Hi. I'm not certain if this is the right forum to post this to. Please move this if necessary.
Anyway, I have an idea for an RPG. Here's the idea.
You're a robot trapped in a post-apocalyptic futuristic city where all the humans have vanished. The city has been decaying for a while. As a robot, all you can really do is scavenge for energy or parts to sell or replace your own parts (you are, by no means, in pristine condition yourself). Getting to that energy or parts is the challenge - The city has decayed so the environment is a natural hazard. All the NPCs are as needy as you so to get any information out of them, you'll have to help them along the way (if you can).
I envision that part of the fun of the RPG is that you have to act like a robot: You can't lie, steal or kill another robot (which means pretty much everyone in the game). If you violate one of these rules, you receive a penalty where communicating becomes even harder (you have to start every sentence with a word that begins with the letter "K", you have to say every sentence in a sing-song fashion, you have to say every word in a sentence twice, etc.). The penalties increase until you have a meltdown (death) or can be partially repaired (at a steep price) by a merchant (if available). I'm not certain how many ways to die would be too many - I also envision the robot's engine leaking energy at irregular intervals, causing the robot to have to constantly explore new regions to find energy but sometimes pushing them off of their goal. You can also die by falling off a cliff or having a grand piano fall on top of you (you know, the classical type of death).
One aspect I'm exploring is to not have combat - I figure the difficulty of trying to act like a robot, coupled with all the other concerns would make combat counter-productive. You're already faulty living in a faulty environment; With a situation like this, do you really need enemies?
Character creation would be taking robot parts and sticking them together, creating your character. Each part would have various attributes that would determine a robot's speed, strength, skill set and so forth. Each part has advantages and disadvantages. As an example, legs are great for climbing stairs but wheels are less capable. Treads are great in loose sand and mud but lousy in stealth.
I'm not envisioning complicated mechanics in resolving unopposed actions - For attributes, you have numerical stats. For skills, you simply have the ability or you don't (you can either see in the dark or you can't, you can either speak Swahili or you can't). To resolve a challenge involving a numerical stat, it's a target number with a chance modifier if the stat is lower then the threshold needed. If you miss, you gain another penalty and if you succeed, you lose a penalty (or even gain a slight reward, like your engine leaks a little less temporarily).
For opposed action, I think the whole "acting like a robot" would be hard enough because even though you can't lie, that's not the same as telling the truth. It's more of a game to be very specific - You can tell someone that you'll give them the widget but you never specified WHEN or WHERE. You can't kill another robot but what's preventing you from simply dropping a landmine any old place because you're not killing anyone RIGHT NOW.
At any rate, I'd like to hear any feedback on this game idea... If it's been done already, if there are some obvious areas of game play concerns. Thank you.