Plot and Character Feedback

Are you wondering if your game story is interesting? Did you hit a snag or a bout of writers' block? Are you having trouble figuring out how your story gets from point A to point B? Or maybe your brain is brimming with plot ideas and you want to help a fellow designer?

If so, this is the right thread for you!

Post your ideas, plot, parts of plot or history-related questions here. Answer and give feedback to other posters.

Rules:

If you're asking for feedback:
- Be descriptive.
Include the game genre, atmosphere, characters or any other important information.
- Tag and "spoiler" your spoilers.
Warn the reader(s) when you're discussing parts of your plot that are meant to be a surprise.
- Note your inspiration(s) or offer an example.
Referencing an existing game makes it easier for people to imagine what you want to achieve.

If you're offering feedback:
- Tell us who you're offering feedback to.
You can do this by quoting parts of the person's post or by making a reference to their name (such as "@user").
- Tell us which part of their post you're giving feedback for.
You may quote relevant portions of their post. But please don't entirely quote lengthy posts.
- Use spoilers when answering situations meant to be a surprise.
- Have fun!

 

Hopefully I am doing this right, but I wanted to see what people think about a specific part of my lore. It is about how magic works in my game to be precise. Here it goes:

Magic in my world is an energy that is constantly absorbed by all the materials around it and then released again through that object's breakdown, movement, or daily expenditures. Living creatures can make further use of this energy through casting spells, powering machines, and creating new objects from the energy itself. Once expended in such a way, the energy recycles itself back into the earth. Living creatures are able to manipulate the energy in many ways, but are generally unsuitable and unable to absorb and store much of the energy at all, since a living creature's daily actions expend the energy as fast as the creature can absorb it. Most materials can absorb far more energy than living creatures but not nearly enough to have any real use for casting spells and powering machinery. Crystals, on the other hand, can absorb huge amounts of this energy due to their unique construction. This makes crystals perfect for harnessing the energy for use in spells and as a power source. Unfortunately, the vast majority of crystals are flawed in one way or another and thus break and crumble after only one or two uses. Only the highest quality crystals are able to be used and reenergized repeatedly without breaking. These are the crystals that are crafted into jewelry and other items to be used as a focus for magic users or crafted into batteries for use in machines. Because living creatures can manipulate these energies, if two crystals are held next to each other, the energies from one can be forced into the other. This is useful because high quality crystals can store more energy than low quality crystals. Thus, a single small crystal of high quality may be able to store as much energy as ten large crystals of low quality. Transferring the energies from the ten large crystals to the single small crystal helps greatly with transportation. In addition, low quality crystals are not always entirely stable when a person is trying to make use of the energy stored within them. Transferring the energy from crystal to crystal is safe, but harnessing the energy for spells and as a power source puts stress on the crystal. It is entirely possible for a low quality crystal to break during this process, causing the spell to have disastrous effects. Because of this, it is only really safe to harness the energy from high quality crystals for these purposes and use low quality crystals for recharging via the transversal of energies. Of course, this is not the only method of recharging. Due to how suitable crystals are for storing these energies, most crystals will have absorbed energy to capacity within eight to ten hours of "resting", that is, as long as they are left stationary in a single location without some force attempting to expend energy from it during the absorption period. Various factors can lengthen or shorten the time needed and it varies from crystal to crystal but that is about the average time required. The actual act of casting spells functions by focusing on the effect wanted and channeling the energies that are needed to accomplish that effect. Words are spoken in a chant-like manner to help the mind focus and gestures are performed to help channel the energies properly. More powerful mages may not need the aid of chants or gestures to help them focus and channel, but it takes quite a while to reach that level of discipline.

Mechanics wise, the majority of this is flavor and still functions as you are used to. The exception being that, in my game, all characters have a max mp of 0 regardless of level. The max mp is raised by equiping these focus items as an accessory, thus giving you the max mp of the item. Since they can regenerate energy automatically after 8 hours or so, you pretty much just refill all mp when you rest in an inn or camp as normal. The low quality crystals pretty much act as your ethers or mp potions and can be purchased or found as normal.

