Rules Ideas That Don’t Deserve Their Own Thread

[gigaswardblade]

Normally I make an effort to reply to peoples stuff here, but I've been pretty busy with Thanksgiving and work, but I have returned.

@gigaswardblade Your region names are a bit on the nose, but that's not really a bad thing. I do like the idea of insect people, but that sounds like a lot of sprites to make.

i forgot that people might've been busy with thanksgiving. also, the beek and antisians are the main 2 bug races that i'll be working on sprites for. the others will probably have like 3 sprites in total.

 

[Robercletzon]

HI, i am Robercletzon and i making a rpg maker game.
I am brazilian, so forgive the poor english.

I thinking of translating my game to English to more people play it. In future i think i sell the game for some small fee, like 10 dolars, but i will leave the full game for free too, if anyone liked the game and want me to continue producing it i think is ok.

The game is an comedy RPG. So if you laught in the battle moves please tell me what is, the names will be in portuguese for now...

So, please make comments to this video of my game.
Its some battle animations for the four first heroes.
Some i made today and need more polishiment.

The First one is Robercleiton, he fights MOLE FU, a kunf fu of mole, so he have some DIG moves based, like dig and trow stone, the others are a Flying Hero, an Fish with manipulate the waters, and an Maid movesets.

 

[Kuro DCupu]

@Kuro DCupu I like the idea you have but what does the other character do while their sibling is doing chores. Its pretty cool to have two characters in that type of game though because they can each have unique relationships to other characters and the actions of one might affect the perception of the other or something

Mmmm, loitering around the city? I haven't invest much on this idea. Back then I planned the siblings activity to be limited. The brother only able to do outside activity such as fishing, hunting, mining, and lumbering. The sister only able to do inside activity such as farming, animal caring, and cooking. Both will hangout in the bar at night when left.

 

[Robbie626]

Hi all,

I am deciding on making a game with RPGMV maker. Will my game be marked down for doing a fantasy and using real city names? I live in California and wanted to use local cities as town names. The land will be unique, but will players dislike names of real cities in games? The towns will not be based on the actual city. I know it is my game, but thoughts on this would be appreciated! In my view, the cities names goes well with the world that I am designing. Some towns will be made up though. Thanks!

 

[DrinkableTrees]

My game has very large side mechanics that involve picking up new party members along your journey and choosing who you travel with. You'll get opportunities to appeal to certain active party members through dialogue/actions/choices and will increase a variable with each called "bond". At different intervals for everyone you'll get unique dialogue whereas the characters open up to the protagonist more, unlock unique personal backstory quests or eventually even unlock new skills/equipment!

PTSD and other mental illnesses aren't a big theme in my game but I do wish to implement it in a potential party member named Aiello. He is a very intelligent, skillful and kind hearted man who is contracted to a nation's capital as their lead producer/designer for firearms and explosives. (In this setting, firearms aren't stuff like M4A1-S or anything it's like Pipe Rifles and steampunk-esque!)

His self esteem is largely attached to his intelligence and his crafts, as they are the main source of compliments or attention he really gets. He solely contracts himself to the capital because A- They pay well and B- He simply doesn't trust other people desiring his goods with good reason, which I'll touch on.

Spoilers, of course, for anyone looking back on this who is interested in my project. Specifically spoilers only relevant to the bond quests of Aiello and the nation history of Fastigium!!

---

Through travelling with Aiello, your bond will increase to the point where he opens up about a huge guilt that he holds. He is confident in the notion of showing the protagonist as he has built a trust with him to a point where he understands that he simply must know what he is responsible for and also to get it off his chest, or just to finally talk about it with someone.

He wishes to take you deep into some mountains that are out of the way in the country of Fastigium. He is confident and direct in his intentions to take the player to a "Long lost and forgotten town that is now drained of hope". On arrival, he does announce that they are at their destination. It's clear he wishes to begin teaching the protagonist what happened to the city in a calm, collected, cool manner but since they enter, he quickly begins to break down and becomes overwhelmed with emotions.

