We need a Sci-Fi Space RPG! Fantasy is saturated.

Irwin John Finster

Irwin John Finster

Sonny, I Watched the Vault Bein' Built!
The Fantasy world is totally saturated with RPGs. All this Age of Decadence, Pillars of Eternity, Witcher series, Torment, etc. even the new Tyranny game looks like a fantasy world from what I've seen.

Where are the sci-fi RPGs?! Where is the top-down isometric space cRPG?

And for that matter, we're pretty short on post-apocalyptic RPGs also. Where is the zombie RPG?
 
Then there's contemporary, victorian, steampunk, 50's and noire just to name a few. Hell, anything but more medieval fantasy would be great. At least Tides Of Numenera looks like it is playing with a lot of abstract themes and being just plain damn weird.
 
Sounds like something to sink my teeth into on the world building front. Unfortunately I don't have a crack team of developers or lots of money to actually turn anything into a game, though, sorry ;p
 
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, goddamnit! The only fucking videogame for that series is a text adventure, it would work fine as a RPG and, I'm sure a few people would buy it.
 
As someone who wants to work in the industry, this is a good place on getting ideas of what people want, I just want to put that one out there.

But on a side note, I thought maybe a murder mystery RPG is something that could be pretty good if done right. It's up to you to make the right judgement on who the killer is and how it affects the rest of the cast of characters without being told whether your choice was right or wrong.
 
FlashBash64 said:
Ehh, I'm getting pretty tired of zombies, honestly.

One in the wild west would be cool though. The wild west doesn't get enough love.
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One of the ideas I'm currently planning for a game is basically a western post-apoc game.
You and your companions can pretty much be cowboys in the Wasteland with old pistols and riding defence heavy horses.
 
Radiosity said:
New Vegas + Firefly, something like that? :D
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Haven't played Firefly, but I did a quick google search. Yeah, it looks like something I'd want.

Millim said:
One of the ideas I'm currently planning for a game is basically a western post-apoc game.
You and your companions can pretty much be cowboys in the Wasteland with old pistols and riding defence heavy horses.
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That would be really cool. I'd like to start working in the industry too, but I have next to no experience :/
 
The Age of Decadence is not a fantasy game at all. There's a lot of sci-fi features actually in this game; such as holographic user interfaces, powered combat armor running on nuclear power cores, energy shields protecting whole structures from entering or decay, and so on. I think this game is great example of third Clarke's law: „Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
 
FlashBash64 said:
That would be really cool. I'd like to start working in the industry too, but I have next to no experience :/
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I have very little experience, which is why I'm doing a course in Game Tech and hopefully I will carry on from there.
I got big ideas for this RPG, it may have a few joke fantasy references in there (Like Excalibur being a melee weapon in which it's hard to get, then you get it and learn it's nothing really special).
In fact, it's kind of an ambitious project with Settlement building which I hope would work better and be effect the game better than F4's (I pretty much took the idea but though "What can I do to improve it in an Isometric setting).
 
FlashBash64 said:
Haven't played Firefly, but I did a quick google search. Yeah, it looks like something I'd want.



That would be really cool. I'd like to start working in the industry too, but I have next to no experience :/
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*watched. I mean the TV series, which is pretty much the wild west in space.
 
I did not think i would ever see a day again, where people would be upset with an abundance of great rpg's (isometric ones above all else!). Right around after Oblivion's release i thought this train is gone for good.
 
FlashBash64 said:
Ehh, I'm getting pretty tired of zombies, honestly.
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I'm just tired of 'bad' zombie films/games. I love zombies but the amount of stuff that can't understand the point of the zombie genre is staggering. The zombie setting should be about the humans, not the zombies. It should deal with serious complex issues of such a horrible apocalyptic event. It should have character development. And it should 'not' go all "ain't it cool the way we killed off that zombie!?"

I don't get it. The Of The Dead trilogy has been out for decades yet there are so many that still can't get it right. I love the zombie setting but the genre is oversaturated with shit. So I'm not tired of zombies, I'm just tired of all these writers, directors and designers that don't 'get' what the zombie setting should focus on.
 
A couple of things I'd suggest for fellow zombie fans would be the FEED book trilogy, World War Z (book, not the godawful film) and the film The Dead.

FEED is set in a future post-post-apocalyptic america where a group of bloggers are following a presidential campaign in the zombie apocalypse, it got some sci-fi elements to it.

World War Z is like a compilation of small stories from different parts of the zombie apocalypse and it was never ever dull.

The Dead is a film where a man survives a crashed plane in Africa and teams up with some military dude and attempts to travel to a safe-zone in order to make contact with the US. Its depiction of zombies is fucking creepy. It's probably the best depiction of zombies I've ever seen.
 
Well, FTL: Faster Than Light or something like it could have way more of an RPG element. It already has the strategic combat and the san action/conversation text-based menu, which is based in chance percentages and your ship's system and subsystem setup. There, you place traits, secondary skills and some perks. If the choices you chose have more later consequences too, you get a nice Star Trek simulator.
 
I'd also like to see more rpg's in less popular settings. Especially sci-fi. Obsidian's Aliens rpg looked and sounded fantastic.

There are good reasons we get so many fantasy rpg's however, and it's not because people just love orcs and dwarves so damn much. First of all, it's simply such a popular and classic setting that people take for granted. You get so much for free; no one will question why there are orcs in your game and no one will question what an orc is. Fantasy races, their typical traits and cultures are so deeply imprinted on us that they're almost historical subjects. Yet there's enough room for personal interpretation and storytelling. Second (and most important), fantasy almost always equals magic. And magic equals a lot more freedom for plot devices, enemies, item powers, and player/enemy skills and abilities (and as an extension, character builds).

In a sci-fi setting, even though it's fictional, people still tend to expect an explanation for how things work. It can totally be a bullshit explanation verging on "magic", but still requires more writing and thought put into it. The exception is of course already existing sci-fi settings, but the popular ones aren't exactly easy to license. And there's no generic equivalent of the fantasy setting, although it's starting to take shape with the continued popularity of Star Wars and Mass Effect. Although I would argue that both are more or less fantasy in space, especially Star Wars.

Irwin John Finster said:
And for that matter, we're pretty short on post-apocalyptic RPGs also. Where is the zombie RPG?
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Well, there's Dead State.

And I'd say post-apoc is starting to get a bit generic as well. I love me some post-apoc, but from what I can tell new games these days are either fantasy or post-apoc/dystopian.
 
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