Crystals were not my first choice since they are so often seen in RPGs, but I kept coming back to them due to just how fitting they are. Especially since they have that whole crystal memory thing and are perfect as a storage device.

As far as inspiration is concerned, just about every game with magic has me wandering, "Where does it come from? How does it work?" This was my attempt to answer that for my game.

Let me know what you think.

 

While the idea does look interesting, there's one rather grating question my brain keeps kicking at...

How did the first mage discover this? This just feels too... refined for it to have been discovered by chance. Perhaps there was an older race, one of sentient crystals, that taught humans how to do this? Or perhaps a small segment of the population has the innate ability to see and manipulate these energies, and over time developed the basic techniques for spellcasting and energy transference?

Either way, a setting where no one has any inherent magic reserves, yet people can cast spells by drawing on an exterior object feels... incomplete. It feels sort of like looking at a 15,000 piece puzzle portraying a vast, populated city... except three pieces are missing.

If you can find a somewhat believable explanation for this, I'd say you have one hell of a backdrop for the setting, too.

 

@Cronith:

Your lore sounds fine and believable. I do, however, want to give you a couple of alternatives to using crystals:

Water/liquid and Air/Gas

Both of them are naturally-occurring substances and both can be concentrated into more potent forms. They also offer the possibility to measure quantities and to make the "setting" re-useable. Depending on the level of technology and alchemy in your world, you can have elaborate machinery that condenses Water/Air into magic fuel.

Another advantage to using a substance like Water/Air is that it can explain the difference in settings. Deserts could be bare because they naturally have a lower percentage of magic fuel, while forests are lush because of a higher percentage. Wastelands are created when people used up too much of the natural resource. Etc.

 

Here is a bit more about it to help fill in the gaps:

These energies have been around for as long as the world has existed. In a way, you can say that the energies ARE the world. These energies are the building blocks of the world and all living and non living materials within it. Similar to how the big bang theory works but with a bit of differences, this world was created when a vast amount of the energy gathered into a single position and condensed. Much of the energy took on all forms of properties and became the earth, water, trees, etc. Once the properties of the energy has become set as an object, it stabilizes and keeps that form for a very long time. It will slowly break down and eventually turn back into raw energy but it takes a lot of time. As I said before, every movement, action, or breakdown of an object releases raw energy back into the world. In addition, when the energy becomes an object, excess energy is attracted and absorbed by that object. Living creatures constantly use this excess energy to help peforform all the bodily functions we know, from digestion to regenerating and healing wounds. The more complicated the action, the more energy is expended. Because of this, living creatures barely absorb any excess energy due to the high rate of expenditure. Non living objects do not have this problem and are thus able to store higher amounts of excess raw energy. As I said before, different materials with different properties and composition are able to store various amounts of excess energy.

The energy itself can be seen, so it is common knowlege about its existance. It is very light, wispy, and ethereal. If you are not actively looking for it, it can be hard to notice, but people know it is there. I mentioned before that channeling the energy from an object puts stress on the object. This is true for the person doing the channeling as well. You can feel the tug and pull of the energy as you manipulate it. People discovered magic in my world similar to how people discovered how to create fire in the real world. Someone at some point in time was sitting around board and frustrated about something they wanted and was fiddling around with the energies in a location with a high volume of it, such as near a patch of crystals at the base of a mountain ( If you can see it and feel it, why not? ). While doing this, their mind was probably so focused with the object of thier frustration that they may have hardly noticed at first when the energies around them began pooling and condensing into the object of their frustration. This may seem a bit of a stretch, but over millions of years, someone is bound to do it. From there it is just a matter of further experimentation and more trial and error. Eventually people create schools to teach it. In my example, the object of that person's frustration was probably something small and simple. Larger, more complex objects take more focus and available energy to create. It takes a lot of training to create things like fire, water, and lightning. In addition, the objects created in this manner are far less stable than their naturally occuring counterparts. It is just too difficult for someone to focus on the exact composition of an item enough to have it be as solid and durable as the same object made from naturally occuring materials. This means that something like a sword made from raw magical energy is far less viable than one made by hand. Of course, the more skill and experience the mage has, the better the quality of his creation. Though, more often than not, you are better off just finding a blacksmith. Living creatures are even harder to create from scratch due to the sheer complexity and are all but impossible for someone to consciously create in this manner. Currently, no known person has been known to have created anything "living" from raw magical energies. The natural way of pregnancy is a different matter in which the body is placed into a state of instinctually gathering additional energy to supply and grow the child over a lengthened period of time, similar to how the body would regenerate and heal a wound, basing its information on the material it is attached to.

