Just one thing I have noticed is that there are some gameplay elements, commonly associated with one genre, that just don't appear in other genres, but would work without causing the game to feel less like its main genre and more like another. For example:

Immediate pick-ups: These are items, typically found on the ground or dropped by enemies, that have immediate effects when picked up, but can't be saved. One classic example is small hearts in Zelda games; picking one up will refill one heart of health. Similar items can be found throughout the action game genre; Castlevania has meat, Doom (and other FPS games) often has medpacks that heal you, and so on. However, you never see these in turn-based RPGs (though I read that apparently the roguelike DoomRL has them), but there is no particular reason that they shouldn't. Why not have enemies randomly (and fairly frequently) drop items that restore HP or MP when picked up?

Cursed weapons: Sometimes, in an RPG, you will find a weapon that is cursed; you equip it, and you can't unequp it without help. There's the old approach of having items unidentified in order to trick the player into equipping one, but there's also a different approach (seen in Wizardry 8, for example), where such items are instead powerful in order to tempt the player into equipping them. However, you don't really see this mechanic in other genres. Why not, in a FPS, include a powerful gun that has a noticeable drawback (like damaging the user or having limited ammo), but which can't be unequipped once it is used? Basically, if you choose to use this weapon, you are stuck with it for that part of the level (at least until you find, say, an immediate pick-up that removes your equipped cursed weapon). Or, perhaps a puzzle game could use item curses as part of the puzzle (you need to use item A, but once you've used it, you can't switch to item B, which is needed elsewhere).

Your thoughts? Also, any other examples of this sort of thing that you can think of?

Anyone here?

(Bumping because this fell off the first page without getting a response.)

I am expecting contract rates for all these posts on your rpg game development...

Bad idea. In classic FPS this will break the game. Imagine, player equipped this gun and used all his health/ammo. There are still enemies around, but he cannot unequip this cursed gun and he is stuck. Basically, he has to restart whole level or even previous level where he equipped this weapon. Very hard to make levels with cursed weapons.

The only good idea (which was dropped while game was in development) was in first Brothers in Arms. There was Colt M1911 and anyone who got this gun by story - is dead on some point. But this is not gameplay mechanics, just plot.

Could be fun in a multiplayer FPS, so long as the 'curse' didn't make the player a complete sitting duck. Kinda like the slow kid in a game of Tag

Because there's no point. Either the challenge is about managing resources through a long dungeon, and these frequent drops make it trivial, or the challenge is about each individual fight, and you might as well restore HP and MP to full at the end of the fight and not bother with drops.

Some ways to deal with this problem:
1. Make sure the mission can still be cleared without killing other enemies, or place an uncurse pickup near where killing enemies becomes necessary.
2. Make it so that the ammunition for this weapon recharges.
3. Give the weapon a secondary attack that doesn't use ammo. (One could make a weapon with one attack that uses ammo, and another attack that actually recharges the weapon when it hits. Making the 0 ammo attack a melee attack is one option.)
4. Make the weapon not use ammo in the first place. For example, maybe the cursed weapon is a melee weapon, albeit a really powerful one. This way, you could (say) kill most enemies in one hit, provided you get into melee range, but you would need to give up ranged combat to do so. I am thinking that the cursed weapon would actually be really powerful, to the point where other players would need to be careful when the player with the cursed weapon is around, but would have some sort of drawback in addition to not being unequipable.

I could also see this working in a co-op mode; one player gets the cursed weapon and uses it where it's most effective, while another player handles those cases where the cursed weapon doesn't work so well. There's actually an intermediate case. The idea is that you can use some of your resources during a battle without them running too low, but if you use too much in any single battle, it may take a while to recover.

Zelda 2 has magic drops, and it still manages to require a lot of resource management to get through the main dungeons. Also, other Zelda games can be challenging even if enemies drop hearts, and if no single (non-boss) encounter could realistically kill you if you come in prepared. (Well, aside from things like Zelda 1 Wizzrobes.)

No, there isn't. There are already item drops, and money and shops to offset the items you use, so you already have enemies drop items that restore HP and MP, if you are going to make it that much more frequent, then there's no point for even having them. I thought you were the one who always insisted that a game had to be turn-based to be a RPG.

These games aren't turn based, the item drops exist to counterbalance the player's poor mechanical skill, which isn't an issue in turn-based RPGs with menu-driven combat.

I never described those games as RPGs; I was just using them as examples of games that *do* have immediate pick-ups and still having resource management.

I have never seen item drops as being used to counter-balance poor mechanical skill; rather, they feel like a mechanic that provides some rewards for killing enemies. In a turn-based RPG, this would be no different. Also, just because a game doesn't require mechanical skill doesn't mean it requires no skill at all.

Item drops could also be used to offset the cost of fighting certain enemies. For example, maybe an enemy that's immune to physical attacks could drop an MP restoring pickup. Or, maybe an enemy that loves to spam multi-target instant death attacks (the sort of enemy that players dread fighting because it could lead to a game over) might have a high chance of dropping a fairy that revives dead party members. (Actually, any enemy with instant death attacks should probably be able to drop such items, and maybe occasionally drop a non-immediate revive item (assuming such items exist in the game).)

Honestly, immediate pick-ups would feel more at home in the RPG genre than mechanics like timed attacks, real-time combat, action commands (like in Super Mario RPG), and real-time out-of-combat gameplay (most games with visible enemies out of combat).

Anyway, there's one other interesting RPG mechanic that is nice to see in other genres; magic, using something that behaves like magic points. It actually is used in many non-RPGs to great effect, especially when there are spells to help with non-combat aspects of the game (like platforming). Some examples are Zelda 2 (that Fairy spell sure comes in handy, but it is too expensive to use all the time, and there are drawbacks to that spell), Super Princess Peach (emotions behave like magic), and some of the Star Wars games (the Force behaves like magic and might as well be treated as such).