Day 5 Mega-Update: Story and play details!
Five days and I finally figured out what my game's about!
I'm adapting a Twine game I wrote a few years ago, called Harbinger, which makes this Harbinger: the Solo RPG. In Harbinger you play as a raven in a fantasy kingdom, trying to warn the townspeople of an impending doom only you know is coming. The game begins just as your Wizard, the man who raised and trained you, is killed attempting to harness the power of an otherworldly Demon. The Demon escapes, bent on consuming the lives of everyone in the kingdom, and it's your job to fly out and warn them before it can. Along the way you discover the raven's true destiny.
Game Map
In order to make the game more replayable, I think I'll have the player randomly generate the kingdom map on a 10x10 grid. The player rolls 2d100 to determine both the location of the Wizard's Tower (the game's starting point) as well as the Capitol/Castle City (if the demon is able to consume this square, it automatically wins. This means, theoretically, both locations could end up right next to each other, so I'll include some mechanic that forces the demon to build up power before it's able to go after the Castle City.
Rounds
I'm thinking of having the game play in rounds, representing the actions of both the raven and the demon over a period of time (probably determined by the player while telling the story). There'll be a limited number of actions the player can take on their turn, and the demon's actions will be determined by both the player actions and random die rolls (eg. perhaps the demon's goal will be to chase after the bird. If the player can move three squares per turn, the demon will always move one square closer to it, then the player will roll a die to determine the demon's action on that square).
Fate, Random Events Table, and The Witch
I've determined the expendable resource I theorized in my opening posts will be Fate (representing how close the raven is to completing its destiny). I'm still nailing down this mechanic, but the idea so far is as the player successfully saves people from the demon, they'll accumulate Fate (not 'fate points', just Fate). Then, as I talked about earlier, in order to improve die rolls, the player can spend their Fate. There will be an incentive to save them though - in order to win the game, the player must locate The Witch, an unnamed character who holds the secret to the demon's defeat. The raven, it will turn out, is meant to be this witch's familiar, and the two of them together are able to work out how to defeat the demon. The more Fate the player accumulates, the higher the chance of locating the witch, and activating the win-state.
In order to facilitate this I'm including a random events table, a rollable d100 table (probably not with 100 results... but maybe!) that the player will roll on at the start (or end) of every round. This'll add some variety to the narrative of the story. The witch's location will start at the bottom of the table, and as the player gains more Fate she moves up the table (eg. if she starts at a 0 (unachievable) with 0 Fate, then a 10 with 1 Fate etc, then at 1 Fate all the player needs to do is roll 10 or lower. With 10 Fate, any roll will reveal the witch).
Locating the witch will involve another d100 roll on the 10x10 map (if that location was destroyed, the player can roll again, or narratively justify that she escaped and hides in the rubble, or some such). Once she's placed on the map, the raven knows where she is and can beeline for her, even if the player then spends more Fate.
Die Rolls
Like I mentioned earlier the die rolls are going to be 'roll under' stats (eg. if the stat is 10, the player must roll 10 or lower to succeed the roll). I'm still deciding between a list of moves or a list of character ability stats - if it's moves, then that means there's a limited set of actions the player can take on their turn. If it's ability stats, the player has narrative freedom to do anything they want to do, and I'll have to figure out some way to guide/limit the player actions manually (like, a "I roll to fly over and punch the demon" must automatically fail for some reason other than 'because the game writer said please don't')
To Do
- Determine what triggers die rolls
- Decide between character moves and character ability stats
- Determine an acceptable range of numbers for those roll difficulties
- Figure out if my map idea is too board-game and should be scrapped altogether
- Determine what information should be on a character sheet, and how many printed pages should be needed to play the game
- Figure out why no one but the raven character is doing anything about the threat