It is interesting that you mention sentient crystals. While the crystals themselves are not sentient, the very magical energies that make everything up IS. In a way, that is. In its raw form, it is too spread out and fluctuating to ever create a conscious thought. When the energy pools together and condenses into a living creature, it is able to compress the sentience and form an single identity within that creature. When the creature dies and the body breaks back down into raw energy, the sentience and energy flow back into the earth. Many people have different ideas about what happens to the person's memories and personality at this point, but that is a different bit of lore altogether. When the energy forms into a non living object, the sentience never really takes on an identity and instead sits in a dormant state with no memories, feelings, or emotions and are unable to create conscious thought. If a naturally occuring object exists that is normally non living but instead has created a personality, noone has ever found it. (Though now that I write this, it does give me some ideas.)

It may also be worth noting that almost all known matter that was naturally created by these energies, was created at the time of the planet's initial creation process and the first few thousand years afterwards. Natural creation takes a very long time and after the majority of the raw energy was expended in the initial creation process, further natural creation has slowed tremendously.

Hopefully this has answered some of your questions. If you need any more clarification or something just does not make sense, let me know. I love to hear what people think and it helps me to know what areas that I need to expand upon or adjust.

---

Lunarea: I do kind of like the idea of using one of those as a conduit for the energy, but the main problem with that, for me, is that those resources are just too abundant. I needed something that could be gathered and traded without being too easy or too difficult to obtain. Crystals still fit the proper mold as they are still fairly easy to locate and mine, but the average person is not just going to step out their front door and just scoop one of high quality right out of the grass (Not normaly, at least). Thank you for the suggestion, though. You never know, I may end up making a highly concentrated liquid form of the raw energy based on your suggestion. Hmm, actually, I may just do that.

Anyway, your original suggestion may work better if the setting is a desert or barren wasteland were water is scarse. Or maybe I am just not thinking of the proper way to utilise it.

On a side note: I am not a usual forum goer, so I am not entirely sure on this, but should I have just edited my last post and added this to it, or is a new reply fine? I ask this, because Lunarea posted while I was typing out my last post and I never noticed it until I was finished ( I am a really slow typer ).

 

This is called double-posting, and we generally refrain from doing that. It's much easier to edit your initial post with any extra info. I've merged your two posts for now.

Here's the great thing about being the master of your own lore ... you get to decide how things are implemented.

A couple possibilities for gathering:

- You need specific and very expensive machinery to gather and condense the natural resource into magical fuel. Not everyone can obtain the technology. And you can back up limited use of the machinery by laws. Areas that are wastelands, for instance, can be causes for laws regulating machinery use. There can be all kinds of scientific checks in place in gathering areas. If the natural resource reserves are running low, the zone is considered restricted and using machinery is prohibited.

- It takes a long time to gather enough natural resource in order to condense it. This means that everyone can go out to their yard to gather it, but it will take them 3 months. This would make the fuel expensive for those who have to have it right away. But people could also plan carefully and go with self-sufficient harvesting.

 

@Cronith

First, it's good that you are considering how magic works. In particular, it's good that you are considering costs and limitations. I'm a firm believer that limitations make powers more interesting. I have some specific feedback, but I suspect it may get a little long winded. Even if you don't want to read through all of my post, I recommend you listen to episode 14 and 15 of http://www.writingexcuses.com (season 1) or read http://www.brandonsanderson.com/article/100/Sandersons-Second-Law. They explain my general sentiment much more succintly.

