An original scifi/fantasy setting I'm working on (janissaries, crusaders, and aliens) (text-based for now)
INTRODUCTION
I am working on a text-based RPG in Twine. At its most basic, Twine is a choose-your-own-adventure story maker, but it's also a robust coding system that can alter and keep track of as many variables as you like. Eventually, I may want to add illustration or graphical elements, but I'd like to make sure the gameplay is fun when stripped down to its bare essentials. Also, I need other people for art and graphics.
This is very long, and only a reduced version of the full guide I have worked out so far. If the premise interests you, you may want to skip around and skim rather than read through every word. THANK YOU for your time and your comments.
(I have just returned to this project after a few months off and thought it would be helpful to hear thoughts from some experienced world-builders. There is some Twine-specific gameplay information that is somewhat distinct from the world-building, sorry if that's totally superfluous. This was cross-posted to /rpg.)
PREMISE
The premise of the game is aliens on Earth in a medieval setting. Eurasia is broadly divided between Usmanis and Apostolics, who have differing views of Earth's new visitors. Most common folk, of course, do not appreciate their interstellar origins, but rather believe them to be demonic or otherwise supernatural beings, and their technology seems magical. The idea is to screw around with perceptions of science and magic from different perspectives.
TL;DR - janissaries, crusaders, and aliens
SPECIES DESCRIPTIONS (with musical accompaniment to evoke their moods)
The first species to arrive was Draconis (music starts at 0:25). Named for their lizard-like appearance, they came to Earth inside a massive meteor which devastated the central Asian steppes, and now live in giant underground burrows in strictly hierarchical societies, divided between fertile queens, governing geneticists, obedient soldiers, and wretched slaves. They use magnetic-based rifles and artillery, and have mastered the practice of trench warfare and the use of cavalry in battle.
Second was the Crystal Empire (music), more commonly known as "wheelmen" for their roiling, rolling appearance and the circular components which make them up. The wheelmen live in a colossal moving city, which trundles about in seemingly random directions, leaving a trail of molten metal behind it. They are able to combine and transform into an amazing variety of shapes, often maintaining a bipedal form in the presence of humans. Although infinitely malleable, they are also capable of forming hard surfaces and sharp edges. They refer to one another and their species broadly as "ardent," excluding the wayward "exiles," wheelmen who have left the moving city for good and hardened into a permanent shape. Some exiles have banded together, dedicated to the destruction of their former home, while others just want to be left alone.
The Cloud People (music), also known as "greys" or "elves" arrived sometime later, and spend their time conducting experiments on Earth's native inhabitants as well as its foreign visitors. They live in the upper atmosphere in floating cities and on the moon, and travel about in flying chariots. Physically, they are frail, but their varied light, sound, pharmaceutical and psychic technology is very effective at incapacitating opponents (or worse). They communicate telepathically and their individual activities and abilities are determined by a vast bureaucracy. Most greys are either scientists, actively conducting experiments on other life forms, or diplomats, who make working plans and conduct foreign policy.
No one knows when the Travelers (music) arrived - some say they've always been here. They appear as unusually tall and beautiful human beings, and can alter the flow of time and warp energy and matter, but have strict rules about interference with other species. Most travelers, known as "observers," move through spacetime and live inside sophisticated observation ships, while a small number, known as "explorers," have left their brethren and carry out reclusive existences in the wilderness.
Humans in Eurasia are divided by religion. Usmanis, followers of Elraim and ruled by the house of Usman the Clement, are the ascendant human power, bolstered both by the draconic destruction of the northeastern color hordes and by Usmani cosmopolitan tolerance of others, except for Draconis itself, whom they are at war with. The western Apostolics, on the other hand, are doctrinally xenophobic, though they have recently signed an unexpected armistice with the lizard nation. Many rogue Apostolic crusading groups are at war with Usmani powers in the Balkans and Italia, despite an uneasy truce between the faiths.
STRUCTURE
I am planning to release installments in chapters. In each chapter, the player takes the role of a particular species or subspecies phenotype. The gameplay will be different in each chapter - as a grey, for instance, much of your time will be spent designing, getting approval for, and conducting experiments, and demonstrating their results. A draconic offspring soldier will spend much of his time following orders and fighting, while a hatchling geneticist will be giving the orders, growing organs, and conducting surgery. An observer might correct dangerous perturbations in the flow of time or serve on a justice tribunal, while an explorer will be surviving and making her home in the woods, trying to stay out of trouble. In this way, I can expand the gameplay possibilities in a modular fasion. The chapters will be, and the roles players can take:
CHAPTER I HAIL DRACONIS - offspring solider, slave
This is the chapter I'm working on now. You are a draconic "offspring," who starts off as a tiny little lizard in its mother's pouch, fighting with your brothers for a spot to suck blood from, and soon enough you're scampering under your mother soldiers' feet around the campfire in a field burrow, and then you are a soldier yourself, and can either achieve glory on the battlefield, be condemned to endless toil in the iron mines, or, hardest of all, learn to stray from the brood and go your own way. Chapter IV focuses on Draconis' other main "gender," the egg-born "hatchling" geneticists/surgeons who run the colonies and the affairs of the queen, and may become queens themselves.
