Departure

Note: when I say “just one more post” I do not necessarily imply a short span of time at all. I’m crafty like that.

Also, this isn’t even and RPG post. Fancy that.

The moon was beginning to tint the raw snow blue when he collapsed on their doorstep.
The cabin that Ed and Roger co-owned was so isolated that they could drive the snowmobile in the driveway in any direction for hours and not encounter any evidence of another living soul. They hadn’t seen a human being since they moved out here, and they weren’t accustomed to visitors. Turning this one away, however, would be murder.
His lips were a chalky cobalt color, and his bare hands and feet looked like they had been scoured with steel wool. All he had on were a pair of torn, crusty jeans and a white shirt. When he opened his eyes to plead with them, the web of veins that spread out from his filmy brown irises was like a map of a subway drawn by a paranoid schizophrenic.
Behind him, a long, uniform line of footprints grew progressively more ragged as they approached the house. He couldn’t speak. His throat was frozen just like the rest of him, and they supposed he must have been eating snow to keep from dying of thirst.
They took him inside and wrapped him in one of the blankets that Ed’s mother had sent them as a going-away present. She said they had come from some aboriginal tribe somewhere, and they were authentic, which they guessed was a synonym for scratchy. They were warm, though, and that was what the stranger really seemed to need.
Ed boiled some water in a pitted steel kettle that they never used, while Roger set the stranger down in the enormous high-backed armchair that loomed just beyond the door.
While the kettle boiled, they stood perplexed as the stranger gasped and huddled in the chair, tightening his lean, skeletal frame into it, letting it devour him. He was so cold that when they had brought him in that the temperature had seemed to drop a few sympathetic degrees.
Eventually the kettle shrieked, and Roger, unaccustomed to the noise, flinched before pouring the water into a tarnished tin mug. Ed fished a few bags of primordial peppermint tea out of the bottom-right cupboard and dropped them into the water, then placed them on the mahogany drink-table next to the armchair.
They waited.
At length, the stranger reached a quivering hand out of the folds of the blanket and grabbed the steaming liquid next to him. Ed realized he’d put the tea in wrong, so that the worn strands at the end of the bag had fallen into the mug. The stranger realized this, and reached a hand into the tea to pull it out.
Ed gasped and covered his mouth. The tea was scalding. The stranger, however, seemed to like it. He let out a sigh like he was sinking into a hot bath and let his hand rest in the boiling tea for a moment before throwing the bag carelessly out.
He drank with celerity and avarice. When he was finished, he laid the mug down on the table and curled up, as if letting the warmth swell through him.
Roger broke the silence first.
“Can you talk now?” he asked tenuously. The stranger was so gaunt, so pathetic and frail, and yet he seemed to command the whole room as if he were the only person in it.
“Yes,” said the stranger, in a reedy, thin voice.
“Where did you come from? There’s no one around for hundreds of miles,” asked Roger.
“Can’t remember,” rasped the stranger. “I’ve been walking so long.”
“Where are you trying to get to?” asked Ed.
“I think it must be here,” said the stranger.
Ed and Roger exchanged a look of worry.
“Here?” they asked.
“This is where I ended up,” said the stranger. “It must have been my destination.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would you come to see us?” asked Roger.
“I didn’t say I was here to see you. I was just heading for this location.”
“I don’t understand,” said Ed.
“Neither do I,” said the stranger.
He shifted in his chair and Roger and Ed looked at the floor, taking solace from the unfamiliar stranger in the extremely familiar resin-oak floorboards.
“I think you should sleep and talk to us in the morning,” said Roger. “You’re probably sick from walking so long.”
“Yes, that sounds wonderful,” said the stranger. “Only, I’ve been walking so long it almost feels like a dream now that I’m here. How do I know that you’ll even be here when I wake up?”
Ed leaned over the chair. “We’ll be here. Just get some sleep.”
The stranger smiled, his frostbitten face cracking with the unfamiliar movement. He closed his eyes and nestled into the armchair.
Within a few minutes his breathing had slowed and evened, the rasping, frozen-lung breaths of consciousness giving way to a steady in-out.
While he fell asleep, Ed looked over at Roger and asked, “What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” said Roger. “I don’t even know what direction we can take him in to find people. We might just have to pack some food and take the snowmobile out along his tracks before the snow can cover them up.”
“I can’t even remember the name of the closest city anymore,” said Ed.
“I can’t remember the names of my parents or where I was born,” said Roger.
They both looked at the stranger, and realized with a peculiar sort of calm that nothing around him seemed to exist anymore. The armchair and drink table, the tin mug and even the floor underneath him had all become indistinct and fuzzy, and they were beginning to dissolve. The only definite thing in the room was the stranger, the blanket now vanishing from his body.
Ed and Roger watched the house and the snow and even each other begin to blur and destabilize as the stranger lost consciousness completely.
“He is dreaming, isn’t he?” asked Roger in alarm.
“We don’t exist. None of us do. We’re part of his dream and now he’s waking up,” said Ed, his tongue vanishing as he spoke and slurring his syllables into incoherence.
Roger’s teeth began to disappear. He reached imploringly towards the sleeping stranger, but it was pointless: he saw his hand dissolve into fuzzy nothingness as he extended it, and the blur rapidly ate up the rest of his arm. He didn’t try to to stop it.

RPG: Chunk 6

The point at which the game disintegrates into subplots is fast approaching; one more post and I won’t have a concrete order in which to write these anymore. This is pretty wild. Chunk 6!

There are two things you can do at this point: stay in Phyrenia, which is less obvious, or chase the extraspatial demongrain across the sea to the city of Akredia, which is much more obvious. Basically the only thing that staying in Phyrenia accomplishes is giving you an easier jumping-off point to the quest that will get you Avira, and there’s no dungeon associated with it, so I’m going into Akredia now because that will actually be interesting.

Story

You get on a boat from Phyrenia and head across the sea to the third of the trifecta of rival trade capitals, Akredia. Upon arriving, you tell the Akredians upon unshakable warrant-driven authority that their grain is actually evil. They aren’t happy, obviously. So their authorities say, alright, we won’t distribute our illegally-acquired grain to the peasants around our city, but we expect Phyrenia to reimburse us for it later because the harvest this year is going to be really bad. They also say that they’re going to have to dip into the city stores of grain to give stuff to the peasants, which they’re none too happy about. The stores are actually kept out of the city, a little ways off to the west in a location that makes it easier to distribute their grain and makes the stores harder to attack from the ocean.

So they send a messenger, and you wander around Akredia for a while talking to people and stuff. Then, once you get back to the palace, the messenger comes back and says, hey, the stores are pretty weird, somebody should go check that out. The Akredians pretty much give you a meaningful look, and you have to be the fall guy and check out the silos for them.

Guess what? Demons!