Crystals are a common choice for magic storage, but that doesn't necessarily make them bad. I do, however, have several questions. Does the type of crystal affect what magic can be performed? What is the purpose of cutting a crystal? Can crystals besides gems be used? If so, has any work been done into making an artificial focus? Can anyone perform magic with some training? Can every magic user perform the same spells given some practice? How expensive are reusuable crystals? Is crystal tech a luxury of the rich or is it available to craftsmen? What about the lower class? How regulated is the industry? Are con artists a problem or does some sort of agency or guild keep things on the up and up? If only one group polices the industry, are they corrupt? If more than one organization is a trusted vendor, how does the rivalry (and competing standards) between the organization affect law, politics, and pricing?

One possible way to start tackling (some of) these questions is to decide which qualities of crystals make them good for spell casting. You mention crystal memory which suggests that a crystal themselves are the mages spellbook, but that spells can be changed by exposing the crystals to magic in a controlled manner. That seems like a service that would require a mages guild or a well stocked personal lab. You also mention crystals being used to power machines, which calls to mind crystal resonators, most commonly quartz. Resonance (accoustic in particular) probably plays a part in spell casting as well since you mention chanting as being a helpful for mages. Perhaps one of the things that sets mages apart from common folk is they simply have the vocal range necessary to resonate with crystals without a machine. If the frequency is different for different kinds of crystals you can even make each crystal only equippable by different party members. That's most useful if the type of gem determines what kind of spells it can be used for.

 

@Cronith

Okay, looks like you've thought pretty much everything out there. In fact, I'd say you have a few "volumes" worth of books for characters to find, explaining the more archaic aspects of magic for your world.

 

@Jaerys

I do have quite a bit more lore written out that answers all of your questions except for the laws and politics. (Never been a fan of politics so it always seems to get pushed to the end of my plans.)

Another thing that you mentioned was the creation of artificial focuses. I actually never thought about this and could be an interesting concept to add.

While I would love to add more of lore to this thread, I am not really sure how much I should share, since I do not have much experience with posting my stuff for feedback. I would however like to clarify on the mechanics of the crystal storage in order to help answer your spell book question.

The magical energies can be used for any kind of spell that a mage wishes. It basically acts as the resource. Different spells require different amounts of that resource depending on the complexity and size of the spell. The quality of the crystal dictates the amount of the energy resource that it can hold and is generally never cut into gems because it would reduce the storage size. When fashioned into a focus item it is usually attached to a chain for a necklace or placed on the head of a staff or rod. It is usually not good to try to channel from multiple sources at one time because it complicates the casting exponentially. A powerful and experienced mage may be able to get away with it, but it is not recommended. For casting powerful, complex spells you really need the largest and highest quality crystal that you can find. I do have a quality scale and small, medium, and large size categories created for my game that lists how much energy a crystal of each of the types can store. Of course, there can be more than my list covers, but I only calculated for the types that people in my character's positions would comfortably carry around with them and use.

I hope I am not confusing anyone. Basically, a person with a small, low quality crystal may have enough energy stored in it to cast a simple, low complexity spell. A large, high quality crystal would contain enough energy for a much more powerful and complex spell. The ability to cast these spells is based on the skill of the caster.

As far as the chanting to resonate with the crystals is concerned, I love that idea. It reminds me of Ann McCaffrey's Crystal Singer trilogy which I loved as a kid and completely forgot about.

 

Hey Cronith! Wow you have really thought about how your world works, thats great! I think it will be interesting to see how you incorperate those ideas into the game world. Adding lore books and flavor text to certain items can go a long way to making your world come to life and you have plenty to work from in that regard. I really like the idea of having 0 MP for all characters and increasing that based on equipment. Also maybe you could have cursed crystals, say from the energy of tainted objects/creatures/people, wield large amounts of power but with a negitive side effect.

 

@Cronith

It sounds like you have this fairly well worked out. One last line of questions though: Do monsters exist? If so, do monsters use magic? If so, is it through the same methods as humans or have they physically evolved in a way that allows them to circumvent your guidelines that living creatures consume magic as fast as they absorb it. For instance, dragons could have crystalized scales that they store magical energy in during long hibernation. If there are creatures that produce organic crystals suitable for at least recharging foci then it would give an excuse to let certain types of enemies drop ethers or boss monsters dropping high quality crystals that probably wouldn't exist naturally. It'd basically be the fantasy equivalent of the calcite and argonite found in mollusk shells. Anyway, I don't mean to sound pushy; I tend to just write whatever comes to mind. Good luck with your game.