CHAPTER II the CLOUD PEOPLE - scientist, diplomat
CHAPTER III the CRYSTAL EMPIRE - ardent, exile
CHAPTER IV BRIDE of DRACONIS - hatchling genetcist, queen
CHAPTER V the TRAVELERS - observer, explorer
CHAPTER VI the LAST MAN- usmani, apostolic
Each species has a variety of technologies related to combat, movement, and their unique fields of expertise, as well as secret projects they may collectively pursue, which typically have to do with learning about or fighting various other species, and, when completed, provide the player with powerful new insights and abilities.
GAMEPLAY
is divided at its most basic level into pages. At the end of each page, the player clicks to select a choice, if there is more than one option (which there usually will be), which leads to the next page and the result of your action. Some choices are momentary reactions to the situation at hand, while others can have long-lasting impacts on the player and the world. Hopefully, if the game is well written, choices will lead to logical and satisfying outcomes, and players are able to make plans and prepare for what's coming next.
Many pages are spent taking part in rituals, survival tasks, and combat. Any of these tasks may require some combination of technology, other members of the player's species, beings of another species, or raw materials.
Rituals are species-specific procedures which achieve some practical end. They may contain within them survival- or combat-oriented elements. For Draconis, both feeding and mating with the queen are ritualized survival tasks with combat elements.
Survival is the struggle against forces of nature, including the player's own metabolism. Things like eating, reproducing, and building shelter are survival activities. Performing a job may also be a survival task, or it may fall more under ritual or combat. Survival tasks may be oriented toward the survival of the individual or more about the survival of the group. Digging trenches and field burrows, providing field medicine, building fires, and eating are all common survival tasks for draconic soldiers.
Combat is a violent contest against another being or beings in which physical or psychic damage is dealt, divided into beats. During each beat, a single combat action may be performed. draconic soldiers, being fast, have two beats for every one beat a human has, but in the same space of time ardent, the fastest at close combat, have three beats. Each species has different vulnerabilities and strengths in combat.
Aside from participation in rituals, satisfying the needs of survival and engaging in combat when necessary, play is relatively free for some species, like humans and travelers, unless another force impinges on them. Other species, like greys and Draconis, are typically under the sway of strong social, psychic, or biochemical controls, and may find their options limited to what is expected of them. Sometimes, members of even these very constrained species can take steps toward freedom, and likewise relatively free individuals may be enslaved by various means.
One good thing about keeping it single player for now, and dividing things up into chapters by species is that I don't have to "balance" anything, any of the powers or species against each other, and the focus can just be on keeping things interesting rather than balanced.
MECHANICS
-Scale of free will, from most to least:
HUMAN - variable in groups, but individually free-minded
TRAVELER - heavily swayed by law
WHEELMEN - wholly ambivalent
DRACONIS - under pheromone control
GREY - no initiative or creativity
Humans, therefore, often have no one watching them or telling what to do, while greys can barely think for themselves. This does not mean, though, that humans necessarily have more choices available to them - a human's existence might be relegated to the same drudgery every day, while a grey has a vast array of options of what to study, what tools to study it with, and how to collect subjects. The difference is how likely each distinct being is to think of performing roles other than those expected of them.
-Understanding and communication:
The ability to understand and communicate with other species can be a valuable asset, whether you're working with or against them.
DRACONIS - can understand grey, limited human
WHEELMEN - limited human, limited traveler, limited draconic (barks)
GREY - draconic, human, traveler
TRAVELER - human, grey, limited exile
HUMAN - grey, traveler, limited exile
The only species uncomprehending of and immune to the grey's telepathic communication are the wheelmen, who use subtle radio waves to stay in touch at great distances. Many wheelmen understand the basics of human and draconic languages, though they are unable to speak them. However, some exiles have developed an ability to mimic human speech patterns by rubbing their metal surfaces together, though articulation is not clear and pitch and intonation is most all that can be understood.
Draconic verbal communication is limited to imperative barks, with most information being shared via pheromones.
Travelers seem to speak human languages.
Several special projects relate to communication - greys can research and ultimately control draconic and human pheromones, as well as ardent radio waves. Humans can also do research into draconic pheromones, and Draconis can develop human pheromones.