But there’s something weird about the stores – the demons that have infiltrated and taken them over haven’t really materialized in their true forms. In the Eastern continent, where all the other dungeons have been so far, the demons have been in very solid, physical beings for the most part. They’ve been able to materialize as their true selves in a way they can’t seem to manage in this new area, and they have to manifest themselves indirectly – in this case, as plants. So once you’ve cleared the city stores, whose grain is thankfully unharmed, you realize that the inter-planar portals in the grain shipments from Phyrenia were the main jumping-off point the demons had in their invasion, and in preventing their shipment you’ve won your first real victory. However, it’s certainly not the only plan the demons had to invade the Western continent: they actually have two contingency invasion plans in effect right now, and within your time frame you’ll only be able to prevent one…

Akredia

Akredia has the same basic setup as the other big cities you’ve been to so far – four outskirt screens, four interior screens, and one square screen. It also has the Phyrenian structure of the docks at one end of town, so there’s one outskirt screen from which you can’t reach the world map. It also has a different kind of art direction – the Akredians were, until fairly recently in terms of world history, nomads, and their city has a kind of ramshackle feel to it, like a bunch of people just kind of decided to stay there and started building on top of their yurts. In terms of the magic-technology axis, Akredia is kind of the third wheel, but if its culture is based on anything, it’s religion. Akredia’s culture centers around a kind of animistic spirituality, a belief that all objects and organisms have an inherent spirit that can influence the outside world. This is the basis of Khavir’s Curse ability (I don’t know if I’m calling that Curse or Hex yet) and Sufiri’s mounts.

Anyway.

You head over to the grain stores, which are covered entirely in horrible twisting green vines. Good luck.

Akredian Grain Silos

There are three silos, so I guess this is formatted sort of like Lucan Temple. The catch is that all you actually have to do is the middle silo – the other two are effectively sidequests. If you don’t do them, all that will happen is that certain things in Akredia, like better weapons and stuff, won’t be as readily available later on, but if you want you can go back and do them whenever you want.

The puzzle mechanic in this dungeon is burning the vines. You can use one of Enata’s spells outside of battle in this dungeon, so you’ll use it to burn paths through otherwise-impenetrable vines. However, if you screw up, you can end up crippling your progress in the room and having to leave and reset it, or worse, you could even burn a whole in the floor and have to do the whole floor again. So the dungeon is really all about foresight and seeing the consequences of your movements.

Monsters

The Akredian Grain Silos contain Tanglers, Reapvines and Tendrils.

Tanglers are basic enemies with not too much health, but they attack in large groups, and their real bitch skill is the fact that their attacks have a chance to cause Slow. So you have to kill them fast, or else they can get in a million attacks before you can do anything. They can Attack, Constrict (causes slow 100% of the time but deals no damage), and Tighten (deals extra damage for every turn Constrict has been in effect).

Reapvines are hard enemies to deal with because they can spawn Tendrils. They can Attack, Constrict (no chance to cause Slow, but does damage every turn passively), and Spawn.

Tendrils are extremely weak, but they can link together to get stronger. They can enter battle independently of Reapvines. They can Attack, Link (combines all Tendrils in battle into one mass with more health and toughness, and one attack for each Tendril in the mass) and Regenerate (heals slightly, chance to create another Tendril).

Boss – Boreal Horror

Once you enter the final room in the dungeon, it attacks you. The vines, omnipresent and creeping all over the walls, split off and merge into one giant tentacled piece of evil. It’s the Multi-Limbed Boss of Escalating Difficulty per Limb Severed by Player, guys!

This boss has six tentacles and a head. You can’t hurt the head until you’ve killed all the tentacles. It moves slowly, but it gets one attack for each tentacle and each tentacle is on a separate attack gauge, so you have to cope with a steady stream of attacks all the time, which is very hard to deal with in an Active Time Battle System. This gives you an incentive to kill all the tentacles. However, once you do, they retract into the floor and then wrap around the head, making it more powerful. So the head starts off very very weak, but as you damage its limbs, it consolidates its power. By the end of the battle, it only gets one attack, but it is a fucking strong attack. It can Attack, cast Vine, Thorn, Nettle, Poison, Venom, Sinkhole and Pit, use Spores (chance to Stun or Slow), and, when all of its tentacles have been killed, use Chamber Contraction, which does heavy earth damage to the entire party.

Killing it gets you a Twisted Staff, which can heal and has a chance to slow an enemy every time it is used for anything.

RPG: Chunk 5

So I’ve been kinda been holding off on the next post in the hope that Tusked would get his shit together and comment or post or something, but I guess custom Magic cards based on rare birds matter more to him than friendship.

Well, fuck him. This is the internet. This is the twenty-first century. I don’t need silly things like “readership” or “attention” to keep myself chugging along. I am a self-sufficient imagination machine and I get 70 miles to the gallon. Here’s the next post.

Story

This section takes two paths, depending on whether you got Vinan or Cathan, but they’re not appreciably different. Either way, you have to head to Phyrenia, Lucan’s historic trading partner and the rival metropolis of Cilusia. If you have Cathan, you head back to Phyrenian High Command and tell them that Lucan was subdued and your mission was a success. If you have Vinan, you also go to Phyrenian High Command, but you deliver an ultimatum instead and tell them that your townsfolk aren’t going to take it anymore.

If you have Cathan, Phyrenian High Command congratulates you and then tells you to run a smuggling ring out of business. If you have Vinan, Phyrenian High Command says that they will only even consider not invading and torching Lucan if you do them a solid and run a smuggling ring out of business. You don’t really have a choice, so you grab your stuff and head out to break some mobster heads. It’s kind of a random sidequest, I am aware, but it provides a break from nasty demons and provides some important stuff to the plot.

You break into a warehouse, storm through it, kill the hell out of a bunch of seedy gangster types and their leader, and you find that they were smuggling, of all things, grain. Grain, to feed impoverished peasants in the southwestern steppes of the continent. You don’t understand, so you head over to track the shipments and see what’s going on.

Phyrenia

Phyrenia is very large, and shaped about the same as Cilusia (four screens for the outskirts, four for the interior, one for the city square). The noticeable difference between the two cities is the art design: Cilusia is a cosmopolitan city full of magic users rocking stately robes and giant bushy beards, but Phyrenia is a cramped, pseudo-steampunk metropolis full of twig-thin engineers and chiseled, businesslike soldier-types. Cilusia has the magic and Phyrenia has the technology. This is the real basis of their rivalry. Another difference is that the two screens on the far east side of Phyrenia are docks, so you obviously can’t get to the world map from them.

The way to get to the gang hideout is this. You get information from the Phyrenian government about a suspected salesman. You find out where he lives, and then you go to his house and arrest him. If you got Cathan, he goes quietly. If you got Vinan, you have to fight him, but he’s not hard. He’s actually just a basic enemy from the dungeon you’re about to enter. When you arrest him, you get his ring, which is how the gang has been identifying him. Then, you go to an alleyway, flash his ring at the bouncer, walk in, and then beat the shit out of the bouncer before he can realize you’re not who you say you are. If you got Cathan, he’s an encounter. If you got Vinan, Vinan does some ridiculous nerve-pinch thing and knocks him out before you have to fight him.

Gang Hideout

This is going to be a pretty small dungeon, and the main puzzle element is block-pushing. Yeah, you read that right – back-to-basics, classic RPG block-pushing puzzles of the devilishly-hard Golden Sun variety. Also, stacking. Here’s how it works. There are piles of crates, which are immobile, but individual crates on top of them can come loose and get pushed around. You can arrage these into stacks of crates, and then use them as stepping-stones to jump across rooms that would otherwise be impossible to traverse. Puzzle-solving like this is pretty freeform, which means that there are a lot of ways to complete the puzzle, but exponentially more ways to completely screw the pooch. Don’t worry; if you fuck up you can just leave the room and come back in with the crates reset.

