Anyone interested in making an RPG?

[crumas2]

rendo said:
My thoughts are roughly this.

We'll need 2-3 story writers, these guys/gals would determine the story of the game, main mission, enemies, side quests, dialogue, and pretty much the core ideas behind the game. These people would need to have a powerful, unique imagination to decide practically everything about the game.

We'd need a few "map builders" and these guys would be responsible for creating the landscapes, a general idea of what the world looks like, buildings, pretty much everything you'd see. Could also maybe have them do character design as well. These guys/gals would have to work with the story writers to make everything mesh together.

Finally there'd be a few of the "programmers" and these are the guys who take all the information, such as dialogue and quests and what not and make them happen in the game.

The flow of development would be something like this.

1. StoryLine developed and agreed upon.
2. Setting is developed and agreed upon.
3. Writers begin working on the story/plot with as much detail as possible.
4. While 3 is going on, mappers are creating the areas that were agreed upon in 2.
5. Maps are all finished.
6. "Programmers" add in NPCs and the like and add dialogue from writers and other related information.
7. Finished Product? I dunno :P

Flow is important, so this would be a project where everyone has to be mature, calm and have the time to do their part. Everything should tie in in the end. Like say the world is an ice world caused by some natural disaster, we can't really have turbans or light clothed NPCs or characters, or desert areas.

Everything should be democratic so any ideas or plans should be agreed upon by the group and not by whoever is doing whatever role in the project.

At least that's how I think it should go if we ever decide to do this.

Sounds like a good plan (I manage a software development team for a living) except for one thing... I recommend staying away from decision by committee.  It's the bane of the software development world.  You would likely want to be the "tech lead", gather input from all parties, then make a decision.  If everyone agrees, great.  If not, then you have to make the call to decide direction.

 

Having a good 50,000-foot plan that everyone can agree on will help you build your team, but the devil's in the details and you really need a team-lead to make the calls when it comes time to execute.

 

Just my $.02.