16 replies to this topic

[heroicraven]

im making a game which i am titling revenant , i would appreciate some feedback on the following plot idea:

the game takes place during the crusade time period. empires are fighting over sacred land.they are at war with vampires, demons, and even werewolves(possibly). at the same time, Malex (taken from 2 Latin words, Malum, which means evil, and Rex, which means king/ruler/monarch), who is the tragic hero in this story, is long-since dead, and is revived as a vampire by a mysterious Necromancer. Malex is informed that his once great kingdom had been destroyed. He alone must reclaim his kingdom, and fight the necromancers evil plan to rule over the sacred land of Sanctalis (combination of Latin words "Sanctus"[sacred] and "Letalis"[lethal/deadly], and thus rule the world.

if you have any ideas that would help sculpt the plot, i would appreciate those as well.

[Nocturne]

Welcome to the GMC! My feedback is : read the rules of the forum before posting!

The community is not really for this kind of topic, but we do have a dedicated section for Game Ideas and Design which is where I shall move this right now...

[Archaeaologist]

im making a game which i am titling revenant , i would appreciate some feedback on the following plot idea:

the game takes place during the crusade time period. empires are fighting over sacred land.they are at war with vampires, demons, and even werewolves(possibly). at the same time, Malex (taken from 2 Latin words, Malum, which means evil, and Rex, which means king/ruler/monarch), who is the tragic hero in this story, is long-since dead, and is revived as a vampire by a mysterious Necromancer. Malex is informed that his once great kingdom had been destroyed. He alone must reclaim his kingdom, and fight the necromancers evil plan to rule over the sacred land of Sanctalis (combination of Latin words "Sanctus"[sacred] and "Letalis"[lethal/deadly], and thus rule the world.

if you have any ideas that would help sculpt the plot, i would appreciate those as well.

The plot sounds fine, though your post leads me to believe you'd need a story editor. I kind of like the idea of playing as a Vampire fighting in a classical horror world against an even more powerful necromancer. Be sure to avoid pointing out that names comes from two Latin words in the game; they're a fine names, but pointing that out is unnecessary and tacky, at least in the game. I don't really know how much feedback or ideas I can give the plot at this stage of it, but it's original enough that I say run with it.

[IceMetalPunk]

I like the idea . However...the way you said "vampires, demons, and even werewolves (possibly)" makes me think you're just kind of throwing as many mythical monsters together as you can think up. That's sure to result in a mess of disjoint themes that will take away from your story/plot.

What you should do instead is consider your plot, especially your setting. It's medieval times, during the crusades, and you are a dead king who has been resurrected (as a vampire) by a necromancer. The creatures that immediately requires are humans, horses, wizards, and vampires. Considering the attitudes of the people back then towards magic, demons also fit in (in fact, I have a cool idea about that which I'll elaborate on below). Werewolves, however, are kind of random. They just don't fit in with the story well. Rather than trying to rework the story to fit werewolves, consider not including werewolves.

Now for the cool idea I thought of. Back in those days, all magic was evil and demonic. So wouldn't it be awesome if "demons" are actually tied into the wizards' powers? A very strong wizard would be considered a demon by the people of this world, and the power itself would physically change the witch/warlock to make them look more like demons. For example, it would make them more muscular, with altered skin tone, glowing eyes, etc. Stay away from horns for this, though, as it's cliched and doesn't make much sense that magical ability would manifest as horns...unless you're a unicorn .

Likewise, skilled magicians could conjure energy beings, spirits, or extradimensional creatures, which the humans would believe are demons as well. This gives you a place where horns (or even more outrageous horrors) actually make sense.

Overall, fit the characters to the story, not the other way around, and you'll be just fine with this concept .

Oh, and welcome to the GMC!

-IMP

[Archaeaologist]

Actually, Werewolves are often seen with Vampires. I think it would be better to have them as Lieutenants of Vampires (or whoever the big bads are), though, instead of at odds with Vampires (as Hollywood's been portraying them, as of late, bleh). Since there are Necromancers involved, you'll also need various undead like skeletons, zombies, ghouls, and bone horrors (not to mention Vampires, though Vampires tend to be a special kind of undead that have nothing to do with Necromancers and more to do with Vampires converting humans to more Vampires). Demons do make sense, and so do many other "dark" monsters. I'd consider using monsters that are either seen as nocturnal or just pure evil and limiting the population to that.

