RMMV Idea for D&D-inspired dungeon-delving romance game

[xlucky_rat]

Project title: Must Love Dungeons

Our heroine, Willow, nurses her drink nervously. She is having second thoughts responding to that personal ad, which reads “Seeking wlw, 21-25, with thieving skills for dungeon-delving double-date.” It isn’t the idea of exploring dungeons that has her on edge, but the idea of exploring a relationship with another human being. Before her nerves get the better of her and she dashes out the tavern door, the most beautiful mage she’s ever seen walks through the door. Wait… is that..? It is! Ruby, her childhood friend!

I would love to make a game with a super fluffy romance plot between two childhood friends reunited after many years apart. I would also love to make a game that really captures the essence of D&D-style dungeoneering, with traps and locks and skill challenges. So I figured, why not kill two birds with one stone? Three birds, if you count the fact that I also want to capture that same feeling my GBC JRPGs gave me. And perhaps even four, as I will also be doing my part to produce LGBTQ+ content for the RM community. Yes, four birds with one stone sounds about right.

In addition to Willow, the thief, and Ruby, the mage, there is the gay power couple Faulk, the warrior, and Gilles, the non-binary nature priest. They make up the other half of this “double-date.” This game features randomly-generated dungeons (each floor of which is actually chosen from 64 premade maps, as doing actual RNG dungeons is a distant dream of mine) and the towns located between them. In the dungeons, there are dangers to overcome and there is loot to plunder, while in the towns there are ways to advance the romantic plot. The game would feature four possible endings; which one you get is determined by how much work you put into the relationship.

It’s still in the “ideas” phase now, but I think it’s a solid idea, at least, and I can’t wait to post about it on the “in development” forum.

 

[gstv87]

the idea of exploring a relationship with another human being

I think that single statement overrules every other aspect you're considering.
the characters being LGBT is secondary to THAT statement.

doing my part to produce LGBTQ+ content for the RM community

producing content is not an obligation.
much less of an obligation within that obligation, is to make it LGBT "for teh lolz" as they say.

if you want to write an adventure, write the characters and let the player play.
if you sell the characters up front, you're not writing an adventure, and it doesn't really matter where it takes place.
more to the point for the first statement: "human being"..... who says they have to even be human?

 

[geek42]

An artist has the right to make any art they want...as do you!

Thoughts on the D&D thing for the OP:

I am new here, but have more of a D&D background and have thought about conversions from D&D to RPG maker; you can look at other discussions on it. One thing is that the randomness that makes tabletop RPGs exciting is kind of annoying on a computer since you wind up reloading until the random number god favors you. I actually worked out that D&D spells would have an RPG maker 'variance' of 33 to as high as 75 for low-level spells with one die rolled!

You will have to make 64 maps and connect them. This is a lot of work. You can use the random dungeon generator, but my understanding is this is looked down on without further modification, and you can copy and paste events but will have to manually stick in each one. Another thought is to, perhaps, divide it into pieces and choose between those; 4 beginnings, 4 middles, and 4 ends will give you 64 possible combinations, and you have to make 12 instead of 64 dungeons.

Unmodified RPG maker works more on a tank-healer-DPS 'holy trinity', which maps pretty well onto fighter-cleric-mage with the thief being more of an outlier that requires work to make useful. In D&D, the uncertainty in the thief's skill is represented by a die roll; in a video game the player will just reload until they get the desire they want, so it makes more sense to have the traps and such represented by puzzles the player has to solve (move the boulders into configuration X to make the portcullis go down, etc.). It also fits the theme of the thief being ingenious and using their wits.

My understanding is relationships in video games are represented with meters representing how much the character likes you, so you could easily increment a counter every time you do something your desired paramour likes. (You could easily have multiple counters if you wanted to give the option for different sorts of relationships.)

Good luck!