The dungeon is formatted as a long stretch of storage rooms full of crate puzzles that get progressively larger and more complex, punctuated by little side-hallways that lead to treasure if you want to get it. At the end is a boss. This whole chunk is actually pretty nondescript; I’m having trouble hitting a thousand words here.

Monsters

The Gang Hideout contains Delinquents, Assassins, and Thugs.

Delinquents are pretty weak, but they attack in large groups. They can Attack, Slash (extra damage between one-quarter or one-half more than normal), or Call for Help (always brings in either an Assassin or a Thug).

Assassins are in the mid-range, healthwise, but they can do more damage than any other enemy. They can Attack, Stab (double damage), Observe (sacrifices an action this turn for two Stabs next turn), or Hide (avoids damage for a turn). They can also run from battles, which they will do at random.

Thugs, as can be extrapolated by now, have high health. They can Attack, Pound (one-quarter extra damage; hits all enemies), or Brace (half damage taken this turn).

Boss – Ringleader

Continuing on our odyssey of Recurring RPG Bosses, I thought this would be a good spot to throw in our old friend, Boss Who Calls in Standard Dungeon Enemies to Indiscriminate Frustration on the Part of the Player. This dude can do some damage on his own, but his real issue is that he can Call for Help without using up an action, and will do so if he has less than two guys with him. So he will always have at least two Assassins or Thugs backing him up. And the Assassins won’t run this time. On the plus side, the experience you get from killing them stacks up, so I guess if you leveled really high before fighting him you could just beat up his friends and then get an assload of cumulative experience and gold at the end. Anyway, he can Attack, Stab, Observe (also applies to Pound now), Pound, Brace, and then he can Toss one of three substances – Sand, which sharply drops accuracy, Acid, which deals damage and drops defense, or Oil, which drops attack and speed. Once he’s dead, along with a pile of his friends, you get an Assassin’s Knife, which has a chance to immediately kill an enemy on every attack.

You also get the knowledge that the grain that was being shipped east illegally by these smugglers was laced with a hidden ingredient that would force the grain to burst open into abyssal portals when harvested, effectively allowing demons to attack from every blade of grass in the west. Too bad.

RPG: Combat

I figured I’d post another one today to make up for my lateness.

I kinda feel like I’ve neglected the role in this game so far. I’ve been focusing really heavily on the puzzle aspect of it, and I feel like I’ve been chalking combat up as something boring and in the way. Basically, I’ve been drawing much too heavily on Golden Sun, in which monster encounters are few and far between and basically serve to screw you up when you’re trying to do the puzzles. This has been bothering me, and I want to do something about it.

I’ve been playing a lot of pretty combat-centric games recently, namely Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 4, and Dungeons and Dragons. The one thing I see all of them having in common is well-defined combat roles, so that’s what I’m going to base my battle system on.

Basically, a combat role is what a character is meant to do in combat. Dungeons and Dragons does a very good thing by getting this out in the open (at least in 4th edition): there are Defenders, Strikers, Leaders, and Controllers. Defenders are in combat all the time, take lots of damage, and pretty much spearhead the party’s assault. Strikers stay out of combat and hit single targets, doing lots of damage, but can’t necessarily take many hits. Controllers do AoE stuff, deal damage to lots of enemies, and ensure that the battle stays under the party’s control. Leaders inspire and buff the entire party, making sure the party keeps itelf under control.

Now, I think the Leader role kind of fails to work in electronic RPGs, because the playable party has no morale, initiative, or variable chance to hit, and the only thing the Leader could really do is alleviate enemy buffs and buff the party, which isn’t really a very handy thing in an electronic RPG. But the other three are very alive and well in most of the games I play, especially Final Fantasy. Let’s look at my current party in FF4:

First, we have Cecil, a Paladin. Cecil is a Defender. He can do assloads of damage and cast white magic, but his real gem of an ability is Cover, which lets him take damage for badly-wounded allies. This is really handy, since Cecil has about 1,000 more HP than anyone else.

Next is Kain, a dyed-in-the-wool Striker. Kain is a Dragoon, so his special ability is Jump, which lets him jump extremely high above the battle and then land on an enemy weapon-first, which understandably deals a ridiculous amount of damage. As a sidenote, having a character from a military unit which is entirely based around the idea of jumping really high and landing on people is the most pointlessly badass thing ever.

Then we have Edge, a ninja. I’m not sure where to put Edge, but let’s look at his abilities: he can Steal, which is totally useless, he can Throw items from your inventory, which does a huge amount of damage and makes him look like a Striker, but he can also cast Ninjutsu spells, which are substitutes for other spells but also cause status effects. I think this makes him a Striker with a Controller-like ability to do mass damage and sow confusion

The next character, Rosa, is a Controller, although she might be the closest thing the game has to a Leader. She heals and buffs up the party, as well as crippling the enemy party with spells like Slow and Silence.

Finally, we have Rydia, who is also a Controller. She has all of the offensive spells, as well as the ridiculously powerful Summons, which do more damage than should be legal.

Now, that was pretty easy. I think that’s what makes the battles in FF4 so interesting: every character knows what they’re supposed to do, and pulls it off pretty damn well. This is pretty different from Golden Sun, in which every character can, with careful arrangement of stat-boosting items and Djinni, perform any given role in combat. Not that that’s bad; in fact, it makes what might otherwise be a lackluster turn-based battle system is made much more interesting, but I feel like I can’t do what Golden Sun does in battle without completely ripping it off. I’d like my RPG to retain the kind of well-defined combat slots that FF4 has.

Now, I haven’t even talked about the actual battle system yet. I know that I want random encounters on the world map, but what about the dungeons? Should I keep the random encounters for them, too? And how should I handle the actual battles themselves?

One of the things I like most about Chrono Trigger is the fact that the dungeons have an element of stealth: there is always a way to escape the monsters, who are always visible, without having to fight them as long as you know where to sneak past. There’s a tradeoff between getting experience by fighting monsters and progressing through the dungeon quickly by sneaking away from them that makes the crawl very interesting. On the other hand, sneaking past monsters would make it hard to do the puzzles that are kind of at the core of the dungeons.

I think I’ll have visible monsters in the dungeons. There will be ones you can sneak past in the halls, but they’ll be small encounters that won’t cripple you experience-wise if you sneak past all of them. Then, I’ll put harder encounters that you can’t sneak past (the monsters will chase you Earthbound-style) in major puzzle rooms and down halls that lead to treasure chests to ensure you get enough experience to beat the boss without having to grind.

The actual battle system is a little hazier in my mind. I know I don’t want a strictly turn-based Dragon Warrior battle system, because those are pretty bland, unless you throw in a gimmick like Earthbound’s rolling HP-gauges. I like the Active Time system that Final Fantasies 4 and up use where you wait for your characters’ speed gauge to fill up and then you can go, but on the other hand, that can get pretty annoying when the monsters are fast, because they can cast Bolt 3 a few times while you’re looking for a spell and all your characters do is sit around picking their collective nose. Nobody has menu speed fast enough to avoid this.

I think what I’ll do is have an implicit speed-gauge. You won’t be able to see it fill up, but it will be filling up, and then once it’s completely full, you’ll be able to do stuff. In addition, any menu screen past the basic ability-selection will freeze the combat while you look for a spell, so you’ll be able to spend as much time as you want selecting the spell and nobody will fry your party. My hope is that this will make the combat cerebral enough to be strategic, but fluid enough to be vicious at the same time.