SPECIES TECHNOLOGY
-| Draconis |-
-genetic - pheromones, parasites, organ grafts, and royal jelly used to transform and control draconics (and other species)
-magnetic - iron- and magnet- based rifles, battleaxes, personal armor, and artillery
-field - improvised trenches and burrows, as well as the battlefield use of cavalry and emergency medicine
-special project - interplanetary rail gun, human pheromones, human disease
-| Wheelmen |-
-enzyme - superheated organic substances with which ardent wheelmen trasform their environment
-ardent battle - rapid, elusive form of close combat based around sharp edges, thrown projectiles, blocks and holds
-exile battle - no longer able to shift form, exiles must make many choices about how they will fight and survive
-special project - human technology transfer, human language, self-sustaining reaction
-| Grey |-
-light - electromagnetic radiation of many different spectra, some visible, some not
-sound - waves to transmit force through a medium, ineffective in a vacuum
-pharmaceutical - chemical substances to influence physiology and psychology
-psychic - extra-dimensional techniques to manipulate minds
-field - measurement and recording devices
-facilities - only found aboard motherships and on the moon base, for use in conjunction with other technologies
-chariot - the abilities of the greys' flying chariots
-special project - draconic pheromone, human pheromone, wheelmen radio interface, time box, temporal emitter, grey psychic driving
-| Traveler |-
-spacetime - manipulation of space and time in every dimension
-observer ship - abilities of the observers' chief means of conveyance
-explorer wilderness - survival skills learned through millennia of observation and perfected through practice
-| Human |-
-weapons - unsophisticated steel and gunpowder technology
-buildings - stationary edifices that can be visited for products and services, typically open only to humans and travelers, who can pass, although many Usmani establishments are welcoming of exiles
-special project - repeating magnetic rifle, draconic pheromone, psychic, immunology
EXPANSIONS
I have tentative ideas for two expansions introducing new, powerful species whose arrival makes survival much more difficult for lesser life forms:
CHAPTER VII OLD GODS (ancient species)
Cuboids are living, thinking domiciles that were originally created to house a now absent alien species. They can alter their dimensions and components to suit (or to discomfit) a variety of smaller beings, as well as armor themselves and attach sails, springs, and grippers to their exteriors. In the absence of their designers, many are thought to have gone mad, and now wander the landscape, obsessively abducting, confining, and toying with other species.
Mind Rot is a microscopic psychic pathogen capable of infecting diverse species. It seems to consciously target particular organ systems in its victims, and can also induce altered states of mind.
The Howling Forests are gargantuan umbrella- or anvil-shaped ecosystems which can enter and leave Earth's atmosphere at will. Their name comes from the often dangerous flora and fauna they foster, as well as their method of communicating with one another, which uses sound waves so powerful they can obliterate solid matter.
CHAPTER VIII the BASTARD HEIR (species from the future)
Hybrids are the distant descendants of humans and draconics. They employ sophisticated bioengineering technology, and are able to cultivate unforgiving landscapes and to create bizarre cross-species hybrids.
Coniforms are bee- or coral-like beings which secrete cone-shaped hives and ribbon-like tentacles. They can fight en masse from a hive or evacuate the hive and swarm their opponents, tearing flesh and clogging orifices.
Ghosts or "djinn" are almost completely invisible, ethereal beings which can nonetheless exert tremendous directional and shear forces. They appear as a very slightly shimmering warp in the air.
CONCLUSION
Phew, thank you for reading! I apologize again for the length. Hopefully, I will have at least the basic plot lines worked out for Chapter One over the next few weeks. The nice thing about this game is that right now it's just a matter of how much time I can devote to it. At some point, 2-D art of even just some of the basic elements and species in the game would probably do wonders (for instance, to let you see who you are fighting), but again I think it will only be better in the end if it functions well as a purely narrative experience first. I have a much bigger canvas, too, than if I was working inside some more restrictive graphical engine - I can really imagine what it would be like to be a conscious, psychic disease, or a massive, flying ecosystem, and have those imaginations be the basis of the gameplay, the choices available to the player, the things they sense and do and the way they sense and do them, instead of being confined to three dimensions of space and one of time and a HUD and inventory and everything else many games rely on.
I'm just looking for general advice and other thoughts. I guess my main questions are:
Would you be interested in playing or at least trying out this game, even without graphical elements?
Are the species compelling to you?
Do the gameplay possibilities seem engaging? Are there major design challenges I've overlooked?
Thanks again.
edit - changed draconic music to something more evocative
Posted Dec 2, 2015, 10:44 PM UTC · edited