RPG settings left unexplored

[GamemasterAnthony]

I would love to see a Harry Potter themed RPG, where you are a Hogwarts student and you progress through your life, basically...

Might not have been what you meant by 'settings', but I figured I'd go with it

Actually, there WAS a Harry Potter RPG for the Game Boy Color. Simple turn based style RPG where you could even use specific combinations of the cards from Chocolate Frogs to perform spell like effects.

 

[Gplars]

a pirate rpg would be a great change of pace or an rpg where you take controll of a prehistoric creature and evolve to gain new skills like spore but deeper

 

[binvjoh]

This is completely fucking off-topic but I just love the idea of the game... it could be epic:

Spoiler

You're an unknown undercover operative (SAS, perhaps?) sent in to investigate a hotbed of activity in Siberia: there, in the opening segments, you and your Spec Ops squad are sent to recon the area. You discover the Russians have a huge mining facility set up and a fighter squadron passes by overhead. Being British (or American, or a mix of both), your team instantly assumes it's a front for nuclear weapons testing and militarization. Your squad pulls out and is about to call HQ for a High-Altitude Recon flyover to take pictures, but not before your squad is engaged by the Russians. Fighting your way out, some members of your ridiculously-large-and-not-at-all-stealthy squad are shot. Others are captured, and you are left for dead. [There's that Fallout inspiration!]

You are doctored back to health by an American. You find out he was operating solo, deep undercover inside Russia. A couple of other squadmates survived, and together they've set up a small, basic camp. This will be your outpost for the start of the game -- your first missions are simply to steal small arms and ammunition from Russian encampments and to recon various separatist camps. This sets up the faction system -- there are several factions, including the Revolutionaries (who wish to separate themselves from the corrupt, military-controlled government and set up their own democracy), the Federalists (who want to take over the government and set up a democracy), and, of course, the Military itself (who, obviously, want to cement their control over the government). [There could be more, I guess. More inspiration from Oblivion and Fallout!]

Of course, your standing with one faction will affect your standing with other factions. [Mercenaries influence!] You can be really popular with the Military, supporting them and doing missions, but of course then you'll be really unpopular with the separatists. Likewise, if you are really friendly with the Federalists, you might not be so popular with a faction that wants to instate a dictatorship.

Your little base camp will be your home, so to speak. You can't take your entire arsenal and you can't modify weapons out in the field... but at home base, you can buy cheaper ammunition (during the day -- at night, of course, everyone's out trying to steal stuff from the various factions), you can modify your weapons with upgrades you steal or buy (suppressors/"Hollywood silencers," better sights, scopes/acogs/red-dots/etc, internal upgrades, et cetera), it's also a free bed and free (or cheap) medicine.

Er, that's all I have so far. I'll continue working on it as I see fit... if I ever get a job working for Bethesda XD

If you really feel that strongly then start writing down all the concepts you come up with. Then after a while you can read through it all and scrap some ideas and connect others, then keep doing that in different stages until it's a polished concept.

Not trying to push any sort of ambitions on you, I just happend to get excited when people present good ideas.

 

[ZephrC]

My favorite kind of setting that works remarkably well for RPGs, and games in general, yet is tragically underused is age of exploration type settings. A great example of this would actually be Skies of Arcadia. I slightly less fantastic setting has just as much potential though.

It has all kinds of advantages, the biggest would be that it can easily contain other kinds of settings. In fact, that's the real fun of it, you never know what you'll find next. It can include renaissance countries, older medieval countries, native cultures, pirates, ninjas, wild forests, vast oceans, giant mountains, lush islands, deserts, rain forests, basically everything except modern and sci-fi is fair game. Even those can be squeezed in if you really want, although that kinda thing is hard to pull of without seeming stupid and forced.

I just think it's weird that so few games are willing to give this kind of thing a try. I guess it has to do partly with how cutting edge graphics are just making games smaller, so there's less room for all this kind of stuff, but we really need a game that lets us really explore properly, not just spelunk around a county.

 

[busterkeatonrules]

this one time i had an idea for a savage worlds setting called arcaine noir which was like a 1930's gangsters with magic.
other then that a stone age type cave man setting has not been done yet.
world war 1 or 2 with magic is also a another idea.
lastly a game where you play as wild animals.

