What would a sidescroller rather than top-down RPG be like? Would it even work?
What would a sidescroller rather than top-down RPG be like? Would it even work?
Jaxon Smith
Ryan Evans
Depends on the genre and mechanics involved.
Xavier Sanchez
Like King's Quest with fewer loading screens.
>Fuck, it's a Rosella scene.
Isaiah Hughes
That's actually a pretty interesting idea.
It would be a bit more abstract, but the most important bits of information (distance, marching order, whether or not you're surrounded, etc.) would be preserved, though you'd lose an entire dimension of tactical movement.
However, it would be easier to track height/depth, which may be more important in submarine/plane/flying game, though my guess is that players would prefer top down and some other form of notation for height.
Ultimately, it might be best to go the Paper Mario route, where the world is whimsical and the flatness is just a quirk of the world.
Asher Ramirez
Darkest Dungeon.
Dragon Crown.
Chronicles of Mystara.
Most point and click adventures.
Just sayin, it is kinda thing.
Luke Powell
...
Dominic Ward
I believe Agon does this. It uses something called the "Range Strip" to handle combat, which is essentially a strip of paper with lines across it marking how far from the bad guys you are. Each turn in combat you can move something on the Range Strip. Move yourself closer to a bad guy, move the bad guy back so you can shoot him with your bow, move your friend with a bow closer to the bad guy so he has to pull out his sword, or move him farther away so you can kill-steal him (it's a competitive game).
No grid, no three-dimensional movement, you just move closer to or farther from other people on the two-dimensional strip.
I'm not terribly familiar with it, but I think that's the gist of it. It seems interesting, at the least.
Jack Long
Super Paper Mario
Robert Morgan
>What would a sidescroller rather than top-down RPG be like? Would it even work?
Pretty much the same, at least at a basic level. Most RPGs with movement mechanics already have rules for three-dimensional stuff like jumping and area-of-effect attacks, so the ruleset wouldn't need much modification.
Leo Ross
This.
OP a dumb shit.
Colton Gutierrez
Based on retro platformer
That's what I was thinking. It'd be neat if Triple Deluxe / Little Big Planet style 'planes' were possible but that's also more complex
I mean tabletop rpg. That is def inspiration though
David Howard
I think it would need a lot of work from the DM with little benefit and less immersio because it will really feel like a videogame.
Might work for a beat em up style hack and shlash campaign. Or of you really want to do a video game campaign, might work as a one shot then.
Christian Butler
I used Fight! to make a Tales of game.
It worked
Charles Fisher
What if the goal is to make it feel like a video game?
It might be the best way to capture a special feel for a Mario game.
Jose Butler
Yep, that's what I was imagining. A tabletop RPG that feels like Mario / Kirby / Klonoa, etc.
Elijah Fisher
>I mean tabletop rpg.
>"I walk toward the background."
>"You can't, you can only go left, right, up, or down!"
>"Why?"
>"Because!"
Sounds like fun
Jason Martin
Didn't Veeky Forums make a sidescrolling Kirby RPG a while ago?
Jeremiah Morales
We were considering making it a side-scroller, but it never got too far.
I think if the players have agreed to play a sidescrolling tabletop RPG, they'd understand to play by the genre's conventions. And besides, it's actually -easier- in tabletop to let them do that. "Okay, sure, you can go into the background and knock over that tree."
Cameron Scott
You'd probably have more success with a board game rather than a tabletop RPG. The entire point of a board game is to simulate a structured situation with hard rules, whereas tabletop role-playing games are more dependent on a referee.
Michael Hill
Well, the hope is to be able to roleplay an adventure in a sidescroller. So a board game doesn't do that as well.
Ayden Young
The reason this isn't done in tabletop is because the z dimension is rarely useful for human movement and the aesthetic of nice backgrounds doesn't come into play because it's all in your head.
It seems like a gimmick for gimmicks sake just to see "if this will work" not an actually wise thing to do.
Charles Lopez
Yeah, this is probably true.
Camden Peterson
Something like this, I imagine.
Aaron Bennett
Tried doing this on Veeky Forums some years ago after I played cave story all the way through for the first time. Tried to use maptool to create tile-based levels. You'd have movement and jump values that emulate platformer physics and players can 'spend' them on their turn, moving left or right, jumping, possibly altering direction mid-jump if they have that ability. Outside of combat you explore the map normally.
Cameron Murphy
Done already.
Ian Robinson
That game is fucking amazing.
Dylan Gutierrez
I vaguely remember a game system called "super console", which was an RPG about playing heroes in an 8-bit game system.
The name, sadly, makes the damn thing fucking hard to google, and since the only copy of this paperback traveller-leaflet-style RPG i ever saw was well before the internet was a thing, i fear it may be lost to the ages.
The character sheet included a NES-like controller, and you were supposed to attach actions to your buttons (like choosing whether you jumped by pushing Up, A, or B.)
I don;t really remember much else about it.
Logan Robinson
This the one?
>rpg.net
Gavin Ross
Also, pdf of it.
console.wdfiles.com
Ian Wright
Cool, thanks.