MEWD'S PROFILE

Okay, that vision of the Fisher King I agree with.

I'm really not sure how we'd tie the excommunication reference into this whole situation, besides perhaps rejecting the 'new' religion in favor of the old, but I still don't feel like religion is a theme we ought to address in this particular project.

If we DO have the childhood home of the kings ingame, it will probably be one of the locations needed to go to for the depower quest. But I also imagine this requiring some artifacts, maybe from deep within the ruined city and other similar dungeons.

The Capitol City is still a prime location for Truth Sword to be stashed, if that counts as part of the 'spine plot.' Prior to that, I don't know. Naturally it's a great place for all sorts of side quests. Maybe you learn that since the fringe town is out of the Slayer King's domain, that it would be a ideal place for the Fisher King to reside. This would have to be after learning the Fisher King's involvement in the war. We could learn that from the library, but there would have to be some sort of obvious key where you would take that information to the capitol to get your next lead. Maybe someone SENDS you to the library from the capitol to find a specific piece of information. Who places some part in helping you clear the path. Maybe he is the one who can repair the warp gate.

I kind of imagine the inane quests the Fisher King sending you on being in abandoned/dungeon-y places.

I agree with Kentona. The Fisher King is better as an abstract goal that almost seems like a wild goose chase to the player. It gives the player a reason to start on their abroad exploration of the world, even if that doesn't remain their primary goal until a real lead actually pops up.

Question: If the Fisher King is being called a fisher king because he has nothing else to do while the Slayer King's influence is so abroad, would there be any actual record of his name being 'Fisher King' prior to the conquest? It probably isn't helping them find him if he's using a name he only recently came under.

Anyway, my grasp of possible quests is a little loose, but I'll try and assemble a story board here as best I can.

> Game opens on the war against the Slayer King, either from the fake protagonists perspective or a narration.

> Fake party storms the castle, crash the place quite successfully and fight the final battle, but then get devastated when the Slayer King unleashes his full power.

>Fast forward a few years to the Rehabilitation Tower. Slayer King's Ego (Identity not revealed to the player) investigates those who managed to resist the Treatment.

>Ego either ditches Administrator Midet (He'd be a useful character to revisit) or returns to the tower with his new information to find the people he needs without setting off alarm. (His powers help.)

>Release, and equip the protagonists and essentially create and name them here. Ego tasks them with their objective, and the party can hardly argue when they haven't even escaped yet.

>Ego teleports them down a few floors, but becomes exhausted. Some battles take place, but Ego ultimately pushes himself over the edge to completely wipe out the enemies. He vanishes with one last wainful plead to find the Fisher King. The party makes their way out of the tower.

>Farming outpost town area of the game. Farmers are distrusting of the party initially. They'd be SLIGHTLY mutilated like the Grunts, but have maintained their humanity? The main plot chain here I am picturing is about the food supply. The administrators from the Capitol City of Laien are taking too much food from the peasants out of fear of famine. Decreps are known to steal crops out of desperation as well. Tension is mounting and a lot of villagers want the Decreps wiped out. The player would either be able to cooperate with the decreps and gain them as an allied force, or kill them all for a monetary reward. You would also need to confront the Administrators about the food shortage.

>Someone tells you that you're most likely to find record of any 'King' at the Great Library of the city of Prath, or you're led to believe that there is a rebel cell there. Contact has been cut off for ages, however, and the path needs to be 'cleared' (Maybe there's a warp gate between mountains, and you can only restore power by getting to the far end of a cavern dungeon. That is totally ripping off Kentona, though.)

>Prath, or whatever we name the city, is completely devastated. The hermit, or maybe a colony of Decreps may be living here, but I think primarily this area would be used for fetch quests, to go and find some items in the bowels of this city. The library would have plenty of pre-war information, but no obvious leads on the Fisher King. Probably tells you about the passing on of the power of life and death, though.

>I'm not really sure what to do as a central chain-quest for Laien, but I figure it would have a lot to do with upsetting the command of the Administrators here. Also, I think that if you have taken a lot of quests that directly defy the Slayer King, than there'd be wanted posters of you in this town. If you take a more selfish route, than I expect you'd probably fit in more easily.

>Going back to the Rehabilitation Tower at this point would probably be interesting. People upset about their friends or relatives being taken would entreat you to go rescue them. You can basically go back there optionally go thrash Midet, who uses his expertise in the mutation magics to transform himself into a psychotic beast.