Over the course of this interaction, the player can push out of Aiello that he had once constructed the most large explosive device he had ever heard of. It was a massive success and he had grown proud of this achievement, but only worked on a "need to know" basis at the time. He never inquired what it was for, but he certainly knew it was great enough to take out an entire town if it really wanted to. Of course, he had sold off his creation and not long after, found out where it had gone. He hurried to the mountains but missed the giant explosion that been felt through all of Fastigium. He investigated with proper equipment later and found that the entire town had been destroyed.

Because of everything surrounding this, he is very conflicted. He really desires to be proud of the bomb, which was supposed to be his crowning achievement, but he struggles to feel that way. He's about equally mad at the contractor and himself, feeling as though they were equally responsible for the deaths of so many people and he mourns over the dead that would later be forgotten by much else of the world, fading out with irrelevance of an already dying town (due to trade being limited due to their isolation).

---

Now, this post looks kinda ranty and long in perspective and I thank you for holding out with me! I understand that mental illnesses do not just "happen" and I'm curious on basically any factor involved with knowing if my design behaviorally feels appropriate for my Aiello character. I understand too, that this case of PTSD could have been caused by the years of dwelling on the incident and obviously wouldn't have happened immediately, though, sudden traumatization certainly may have happened.

Normally, he is happy to discuss his designs and overall profession and view on world events as, again, this is mostly what he gets his self esteem from, almost like he feels it's really all he's good for. Maybe his devotion to Fastigium could be a sense of obligation? Like a silent apology to the country for what he views as his fault. Of course, he's not open about his involvement in the incident out of fear that he will get locked away or killed for his involvement as well.

I am a straight, white male with no mental illnesses and so I'm in a lot of majorities here haha. I don't want to be insensitive with my inclusion of Mental Disorder as a surrounding trait in someone's backstory and a piece of world history. Thanks for reading and I'd love to hear your honest opinions and critism. This is all still open for change!

 

[chalkdust]

I'm a war veteran with plenty of experience with explosives and their aftermath. Generally, we're not the sort of people who get easily offended and you shouldn't worry about causing offense. Getting the details right should be more about accuracy than feelings. There is nothing insensitive about using this theme in a character's backstory. It's good world-building.

Personally, I think the PTSD angle works best if your character witnesses the explosion. PTSD is not the same thing as a mere guilty conscience. You need the character to experience real trauma. I'm not sure that an after-the-fact investigation is realistically traumatic enough for your purposes.

As part of the character development, you could have this guy refuse to do certain jobs. Maybe he won't build explosives at all, or won't build them above a certain size, until his trust is high enough (so he knows they will be used ethically).

 

[DrinkableTrees]

I'm a war veteran with plenty of experience with explosives and their aftermath. Generally, we're not the sort of people who get easily offended and you shouldn't worry about causing offense. Getting the details right should be more about accuracy than feelings. There is nothing insensitive about using this theme in a character's backstory. It's good world-building.

Personally, I think the PTSD angle works best if your character witnesses the explosion. PTSD is not the same thing as a mere guilty conscience. You need the character to experience real trauma. I'm not sure that an after-the-fact investigation is realistically traumatic enough for your purposes.

As part of the character development, you could have this guy refuse to do certain jobs. Maybe he won't build explosives at all, or won't build them above a certain size, until his trust is high enough (so he knows they will be used ethically).

I am so fortunate to get an opinion from someone who actually knows a thing or two about the background I'm laying out! Thanks for replying!

As to your criticism, this is super insightful! Do you think that it could work best that he stayed with the people as he followed them inquisitively to find out what the heck they'd need such a big order for? I had already wanted to implement that they paid a rather generous sum of currency to Aiello to begin with but perhaps they desired to show him what they were doing with the explosive device so that they could reward him with a sense of power perhaps? To ensure that Aiello would continue working for them in future occasions, not expecting him to reject the outcome entirely? This would result in him having witnessed the catastrophe.

How, perhaps would you think he'd react right then and there if this all had happened? Would the trauma drive him to seeking revenge instantly or would he break down initially?

