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NEW GAME IDEA - LOOKING FOR FEEDBACK AND SUGGESTIONS
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cadh20000
14
cadh20000
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CloseI'm planning out another game project. Just got done brainstorming with some guys about it. Somehow during the process I ended up committing myself to writing a bunch of spells and doing up 2 alternate graphics of each of the spellbook pages for the project...
The spellbook itself is a semi-conscious entity designed to teach and test novice mages. Study hard and pass the tests to learn new spells, fail the tests and you are trapped in the pocket dimension where the test takes place until such a time as you can pass the test…or die trying…
Intro story:
http://fav.me/d5b7r2w
Basically, a boy goes to a convention with a book cosplaying as a magician, but accidentally casts a real spell as the book turns out to be real. This brings some unwanted attention, and now he has to recruit allies to help him stay alive while he races to figure out how to destroy, or render useless, the book his enemies are after.
The incident with the Salamander alerts some bad people/evil magic users to the existence of the spellbook. You are forced to break your vow and actually learn to use it correctly in order to protect yourself.
Basically each page of the spellbook will display in the Futhark syllabary until it is learned by completing the spellbook's tests at which time the graphic will be switched to the same spell in the English alphabet and the spell is added to the skill list.
I do have 4 of them basically done except for minor edits...
I had done those 4 as a scroll for an illustration for my book quite a while back, but since I took those 4 spells straight from the book, I can take the illustration from it too and just edit it to look like an old book page instead of an unrolled scroll, right?
Game mechanics ideas:
1. The team recruitment takes place at school.
2. Recruit classmates to help you fight. Different classmates have different skills depending on the classes they specialize in:
a. Chemistry = Alchemist
b. Gym = Fighter
c. Etc…
3. Who is willing to join and how you are treated depends on your rep.
a. Example: Do well and strong people join you, do poorly and only weak ones will.
4. Reputation system built around separate “Classes” where you have an
a. overall reputation based on combined score as well as
b. sub-reputation based on separate classes.
5. Different NPC/Potential team-mates are impressed by doing well in different classes
6. Reputation is also built on how you treat the others;
a. Example:
i. bully weaker kids and only bullies/delinquents will want to join you
ii. defend weaker kids and “upstanding” kids will want to join you
Anyway... Anyone feel like suggesting a spell or two for the list? Nothing too graphic please, the playable characters are a 12 yr old and his classmates.
The spellbook itself is a semi-conscious entity designed to teach and test novice mages. Study hard and pass the tests to learn new spells, fail the tests and you are trapped in the pocket dimension where the test takes place until such a time as you can pass the test…or die trying…
Intro story:
http://fav.me/d5b7r2w
Basically, a boy goes to a convention with a book cosplaying as a magician, but accidentally casts a real spell as the book turns out to be real. This brings some unwanted attention, and now he has to recruit allies to help him stay alive while he races to figure out how to destroy, or render useless, the book his enemies are after.
The incident with the Salamander alerts some bad people/evil magic users to the existence of the spellbook. You are forced to break your vow and actually learn to use it correctly in order to protect yourself.
Basically each page of the spellbook will display in the Futhark syllabary until it is learned by completing the spellbook's tests at which time the graphic will be switched to the same spell in the English alphabet and the spell is added to the skill list.
I do have 4 of them basically done except for minor edits...
I had done those 4 as a scroll for an illustration for my book quite a while back, but since I took those 4 spells straight from the book, I can take the illustration from it too and just edit it to look like an old book page instead of an unrolled scroll, right?
Game mechanics ideas:
1. The team recruitment takes place at school.
2. Recruit classmates to help you fight. Different classmates have different skills depending on the classes they specialize in:
a. Chemistry = Alchemist
b. Gym = Fighter
c. Etc…
3. Who is willing to join and how you are treated depends on your rep.
a. Example: Do well and strong people join you, do poorly and only weak ones will.
