Primeless

thx for the advice, i'll try it this weekend

Robo Rally is other board game in wich cards have a huge importance. You choose your moves via cards (go foward, turn left, etc) and plan your move using 5 cards in a row. At the beggining its easy to plan ahead. But once the turns goes, each robots starts crashing each other, moving them, so the first few cards in a turn makes you move somewhere, then, someone moves you, and you still have to move as the rest of your own cards say, so that card that would give you advantage (move 5 scuares foward) now can end up with your robot in a hole. So funny board game. Guess if someone can add some kind of sistem like this. P.D: off course, there are cards like: push the nearest robot 1 scuare foward, and so. So your carefully planed 5 actions can be messed up really fast.

hahaha!!! you are so evil!!!! PURGUE YOURSELF!!!! thats a great idea! Im buying it for a game with a corruption system. It could be cool if, once you get corrupted (and superpowered because of that), you miss some options in the menu xD edit: im also playing darkest dungeon.

Yeah except most of the games you mentioned do have stories, even outside the manual. I think you need to replay Duke Nukem and Doom if you forgot about the ending scenes after every episode, and Duke Nukem even has story text in it's help menu and spoken lines at the start of each episode that tell you what you are doing. X-Com has tons and tons of text detailing stuff about what is going on when you research things. Plus a minimal story printed in the manual is still a story. Of course, you are so right. I'll never forget that second episode in DN where you start with no gun at all. Neither the sensation in Doom when But you will agree that players (usually) dont play those games because the story, but because the mechanics. If OP has a nice mechanic, and thats the main thing in the videogame, maybe he dont need a "great and detailed story". Just an story to go with the game. Thats because the story is not the main thing in those games (even if they have one). And sure! i need to replay DN3D!, and i love the new X-com (even when its not even a shadow of the original one). Taking the Duke Nukem example, we dont really know anithing about Duke himself but that he is a badass killer, and an allien hater, and a sexual machine. Neither we have a good idea of why the alliens are invading the earth (scrap that. We know. They are kidnaping our women!!!). Or why there are gogo girls dancing naked to the alliens (or Duke, when he pay them). What i want to say with all this is that, as developer, each one needs to know where the strong points in your own game are. If that one is the story, the feeling, the atmosphere... hell yeah, you need a good plot. With good characters, jokes to break tension, a nice art skillz, etc. (the list can go on and so). Thats why there are some games out there that can make some players cry and laught. Others, will make you breack your head thinking in the best ways acomplishing this or that. Those are great games. And of course, there are some pieces that acomplish both (and even more) objectives. Those are mawsterpieces, and we all have our own favorites But if you have in mind some really good puzzles, a nice mechanic for whatever thing you want the player make, etc, you dont really need a good story, just an excuse so the player is hooked in to the game. At the end of the road, it is developer choice if he wants the player to think "That was a nice story" or "that was a nice mechanic" or whatever. As final thought: usually developers (at every art form) try to focus in transmiting some feeling. To acomplish that, they will usually make all the components of the art piece to focus on that they try to acomplish. Of course, there are grades and exceptions. TL;DR: Think about what do you want the player to feel, and focus all elements in that feeling, so you acomplish your own objectives as developer. This requires lots of planification, brainstorming, and chooses (this being the hardest part, as you might quit some really nice ideas in favour of others). P.D: damn, my posts are long as hell. Sorry.

This is really helpfull. Thx to both of you, as i had similar issues.

Even Duke Nukem drop literally the player into a city so he can start smashing aliens right away. There is these feeling of "aliens are invading!" but there is no story at all. Just you, your guns and the aliens (and some secret rooms). We can think about (nearly) any 90's game, and we have the same thing: a main character, something to beat, and the feeling you are doing it for some reason (like rescue the princess in Super Mario Bros. Bomberman. Pang... you got the idea (who wants to play pang because the story?). Golden Axe... the list is infinite. Even now a days, most game history starts pretending main character is "this" and wants to acomplis "that". They dont even need to explain anithing. They just have "hooked the player into the game". You can go that way. "You (the player) are a detective and need to resolve this case, so... start doing puzzles!" Make an interesting mechanichs and the player will do the rest (if he is interested, of course) Damn, even Doom haven't a final scene at all. Other game i can think about "lack of history but great overall game": X-Com. Again, aliens are invading. Just an excuse to make a management and tactical game. Im sure you got the point. Even the super classic Monkey Island started with the sentence "I'm Guybrush Threepwood and i want to be a pirate", and the player is like "hell, yea, im on it". Of course monkey island have story, but its not one in wich the player has a real impact. You just do puzzles as you just want to help that guy (and have fun while doing).