(all this, of course, if it's even a good direction to take with it haha)

 

[onipunk]

As Chalkdust said, PTSD isn't the same as a guilty conscience. It can manifest itself in many different ways, but it is a long-term mental illness that can take years to overcome, if at all. Some days, the sufferer will seem normal, while on others they completely can't function. They might hallucinate, they might be unable to do something innocuous that they'd be able to do no problem any other day, they may have panic attacks. The symptoms are different for everyone who suffers it. I don't think a character with PTSD would be able to be cool and calm and collected as he was even talking about showing the player the scene of his darkest moment, and I think the symptoms would manifest themselves a hell of a lot earlier than just when he goes back to that place. Trauma isn't something that can be taken lightly - it's traumatic, after all, and it can break a person. I don't have PTSD myself but I have several very close loved ones with a professional diagnosis of complex PTSD, and in one case it took two years to even realise there was a problem and seek help. Trauma =/= guilt, and in my opinion you should read academic material on the subject, as well as finding first-hand accounts by people with PTSD of their struggles, if you want to do this theme justice. The forum is a great resource but in this case I think looking outside the boards and doing the work will help you realise this theme more accurately, because it doesn't seem to carry many hallmarks of PTSD to me. This seems too...flippant, I guess. Chalkdust's suggestion is a good one, I reckon if he built a bomb that was abused to take out a town, he wouldn't ever build anything with that power again no matter who he was building it for. He seems like a smart dude, smart enough to know that he'd be placing that power in the hands of other people and that people can and will abuse power (unless your plan is to make the capital a completely altruistic beacon of honour and nobility which is a whole other can of worms, but suffice to say the quickest way to make a faction boring and unrealistic is to make them unambiguously good at all times).

 

[MakerZeroOne]

Tony Stark meets Oppenheimer? guilt induced PTSD at knowing his creation was used so irresponsibly? To be honest, I'm not sure that is possible without experiencing an actual event that traumatizes you. Was he actually hunted and persecuted for creating the device? If so, then it's possible that the PTSD that he feels is linked more so to the primal fear of being hunted, especially if he did not know he was making a bomb in the first place. If no, then I think that the backstory of self esteem and fear of others judgement, being the prime reason he delves into his work, and as a driving cause of PTSD, is kind of weak. You move on pretty quickly if your self-esteem is based upon the recognition of others. If instead, you made it his passion for the sake of what he does, regardless of what people think of him; if his self esteem is based primarily upon his understanding of his art, and his completing the function that he feels he is built to do, (Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Self-Realization); It would give cause for a much deeper sense of trauma to feel that the purpose of his existence had caused others pain. Instead of questioning how he feels about himself based upon the feedback of others; he would question the validity of his entire existence; which i suppose can be a strong enough of a connection to the event, to cause PTSD.

"Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds..." -Oppenheimer (I have no idea if Oppenheimer actually experienced PTSD or not.)

All of that, is of course, unless you do something as chalkdust says, and make the character imminently close to the blast; feeling and experiencing the trauma.

If I were in Aiello's shoes, upon learning of the bombing, I would feel a lost sense of surreality; followed by a slowly awakening horror and rage. I wouldn't feel guilt at all about corporate or military compartmentalization of information leading to such a catastrophe. I would feel used, and cheated, and want to visit just retribution upon the deserving parties more than anything; especially if it made me insecure about myself and my craft. The closest thing would be a strong sense of regret, at allowing myself to be used buy the "Capital" in the first place.

"If I only knew then what I know now."

Other than that, it sounds like you are really trying to invest deeply into the development of your characters and plot-line! Keep it up!

 

[Black Pagan]

Hi all,

I am deciding on making a game with RPGMV maker. Will my game be marked down for doing a fantasy and using real city names? I live in California and wanted to use local cities as town names. The land will be unique, but will players dislike names of real cities in games? The towns will not be based on the actual city. I know it is my game, but thoughts on this would be appreciated! In my view, the cities names goes well with the world that I am designing. Some towns will be made up though. Thanks!

Probably.. Personally, I sure don't like anything related to real life in my RPG Games. What you could do is what most games do - Replace a single letter or word of your original city names with something else. Example : Los Angeles could be changed to Los -something-

That would fit in perfectly in a Fantasy Game. People play RPG Games to experience something different, I hate people bringing up real life events or names in an RPG, But heh this is just my opinion.