 

Sorry everyone, I am just gonna butt right in here.

Fortress of Whitwall - Seeking Feedback

Kay, so I am kind of bad at summarizing my plot ideas... so I will try to stick to important stuff, but I apologize in advance if I fail to do so.

The main character of the story is Grace, a cleric in training. The story begins on the last day of term at Whitwall Academy, a school for teaching magically gifted people from all over the continent how to handle their abilities (it is not as Hogwarts-y as it sounds... I hope). Grace's mother is the headmistress of the school, so she even lives there during the break period with all of the other graduated clerics.

At the beginning of the story, Grace's mother becomes possessed by a dark force - an alarming occurance for the reason (amongst the obvious ones) that the academy possessed ancient and powerful barriers that should prevent any evil from entering. Grace, along with her best friend Maria and two other students, end up in the nearby Spirit's Sanctuary - where almost the entirety of the remaining game takes place.

Spoiler

They soon discover that not only is the sanctuary - which is also supposed to be guarded - home to hundreds of monsters, but the spirits who originally granted humans magical abilities have also been imprisoned. Grace is called on to free them, as only someone with such a long-running Cleric bloodline can do, and the further her and her friends delve into the sanctuary the more they start to uncover about a terrifying past that her entire world seems to have forgotten.

So... more details? Less details? Please tell me your thoughts <3

 

@Jaerys

Monsters do exist of a sort. Never really considered them monsters, myself, just as the creatures of my world. As far as them using magic, well, I currently do not have any that do. The majority of the enemies in my game are human, due to the story revolving around a war between three kingdoms. It is possible that I may come up with creatures that can use magic, but I just have not needed to at this point in my game.

Thank you for all the advice. I will probably be crunching down on the game for a bit now that Ace is here.

@IndigoAir

It is nice to see more people posting their plot and lore ideas. I do not really know how to summarize plot, either. Anyway, I get a lot of questions that come to mind, but almost all of it is stuff that you will most likely learn from playing the game. I probably just do not know how to properly give feedback on plot stuff. Hopefully I can think of something a bit more helpful later.

 

@IndigoAir

Great start to what looks like will be a game full of plot twists and suspense! Obviously you probably have many ideas in mind, but I like the potential you set yourself up with. If you are looking for feedback, I'd ask you the following questions:

Will the story focus on relationships? (Grace and her mother, Grace and her friends) or will it focus on battling, items, and dungeon crawling? I'm sure you will have a mix of both, but being specific in your intentions with your game will make it that much better. Will it focus on a linear story, or leveling up and having an awesome party that can take on any enemy?

Again, to make your game more specific, will you have an entire world, or do you mean the world of Whitwall Academy? Based on what you say about the majority of the game happening in the Spirit's Sanctuary, you may want to narrow down the scope of your project, which then leaves you free to create sequels based on the world outside of Whitwall.

Just my two cents. It's a great foundation for a game that sounds fun! Let me know if the feedback was helpful or not.

 

I am glad you brought that up because it is something I wanted to get a bit of feedback on, but I didn't want my first post to be a million miles long. The game will mostly focuson dungeon crawling, though since I am still a bit new to mapping the areas I have created so far are somewhat small. The current setup I have makes it so that there is a certain scenery object placed in several locations throughout the sanctuary that players can interact with. When they do so they will have the option of viewing between 2-4 scenes that will reveal some background information on the playable characters and their interactions with each other.

Well that is a bit of a complicated answer. I have already created an entire world, but the events of the game do occur entirely between the academy and the sanctuary. I have some vague plans for sequels I could make if I am satisfied with how the original attempt turns out, and that is why I have included a couple details in the plot that branch beyond the academy and the sanctuary.

