Idea 1:
You play through the character creation screen of your typical RPG, picking features and equipment for your character. However, you also have to convince her to actually fight for you.
Idea 2:
You’ve been hired to babysit the “difficult” child on the block. They don’t listen, they’re hyperactive, they freak out over random things, they don’t shut up. Your goal is to make it to getting paid without any tantrums. Who knows, maybe it’s just a matter of understanding what upsets the kid?
This is a bit of a sketchy version but it’s the same overall style.
Idea 1 is definitely more interesting to me. What kind of personality will the RPG character have? Will you have to tailor your choices of attire, etc to her liking? I really like the idea of the player interacting with the character that they’re creating.
The first idea is much more interesting. Would the things you say to the character also change her appearance? So if she were to ask what kind of perils she would face, and if you answered “ninjas” she would change to have a shuriken in hand?
Does the character come into existence with no backstory of her own, or would she have some background of importance to her that you could pander to so you can convince her to fight for you?
Both ideas have a similar theme: convincing a character to do what you want. This reminds me of the homeplay game with the mother trying to convince her family to play World of Warcraft. In that sense, I think both ideas would be engaging to play and give you the freedom to develop character personality and motive. I think the first one is more original though so I would go with that.
The player’s actions are confined to the sort of actions you actually do on a character creation screen- picking a name, assigning weapons, and so on. The character will talk to you, but you can’t directly talk to her– she just interacts to everything you try to make her be.
She’s got something of a preexisting personality (she’s a fighter, that’s what she’s there for, but she’s not going to do it if you’re going to be stupid about it) but no real backstory to make a focus of.
What is cool to me about the first idea is that it is something that never happens in an RPG (right?), it can have some interesting twists like you get to actually try reverse psychology on the character or motivate her using some stuff from positive psychology… I don’t know, it could be a funny way of using all of the research in this completely unexpected way.
I really enjoy the first idea more. I think that it could be compelling to create reasons for the character to actually work for me. I think that the conventions of using a RPG as a base system will help you define the system to where it could be quite fun and constantly stable.
I actually like both of the ideas and they both seem feasible. The first idea definitely lends itself to some commentary on character design which could be very interesting to explore. The second idea sounds like a more touching experience, but will hinge heavily on how realistic the character is.
The first one feels more original to me and would be interesting but I really love the art work you did for the second one. It also feels a bit more like a game with clear goals and frustrating results. stupid brats!