E-RPG General Development
Due to a string of doctor appointments for my 2 year old daughter (she has a handicap that requires strings of tests periodically) I was severely hampered in my time to focus on development. This week is different, I am choosing to take some time off for one good reason, I need to minimize my level of stress for the next few days while my body attempts to withdraw form a nicotine addiction.
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This week has been full of frustrations. I won’t go into all of the details. Suffice it to say that one incredibly stupid assumption on my part, as well as an entire host of other events throughout this week, have exhausted me. I am glad the week, and the weekend, are over and am looking forward to a fresh start on Monday.
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This post is a two parter. First is a quick update on the CRM. I have to completely rewrite one of the DLL files to better handle management of data and reduce load on the system created by the current structure. This is more of a pre-emptive move as the current setup doesn’t hurt on its own, but in more complicated programs the elements created through the DLL are way too large and thus may prove to difficult to manage. It is a product of being inexperienced when I created them. Though I don’t consider myself experienced at this point, I have learned enough to know that this needs to be fixed. Therefore it is.
What I really want to talk about is a thought that brews in my head from time to time. That is creating an official Fantasy Sagas campaign world. This is something I have toyed with for some time. However, I have had some serious dilemmas when creating it.
First of all, unlike most publishers, I am not going to release my campaign world. It isn’t one of those things wherein I just think my world is so cool that it should be published and thus it will be the next Forgotten Realms or whatever. Truth is, I don’t have a fixed campaign world I play in. I steal a lot in my private games from other companies and material. I usually play in existing campaign worlds but expand on them. This will not be a pet project wherein I release my Oh So Cool Campaign. This, if I do it, will be specifically designed.
I thought first and long about a campaign world where it is pseudo historic. I wrestled with this for a long time, thinking it would be fun. Truth is, it probably would, but they already exist. Lets face it, almost all campaign worlds are in some way pseudo historic. So eventually, I will probably create pseudo historic campaign source books, but they will not be based in a specific campaign. I know, sounds odd, but that is where I eventually landed in my thought process and I will expand on that when the time comes.
My next thought was one of my favorites, and may be developed later. The setting is low fantasy on another world entirely. It is an alien world, not a version of like most other fantasy campaigns. Firearms exist in very barbaric and primitive ways. Magic exists only in the natural magic sense. There is no real Human race, all races fit along a specific territorial evolution. Therefore, there are races such as these mantis like creatures which live in the humid swamp like regions, and these rock flecked skinned people from the mountainous areas. There are other races as well, all fitting within a specific region. The world itself is apocalyptic, but not in the post-apocalypse. This is the actual end of days of this world that people are living through. Campaigns exist in surviving through the death of an entire world, or maybe on quest to try and save every0one from utter ruin.
Again, I like this idea, but there are too many sci-fi elements to really consider it fantasy so it is getting pushed to the corner of my desk.
Another is a near future modern setting. By near future I mean five to ten years from today. Dates are not specific for a good reason. Nothing else you will get from me on this as it is actually under production in a very small form. However, it is modern sagas material so not relevant to this article.
So that bring us to what will I do. Here are some things I notice in just about every fantasy setting.
- There is a once mighty empire now on the decline (like Rome). It is both evil and good in varying respects and has a large, but dwindling influence on the world.
- There is a group of wizards that are enigmatic. We don’t know if they are good or evil but they usually take the form of a villain.
- There is a group of hero like people akin to Jedi. They are always lame but someone in the design thought they were cool. They meddle in the world either behind the scenes or openly trying to bind the world together in peace and love. However, people often resent them for whatever reason making their job more difficult.
- There was some great cataclysm in the past (usually a few thousand years ago) that results in wastelands and ruins for your adventuring fun.
- For some reason everyone speaks a common language. Also, though writing and libraries are few, every Jack the Farmer knows the names of heroes and villains and strikingly large specifics on things that happen thousands of years ago, even though in our modern world our history over the past few hundred years is vague and error prone to even scholars with access to huge electronic data bases and mass communication methods.
- The near past was a silver or golden age, usually ended by the cataclysm mentioned above, now the remnants of great magical weapons and other wonders that can no longer be made are littered around the world and the current world is on the decline because said magical advances no longer xist.