4. Reputation system built around separate “Classes” where you have an
a. overall reputation based on combined score as well as
b. sub-reputation based on separate classes.
5. Different NPC/Potential team-mates are impressed by doing well in different classes
6. Reputation is also built on how you treat the others;
a. Example:
i. bully weaker kids and only bullies/delinquents will want to join you
ii. defend weaker kids and “upstanding” kids will want to join you
Anyway... Anyone feel like suggesting a spell or two for the list? Nothing too graphic please, the playable characters are a 12 yr old and his classmates.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
There's some potential for some good puns in the class system, if their classes are based on their... classes. Your main character should have to visit the guidance counselor to apply for a class change.
This is middle school; there aren't any "upstanding" kids. (All middle schoolers are horrible in their own unique ways!) There are nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, goths, band members, preppy kids, and other cliques. I would probably base your reputation system on something like that.
As far as spells go, uh, you haven't given us much to go on. "Suggest an ability for a video game, I have no ideas yet" isn't exactly very frikkin' specific. Recommend figuring out what sorts of dynamics you want combat to be based on. How easy do you want healing to be? How long do you want battles to last? How much do you want party members to rely on each-other for their skills to be effective? How much freedom do you want the player to have in their strategies? Do you want battles to be about dealing damage before enemies can hurt you, or about using defensive skills to prevent the damage, or about healing after the damage is dealt? Do you want a tanking system to give the player a way to deal with enemy damage? How much room for error do you want the player to have? How tense do you want normal battles to be? How common do you want bosses to be? How do you want character turns to work? Do you want to build skills that play off of each-other to create a skill rotation, so that players don't use the same skills every round? Or do that via some other method, like cooldowns or combos? How important do you want status effects to be? Do you have some specific gimmicks in mind that will be key skills/features that feel like the centerpiece of your game's combat system, like controlling enemies or destroying missiles or targeting individual body parts? Are you even making an RPG??? Maybe read this topic and this one and this one and this one and this one and oh hey this one.
This is middle school; there aren't any "upstanding" kids. (All middle schoolers are horrible in their own unique ways!) There are nerds, jocks, cheerleaders, goths, band members, preppy kids, and other cliques. I would probably base your reputation system on something like that.
As far as spells go, uh, you haven't given us much to go on. "Suggest an ability for a video game, I have no ideas yet" isn't exactly very frikkin' specific. Recommend figuring out what sorts of dynamics you want combat to be based on. How easy do you want healing to be? How long do you want battles to last? How much do you want party members to rely on each-other for their skills to be effective? How much freedom do you want the player to have in their strategies? Do you want battles to be about dealing damage before enemies can hurt you, or about using defensive skills to prevent the damage, or about healing after the damage is dealt? Do you want a tanking system to give the player a way to deal with enemy damage? How much room for error do you want the player to have? How tense do you want normal battles to be? How common do you want bosses to be? How do you want character turns to work? Do you want to build skills that play off of each-other to create a skill rotation, so that players don't use the same skills every round? Or do that via some other method, like cooldowns or combos? How important do you want status effects to be? Do you have some specific gimmicks in mind that will be key skills/features that feel like the centerpiece of your game's combat system, like controlling enemies or destroying missiles or targeting individual body parts? Are you even making an RPG??? Maybe read this topic and this one and this one and this one and this one and oh hey this one.
cadh20000
14
Sorry, I was posting at about 3am, should have put off posting til today AFTER I slept. :p Anyway, not the first time I've designed a skill set, just the first time I asked for suggestions while 1/2 asleep.
I'll try to address each of the points you brought up, but if I miss one in that block of text just point it out graciously, no need to be snippy.
Part 1:
The game has only had about 5 hours of brainstorming. Mostly focusing on:
Actual combat is only about 1/3~1/2 the game.
Skills are ADVANCED through combat, but are acquired outside of it through the classes/clubs and spellbook "trials".
It would be primarily a combination tactical-RPG and school-life sim with a variety of potential teammates each with their own skill-set so the player should have quite a bit of freedom as far as strategy.