[IceMetalPunk]

Actually, Werewolves are often seen with Vampires. I think it would be better to have them as Lieutenants of Vampires (or whoever the big bads are), though, instead of at odds with Vampires (as Hollywood's been portraying them, as of late, bleh). Since there are Necromancers involved, you'll also need various undead like skeletons, zombies, ghouls, and bone horrors (not to mention Vampires, though Vampires tend to be a special kind of undead that have nothing to do with Necromancers and more to do with Vampires converting humans to more Vampires). Demons do make sense, and so do many other "dark" monsters. I'd consider using monsters that are either seen as nocturnal or just pure evil and limiting the population to that.

I know they're often portrayed together...but if you think about it, there's no reason for that. One creature is an undead human(oid) that drinks blood, converts humans into their species by biting them, and (sometimes) can transform into a bat. The other is a human that, given the right conditions (which vary from myth to myth), can transform into a wolf/human hybrid (or just a wolf, depending again on which myth you use). Other than the fact that they're both some type of shapeshifter, the rest of their properties don't really have any connection.

So, yes, they are often together. But there's no reason they should be, and I always feel like a cohesive story needs to at least have some reason for why things are how they are, even if that reason is a bit unusual. "They're both mythical and evil" doesn't really work (unless you're planning on going the Supernatural route and just throwing every mythical creature ever described into the game...but that would be crowded in one game ).

But maybe that's just me. Maybe I've been writing prose for so long that I have an unnatural sense of "why does this happen?" than most people.

-IMP

*EDIT* Hm. I just did some research because I was really curious to know what the connection between werewolves and vampires actually is. Turns out, in medieval Europe, people thought that if you didn't burn a werewolf's corpse, it would come back to life as a vampire-wolf. At night, it would be a wolf that ran around drinking blood, and during the day it would return to reanimated-corpse form (pale, sunken eyes, etc., like a vampire).

Wow. People are weird . But that does offer some help with your story. Perhaps you could bend that myth a bit and have vampires actually be reanimated werewolves. It combines the vampires and necromancers you already have in a way that's true to history and allows werewolves to make sense.

Of course, if you came back as a vampire, you must have also been a werewolf in life...which could be a very good plot twist towards the end of the game!

Edited by IceMetalPunk, 25 April 2012 - 10:01 PM.

[Yal]

I like this idea... I've actually considered a similar game where you played as a recently revived Count Dracula setting out to recover his lost lands.

One thing I'd planned to do was a "convert system". Basically, every single unit, friend or not, has a Level and levels up just like a player character. The main reason for this was that you'd be able to convert ANY fallen non-boss unit using some special resource in the progress (blood, mana or something). This would give the player a lot of freedom in selecting his units, and it'd also allow you to give the player consecutively harder enemies without making more kinds of enemies: just raise the levels of some enemies you've fought before! Like, start off fighting bats on Lv.1 in the first area, and as you go further into the ruin bats on Lv.3 starts appearing, and maybe some Lv.2 goblins too. Enemies would also be able to learn Skills, both weapon-based skills and magic, plus each race would have their own unique skills (for instance a Lv.50 bat would learn Nightfall Skewer which is a cut-based darkness-elemental AoE attack which mainly exists to give the player a reason to level the weakest race in the entire game so much, a Succubus would learn seductive skills that makes the target unequip its armor, and so on)

Also, you could let the player attack innocent townspeople, cows and so on, and then revive/necromance/convert them. They're maybe not as strong as monsters, but they would be better on using weapons and maybe learn some unique skills. For instance a cow could produce healing milk items outside of battle, letting you stock up your inventory on items mid-dungeon. A maidservant would have a larger inventory than a normal character making her a good assist character (plus she'd be extra good at equipping accessories, so once you get your hands on the Fire Necklace and Ring Of Destruction she suddenly get a force to be reckoned with), a knight would be good with stuff in general, a hunter could skin dead enemies to get items you could sell in towns, and so on.