Back on the subject of combat roles, I feel like I should go through the characters in this game and make sure that their roles are defined, more for my benefit than anyone else’s. Here we go:

Alarim functions as a Controller with Defender tendencies. He can attack and cast black and white magic. He should have the battle well in hand at all times, and he’s the only character I’m allowing to have a more vague combat role because he kind of has to be flexible to tie the whole party together.

Imere is a bit of an anomaly. She can function as both a Striker and a Defender depending on which techs you learn, which is in turn influenced by who is in your party. If, for example, your party includes Baldwin and you continue to use Imere’s Defender-style techs exclusively, you’re kind of a dumbass. So she starts off vague, but develops into more of a defined character as she levels (puberty metaphor is unintentional).

Alistair is a Controller of the Rosa/White Mage variety. He keeps the party tied together.

Enata is a Controller. She blows shit away with fire.

Khavir is a Striker, definitely. His Rage ability lets him basically insta-kill one enemy per turn, but makes him a high-maintenance character who will require a lot of healing. In addition, his Curse ability lets him screw up one enemy as a counterattack, which makes target selection pretty damn easy: the enemy that attacks him gets poisoned, and then he tears them in half and crunches their skull.

Vinan is a Striker. He hits pretty damn hard with his techs, but he can also do some more general stuff: he can freeze single enemies, shield other party members and even use small-radius ki blasts to hurt larger numbers of enemies. So he’s more versatile than Khavir, but still definitely a Striker.

Cathan is a Defender, but his Stance ability makes him more pretty flexible: depending on the turn, he can wildly alter his combat role. He’s played most comfortably as an armored Defender-type guy, but depending on the party he can be very resourceful.

Sufiri is a Controller, but his reach is a little more limited, because his Charge ability only targets a few of the enemies. He functions better as a sub-Controller – he keeps the battle in hand, but only one portion of it.

Avira (Avi is actually a common Jewish name and only applies to men, so I changed her name) is a Striker. She has guns and good aim, so she can do shitloads of damage with a basic attack, but she also has a very Controller-like ability to Bomb all of the enemies. She doesn’t get it very often, though, so I’m leaving her as a Striker.

Baldwin is, obviously, a Defender to the bone. All of his abilities involve taking metric fucktons of damage.

Eusoph is a Controller. He’s not as good at healing as Alistair by the time you get him, but he can use Divine Wrath, which status-effects the shit out of the enemy and does a good amount of damage.

Ricca is a Controller. She can summons monsters, and they can do lots of damage to everything. Pretty obvious choice.

RPG: Chunk 4 and Stat System

I hammered out a little bit of a stat system here. I know I’ve been rattling off high-low stats for all the characters, but I hadn’t actually given it any thought until a few days ago. Now I know which stats manage which attributes when it comes to battle. Here you are:

• Strength manages how many hit points a character has, as well as, obviously, how much damage they do in battle. It also manages how many techs a character knows, if they know techs, and adds a small amount to mana. Strength is important for everyone.
• Intelligence manages primarily how much mana a spellcasting character has, the number of spells they know, and how much damage those spells do. It also adds to how much damage a technique does, although it’s not the major determining factor.
• Defense manages how much damage a character actually takes from physical attacks and adds a small amount to hit points.
• Resistance (this one is new, because I forgot to add it until now) manages how much damage a character takes from spells and affects Mortal Damage (more on that later).
• Accuracy affects how likely it is for a character to hit with their physical attacks (spells always hit; none of that stupid IT FAILED crap like in pokemon).
• Evasion affects how likely it is for a character to dodge physical attacks.
• Luck has been beefed up heavily from what it usually is in other games. Luck is basically a secondary stat for everything. It manages the likelihood of critical hits, and then secondarily manages hitting, dodging, and special weapon effects. It also affects Mortal Damage.

Basically, my idea for luck is that when you fail an accuracy “check”, the game rolls a luck check, and if you make it, you hit anyway. Same with dodging.

Mortal Damage is lifted pretty much directly from Earthbound. When a character is hit by an attack, their hp doesn’t just immediately lose the amount dealt by the attack, it scrolls quickly. If a character takes enough damage to kill them, the game makes a few resistance and luck checks while the hp is scrolling, and if you’re really, really lucky, the character will survive with low health instead of dying outright. This is really handy.

Just so we’re up to date, Alarim has high resistance, Imere has average resistance, Alistair has high resistance and Enata has high resistance.

Anyway, here’s Chunk 4:

Story

Before going to Cilusia, the characters actually have the option to go to Lucan, but I’m assuming they didn’t. If you do go to Lucan, what basically happens is that the hereditary leader of the town, a monk named Vinan, tells you that Lucan has been withholding trade from its former ally, the southern city of Phyrenia, and forming an alliance with Cilusia. However, it looks like Cilusia is taking negotiations slowly, and Phyrenia is getting pissed, so he sends you to Cilusia to ask them to speed the hell up and send some protection over.

But you didn’t do that, so it doesn’t matter.

The city of Cilusia awards you for saving the outskirts of town from danger and saving the life of a little orphaned girl, gives you negotiator status, and sends you off to do its dirty work in Lucan for it. You head off to the tiny, pathetic mountain town of Lucan with only a vague idea of what’s going on. When you arrive, you find it blockaded by Phyrenian soldiers, who let you in because you’re an ambassador now.

The situation in Lucan is this: it’s been trading only with Phyrenia for a long time now, but just recently, it’s broken off its alliance and begun trading with Cilusia more and more exclusively, gradually edging Phyrenia out. Phyrenia, which claims it still has a binding treaty with Lucan on trade, has sent a detachment of troops led by Cathan, a man who was born in Lucan. When you reach the town’s central hall, Cathan and Vinan are arguing in the main room. It turns out that they’re brothers, which doesn’t make the situation any easier to deal with. Basically, they had a fight over the succession and the townspeople chose Vinan to lead, which led to Cathan leaving angrily. Vinan felt betrayed by his brother and has basically created his town’s anti-Phyrenian tendencies out of petty anger. Obviously this came to a head, which is where you are now. You have to choose which of them is right. On one side, Cathan threatens a declaration of war against Cilusia, and on the other Vinan implores you to back your new ally up. Basically, it’s a really awkward situation.

If you pick Vinan, a lot of stuff transpires and eventually the people of Lucan rise up and drive the Phyrenian soldiers out. If you pick Cathan, the Phyrenians strong-arm the people of Lucan into cooperation. Either way, before anything more can happen, a loud crash tears through the village and you get a report that the windows on the ancient temple to the north of the village have just lit up with some kind of unearthly flame. You figure that’s probably a bad sign, so you head up to the temple to see what’s going on, along with whomever you picked. The temple has been overrun by demons, as is becoming the norm, and they’re using it as a stronghold from which to attack west. You head over to the temple with whoever you sided with and kick the shit out of the demons, kill their leader, and then come back to Lucan, where some interesting stuff is starting to happen. If you picked Cathan’s side, he allows you to enter certain important parts of Phyrenia later on, and if you picked Vinan, you’re allowed to come back to Lucan later on. Both areas have an associated sidequest. Also, the dude you picked joins your party permanently, but that goes without saying.