 

[DrinkableTrees]

This is all super useful information, regarding why I came to this forum first is because I primarily wanted to see if people could reflect it from an RPG game perspective. I definitely hope to make every party member (as well as the protag) feel real and relatable. This is pretty central to making my bond system work, anyhow!

So if I continue going as I was, I suppose his insecurity is based on a guilty conscious instead of a form of PTSD. I suppose I mistook the two when trying to analyze his situation. Now that I know what I'm really trying to write for, I can do so much more effectively with much more accurate research.

I will still debate the idea of allowing Aiello to have experienced the explosion as well but then I feel like it'd just be me trying to chase a mental disorder for my character to have, which was not the intention, I only reflected in his ideals and history that he may have had such a scary disorder.

I'll continue to any further comments on this thread if any more comes and consider it into the development of my game and character. Thank you again for your contributions!

(I'll also write it out less as though his entire self esteem is based on his knowledge and expertise in his profession and allow him to be more collected as a person as a whole with a more rounded and comfortable personality, albeit holding a potential guilty conscious. (or actual PTSD if I take that route)

 

[gstv87]

I guess PTSD comes strongly defined by how the person suffering it had pictured other people to be.
"people are good and righteous!" -> own people behave like savages, person can't help the real victims (other people they thought to be *not* righteous) -> person has a mental breakdown.
"people are savages!" -> own *and* foreign people behave like savages -> person shrugs it off as "meh... people are savages"

the greatest scare comes when something scares you when you thought you were safe, and can't find the answer to the question "how was I not safe, as this?"
if you always know you're not safe, or you always find the answer to why you are not safe, then you'll never be stressed, because everything fits into some concept...... as in, you don't suffer or struggle to find an answer.

 

[trouble time]

Hi all,

I am deciding on making a game with RPGMV maker. Will my game be marked down for doing a fantasy and using real city names? I live in California and wanted to use local cities as town names. The land will be unique, but will players dislike names of real cities in games? The towns will not be based on the actual city. I know it is my game, but thoughts on this would be appreciated! In my view, the cities names goes well with the world that I am designing. Some towns will be made up though. Thanks!

I know a band that did this for their music. Gloryhammer! For example the first song on their first album is "The Unicorn Invasion of Dundee" and they cite Crail as the home of the most mighty knights (later THE SPACE KNIGHTS OF CRAIL) and have raging astral dwarves from Aberdeen, and the Questlords of Inverness ride TO GALACTIC FORTRESS! Then theres my favorite, the Hollywood Hootsman, a barbarian warrior from Unst that traveled to Hollywood to become king of California and the greatest movie star ever while also being a cyborg powered by a neutron star who blows up the earth to prevent the evil wizard Zargothrax from summong the elder god Kor'Viliath of THE 18TH HELL DIMENSION. Basically the band use real place names to tell a fantasy story (I think they were using real locations in the first album but by their second Dundee is an galactic empire ruled by the valiant hero Angus McFife the XIIIth)

 

[Gigglemoo]

I will still debate the idea of allowing Aiello to have experienced the explosion as well but then I feel like it'd just be me trying to chase a mental disorder for my character to have, which was not the intention, I only reflected in his ideals and history that he may have had such a scary disorder.

Take a look into "first responder PTSD" if you're interested in exploring that idea. You could easily mix some of the symptoms with the guilt of creating the bomb in the first place.

 

[DrinkableTrees]

Take a look into "first responder PTSD" if you're interested in exploring that idea. You could easily mix some of the symptoms with the guilt of creating the bomb in the first place.

EXCELLENT idea. I had heard of first responder PTSD before too! It'll be an interesting topic to reindulge in the research of.

 

[MakerZeroOne]

This is all super useful information, regarding why I came to this forum first is because I primarily wanted to see if people could reflect it from an RPG game perspective. I definitely hope to make every party member (as well as the protag) feel real and relatable. This is pretty central to making my bond system work, anyhow!

So if I continue going as I was, I suppose his insecurity is based on a guilty conscious instead of a form of PTSD. I suppose I mistook the two when trying to analyze his situation. Now that I know what I'm really trying to write for, I can do so much more effectively with much more accurate research.

