Of Iron and Spells* (Updated)

[Xyster]

I've been toying with, and discarding several games now on RPGM 3 in an attempt to get a good one going. The first couple I did...well, they got messy really quickly. So that's why I'm going to post a backstory here for my new game and a brief description that I will update as I progress with it. Please give me some feedback if you have a chance and let me know what you think so far and if you have any suggestions for it. I really do appriciate constructive critism.

The story opens (like many) with a small history of what is going on in the story. (This is all basic and parapharsing. I'll flesh it out as I go.)

Story:

It all began when man first forged iron into a weapon and the earth gifted on of the greatest crafters with the ability to wield both iron and magic. This man propogated a large and powerful family of people that became known as "Spell Swords".

These people became the mightiest warriors in all the land, able to control magic and wield weapons of great power at the same time.

Soon though, many others began to fear them. They were too powerful, too many, and only seemed to be increasing in strength. In fear, many men and nations rose against them, driving them back and far across the vast oceans...supposedly to their doom.

Over the generations the family has become smaller and the power weaker, until the last child born with the gift. She showed much potential, more than any other for generations before her.

Becuase they needed to extend the blood line, they sent her away as a child, back over the ocean and to the kingdoms that had driven her out. With no way to return home, she lived among the other humans until she was discovered and captured.

Fearing that she would become more powerful, yet not having the courage to kill her, they locked her away beneath a horrible prison. There she was tortured and mocked until she thought that she would go mad.

Finally though, something has gone wrong for the prison. She has escaped and now seeks to find a way to return to her home... a place that no one even seems to know of anymore.

That's the basic rundown. It'a actually a pretty dark thing to start with. It's intended as a bit of a mature game, considering some of the references in it and material base.

Please let me know what you think.

Characters:

Kimi - Kimi is the main character. She's plagued by several mental infirmities due to her long and unjust imprisonment, including...but not limited to constantly talking to an imaginary friend. Though she uses a sword, she is deffinitely not an average main character, due in most part to her complete naivety about some things balanced with her mental disturbia.

Worbby - Worbby is among other things, the main healer/debuffer of the group. He is a large, leapord spotted bunny with magical powers and a not so friendly attitude towards other monsters. *** SPOILERS ***
He's also not Kimi's imaginary friend.
*** END SPOILERS ***

[Perversion]

Re: Of Iron and Magic

It sounds good so far. A BIT clichéd, but nowhere NEAR as bad as some of the game ideas I've seen here. All in all, it sounds like a good foundation on which to develop your game and story.


Honestly, and this is only my own perspective, but when I read the plethora of "new game idea" threads in this forum, I personally tend to look at the background/story/characters with a lesser eye than I do the gameplay. It's going on three years that RPGM3 has been out, and keep in mind, this is only my estimation, but it seems as if almost everything that could be done with the standard battle system has been over the past few years; everything from Cry's elemental combat to Obi's "choose the guys to take with you" to my own really basic "first game syndrome" combat.


So, you might have a wonderfully rich story, detailed world, great character development, etc, but, and again, this is only my opinion, if the game has the standard (REALLY, REALLY SLOW AND TEDIOUS) random battles in place, you might not have a lot of people make it all the way through the story. I know myself, if there's a hook to the gameplay, it'll draw me in. I've played more than my share of RPGM3 games with the standard battle setup, and for me, it's honestly a chore to get through (including my own 15-20 hour first game). And I think I may not be alone in thinking this. In 2005, when the game was still new, a lot of people tolerated the battles because the software was still new. Three years later, some people may not be so forgiving of using the default random battles.



Please, though, do not be discouraged or decide to change your entire game idea around just because of one post in your thread. I'm pretty sure you've got a good enough head on your shoulders to take everything people say here with a grain of salt, so I just thought I'd give you some of the requested constructive criticism, and tell you what I personally look for in RPGM3 games. Spend at least a little time in making the battles somewhat unique (inasmuch as possible), and I think it'll go a long way, even if you do decide to go with the standard random encounters.

[Xyster]

Re: Of Iron and Magic

Thanks for the review. Honestly, at this point I'm still trying to figure out the battle system and point values as it stands. Do you have any links to some good tutorials on how to set up a battle system? Maybe if I see some I can get some ideas for something maybe not knew, but enough changed that it would be interesting to play.

[Kumataka]

Re: Of Iron and Magic

great story so far. but yeah the battle system is always tricky. The easiest way to go by is paper mario 1 style

of coarse without the choosing your prze for upgrade
such as fp, np....ya get the point all though I know how you could make it like that but nevermind

[Ωbright]

Re: Of Iron and Magic

Thanks for the review. Honestly, at this point I'm still trying to figure out the battle system and point values as it stands. Do you have any links to some good tutorials on how to set up a battle system? Maybe if I see some I can get some ideas for something maybe not knew, but enough changed that it would be interesting to play.

I can give you some pointers if you want, or at least tell you how I've done it in both of my games so far. First of all, to keep people interested in the battles you need to make sure that you give people a wide variety of enemies to fight (and enemy parties), and give those enemies a wide variety of skills, magic spells (including stat up/down skills), and 4 dropped items (1 common, 2 rare, and 1 very rare works pretty well, but you get the idea). Doing that will help ensure that people still have surprises, even after fighting in that area for a good while.

Also, don't make the battles too long, or too short. Long boss battles can be ok but again, give that boss enough skills to provide some surprises for the player...enough to warrant the extra time it takes to slay it, and make sure the characters have enough skills/magic at that point to avoid doing the same things over and over again.