Oh, also each enemy would have 6 repalettes, allowing you to give more variety. Each palette would have a different Class Name and a bit higher stat growth. For instance the first bat palette would be "Dingbat" and the 3rd palette "Swamp Bat". The last palette would be something like "Undead Egyptian Hellbat".

Similarily, the Knight palettes would go from "Knave" over "Squire" to "Knight" and then finally something like "Excalibur". If the palettes are done correctly it'll add loads of variety, making the PosiSlime feel a lot different from the FireSlime and BlueSlime and the Dark Knight feel a lot different from the Knight, and so on. You could also have some unique abilities for some palettes.

[chance]

...and is revived as a vampire by a mysterious Necromancer. Malex is informed that his once great kingdom had been destroyed. He alone must reclaim his kingdom, and fight the necromancers evil plan to rule over the sacred land of Sanctalis...

If the necromancer wants to rule Malex's old kingdom, why did he (the necromancer) revive him? Or is this a different necromancer?

Other than that, the plot/characters sound interesting. But what's the game about? And what style -- RPG, adventure/exploration, shooter.. ?

[heroicraven]

I like the idea . However...the way you said "vampires, demons, and even werewolves (possibly)" makes me think you're just kind of throwing as many mythical monsters together as you can think up. That's sure to result in a mess of disjoint themes that will take away from your story/plot.

What you should do instead is consider your plot, especially your setting. It's medieval times, during the crusades, and you are a dead king who has been resurrected (as a vampire) by a necromancer. The creatures that immediately requires are humans, horses, wizards, and vampires. Considering the attitudes of the people back then towards magic, demons also fit in (in fact, I have a cool idea about that which I'll elaborate on below). Werewolves, however, are kind of random. They just don't fit in with the story well. Rather than trying to rework the story to fit werewolves, consider not including werewolves.

Now for the cool idea I thought of. Back in those days, all magic was evil and demonic. So wouldn't it be awesome if "demons" are actually tied into the wizards' powers? A very strong wizard would be considered a demon by the people of this world, and the power itself would physically change the witch/warlock to make them look more like demons. For example, it would make them more muscular, with altered skin tone, glowing eyes, etc. Stay away from horns for this, though, as it's cliched and doesn't make much sense that magical ability would manifest as horns...unless you're a unicorn .

Likewise, skilled magicians could conjure energy beings, spirits, or extradimensional creatures, which the humans would believe are demons as well. This gives you a place where horns (or even more outrageous horrors) actually make sense.

Overall, fit the characters to the story, not the other way around, and you'll be just fine with this concept .

Oh, and welcome to the GMC!

-IMP

well im not exactly new with GM8...and i wasnt throwing random things into the plot...i wanted to do a dark, gothic/horror version of the crusades

...and is revived as a vampire by a mysterious Necromancer. Malex is informed that his once great kingdom had been destroyed. He alone must reclaim his kingdom, and fight the necromancers evil plan to rule over the sacred land of Sanctalis...

If the necromancer wants to rule Malex's old kingdom, why did he (the necromancer) revive him? Or is this a different necromancer?

Other than that, the plot/characters sound interesting. But what's the game about? And what style -- RPG, adventure/exploration, shooter.. ?

well this is almost like a brainstorm...you know those vampires, demons, and werewolves?the necromancer is their ruler...i know im still brainstorming

...and is revived as a vampire by a mysterious Necromancer. Malex is informed that his once great kingdom had been destroyed. He alone must reclaim his kingdom, and fight the necromancers evil plan to rule over the sacred land of Sanctalis...

If the necromancer wants to rule Malex's old kingdom, why did he (the necromancer) revive him? Or is this a different necromancer?

Other than that, the plot/characters sound interesting. But what's the game about? And what style -- RPG, adventure/exploration, shooter.. ?

...and is revived as a vampire by a mysterious Necromancer. Malex is informed that his once great kingdom had been destroyed. He alone must reclaim his kingdom, and fight the necromancers evil plan to rule over the sacred land of Sanctalis...

If the necromancer wants to rule Malex's old kingdom, why did he (the necromancer) revive him? Or is this a different necromancer?

