I've been working lately on designing a turn-based game (stay with me), Something that is not too complicated or resource heavy but will be fun to play and (hopefully) addictive. A while ago on this forum someone suggested a game where you take on the role of a prophet. That got me thinking and my mind churning out ideas. I've come up with the following premise: You begin the game by choosing a deity that you will serve, and take the role as oracle or prophet to go into the land and convert followers to your deity. You do this by travelling from place to place on the map and performing miracles and other actions which become more numerous and powerful as your deity gains more believers. Similar to Black & White, only in this case you are a disciple. To make the game interesting, of course there are a number of rivals in the land who are also trying to win followers to their deities. There's no peer bonding to be found here. I mentioned that I've devised for this game to be turn-based. In that fashion it works as a sort of board game or Heroes of Might and Magic esque experience. Each player has a limited number of actions per turn, these can be any of a number of interactions such as performing miracles or negotiating with the local government for city space to build a temple. More actions per turn become availible as the player's standing increases, so the turns grow in complexity as the game lives on. In between turns there can be random events -- I don't know if you're familiar with an indie game from 1999 called King of Dragon Pass, but if so then similar to that -- based on the state of the game and the choices the player has made up to that point. For example, if the player is converting an opponents followers at an alarming rate, said rival may take drastic action such as burning a temple in secrecy, or perhaps the ruler of said town may become a convert. The player may respond to these events in a number of ways depending on their nature. In addition to serving a deity, there could also be an option to play the game as a pretender. That could lead to interesting developments. Objectives may be set, where depending on the deity chosen and the belief system enforced these must be achieved by a certain turn to remain in the game. The overall objective may be to convert the world (map) or become the majority. That's the basic premise. There are still a number of design issues to be worked out, and nothing is set in stone. At this point, I'd like your input on whether this sounds like something that you'd be interested in playing. Any ideas or suggestions? Will this work?

so kinda a cross between a rpg and tbs

The devil's in the details! I don't think I have enough GAMEPLAY information to tell whether the game idea is good or not.

In other words, what determines whether a certain "move to a place, convert all the people there" sequence of actions is better/more efficient than another? What provides the challenge? This is the core of the gameplay that'll make or break it.

I understand what you mean. Problem is, I'm still having trouble with many of the details myself, which is part of the reason I made this thread.

To answer your questions, as I see it at this point: There are different actions that can be used to convert followers. The player moves his character to a certain location and is given access to the actions availible to him there (through buttons and text most likely). Performing wonders can do the trick, like calling fire down from the sky or raising an army of zombie. An action may be more or less effective depending on where or when it is used, and they have statistics that determine how powerful they are. The strategy comes from using the action points alloted each turn to do things that will be effective and contribute to your overall strategy. The player "levels up" in a way of speaking, becomming more powerful depending on his level of influence in the world.

I don't know if I'm still being too vague here?

You certainly have a lot of fertile ground to break with the subject matter. A lot of the challenge I think will be in making the gameplay for miracles and conversion actually have risk, strategy and resources that the player cares about.

Just on the surface, I think that it would be shallow to give the player a result like, "You preach in Galilee, 267 converted." Where did you preach? How much risk did you expose yourself to? Did any other actions you take reflect on your credibility as a preacher?

Prophets often have to talk the talk and walk the walk (or hide it when they don't). One thing I'd consider doing is humanizing the player's avatar and the enemy avatar in funny ways. Maybe you preach about the virtues of vegetarianism, but enjoy a salami sandwhich now and again on the side (ok, silly, but I'm talking temptation as a game mechanic).

And that brings this to mind: What exactly do you preach? Can you be beaten by mobs? Can you have desciples? Can your desciples turn on you, or themselves be harmed while preaching?

And in a universe where multiple prophets can perform miracles, what makes any one miracle better than another? If you wanted to include the idea of being a pretender I think you definitely need to have some sort of gameplay system in place for actually faking or truthfully creating miracles (and how do frauds get uncovered, and what happens when they do?)

Like I said, fertile ground. [grin]

you'd have to model the populations in a pretty complex manner i think, to make this interesting; give them hopes, wants, fears, etc etc. regardless of your preaching ability, if the other guy just came through town and burned everyone who laughed at him with a pillar of flame, it might be hard to get any converts.

you definitely need risk/danger, or there would be no strategy or challenge. maybe if you screw up with your miracle or tell a stupid parable everyone in the area will hear about what a fool you are (that won't help business). one way of doing this would be to make it uncertain of how powerful a miracle your deity will give you on a given day (based on current subscriptions, if you are in her favor, etc). even if you DO have a deity (and aren't being a pretender) you can keep a few tricks up your sleeves for when your goddess is busy with zeus and you need to turn water into wine for the 500 audience members anyway.

I quite agree with krez, the population should be modeled in extreme details.

Let's say your ingame prophesizing parable gameplay allos you to choose how many themes you are going to include in your preach. Then it asks you to devote a percentage of the text to each theme, so that the cpu can calculate approximately how much of the percentage of the populatinon of the city you're in is interested in the theme you are evoquing, and what percentage of these people are convinced by your preach, that is converted.

Think of as many themes you can (fear of death, fear of hunger, fear of the stranger, need for love, need fo peace, need for strength, need for protection, anything will suit you...). now assign a variable to each theme, and make it loved, neutral or hated by a percentage of the population you're trying to convert. Of course, what you would end up with would be a sort of betting game, where you bet on your chances of converting a population with said preach,a dn that may not be your aim, but it is a way of seeing things.

You could also assign the same kind of rates to miracles, a level of belief/disbelief towards the miracle in populations, some kind of animosity from the populations that are already worshipping another God, which would lower your chances of actually converting anybody. Really, the possibilities of complexifying the gameplay seem endless. Now, it's up to you to choose what you want your game to be...

Yours faithfully,
Nicolas FOURNIALS

War of the evangelists!

For the miracles you could make this more interesting by detailing whom you perform the miracle on and how the rest of the population views that person. Kind of like find what the people want and give it to them.

I.e. you go into a small village to convert them. All the villagers are in good health, so healing someone is out of the question. Their crops are all good so making it rain won't help. But their cows are not producing any milk, so if you can help them out with that you make headway.

You go into a major city. The mayor is abusing his power and everyone knows it. Shortly after your arrival the mayor is run over by a horse and is sure to die. You heal him, gaining his trust but the rest of the city turns their back on you.

You could also include side effects:
There is a major drought and you summon rain which takes the form of a torrential downpour and the ground doesn't hold the water causing a flash flood.

Wavinator said:

Prophets often have to talk the talk and walk the walk (or hide it when they don't). One thing I'd consider doing is humanizing the player's avatar and the enemy avatar in funny ways. Maybe you preach about the virtues of vegetarianism, but enjoy a salami sandwhich now and again on the side (ok, silly, but I'm talking temptation as a game mechanic).

I really like this idea. It would be interesting for the player to have some control over his "life" with the possibility to deviate from his own teachings in ways as you said, with danger of exposal. I'll have to figure out a way to make it a part of the gaemplay.

The rest of you bring up excellent points. I could sure use you guys on my team.

Gah, forgot to log in, that AP ^ is me.
Messed up on the quote too.