As far as battle balance and stat growth go, JPS made a neat utility for calculating a good battle balance which can be found here.

What I did though, was just follow a few simple rules:

- Give level-up bonuses which are average, about '5' on a scale of 1-10. This goes for both enemies and heroes. Certain enemies/heroes will have slightly higher or lower stats based on what type of enemy/hero they are, but the trick is to keep within that 1-10-point range.

- Increase enemy difficulty by leveling them in the monster parties editor...NOT by increasing their stat growth. While you can still tweak enemy stats slightly in late-game monsters, keep in mind that the effect will be exponential stat growth.

- PLAY TEST, and tweak the enemy stats as you go. DO NOT tweak the hero stats though, those have to remain constant. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT, or you can ruin hours and hours of delicate balance work!

The whole purpose of this is to just lay down a basic foundation to use as a point of departure. It's meant to be twisted around a bit, just make sure to playtest and tweak it a lot to smooth it out to your own liking.

Hope this helps you out.

[Wavelength]

I'll go out on a bit of limb and say that I think this is very, very good. It's the little details you've explained that make me think you're going to include some very solid character development, and I like that.

The story just sounds very good, the "spell swords" could make for some awesome talents and abilities, and I like the first part of the name ("Of Iron..."), although the latter part ("...and Magic") might need a revise.

A few things that stand out as particularly good or weak to me...

the earth gifted on of the greatest crafters with the ability to wield both iron and magic

Now this isn't bad, but I think you can probably come up with some better explanation for this ability than "the earth gifted it to him."

Becuase they needed to extend the blood line, they sent her away as a child, back over the ocean and to the kingdoms that had driven her out. With no way to return home, she lived among the other humans until she was discovered and captured.

Fearing that she would become more powerful, yet not having the courage to kill her, they locked her away beneath a horrible prison. There she was tortured and mocked until she thought that she would go mad.

For my money, this is the strongest element of your backstory. It all sounds very believable and you've got one hell of an opportunity to pull on the player's heartstrings here.

For my pathetic lack of a better analogy, the "innate ability makes a child an outsider" sounds a lot like the beginning of Harry Potter (Sorcerer's Stone), or the first half of PS2's Phantom Brave. I found both of those very compelling, though I know some people were just hoping the action and exploration would move on.

Um, one more thing about this--what do you mean they didn't have the courage to kill her? Did they not have the heart to do it to an innocent girl, or were they afraid she would do something to them out of survival instinct?

~

Also, Perversion is correct about the gameplay--the more unique it is, the more people you will find play it. Add features, take the time to perfect your battle system (I personally hate long battles. I feel they should be quick, strategic, and difficult), and most importantly just make it all fun!

He's also totally right that you shouldn't be discouraged or feel like you need to change your game around because of any single post here. It's your game and it's important that you're happy with the decisions you've made. Figure out which suggestions jive with your vision, and consider implementing those.

- Increase enemy difficulty by leveling them in the monster parties editor...NOT by increasing their stat growth. While you can still tweak enemy stats slightly in late-game monsters, keep in mind that the effect will be exponential stat growth.

Whoa, that is a really good idea! I never thought of that... definitely a great way to keep things in balance and ensure the difficulty never spikes too quickly. All you need to do is figure out what level your characters will generally be at a certain point. I personally like setting the stats manually and making the enemies all Level 1, for maximum flexibility, but yours is a much better way to do it.

[Ωbright]

Re: Of Iron and Magic

Whoa, that is a really good idea! I never thought of that... definitely a great way to keep things in balance and ensure the difficulty never spikes too quickly. All you need to do is figure out what level your characters will generally be at a certain point. I personally like setting the stats manually and making the enemies all Level 1, for maximum flexibility, but yours is a much better way to do it.

Well, only thing about doing that is that 99 is the highest you can bump a stat bonus, isn't it? I guess if you wanted an enemy to have say, 300 STR, you could give them +99 in STR and level them 3 times.

[Wavelength]

Re: Of Iron and Magic

Well, only thing about doing that is that 99 is the highest you can bump a stat bonus, isn't it? I guess if you wanted an enemy to have say, 300 STR, you could give them +99 in STR and level them 3 times.

Ah, good point. Yeah, I think you're right. So far the highest stat I've had to set is around 70. On your scale of 1-10 on the power of "level-ups," I guess mine would be about a 2 (the characters don't actually level up, but there are ways to make them more powerful through the game). Anyhow, I guess I could set an enemy to level 2 or 3 if I need one of their stats higher than 100. I just don't like having to have the stats in multiples of 5 or 8 or 16 as you'd see with higher-level enemies.

By the way, I meant to say this before Xyster--"Ninja Poke" is absolutely, by far, the most adorable thing I have ever seen!!

[Xyster]

Re: Of Iron and Magic

These are all very good ideas. This is my first game, and I haven't gotten very far into it yet. I'm trying to work out most of the monster/leveling/battle quirks before I even delve that far into those things so that by the time that I get there, then I don't have to rework everything.

As for the title, yes...that's kind of a place holder. I'll grab a thesaurus before I actually put it to print to have a better title, but it gets the point across.

Finally, they are very much afraid to kill her because she is a thing of legend. They don't know that since she's alive, if there are any others, what kind of power she has, and if they did kill her if any of the others, if the existed would come to get revenge. Let's just say that human emotions aren't one of their concerns when dealing with her.

Also, I do think I need to alter the fact that the magic was just gifted to them with something else...I'll mull that over for a while and probably alter it to something a bit more...in depth and worth reading.