First of all, my world - let's call it Dreamland - does not need players to evolve. Is there. Have it's own life.
All the critters in game are mobs. Not NPC's. Mobs are trading goods, are hunting mobs, mobs are hunting mobs. Mobs are forming alliances and gain experience during the wars. Mobs are gaining levels and get skills. Mobs are making couples, are mariing eachother. Are having kids. Mobs have laws, laws enforcers, bounty hunters, crafters, criminals, shopkeepers, servants, masters, service providers, janitors, policemans (well, police persons), jails, wardens, judges, bums, bandits, hackers, spyes, soldiers, bodyguards, everything you can find IRL. But are also fantasy/sci-fi things like monsters, robots, aliens, cyborgs, dragons, monsters. Also renowed fantasy/sci-fi characters like Robocop, Lancelot, MuaDib. All those mobs have spells, weapons, tools, clothes, guns. There are also cars, horses, mules, computers.
All those mobs are having a life with or without player. As a matter of fact, they don't care about players. Well... as long as players are not messing their lives.
There are no classes here, but are races and ascendency. Like a resume.
As long are no classes, there are no skills forbidden to players. The catch is that let's say an afro guy will do better in warm climate than a scando, a latino will launch "berserk" with more ease than others, an asian will have less trouble using "flurry".
You arrive in game as a child. Yes a child. You can choose to have a mother and a father, to have intelectual or middle class parents, to be an orphan and such. You are NOBODY, like in real life. You have to learn everything. As long as IRL everything costs money, so is here.
You need food and water to survive. You need to sleep to be effective. You need clothes - or ur get ur butt arrested for indecent behaviour.
So if you want to become stronger, you have to go to a gym. But a gym costs money, so you have to do something to earn them. Also no matter if you have money and the facility to train your strenght. You need a long time of - heheeee - grinding there to become a bit stronger.
There are no caps for primary attributes (str, int, wis, dex, con and cha - if you don't know what those are, skip the thread
), and each one can be trained. The only problem is that each grade will require more effort and more money. And each death will reset those values to the initial ones. (back to ground zero, lol)
Also your stats (HP, mana, stamina) can be trained, but only to a certain value. There are levels, but levels are giving you training sessions. Those can be used to train skills or stats or atributes without grinding - but not without money.
Skills are divided in a couple of categories. Fight, psi/mental, craft, harvest and social. Doing tasks in a category using certain skills will increase the experience in that area. At a certain point, when enough experience is earned, player gains a level. Is a level cap and that is around 1000.
Assuming there are enough money, players can hire mobs or other players to acomplish tasks.
PK and looting are allowed but only in 10 levels range and after average level 25. If a player is level 30 in fight, 8 in mental, 0 in harvest and 2 in social means is average level 8 so... Also, killing (mobs or players) within city limits can lead to a convction, or even worst, an execution.
Fight can be ranged or melee, of course a sniper rifle is FAR more powerfull than a knife or a katana.
But you have to be able to shoot with such weapon and that requires shooting skills. Also the noise of shooting will attract cops... so be sure you can manage to kill a patrol (one human with psi and one cyborg) to escape. And having a knife or a sword wielded in hand does not mean you will be able to hit something with it. Maybe you can hurt yourself. Using a knife or a sword to kill someone requires skills. And don't aspect that if you kill family cat you'll be unhurt. If you want to parry it's claws you need defense skills. And even you use barehanded combat do not think you will do some damage. Even a basic fist in the face requires skills. Or at least a couple of hours spend hitting a sack with sand.
For crafting you need blueprints. Those, of course can be bought. But if you want a bow and buy a blueprint for it, do not aspect to find a quilver of arrows after the next corner. And be sure you can sell your products. In an age of guns, a bow can be sold only in certain places, like sporting associations or some primitive tribes.
If you want to hunt, be sure you dont hold your breath waiting to find credits when killing cats or dogs. They only drop fur and bones. Or raw meat. But if you use a piece of pipe (smashing damage) the bones will be broken. If you use a knife (piercing), the fur will be full of holes. If you use a gun and snipe it in eye... you'll get the bones and the fur intact... if it drops them. But selling them will not cover the cost of the bullet.
Maybe you can craft a necklace from bones for some weirdo... or a pair of gloves from fur. But you need to use your tannery skill to transform the fur in skin, then the tailoring skill to make the gloves. And if you want some more amount of protection you need to take the bones and the soft gloves and use the armouring skill to make hardened gloves.
Harvesting skills are related to minerals and raw materials. You can pick up a piece of wood and try to carve it to make a statuete, but is better to use some of your skills to find the best tree and the best piece of wood. Also you can chop a tree witout skills, but sure will take longer and is a good chance to hurt yourself or to fall on you. You can look for minerals, but finding mineral spots and extracting ore will not help you much without some basic refining skills. If you melt copper ore with iron ore you will get bronze. If you want to pay a lower price for using the forge, you better find some coal. Also coal is needed in other refinning actions.
Magic. There is magic, but is a personal magic. It involves psi powers, and , of course can be used in combat. It ranges from basic induced fear and disorientation to massive area damage. Of course such powers can have side effects like stunning the caster or hurting him.
Social skills includes - but are not limited to - bartering, trading (commerce) persuation (language skills), picklock, sneak, etc (vagrancy skills), operating comps, hacking (electronics) and many others.
There are no useless items. Each item / material serves to its purpose. If it cant be wielded, weared, drinked, eated, etc, it sure can be used in conjunction with other item(s) to craft something.
Of course there are quests to acomplish. Could vary from simple services (take that package and give it to x, he will pay you y ammount) to hit jobs (kill that guy) escort missions (make sure my daugher arrives safe at school) to real tough asignments (we need to secure area x for y days. you better be volunteer private) or spying (we need you to provide us with pictures at those military instalations) and many others.
There is a storyline and action, but beside that, you have to make your place in that world.
Now I'll make a pool, just to see how many of you would like a game like that. If you need additional info before you vote, pm me or post in thread.
Edit. Darn I placed it in General forum. Lawrence, please can you move this thread where is supposed to be? (I mean in Off Topic forum) I apologise for my lack of attention here. I woul've PM you, but "lawrence has exceeded their stored private messages quota and can not accept further messages until they clear some space"
Rjak
