I got some questions for yall.
First question: Would you want a choice to pick a virtue that you though was important to you, and then get a predetermined family based on that, or would you want to pick your own family. For example, if you choose honor as your most important virtue, you were put into an honorable family with a predetermined name? Or would you want to choose a different family background. For ex:
You picked that you were honorable. Your family was the Smith family, known for it’s honorable ways through out the lands.
OR
You picked that you were honorable. Your family was the…
*choice #Bunch of choices here.
Second Question: Would you prefer an intelligent stat that was just a measure of how smart you were, or two different stats that measured “Street Smarts” and “Book Smarts” that could be used in different situations.
For the first question, I’m okay with picking my Virtue. Also, try giving people an option for predetermined names if they can’t think of one, or give a custom name for the people who already has a name for a family in mind.
On the second one, I would prefer just one stat. It gets a bit complicated for when you’re intending to make a big game with very similar-sounding words.
P.S. I forgot to answer the third question! The Answer is…
Thanks guys (and gals?). I must say, I am a little surprised at the inteligence question. I thought y’all would have wanted a street smart/book smart thing. Anyways, I’m not on my computer for a few days, so I’ll make the game like this then. Hope I can release a demo soon.
Depends on the overall number of stats and how often you use them.
AND: Your topic.
If it is a Cog-version of “The Big Bang Theory” of course you HAVE TO include both stats - if it is a Street-Fighter-style choose-your-beat-em-up… you would not need even one of those two.
Pre-determined families look like they’d be better from a story point of view. It can also explain that you’re so Honorable because you were raised to be that way. And it’s good short-hand for creating NPCs who share the same values you do. I’d admittedly be just as happy if it’s pick a family from a list and get a virtue. Now that does prevent the idea of being a black sheep, not fitting in with your family, but you could always offer black sheep as one of the starting options too.
Will you be doing virtues/vices as opposed stats?
I’m not a huge fan of fantasy names either, when there’s a lot of them to keep track of it can be hard to remember which is which. So another good tip is to do like JK Rowling did with her houses for your families.
It’s easy to remember what each House stands for because their names are evocative of that. So for your Honour house give them a name that evokes that. Either start it with an H or an Awn sound, hit up a thesaurus, think of an honourable animal, or something that just evokes the idea of honourable things and use that.
Second question:
Now, I’m biased on the behalf of intelligence stats. I dislike playing stupid characters where answers that would be obvious to me are greyed out. So I’ve deliberately chosen not to have an intelligence stat in any of the games I’m working on.
Is intelligence or cleverness going to be one of your virtues? What do you plan to do with your intelligence stat? Which other skills do you have?
The problem is:
A game creator can’t really make a charakter much more intelligent than he is himself - so in most cases intelligence stats are only limitations…
Besides, when the author is signifficantly more intelligent than the reader, of course.
but the problem with this families systems is if they based in virtues you are obligated to be a silly good character but if like Harry potter there is a house like Slytherin well you give some freedom and not choose five ways to be good character and add replay value and funny
One: Similar to what @FairyGodfeather said, I think that predetermined families would do well, and that people may be black sheeps, but I think that people should be able to choose their families and be told how the family is and then choose how they are… if they are like their family, a black sheep or just not really fitting.
Two: If the stat is being used just to limit things, I think that have street smarts and book smarts would be good.
It depends on how the virtue system is implemented and which virtues are used.
Isn’t Slytherin’s virtue, ambition? It’s interesting to see how virtues can be corrupted. And also how people can claim to be more virtuous than others. There’s no reason why a virtue based game would immediately put you into a position of being a silly good character.
So your Honorable character, for instance, may also look down their nose at anyone they see as dishonorable. Honor may be their virtue, but Judgemental would be their vice. Or maybe their Honor means they can’t lie and in turn they believe everyone else can’t lie too and their lack of foresight is a vice.
Although I’d love to see virtues used as a power.
So somehow you can make others surrounding you act more honorable, force them to obey the rules (or contrarily make your enemies break the rules and act dishonorable to get them into trouble). Just as with Courage, for instance, you can make your allies more courageous and your enemies filled with fear.
That said, I love playing good characters. I dislike being forced into making bad, wrong decisions.
I hate being forced to being good hero in every fantasy game or book , I really tired about that so I always play rpg like bad alignment first then play like good to mach differences life wizard is a good example. If there is something similar to a Slytherin machiavelian power hungry family that will be awesome and add a lot of juicy plots to the mixture and I will your eternal fan!