1930's gangsters WITH MAGIC? YEAH! I'd play that game!

I like your other ideas too. Hope some game developers are reading this!

 

[Piction Froject]

I dont know if this has been done but, early china dynasties.

 

[bloodmonkey]

As a toilet paper roll, trying to fend yourself from the menacing hand of the human, as he rips you apart, bit by bit.

Wouldn't that be the shittiest "Game Over!" screen you've ever seen?

that is simply outstanding

 

[CD-R]

A fantasy setting world base in the modern setting. Have monsters and other species interact with each other, having magic play, and guns. While the whole magic with guns have been played out, it usually involves melee as the main focus of attack. Not saying that melee won't be involve just not as much as having range. Man actually there is a lot of stuff you can do with this type of settings.

Shadowrun? And before you say 'but that's pen and paper', I'd like to remind you that there's been a few games based on that kind of setting.

Arcanum was set in a 19th century type setting. You fought orcs and ogres with magic and flint lock pistols.

Fuck yeah, I need to get Arcanum. And we need more games with that setting.

What about an urban setting, like today, only everyone has some sort of special powers? Wait, that's probably been done...

A steampunk setting, only throw in witches and wizards. Something along the lines of some old anime I watched before I stopped watching anime called "Fullmetal Alchemist", only drop the whole "alchemy" word and just make it plain old magic.

OR

A guy gets stuck in Hell and has to make his way out. It isn't a place covered in red and fire, but it is full of lawless bandits and thugs. There are some, though, like him, that are there because the bad guy found a way to round up good people and sell them to Satan so he could stay alive. It's not turn based, but it definitely follows a more linear path to keep a good, tight story. Open worlds are overdone. Anyway, the environment isn't red and fiery, like the gates in Oblivion, but it is a place full of destruction. Ruined buildings, desecrated landscape, piles of carcasses left to rot, only in a place that's colored similarly to our own. You could go through a snowy area where blood stains the snow after a fight with some bandits or demons, there's a sun trying to shine through the dust of a recently crushed and ransacked city... you people get my idea.

I love these ideas. Someone go make a game out of them.

OT: Not a setting per se, but someone really ought to make games based off of exalted. And there needs to be a new RPG in a D&D setting, like Forgotten Realms or Planescape, or Arabian adventures.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/arcanum_of_steamworks_and_magick_obscura

 

[Madskull]

How about an RPG where you play as a human impossible to die except in battle, starting in the ancient china and working your way through different periods as you're character grows in strength and wisdom, all the way to the modern city setting and beyond. Would be awesome, right?

awesome but bloody difficult to pull off. You'd need to build soo much stuff as weapons develop over the ages, not to mention all the maps, environments, armour... Also how would it have any kind of story? Unless you set up with a villain who is also immortal, so you're effectively continuously duelling it out through the millenia. That could work.

I like that, the immortal villain. As for the weapons, you could have like 40-50 different types of weapons that gradually improve, for example, you start off with a spear or a bow and arrow and you end up with a laser cannon .
What I had in mind for the environments is that you don't stay in the same area the entire game, you travel through all the more important places of the world and witness their culture. It could have the same environments as The Witcher, but more awesome.

 

[thedoclc]

A fantasy setting world base in the modern setting. Have monsters and other species interact with each other, having magic play, and guns. While the whole magic with guns have been played out, it usually involves melee as the main focus of attack. Not saying that melee won't be involve just not as much as having range. Man actually there is a lot of stuff you can do with this type of settings.

Dude... Play Bloodlines. Seriously.

Or if only some competent developer tried their hand at either of the Changeling IP's.

Edit: Bloodlines, the crappy Hunter: Whatever games, and Changeling are all IP's owned by a company called White Wolf. They did an urban horror fantasy line-up of table top games. They also had a crazy number of alternate settings, like werewolves in the wild west, vampires in the Victorian era, and magicians FOR SCIENCE in space.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

Modern day. Why does everything have to be really shitty or really great, we're at a pretty decent balance here and it won't be hard to get inspiration for locations.

That would be pretty cool, basing an RPG on the here-and-now or, the not-too-distant-past.

I know this is a fantasy setting but, how about a Discworld RPG? I would prefer single player but, many would clamor for an MMO and...well, when was the last Discworld game? PSX!?

