1) What do you _not_ want to see in the story?
- Genre - traditional fantasy/sci fi
- Characters - cliche villians, characters without developed personalities and backgrounds.
- Abilities - magic, enchanted equipment
- Tropes - amnesia, war, heros, all oppostion is evil
- Plots - save the world/princess, get the magic X to stop the evil Y.
- Settings - fantasy world

2) What existing ideas do you have that you would like to possibly put into the story (describe in detail please)?
- Genre - satire, mistaken identity, journey
- Characters - Aku the shapeshifting master,
- Asuka, the last in a long line of human hunters( human hunters used to protect the settlements from rovering bands of humans that would attack lone travelers and occasionally settlements. But alas deforestation and over hunting lead to the extinction of wild humans.) who's family want to contiune the family line and traditional role. While all she wants to do is become a dancer, artist or writer.
- Cleo, a human who awakes form cryo suspetion to find her self in this strange new world.
- Abilities - All abilites come from either tools, or are taught in some kind of school. Abilities should be used to overcome diffrent challenges, obstacles and puzzles. Combat should take the form of some kind of competitive puzzle.
- Tropes - new game+, players can make changes in one game such leaving equipment in special containers or alter the landscape and create changes in the next game. For instance leaving a ivory statue is container in cave where a poor family once lived, could me that in the next game that family instead of dying out are now the wealthest people in the settlement.
- A barter based economy
- An education system
- Survial aspect to game play, players need to food, heat, shelter, sleep
- Plots - All the imporant characters have met before at some point all though they arn't sure when or where. The encounter with a main character is always accompined by a feeling of deja vu and a flash of a similar encounter when they first new each other(perhaps this could incorperate the new game+ feature). Where they met before could be a pastlife, alternate universe or some kind of time travel.
- Settings - An artic world with mountains of ice and snow. There are a few small forests but most have been cut down for making tools. Under the ice and snow are the rement of our modern society, people called diiggers explore these ruins through tunnels from the surface(sky scrapers), they recover lost artifacts from that world and trade them form goods and supplies. Settlements are combination of primitive tribal villages and victorian industial communities.



4) Romance has been mentioned a lot recently. Please describe in as much detail as possible how much and what kind of romance you would want the game to have.

The player should be able to player both love interest and match maker. It should be possible to develop and have diffrent kinds of relationships with each of the main characters. These relationships should also have an effect the story path, game play and ending(for instance if the main character is male and has casual sex with each of the female main characters, it would be funny if at the end of the game they all turned up on his doorstep with kids demanding he take of them all.) The player should also be able to build up the relationships between the npcs which also has an effect of story, gameplay, and ending.

The actual form of relationship building could consist of gift giving, a conversation mini game, etc...

5) If you could only choose one item you have listed above to go into the story, which one would it be?
All abilites come from tools and education.

Just an idea that came to me and I thought I'd shout it out there before it faded.

Looks like for plot/setting we could have:

Set sometime in the distance future, years after either humanity is destroyed or has nearly been destroyed. There are two species of alien races from somewhere else in the cosmos and they arrive on earth and begin colonizing the planet. There is some conflict between the two or no conflict, everything I assume is open for discussion. These two alien races uncover a few human in cryo stasis. Those will be our user or PC characters and the NPC will be the alien creatures, or however we all decide. It will be a game in which you will have to discover the lost history of your own race in a new completely terreformed world.

Thats what I'm getting so far!

Quote:Original post by 5MinuteGaming
Just an idea that came to me and I thought I'd shout it out there before it faded.

Looks like for plot/setting we could have:

Set sometime in the distance future, years after either humanity is destroyed or has nearly been destroyed. There are two species of alien races from somewhere else in the cosmos and they arrive on earth and begin colonizing the planet. There is some conflict between the two or no conflict, everything I assume is open for discussion. These two alien races uncover a few human in cryo stasis. Those will be our user or PC characters and the NPC will be the alien creatures, or however we all decide. It will be a game in which you will have to discover the lost history of your own race in a new completely terreformed world.

Thats what I'm getting so far!

Hmm, that could work. It should be a mystery at first why there are two kinds of aliens on the same planet, where the hell the aliens' magic came from, and whether there are any humans elsewhere or the cryo-capsule people are truly the only remnants of their species. And possible endings could be: you lead the little band of humans to found a new Earth, you discover that the aliens actually are humans after lots of evolution, you decide that one of the groups of aliens are superior to humans and have yourself transformed into one of them and make your life among them, etc.

Or another possible ending would be that the Alien races are actually created by the humans of the past. One gets their magic from mechanical nano or some type of computer implant or devices. Much like those of the Techno-Mages kind of like from Babylon 5. I always thought that was a cool idea. The other alien race gets their magic from holy relics which contain a suffisticated anti-matter device used to allow them to control energy with their minds.

Your right that the reasons for both species on the planet should not be immediately apparent and I don't even think that one species should know of the existance or occupation of the other on the planet. Say their are only a few cities and the aliens have colonized only a small portion of the world this would make it more feasible in a game setting simply because its such a large planet to create in a game.

Quote:Original post by 5MinuteGaming
Or another possible ending would be that the Alien races are actually created by the humans of the past. One gets their magic from mechanical nano or some type of computer implant or devices. Much like those of the Techno-Mages kind of like from Babylon 5. I always thought that was a cool idea. The other alien race gets their magic from holy relics which contain a suffisticated anti-matter device used to allow them to control energy with their minds.

