Need help on developing story

[Grade Zero]

I have no idea how well the storyline's going to hold up with the player so a little help would be appreciated.

Oh, and I need help coming up with names as well.


Intro:

A few months after the defeat of an evil demi-god, Gorgogeth, at the hands of three brave strangers (an archer named Remian, a masked vigilante named Kochei and a priest from the Eoalin Monastery named Perinet), the rest of the world is trying to clean up the mess that was left behind.

Each town in the kingdom of Norin has assembled its own militia to find and eliminate the remaining followers and creatures that once served the evil demi-god. There's only one problem: their numbers have been increasing. After consulting an oracle, it is revealed that something or someone is responsible for creating new abominations. With this revelation, the King ordered a group of his best warriors to find the source producing the evil creatures. But in some twist of fate, someone else has been lead to the right path.

The main character, Samseth joins his town's militia and gets deployed via airship into a fortress under seige by ressurected Norinian soldiers. They find the source of the corpses: the Tomb of the Fallen, a burial shrine to those who died in battle. A team is assembled to find out who is controlling the corpses and kill him.

Once they reach the tomb, the group splits up and Sam's group find an old man deep within the tomb. They attacked but they were outmatched by the mage's magic spell. Sam's two companions died in the attack. The mage readied himself to finish Sam, but an Auric Knight (knights who specialized in magic), named Winter, intervened. Together, they both defeated one of the three followers of Gorgogeth.

The story continues as Samseth and Winter take down the last two disciples of the evil Gorgogeth.

[Hikari no Kaze]

Re: Need help on developing story

Oh, um, wow.

Evil Demigod: Ky'semia

Masked Vigilante: Kochei

Shinobi: Jeff (ALL THE SHADOWBLADES SHOULD BE NAMED JEFF.)

Ummm.... yeah.

[Grade Zero]

Re: Need help on developing story

Oh, um, wow.

Evil Demigod: Ky'semia

Masked Vigilante: Kochei

Shinobi: Jeff (ALL THE SHADOWBLADES SHOULD BE NAMED JEFF.)

Ummm.... yeah.

Evil Demigod - Maybe. I'll have to see what others suggest.

Masked Vigilante - I'll keep it.

Shinobi - I dunno, but I like the idea of them having the same name.

[thelegendaryX]

Re: Need help on developing story

Okay, I'ma level with you on something: I didn't read much of your story because you seem to add plenty of detail, showing you're thoughtful. I'm sure whatever you think up will be fine.

As for names, might I suggest googling "unusual names"? That's what I did. I got the following from one of the sites I found:

Auzric, Talano, Evijan, Bristan, Xanthius, Taiven, Saulth, DaKesha, Greyti, and Brynlee.

[Wavelength]

Re: Need help on developing story

The setup as you presented it seems pretty decent. The strongest part is probably that you've got enemy magicians controlling armies of undead zombie corpses. Very cool. Who wouldn't want to go up against that?

I also like that you gave a lot of detail about your game. Definitely good to see that. Two things you only touched on were the world and its locales, and the characters' personalities (as opposed to their motives, which you did a fine job with).

It sounds like you've got two characters plus two optional characters. Do you plan to allow all four in a battle party at once? If so, this could create some major balance issues (as well as writing issues--I take it you plan to create dialogue/scenes without the characters, as well as ones with the characters, and show the player the appropriate dialogue based on who's in your party?).

Have you done any playtesting? My experience with low stats is that the variability--in attacks, especially--seems to have a lot more effect on how much damage you do. Your hits might range between 0 and 6 damage, for example, rather than ranging between 16 and 22--so the luck, relatively, plays a bigger factor. Now, I know you said the equipment is really important, so maybe you're planning on making the equipment bring peoples' stats up well into double digits, but if not, I would recommend playtesting some battles, and if it seems like the battles are a little too much of a crapshoot, globally increasing Attack, Magic, and HP stats for foes and allies alike.

Just a few suggestions off the top of my head for names:
Demigod: Helio, Arco, Malik, Demi (lol!), Nyle, Warru, Mot
Shinobi: Kenchi, Zero, Loki, Kunai, Cliff, Hito

[Perversion]

Re: Need help on developing story

(as well as writing issues--I take it you plan to create dialogue/scenes without the characters, as well as ones with the characters, and show the player the appropriate dialogue based on who's in your party?).

That part IS tricky. I know in S1, there were three main characters, and the fourth depended on if you joined the fighter's or mage's guild. I pretty much made all of the mandatory storytellers (ie-the ones that dealt directly with the plot) using only the three main characters. There may have been one or two that included whichever fourth character you had, but mostly, the only storytellers or dialogue that included them related directly to their respective guild or acquisition of an exclusive weapon/spell/skill.


If you DO have multiple characters who may not be in your party at all times, I recommend assigning a variable to each, and then making a val cond branch to determine if they are in your party if you need to have a storyteller that includes them. That way, if need be, you can have two different versions of a storyteller depending on who is in your party.

Of course, if the game is completely linear, and you know exactly who is in the party at all times, this is not even an issue.

Hito

A shout-out for one of own, eh?