Characters

Vinan – A physically powerful man who has had the leadership of his town thrust upon him before he was really ready for it, but is trying to make the best of the whole situation. Vinan has always been seen as the more responsible of the two brothers, which contributed to his brother’s disgust with the whole situation. He’s fairly soft-spoken, which belies his ability to deal extremely large amounts of damage. He has high strength, accuracy, evasion and speed, average defense, and low luck, intelligence and resistance. He can’t equip any weapons whatsoever – he just has extremely high attack unarmed.

Cathan – A man sick of living in the shadow of his brother, Cathan left his hometown after his father died and was shortly put in his unenviable current position by the military of Phyrenia and the cruel twists of fate. Cathan seems to have something to prove: his brother had the title of “responsible” clinched, so Cathan decided to join an army and is now in command of a major detachment. He has high accuracy, defense, strength and resistance, average speed, and low intelligence and luck. He can equip spears and swords.

Lucan

Lucan is pretty damn small. I’m thinking a winding mountain road over two screens with a few houses on the side, and then the town hall-type building, which will take up two screens – one for the main room with all the rabble in it, and one for the back room with Cathan, Vinan and their honor guards. The houses near the entrance to town are barely populated, but the people in them will sell you weapons and armor and let you sleep for free, which is nice.

Lucan Temple

This dungeon is a tower, so it’s formatted as less of a sprawl and more of a stack. There are three towers in the temple. The main floor has one passage on each side, and these passages lead to smaller side towers that need to be completed before the main tower can be climbed. The puzzle mechanic for this dungeon is the statues – in the religion that proliferated in and around Lucan at the time this temple was built, it was apparently considered important to have statues strewn around your temples, everywhere. So expect a lot of statue-pushing to sort out mazes, as well as some Dominion Rod-style statue escort missions. The catch is that a lot of the statues are different sizes – some of them are up to five times as big as the player, so sorting the mazes out is made harder by that. Also, expect some out-of-doors scaling and ladder-climb bits.

One of the things about this dungeon is that there are no random encounters – just bad statues. Not all the statues are pieces of scenery; in fact, many of them are malevolent critters who would like to jump on you when you press A to push them or whatever. This can be a serious problem when they’re, as previously mentioned, five times your size.

Monsters

Lucan Temple contains Homunculi, Ravenous Idols, and Golems.

Homunculi are the smallest statues. Normally an entire party of them will attack you when you touch a bad small statues. They can Attack, Latch On to party members (long-lasting drain effects, take party member health and gives it to them), and cast Thorn.

Ravenous Idols are the generic middle-of-the-road statues. They can Attack, cast Stun, and use Armor (halves damage for two turns).

Golems are the big statues. There are only two of them, and they’re the minibosses of the two side towers. They can attack, use Armor, cast Pit and Landslide, and Turn Away (negates all damage for one turn)

Boss – Abyssal Icon

The Abyssal Icon is the obligatory Bitchy Boss You Can’t Usually Hurt. He’s in perpetual Turned-Away status, which means he can’t attack, but you can’t hurt him, either, and then when he turns back around he fucks you up and you don’t really have a chance to hurt him much because you’re too busy healing and trying to stay unfucked-up. He acts twice on his turn, and he can Attack, cast any first- or second-tier earth-aligned spell, along with Stun. Spells aside, he can Devour a party member, which has a chance to instantly kill them, and he can use Quake, which I guess consists of him jumping up and down. Basically, it shakes the whole temple and Stuns your whole party for a turn. He’s pretty well-armed. Killing him gets you a Relic Sword, which has to be reforged by a blacksmith in Lucan, but does heavy damage in both Earth and Holy forms, which is very very nice.

I’m sorry this has taken so long. I don’t really have an excuse except that I haven’t really been playing that many RPGs. Saps my creativity or something. Whatever. Anyway, now I have FF4 DS, so I’m alright.

Standard Procedure

The corpse had been scorched and burnt almost beyond recognition. It lay facedown on the charred street, hands raised in an attempt to protect its face. It sent plumes of steam swirling into the blurry grey sky and, consequently, the face staring down at it.
“Blast pattern looks like a cone, sir. Definitely a long-range deal, too,” said Constable Evarin. “The perp knows how to use fire. I didn’t even think it was possible to off someone from so far away with nothing but fire.”
Lieutenant Garamond stood up.
“Looks like the guy’s front is just as badly burned as his back, sir. He wasn’t running at first,” added Constable Syrion “And the perp must have kept the fire going for a while if he burned both sides. I’d say at least ten seconds.”
Lieutenant Garamond painfully blinked the sleep out of his eyes and said, “I think we should consider the possibility that the fire wasn’t even the cause of death.”
There was a quick silence.
“Sorry, sir, what?” asked Constable Evarin.
Lieutenant Garamond sighed, looked around at the ring of police barriers, sniffed in the cold night air, and said, “I don’t know if the burns looks intense enough to kill someone on their own. It would be pretty easy to conceal a few projectiles in the space of the blast, too.”
Sergeant Noril stepped closer to the body. “Why would anyone do that?” he asked.
Garamond looked away from the body and turned to Sergeant Noril. “Noril, there are so many reasons for that I don’t even feel like I should have to tell you.”
Noril smiled tightly. “I knew you weren’t that exhausted. I guess you could use something legal like the fire to conceal something more illicit, if you want to think like that. But if you want my highly professional opinion, that’s too much thought to put into a street murder.”
“Alright, sure. But if this wasn’t a street murder, we’re going to have to take this into consideration,” Garamond replied. “We have to get someone out here to identify the body. Syrion, call someone from yard.”
“You want me to get someone to detect what they used here, sir?” asked Syrion.
“That’d be great too,” said Garamond. “But I don’t think any of our detection mages are going to be happy about getting up this late.”
“They’re just going to have to deal, sir,” said Syrion.
Garamond turned back to Noril and murmured, “I like him.” Noril smiled.
“Sir, I’ve gotten pictures from just about every angle,” said Constable Evarin, putting down the recording scroll he’d been holding. “Do you want me to chalk him?”
“Do it,” said Lieutenant Garamond.
Evarin dug another scroll out of the pocket of his Watch coat and began muttering vague words off of it. Noril sipped his coffee.
“Some day we’re going to have to figure out how to put bigger spells on those scrolls. We can’t keep losing time because our detect mages can’t be bothered,” said Garamond darkly.
“Then they’d be out of a job and they’d start striking. Mage strikes are damn ugly,” said Noril.
There was a small flash of light around the body, and a dull white outline settled around it.
“Clear,” said Evarin. “We can pick him up.”
“Get us a stretcher over here,” barked Sergeant Noril.
A medical crew sprinted over from the sidelines of the police zone. They set a stretcher down next to the body and eased it into their arms, face-up, making sure to support it in case its charred joints snapped. When they placed it on the stretcher, Lieutenant Garamond noticed a vague glint on its chest.
“Stop,” he ordered. They did.
He reached over to the body and touched its chest. A blue symbol vaguely sparked in response.
“Shit,” he groaned. “They marked him. He’s warded.”
Sergeant Noril looked over at the corpse. “Son of a bitch. I guess we know it was planned now.”
“And we’re never going to find out how this happened. If they warded his clothes against psychometrics, we’ve got no lead.”
“We’ve got some ideas. Don’t kill yourself,” said Noril.
“Oh, sure. This could be a Red Mage because they have access to fire spells, and it could be a Salamander because they can breathe the stuff. That’s not much of a lead,” snapped Garamond.
“It could be a drake,” said Noril, looking over Garamond’s shoulder.
“Drakes have been banned for seventy years,” Garamond shot back.
“Plumes of flame like that have been banned for a hundred.”
“Alright, but you can find those on scrolls. Drakes are the size of horses.”
“Yeah, but there’s a drake fang on the ground a few feet back. That’s quite a bit of evidence,” said Noril.
There was a quick silence.
Garamond turned around and picked up the blackened tooth, turning it over and over in his hands.
“Can’t ward something that small, el-tee,” said Noril smugly. “And it doesn’t matter how good your plan is if your smuggled drake’s tooth flies out while it’s spitting.”
“I feel like I should promote you and put you on day watch so you’ll stop stealing my thunder,” murmured Garamond, still eyeing the tooth.
“You’d never get anything done without me.”
Garamond handed the drake fang to Constable Evarin. “Get some psychometrics on this by yesterday. I want to know its whole history up to and including tonight.”
He turned to Noril. “I need a drink,” he said. “And you’re going to buy it for me.”
Noril smiled. “I’m just guessing this is for upstaging you.”
“And being a generally unlikeable bastard, yeah.”
“Firewhiskey, then.”
Lieutenant Garamond laughed bitterly.

