I recall an idea I had back a time ago, where enemy encounters weren't just two-turn filler battles leading up to a boss fight. The general feedback was a rather tepid reception.

With a little elaboration I wanted to come up with a battle system that could work, but I wanted to get some reception on it. (I actually doubt I'll use this idea any time soon though.)

Legend of the Collosus did something right by taking out those little filler battles and getting you right to the boss.

I had a similar idea related to RM.

Instead of having those little battles inbetween, why not change it to only big battles. Example, you enter a dungeon. There's a few puzzles to complete, like moving some boulders and pulling some switches, etc, typical stuff like that. However somewhere in the dungeon is a pit with a bridge you have to cross. There's an option to drop some boulders into the pit and a torch, etc. As you try to cross the pit after setting it up, you fall in and encounter some creature. How hard or easy it is is based on if and where you dropped things into the pit. And the monster is a boss fight that requires some strategy to win. Later on you run into a similar creature and have a bow and arrow where you shoot at it and try to keep your distance. How hard or easy the battle is is again based on how many times you've hit the creature before it reaches you for encounter.

It sort of takes puzzle battles, mixes them with a little bit of Action Battle Systems, and uses a Turn Based System. You could do an entire game this way or just a dungeon. Either way, I haven't seen it done. Most games have those filler battles if they have boss battles.

Each dungeon in the game could have a few bosses, some of which may incorporate smaller battles, but it's never just filler battles for the sake of something to do. What potential might this design have, if any?

Lots.

games like Shadow of the Colossus, as you said, has already shown this kind of thing can work. The only reason people don't do it on a regular basis is because it's hard to come up with original content that can last for over long periods of time, not because that kind of design is preferable. It's the same reason why you have grinding in games, even though we all hate it. It is essentially an easy way to extend the length of game.

Well, you could just have a lot of quests and very little monsters to run into, and make bosses generally mild to medium difficulty. Just because you don't like grinding doesn't mean you have to take out a whole part of the classic RPG experience.

unless he has a specific experience in mind that he wants to the bring to the player. If he wants each and every fight to feel like it's an important fight, with each and every one of them focused on a specific aspect of the combat, then yes, he very well would. From his description, it's clear that he's looking to create a game that is less about the numerical growth and more about strategic play as well as puzzle solving. If those are his goals, the presence of random encounters might not serve any purpose at all. Extraneous parts, in this case, should be removed, if it no longer serves a goal.

If that is what he wants to do, I would heartily support that endeavor. In this particular instance, there are no real boss fights, but just combat encounters that is integrated seamlessly into the narrative. I think that could be awesome. The challenge, of course, is coming up with a shit ton of puzzles and stuff to do. And also, the difficulty level control needs to be carefully calibrated, or else people who can't solve the puzzles will be kind of stuck.

I'm not exactly going to do this. I'd say there's a good chance I'll never get around to it because it'd involve some decent scripting knowledge which I'm still working on.

However, I found the idea to be intriguing both from a design perspective and a player perspective. Perhaps I will create a small mock-up dungeon over time to illustrate my vision on this, though any release of that is a ways away. This discussion is to explore the capabilities of this design, the difficulties and obstacles it imposes, and the games capacity to be enjoyable.

I could see it not just as an entire game, but perhaps a mid to late game dungeon in a typical RPG.

The general idea is that most dungeons have no random encounters, and only 3 evented encounters with boss styled battles. Leading up to the encounter with these evented boss battles you perform a series of puzzles or actions that will weaken the bosses or change the style of the encounter. The boss battles are also puzzle based, requiring a lot more strategy than even your typical boss battle.

That is the general setup I see, however it isn't the only possibility and certainly exploring the game space deeper is recommended.

Just for the record, if the leveling system is good I actually DO enjoy grinding xD.

As for your idea, I think it's interesting. The real question is whether it would be an rpg at all, one thing that battles do is give you experience points for character growth. So would you instead have quests reward your points to level?

If you're just getting rid of the leveling and experience the system sounds like an adventure game (or whatever they call the early tomb raider games) with a bunch of puzzles before a strategic boss fight.

I like both rpgs and adventure games so you wouldn't get any complaints out of me!

In a way it's almost an extreme version of WRPGs, where there are plenty of ways to avoid fighting using either stealth or talking. So, in the end I think your idea would be great to please the adventure crowd but if you want to make an rpg with less random encounters just don't make them necessary and have skills to get around them.

for an interesting show of an RPG mixed with adventure, check out the Quest For Glory series.

although, to be honest, the term RPG has pretty much lost all meaning to me by this point.

Haha, those games look pretty cool! But then again, I guess they WERE created by Sierra so I'd be surprised if they were anything less.

I usually think of rpgs as at least having character leveling (or some sort of progression) but the line get pretty blurry beyond that.

Okay, the issue here is that you'd need a way to build experience through an award system or these big bosses would wipe you out. Try supplementing experience with side quests, and the like.

Guess that's true. The question would be will this be a puzzle game that uses traditional RPG battles to simply do puzzles, or will it be like a traditional RPG where you must grind for EXP to complete a dungeon.

In the case of the latter, you must find a way outside of battles to gain exp. This could also be supplemented with battles prior to the dungeon, where in the dungeon it's purely puzzles.

Another idea is giving a little EXP for certain puzzles. As a little reward and such. Not too much EXP, but not to little. And yes, sidequests giving EXP is a great idea too. The balancing on that would be utter hell, though. But, if you're willing, that would be quite interesting to see.

TCC approves this battle idea.