Salacious Angel's Homebrew PC RPG... Laying the Foundations

[SA]

I'm making an (almost) combat-free Windows rpg based on my wizard thread. I am sick as shit of all these fantastic epic sprawling rpgs with brilliant plots that are bogged down with gratuitous fighting, and I want REAL DAMNED FANTASY.(See signature)

STEP ONE: I need a good program for mapping the various plot branches. As you can imagine, there will be a lot of them.

EDIT: before anybody opens their smart mouth, I know this will take about a million years. I am a turtle. I have time. :D

[Ninja D!]

Honestly, the method of writing small and doing a flow chart on a big poster board is tried and true. The only programs I know of that I would consider using for such a thing would be a basic word processor (again for doing it the old fashioned way) or an old BASIC program and you could write it like a Choose Your Own Adventure book for yourself to reference. Actually, if you can find a program that let's you have somethink like a wiki but just on your machine, that would be damn near ideal; It could be searchable and include links to any related information.

[SA]

Hmmm. Wiki. I'll have to hunt for something like that. Thanks D.

[Superfluous Crow]

If you just need a flowchart, I think FreeMind might do a pretty decent job.

[Lmns Crn]

Hmmm. Wiki. I'll have to hunt for something like that. Thanks D.

There's a program called Notebook that does this. It is also free.

[SDragon]

Check out Renpy for the actual game engine. It's cross-platform (even ported to Android), easy to code, and very flexible. If the basic scripting isn't enough for what you want, you can imbed Python/PyGame code.

If you do choose to do this, I might even be willing to help out a bit.

[Lmns Crn]

EDIT: before anybody opens their smart mouth, I know this will take about a million years. I am a turtle. I have time. :D

New community motto located.

[sparkletwist]

I don't know much about the question you asked. What I do know about is programming! So if you need help of a more technical nature, I'd be happy to give a bit of assistance, too.

What style of game are you going for? SNES CRPG style? More like an old Sierra adventure? Or just a text adventure? Something I haven't thought of?

[SDragon]

Oh, and for offline wikis, use Wiki on a Stick. It's a portable wiki based on Javascript, so you can run it in just about any browser.

[SA]

Thanks all!

I'm checking out Ren'Py right now. Looks promising. Also got hold of Notebook and am about to peek at Wiki on a Stick.

[Ninja D!]

I am a turtle. I have time. :D

New community motto located.

I second this.

Offline wikis sound great, anyway. I think I need to check out these programs.

[SDragon]

Bump. How's it coming along?

[SA]

Plot, plot, plot. That's the first goal.

I've decided on four playable characters, whose stand-in names are SCIENTIST, SORCERER, SOLDIER and SOCIALITE. The setting is a modified version of Magnum Opus, which I feel is a highly evocative setting and which my players love.

I'll be using Renpy.

[LordVreeg]

Well, I always liked Magnum Opus. It's good choice.  
Your character archetypes are interesting.  One wonders about the place of religion in our four friends...