[Wavelength]

Re: Need help on developing story

That part IS tricky. I know in S1, there were three main characters, and the fourth depended on if you joined the fighter's or mage's guild. I pretty much made all of the mandatory storytellers (ie-the ones that dealt directly with the plot) using only the three main characters. There may have been one or two that included whichever fourth character you had, but mostly, the only storytellers or dialogue that included them related directly to their respective guild or acquisition of an exclusive weapon/spell/skill.

Ah, the Star Ocean 3 Bonus Characters route. Well, this is one very good way to pull it off, except, personally, I found it annoying when characters like Mirage and Adlai (sp? the strong guy) completely disappeared from the plot after joining. It's a matter of effort (and data usage) vs. reward, I guess.

A shout-out for one of own, eh?

'Hito' is Japanese for 'one,' or (roughly) one person. I figured that would be an appropriate name for the kind of character that the Shinobi seems to be. But yeah, I also had Hitogoroshi in mind when I thought of the name, probably

[Perversion]

Re: Need help on developing story

Hehe....yeah...it boiled down to data usage. I didn't LIKE that only three of the characters were fleshed out with any sort of character development, but as I ended the game using 99.9% of available space (and this included at least two weeks of reconfiguring events/modes/data in order to include everything I NEEDED), I kinda had to focus on only the three main characters. There WERE a few storytellers/events, determined by val cond branches, based on which character you had/your alignment that DID have an effect on a semi-important piece of the plot, and which DID give at least one of the two non-main characters SOME background and motivation. There were at least 3 triggers for this particular event, though, and this DID effect one of the 17 endings (I needed to make at least 2 versions of the good, neutral, and evil endings to accomodate which character you had).


So, yeah...I didn't LIKE it, but it was necessary.

[Grade Zero]

Re: Need help on developing story

The setup as you presented it seems pretty decent. The strongest part is probably that you've got enemy magicians controlling armies of undead zombie corpses. Very cool. Who wouldn't want to go up against that?

There's only one magician actually.

There are three main "bosses" after the first one I described. Each one is different. Not all of them can control monsters.

The first one uses with Black Magic.

The second one deals with politics.

The third controls the military.

The final boss is basically by himself somewhere that I won't say.

I also like that you gave a lot of detail about your game. Definitely good to see that. Two things you only touched on were the world and its locales, and the characters' personalities (as opposed to their motives, which you did a fine job with).

I really suck at creating maps. Mainly because V- and G- mode are separated and I can't see what types of land I put where once I enter V-mode.

The personalities are still in the works for the last two characters.

I'll add more to the original post about the story and character info and less about gameplay.

It sounds like you've got two characters plus two optional characters. Do you plan to allow all four in a battle party at once? If so, this could create some major balance issues (as well as writing issues--I take it you plan to create dialogue/scenes without the characters, as well as ones with the characters, and show the player the appropriate dialogue based on who's in your party?).

They're all mandatory for the story to move forward. I designed the starting map to be in the center of everything (sort of a crossroad town). You can't move on to the next map without recruiting the Werewolf/Shinobi.

At the start, you head West (1st boss), then East (Werewolf), South (2nd Boss/Shinobi), North (3rd boss), then you airship from a northern town to an island (final boss).

So...you can't head south without the Werewolf, and you can't go north without the Shinobi. I just made special conditions (battling and searching) to get new characters mandatory so it's not boring just conveniently having people join your "adventures".

Have you done any playtesting? My experience with low stats is that the variability--in attacks, especially--seems to have a lot more effect on how much damage you do. Your hits might range between 0 and 6 damage, for example, rather than ranging between 16 and 22--so the luck, relatively, plays a bigger factor. Now, I know you said the equipment is really important, so maybe you're planning on making the equipment bring peoples' stats up well into double digits, but if not, I would recommend playtesting some battles, and if it seems like the battles are a little too much of a crapshoot, globally increasing Attack, Magic, and HP stats for foes and allies alike.

Originally, I would have just made the enemy parties have a higher level than the character and just give enemies low HP values.

My plan-B would have been to give enemies stats based on the mean (average) of all the player character stats and just give them high enough HP to survive the hits.



If those were done before and didn't work, can you suggest some stat ranges?

I had these in mind for the character types:

Archer = fast, offensive magic, low strength (main character)

Knight = tank character, high starting stats, slow to level up (but starts at a higher level than Archer)

Werewolf = strength and speed are high, low defense and magic defense, HP bonuses (regen, high HPbase), levels up fast, starts at Lvl 2 (you'll get him when you're probably level 15+)

Shinobi = weak in the beginning, strong at the end. Slow to level up.

[Grade Zero]

Re: Need help on developing story

Call the evil deity Gorgogeth.

I likey.

I'll keep that temporarily until someone comes up with a better one. But only if someone does. If not, its staying.

[Grade Zero]

Re: Need help on developing story

So...I'm really not liking the Loading screens before every battle and before using every item.

I'm thinking of having a low encounter rate, but with harder enemies overall to make it worthwhile.

What do you guys think?

[Marshmellowguy]

Re: Need help on developing story

It sounds ok.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: Need help on developing story

Ugh. Gorgogeth is a mouthful, and not a good one.

Phaedrim

[Marshmellowguy]

Re: Need help on developing story

Ugh. Gorgogeth is a mouthful, and not a good one.

Phaedrim

It does sound EVIL.

[Big Rick Cook]

Re: Need help on developing story

Might as well name him Gjigrajheth.