Design Notes for Synthnostate 1742

Synthnostate 1742 (codename Salem) is basically Synthnostate 2042 without the scifi elements. A single player, single character, third person, immersive fullscreen PC RPG experience. It’s just an easier game to make, with less artwork and variety. It may be only a demo along the way to 2042, or it may blossom into a full-fledged historical RPG, I’m not planning that far ahead.

Major differences in the setting:

• Vast woodlands
• Small cities, towns, outposts
• Almost everyone is English
• “Vampire” is a brand new word (~1732 in English, German, French)
• People are wary of witches, demons, etc in general
• Tough people accustomed to war for 50 years
• Low technology level, more emphasis on sorcery/alchemy
• Alchemical apparatus is expensive and only made in major cities like Boston and Providence
• In the development phase at least, you can start at any vampire level you desire, from waking up in a coffin for the first time all the way up to Dracula-tier with all the spells you want.
• Wintertime until/unless we implement seasons

Old-school procedural sandbox game world:

• Overmap with fixed locations for rivers, roads, settlements
• Travel to any point on the map
• Random encounters when traveling on the ground
• Semi-procedural cities (actual historical streets, seeded random houses, 1000’s of NPCs)
• Some designed locations (landmarks etc) and major characters