How about some ideas for some non-RPG BYOND games? Lets face it, unless you're going to go all the way and creating a totally new interface, your RPG would probably just be like every other RPG on BYOND anyway. But there are plenty of other areas open for ideas. How about strategy games. Turn-based strategy, for one. There are so many avenues open for strategy games, and BYOND can do an excellent job of handling them, too. (Assuming you can get around not having text on the screen itself, but that, I believe, will be solved in BYOND 4.0) While I admit that I haven't played them all, looking at the games in the strategy section doesn't turn up a whole lot of games that can truely be called strategy games.

We have Star Traders (which frankly, would probably be better off listed as an RPG), Bombard (technically strategy, but not much beyond aiming your turret), Nyctophobia (strategy, you have to be more clever in deciding which lightbults to position yourself under and outmenuever everyone else), and several more than I haven't played. LaserWars and Incursion are two of the better examples of games that really deserve to be called Strategy games.

In LaserWars, you have to be very clever in positioning the numerous objects to direct your laserfire towards the opponents, while at the same time directing enemy laserfire away from you. This is a game where you really have to stay alert and plan ahead. If you're not alert, you'll be blasted by one of the other players before you know it. And if you're not careful in your planning, your approach will be so obvious to the other players that they'll have little trouble disarming your attack. Now that's strategy.

In Incursion, while the game itself is a reletively simple concept of moving around resources and units, while attacking other territories and claiming them as your own, there is an awful lot of thought that has to go into everything you do. If you take over too much territory, you could spread your forces too thin and make yourself an easy target for the other players. On the other hand, if you fail to spread, your forces may be too weak to deal with players that have succeeded in expanding their empires. If you aren't careful where you put your resources, the enemy will have easy access to them. Do you store your resources on the borders where your armies are defending, so that they can have the best defense possible (but potentially lost in raids)? Or do you store them deeper in your territory, where they could be vulnerable to an assault that penetrates your borders, where your forces must be divided to protect everything. Not to mention all the secret diplomacy that happens between players.

Those are just two examples of games that BYOND is well suited to support. Although both of those games, in my opinion, are underplayed. If you ever get tired of dealing with all the difficulties that building an RPG has to offer, you might take a break from it and try your hands at a Strategy game sometime. (Making things turned based really isn't all that difficult, and I'm sure there are plenty of people here who would be more eager to help someone create a new strategy game rather than showing another person how to make an attack verb.)

Just a suggestion to hopefully inspire some people. BYOND has plenty of RPGs, and to put it bluntly, most of them are crap, even if they are the result of someone's hard work. Why not try your hands at something that's a little more likely to succeed?

Well, that's my rant for today.