[color:"orange"]forcing you to make choices which you might not necessary like.[/color]
That sounds good, as long as the choices are not artificially limited. I know in practice you can not program in every possibility, but a few options would be nice.
In DD after having a copy of the elvish necklace made and returning to what my character professed to be his one true love, I would have preferred the option to say that I scoured the world to find the necklace, but the best I could do was to commission an exact replica. Actually, lieing under those circumstances bothered me more than killing the mind controlled soldiers, but experience points are experience points.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/evilgrin1.gif" alt="" />
[color:"orange"]Still, to me, having a RPG in which I need to deal with these kind of situations would immerse me far more than "We need to find the sacred shoes of queen Hellonia.[/color]
Me too. That should make for a much more compelling story line, and add to the replayability. Even if the majority of dilemmas only have a moderate effect (I assume most will not be quite on the same scale as choosing which child to save), that could still help create a vary dynamic world.
[color:"orange"]Would you want Karma Points or something along those lines as Nemisis hinted ?[/color]
Yes, that would be nice. It may not be necessary with a good reputation system, though.
If evil characters are going to be a viable option, there would need to be charms to mask their aura from most NPCs. There can be lawless towns and merchants who don't care who they sell to, but most NPCs would avoid a truly evil character. Conversely, good characters may be able to use charms to disguise themselves to infiltrate a thieves' guild to gather information, etc.
In Ultima the system of virtues was pretty much universal. If there are going to be various factions in the game, reputation could be independent of karma. If you slaughter an entire elvish village for kicks, that would certainly hurt your karma (and your reputation with elves), but may improve your reputation with dwarves, if the two were at war. A neutral faction (and perhaps some dwarves) would react with a drop in reputation.
