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Shiny Pretty Rocks of DOOM

Page history last edited by Richard 13 years, 7 months ago

This is a generic epic fantasy storyline. By itself it has nothing to do with the themes, but is a starting template. I think it's fairly steam-punk compatible. At the end I explain how to modify it to adhere to some of the themes. I'll try to write two more vastly different storylines and do the same thing. This story is very complex but I'm hoping that much of the complexity will take place as dialog and will put the most amount of work on our mappers who should be able to crank out most of the temple maps using The Magic Rectangle Tool, and not require excessive amounts of art that will make Spears explode. 

 

You are a member of a band of thieves that furtively raid government transports for valuables and goods. 

(the government is slightly opressive, but not perceived as ultimately evil...yet) The thievery is slightly akin to robin hood so the player doesn't view the main characters in an entirely bad light. 

 

Phase 0: Intro Level

 

23:35    Falun_    okay, the options we've talked about thus far are:
23:35    Falun_    1) get caught and find stone in transport
23:35    Falun_    2) find stone escaping from prison
23:35    Falun_    3) find stone breaking into prison to free your friend
23:35    Falun_    does anybody have a preference?
23:35    Blake    4) get caught while stealing stone?
23:35    Falun_    hm
23:35    Christine    I like number three.
23:35    kirin    I like 1 as sort of back story to the game, have player start in the prison
23:36    Christine    True.
23:36    fixception_    I like 4 in conjunction to 1?
23:36    fixception_    err
23:36    fixception_    that makes no sense
23:36    Blake    yes it does
23:36    Falun_    so you were trying to steal it, got caught -- why would they put the stone near you in prison?
23:36    Christine    Unless you refind it breaking out.
23:36    Blake    because you were caught with the stone in a remote place
23:36    Falun_    since you know you're looking for it
23:36        +++ ChanServ has given op to kirin
23:37    Blake    and they need to transport both you and the stone back to the capital
23:37    Falun_    now that you know it exists
23:37    Falun_    awesome
23:37    fixception_    okay, this isn't too important, we're really looking for a vote order at the end of all this
23:37    fixception_    NEXT
23:38    Blake    right
23:38    fixception_    POP-UP
23:38    Blake    the backstory would be like the original one
23:38    Falun_    I'm not a huge fan of pop-up
23:38    Blake    you get pretty far with the stone and you realize the importance of the quest
23:38    Blake    but then you get caught
23:38    kirin    maybe stone in transport to lab part of prison industrial sprawl (yeah I know we moced on sorry)
23:38    kirin    *moved
23:38    fixception_    kirin: just me
23:38    Blake    and in the transport you break out and need to find the stone and escape again
23:39    fixception_    lets flesh that out when I wake up
23:39    fixception_    :P
23:39    Blake    the tranport that's taking you from this remote place you were in when you were caught which is why they had to carelessly put you and the stone in the same vicinity
23:39    fixception_    sorry for being the new slave driver

 

You sneak into a government transport. Your ship is standing by next to it waiting for you to blow a hole in the side so they can unload as much stolen cargo as possible to it. You are receiving radio instructions during this part since it's an intro level. You stumble across a room in the transport that's heavily guarded. Figuring it contains the most valuable cargo, you covertly sneak into the room (via ventilation shaft or whatever) and blow the hole in the floor where your ship is waiting to load the cargo. In a hurry to escape after making such a racket, your team doesn't check the contents of the container until after they get far away from the transport. 

 

After opening the container, they find a pretty shiny blue stone. Which seems fairly valuable on its own. But one member of your party (the one that seems the most hippie-like) recognizes it as something more.

 

This is when the first partial picture of the mechanics of the fantasy world are explained in a dialog with this character:

 

After the elemental gods created the world, they constructed temples hidden throughout the world where they supposedly reside to this day in the form of a stone. (The stone you found contains the soul of the water elemental) These temples were built specifically above energy points in the earth that act as taps into the greater energy below. Energy, if harnessed, could give the person who commands it god-like power of that element. In the ancient times, the knights of SOME COOL NAME protected the temples. But they were hunted to extinction in the early days of the current government. 

