Game Design: A Massive RPG

I used to make my own RPGs on my TI-83 calculator, so when I learned a way to program on the computer, I wanted to make another RPG.  I wanted to make a story that you had a lot of control over, a lot more than the usual "read the story and maybe make an occasional choice" style.  I wanted to make something where you have personality ratings, like an outgoing rating, a politeness rating, etc.  At the beginning of the game, you would respond to some things, and based on those responses, you would get your initial ratings.  For example, the game would say something like "When I see a crowd of people, I-" and you choose from "1) Run and hide," "2) Ignore them," "3) Look for someone I'd talk to," "4) Jump in with the crowd," "5) Do something to make everyone look at me!"  You would also choose a lot of things to say or do throughout the game, and those choices would also affect your personality ratings.  And then your personality would naturally affect what you could say or do.  Maybe in a certain situation, the choices for a really quiet person would be things like "...", "Um...", and "Excuse me, but...", and the choices for a really loud person would be "Hey, get out of the way!", "Would you please move?!", and "Man, what's your problem?!"  It might get kind of ridiculous at the extremes, but as a gamer, I'd enjoy investigating what my character could say if they had the lowest or highest possible rating in different areas.

Then, other main characters would have a friendship rating telling how much they liked (or hated) you, and that would change based on what kind of person you were and what you said.  Then you could progress towards different friendships, different enemies, and, eventually, different endings.  Maybe in one ending you conquer the world as a villain and in another you save the world as a hero.

For my specific game, I had more ideas.  It would be set in a world where there were a couple of other popular things, like maybe Dance Dance Revolution and Mario Kart Wii and maybe some sport, like basketball.  You could participate in those things and win money or items or things like that.  Players would have ability levels in the games and matches would be simulated to resemble things that would actually happen in the real world.  [When I first came up with this concept, I continued on, thinking about how I would simulate DDR and the percentages with which actual players hit various steps at the different timing levels.]

Finally, I was thinking of making days and day events.  You choose different things to do during the day, with each thing taking up a certain amount of time.  You could even choose when to go to sleep for the night.  You could do more stuff and raise your abilities, or you could go to sleep and have more energy the next day.  The story would progress after a certain number of days, or after you reach a certain level, things like that.

Half of me knew it, half of me wouldn't accept it, and half of me said it didn't matter.  Surely this game was way too much for me to create on my own.  Even if that was true, sometimes I just enjoyed coming up with the ideas and planning it all out.