Your right that the reasons for both species on the planet should not be immediately apparent and I don't even think that one species should know of the existance or occupation of the other on the planet. Say their are only a few cities and the aliens have colonized only a small portion of the world this would make it more feasible in a game setting simply because its such a large planet to create in a game.

If the magic all came from technology it wouldn't really be science-fantasy, only science fiction. I think gamegod's point in suggesting the two races, one technological and one magical, was to contrast scientific and spiritual ways of thinking. And like I've said twice before, when there are multiple races in a game they should never be isolated from each other because this cripples possibilities for developing theme and conflict through the interaction of the races. Besides, it would be much more mysterious how two alien races came to coexist peacefully on the same planet than how two isolated alien groups came to exist on a planet.

Well, It was just a possibility although now that you mention about them being seperate. I was only thinking there should be seperate but then you could also add in the element that during the life of the game these two races meet and either they peacefully decide to coexist adding in the element of teaching people how two races should coexist or that you as the player has to come up with compromises for the alien races to coexist so that there isn't mass bloodshed.

Another possibility for the Magic is that the one race acheives such wonder through technology and the second through simply knowing the universe. I don't see how them having control of energy with their minds isn't magical. In almost all fantasy involving magic you could explain it by saying that they could control matter or energy with their minds. Its just taking a deeper look into it. In the actual story the Magic doesn't need to be explained. I mean even look at Star Wars, D&D so if you want a Tolkien romantic sentiment of magic where you never delve into an explaination of it just leave out the religious artifact and just say they have magic powers.

Quote:I mean even look at Star Wars, D&D so if you want a Tolkien romantic sentiment of magic where you never delve into an explaination of it just leave out the religious artifact and just say they have magic powers.

Just to interject here: both example DO in fact explain magic, they don't simply state "magic exists". In the SW mythos the Jedi (and others) powers are based on a universal underlying, linking energy force - simply, "the Force". By accessing this energy, perhaps the source of all creation, they are able to manipulate the natural forces of the world to do "wonderous" things.

In D&D, it depends on the realm. Forgotten Realms uses the Weave as a magical source, and it is god (goddess)-derived. While spellcasters do not have to "pray" for their spells, they tap into an energy well existing, perhaps, extraplanar, and shape/manipulate that energy using various tokens, talismens, incantations and/or somatic manipulations.

So in worldbuilding, as a writer, I'd hate to see the cop-out "magic simply IS"; I'd want to know more about how it is viewed, philosophically (even if on a small level), by believers and possibly non-believers as well.

And now, back to your program ;)

Looks like we're doing good here. Now, I want to know if everyone is basically on the same page here, so...

It seems like the plot we're developing is the following:

Many thousands (millions, even) years into the future we have 2 races on planet earth. One is a more spiritual, nature/magic oriented race and one is a more technologically advanced race. Neither of these races are human, but must coexist peacefully on earth.

I may be wrong, but that seems to be the general idea floating around. Now, more specific ideas that are popular (and I like myself) are:

You area human who has been cryogenically frozen (for whatever reason) and you wake up to a planet with the aforementioned setting. You (and whatever other characters awaken with you, if any) must learn about this new world, discover where you are, secrets of the past, and any way to get back home.

So it seems that we have the basic setting down, and a few ideas on the character base, but I just wanna know everyones opinions on the things I mentioned.

Anyhow, my little twists on this are:

- Races:
One of the races is a humanoid race, with alittle modification or evolution (such as wings, four arms, or other such adaption). This would be the spiritual/magic oriented race, which would have minor mechanical technologies, mainly in the departments of transportation (Zepplins and rail cars) and weapons (Rifles and Flint lock pistols). This race would present itself and believe itself to be the natives of the planet, who have been there since the dawn of time. The humaniod apearence can bring about questions of their true origins, be it evoltion of the race or scientific experimentation gone planetary.
The other could be a more alien race (no ideas yet on appearence) with very advanced technology (but no magic or religion). This race is greedy and cunning, but their numbers and power are no match for the natives and their magic.
- Characters: I would like to see a large cast of playable characters. There are many oportunities in this case for a diverse cast. In the begining, you can have the characters who awaken to this new world (2-3), humans that still somehow exist on this planet (1 or 2) a member of the spiritual race (preferably 1) and a member of the technological race (also probably 1 if any). That's seven characters already, and plenty of oportunities for more. In addition, I think the way you play the game can affect who join your party (taking a stand with the tech race could offer less alliance oportunities with the natives).
- Setting: Since it's going to be earth (or so it seems), geography can be similar, but it would also be interesting to have different climate changes (North America is a winter continent, while Siberia is now a tropical hell), and depending on how far in the future, continental drift. I don't think this part is vital to the plot at this point.

Anyhow, just some ideas. So, any feedback would be great. Looks like the project is coming along fine.

-TJ

Another idea I had adding on to TraderJacks summary and ideas. We could have it so that those who imerge from cryostasis know only a little about their past as they suffer from temporary amnesia so that would allow for a cutscene here an there in the game showing a flashback of the persons life before they entered into cryo. Similarily since we are definitely going to have more than one playable character who was in cryo. They could all be from different times thus creating a slue of different historical events to complete a time line dating to the present and discovering the truth about what happened to humans.

Those alien characters could also be involved in this mission to uncover the mystery of the human race by being either Historians or equivalent there of in their own culture or Xenobiologists. Also for the love and romance element we could add in that one or more of the characters had a loved one that they remember being put into cryo-stasis which leaves the added option of the player searching for them and thus another possible ending.

Anyone like to add or offer an alternate opinion?