I swear to god I have a post coming along. But the game’s starting to get complex, so this will have to tide you over for now.

RPG: Chunk 3 and Revisions

Before we get started, I want to say that I’m adding an entire dungeon. The players don’t have enough to get familiarized with combat strategy before they reach Iuris and the entire Demon Convoy sequence is probably too hard for an early level, so I’m adding a path through the mountains between Crasada and Iuris called Iuris pass.

Dungeon – Iuris Pass

This is a fairly long dungeon; longer than Merisi Mine, definitely. It’s probably the first real dungeon-crawl experience the players get. The basic puzzle mechanic is the rockfalls: loose rocks on the walls of the mountain pass tumble down and block the players’ path unless they push the right configuration of blocks against the wall to block the spread of the rockfall. The sites where the rocks will fall are marked by barren stretches of ground, and pushing rocks around the borders of the sites blocks the sliding rocks. The problem is that the supplies of pushable rocks are limited, so you have to figure out how to maneuver them efficiently to block off the rockfalls. At certain points the path of the dungeon splits – if you use the obvious configuration of rocks, it routes you along a more roundabout path, whereas the more complex configuration earns you a straighter path.

Monsters

Iuris Pass contains Rockhoppers Desperate Bandits and Minor Golems

Rockhoppers are large bugs. Fairly easy to kill, but they’ll wear you down over time. They can Attack, Bite (light damage for two rounds) or Chitter (decreases either defense or accuracy for duration of battle).

Desperate Bandits are starving humans. They’ve got knives and hunger. They can Attack, Slash (plus one-quarter attack damage) or Call for Help (60% chance to bring one extra Desperate Bandit in).

Minor Golems are magical rock constructs, presumably used by the bandits. They can Attack, Crush (plus one-third attack damage, 30% chance to Daze) or Call Superiors (75% chance to bring one Desperate Bandit in).

No boss. Okay

Chunk 3

Story

Alarim, Imere and Alistair travel west from Iuris to the capital city of the nation, Cilusia. When they arrive in the suburbs, they come upon the burned-out husk of a house, and then the player knows shit’s about to go down. Basically, there’s been a rash of random, apparently unmotivated arsons recently. No deaths have been reported yet, but most of the people they talk to figure it’s only a matter of time. Even worse, the municipal government is occupied with what is only referred to for now as “The Lucan Problem” and can’t turn its attention to the destruction of its suburbs. Naturally, being heroes in an RPG setting, the three kids take the law into their own hands and set out to find what’s going on. There’s a house on the very outskirts of the city that’s always boarded up; the local kids think it’s haunted. It seems suspicious, so the players visit it. They find a way to break in and discover that it is linked directly to the older, unused sewer system of the city, which they journey through until they find the cause of the arsons: a young, magically-talented girl named Enata. Enata has been possessed by a pyromaniacal demon, whom the players manage to defeat. In gratitude, Enata joins the party, and you suddenly have a badass fire mage with you.

Characters

Enata – An orphaned street girl who has nursed a profound natural talent for magic her entire life. She is quiet, timid and guilty, which contrasts oddly with her violent, conflagratory abilities. She has been possessed by a demon for several weeks when you find her, which has turned her into a skeletal, emaciated wretch. She has high intelligence, speed, evasion, and accuracy, average luck, and low strength and defense. When you meet her she can cast Flame, Flare and Fireball, which means you’re pretty much set offensively. After a few levels, she gets Salamander’s Blade. She can equip staffs and knives.

Cilusia

Cilusia is huge. I mean, seriously fucking enormous. Nine screens: four for the outskirts of the city, four for the cosmopolitan interior, and one for the city square where all the really good shops and important plot-driving NPCs are. All the talkative townsfolk (or at least the ones with relevant things to say right now) are in the four outskirts. You can find out things about the The Lucan Problem from them, as well as the arsons. Also, the cheap inn is in the outskirts. The shops that sell things you don’t already have are in the city center, so that’s important. You come in by the Farmer’s Gate, on the east side (represent), and the first burned house is right there as you enter. Enata’s hideout is on the west side, by the Merchant’s Gate.

Cilusian Sewers

So, these sewers are pretty old. They haven’t been in use except by the obligatory Thieves’ Guild for a really long time now. The demons have kind of refurbished them since they arrived, and by refurbished I mean set everything that could ever have carried any kind of liquid on fire. So now, instead of unspeakable human waste flowing through the tunnels, there is fire. Not lava. Fucking fire. The basic puzzle mechanic for this dungeon is rerouting flows of fire – making tunnels walkable, for the first part, and then using the fire to flip switches to other levels. There are three levels. The last puzzle, the one right before Enata’s chamber, uses all three floors and requires both previous mechanics to open the door.

Like the Merisi Mines, the Cilusian Sewers have another, lower level that gets even more devilish. I guess these are the really old sewers or something. Whatever. Pretty much, the puzzles are much harder. They use the same mechanics, but the puzzles are longer and more mind-bending. At the end, you either get the Staff of Light (if you have Eusoph) or the Possessor summon (if you have Ricca). The Staff of Light is an incredibly powerful Holy-aligned weapon which can simultaneously cast Judgment and Angel’s Mercy once per battle, and the Possessor lets you take control of an enemy for an MP cost that changes with the enemy. Handy.

Monsters

The Cilusian Sewers contain Corrupted Thieves, Pyrodemons, and Fire Elementals.

Corrupted Thieves are the thieves who were present in the sewers when the demons showed up. They’re like beefed-up versions of the Desperate Bandits from Iuris Pass. They can Attack, Fire Slash (plus one-quarter attack damage, fire-aligned) or Summon Help (50% chance to bring in one Pyrodemon)

Pyrodemons are stronger, fire-aligned versions of the Minor Demons from yore. They can Attack, throw Fireballs (attack damage divided evenly between all party members) or Burn (monster-only spell, does poison-type damage, but fire-aligned and alleviated after end of battle).

Fire Elementals are made of fire. They can Attack, Burn, Split (divides self into two Elementals, each with half HP of original.