I don't buy the idea that conflict is essential for a story, or at least that conflict is an element of a story you should really focus on. If you have to have to contently artificially make sure every event in your story always has to revolve around conflict you are not writing a good story, you are writing a soap opera. There have been tons of things with plots that basically have people standing around talking about things that have still been interesting. I am not saying eliminating conflict is a good idea I just am saying it should come naturally. I don't know if any of that actually has to do with the topic but, in some small way, I think it does kind of does. It reminds me a bit of the same kind of argument really. If you spend all day worrying about some "essential" feature your thing needs to be to be x, you are probably doing it wrong. It should either have it by the very nature of what you want to do or it doesn't need it. Really I think it's more the case that some people want a lot of varied things and others don't know the names of or how to explain what they want. And then there are a ton of people that just don't think about it, or people that know more what they don't want then what they do want. i think i've explained myself pretty bad, maybe for language issues, as in spanish the word "conflict" don't mean necesarily a "violent conflict". I understand "conflict" as a fight between factions, but also, as the dudes a guy may have related to his love. I mean. If a guy is asking himself how to ask her girlfriend to marry, he is having a conflict with his ownself... And, of course, it has to become naturally... and usually it matches with the charactersway of thinking and acting (or even talking).

Hi all. I guess that it depends on the core mechanich. Most of the games made in RPG Maker consider regular combat some sort of a "erosion vs sustain" combat. They are not really dangerous, they just consume some resources (healing, speciall moves, etc), and, as player, you dont really need a free save for each step you take (bosses and special events are the excepction). Other games consider each combat dangerous and mortal. You need to save often on those. At the top of this, we have games like Faster than Light or the new game The Darkest Dungeon. Both of them are so challenging, and none of them allow you to save (they both have an autosave sistem), so a 5 hours game become a 20 hours game (or so) and a really challenge one. my 2 cents. P.D: Be ware of Xenox!

pretty agree, but have to say: Conflict is esential to tell a good story (but not a story by its own) so, if you want a game with a good story, you need to set a conflict. + Tetris is the best game ever. edit: @KilloZapit: People should learn what they really like xP. My own experience sais that most of them dont really know it.

As people is pointing, you need to be clear with what you want. There are many kinds of "horror" out there, and you need to decide with wich one are you going. ¿do you want some horror like in the aliens movies? ¿or something like a zombie apocalipsis? ¿its some kind of Lovecraft horror kind? Define some good characters, a nice athmosphere and a enviroment. Horror can be used in a Fantasy World, a Sci-Fi history, or a today's plot. After all those sketches and ideas, define the strong point in your game: ¿is it the battle itself? ¿its the "resolving the mysterius" thing? ¿discovering all your allies are evil? ¿its a survival? Then sketch your adventure with your choices in mind, and star writing a nice plot. To write a nice plot you need some inspiration (it becomes in the brainstorm you have to do before), and try to resume your game in one or two simple sentences. Some examples: Terran Marines discover a strange sheep in the space and try to explore it. Soon they find fighting each other to survive. or A Journalist wants to write a book about madness, so he request to explore the deep of a Madhouse. Soon, he is traped in his own mind, not knowing what is real or not. or A group of pirates discovers the map of a new treassure. In the adventure to achieve it, they all become Mad because devil influences over the treassure, killing each other. --- After you have the basic idea, you can start figuring out the plot. Posible finals, Hints, main characters, etc. And you also need some art that matches with your story and enviroment. You can check some films like "The third man" for inspiration. I know the plot of these films may not be similar to yours, but the visual language can be very strong, and you can learn much from it. (you know: close camera for important speechs, black and white images, twisted drawings, you can manipulate perspective in some planes, etc.). Look for some music too, stay focus, be patient, dont mind to correct (or even destroy) some parts that you may think they are good, bat then you realize they are not really that good... Test your own game, have fun while doing it, and think about who is going to play your game. just my 2 cents. Or else, you can always start opening the program, make a new map and start doing random stuff.

didn't know about those! thx for sharing

thx! i will try it once i have time!

I love the idea of people reacting to telepaths the same way that they did to witches. Even though there may be scientific ways to figure out that someone is a telepath, people will inevitably get so scared of the "other" hiding among them that they'll come up with their own not-so-scientific identification methods. For example, if someone wears a certain type of clothing, or has a particular skill, they might immediately be branded a telepath and subjected to extrajudicial punishment by the community out of fear - whether or not it's actually true. It can be cool if there is a cloth that the goberment asignes to telepaths. Not using it can bring some penalties to the telepath (if cought). Using them will make the NPCs to react as intended...

Its fun because that way, an evil guy can change the names of places confusing the main character of the story... hum... evil ideas are coming (mixing this with the infinite map script can be awesome!)

im already interested in this topic, as im intended to do a "chaneled skill". Im breaking my head, but cant find a solution.