost wood to place. You can fight and make peace as well as trade. Alliance system should be built in because saying "who wants to team" generally doesn't work. Having a built in teaming up system would allow people to work off of one big resource pile, use the same spawns, use custom chat, and so on.

Will you continue working on that eventually. If so, I have a good idea on how to have populations, assigning jobs to bots, etc.

[Krinsae]

I agree with mostly everything said: now, i think we should start a progress thread, and start listing and assigning roles to make this incredible mod.

[Night Fox]

I don't usually care for the RP stuff, but if this gets made, I'll likely be playing them more.