In the case of my above comment,

Spoiler

there was once an invasion of beasts across the entire world that resulted in heavy bloodshed for the anctient people. Once the spirits intervened and the most dangerous demons were sealed, the humans fell into an era of peace, and with their newfound magical powers they began to lead lives of almost absurd serenity.People stopped traveling, lines of communication were nearly entirely severed between nations, and history was severely neglected. As a result there are only a handful of people left who are aware that a war even took place at all.

Thank you very much for your input, I found your questions and comments extremely helpful! Please don't hesitate to let me know if there is anything else you want to know about!

 

@IndigoAir

Sounds good! I think you'll have a wide variety of monsters to battle because of the story you have set up, which is always helpful in a dungeon crawler. My next question would be: will it be a dungeon with checkpoints (warping or something) every few floors, or will it be a "go as far as you can until you need to upgrade equipment" style of dungeon crawler?

I also like the idea of the cut-scenes; giving your audience something to strive towards (in this case, discovering what the characters or the ancient's story is all about) makes them want to play it non-stop.

Keep up the good work! Let us know when you develop it even further.

 

Checkpoints and warping is the better fit, I would say. The first area the players can access takes them to the upper floors, then they teleport back to the main floor and gain access to deeper areas of the ground floor, then return to the main room again and from there explore the below-ground areas, with a point near the end taking Grace by herself back to the Academy.

 

@IndigoAir

You mention placing objects on the map that let players view scenes to fill in the backstory and character interactions. Will this be the main way the story is told, or optional content for those that are more interested in the setting and characters? If it's purely optional material then you may want to make those objects key items that can be used to view the scenes later. Alternatively, have an object (save point?) that can (re)play scenes that the player has found. Many players like lore, but they generally like to read at their own pace. That's why so many games have codex systems or replayable audio logs.

I assume that clerics get their magic from the spirits and that the powers are at least somewhat hereditary. Do the kinds of spells they can cast depend on family line, personal aptitude, or field of study. Does each cleric get their power from a specific spirit, the whole pantheon, or some source of magical power that the spirits taught clerics to channel?

Also, is Whitwall the only academy or do other cities have their own? If it is the only one, is that because it is a holy site? Is it part of a nation or considered neutral ground? I ask, because it affects how multicultural I would expect the academy to be.

 

@Jaerys

The dialogue and information offered by the map objects would be optional. I like both of the options you preposed, but I am still very new to the program so it's possible I would need a bit of help implementing them.

All magic in the world came from the spirits originally, but at this point it is more or less entirely hereditary. The clerics are one of four magic affiliations and each was granted the power of three spirtis - in the case of the clerics, they were given the powers of ice, light, and healing. However the exact spells each person can learn differs from one another - some may not even be able to use a certain element at all. But there is really no definitive reason for why people learn the specific spells that they do, but generally their magic tends to reflect their personailty.

The world is split into five regions (only four of which are populated by people, however) and each has a single large academy. Each is located within close range to a sacred structure like the sanctuary, where the magic of the three spirits of each region is strongest. The people who run these academies are not necessarily considered above the kings/queens/etc of the region, but they are considered independant of them and no royalty holds influece over the academies.

I hope I've answered everything, I think I have >.< Let me know if I missed anything! Thank you as well, it is very helpful to be asked these kinds of things!

 

If I posted everything about the story, lore et cetera from my project I would probably be here all day. And summarizing this is going to be difficult, so forgive me on this.

The main character in my story in question is a boy (Riley) thrown into a despute between two 'Daeva's resurging in influence, Agnisus and Galadius. He is accompanied by a cat (a type of creature called Hex Conjeror) named Zephyr, of whom he has been good friends with since a young age, and another boy and girl, who are both brother (Allan) and sister (Tay). It turns out later on that all four of them have a major tie in with the Daevas themselves, besides just being caught up in the conflict. Zephyr and Riley are with allegience with Galadius, and Tay and Allan being in allegience with Agnisus. However, they don't recognise this until a good way into the plot, and it makes them wonder why they are fighting in the first place. The game ends when Galadius is defeated.

If anyone wants me to elaborate on some plot points, I will do, because summarizing this makes it sound so uninteresting.