Matthew P. Barnson said,

Well, you might get accused of nepotism if I win. But the next time you have us over for dinner, show me the gameplay!

I am a big fan of tower defense games, particularly mixed with RPG. Dungeon Defenders qualifies as one of my all-time favorite games for this reason: RPG elements, min/max powergamer elements, first-person shooter elements, and tower defense elements. Admittedly, at higher difficulties and Monster Bash DD becomes much more a shooter than RPG, and with all the zillions of hacks going around it’s tough to find an honest game outside of the Steam ladders. But very, very fun nonetheless if you play with people you know.

Does this support multiplayer in any way?

Darius said,

A little while ago I made a little game that added RPG mechanics to tetris. The tetris blocks are pieces of a tower that your character climbs, fighting monsters and leveling up along the way. I hope to flesh it out one day, but you can play the concept here: http://gamejolt.com/games/puzzle/tetratower/5761/

Damon Smith said,

Tetris RPG!

So you are a little 1×1 square, running along a simple platformer world, and fitting yourself into holes in walls/floors to “solve” the row and remove the obstacle.

As you gain experience and “level” up, you slowly acquiring more 1×1 squares until you can form a final 4 square tetris piece (allowing you to unlock more areas that require that particular piece to pass).

It could be a “Thomas Was Alone”/”Lost Vikings” game too, where you control multiple tetris pieces, and must level them ALL up and work together to pass certain sections.

Enemies would be characters from other old school games like pacman, centipede etc…

Anon said,

This isn’t a competition entry:

What we definitely need are more RPGs placed in our times – and sports are only one, very specialized, example. Everything happens either on the playing field, the management offices or the dressing rooms ;-).

What we have enough of is gangster simulations (GTA, Godfather, Mafia, Omerta etc.) but crime-solving RPGs are kinda rare.

What I therefor would like to see is a “Dirty Harry” CPRG where you play as Harry Callahan, roaming the streets and the massage parlors of 1971 San Francisco.
You shoot bank robberies with your trusty .44 magnum (“The most powerful handgun in the world!” – at least in 1971…) while munching hot dogs.
You harpoon baddies against wooden shacks, drive all sorts of vehicles (motorcycles, buses for senior citizens, but not in real time as everything is turn-based!). You can hone your skills on the firing range (don’t blow the grannies away!), have casual free sex with the sexy neighbour (or hear the lamenting of your ex-wife).
You tell people that opinions are like assholes – everybody has one! and to the mayor that your policy is to shoot people who are running around with a knife in one hand and a dildo in the other!
You also team up with a partner but be prepared to learn new names as they don’t last long…
Later missions include serial killers that shoot random vics like the Zodiac/Scorpio killer (with torture opportunities!) and vigilante cops (plant a car bomb in your superiors car to solve the mission!).

Bonus points if you manage to kill a mafia boss by causing heart-failure through accusation!

You are Dirty Harry – you only get the dirtiest jobs in the city!

bvg said,

I think there are different ways to merge rpg’s with 4x turn based strategy games then the heroes of might and magic route.

For example, a 4x game could have a kind of rpg game for the court and rulers of the realm, with intrigues and such. Crusader Kings is halfway there, with it’s focus on inheritance. But it is still rooted in a managers mindset, and thus not a rpg at all.

Another way to do that could be the way that the empire works, needing to send envoys on quests to keep cities in an empire, with factions and adversaries that need figthing. The envoys could then gain experience and loot. The total wars series is almost there, but it focuses completely on the battles, and all the little minions and generals are mere pawns, not characters.

Maklak said,

That “Valley of The Forgotten” game is pretty awesome and I want one if I win. Archers rule the battlefields (well, not so much against very heavily armoured enemies, but still). Oh, and the first point you spend on some ability is often more powerful than points 2 and 3, so it pays off to save points before lvls 5 and 10 and buy 2-3 abilities at once. I also like the passive abilities almost as much as I like the extra attacks from active abilities.

As weird as that sounds, I’m currently hooked up on a Dwarf Fortress mod that throws MLP and Fallout into the mix. I like two genres the most: RPGs and city builders (Sim City, Civilisation and the like), so it should be no surprise that I would like to see the two merged in some way. As to how that could be accomplished, well it gets more vague, but there are a few possibilities:

* City builder or an RTS that has some “hero” units, whose main purpose is not to die and provide bonuses for nearby soldiers. This has been done many times, but an interesting twist would be that all your “hero” units form a family and it’s OK if some die as long as the family continues. The “Total War” series works pretty much like that, although to me it has too much war and too little building and economy.

