Story: You''re in the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome, and everything is disoriented. One day an earthquake happens, the ground opens up, and all of these demons come out and take over cities as strongholds. You, happened to be in the town where the crack in the earth appeared and quickly flee to a safe place. You were one of few who survived from the demons. The demons quickly take over the city as their main stronghold. Within weeks they take over other nearby cities, but aren''t as powerful as the main city. The place you fled to was a castle roughly 10 miles from the last taken over city. There you train for months to go back and regain the lost cities and restore order in Eurasia. Characters: There will be one race, which is the humans and there will be different classes e.g. Warrior, Mage, etc. the basic layout of what you do is that you start out at town, pick your class, etc. Go out of town to head for first city. On the way there will be wandering demons to bring exp up. At first city you enter there will be demons on the streets, but not many. (Not Sure yet) If they should go into a building and go into a basement, etc or have the character fight the boss on the street. Once boss is beaten, people start to come back to the town and it is now a town that you can go back to heal etc. Once you''ve beaten all of the cities, you go to the main place where the crack is and beat the boss there. When you finish that, you go down in the crack and fight demons and kill the queen, thus stoping the demon threat. When you relpy... Please don''t flame about how this game seems like some other game. When developing the concept, we tried to go off the beaten path for RPGs and come up with somthing original. If this concept seems like another game, suggest an idea that would make it "original" in your sight. I will appreciate any new ideas or feedback

A point on progression of the story: Be aware that just killing all the demons seems like a cheap way out. Make sure the PC has to find out information from various people (was there a prophecy? has this happened before? was it recorded when the ultimate weakness, or the way to close the hole in the ground was discovered?). Your model already isn''t linear, so I commend you for it, but make sure that there''s a reason for the player to be there for his character''s own people, not just to kill the invading army.

George D. Filiotis
Are you in support of the ban of Dihydrogen Monoxide? You should be!

Not using the standard Warrior Mage Cleric setup, for one.
Trying to make an RPG -not- set in long-ago earth, although I commend you for actually putting it in a real time period, rather than "long ago when monsters walked the earth"
What''s so wrong about a Sci Fi RPG every now and then, I ask.

But anyway, how about setting a good portion of the game -within- the crack itself, where the party must descend and explore Hell? I think that would be, er, a hell of an idea. Although to make it a real twist, I woudl suggest not doing the normal "the Lord/princess/lvoer got kidnapped and needs ot be rescued from hell."

Just have Hell be a sidequest where one must, oh, i dunno, sway a powerful inhabitant of hell to aid you in your quest. Change of pace.

Symphonic: Just to let you know this is a basic idea, if people think the idea is good, then we can add those details you mentioned. But since those are all key parts of the storyline, i will state them now. No, this has never happened before, it could be a prophesy and have the character preparing before it happens, and then when it does, he goes and does whatever. I'm not really sure what would happen, maybe after the queen dies lava squirts out and seals it, and it could possibly be connected to an event that really happened like Pompei. Any more suggestions/ideas?

[edited by - Magriep on April 3, 2002 10:49:04 AM]

krikkit: Ok, so after you defeat the last boss on the surface, you go down in the "Underworld" and there will be a series of levels (dungeon). Then when you reach the last level or when your finished exploring, you fight and kill the queen.

Possibly, sure. Or perhaps upon reaching the inner sanctum of hell, you find that teh queen has begun to move her dominion to earth, and the boss in the underworld is only a miniboss. Then its back up to earth, where (doh, more puns) all hell has broken loose, and its nothing like you remember, blahblah.
Think big, think grand, because I guarantee, whatever you settle on for your plan, you will probably scale back at some point, so you might as well scale back from Totally-Super-Uber-Sweet to just Really-Cool.

Thanks for the advice. That does sound good when you find out the boss of hell is a mini-boss ecpept more powerful than the ones in the cities. Then when you go to return to get credit, you find dead corpses on the ground and a TON more demons. There are so many, it took over all of [country name]. It''s up to you to to save the human race. Heh, I just thought of a funny idea. How about when they kill the "boss" of hell, it says "Return to the surface to recieve your reward". Then when they get up there, It''s like all dead etc.

One more thing: Should there be multiplayer or just have it sp?

Those are all your decisions..sit down with a pencil and paper and think about how it would effect the game to implemetn multiplayer,a nd what you would have to do as the designer/coder to accomodate. Then compare that to single player, make a reasonable judgement based upon your level of skill and commitment, and thats your answer.

I know what I''m going to do with multiplayer, I just want to see how other people think about this rpg being online. That''s all for now. I may be putting a post in the ''Help Wanted'' forum soon so if you want to work on this project keep an eye out.

This is a great idea. I recommend you get Dungeon Siege. Its got a nice graphics engine and has basically everything there for you that you need. All you''ve gotta do is add in all you''re own stuff.

On the thing about hell, you could have it as sorta a high level dungeon, like Watcher''s Keep is in Baldur''s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal. That''d be sweet.

--Buzzy