Other than that, the plot/characters sound interesting. But what's the game about? And what style -- RPG, adventure/exploration, shooter.. ?

...and is revived as a vampire by a mysterious Necromancer. Malex is informed that his once great kingdom had been destroyed. He alone must reclaim his kingdom, and fight the necromancers evil plan to rule over the sacred land of Sanctalis...

If the necromancer wants to rule Malex's old kingdom, why did he (the necromancer) revive him? Or is this a different necromancer?

Other than that, the plot/characters sound interesting. But what's the game about? And what style -- RPG, adventure/exploration, shooter.. ?

the necromancer revived him because he saw him as a tool....and the game is gonna be hack&slash/rpg

[Archaeaologist]

I'm fully aware that games can break away from standard tropes, but I still feel I should ask, why are you making the main character a Vampire instead of some other undead that would make more sense for a necromancer to raise? Is it simply because you have your heart set on vampiric abilities, or do you have something even more specific in mind for the whole vampiric path? If it is for abilities, what kind of abilities do you see the character having?

Personally, if I were to write it, I'd consider making the character some sort of Death Knight. It could still have vampiric-like powers like a touch-based life draining or heat draining ability and sensitivity to sunlight and mostly human looking and immunity to most weapons and some sort of secret weakness like beheading or removal of stomach leading to death. I don't know if that's any more original, though, so if you have a good reason to make the main character a vampire then don't let me persuade you otherwise.

[heroicraven]

I'm fully aware that games can break away from standard tropes, but I still feel I should ask, why are you making the main character a Vampire instead of some other undead that would make more sense for a necromancer to raise? Is it simply because you have your heart set on vampiric abilities, or do you have something even more specific in mind for the whole vampiric path? If it is for abilities, what kind of abilities do you see the character having?

Personally, if I were to write it, I'd consider making the character some sort of Death Knight. It could still have vampiric-like powers like a touch-based life draining or heat draining ability and sensitivity to sunlight and mostly human looking and immunity to most weapons and some sort of secret weakness like beheading or removal of stomach leading to death. I don't know if that's any more original, though, so if you have a good reason to make the main character a vampire then don't let me persuade you otherwise.

[heroicraven]

im choosing to have a vampire as the protagonist because vampires are : A-immortal B-have various vampiric abilities C- they are, in my perspective, like the devil.

[Yal]

I'd personally make a sect with thousands of necromancers lead by a hellish king/emperor/insanse power-hungry fool and make the necromancer that revives the vampire protagonist be a nice necromancer that want to stop the bad stuff her bethren has stirred up.

For jRPG plot reasons, that necromancer would be female and end up as your love interest, and on top of that be the princess of the Necromancer Kingdom, being usurped by the current leader of the necromancers, who happens to be the brother of the main protagonist vampire.

Since the love interest generally turns out to be the party healer, you have a good twist there with her using necromancy instead of holy magic to heal. You remember that undeads take damage from healing magic and recover when hit by posion? You could make a really interesting spiteful healer character with those premises.

[maxriderules]

Alternately, the necromancer that revived you could just be out for revenge, or be reviving you as a power grab against the necromancer conglomerate. I prefer the idea of having shades of grey, instead of a clearly defined good or evil. Seems that a vampire protagonist would be an antihero at best, or at worst a vilain protagonist, and if you run with that, it makes sense that the group that uses such an individual wouldn't be doing it for the best of reasons.

[heroicraven]

Alternately, the necromancer that revived you could just be out for revenge, or be reviving you as a power grab against the necromancer conglomerate. I prefer the idea of having shades of grey, instead of a clearly defined good or evil. Seems that a vampire protagonist would be an antihero at best, or at worst a vilain protagonist, and if you run with that, it makes sense that the group that uses such an individual wouldn't be doing it for the best of reasons.

[heroicraven]

the thing is, is that Malex was involuntary made a vampire.......its hard to explain but my game is coming out pretty soon so maybe then you will understand

[Yal]

....its hard to explain but my game is coming out pretty soon...

Translation:

I'm so bad at english I don't understand half the stuff you're saying. I'm gonna make my game using my initial story taking no of your suggestions into account.

