Valor Quest

Thank you very much for your feedback.
I could always modify to a table top game and wokring out a good story line will give me time to hone my skills of synchronization.

DOn't worry about belittling my computer programming skills because I know they're limited and I'm not here to try and beat anyone but instead to gain advice on my Ideas.
I was thinking for the tournaments that they would be for mainly bragging rights but I think I'll add some side quests only attainable by getting to a certain rank through the tournaments. I'd be really happy if you would help me continue my story maybe by adding your own plot lines and me modifying them a bit to fit or modifying a bit of my story for it to fit. I'm glad to have found someone so dedicated to RPing.

Thanks a ton
Your Pal Shock

P.S. Can I add you to my friends so we could keep in touch better for plot lining? Thanks.

If you want to mark me as a friend, go ahead. For that matter my e=mail is listed in most of my recent games on 1km1kt.net. (I won't post it publicly... but its a good means for feedback if they take the time to download. Of course, there's a lot of other good stuff on that site as well - much by the other denizens of the lab.)

Give me a few suggestions about the themes you'd like to explore or set piece events for the players, and I'll see what I can do.

There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

Wow thanks, I was thinking about your magic and specialization suggestions and I think adding an element of magic to the game would be cool, maybe if at the beggining of the game the player must choose a class(like WoW) and play through accepting missions dealing with that class. The classes like most games based in midieval times will probably be: Knight, Wizard, Archer, Elf, and druid.

You're probably going to say wouldn't and elf b like and Archer and a Knight, but I was thinking of combining them together so he has a ranged attack and a sword but weakening them slightly.

For the backstory of why you're attacking the dragons I think I should do something similiar to Golden Sun, where as a kid you run away with this other kid (I havent named them) and you take shelter from the rain that just started in a cave. Then you see this gant tail sticking out of a passage way and chase it when it starts to slither away. You reach the end of the passage and there the dragon is, it tries to eat you and your companion so based on your luck you win against the dragon and continue on with the storyline as a great hero whose helping cities defeat dragons because of your luck with the first one, or you lose and go around defeating dragons as vengence for what the starter dragon did to you.

Hopefully you can help me with any flaws in my story or characters, thanks a ton.

Your Pal Shock

What you have is a decent start for a standard CRPG. However for either an MMO or a table top game, you're much too specific. In the later two media, character and motivation is something the player's create, while as the designer, you are to be designing a world for them to explore. At the moment, emphasis should be on where are the characters and what might they be doing than who they are. Script and setting come before actors and without a plot they don't matter. Also bear in mind that there would be more than a singular character in an MMO/PnP game and everyone can't have the same exact story at the start - right?

After some thought, I had an idea about the style of magic and why there might be such an emphasis on tournaments. So, consider this:

Magic is something akin to shamanism/cargo cults - the character is asking spirits to help, and to get any effect they need a representative piece of the animal/monster. (pelt, antler, tooth etc) However one needs to earn these bits - simply purchasing or giving away sacred objects would be a great insult to the spirits - and hence the magic would either stop working, or have an undesired effect. Thus tournaments act as a sort of swap meet - a chance to earn spirit trophies from others so you don't need to wander the entire world for bits you need.

Most effects would presumably be enhancemnts - speed of the deer, eyes of the eagle etc. rather than calling lightinng upon the enemy - unless you slay some fantastic demon or dragon.

People from different areas would grow up with different fauna and thus spirit guides/morals etc - so countries/realms can substitute for the rather tired elf/dwarf/gnome etc. paradigm

Of course, there is still plenty of room for elaboration, and at least a few words of artificial language are needed. (While Fetish would be the correct technical term - its also picked up some undesirable meaning that will be abused by players... rules of the internet...) Plus interesting terms make it seem less like postmortem pokemon. (gotta skin em all!)

So what is there aside from combat/questing? What technology is available?

Game design is a lot like cartography. You need to decide what you want to model (ie type of game) then establish a few benchmarks of major concepts to guide you. From there you refine the details a bit and decide major features. Then you just pass over and over filling in a bit more of the resolution each time.

You're off to a fine start. I've been doing this for years so don't worry, have fun.