* In RPGs you often have a maximum party limit and a number (5-20) of potential companions who will talk to you about their backstories, romance with your main character and so on. This is all fine, but players usually hate to see them die and reload saves if it happens. What if the more important and story-related NPCs were leaders, traders, craftsmen and other stay-at-home types and most of your hirelings / companions were expendable redshirts? It would even be a valid tactics to lure them into dangerous fights and take their stuff if they die. Sure, if you convince a few people to go on a quest with you and return alone, their families and village will ask questions and react negatively to you, but your reputation will suffer mostly in that town. Well, I wouldn’t like those redshirts to be just nameless soldiers, like in X-com, but I don’t want long backstories for them either.
I also don’t want any artificial limit on the number of companions (unless it is something meaningless, like 10-35), but instead I want the balance to be provided by other factors: Hirelings need food and water, which you have to buy and carry (possibly needing a horse and a cart or at least a packmule). At least some of them will demand regular payments for their service. Others may want a share of the profit. Some may be disloyal and steal from you. Some may get you into trouble when you go to a town, for example by having their way with some local woman without the consent of her father or husband. Most are motivated purely by greed or quest for fame, a select few may be just loyal to your family or to a cause. This may be a cause of arguments among them. Some may have their own weapons (or tools, if you bring along non-combatants), but if you just take a few random peasants or beggars, they need to be outfitted in something. Toss semi-suicidal / homicidal AI (A giant rat between me and my master? Full auto assault rifle!) and companions would balance themselves in that having more than a few elites would be more trouble than they are worth, but playing a charismatic leader with a small army of “zerglings” that you often have to replenish should be a viable tactics. Those hirelings that do survive, should slowly advance in the skills their use the most, but don’t have an unlimited potential for growth.

* In RPGs by the end of the game, you often have a bunch of “mid-game” weapons lying in the inventory with no other use than shop fodder. What if instead, you could outfit the town you did a few quests for, so that they can defend themselves easier and will like you more? Maybe even send a few of their guards with you if you ask. Or it can be your town and you can use those weapons to upgrade your guards, royalties from that mine to build a granary or otherwise make your acquired wealth meaningful.

* When I have a location of a bandit camp, I’d like an option to ask the guard for help in dealing with them.

* When I help a town secure some resource or trade or free a nearby mine from minecrawlers or whatever should benefit them, I’d like to see the results: more people moving in, new buildings built, new items they have for trade, etc. If two communities now live at peace, it would be nice to see they have visitors from each other or that caravans are moving between them. Oh and my character should totally get royalties on it or have an option to negotiate “You want me to kill those Deathclaws so you can mine again? I can give it a shot, but I’ll want a share of the profit.” RPGs deal with these situations by the owner paying you once, then telling you to bugger off.

* City builders are often kinda shallow in that most problems can be solved by throwing money at them. What if there were various other options for dealing with most problems? Use local guard or hire mercenaries? Import some resource or use a locally available substitute? Kill someone who is annoying, but kinda useful, let him be or perhaps send him away on a mission?

* A rather nice feature of the new X-com are cutscenes when you get some new piece of equipment. A city builder can have that too, for example in post-apocalyptic world, building a copy of AMR could trigger a cut-scene where it is used against someone in Power Armour, killing him at long range. Or if you go the route of say, using slaves as resources to make cyborgs, some cut-scenes could be the stuff of nightmares.

* In most RPGs the player should be able to own a house, if only as a base of operations and a warehouse for items. Customisation is more than welcome. So far the game that handled this best was Ultima Online.

* Make it so that all people have to eat and they grow food, work, trade, collect taxes, whatever. If you steal from them, they may starve. If you steal the money to pay some workers, there may be a revolt. RPGs are getting closer to this, but “living, breathing world” usually just means that NPCs have some scripts that make them hang around different parts of the town, depending on the time of day and you can loot most things either without consequences or without consequences if you aren’t seen.

* Things like this would definitely require some procedural content generation and AI complex enough to handle a lot of things you can throw at it.

Well, pretty much all I’ve said is vague, but I would like “living, breathing world” and “your actions will affect the world” to be more than hype and marketing slogans.