Hiya Im trying to figure out a good story to fit in with the type of game and gameplay I want to have. Being focused on building the engine, im having trouble comming up with ideas. What I want is to make a standard action rpg. You level up by killing evil monsters and going on quests.. this is all set within a middle earth type enviroment.. yeah, yeah cleche right!? The thing is, I want to have vehicles and other high tech toys for players to use. Thats where im lost. If you have a world consisting of villages, casltes, dungeons, elfs, dwarfs etc and is not set within a modern world.. how can you incorperate vehicles and other modern objects? I really want to have vehicles for a number of reasons: (a) I want to learn how to do vehicle physics. (b) Vehicles are a ton of fun!, (c) It will help pull the game out of a cleche ridden crap fest. *Note that this is my first attempt at making a big game. Thanks a lot guys/gals ;) ~Jason

Well, why not regard it as two worlds if you need an excuse for mixing hi- and lo-tech? The backdrop for the story could be a meeting between two such worlds - futuristic and fantasy. All you'd need is a reason why they've stumbled upon each other (interplanar exploration being the most obvious to me), and you'd have a clash between two cultures. The direction in which you take the story could either be war-oriented (one world tries invading the other), exploration-oriented (one world sends explorers into the other in order to learn more), or you could go for a more complicated plot where the meeting between the worlds is only the backdrop for a character-driven story.

You could say that your world is a planet colonised from Earth, but which has regressed technologically due to losing contact with the home planet. However, some of the ancient machines still work, even if no-one knows how to build or repair them anymore. The humans, then, are held in some suspicion and distrust by the indigenous races, the elves and dwarves or whatnot.

Alternatively, perhaps the Earth after a nuclear war? Then you have other races as mutants. You could have a few enclaves where technology has been preserved, and where the ancient factories still churn out some very few machine parts; however, these places are handicapped by their lack of raw materials and their tradition of secrecy. In the days just after the war, see, the people with food and functioning technology had to hide from the starving hordes outside, and the tradition remains. Occasionally a rebel from the Enclaves will break out into the Outworld, taking with them whatever tech-equipment they can lay hands on; hence wizards, and the legends of the Wizard Cities. Which your hero might want to find for whatever reason, perhaps bringing "magic" to the masses so a technologically oriented society can rise again?

Why not have a tolkien-esque world which has become modern and industrialized just as we came from the middle-ages to where we are today? No Meteor, no Armageddon, just the winds of change blowing for 500 years or so. It wasn't all that long ago that humans were still building fortresses and carrying swords ourselves. Perhaps in your world they managed to hold onto the old ways longer than we did. Maybe they never discovered gunpowder or other explosives and are still using medeivel weaponry that has continued to evolve in the stead of explosives. Think of how the crossbow or bow have evolved today, although we no longer use them for war. Perhaps the Dwarves embraced the industrial manufacturing type tecknology early. Orcs maybe embraced the same technology for weaponry, while the elves, being close to nature, have resisted modern industry, at least more-so than the others. Build History around this great change from the old ways. I don't think I've ever seen anyone who thought to ask what tolkien's world might turn into hundreds or thousands of years later, let alone create a game in this new time-period.

How about this (brief idea)

Due to a war in space between 2 alien species, several of these ships crashed landed on earth. These beings died after several hours from the shock of the landing and earths tempatures. Two hudred years later these ships were discoverd by a group of humans and elfs. Not knowing what to make of the technology, they seeked the council of a great ancient wizard. After gaining the information, they returned to the crash site and began exploration. They came acros what appeard to be a large transport vessel with several dozen objects that appeard to be used for travel....

And you can see where im going with this. I g2g now.
Thanks guys!
~Jason

There's nothing implausible with that in itself - not until the moment that the elves start using hoverbikes intuitively, and so on. Remember Independence Day the movie? - where the cataclysm was averted because someone figured out how to plug a Mac into the alien computer network?

My point is, some cultures can't, and shouldn't be able to understand each other just like that, simply because cultural difference is defining for who we are. Look at our modern, digital society - there are still plenty of people who can't program their microwave oven. So how would these medieval races be able to take advantage of a futuristic brand of vehicles when they haven't even grasped the steam engine yet?

As I see it, you would need to provide a reason why this is plausible in your world - and even so, if it's only a superficial reason, I think it would take quite a stretch of the imagination to believe in.

Lol. Yeah, well maybe the wizard is also a fortune teller and told them how to use them ;) lol.

I thought about that actually after I had posted. What Im going to do instead is go with a futuristic fantasy world where nature has been perserved for the most part, but there are huge domed cities. That way there I can still be creative with the creatures in the world, still have elfs and dwarfs and have hover bikes. Sword will still be used, but they will be light saberish.

I still want to have a lot of focus on natural enviroments, so most of the game play and or quests will be outside of the cities. Think of a standard rpg where you have small towns and just outside of those towns lays grassy planes and trees.

Ill have to work on game play within the cities as well, Ill probably setup stores, bars and resturants, living facilities, and a bunch of other things.

edit: Also, there can still be small elf cities and misc villages. Like maybe people that choose not to live within the domes and or nomatic type people. In the end, In just want to create a fun game, but have a game design that is flexable enough to alow me to add what I want really.

Try searching for the word "steampunk" online. It's a popular compromise which basically consists of giving some fantasy race (most popularly, gnomes) a high affinity for technology, and introducing modern toys via their labs. Typically in a steampunk game, these toys are particularly and spectacularly unsafe, but you could safely break that convention if you needed to.

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Quote: Original post by no one
Lol. Yeah, well maybe the wizard is also a fortune teller and told them how to use them ;) lol.

I thought about that actually after I had posted. What Im going to do instead is go with a futuristic fantasy world where nature has been perserved for the most part, but there are huge domed cities. That way there I can still be creative with the creatures in the world, still have elfs and dwarfs and have hover bikes. Sword will still be used, but they will be light saberish.

I still want to have a lot of focus on natural enviroments, so most of the game play and or quests will be outside of the cities. Think of a standard rpg where you have small towns and just outside of those towns lays grassy planes and trees.

Ill have to work on game play within the cities as well, Ill probably setup stores, bars and resturants, living facilities, and a bunch of other things.

edit: Also, there can still be small elf cities and misc villages. Like maybe people that choose not to live within the domes and or nomatic type people. In the end, In just want to create a fun game, but have a game design that is flexable enough to alow me to add what I want really.

its still seems to me as though the idea does not flow together very smoothly. I am curious, do these vehicles amount to anymore than a gimmick in this game?

why do they have such an integral role in this world with elves and dwarves that you are building? or rather... what importance do elves and dwarves have in your world of vehicles?

If you could, describe some of these vehicles.. the level of tech involved would dictate how plausible it is that such races of old could develop technologies that are still not available to us..