Recently I talked about choosing a better plot for the beginning of the game. If you want to keep the beginning a surprise, don’t read any further.
So far my idea is this:
- The player and his brother Robert are smiths working on an indestructible blackrock golem by the order of some unknown client.
- This unknown person knocks on the door, inspects the work and leaves.
- The Necromancer comes to the smithy. He zaps Robert dead and freezes the player. He makes Robert a skeleton in his army.
- The Necromancer removes the player’s soul, and makes him into his mindless right hand.
- The Necromancer tells the player to divide the golem into 7 parts and hide them so nobody can gather them.
- Fade out. Fast forward some decades.
- Fade in, the Healer Samuel is asking how you feel.
- Samuel tells that you came in terribly wounded, and he has tended to you for months.
- He has found a letter in your belongings ordering you to destroy the town of Asrald.
- You have no memory of anything he tells you, except of the encounter with the Necromancer.
- Samuel suggests to find Paul who has researched the Necromancer’s magics.
- Paul suggests that you have lost parts of yourself by wronging others in the service of the Necromancer, and that you may get these parts back by righting the wrongs.
- Throughout the game you will meet many people who have known you while you were serving the Necromancer. You have an option to set things right with them to gain back parts of your soul. Doing this may gain you skills and experience.
- Paul says that nothing can destroy the Necromancer, but that it was once tried by building a golem out of blackrock.
- What dark deeds have you done in the Necromancer’s service? How can you gather the golem pieces to destroy the Necromancer?
This is just the first part. I have plenty of plot twists thought up but I won’t be revealing those just yet. I’m open to suggestions if you have any. Any obvious cliches? A good plot is arguably one of the most important parts of any good RPG, so I’m very interested in hearing your thoughts.
What purpose does Robert serve? Is he just a person who dies to showcase how evil the necromancer is?
Also, you might want to consider fading to black as soon as the player loses his soul. Why reveal that you’re travelling to seven places to find seven bits of the evil-killing macguffin?
Overall, awesome beginning. At least you don’t live on a farm, go to a nearby cave and kill kobolds, only to return to burning dead parents. The key is the writing more than the plot, of course.
Just keep at it. I think you’re on the right track.
Thanks! The purpose of Robert for the plot is to familiarize the player with the setting at first. I feel it’s a cliche that a game starts with your family being killed, so the twist here is that Robert is not the least bit discouraged by his death – he’s a fairly important character later on in the game.
I’m not sure if you read that, but one of “master” rules is to write the plot from the middle. Also provide a wide picture of the world that is never shown to player but is a “map” to design a plot, a map where all actions take place logically (to avoid inconsistencies).
I first excepted that players soul would end up in golem pieces or something. Indestructible part sounds a little bit too much for something that two random smiths are working on. Saying just that blackrock is instead of golem would be better. It sounds less god-like and doesn’t instantly rule out possibility of destroying whatever system animates the golem.
Also a bit nit-picky matter would be how can smiths shape something indestructible does it involve some one time irreversible part where raw destroyable blackrock is somehow made into indestructible one. Another would be even if it does make sense with 2 legs 2 hands 1 head 1 torso and 1 “heart” why specifically into 7 parts?
Losing parts of yourself and righting the wrongs seems interesting but how does it actually work? Wouldn’t soul be considered as the part that makes you you and didn’t the necromancer take away players soul? Did the parts of players soul somehow get attached to people he met or is it something more internal with parts just coming back to him with the experience? Also will they all be people player wronged somehow there could be some bit more exotic experiences mixed in. Some parts of soul could be gained from some other things than people like locations or some other things that he had effect on or was related to for example items.
What if unknown person’s and necromacer’s “parts” in the beginning were switched with Necromancer ordering the golem for his own nefarious purposes. Unknown person in order to hinder necromancer steals the golem parts killing Robert in the process and then necromancer holding player responsible for the loss of golem and providing his services for Robert. And due to (necromancer) not having put all the finishing touches to the golem it could be after being put together used against necromancer or given to him after some sneaky modifications(also trying to keep it hidden and simply surrendering it to necromancer should be options).
Making single parts be more than useless parts for the whole thing would add nice touch.
What kind of properties does blackrock have as an material? Has player ever heard of it before? What does he know about it or is it just something he’s never heard of before and knows what’s it called only because that what the guy who brought said so.
