The game would be a sort of RPG with sandbox like base, gameplay premise and storyline being thought out to be coherent. The game open with a rather basic mission : a female Human, only known as the Censeure (Censor) is sent by the Inquisition to investigate on the activities of a Count. The Censeure, from the get go, don’t hide that she don’t care about inquiries much : she show a open delight at the thought of executing the Count. She obviously also care a lot less about summoning than the fact that the Count is a rapist (kinda like Gilles de Rais), that caused a huge scandal at the capital, and who is down to stuff like alchemy and demon summoning to maintain his lifestyle. The Censeure is, this is also obvious, borderline unhinged, out of the grief for the death of her daughter Iris. The Censeure, while being overpowering to enemies, being able to use with ease magic and swords, is more prone to using her wits : the Censeure is an extremely intelligent woman (with a very ordinary physique), and she knows it. The Censeure, despite a very cold behaviour, is smitten,by an Human girl. She soon decide to adopt her, and when the mission to terminate the Count ends up in massive mayhem, it’s kinda obvious that the Censeure saw this as a golden opportunity to rescue the kid. This, however, is the prologue. The thing is, the Censeur e name is Lilith (that the girl will reduce to Lily, a name that she will adopt at once) : she is a Succubus of massive powers, that was sent among Humans to destroy the Count. She is extremely callous about Humans , EXCEPT when the Human kid, Romanova, is involved. The sandbox game follow Lilith as she try to raise Romanova. The core aspect here is that Lilith don’t change, progress. It’s Romanova that change. This lead to an aspect of the game : obviously, very different conceptions of what are Succubis and Seraphis (their counterparts). First hand, all the dubious aspects of Succubus are reduced to the fact they are indeed Temptation, but temptation can take many forms. (Succubus are themselves damned female Humans, and conserve often some residual Human train of thought, or even fears. As an example, one secondary character, Avarielle, have claustrophobia). In fact, Lilith is surprisingly prudish for a videogame character, preferring clothing that is hardly associated with Succubus. Neither Succubis or Seraphis especially want to deal into Human affairs : they only act when Humans acts in way that are a deadly threat. Note also that Lilith was actually outraged about the fact that the Count was a rapist. This metaphysical conception is based on the idea of freewill, as opposed to predestination : an Human is ‘’saved’’ or ‘’lost’’ based on his actions, not Fate (or the actions of an un-Human power, be it angelic, demoniac...or gamer). A serious effort is made to make this an integral part of the gameplay : the only thing that bounds the almost amoral Lilith is Romanova. So, basically, the whole ‘’goal’’ of the game is just a single, normal, peasant, Human girl-her soul, rather. Liltih could obliterate whole armies, but she don’t care about it. She cares about Romanova considering her like a mother. The problem is, Romanova is a Human being : not a tool or a toy (the own words of Lilith v several times) : the AI of Romanova would be a core part of the game, but not in an usual way. Romanova is not a, competent or not, teammate for fights-not that Lilith actually need her. The AI modelling of Romanova is about her speech, her attachement to Lilith, the influence she took from her. And, see, efforts will be made to make this as realist as possible. Romanova is not dumb : if Lilith slaughter a platoon in front of her, she will not forget it if Lilith hands her a chocolate bar (while this sentence seems very obvious, how many time in a RPG you can coldly murder someone for an item, then redeem yourself by saying ‘’Nah, no cash this time’’ ?). In many situations, there are no clear good or bad answers to something, especially as Lilith and Romanova will face the same issue that caused Lilith to meet her in the first place: what allows someone to invervene in a tier situation ? Let’s take a very basic situation. In a port city of Lorraine, Romanova glimpse Damaskian slavers. Lilith hate slavery, especially if Romanova make comments of the matter. What would be simple, and rather flashy, would be to allow Lilth to explain matters to slavers. That would result into Romanova taking a rather bad example-yet, letting the slavers get aways is even worse...A notable effort is given in making an nuanced, credible medieval world, when authorities behave like actual monarchs. The shadowy Regent Judith, for instance, is a obviously a power hungry female, but she does care about the status of her realm, and the well-being of her subjects, and she use realist strategies for assert her powers. She behaves like Queen Elizabeth, not a fantasy queen. Overall, the game, over a set time period (four years) will show Romanova grow up, and change-as said before, Lilith will actually throw casually an enchanted sword dropped by a powerful enemy : what she seeks, what she wants, is stuff like Romanova telling her ‘’I love you, auntie Lily’’-a thing way harder to achieve than killing a dozen henchman, which Lilith can do from the get go... Sentence resuming this peculiar RPG : instead of talking to stuff to get enemies to kill, killing enemies is the way to go to unlock dialogue... [Edited by - Sandman on June 11, 2008 8:27:46 AM]

1) Meaningful thread title, please.
2) This is the Game Design forum. Perhaps you wanted the Writing for Games forum?

Well, this was a game concept, basically.

change the title, retype this for better grammar and more clarity, and state plainly what you are looking for in a response. Do you want opinions on your ideas? Are you trying to lay out some sort of innovative game mechanic? Are you trying to define a new genre? what are you looking for here?

I also had some trouble making sense of everything. Perhaps you were slightly drunk off your arse when you posted? "Bah" being a drunk man's "hello" was my first clue.

For what it's worth, I think I see something interesting in there. The concept of having the player character start the game with full abilities while still finding a way to implement character development is a worthy vision. I've always thought this type of gameplay would make a great sequel to a typical role playing game, where the original player character from the first game can be carried over as the new player character, without removing the super human stats and abilities they earned during the first experience.

I was not drunk, but English is not my first language...

My questions are :

1)Is the premise enough original ? (Motherly daemon, for instance)

2)Does the whole concept of having for ''rewards'' rather immaterial things (actually, in game, Lilith would ''die'' (or rather make others die) for making Romanova smile) sounds interesting for you ?

To answer a question...the interest of the game would be the sandbox nature of the universe, as well as the realism implemented.

An idea is also that Romanova can turn in dozens of ways : with the example set by Lilith, she can become a deadly praticionner of the Dark Arts: less dramatically, she risk to become the Human version of a Succubus : a very arrogant (if smart) gal, quite able to manipulate.

1. Yes.

2. It could be. However, I don't believe the forming of relationships between video game characters is much less materialistic than other likely rewards. If it leads to other game content, then it's as good of a reason as any to play.

n other idea I got is to implement in some cases a very different case of reload.

In some cases, some critical conversations pieces CAN'T be reloaded. See, suppose that Lilith says ''Honey, I'm a princess from Sheol, and I ravaged your hometown just to get you all for myself'' (which would be, honestly, quite dumb) and, strangely, Romanova react bad. What you do ? Reload ?

But (in theory, of course) you can't really reload such critical game events. However, Lilith have a limited capacity for mind-wiping Humans-so she can do that to Romanova. While stating OPENLY to the player that doing so will be harmful. Lilith will even beg the player to not do this-attempt at breaking the fourth wall. What is not stated is that by doing so, Lilith will indeed make Romanova accept in a easier way pretty gnarly stuff-at the cost of damaging her mind a lot. Romanova can stand it one time, two times, but will go insane after.