The idea for this game came to me some time ago when I was in a Japanese restaurant with some friends from college. There were quite a few of us, so 2 tables were pushed together. While everyone was sitting there waiting for food I began to notice the propagation of the conversations at the table. A dialogue might start on one end between 2 people. Someone else might chime in, expanding the conversation to 3 people. The topic would move down the table, the original people involved splintering off into another conversation with other people while the first conversation had evolved into a different subject altogether.
I wanted to do a game that modeled this phenomenon. My first inclination was to do an RPG where "combat" would be conversations. The actual interface might be more similar to a card game however, with certain topics sitting in your "hand", or short term memory. Your "deck" would be long-term memory, and topics could be drawn from it into your hand.
Throughout the game, the character would observe things in the world that would add topics to talk about. In the beginning, you would only be armed with "the weather", the lowest common denominator topic of small talk everywhere. You might also start with other topics based off of character background, determined during setup.
Topics would have levels, depending on the characters 'passion' and 'expertise' on a subject. Take "weather", for instance. A meteorologist might have high expertise and moderate passion on it, while a tornado-hunting buff might have high passion, but little expertise. Tornadoes might be a specialization, which is another idea to explore regarding topics.
The object in any conversation would be to keep it going as long as possible. This would entail matching topics with other characters, with topic levels factoring into how long a conversation could be sustained off of one topic. The longer a conversation with a person lasts, the closer the 2 characters will become, probably forming some sort of character relationship matrix.
Not having an applicable topic in a conversation will result in awkward pauses, which can result in the conversation ending. Certain conversations might have a forced duration, like a dinner party or elevator ride, while others might have an indefinite length, like a casual meeting on the street.
I'm still fuzzy on overarching goals for the player, aside from achieving social dominance.
Labels: convorpg, game design