The setting is the modern world and the main character is the only true Mage/Wizard among the good guys, the rest of them are to be recruited from among his classmates and who specialize according to the classes they are good at in school, for example the chemistry wiz is an Alchemist and uses potions to attack/heal, the jock is a Brawler and uses his fists and feet to attack, kid from shop class is a Mechanic, etc... Not all classes are combat-oriented though. You can keep some allies in the background pumping out potions (Alchemist) or making/upgrading weapons and tools (Mechanic).
If the main character/commander is defeated the game is over, but he MUST participate in all battles, so keeping him alive is your main priority. If anyone else gets defeated they retreat from the battle and lose respect for you, lose too much respect and they leave the team completely...
Mage/Wizard/Commander: Strong long-range attacks and support spells, weak close-range combat skills. Has the ability to sacrifice his turn to give an ally another one that round.
Alchemists: Basically healers/trap masters. They are useless in head-to-head combat unless they have been prepared properly in the chem-lab first. They make potions to heal and/or attack. However, IF you have acquired the appropriate materials and recipes they can inflict status ailments such as poison or wield explosives to hit multiple enemies (example: set up a molotov cocktail to blow underneath the enemy party causing heavy fire damage to those within range)
Brawler(or Fighter. I haven't finalized the class title yet): uses hand to hand combat which includes attacks ranging from punches and kicks for immediate damage to submission holds which can be used to temporarily disable most enemies and capture some enemies which allows the player to obtain items and/or information.
Mechanic: Worthless in combat, invaluable in the Shop Class where he/she makes tools and weapons for the rest of the team to use.
Still working on the other classes...
I didn't want the standard RPG skills like "Magic Arrow" or "Fireball", they've been so overused that they're kinda cliche. For instance, the four I already have are "The Summoning of the Elementals" set (Fire, Water, Wind and Earth) and each calls in a magical (Elemental) ally(Salamander, Undine, Sylph, or Golem) for one powerful attack in their element at the cost of leaving the caster wide open for that turn.
I've got to run some errands now, I'll be back and address the rest in a bit.
I'll try to address each of the points you brought up, but if I miss one in that block of text just point it out graciously, no need to be snippy.
Part 1:
The game has only had about 5 hours of brainstorming. Mostly focusing on:
- Reputation system (which includes/controls team acquisition and management)
- Skill acquisition and advancement
- Item/weapon acquisition and advancement
- Storyline advancement
- Event conditions
Actual combat is only about 1/3~1/2 the game.
Skills are ADVANCED through combat, but are acquired outside of it through the classes/clubs and spellbook "trials".
It would be primarily a combination tactical-RPG and school-life sim with a variety of potential teammates each with their own skill-set so the player should have quite a bit of freedom as far as strategy.
The setting is the modern world and the main character is the only true Mage/Wizard among the good guys, the rest of them are to be recruited from among his classmates and who specialize according to the classes they are good at in school, for example the chemistry wiz is an Alchemist and uses potions to attack/heal, the jock is a Brawler and uses his fists and feet to attack, kid from shop class is a Mechanic, etc... Not all classes are combat-oriented though. You can keep some allies in the background pumping out potions (Alchemist) or making/upgrading weapons and tools (Mechanic).
If the main character/commander is defeated the game is over, but he MUST participate in all battles, so keeping him alive is your main priority. If anyone else gets defeated they retreat from the battle and lose respect for you, lose too much respect and they leave the team completely...
Mage/Wizard/Commander: Strong long-range attacks and support spells, weak close-range combat skills. Has the ability to sacrifice his turn to give an ally another one that round.
