>Just as a hint of what
>is being thrown around as
>ideas, I believe it necessary
>to illuminate what it means
>to be CRPG. CRPG
>is text based; as Rosh
>most certainly nows MUDs were
>the very first CRPGs.
Uh, not really. They were the first multiplayer RPGs in, but only in a setting and social quantifier before the ease of the modern internet gave a great influx of the combat kiddie and grief-player population. The playerbase is hardly what it was anymore; it used to be mostly computer science students and teachers, now it's got included a lot of AOL trash.
Perhaps what should be meant about Old-School Traditional CRPG, would be it's P&P or related roots. Unfortunately, a lot of "back-influence" has taken some irritating aspects and enlarged them. Monty Hauling is a lot more common.
>So if what is wanted
>is a "Old-School" CRPG then
>let's see a a reduction
>in the combat and violence
>in the game, and let's
>see a heavy increase in
>dialog.
The mix is good enough already, as there are ways to play through the game either as a combat character, and as a non-combat character.
And frankly, it wouldn't be a wasteland without the danger of combat, thus the peril of playing a diplomat/thief character.
If you've taken a look at Arcanum's WorldEd, which is about as close as you'll likely see to a large-scale editor for something like Fallout's gameplay for a while, you'd see that speech trees and the like take a long time to construct. When you run into "the great unwashed" as one friend put it when he was making bland NPCs, there's no great reason to add in too much dialog as it would lead into a frustration factor in having to wade through all that. Ultima 7 took a load of work...
