ideally, open-ended without ridiculous repetition (i.e. every time you go into the woods, you're attacked by orcs after 10 steps). but the more i look at what the game is capable of, and what i want to do, i see that it's not going to work out the way i want it to. diablo was fun, until you beat diablo and then you finish and wipe it from your hard drive never to play it again. why? b/c it's just hack and slash and incredibly linear.
i guess what i was trying to get at with using the term 'open-ended' was that if you didn't want to go down into the dungeon and fight monster a that you could still have an enjoyable time drinking in a tavern.
my idea was that you could choose a or b or c or d, or a and b and c and d, and/or any possible combination in any order. or you could choose none of these and go down to the local dungeon and kill rats and find trinkets.
the idea wasn't for an epic adventure (though, i must admit, i'm pretty fond of those myself), it was that the party would be based in an area, and that certain opportunities would arise, that if not taken wouldn't be the end of the line for the main characters.
on the other hand this whole set-up seems awfully simplistic and quite frankly boring to anyone but the creator.
at this juncture, my compromise is a combination of my original idea with an overlay of an epic storyline.
i've also thought about doing what i originally was going to do, and releasing it as an incomplete mod that would be the background for others to create stories in- all the artwork and building would be in place as well as basic events such as place name text events, taverns, shops, etc.
just some thoughts.
[img]graemlins/1druid.gif[/img]
-manikus