Random idea: It could be interesting if player was somehow more involved in actually making the golem by that I mean being able to decide how it turns out maybe deciding what metals to mix with what parts at what amounts(and how to get those metals) and how the “magic” veins, “control points” and power sources are built(where, how strong they are, how big, how are they protected) . With all this having some effect on things but that might be bit too complicated for relatively simple RPG.
In short being told something’s invincible or indestructible can be a bit limiting. What is blackrock? How are golems built? And what about souls? Switch necromancer and unknown.
THAT IS AN EPIC STORYLINE!
umm. . . thats all really that is just an awsome idea go Ville!
This is a great, great change Ville; I like it so much more.
For some reason, the idea of a letter being found in your pocket after you stumble in half dead ordering you to destroy a town appeals to me greatly. It’s very dark and threatening, and adds a good edge to the storyline, raising many intriguing and disturbing questions. Why were you ordered to destroy a town? Why that town? How did you have the power to destroy a town anyway? It’s great.
I think this is a lot better than the original storyline you had in mind, Ville. However, I do agree with most of the questions asked by Endymion above. A question that’s hard to answer, in my opinion, is the one of the soul.
If the necromancer steals your soul at the very beginning, how does doing evil deeds to/involving certain people attach a piece of the player’s soul to him? I’d say that the necromancer has your soul stored in some sort of soul gem or pool (Maybe a more original container is better, but that’s beside the point), and thus he’s the one in control of your actions.
The problem here is, of course, why would the necromancer give up a piece of the player’s soul? Is the soul somehow aware that it’s doing things against it’s own nature, and attempting to break free? This would explain why the necromancer would attach pieces of soul to certain people and locations, as to weaken it somehow so it remains firmly under his control.
I’m just throwing in a wild suggestion ofcourse, but I do think that this question, and a lot of others, need good answers. It’s hard to believe in a world that makes no sense, where people do things that aren’t logical, or go against their nature, just to fill a plothole. This is one of the biggest pitfalls in RPG storytelling in my opinion.
Those are definitely good points everybody, thanks! I haven’t really determined the actual details of the whole thing yet, I’ve mostly been toying around with the bigger picture of things. What I like about this story the most is that everyone gets a lot of ideas about what the player has done in the Necromancer’s service. That is a good sign.
And don’t worry, I’ve got the large story events and plot twists figured out until the end. I’m just not going to reveal anything, you’ll probably have to get the full version to find out.
As for the soul stealing thing, I don’t know yet that it would be the soul that’s taken away. Mostly I want something that would motivate the player to do some of the side quests that would have to do with your previous unkown past. And I want to explain that the player has no recollection of his service to the Necromancer. My plan is that you would have nearly died during some especially dangerous mission, and something would have happened there that you had regained consciousness. Obviously you wouldn’t find out exactly what had happened until much later.
About the soul thing what if the soul somehow escaped from it’s bottle but is prevented from returning to player because of some seal that necromancer put to player and so the pieces end up in things closeby that recognize and know the player as in things that have strong feelings or images about player. There are two ways to go about it that I can think either the soul escapes early on and just hovers around player as long as it can but parts of it mistake other people as player, get taken by or are left behind and end up in other things or the soul just escapes and breaks into pieces wanders around looking for player or anything that “reeks” of player.
One way to encourage collecting the soul pieces could be by making certain amounts of soul unlock some magic powers. Also using souls as only powerful source of magic would be interesting and somewhat limit it’s use to bad guys only. Maybe that’s how you’re supposed to destroy Asrald.
Why does the necromancer make Robert and player into his minions? Does he just make almost everything he kills into one in someway. Would he have killed Robert if he didn’t want to make him into undead? How does he take care of his minions?
Also main reasons why I think unknown person should be the necromancer is that the golem’s role seems too uninteresting and obvious and some weird person ordering powerful golem doesn’t exactly strike me as a good thing for world peace. Also if I were the necromancer I’d just send some of my minions to do the job and decide the hide part myself giving some for people as “rewards” to be protected and one to the sea floor hidden inside a dead body and so on. Also if he was the one to order the golem then killing the smiths would be justified and the natural thing to do. Necromancer zapping people dead just for the sake of it doesn’t seem very effective it’ll make people hate him more than if he was just someone who you don’t want to piss off.
You surprised me this time ville. I can bet imagining a good plot is quite hard, but this one sound quite good. Looking foward to see it in the actual game.