- At least two races (usually elves and dwarves) are bitter enemies because of some vague historical footnote usually having root in some war or conflict. Occasionally this actually may be something more realistic like a slight grievance like refusal of gift between kings. However, there is usually some element there so that a party can have an “interesting” dynamic with two of its members being of these opposed races and how they have to settle their differences and come together for the sake of the group.
- Thieves guilds and assassins groups operate like medieval versions of the Mafia and so are underground crime syndicates that run everything from brothels to slave trades, even though the world is set in a period of time were slavery and prostitution were commonly legal in our own historical timeline.
- Just about everyone can read, swing a sword, or cast a spell except the innkeeper, the local lord, or some other insignificant NPC.
- There is monster races that are evil for the single point of being the evil race. This is a throwback from JRR Tolkien LotR so we all seem to have a race of Orks that will constantly plague the world with faceless monsters to slay without regard. They are the RPG version of Nazis in that they can and should be killed without thought or remorse, even though in our real world many German Soldiers in WWII were not Nazis and were likely conscripted again their world (the SS being the exception that proves the rule).
There are more perhaps. However, this seems like the general formula for a campaign setting. I want to avoid every single point on that list so I have an alternative. I will list everything in the above list in an opposite or alternative way to get the design philosophy for my campaign world.
- There is an empire on the rise. It is growing in strength and influence and is conquering or influencing other cultures religiously or militarily. In all countries not under the growing empire’s thumb, the shadow looms like some desperate beast.
- All wizards are enigmatic and thought to be evil. In almost all cases they are. However, I think that the idea of wizards as scientific like scholars is dead and overused. Therefore, all of my wizards are priests of some type. This limits there spells, but makes them more interesting in that their goals are either religious zealotry or having great amounts of power. Both, are very dangerous and are abused in this type of world.
- There are no Jedi like people. No heroes lie on the horizon giving you hope. There are good and noble people, but their groups are utterly shattered by the powers that be whenever their ideology rears its illuminating head. The threat of such good and noble rule threatens the powers that be, therefore, they are hunted and stopped at every opportunity. People with good moral ideas are few and far between and work in small isolated groups (like adventuring parties) but have no great organized body.
- The world lives in a cataclysm. Death, plague, hunger, poverty, wastes, all of these exist as normal every day life. The world is a harsh place, but there are some places harsher than others. Cities spring up to protect people from the primitive encroaches of a wild and untamed world. In short, thing the Dark Ages.
- Languages are regional. Furthermore, there are comp[licated dialects. However, most people speak at least two languages, making things easier. No one reads unless they learned how, and really only priest and nobility ever need to do this. They may speak 3 to five languages. In short, think the Dark Ages through to the Renaissance.
- The past was worse than today. The ruins of failed civilizations do litter the wild, however, it is just as likely to have fallen 5 years ago as it is 5 hundred. No one really knows many details about past civilizations except that they existed, and some great and notable events. Few scholars exist that record and keep safe this lore, but the common person knows little more than events that happen in their own region and within their lifetime. In truth, they don’t care.
- There is only one race, humans, but there are variation of them. There are common racial distrusts. For instance, in the Renaissance, people in France would look down on Italians and the English not for being Italian or English, but because they were not French. Same goes for the English and the Italians. Racial hatred only extends during times of war, but fade shortly after. There aren’t any long standing elf/dwarf like feuds.
- Groups of bandits, thieves, assassins etc are not some kind of underground mob. They may be an arm of a cult or movement, but there is not sinister shadowy kingpin that has his hands in all vices. Furthermore, they really only exists as pickpockets and thugs for hire. There is nothing dashing or romantic about them either. They are brutish and nasty. There is little for them to do except for petty muggings and murder as there is little that is illegal. Drugs, prostitution, slavery, all of that is generally legal and lordships rarely care enough to do more than to keep it away from the more desirable areas of their domain. They are fine with that sort of filth in the warrens or slums, but keep it out of the nice rich neighborhoods. The rich send their servants into the warrens to buy for them (which is usually where the mugging victims come from).
- No one except priests, scholars, and some nobility can read, or even need to. Swords are rare and not cheap. Most people fight with sticks for clubs or throw rocks. Primitive snares and make shift tools are used for hunting by most, but some professionals may have bows and such. Most nobles guard the weapons that their peasants have jealously. Therefore, armor and martial weapons are hard to come by. You can assume that anyone with these weapons served in some military or mercenary group.
