For the past couple of years, I've been playing with the idea of making a game. The concept has some significant similarities to other "creature-training" games like Pokémon, but it also has a good number of unique traits. Anyway, I thought I'd start looking for input to help me flesh out the story and mechanics. I'll focus on the story in this post:

Backstory:

[spoiler]In the game's world, humans have somehow managed to obtain a form of magic which enables them to capture and control powerful creatures by using devices known as "soul stones." This ability has influenced the development of society, technology, etc. For poorly-understood reasons, there is a relatively small portion of the population which is unable to use soul stones. These individuals are largely ostracized from society and have migrated to a rural area to the north of the world.

Many of these settlements are located near a forested area with a swampy "core." The swamp has always contained dangerous creatures, but in recent years, particularly dangerous shadowy creatures have been appearing in unprecedented numbers. For the towns closest to the "dark" areas of the forest, the threat is significant enough that they cannot survive without protection, especially because the society in general has never developed effective weapons due to the effectiveness of creatures as defensive units.

The only hope for the survival of these towns is a group which (for lack of a better name) I'm currently calling the "sky knights." They look kind of like the stereotypical "light-aligned flying knight" guys (who live on a floating island, no less!), but they're arrogant and authoritarian. Several towns have entered into an agreement wherein the "sky knights" will protect them...for a hefty fee. Some towns have resisted the idea of hiring the "sky knights", but so far, as the dark forest has spread, each town has eventually given in.[/spoiler]

The player's character (PC):

[spoiler]The PC lives in one of the "non-magic-user" villages. For years, the village was a safe distance from the "dark forest," but the forest has spread and is threatening the town. The village elders are adamant in their refusal to work with the "sky knights," but the situation is almost completely out of hand. The PC decides that something must be done, and he/she travels out of town to an abandoned temple which was once used to train magic-users. He/she searches the temple for anything that might be of use. Partway through the search, the PC encounters an older man (who is a magic user). He is initially wary and somewhat hostile, but once he hears the PC's story, he becomes friendly and explains his purpose.

The old man (whom I call the "mentor" for now) explains that he has been searching for a way to make magic accessible to everyone. After a short test, he determines that the PC may be a candidate for the method he has been developing, and the PC agrees to try it. The procedure is successful, and the player obtains a soul stone containing an ancient creature from a cache deep within the temple.

Both characters return to the town. The mentor determines that no one else in the town is a candidate for his procedure, but he decides to remain there to protect it and tells the PC to travel south and become stronger.[/spoiler]

Anyway, that's it for this post. I've got a rough world map, a number of random plot fragments, and an ending, but I'll leave those for a bit later so this post doesn't become gigantic.

Thoughts? Constructive criticism? Not-so-constructive criticism?

I'm not immediately seeing what this set-up is intended to accomplish. That might just mean that I don't understand it yet though. What it looks like is: the main character starts out as an ostracized minority, which is interesting, except that it means the main character can't have pet monsters, which is not interesting. Then, the main character is converted into one of the normal majority of pet users, which cancels out the interest factor of being a member of a minority. The players is also sent to where the normal majority live, so the minority is almost canceled out as a factor in the game. Why do this? Does it accomplish something I'm not noticing?

Yay creature-training games though.

The goal shows up a bit later. Although the PC is no longer "part" of the minority, he/she still represents that minority's interests. To summarize: the PC eventually finds a way to expose the corruption of the "sky knights," who are actually encouraging the spread of the dark forest. He/she takes them down, but in the process, an ancient evil is awoken. Nastiness ensues, but the PC eventually fixes it.

Well, the overall plot sounds fine, but it would be good to have more of an immediate problem at the beginning to motivate the main character and stir up the player's emotions. How about, right near the beginning, the community of people who can't use pet monsters are forced to flee their town as refugees when the growing dark swamp stuff invades. Then you have the player's family as refugees, and the player will interact with them more because they will go with him to the first new location, and the player will be strongly motivated to reclaim their town, and thus to investigate the cause of this increasing problem. It would also bring the player into contact with the sky knights as the sky knights would be the reason that the second town the refugees go to is (temporarily) safe).

That could be interesting. It seems likely that other towns would be resistant to allowing the refugees in. After all, they're paying the fee to the "sky knights," and the refugees would just be "freeloading." Because of that, the refugees would likely end up sitting outside one of the towns, which means that they're partially under the knight's protective "umbrella" but still need the mentor's help to fend off attackers.

As far as contact with the "sky knights" goes, one of the ideas I had was that the PC would encounter an off-duty knight during the PC's first night in a protected town and would be challenged to a battle. Upon victory, the PC would probably get his/her first creature capture device. The knight may be impressed with the PC's potential and state that he/she could join the knights after becoming stronger. This would potentially open an avenue later for the PC to infiltrate the knights.