The Story of Gilan the Wise

So I did not do much programming this week. Actually, I dont think I did any. But I did think about what I want the Generic RPG to be. I wrote down some ideas and a genaral design and began work on characters, the first chapter and map and scripts for its characters.

First things I want the game to be small and completable. I also want to explore concepts related to nonlinear and emergent story. I want the game to be short but filling. I was able to think up a general design and retrofit a story to match this. I am using Reiner's Tiles sets which have a certain... style so the story is a bit quirky.

The game will be titled "The Story of Gilan the Wise". This is the synopsis:

You are Gilan, a retired but powerful mage who has been called by the Council of Seven because Max the Mad Mystic is at it again. He is seeking The Green Stone of Core Power to drive his device which will destroy the world. .

So you play an old male mage whose age is estimated to being anywhere from between 60 - 150. There are no elves or dwarves in this story. Except for hints here and legends there the back story for Gilan is never gone into.

There are Three Chapters with 2 main maps and one side map each. Every map with the exception of the first will have at least 1 but no more than 4 characters with involved conversations about philosophical issues, which tie into the game story. There will be any number of characters with generic conversations. The game though, is nonlinear in the sense that the chapters don't really exist; they are more an organizational tool for me.

There are no Levels, nor XP. You are already powerful so the need is not there. You can complete the game without killing anything. Though the power is there if you wish to flaunt it. There is HP and MP but no distinction is made between magery or priest magic. There is only the arcane arts. The game world assumes a level of development around 1700s and 1800s and develops a similar world view. The gameplay is centred around magic. The magic system is inspired by formal logic.

Since you are a powerful mage it seems right that you should be able to create your own spells. Gathering components and coming up with spells to defeat situations that will otherwise cause you to lose the game will be a focus. I have not yet thought about it but I want a powerful system that interacts with the world. I am thinking of a simple visual language that influences stats and has effects and alters rendering. I dont know, thats still a bit down the line. Regardless I have put a requirement on myself - to force my hand if you will - that all spells you come prebuilt with will have to be made in the game using this technique.

The other aspect is the story. I want to be able to play it and not know what is going on in some aspect. On that line I have thought about making the Council of Seven simple agents with motivations and attitudes. You start out knowing that there is a traitor amongst the seven. Then using simple decision theory and dice have the computer choose the culprit. After that use that as input in some algorithim that sorts of fills in the blank in areas in the story, levels and items etc. which I would have designed to be treated as free variables. Again I dont know the specifics of how I will implement this. But in my head the key words I am considering is recurrence relation. To make the story be sort of dynamic I am using variables and a set or relations to determine key outcomes.

Sort of a story where words and paragraphs are left out to be filled in and where each subsequent choice affects the set of choices that are possible in the future since for each choice the algorithm uses prior choices to calculate what to write display or generate. Choices made by both you and the traitor. So in a sense it will be you vs the computer - each member of the council will have a certain style and I think I will want two or three of the roadblocks to be randomly generated based on the set created from the actions taken on specific key turning points and agent originally chosen and dice.

In this sense the game does not have any story to be found out. There is a mystery and in playing the player solves it and develops their own story. Hence the title of the game.