I will still debate the idea of allowing Aiello to have experienced the explosion as well but then I feel like it'd just be me trying to chase a mental disorder for my character to have, which was not the intention, I only reflected in his ideals and history that he may have had such a scary disorder.

I'll continue to any further comments on this thread if any more comes and consider it into the development of my game and character. Thank you again for your contributions!

(I'll also write it out less as though his entire self esteem is based on his knowledge and expertise in his profession and allow him to be more collected as a person as a whole with a more rounded and comfortable personality, albeit holding a potential guilty conscious. (or actual PTSD if I take that route)

You could always include a bit of backstory where the guys controlling the Capital, who built the bomb, invite Aiello in for the celebratory unveiling and deployment of the project. you know, big wigs in suits, inviting him for a glass of champagne, lauding him over his success, and then everyone happily and joyously watching as a screen drops down to show the bomb deployed. Aiello is left horror stricken as he watched a peaceful little town wiped off the map; with suits everywhere congratulating him on a roaring success. something like that could be extremely traumatizing.

"At first, there were children playing in the town square, and people buzzing all around the streets and shops; Such happy faces... Then a flash, and nothing..."

I would be traumatized after something like that for sure.

 

[Paladin-Cleric of Awesome]

Was it his own capitol that’s he’s building for now who had the bomb or someone from another country or group?
Because you could have this group wanting to both test the bomb and kill him off ( they backwards engineered and maybe don’t need him anymore and don’t want him making this weapon for anyone else), so they invite him to the town so they can congratulate him and make another request from him, something happens and he’s delayed and arrives just as the town is blown off the map, he rushes to help, sees the awful conditions left behind and finally realised what caused it.

So the capitol or whoever it is he works for now comes to investigate and help and finds him, and because of this he attaches a ‘trust’ to them, which is why he builds weapons for them when otherwise he might have stopped, or looked more closely at their motivations or something. And if he has a pang of conscious or a ptsd panic attack whoever works with him making requests and collected weapons etc, keeps gently reminding him that they need these weapons to combat the group who has the bomb, which they either know he made and deliberately play on, or they don’t and the guilt of it makes him keep Woking to try and make up for it.

That’s how I would handle it. But I’m not a sufferer of ptsd or anything like that, so it might not work!

What I’m trying to say is you can still tie his building of weapons to his self esteem like this, because the more he builds for this ‘trusted’ group the better he feels after being the one to cause the destruction, he uses his knowledge and skills to try and make up for it and cope with it all.

 

[Kes]

This is a really interesting discussion which, sadly, does not belong here, as it is asking for feedback on a specific individual project.

It really belongs in 'Ideas and Prototypes'. I don't know if you have enough material to open a thread there (see this post for the guidelines of what you must include), but if not, I would need to merge it with 'Ideas that don't deserve their own thread'. Would you have a look and tell me which you want to do.

Thanks

 

[TheoAllen]

While I can't contribute to the discussion, but I prefer this topic stays as topic if possible, and not get drowned in single thread you can extract (or maybe even discuss) the information of how to depict PTSD while ignoring the project spoilers

 

[DrinkableTrees]

Was it his own capitol that’s he’s building for now who had the bomb or someone from another country or group?

It was another group that doesn't hold any allegiances to the country Aiello is from. The group is hardly designed yet and this is temporarily purposeful so that the building of Aiello and the history of that little lost town in the mountains is malleable.

This is a really interesting discussion which, sadly, does not belong here, as it is asking for feedback on a specific individual project.

It really belongs in 'Ideas and Prototypes'. I don't know if you have enough material to open a thread there (see this post for the guidelines of what you must include), but if not, I would need to merge it with 'Ideas that don't deserve their own thread'. Would you have a look and tell me which you want to do.

Thanks

Hey Kes, I just read through that link and it seems my discussion should fit in with the topics of "Characters" and "Storyline/Plot" (if a sidestory/personal character backstory counts, if not, this may also count as Worldbuilding)!

It does say that screenshots must be used but this topic is basically founded on discussion whereas screenshots are not present because I have yet to design this section of the game. Although, if everything does work well for being merged, I think it may provide even more feedback there. Thanks!