🎉 Celebrating 25 Years of GameDev.net! 🎉

Not many can claim 25 years on the Internet! Join us in celebrating this milestone. Learn more about our history, and thank you for being a part of our community!

I am trying to write a story of a RPG

Started by
1 comment, last by Kaze 13 years ago
I am trying to write a story of a fantasy RPG,so I divided the story into quests which the player will need to play through.I really don't know if this is the right format of presenting a game story so I need feedback whether this is the right approach.

Eons have passed since the dominion of gods rested on the great sword of Balance,each of the six runes engraved on the sword defined their realms,it is said, 3 runes on either side of the sword balanced the dominions of Heaven and Hell.In this way,their powers were evenly distributed throughout the world.For once,peace was settling in all the realms,until the Bartholans tribes came.

Led by an evil necromancer, these fierce mindless warriors had a raw greed for power, obliterating every thing that stood in their way, their dreaded swords found the heart of many innocents and death came at their wake,quick and painful.

Finally they along with their leader,reached the city of Ken’dulan within whose confines the sacred sword was magically sealed away far from the reach of the mortals.But some gods find it hard to understand their monotonous role of preserving peace eternally,they feel power of change in this ever monochrome world could teach the mortals a better way to evolve.So one of them handed his power to this necromancer who promised to deliver him one of the sacred runes.

Eventually,Ken’dulan was attacked and using the power of an orb given to him by his lord,the necromancer forced the magical seal to open,with haste he detached the promised rune from the sword and sealed it away with a curse.

Without the rune,The dominions became unstable and the gods angered at this abomination declared war against each other.now the city of Ken’dulan lies in ruins,the wrath of the gods from above has left the free peoples trembling with fear, desperate to put up a fight for survival,men and women from all the races united and came to be known as The Sun Warriors,their only resolve were the Bartholans,warriors sharpened their steels,mages cleaned their scrolls,and together they fought with glory.

the chaotic Age has been recalled and the drums of war thunder again…

Quest 1

Welcome Stranger! We have been expecting you. Ken’dulan faces great danger in these troubled times. The threats from the Bartholans have been rising, their numbers are many, so my men are not enough to hold them. You are the most precious addition to the sun warriors clan and we require your help to defend Ken’dulan. Recently one of their hordes have seized our sacred temple, there have been reports that now they are using the temple to perform an unholy ritual. We cannot stand this abomination, the ritual must be stopped, or else they will become more powerful. If you succeed in stopping the ritual, you will earn the trust of Ken’dulan and I will reward you sufficiently.


Quest 2

It was very brave of you to stop the ritual in time, otherwise we would have lost the temple forever. However a greater danger lurks in the nearby village of Hazelwood. I hear that the evil necromancer is gathering the Bartholans to stage an assault directly in our town. This is bad news. Our seers tell us that the necromancer has grown very powerful since the god of anarchy gifted the necro his precious orb. If you will, go to the village of Hazelwood and thin out the mass of Bartholans gathered over there. Be careful of the necromancer, his curses have become very powerful, I would suggest not to engage him directly. Once you have finished your job, get out of there as soon as possible.

Quest 3

I should have recognized you. You were different from the others. In my ignorance I’ve sent you on a dangerous mission. You are too precious to us now. Let me tell you about your true identity. When the great sword of Balance was forged, the six runes engraved on the sword were protected by six mortals. If by an unfortunate event, any of the runes were missing, the mortal who was the keeper of the respective rune was to be confined in the heart of Adra after undergoing the purification process. So that in the absence of the rune, his pure soul will act as a substitute to alleviate the intensity of the chaos that will rage the world. You my friend is one of the Keeper, but you are now cursed by the necromancer, your only choice is to go to the forest of Kunlu and search for the stem of Nyss which will lift the curse, time is short, make haste and start your journey lest the curse will consume you, and if that happens the world we know will be no more.
Advertisement
Up front there's a lot of big words that seem to mean something but they kinda don't and aren't going to really feel big; it takes some effort to really imbue something with any emotional content. Like "chaotic", "balance", "sun warriors" and so on. And names with apostrophes thrown in. It doesn't actually have much meaning to the player; you might call it "false pathos". It's also sufficiently generic and plain that it'll be glossed over or not read at all.

So you need to work from the individual angle. Be more Final Fantasy VII than Chaos Rings, more Half Life than Oblivion and more Star Fox than Shadows of Oblivion.

There isn't enough here about any individuals for me to repurpose this so I'll give an example from my first completed game writing project.

We have two angles...

Angle one: Aliens are coming and two cities are fighting. Portville, lead by the Mayor of Portville, wants to offer a landing site, welcome the aliens and surrender preemptively to avoid war. Gavin Wentworth leading the opposition wants to mine the landing site with nukes. Conflict ensues...

Angle two: Frank Hank is brought to the future by Portville who asks him, as an ancient war hero, to teach them how to protect themselves. Frank Hank agrees but becomes disturbed by how uncomfortable everyone is with fear; he finds the news of aliens and their "we come in peace" message exciting and aside from having to fight Wentworth, finds himself in conflict with his host about their sky-is-falling attitude.

This lets us explore individual-level conflict between Frank Hank and his boss, the villian, hirlings. This is a story. Angle one is a scenario.

They jive together. The scenario puts everyone in context and reveals, through how they act, their nature.

So let's dive in and think about a person in your scenario. The following things are true:

1) Someone came up with the Sun Warriors. Who? Why? How? What? Did the Garamond Federal Legislature sign the National Swordonautics and Sun Warrior act of 1958 or did the knight Sir Wilhelm found it, auctioning off his art collection for seed money, ... ? What's the meaning of the name?

(Those are somewhat rhetorical questions.)

2) Someone decided he wants to join them. This someone is the player character (except when he's the player avatar). Why is that?

3) Who is he talking to sending him on these quests? Why is this person there? How does he know what to do? Why isn't he coming with you? This person is important because he's so far the main individual interacting with the main character!

Keep in mind that absolutely none of this is mandatory so it's preferable to chop a lot of what doesn't really matter, and keep characterization of the world and setting further in the background. Narrative is not mandatory.

You can also express the world and setting through all the tools you have such as art design, game rules, level design, etc.

Are the enemies on the side of chaos? What does that mean about them in practical terms and how is the final product (as a whole) going to express that?
Your first few paragraphs are a bit of a cliche storm,

If you want a simple plot that you can work into game play its ok but if your going to put it all into a text wall you might want to work on it a bit more.

This topic is closed to new replies.

Advertisement