How To Spawn Blockbuster RPG's

[Ark]

- Paper money is nonexistent.

[DesR85]

- When it comes to healing, there are always more than one item that fulfils this need. Herbs, potions, flowers, grass, meat, etc..

- You will always sell an item at half price (or less) no matter how expensive or cheat that item is.

- Items on sale are never put out on display and instead, confined to the shopkeeper's pockets.

- Shops or merchants never offer discounts on their goods.

- The main character can only buy/sell from the merchant or shop. Everyone else lack this ability.

[DesR85]

Name of characters

- Always the funny sounding names such as Shaak'Ti, Real'nok, etc.

- You'll never come across anybody with regular names.

- The main character's name is never mentioned by NPCs.

[Lehiff]

More on dialogue:

Dialogue options must include a 'How do I know I can trust you?' option to create an illusion of choice when you're putting your life in the hands of Mysterious Stranger No 1 who you've just met in the enemy's stronghold and has decided to help you for no good reason.
Mysterious Stranger No 1's reply must be totally devoid of logic and be generally retarded. Choosing said dialogue option must be totally without consequences for anything whatsoever.

[Siberys]

Originally Posted by Lehiff

More on dialogue:

Dialogue options must include a 'How do I know I can trust you?' option to create an illusion of choice when you're putting your life in the hands of Mysterious Stranger No 1 who you've just met in the enemy's stronghold and has decided to help you for no good reason.
Mysterious Stranger No 1's reply must be totally devoid of logic and be generally retarded. Choosing said dialogue option must be totally without consequences for anything whatsoever.

Except that this is almost never the case. "How can I trust you" makes perfect sense in any game as well as real life, and most of the time the logic is "Well you don't seem to have a choice at the moment" which if in a life threatening situation, trust seems rather worthless over a good blade.

--Healing--

1. Most of the time, Eating some kind of flower herb will cure you even though it would more than likely be poison.

2. Make Healing your character not a wound problem but a simple math problem. No broken bones will ever befall your character, but a minus forty hit points will.

3. In an open ended RPG, more powerful potions are almost never available until you're level 40; even though the more powerful potions have less of a cure than your current level 1 character's hit points.

3A. In a linear RPG, potions always come in a degree of sizes that are available by the higher towns only (starting town = lesser potion of heal, town before the final dungeon = Max heal potion) even though a lower level character would be more likely to make use of potions than one of a higher level with a healer companion.

4. In most games, no matter how severe an injury, no matter how close to the brink of death, an eight hour sleep will devoid all diseases, and cure all your wounds.

[Lady Dragonfly]

Originally Posted by DesR85

Name of characters

- Always the funny sounding names such as Shaak'Ti, Real'nok, etc.

- You'll never come across anybody with regular names.

- The main character's name is never mentioned by NPCs.

- It does not matter whether NPC's name Shaak'Ti or John, because all names in a game must be unique: you can bet your last gold piece on it.
The only exception is name Darryl ( the sweet kobold trio Larry, Darryl and Darryl).

- While all names are unique, faces are not. You can travel all across the universe and encounter the same familiar faces (or mugs) wherever you go.

[DesR85]

- And sometimes, some of the unique names (especially last names) are derived from words strung together and most of the time, they sound stupid.

[Lady Dragonfly]

-- Every town has a few traders and a blacksmith.

-- Every corner is populated by a hooker.


The Chosen One is their only customer.

[fable]

Good idea:

Every guard will tell you that there's nothing to see, and you should move on.

Every noble you encounter will show the same attention to subtle class distinctions exhibited by Thurston Howell III.

[Loki[D.d.G]]

Originally Posted by Lady Dragonfly

The Chosen One is their only customer.

Mind you, the chosen one is the only one in need of uber armor or weapons. The guards?

Sponsored by the village council.

[DesR85]

- Every civilian you encounter will look identical to each other and say the same thing over and over again.

- There is a bar/tavern in each town.

[Loki[D.d.G]]

- Everyone suffers from "beautiful people" syndrome.

- All enemies suffer from rabies...