As for something 100% completely different, how about an RPG taking place in High School? Not an action RPG but something like Persona only without the dungeon crawling bit. Depending on what teams/clubs you join, you get different mini games and, depending on your GPA and Test Scores and such, the ending of the game can change drastically from your character being doomed to work in food service to, your character graduating early?

 

[thedoclc]

I dont know if this has been done but, early china dynasties.

Yeah, it's been done quite a few times. There's the old Romance of the Three Kingdoms series by Koei, which range from JRPG to sandbox-style RPG to grand strategy simulator. There's quite few others, too, but they tend to have niche appeal and be old, obscure PC games.

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

A relative of mine once wrote a table-top rpg that was basically Wolfenstein but during the Napoleonics rather than WW2. Something like that might have some scope for a videogame rpg. If it were a jrpg, then the reload times of weapons could be made into a game mechanic to balance the differences between ranged and melee weapons.

 

[thedoclc]

A relative of mine once wrote a table-top rpg that was basically Wolfenstein but during the Napoleonics rather than WW2. Something like that might have some scope for a videogame rpg. If it were a jrpg, then the reload times of weapons could be made into a game mechanic to balance the differences between ranged and melee weapons.

Why would that only apply to a JRPG? Every TT game based on D&D, Fallout 3 and the other Bethesda games, Fable, etc, etc, are all WRPGs where reload speed or weapon speed counts.

 

[Snotnarok]

Wild West

I believe Wild Arms is in the west, or a likeness of it. Can't say never played it.

 

[ArtellTheWanderer]

The old west?
Steampunk world?

Even better: An old west steampunk world!

I like the way you think, sir.

There's a pen and paper game with a setting like that. It's called "Dead Lands." Of course you've got your typical Wild West gunslingers, but one of the character classes is a "Mad Scientist"--an inventor who creates steampunk devices but becomes more deranged as s/he does so. These devices are often powered by "ghostrock", which is created from the souls of the dead.
There is also magic in this realm--there are Houngans and Mambos (practitioners of voodoo), and "Hucksters" are those who bend the world to their wills by playing poker with the Devil. Literally.
Worth a look-see if you're interested. The latest iteration is an expansion for a roleplaying system called Savage Worlds, which I believe was mentioned already in this thread.

 

[CrazyGirl17]

My money would be on an urban or steam/clockwork/bio-punk setting. Maybe time and/or dimension-hopping as well..

 

[annoyinglizardvoice]

A relative of mine once wrote a table-top rpg that was basically Wolfenstein but during the Napoleonics rather than WW2. Something like that might have some scope for a videogame rpg. If it were a jrpg, then the reload times of weapons could be made into a game mechanic to balance the differences between ranged and melee weapons.

Why would that only apply to a JRPG? Every TT game based on D&D, Fallout 3 and the other Bethesda games, Fable, etc, etc, are all WRPGs where reload speed or weapon speed counts.

Most western rpgs I've played only have one playable character, so there's not the same need to balance between characters' equipment. Plus western rpgs tend to be more on-the-ball about how weapons actually work, so I normally assume that sort of thing is allready part of western games.

 

[_Cake_]

One of the most common themes out there, zombie. I would love to see a sandbox rpg where your given a zombie apocalypse. One that focuses more on the interpersonal relationship of groups of people, finding food/water/shelter or building up a home base, sanity issues if your alone too long, bows and melee weapons are the smartest move(guns make too much noise so you only use them when you plan on leaving an area).

 

[Arduras]

I'd love a Frontier style RPG, Fantasy or not, doesn't matter (I see it being 16/17th century though), where a small band of settlers have arrived on a continent that is chocka block full with man eating creatures, violent locals and other peaceful (ish) tribes.

You take the role of a frontiersman and, in normal RPG style, you can decide to help the settlers expand their holdings (which added perks from things you find in the wild, like trade goods increase the wealth of the settlement, causing a boost in population and better imported goods, etc) or go out on your own and explore, make a name for yourself.

Even be dastardly and attempt to hinder the settlement (for say, a rival nation or the tribals?).

The picture in my head says theres no clear cut good/evil, just multiple groups of people trying to survive.

Yeah, that'll be awesome