 

It becomes clear that the government is going to attempt to harness this power and possibly has found more of the hidden temples. 

 

While admiring the beauty of the elemental rock, the protagonist touches it. Doing so gives him/her a vision. The rock is connected to 3 other rocks: a red one, a white one, and a green one. He/She sees that the white one is being held captive. He/She also sees the location of the water temple. 

 

Phase 1: Water

 

So as you probably guessed, the protagonist decides to return the blue rock to its proper place in the water temple. This is of course the first "dungeon". After putting the rock back on the proper pedestal, the spirit of the water manifests itself into physical form and talks to you and fills you in on the technical details.

 

There are 6 elementals altogether: Water, fire, light, darkness, life, and death. The white, red, and green rocks the protagnoist saw in the vision were the light, life, and fire elementals. The elementals' energies are connected as follows:

 

--Positive--  --Negative--

Water           Fire

Light             Darkness

Life                Death

 

There are 3 positive elementals and 3 negative elementals, each paired with its opposite. Each elemental's energy is connected to the 2 others in its polarity and its corresponding opposite. Because the light stone was captured, you know that they know the location of all the stones except death. 

 

The water elemental then knights you as the sole member of the re-introduction of the Knights of SOME COOL NAME and you must go and save/return/protect the 5 other stones. 

 

By now the government notices their blue rock is missing, so the water elemental sinks the water temple to the bottom of the ocean to protect itself, but warns the protagonist that his/her actions must be more careful to avoid the might of the armies of the government. 

 

Phase 2 - Light

Find the Light Stone. Replace it with a decoy. Upon touching the light stone, you see that the Darkness stone is being stolen simultaneously. Now they know the location of all stones. 

 

Phase 3 - Darkness

Same sort of deal as last time, except upon touching the darkness stone, you see that fire and life have been captured. Darkness warns you that the death elemental alone is enough power to do Really Bad Things and overpower the other elementals. Luckily that stone is still safe. 

 

Phase 4 & 5 - Fire and Life

You get to choose which one you do first

 

Upon finishing phase 4 (whichever that may be, you see that death is still safe in its temple). Of course at the end of phase 5, this is no longer true. The stone is still in the temple (which is below the ground below the ocean floor), but the death stone becomes aware that workers are beginning the process of drilling for it. By the time you get to the temple, the emperor has reached the death stone.

 

Phase 6 - Death

 

In the last moment, your friends (from the very beginning) sneak into the temple and help you fight. They're able to hold down the emperor while you snatch the stone, but upon doing so, the emperor dies instantly (it's a death elemental after all) and he turns to dust like in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. For some random reason that will probably have a simple explanation that I will come up with later, the temple begins to collapse. You must decide whether to hold on to the stone and live or put it back in its place and die. As the temple collapses and a wave of dirt and water from above swoop in, you put the stone back but everything is unclear. 

 

End sequence: shows your friends washed up on shore, but then the life elemental delivers the protagonist whom he/she/it saved and then everyone's all happy and queue credits.  

 

Modifications according to themes:

I think this storyline works well for Wings and Caught, maybe even Election. For Pop-up and Primed, it's a little stretch... 

 

Caught:

I think this general storyline can suffice for "caught" since it's about the souls of elementals being caught. If this is the theme, we should probably work it into the title to make it clear. 

 

Wings:

Lots of emphasis of stuff being in the air, excessively. Like that cartoon, Tale-Spin. The transport is an air ship, etc. The Knights of SOME COOL NAME were actually some sort of angelic winged species. 

 

Pop-up:

The thieves primary tool of theft is drilling and popping up from below. This could then transfer to a gameplay mechanic when you're in the temples, you can go from level to level by popping up from below. This could also be worked into the primary way of solving the puzzles.

 

Election:

The chancellor is up for re-election and will most likely lose. This stealing-the-power-of-the-gods plot is his way of using his current resources to stay in power and rule the world forever. This would have to be explained in some sort of introductory sequence otherwise we'll get a bunch of does-not-comply-with-theme votes. 

 

Primed:

I really hope primed is not the selected theme. 

You're a cannoneer. All in inventory items are specialized cannonballs. You have a huge hand canon.  Story is pretty same, but very lighthearted.

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