>Going to the 'fringe' city at this point, where you actually find word about the Fisher King as he resides in this area. He lives alone up along a dangerous mountain path wasting away his days fishing out of his brother's reach.

>Fisher King gives you some expository plot dialog, the S.K. Ego might show up for this cutscene. You are charged with needing to kill the Slayer King, and the Fisher King gives you a lead on how to 'depower' the Slayer King. Maybe neglecting to tell you that his power needs to go somewhere. You can also do a number of quests to make sieging the castle more feasible thanks to the cooperation of people you help.

>'Depower' the Slayer King. This maybe involves powering up a relic and then using that to sabotage important parts of the Slayer King's castle, and greatly diminish his fighting abilities in the final battle done to the 'possible' range.

>Clear out the Elite Guards that guard the castle. You maybe rally the people to combat or at least delay the elite guards while you enter the castle, not unlike how the war was fought years ago. A deliberate parallel.

>Maybe getting ahold of a skeleton key that will help get through some doors in the fortress. I'd like to have the hermit like character create some tool or vehicle to help you late game, but I'm not sure what.

>Confronting the Slayer King. You get the dramatic reveal of the Ego's true identity and his entreating of you to finish him. More exposition. (I think I need to find a device to explain more of the backstory beforehand, like have the Administrators have access to some of his past.)

>Upon his death, his unbridled emotions are unleashed and attempt to assimilate you. If you have played selfishly in the game, than you probably cave into this emotions and resume his rule in like manner after his death. Alternatively, you preserveer and your party (Or at least the leader) becomes the new avatar of Death. If you have played selfishly than you take over the throne and rule as a mostly humane tyrant. If you have played unselfishly than you step down from the throne and work more towards restoring the balance of the world.

Both devices work well here (Although it would be difficult to fortify entire crop fields)

I don't think the Slayer King would be the only to lead them to believe there is a rebel outpost someplace, as he would probably already be aware of them being squashed. (This doesn't seem like information that would be stopped by delegation.) But there's liable to be a lead somewhere along the line that could be turned into disappointment this way.

Personally, I have no problem with the use of RTP. I prefer them WAY more than ripped graphics. There is a tendency to complain if graphics are very generic, though.

RPG Maker was made to give people with minimal graphic, music and programming talent a chance to make their own game. The problem just is that it's hard to make your game stand out if it looks just like everything else. And most RPG Maker games are rubbish.

If you have an interesting idea, however, and can pitch it well, you can probably compensate for the generic graphics. Using RTP graphics won't condemn your game to the rubbish pile, since a lot of the best games have used the RTP and heavily abused 'Mac and Blue' resources. Pretty graphics are a great way to attract players, though.

I have no idea what you are talking about with this nudity tangent.

I have a massive library of midis and VGmusic.com is right around. The community abuses midis sequenced after commercial game music all the time. But again, making your own is likely to net you more respect for your effort.

I don't think there is any average time frame that a game is completed in. It depends on how ambitious you are with your project, how committed you are, and how fleshed out your idea is.

My game 'Corporal Buggy Bear' was supposed to take me a week to make. I spent six months on it. Game making isn't easy even with RPG Maker. Finishing a project takes diligence and a love for your project.

I don't thing Ego could afford to cause alarm with the guards on his own. Depends on how weak precisely he is. He might be able to pull off one or two feats to give them a reasonable escape route. I expect that would exhaust him enough that he would simply vanish in front of them. Then show up at some later major plot point when he has recovered some.

I like the idea of a abandoned/ruined city as a place that needs exploring, it would be a prime place to be crawling with mutants even. Although I'm not sure that this is a natural place to search for clues about the Fisher King's whereabouts. It might be a good red herring to get you exploring, but I imagine that the Fisher King is so out of touch with the outside world that any record of him would be very. But this sort of quest is a lot like the 'Water Chip' from Fallout. You search the entire world area for a lead on where to find one, and don't really get any real leads until late game. In the mean while it's just a matter of getting out into the world and looking.

After the heroes escape, I kind of see the game needing to take on its exploration aspect. You would be able to wander. A farming village would be the closest and most reasonable area to start from, gather leads and start a few chain quests. Chain quests in a farming community would probably largely center around mutants/beasts stealing crops, and the Slayer King's military taking more food from the community than is reasonable. I'm still thinking up characters and threads we could explore.