Boss - Possessor

This guy is a pretty serious problem. Basically, he’s inhabiting Enata’s body. If you kill her, you lose the battle, so you have to do just enough damage to her to make him vulnerable, and then use a special ability that Alistair gets for battles like this called Exorcise to force him out of her mind. Then, you fight him. Enata herself is very powerful: she gets Cutscene Power, so she has like four or five times the HP she will have when she’s in your party and she gets much better spells (alright, she has the same spells, but she also gets Torch, which is very dangerous this early on). The Possessor can cast everything she can along with Explosion and Drake Fire (a weakened form of Dragon Fire which can still seriously fuck you up). Enata can do basic attacks, but the Possessor can’t, being technically incorporeal. Once you defeat him, he cackles and escapes to the lower levels of the sewers, where you vow to find him later (The boss of the really old Cilusian sewers is him in full corporeal form, which means he’s maddeningly strong). He drops a Staff of Darkness, which would be very powerful if you could equip it without fucking your characters up: it Curses them, which means it does damage to them and can’t be unequipped unless you take it to a hospital and have it exorcised. Exorcists are common in hospitals.

RPG: Chunk 2

This has been done for a while but apparently in the American mid-south they haven’t discovered the internet yet.

RPG: Chunk 2

I didn’t change Alistair’s name.

Story
Alarim and Imere leave Merisi and head south to the second town, Crasada. Crasada is a large town (by their standards) at the crux of three large trade routes. A lot of what you can find out about the political situation in the world can be discovered by talking to villagers there. After staying in Crasada for a while, they leave for the third town, Iuris Monastery. When they arrive, they find it in a state of panic: the head priest of Iuris, Eusoph, has disappeared, and none of the monks have any idea where he could have gone. After wandering around the monastery for a while, Alarim and Imere come across Alistair, Eusoph’s apprentice and presumable successor. Alistair reveals that he knows where Eusoph is, but also that he has been cursed, and if he tells anyone where Eusoph has been taken or leads anyone to it, the curse will activate and kill him. Alarim finds (steals from the monks) a way to draw out the curse and uses it, and then Alistair leads the two to the demons’ convoy, which is transporting Eusoph away from Iuris. The three manage to defeat the convoy leader, a powerful demon called the Abyssal Rider, but it’s too late to rescue Eusoph, who is dragged into a portal and presumably (at this point in the game) killed. Alistair cannot return to Iuris, as Alarim had to steal an instrument to remove his curse, which he should have confessed in the first place, so he goes along with Imere and Alarim.

Characters
Alistair – A neophyte in the Iurian order who, despite his timidity and naïvete, is highly skilled in magic. He is an orphan, and has always looked at Eusoph as a sort of father figure, which is probably a bad idea, since Eusoph is kind of an asshole (aloof, arrogant, fanatical). Alistair has good intelligence, accuracy, evasion, and luck. He has average speed and low strength and defense. When you meet him he can cast Cure, Light, and (I neglected these in the spell list) Heal Poison, Awaken, and Heal Stun, which heal the major status ailments. He gets Cleanse shortly after he joins (within a few levels), which is very important when you start fighting large numbers of demons. He can equip staffs and maces.

Crasada
Crasada is significantly larger than Merisi; I’m thinking four full screens of stuff. There are three roads out of town: one to the north, one to the southeast, and one to the southwest, so there’s one screen per road, with a hub in the middle. The hub is where you can find the inn and the shops, and the roads are where the talkative townsfolk are. There are caravan wagons everywhere in this town, and I think that each road should have a different look to show where they all lead. So the north road to Merisi is coniferous and rocky, the southeast road to Iuris is deciduous and verdant, and the southwest road to the steppes (where you find Khavir and Avi) is dusty and grassy.

Iuris Monastery
Iuris Monastery is only two screens: an exterior shot of the walls, the cloister inside them, and the gardens, and an interior shot of the cloister on its own. You can’t buy anything here, but you can sleep for free. To find Alistair, you have to go inside, talk to some monks about Eusoph, and then leave. You find him in the gardens.

Demon Convoy
This is not so much a dungeon as it is a train. The demons have Eusoph in manacles to prevent him from casting spells, and you have to fight through several groups of them to get to him. Basically, it’s a long series of battles against progressively harder enemies, so the challenge is in enduring long enough to get to Eusoph and then… well, fail to save him, I guess. Too bad.

Once you get through, you get to fight the Abyssal Rider, who is at the head of the caravan guarding the cage containing Eusoph. Pretty bland dungeon, really. More like an event.

Monsters

The Demon Convoy contains five different encounters.

Five Minor Demons – There are more of these than there ever were in Merisi Mine, but they’re still not very hard. They can do basic attacks and throw stone shard (since there’s no obsidian here).

Three Mounted Demons – These are significantly harder than the Minor Demons, and they get to attack earlier due to a higher speed. There are less of them, I guess, but they’re tougher. They can do basic attacks or Charge.

Three Mounted Demons, Two Minor Demons – Not much new to say here. There are more of them, and this is where the endurance thing starts to pick up.

Two Demonic Cavaliers – These are hard enemies. They’re very fast (fast enough to attack before anyone but Imere) and very powerful. They’ll fuck you up unless you’re careful and loaded with potions. They can Attack, Charge, and Trample (high damage with a chance to Stun).

Boss – Abyssal Rider

The Abyssal Rider isn’t as hard compared to the other enemies as most dungeon bosses are, but he’s still big and scary, and he always attacks first, before anyone else in the battle, which makes him extremely dangerous. He can Attack, Trample, and cast Darkness, Drain, Nightshade (some spells, like Nightshade, are only usable by monsters, which is why they didn’t appear in the spell list). and Decay. Killing him doesn’t help Eusoph or really help you out at all, plot-wise. But shut up. You have to do it. Also, it gets you an Abyssal Rapier, which is an excellent weapon.

So there’s the second chunk. I actually have no idea what chunk three is going to be yet, so it could be a little bit of a wait. Oh well.

RPG: Spell List

Right, so because I’m bored out of my skull, you get an extra post for today. This is a fairly comprehensive list of all the spells in the game. Not all the summons, because that will take a lot longer. Definitely not all the techs and stances and stuff, because that would be ridiculous. I’ll probably add a stance list, a sword tech list, a monk tech list, and a mount list later. But right now you just get spells.

Fire-Aligned

• One enemy: Flame – Torch – Eruption
• Three enemies: Flare – Blaze – Inferno
• Five enemies: Fireball – Explosion – Meteor
• Buff: Salamander’s Blade (raises attack of all party members and grants everyone fire damage for a turn)
• Extra: Dragon Fire (extreme damage to all enemies at a very high MP cost; the fire element goes the whole game with no status-ailment spell until it gets this, which makes up for it)

Earth-Aligned

• One enemy: Sinkhole – Pit – Chasm
• Three enemies: Vine – Thorn – Nettle
• Five enemies: Rockfall – Landslide – Avalanche
• Buff: Golem’s Armor (raises defense of all party members and grants everyone earth damage for a turn)
• Extra: Poison – Venom – Plague (Plague does the same damage as Venom but spreads between enemies, one enemy per turn)

Water-Aligned

• One enemy: Chill – Freeze – Frostbite
• Three enemies: Douse – Deluge – Flood
• Five enemies: Wave – Surge – Tsunami
• Buff: Nyad’s Lore (raises intelligence of all party members and grants everyone water damage for a turn)
• Extra: Sleep – Slumber – Coma (Sleeping enemies awake once attacked. Slumbering creatures do not. Comatose creatures have a chance to die every turn.)