There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

Wow that's excellent. I'm thinking from the fauna and spirit guides ideas we should design the game so there are startung points based on something similiar to the worlds climate and each race as it were would have a different special ability (like in WoW). We could set it up so there are a desert nomadic people, a tempurate forest people, an arctic (arctic and ant-arctic would have to be different as well) and a tropical forest people. Maybe there would be special climate attributes to so if you are a desert person you would have more trouble travesing a tropical forest than someone from the tropical area and to overcome this one would haev to purchase armor or clothing at a blacksmith or tailor shop depending on class. The armor purchased wouldn't completely dissolve the problem but illiminate enough of it so there wouldn't be a huge level of trouble. The skinning idea is cool but to cut down on animating time we could just choose one animal, say a lizard and slightly change the coloring so when one acquires said token of power, the effect will be different in each climate. Maybe we could also set power to the quality of the token as well.
If you've ever played world of warcraft there are instances a player can complete in game to get more experience and better weapons and equipment. I was thinking about my dragon fighting basis and maybe the dragons won't be a huge part of the game but more of a side quest ordeal to gain better stuff. Maybe dragons could have tokens like scales or teeth but they can only be equiped after beating a certain level of tournament?
Those are my ideas , please tell me what you think and add more, and thanks for helping me out those ideas are incredible.

Your Pal Shock

Unless you wanted to have some sort of user skill based mini-game, then there probably wouldn't be any real animation of the skining - it would just be a dropped item like in any other crpg. (albeit making a bit more sense than a spider with 15gp and a potion for some odd reason...) Part of the interface might be a series of circles forming a belt at the bottom of the screen, and when the characters turn for action comes up, you can click one to activate the power. (Instead of/in addition to attacks etc depending on the power. possibly depending on either the spirits relation with each other, or the characters shamanistic prowess.)

As an addendum, you could probably have only a limited number of items at one time (the rabbit spirit and the wolf spirit don't want to be together all that much) so in downtime the player needs to swap or optimize his layout.

I presume each area has at least one token for its environment so a desert person might need a hare's pelt for cold resistance. On the other hand, they should be fine without such a totem in their native land. Hence in their home terrain they get a "bonus slot" not taken up by the environment talisman. Perhaps there are other area restricted knowledges as well. In a flat plain or desert - archery would be ideal as its hard to get close to a mark that can see to the horizon. conversely, dense trees make close attacks a better choice. A little though could reveal some more area based skills, and culture might account for something as well.

Don't neglect the island people with the ability to breath underwater from the fish spirit... RPG worlds are often rife with different countries or city states, so characters may well be defined as nationality/profession rather than as race/class (albeit the end result is similar.)

Certainly leveling/increasing ones skills/attaining greater honor would allow them to endorse the help of more powerful spirits. It makes perfect sense that some animals might not help young adventures or perhaps expect a certain behavior code in their users. (Taken further, we could make certain ones available only to those who forgo PK to help encourage less antagonistic behavior amongst players.) Given the rarity of some supernatural creatures - only adventures who get into high level tournaments might get the prize.

There is a fine line between hobby and obsession. I seem to have lost sight of it some time ago.

I just saw 10 000 BC this weekend and this old lady was the shaman of the village in the mountains and blessed the hero and companions' and their spirits. I'm thinking we should include an interactive NPC ally that is formed through some sort of mystical alchemy. The dragon hunting was a major part of the game in my first idea base but now I'm turning it into an instance/dungeon battle quest. But I'm thinking maybe there should be multiple dragon in each area. The desert for example, and each dragon would drop a piece of itself: an eye, a bone, a scale, a feather and a fire essence. Once all piece are collected maybe you would be given an option to fuse the pieces together to form a smaller version of the dragon that grows in size and power with you and will give you hints on quest locations and weapon drop tips, as well as be able to fly you to locations when it reaches a certain level. I want to name the arctic tribe Arktos as in the Greek word for bear which is why the Arctic is named such. The constallation Ursa Major and the northern star.
I would like to include a people of the sky, and an underwater people, maybe instead of the underwater people we could use the island people.
I'm also thinking to promote character interaction and exploration we should set it up so a player can only gain 10-15 lvls in each area s/he goes and that the quests would have the same name and location but would be harder for the higher lvl people to complete than for the lower lvl people to complete.
Maybe an alternate dimension would be available to players who are the maximum lvl so they could gain wealth to purchase new skill for creating allies and gain new allies through harder instances.

Tell me what you think, I'm going to look harder for a better engine to create games like 3D cakewalk but something cheaper, please let me know if you hear anything, thanks!

Your Pal Shock