Idea: Character aging
Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2020 5:54 am
I know this idea sounds very out there, but it's something that's been done before. I've been thinking a lot about Wizardry 6 and 7 recently, and something I always found the aging system from those games (maybe it also appeared in earlier games in the series? Idk bc i've never played Wizardry 1-5) an extremely ambitious and interesting life simulation element. In Wizardry 6, every time you rested your party, they'd get 8 hours older. If you play long enough for those hours to turn into years, eventually you'd see your characters' stats start getting lower and lower as they age.
The thing is... as neat as that is in concept, it's kinda sad that you probably would never see it actually play out unless you went EXTREMELY out of your way to do so. You'd have to rest 1095 times in order for your characters to age a full year, let alone the decades that it'd take for old age to eventually start affecting them.
Daggerfall, on the other hand? It's a game where you can easily let years or even decades pass without realizing. Sometimes when I create a new character I can easily spend 2-3 in-game years goofing off before even starting the main quest, so I think it's the type of game that would benefit from a system where your character ages as the days and eventually years pass.
Of course... Elves would probably be virtually unaffected by it unless you play for a long-ass time, and the specific way in which age affects your stats should probably be race-specific.
The thing is... as neat as that is in concept, it's kinda sad that you probably would never see it actually play out unless you went EXTREMELY out of your way to do so. You'd have to rest 1095 times in order for your characters to age a full year, let alone the decades that it'd take for old age to eventually start affecting them.
Daggerfall, on the other hand? It's a game where you can easily let years or even decades pass without realizing. Sometimes when I create a new character I can easily spend 2-3 in-game years goofing off before even starting the main quest, so I think it's the type of game that would benefit from a system where your character ages as the days and eventually years pass.
Of course... Elves would probably be virtually unaffected by it unless you play for a long-ass time, and the specific way in which age affects your stats should probably be race-specific.