If that's what you meant:


I agree with MRR, by the way, with having shades of gray, people believing that they're good and that other people are evil, but in reality everyone does morally evil things no matter what side they fight for, it's just that some people can do more evil stuff.

That's actually (more or less) what happened in the IRL crusades in the 1400s: some religious fanatics high up in the ranks told the masses to go and slay some other people because their religion was evil. To keep themselves not starving, the crusade armies more or less raided villages to get food on their way through the continent (which took like a year, especially for the footfolk). Once there they more or less slayed everyone that seemed to be part of the "main target" religion they were after, including women and children, being quite affected by I Just Obeyed The Rules syndrome (or whatever it's called, it was proven scientifically with an experiment where the test subjects were ordered to punish an actor, that they believed were the test subject, by giving him stronger and stronger electric shocks when he gave the wrong answer to a question. If the "scientist" encouraged enough, most of the test subjects would actually give a shock marked as "deadly" even though most people say they wouldn't dream about killing someone!) and lots of religious and political propaganda at home and during the way to the war. Obviously the attacked people wanted revenge after the barbarian army from the west came and killed lots of innocent people, so when the (remaining shards of the) invading army thought they were done and left for the journey home with their loot, having their settlers now living in holy cities and other places that's been overtaken during the war... the same thing basically happened again. Invasions, sieges, and innocents getting killed. Obviously there was lots of good-hearted people on both sides, but even just a few really nasty people and a pinch of "We are human beings, they are not" propaganda is enough to result in pointless bloodbaths.

Oh, and the masses only got religious education back then, which meant that it was quite easy to feed them with propaganda that sounded reasonable. Think about it for a while - if your science teacher started telling you that, say, Canadian people were behind the greenhouse effect, ate children and were gonna cause the end of the world unless "purged away"... and there started to come out videogames about heroes fighting in Canada and killing people there to save the world (which is the modern-day acronym for the bard tales told about the battles of the crusade)... wouldn't that sort of affect you in some way sooner or later? Especially if you really like your science teacher because you get along so well, such tutor-to-pupil propaganda is really powerful. Same if your parents started to believe this and put it into part of your education.

Basically, all terrible conflicts start off like this. Between the world wars, the kids of a certain country was fed with propaganda about how the rest of the world had unfairly punished them, taking away big chunks of their fatherland and shared among themselves, condemning them to starvation and eventually vanishing from the surface of the earth, even though they hailed from the strongest race of humanity... and we all know what happened in 1939.

To nail it down to a few points behind how to make a realistic war for your game:
- There has to be reasonable hate to some other ethnical group. For instance, in Germany there was a growing hate to the rest of the world after large parts of the country had been "stolen" by other countries and the people felt they were treated unfairly.
- As part of the hate, the attacking side sends out propaganda about their main target being "lesser beings", so that if you kill one of them you don't murder, you purge out evil. (Obviously killing someone, especially innocent, is always bad, no matter the reason!)
- There's some "lighting spark" that sets the gunpowder keg of hate ablaze. It's not really "that bad", but it sets of a domino effect of sorts, or it gives you the reason you wanted to send off the army you've been preparing. For instance, the reason the Crusades started was that Jerusalem (the holiest city within Christianity) had been taken over by the muslims.
- Finally, people aren't good or evil: nice guys can commit terrible war crimes while people you wouldn't like meeting in a dark alley might show great concern for civilians.

For different shades of gray, you could give all important character a reason to fight:
- Because of beliefs, religious or otherwise fanatism, or similar (these guys often end up doing war crimes and killing innocents)
- Because of greed and a desire to loot in the ensuing warchaos (these people are quite nasty to innocents, too)
- Because being paid to do it (these people are quite emotionless and tend to turn traitors if someone pays them more)
- Because of being ordered to do it or face serious repercussions (these people gives pretty much concern to innocents, since they know how it is - they're from the same social layer)
- Because of being bored (these people can be really nasty, but most of them don't want to slay villagers because they don't put up a good fight)
- Because of wanting to change the world, hopefully to the better (these people typically get cynical, disillusioned veterans sooner or later)
- Because of hoping to grasp some power (these people may be quite nasty, but that depends on how much support from the people they'll need to succeed in their plans. They're also quite commonly traitors)