Monday, December 06, 2010

Notorious

Concept
A game where you build dungeons, raid the locals, and fend off heroes to become the most notorious in the land.

Facebook implementation:
The problem with most new games is that they either follow the social obligation path of Farmville or the energy-as-limitation with artificial missions akin to Mafia wars. I want to design a game where the interaction between players is a little more meaningful, and the interaction with the game is not as artificially limiting.

Even though the digging out of dungeons and conducting of raids takes time, the planning is freely available at any time, as well as the interaction with other dungeons through heroes and the rumour system. Matters still need to be addressed as things may not go to plan on the raids, diggers may strike unknown obstacles (monster pits / gold veins), or new areas need to be designated once dug out. There should be enough activity for new players and invested players to be able to play as long as they like, but players seeking only small doses of fun can still plan out a fair way into the future, and also have many things to do when returning from a period of time away.

Most monster contracts and built areas are designed to be replenished over time, so the dungeon will settle about a certain level of notoriety if left alone for an extended period. Heroes will attempt the dungeon at somewhat regular intervals (~1/2 hr?), and non-returning heroes will raise the notoriety of the dungeon, which in turn inspires higher level heroes to attempt the dungeon. Once a high enough hero comes through to wipe out all the monsters and take most of the gold / equipment away, the notoriety drops so that minor heroes will attempt it next time.

Things to do
Build a Dungeon
Conduct Raids
Hire Mercenaries
Buy / Sell Equipment
Ransom Prisoners
Bribe Heroes
Listen to Rumours / Spread Rumours
Replay events
View Highscores

Build Dungeon
- Pick starting location (allow restart / multiple dungeons?)
- Designate areas to be mined out
- Designate a room (Storage / bedroom / training room / patrol room / eating / vault)
- Start with dirt around entrance, but get into different types of stone further in, with gold / gem seams / caves / ravines / streams. Stone needs mining equipment and a lot more time to get through. Gold seams could take a long time to go through, so they provide a steady source of income

Conduct Raids
- Capture prisoners. Designate prison areas. If area contains digging designations, prisoners will also dig. Each prisoner has a name / occupation and a bounty that is used for notoriety
- Target equipment / gold
- Spreading chaos. Raises Notoriety. Increases happiness for chaos creatures.
- present 3 targets with easy / medium / hard options. Give percentage chance for success, appproximate time to get there and approximate rewards.

Hire Mercenaries
- Set up contract with goblin camp to provide up to 5 goblins at 1 per hr for a wage of 5 gold per hr each.
- Contract with a Troll for modest lodgings and 40% of all loot found
- Mercs will take wage from whatever drops, or through trips to the vault. No payment angers mercs, granting greater autonomy to take their payment through other means.
- If mercenaries level up while in base, you can attempt to offer them individual contracts
- Provide a choice of 3-5 contracts at the "villians'r'us" trader. Go between for nefarious rulers of the world
- Make names and random stats for mercs. Light hearted like Majesty.

Buy / Sell Equipment
- Purchase goods through middle man
- Sell manufactured items and old items from heroes to black market

Ransom Prisoners
- Negotiate through ransom broker
- Ransom for prisoners continues to rise from their base level (set by profession/level), giving bigger rewards, more notoriety, but also more incentive for heroes.

Bribe Heroes
- Pay minimal cost to cast spell of seeing on hero so that you can observe what someone's dungeon setup is like.
- Can organise a more tougher hero than the dungeon warrants if you pay the difference. This should allow even level 1-2 players to see what a level 20 dungeon is like from both the hero and dungeon creators perspective. Negotiate deal to split profits for upfront cost.
- Cast spell of control to give player the choices the hero would have automatically made. (Move to grid coord / fight / search / free prisoner)

Listen to Rumours / Spread Rumours
- Find out what townsfolk have to say about your dungeon. Multiple perspectives available to hear different variants, plus a general consensus of notoriety.
- Choose rumours by dungeon (player) / monster / town / hero / prisoner / rumour type
- Heroes use the rumour system to pick their next targets.
- Information leaks through public interaction of your dungeon with the town, as well as returning heroes.
- Spread rumours allows the player to either agree or disagree with certain rumours (through a conversation with townsfolk, with chance of them believing) or make their own rumours up. Allows the user to control the notoriety of their dungeon (and other people's dungeons) and tailor the types and level of heroes that attempt to take on their dungeon.


Replay events

- review events hapening in your dungeon since you were away
- sort by time / level of importance / characters involved / room involved

View Highscores
- sort by highest level of hero killed (main criteria) / current notoriety /notoriety change / rumoured wealth / rumoured size