Wind-Aligned

• One enemy: Shock – Bolt – Plasma
• Three enemies: Gust – Gale – Tempest
• Five enemies: Whirlwhind – Cyclone – Vortex
• Buff: Wyvern’s Wings (raises speed of all party members and grants everyone wind damage for a turn)
• Extra: Daze – Stun – Confuse (Dazed enemies may not be able to attack. Stunned enemies cannot attack. Confused enemies may not be able to attack, and if they can, they will always hit each other.)

Holy-Aligned

• One enemy: Light – Flash – Radiance
• Three enemies: Cleanse – Scour – Purge
• Five enemies: Wrath – Retribution – Judgment
• Buff: Angel’s Mercy (grants all party members HP regeneration for two turns and holy damage for one)
• Extra: Revive (brings a party member back from the dead, instant kill on any undead non-boss enemy)

Unholy-Aligned

• One enemy: Darkness – Shade – Gloom
• Three enemies: Decay – Fester – Corrupt
• Five enemies: Spite – Rancor – Malice
• Buff: Demon’s Rage (grants all party members vampirism for two turns and unholy damage for one)
• Extra: Drain – Siphon – Void (drains enemy health and gives it to caster; Void has a chance to immediately kill enemy and take all their health)

Healing Spells (effectively Holy-Aligned, but not used on enemies unless they’re zombies)

• Cure – Greater Cure – Absolute Cure (replenishes health)
• Heal – Greater Heal – Absolute Heal (removes status ailments)
• Aura – Greater Aura – Absolute Aura (heals whole party)

RPG: Chunk 1 and Magic Theory

I’ve decided to do this thing in what I’m calling “chunks” – large bits consisting of a few plot elements, a dungeon or two, maybe a new character, a town and some monster profiles.

So, as an example, here’s the story you got last time, in chunk format.

Story

Alarim, a fifteen-year old youth from Merisi, a small but prosperous mining town in the mountains, is eagerly awaiting his sixteenth birthday, only a few days away, because it is the date he will come of age in Merisian society and be allowed into the mine. However, two days before his birthday, the men of the village fail to return from the mine until, just before sunset, a badly-beaten one stumbles out of the mine and collapses. Alarim heads into the mine with Imere, the quiet but skilled daughter of a caravan guard staying in the village. When they manage to open the seal on the door open, they find themselves in a changed mine; liquid obsidian is leaking out of the walls, and the place seems in the process of melting. They fight their way through and kill the boss, an Abyssal Lieutenant. He tells them with his dying breath that they don’t have a chance to stop the flow of evil into the world, and they might as well accept defeat. With his death, the obsidian hardens and retracts into the walls. Alarim and Imere resolve to warn the surrounding world of the threat and, if they don’t listen, to save the world themselves.

Characters

Alarim – the silent hero of the game. At the beginning of the game, Alarim has a borrowed sword he got from Imere’s father. He has Mario stats – decent all around. He has average strength, defense, speed, accuracy, evasion and luck. He has above-average intelligence, which is vital to his magic. His spells at the beginning consist of Cure, and then two choices of spells – he can learn Sleep, Poison or Daze (like Stun) for his status ailment spell, and Douse (basic water), Vine (basic earth) or Gust (basic air) for his damage spell. He can equip swords, knives and axes.

Imere – The daughter of Castal, a guard who works the caravan route south of Merisi and has just come up north looking for better prices. She’s been taught swordcraft by him from a young age, so she knows her shit. She has a better sword than Alarim at the beginning of the game. She has high strength, speed, accuracy, evasion and luck, average intelligence and low defense. She can’t use magic, but she can learn powerful sword techniques throughout the game. The one she knows at the beginning is called Quick Slash, and it allows her to attack for extra damage before any enemies have attacked. The techniques run down her MP just like spells would for a caster. She can equip swords, knives and spears.

Merisi

Merisi is a very small town. I’m thinking about three screens top-to-bottom and only one screen wide. Most of it is one street, with the inn and the shops at the front, surrounded by caravan wagons, houses behind that, and then the entrance to the mine. The shops don’t sell anything you don’t already have, but you might be able to pick up equipment from the caravan guards. Nothing very interesting happens here. Before you enter the mine, the first day passes as you perform chores and talk to people to get yourself acquainted with the game’s controls.

Dungeon – Merisi Mine

This is a small dungeon to suit the town. There’s a hidden key in the first room, which allows you to open the seal on the door. The dungeon mechanics are pretty simple; the basic puzzles are going to revolve around rerouting mine cart paths (of course there are mine carts) to crack the cocoons that the Merisian miners are trapped in. Once that’s over, there’s a short walk to the boss room, where the Abyssal Lieutenant is waiting for you. There are two wings of the dungeon, and one mine cart puzzle for each.

You can come back here later in the game and enter the lower levels of the mine. This is a much, much harder multi-floor dungeons with similar mine cart puzzles on a larger scale and water-pumping mechanics to clear out flooded areas. Once this is over, you receive one of two things: the Purified Armor, if Eusoph is in your party, or the Abyssal Lieutenant summon, if Ricca is in your party. The Purified Armor allows Eusoph to channel holy energy and block 95% of damage to the party for one turn, and the Abyssal Lieutenant does a huge amount of Unholy damage to one opponent.

Monsters

Merisi Mine contains Imps, Minor Demons and Obsidian Elementals.

Imps are basic cannon-fodder, the easiest enemies in the game. They can do basic attacks or Bite a target, which does light damage for two rounds.

Minor Demons are slightly stronger. They can do basic attacks and throw obsidian shards, which does extra damage.

Obsidian Elementals are much stronger, but slower. They can do basic attacks, throw obsidian shards, or Charge, which does double their ordinary attack damage.

Boss – Abyssal Lieutenant

The Abyssal Lieutenant is a very hard enemy for this early in the game. He has high health and defense, but low speed. He has a suit of Desecrated Armor on, which can be destroyed to decrease his defense but increase his speed. He can do basic attacks, throw obsidian shards, and cast Daze, Drain (leeches enemy health to replenish his own) and Nightshade (Unholy damage and a chance to Poison and enemy). Killing him saves the mine and gives the player an Obsidian Knife, which is a good weapon this early on.

Alright, so that’s what a chunk is going to look like. Now on to magic theory:

Magic has six elements, and they oppose each other differently in this games because damn it, I feel like defying standard RPG tropes this once. Basically, the four “ordinary” elements chase each other in a rock-paper-scissors way. Fire beats Earth, Earth beats Wind, Wind beats Water, Water beats Fire. However, diametrically opposed are the last two elements, Holy and Unholy. Obviously, Holy does extra damage against the undead and demons. Unholy does extra damage against every living, super-planar thing, which makes it extremely dangerous, especially since you can’t use it except for a few spells and summons.

There are three types of spell per element – one that does high damage to one enemy, one that does medium to three, and one that does low to five – and three spells per spell tree. As an example, the spell trees for all the ordinary fire element spells go:

• High damage, one enemy: Flame – Torch – Eruption
• Medium damage, three enemies: Flare – Blaze – Inferno
• Low damage, five enemies: Fireball – Explosion – Meteor

The paths for status-ailment and healing spells are different, and there are a lot of extra-powerful spells for each element that don’t progress on a tree, but I’m not going to go into that yet. I’ll have a full spell list ready by next week, maybe.