Author Archives: Alai

Inherited or created artifacts holding complex or immense magical power are a common fantasy trope. In Patricia Wrede’s Frontier Magic series, the main character inherits a complex magical artifact. It’s a talisman given from student to teacher, and it’s layered with generations of magic, a good chunk of which hides its nature.

More famously, the One Ring in the Lord of the Rings contains a fair amount of Sauron’s power, malice, and will. He has imbued it with his dominating force, and it is both a tool and a means of corruption.

A game – or game system based around this may be interesting. Start with an artifact and then give it some hidden properties. The player can discover things about the artifact, but they can only discover as much about it as they put in. And what they put in affects more than they directly want it to. They can pick how they want to influence the artifact. This could either be over time or at something like a level up event. Putting an attribue in (something positive) might enhance it, but also enhance a hidden negative trait of the artifact.

Because games are fundamentally about making interesting choices (and about teaching), what about being able to put power in, investigate, or control the power – but there’s a limit as to how much you can do. And as you try and shape the artifact, the artifact will be constraining your choices and shaping you as well.

Additionally, if a game using this wants to, we can have the artifact – and it’s peril and possibilities – inherited by the next generation, for whom the effects may be similar, or may manifest themselves differently. Think of an eternal ruler, attempting (and mostly failing) to rule through control of others.

When thinking generationally about this, I want to know how choices affect generations over time – what are their choices like? How does this talisman shape generations over time?

I’ll flesh out this idea more later, and put it into a bit more formal of a structure.

Feel free to use any game ideas or parts thereof on this site. Take them, combine them, mix them, and implement them. Ideas are a dime a dozen, and I hope these provide some thought and maybe spark some more ideas in others.

Tonight, I was thinking about RPGs, adventure games, and exploration games like Metroid Prime. I enjoy that Metroid Prime (if I remember correctly) billed itself as a first person exploration game. And it did it magnificantly. However, in a game in which you’re given a gun, it often becomes the primary tool that you use to solve problems with things that are agressive, especially monsters.

This brings me to Beyond Zork, which if you’re familar with the Zork series, are games that are generally more puzzle oriented, though there can be some combat.

Similarly to games like Metroid, you can attack things. You’re given a wooden stick (actually, a shillelagh) and other implements of destruction. You actively need to attack certain foes, and it becomes a go-to means of solving problems. But there are things that are monsters (and listed in the bestiary as monsters) that just hitting doesn’t work all that well. It’s less combat, more puzzle.

Spoilers for the I don’t know how old Beyond Zork follow…

In one segment, you’re in the top of a tower and encounter a powerful, hideous monster that can very easily kill you. Reading the bestiary, you note that this monster (a dorn) has hundreds of eyes. The solution? Roll a giant onion all the way up the tower and hack at the onion to cause the monster to go into an uncontrollable crying frenzy while you either make off with the treasure, or alternately hack and the onion and the monster until it dies. (Yes, the solution can partially involve killing it, and I like the XP).

In another segment, you’re confronted by a monster that can easily beat you to a pulp (by playing terrible music at you that is so painful to listen to that your hit points drop). It’s weakness? It can’t read. So if you give it a chest that sends it to another dimension (full of really irritated unicorns), it can’t read the warning and you dispatch it just by presenting it with the shiny chest, which it doesn’t know enough to not open it.

What would happen if you encountered either of these things in something like Metroid, or a lot of other games? The presentation in those games say that you need to shoot more, get better weapons, or attack a weakness with the main tool that you use for most things – your gun.

This may be a function of “those are two completely different genres”, but it’s important to note that we’re conditioning ourselves around certain actions. It’s about the expectations that you have and especially the verbs that you bring to the table with you. Part of the issue is that in something like Metroid, you’re expected to gather information, explore, and shoot things. Usually, running away isn’t an option (doors lock, and you can’t get away). Your only option is shooting.

In addition, a lot of the actions involve physical challenges. In Beyond Zork, you carry things in your inventory and occasionally have things (like the onion) that are too big to fit – and getting them around thus becomes a puzzle. In a Metroid or a Mario, part of the challenge would become how to move with this awkward object – grappling it or the like. In a Zelda game, you would have it in your inventory. It mostly would come down to fighting, and puzzle sections are (from what I remember) clearly not combat.

How do games mix how to tackle problems such that if they can fight that fighting doesn’t become the only solution?

How far can we mix our genres, and how much do we limit ourselves by the already known and the conventions we’ve made as to genre, style, and the like?

Hi there. I will be talking about game design on this site, along with other related things.

I’m going to be doing this in bits and pieces, and will build up designs from post to post. Therefore, this isn’t a static “here’s a design”, it’s more “here’s what I’ve been thinking about”, gradually building things up, cutting things out, and generally refining. As time goes on, I hope to have a bunch of interesting designs that anyone can use freely. I don’t promise all of them will be interesting – some of them will be “hey, let’s do something like this other game” – but I hope we at least explore the why in what might work and what not.