Alchemists: Basically healers/trap masters. They are useless in head-to-head combat unless they have been prepared properly in the chem-lab first. They make potions to heal and/or attack. However, IF you have acquired the appropriate materials and recipes they can inflict status ailments such as poison or wield explosives to hit multiple enemies (example: set up a molotov cocktail to blow underneath the enemy party causing heavy fire damage to those within range)
Brawler(or Fighter. I haven't finalized the class title yet): uses hand to hand combat which includes attacks ranging from punches and kicks for immediate damage to submission holds which can be used to temporarily disable most enemies and capture some enemies which allows the player to obtain items and/or information.
Mechanic: Worthless in combat, invaluable in the Shop Class where he/she makes tools and weapons for the rest of the team to use.
Still working on the other classes...
I didn't want the standard RPG skills like "Magic Arrow" or "Fireball", they've been so overused that they're kinda cliche. For instance, the four I already have are "The Summoning of the Elementals" set (Fire, Water, Wind and Earth) and each calls in a magical (Elemental) ally(Salamander, Undine, Sylph, or Golem) for one powerful attack in their element at the cost of leaving the caster wide open for that turn.
I've got to run some errands now, I'll be back and address the rest in a bit.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I AM INCAPABLE OF NOT BEING SNIPPY
No but yeah it seems like you probably at least mostly have an idea of what you're doing, which is good. If the main character's death results in game over, my first thought is that there probably need to be ways to influence who the enemies attack. In a tactical RPG, though, positioning might be all you need. The key will be to make the main character useful from a longer range than the rest of the party (sensible anyway for a mage) and to make sure that, if you ever give enemies ultra-long-distance attacks, the player has tools to deal with those enemies and make sure they can't pick off the leader.
Of the different possible classes, it seems like outside of phys ed, shop class and chemistry are the two most likely candidates for allies that deal damage. One uses power tools and the other makes things explode; how much better suited to a damage-dealer could they be? Making them be pure support roles makes me wonder who is gonna deal damage. The math, art, biology, literature, newspaper, band, and lunch characters all make far less sense as damage-dealers. I could probably see home ec being a damage-dealing class, using kitchen knives and hot oil and sewing needles. Maybe the history character thinks he's a ninja and uses medieval japanese weapons? God that sounds so perfect for middle school.
If only one character uses magic, you proooobably don't need elements. I mean, you could fit them in, but you could just as easily make the game without them. And it's both harder than usual and less necessary than usual to make them meaningful in a tactical RPG, because skills already have an extra layer of depth that affects which skill you use use: range and area-of-effect. The only time I've seen elements make any sense in a tactical RPG was in Fire Emblem, where you had 15-vs-40 battles and all skills were single-target, so choosing the right character to attack the right enemy was actually something you got to do really often. Usually in TRPGs the choice of targets is naturally very limited due to range, and then the choice of skills is limited because hitting multiple targets or staying out of the enemies' range trumps almost any elemental advantage.
No but yeah it seems like you probably at least mostly have an idea of what you're doing, which is good. If the main character's death results in game over, my first thought is that there probably need to be ways to influence who the enemies attack. In a tactical RPG, though, positioning might be all you need. The key will be to make the main character useful from a longer range than the rest of the party (sensible anyway for a mage) and to make sure that, if you ever give enemies ultra-long-distance attacks, the player has tools to deal with those enemies and make sure they can't pick off the leader.
Of the different possible classes, it seems like outside of phys ed, shop class and chemistry are the two most likely candidates for allies that deal damage. One uses power tools and the other makes things explode; how much better suited to a damage-dealer could they be? Making them be pure support roles makes me wonder who is gonna deal damage. The math, art, biology, literature, newspaper, band, and lunch characters all make far less sense as damage-dealers. I could probably see home ec being a damage-dealing class, using kitchen knives and hot oil and sewing needles. Maybe the history character thinks he's a ninja and uses medieval japanese weapons? God that sounds so perfect for middle school.
