Setting - Arcanorum/rogueworld GitHub Wiki

Goals

  • Provide a semi-blank canvas.
    • Facilitate players inserting their own characters and projecting their own idea about the adventures they go on within the game.
    • Align the setting and narrative to reflect what the players actually go through on their journey, as every journey is different.
    • There is no long-running history of this world, or an epic conflict going back generations that the player is being inserted into.
  • Present a grounded and relatable experience.
    • The player should not be "The Chosen One", or a demi-god, or a reincarnated epic hero from legend, destined to save the multi-verse from ultimate doom, or whatever, as it rarely makes sense in the context of a multiplayer game for everyone to be the main protagonist that everything revolves around.
    • Instead, players experience the journey of going from being a regular inhabitant of the game world with no noteworthy backstory of their own, starting off as just a bunch of humble peasant townsfolk, and rising to be the heroes of each other's stories through their actions, not those of some pre-defined timeline of events which they must play through.
  • Should be easy for new players to be able to get involved in and explore the game world, without feeling like they need to know a lot about the game world to be able to understand what is going on or they are doing, or feel like they are expected to have a certain base level of knowledge before stepping in. (Pick up and play)

Themes

The setting of Rogueworld will incorporate sci-fi elements by exploring various concepts in theoretical physics, in particular parallel universes/multiverses, wormholes, infinities, space exploration, and warp them through a high-fantasy lens to form a set of rules upon which the game world is based.

Knowns

There are what the established rules and limitations of the game universe are, and in what ways they influence the world, characters, and mechanics.

tower permanence, destructability, can excavate part of the tower and that will restrict where openings can appear on the surface, and the interior structure of the tower, can be exploited to remove things from existence, a particularly hard to destroy creature was removed from existence, a plane can cut itself off from a tower this way, some planes do this deliberately for towers that they get regular problems through (seal off a point of attack) (the dark forest) the different plane types study of the towers, exploration/science, theories worship of the towers themselves, worship of other more powerful beings in other planes

Unknowns

Possibilities, what the inhabitants of the universe don't know, what they are trying to find out

the amount of towers in a plane, the amount of planes in a tower, parallel universes size height/length of the towers the relationship between the towers and magic how many planes there are the nature of the explorers guild

Concept

Various locations spread around a nameless, deliberately vague, and nondescript generic medieval fantasy world have recently been plunged into turmoil and darkness by an assortment of mythical threats.

Players enter the game world as one of the regular inhabitants of a settlement within lands that are either ruled over by some kind of tyrant, or are terrorised by some kind of monster, and must progress their characters up to the point of being able to challenge and defeat them.

Tone

Quirky and a bit silly. Doesn't take itself too seriously. Is aware that it is a low budget pixel art video game, like a game equivalent of a B-movie.

In a way a subversion and satire of the cliche "prophesied chosen-one" trope, featuring a cyclical story where an epic hero who defeats some great villain becomes venerated and worshipped to the point of becoming consumed by their own ego and arrogance, and ends up becoming the next antagonist in a long line of fallen heroes, only to be defeated in turn by the next "chosen-one" according to some (perhaps wildly inaccurate and misinterpreted) prophecy, with this chain being disrupted by the team of players who are nothing special within the context of this world, and where their collaborative nature is in opposition to the concept of there being a single main character whom everything revolves around.

The kind of thing someone can show to a bunch of friends at a casual house party, and for them to be able to jump in and have some fun quickly, without having to worry about needing to get immersed in a deep and rich world and story before they can start to enjoy the experience.

Inspirations:

  • Early D&D or similar throwback RPGs like DCC. Enough of a real world tone for players to contrast against the bizarre and ridiculous elements.
  • Early RuneScape, with it's humour that is self-aware that the game is just an otherwise fairly mundane and generic fantasy RPG clicking simulator, littered with pop culture references.
  • Various fantasy comedy literary sources.

Synopsis