Just read and then criticise (constructively). Even if its nowhere near finished just give your opinion Game Design Document Introductory apologies Firstly I will apologies for the low quality of this document. I have never written out a design document in my life so I have no ideas as to how they should be. Secondly I will apologise for my lack of effort with the aesthetics of the document. Hey if you wanted pretty pictures you would never have read this far! At this point I was going to describe my love for Team Fortress and Counter Strike, but I have realised that is not why you are here. So on to my aims Aim and Game Outline To create an ONLINE game that combines the genres of Role Play with FPS. Ridiculous you snort. Abstract ,yes, ridiculous no. Imagine a game where you are part of a nation. You have your own job to perform and life to live. You can interact with your fellow countrymen. Trade goods and services. And much more... All will be experienced from a first person viewpoint, creating that feeling of the players’ actual existence that many RPGs lack. Perhaps you will be a farmer, growing crops or rearing livestock for sale. Maybe you’ll be a poacher, stealing these things. Perhaps you will be a trader, underselling you fellow shop owners. Or a doctor, curing your societies sick. If you want to you can go round breaking the law, fighting with other gamers in your local village, stealing things perhaps. Or perhaps you will be the one upholding the law, the local Cop, fining those who step out of line. Maybe you will be involved in politics. Part of a political party, aiming to get the vote of people at the forth coming election campaign. You’ll need a distinct set of policies to be voted in by your citizens (the other players). On the other hand you could be a group of terrorists going round killing people, seizing control in a different way. However guns will not be easy to get hold off so killing sprees will be something of a rarity. Every player will need their own unique character with several information fields. When they first play the game they can decide these different things: Name/Job/Appearance (choice of several) They may be allowed to change their Job if they wanted to. There will also be a data field keeping a check on what the player has done. The type of information recorded here will be how rich they are, how good they are at what they do, what items they are carrying etc, how healthy they are etc. The players will enter one of several levels, depending on which one the server is playing at that time. They will be carrying different equipment depending upon who they are. A doctor will require medicines, bandages, syringes etc. He will have some of the standard ones by default but may need to buy others (not any old player will be able to buy these items - they will need to be medically certified). He can go around looking for other players who are in need of treatment. People who have been injured by a fall would have nasty bruises or a limp so the doctor would use say bandages for them. Others who have infections or food poisoning might look off colour. The player working the doctor would require the ability to correctly diagnose. Some common sense may be involved or perhaps the need to research information by talking to more experienced players or looking for books from traders. If the doctor finds someone seriously injured, perhaps from a fight then CPR may be needed to resuscitate them. Doctors could be paid for medical care by agreements with ill people (mutually agreed amounts). They also may be rewarded by others players (say by a president who wants to fulfil his promise to invest in medical care) for good work or any old generous player (helping out a friend). The game would record how many people the doctor has treated and heeled in his/her time. A farmer will need various farming tools. They may wish to hunt animals (these would have to be bots) and sell their catches to traders. They may be equipped with a standard bow and arrow for this purpose. Or they could buy traps from traders once they have saved up enough funds. However hunting might be illegal in certain servers (if the president in certain servers had made such a law). Note: anybody else may hunt if they bought this equipment. The farmer can also breed animals that he catches (alive - certain traps would kill others would just capture) to sell them for food. Alternatively he could grow crops. He''d have to buy seeds and plant them in fertile land or use fertiliser. They would require water too so a bucket may be required to transport this. Alternatively variable weather could play a role, but I don''t want to get carried away just yet. They would take x amount of time to grow and could then be sold to traders. If they weren''t given long enough they would be smaller and would fetch a lower price. Bad farming may lead to "poisoned" food or other farmers (wanting to damage the competition) could take the law into their own hands. The result of this may be infections and disease for those eating the food. Did I mention you have to eat to survive. Now obviously servers will not be able to remember where all different farms are if people are planting crops and all that. Here is the solution. Farmers will plant their crops or drop the cages where they will keep their captured animals when they are on the server. They will do as much business as they can: producing and selling and then when they leave the server these items will be removed. It will be like nomadic herding. You take your little farm round in your rucksack. You take it to where you want to use it, grow or rear stuff, then sell and pack up. You can move to another area in the server and begin again or go offline and next time you join a game begin again. HELP...... Ok so I realise that this design document stinks bad, but just be constructive. What sounds impossible? Where are the problems? What else do I need to mention?

If you have never made a design document before, your whole idea sounds absurd. I doubt you could do anything that would be helpful in making that game, if you havent made a design document before. Start out way smaller.

well instead of describing the type of game you should have just wrote down the genre and how it differs from other games in the genre. So your game is a MMORPG so you should come out and say so, it makes it easier on the reader. btw, MMORPGs are far beyond what you are capable of. I don''t know who you are, but there is no way that you will be able to accomplish this. Go for something easier, maybe a gauntlet clone

Actual politics in a game are impossible. There''s too much involved. Issues to be exact. Also, game rules are hard coded. You have to examine what platforms candidates could potentially take and why people should care enough to worry about an election.

MMORPGs are meant to allow people to do whatever they want. No one is going to want to be a farmer especially if it''s boreing and tedious and they can''t do anything else.

Diseases are a nice idea but this isn''t The Oregon Trail. Inflicting people with random diseases who can''t cure themselves is a bad idea. It''s simply a play on spells from conventional RPGs except it''s the server that casts them. At least in regular RPGs anyone can have and use the cure.

In any game death cannot be unavoidable and/or unpredicable. I think you''re trying to hard to make a life like game and life is exactly what people are trying to get away from when they play games.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com

I agree with some of the above. If youre doing this just for fun, it´s ok, but doing a design doc for something that is possible to actually implement is going to be a far better learning experience.

And there´s nothing wrong with doing design just for the heck of it, most of the people here do it on a daily basis (as i haven´t seen an actual RPG come out of this forum)

This is a great idea; the only problem is that it may be impossible to do. I will also go with the suggestion that you should try something easier.

-- MacDrone1