If only one character uses magic, you proooobably don't need elements. I mean, you could fit them in, but you could just as easily make the game without them. And it's both harder than usual and less necessary than usual to make them meaningful in a tactical RPG, because skills already have an extra layer of depth that affects which skill you use use: range and area-of-effect. The only time I've seen elements make any sense in a tactical RPG was in Fire Emblem, where you had 15-vs-40 battles and all skills were single-target, so choosing the right character to attack the right enemy was actually something you got to do really often. Usually in TRPGs the choice of targets is naturally very limited due to range, and then the choice of skills is limited because hitting multiple targets or staying out of the enemies' range trumps almost any elemental advantage.
cadh20000
14
I was thinking of clubs like Archery for ranged damage dealers and a Martial Arts club for more refined close range damage dealers(also able to reduce stats by striking pressure points, etc...) but haven't gone in-depth with that yet.
I like the idea of a history-buff/would-be ninja!
As to magic users, there is only 1 GOOD magic user, most of the bad guys are either magic users or employed by magic users.
Basically the story goes that he caused a scene when he summoned a fire elemental in the middle of a scifi/fantasy convention while cosplaying as a wizard with this antique spellbook he found among his grandfather's things.
The official story was the fire broke out because of faulty wiring and the panicked descriptions of a small dragon made of fire flying around in the middle of it were dismissed as hysteria, but a coterie of evil mages who had been manipulating things from the background heard these descriptions and recognized the creature as a magical summons. They wish to remain in the shadows and retain all magical power for themselves. The existence of the spellbook in the hands of a child outside their group threatens both their power and their secrecy so they decide to kill you and steal the book for themselves.
I like the idea of a history-buff/would-be ninja!
As to magic users, there is only 1 GOOD magic user, most of the bad guys are either magic users or employed by magic users.
Basically the story goes that he caused a scene when he summoned a fire elemental in the middle of a scifi/fantasy convention while cosplaying as a wizard with this antique spellbook he found among his grandfather's things.
The official story was the fire broke out because of faulty wiring and the panicked descriptions of a small dragon made of fire flying around in the middle of it were dismissed as hysteria, but a coterie of evil mages who had been manipulating things from the background heard these descriptions and recognized the creature as a magical summons. They wish to remain in the shadows and retain all magical power for themselves. The existence of the spellbook in the hands of a child outside their group threatens both their power and their secrecy so they decide to kill you and steal the book for themselves.
cadh20000
14
Oh, forgot magical summons such as elementals who would take damage differently based on the attacking element and are even healed by attacks of their own element. Some, such as Sylph (Wind Elemental) are totally immune to purely physical attacks.
Jess24
0
The history buff could be able to use many different kind of weapons, and each of those are different in their own way: A spear can attack from a 2-or-3 block range, a morning star could be used against armored enemies, etc...
The Home-ec could be both offensive (using knives and needles to attack short-range) and support (cooking stuff to heal allies).
Biology could be used as a hit-and-run class: very effective when it connects (because it knows where to hit), but very fragile. Alternatively, his support would be constructed around figuring the weaknesses of the monsters (think Rise from Persona 4 or the Libra spell from Final Fantasy).
Math and cheerleading would be support classes, with math increasing the accuracy/potency of attacks and the cheerleader being able to give a second turn to other units.
Band member could be used as a buffer/debuffer, like playing really hard music to confuse/scare enemies, etc.
Question: Jocks are going to be once Class or are there going to be classes for Baseball, basketball, rugby, etc?
The Home-ec could be both offensive (using knives and needles to attack short-range) and support (cooking stuff to heal allies).
Biology could be used as a hit-and-run class: very effective when it connects (because it knows where to hit), but very fragile. Alternatively, his support would be constructed around figuring the weaknesses of the monsters (think Rise from Persona 4 or the Libra spell from Final Fantasy).
Math and cheerleading would be support classes, with math increasing the accuracy/potency of attacks and the cheerleader being able to give a second turn to other units.
Band member could be used as a buffer/debuffer, like playing really hard music to confuse/scare enemies, etc.
Question: Jocks are going to be once Class or are there going to be classes for Baseball, basketball, rugby, etc?
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