- People are bad enough. Do we need Orks when your neighboring kingdom is ready to sell you off, destroy you, conquer you, or otherwise wipe your kingdom off the map for their own personal gain? When an ambitious empire is sweeping the land through blood and influence do you really need hordes of goblins looming in some dark wastes? I think we got dispensable sword fodder handled enough.
So that is my world. Surprisingly it is actually quite remeniscant of another very famous, and almost as influential as LotR, world from literature: Hyboria from Conan. The truth is, while this has been done (there have been several iterations of Conan’s world in RPGs), I don’t trust that games licensed from other work will naturally translate properly. The reason is that reading literature is a very personal experience. Everyone reads a book differently. There are huge differences in opinions in some respects. Even my father (who turned me on to Conan as a child) and I have some vastly different ideas about the fiction.
So I actually believe that a world influenced by Conan may work as an original work, if done properly. Of course, there must be some originality to it. Having a world developed around the ideas in my list will, without a doubt, garner criticism as being a knock off of Conan, and in truth it probably will be. My goal is not to create some great new myth from which the world will embrace as some kind of literary genius. The goal is to create a world where adventuring in an RPG can be fun. It also has to avoid the almost constant “try to appeal to all audiences” approach. The benefit of having a universal gaming system is that you can be very specific. You can create a specific type of allure. For fans of Robert E. Howard’s writings, or fans of dark fantasy, this kind of world will be fun for them if handled properly.
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Let’s face it folks, the industry that was RPG’s is not doing so hot. With WotC starting in on lay offs of some heavy hitters it is plain that what was a niche industry is having real problems supporting itself in this economy. I am not a doomsayer or anything. I don’t believe that RPGs will vanish or that table-top RPGs as a whole are destined to be a fond memory. However, the future of gaming as we know it will not survive unless the industry as we know it changes. I don’t pretend to have the answers to what the industry will become. However, I do have an idea of what I think it will be, and what the companies that seriously want to make the industry viable in the future will have to do.
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As I continue to enter data into an almost final version of the current DPnP Content Creator I find that I am still learning and growing in this process. The design gets better, and greater possibilities appear. So at what point does on finally say to himself, enough is enough? Well the answer is not easy. As anyone reading the forum post tracking the data entry will see, as I continue I find things that need fixing, but I also find new possibilities for the system that almost demand exploration.
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WOW! What I didn’t consider before doing this is amazing! The really great part is that I am unlocking more depth to this system as I progress further into the developer’s tools. I can’t wait to unveil this thing, but first, the content creator at least, needs to get into the hands of some qualified testers. I have that group in mind and am getting closer to shipping it out to them. But that’s not what I want to talk about today. Today, it is about depth! (more…)
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It has been a good week. A really good week. I still have been charging through DPnP and come closer to seeing it all come together. It is an odd feeling, having come from not knowing if I could do this, to seeing development coming closer to completion. It is a heady feeling, bewildering, and exciting.
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Sorry for the late post. Unfortunately, this won’t really make up for much. I’m just sending out a quick nod to let you all know that progress on the DPnP demos is going very well. I have been extremely busy on that lately, which accounts for the late, and brief post. As of now, the content creator which builds the data base is well under way. The backbone of the program is finished and I am just tying it all together. Once that is done there are some small details to finish up and then I clean up the look of the program. Hopefully I can get some screenshots up soon but no promises.
I’ll have more information, such as thoughts during this development later in the week when I get some more time. Until then, sorry for being brief.
Happy Gaming!
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Well, it is kind of back on. The simple answer to the complicated story that has been Digital Pen n Paper is that I can’t really afford a programming team. While some people have helped along the way, a full commitment has been unavailable. The answer to the problem, I believe, was that eventually I would have to learn to do it myself and make it happen. No easy task. I have the design document, and the plan. So the largest part is over. The details, such as making this happen, are the crux of the development delima. Luckily, I love a challenge.
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Content creation has become almost a full time job for me lately. Working on current projects has superseded me even getting a normal 9-5 job since I got laid off about 3 months ago. This is not a devious plan to avoid full time work, it is actually just a product of some current life issues that my family have to hash out before I start work again. The good news is that it allows me more time to work. However, the load is getting pretty heavy and I am only one guy at the moment.
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