Tahnan wrote:
I don't like the fact that underoptimizing at one point affects your score at every subsequent point.
Yeah, that is a bit of a problem with TotS-likes because of the general game design. However, it can be mitigated a bit with design of the holds... much the same way you don't have to use less popular things like Orb puzzles when making a hold for regular DROD. One thing is that holds will likely be shorter for RPG than regular DROD... because it's a lot harder to produce and test a really large RPG hold because all the rooms are in play and active. Shorter holds will naturally be more forgiving of an early mistake in optimization (and easier to replay if you do). User made RPG holds the size of
Tendry's Tale will probably be less common than user DROD holds the size of KDD, JtRH, or TCB (which are already pretty rare).
Another thing is that if you are going to make a long RPG hold, there are things that you can do to keep the butterfly effect in check. The most obvious is what's already done in TT... mug the character and reset them so everyone is even again. Sure, it breaks up the hold into multiple sub-holds (which could have be released that way), but if you're developing a long story it's an option that helps keep things more manageable.
In any case, it's a bit early to see how things will play out in practice. Holds that get through architecture are human evaluated and thus need to be fairly reasonable... if people don't like long slogs where early mistakes can really screw you, then you're not going to see that sort of hold go to the Holds board very often.
/dy
