Mortal - Massive Single-Player Role-Playing Game project

[Dramai]

Hello. My name is Gabriel Greene and I am a writer of fantasy novels. Long story short? I've designed (written the framework) of a video game. In abridged terms, the video game is a table-top pen and paper designed for the PC and consoles. Gridless combat and tons upon tons of content. I implore everyone interested to read the entire design document at their leisure.

If you're the kind of a person whom dislikes long documents, here's the concept part of the .pdf.

Spoiler

At core, Mortal is meant to be a Simulation. A MSPRPG in which the Playable Character would be the same as the Non-Playable Characters in terms of the Characteristics, Skills, Journals, Inventories and the Array of Actions that would be present in the video game. Within the Simulation, Characteristics are to define the mind and body of a Character while the Skills are to reflect what the Character has learned. Journals would contain all that a Character might know, Inventories would be the lists of what a Character carries and what a Character might own. The Array of Actions is meant to be all that a Character can act out and so, it would cover not only combat, movement and dialogues yet also inspecting and using items within the game world as well as those within the carried inventory. The Array of Actions is meant to be a truly revolutionary experience for the Player. The Plot of the Simulation, in other words the Main Quest, is a folk tale or legend which has foundations in reality and life upon Earth during the Medieval Ages. In this legend, the Player is to take the role of the Playable Character, a male or female Character of the human species which inhabit the setting. The Character is to be created by the Player at the beginning of the experience. Although the Main Quest might remind of the core of the gameplay and the video game itself, in Mortal, the Player does not have to advance the Plot or even begin it. This is because the Main Quest is to be a Side Quest amidst an abundance of other Side Quests which can be divided into the Story Quests as opposed to the Generic Quests. The Main and Side Story Quests are meant to be adventures that are unrepeatable and always offer the same plot. The Generic Quests happen based on the Characters using the Array of Actions, their respective Journals and interacting with the environment. A Journal would record all that a Character does and sees, allowing for the Simulation to generate Generic Quests based on the entirety of what the Characters do.

And so, Actions, Relationships, Quests and even Inventories might lead to new Quests and affect the world within the Simulation. In other words, each action will have a potential reaction. Unlike most of the Story Quests, a Generic Quest can be completed by any Character. As Characters will see or participate in events, their Journals will be automatically updated and so, Quests can be given to other Characters through dialogue as all Characters present can converse with other Characters in the same way the PC can. However, Quests are not the entirety of the artificial life of a Character as travel, dialogues, trade, relationships, crafting, work and combat can happen outside of Quests. A Character that works as a blacksmith will craft without any Quest in order to increase Skills, improve Characteristics and earn coin, any of the Characters will make attempts at both Friendship and Romance through Dialogues, all of the Characters will try to find Work, some Characters work through combat, some through travel. A Characters Work might be Thievery. If a Character might, within scripted roaming of an open world, travel between locations, a Character can just as well switch between different types of Work based on variables, can attack the Characters that are foes, converse with the Characters that are friends, decide to find Work when his or her wealth is dwindling or when there is no coin in the Inventory, fulfill other Characters' Quests based on receiving mention of these through Dialogue or noticing Events that may happen around the Character in question. If crime is rampant in a town, the NPCs living within might leave the settlement to search for better lifes elsewhere. If a town is succesful and wealthy, it will draw NPCs to live there. Yet commoners who work the land in hamlets will not desire to move to a town since their Characteristics and Skills are different to the ones of a town thief, a merchant or a craftsman to name a few. Commoners will not rush into combat either, the life of these Characters is inherently peaceful and so, other characters might and will find employment as a guard or mercenary. Perhaps, even an adventurer. In the ongoing quest of survival, food and drink as well as equipment and supplies are a driving force in the lives of all Characters as the Characters trade, talk, sleep, fight, work and travel the setting in order to achieve their goals and fulfill their desires and everyday needs.

To summarise and expand on the concept of the video game, all NPCs as well as the PC play a role in Mortal. When a Character cuts the purse of a merchant, the merchant might notice right away and raise alarm if there are other Characters present nearby as the merchant might not be skilled in melee, the merchant might also notice later on and so, approaches the guard or his private mercenaries, giving them a quest to catch the thief based on the exact item missing. If a Character kills another Character in combat, the family of the deceased Character's mourns the passing of the husband, son or father, wife, daughter or mother depending on what that particular NPC did in the Simulation as evident by the Journals as well as the entire database of past events that is hidden to all Characters as each particular Journal grows thicker with the passing of time. The simulation of the life of each Character is meant to allow whole communities, the world, to feature in gameplay, not through some form of storytelling or empty and meaningless animations yet as an Artificial Reality. As for the Plot, the Main Quest is meant to allow the Player Character to become a wealthy and famous adventurer by the end of the Quest. Forgotten keeps and dungeons scattered across the continent serve the purpose of creating the Sword and Sorcery aspect of the Simulation and that is what the Main Quest is meant to represent.

As the Simulation is meant to allow the Player to take part in the life of a community in a town or the countryside as at least a half of the video game experience, becoming a traveller who can, either with the help of a group or alone, brave the wilderness and delve into dungeons is not an easy path nor task. The Main Quest is supposed to be a classical RPG tale of defeating villains and other adventurers that wander the setting in search of treasures and the Player is not forced to take part in the Plot. Instead, the PC can become a town thief, a farmer, a vagabond, a blacksmith, guard or even a pleasure seeker without much experience in any way of life. To become wealthy enough to settle, powerful enough to master Sorcery, strong and agile enough to become the greatest adventurer of the setting are just a few of the goals that the Player might choose. The RTS aspect of the video game is the management of the PC and any followers chosen by the Player as well as owned buildings and land. As the Adventure part of the Simulation is the Array of Actions and the Dialogues, the Simulation is fully explained, the Concept abridges what the game is and what the Player is able to do. All of which are further explained in full within the Game Framework part of the design document. And the Player is essentially able to do everything and anything. From buying a flagon of cold mead in a roadside tavern in order to destress his PC to working in a silver mine or befriending and falling in love with a Character that the Player deems interesting. The Player can enjoy a primarily mouse/keyboard oriented experience that can be easily translated into a gamepad controller experience. Without any further ado, the entirety of the gameplay and all of its parts are explained forthwith.

I am not a programmer. I've played video games for over 20 years though, so it's up to you to decide whether the design document describes the best RPG ever designed or not. I am the sole owner of all of the intellectual property included in the .pdf. If you want to start a video game development team with this project, I'm your man. If you want to mod a game, I would be into that as well.

If you read books, my novel is entitled "Gahbreeil", penned by me, Gabriel Greene, and is available in both ebook and paperback format on Amazon's websites.

 

 

 

Mortal - Design Document.pdf

Edited Thursday at 07:44 AM by Dramai
A comma.

[Dramai]

Just in case the fifty or so people whom have seen my post didn't know what I was talking about, the game framework part of the .pdf describes game mechanics in detail, the concept is just an abridged description of the game.

If I'm missing something, do tell me. I think that Bethesda's primary titles, Skyrim and Fallout 4, would be good games to mod the mechanics into.