Inspired : Tales of Renown

Inspired is the name of a series of maps I am planning to make. They are "inspired" by Dungeons and Dragons, hence the name for the series. The first map in the series is Tales of Renown, an 8-player RPG with AoS and TD style gameplay elements as well as some new innovations. My goal is to have all of the great gameplay from the Orc bonus campaign all contained in 1 multi-player map. Anyway, this is a long post, but I would like to get some outside opinions on these ideas. I have only been working on Heroes and Hero abilities so far, so much of this is still up in the air, but I hope to get all of it incorporated.

General Features

-The map will contain a large playable area complete with 2 city-states, villages, mountains, seas, forests, deserts, and swamps.

-There will be "gates" that will function as entrances to ruins, temples, dungeons, and caves. These areas will be seperate from the main play area and players will be silently teleported to them, with the camera bounds locked to the new area until they leave.

-After selecting their hero, players will start in a random place on the map.

-Players' starting diplomatic relations will be based on the hero they choose(good, neutral, or evil). However, their actions during the game will automatically adjust the city-states stances towards them, and players may freely change their stances towards each other.

-Once players become friends of a city-state, they may freely trade with the merchants, rent a workshop, and do quests for the king. Friend status is achieved by performing a few tasks for the the city watch, the king, or other citizens.

-There will be quests available all over the place, but these will be given only to the player that activates them, except for the main quest events, which will be globally broadcast.

-Over the course of the game, some interesting events might happen. My plan is to have enough events that no 2 games will be exactly the same. Some types of events:

Main Quest Events - These will present the ultimate threat that must be defeated for the players to "win" the game. These events will happen after a set amount of time, voted on by the players at the start of the game.

Ancient Demon - An ancient demon awakens and must be stopped. The demon will throw waves of lesser devils at the 2 cities until they are destroyed or the players kill the demon.

Evil Artifact - An evil artifact is discovered by some explorers, releasing some minor fiends. The players must either take the artifact to the ancient temple to destroy it, or take it to their workshop to claim it's power for themselves.

Possesed King - An extra-planar entity possesses the king of one of the cities and wages war on the world. The players must either side with the king and destroy the opposing city, or kill the king.

Old Gods Return - The ancient gods are manipulating someone into releasing them from their infernal prison. The players must stop the gods' agent or, failing that, collect the sacred relics to seal them away again. A player may also choose to destroy the sacred relics, gaining the favor of the old gods and being elevated to the level of demigod, or they can try to kill one of the old gods and take their place.

Astrological Events - These will be global events that do not neccessarily generate quests, they may just have temporary effects.

Meteor - A meteor falls from the sky, possible landing in a populated area. This may leave some starmetal, useful for crafting items, or it may be a powerful entity that then goes on a rampage, or it may just be a pretty show.

Star Alignment - The stars are aligned in a certain way, this has different effects, it could be that all healing is doubled, mana regenerates faster, magic becomes unuseable, monsters become restless or scared, animals go crazy, etc.

Eclipse - There is a solar eclipse, resulting in a long night period.

Weather - There will be random weather events such as rain, snow, and thunderstorms.

Monster Invasion - These events will prompt a tower defense style scenario where players will be given command of an engineering team and be responsible for constructing defenses for the city-state they are allied with. Players not allied with a city-state will be offered money by the city-states to work for them.

War - These events will prompt an Aeon of Strife style scenario where the city-states begin sending AI-controlled troops to attack each other. The players will be given orders by the city-state they are allied with. The war will last a set amount of time unless ended by the players when they kill the opposing king, destroy the opposing city-state, or successfully complete all of their orders during the war. Players not allied with a city-state will be able to rent their services out as a mercenary or stay out of the fight.

Archeological Find - These events will generally result in a quest from one of the city-states to go and retrieve an item, rescue an acheologist, or clear out a ruin/temple/dungeon/cave of monsters.

Scientific Discovery - These events will signal new technologies that become available, such as new types of metal for crafting items, new types of items for sale, and new modes of transportation(air ship, lightning rail, etc).


Characters
Heroes in the map will be based on D&D classes and prestige classes. Maximum level will be 20. Each hero will have 3 class abilities, each with 5 levels, as well as an epic ability that will automatically be learned when they reach level 16. Heroes are broken up into several categories: good, neutral, and evil alignment; caster, warrior, and support archtypes; and melee or ranged combat style.

In addition to their class abilities, heroes will spend skill points on feats, which can be learned by visiting a trainer in one of the city-states or finding one in the wilderness. When a feat is learned, the appropriate ability will be added to that hero. Each player will have a "character sheet" unit that will be useable to carry extra items and show the feats they have learned, this unit will be invisible and do nothing else.

Feats
Ancestral Weapon(level 3) - Makes the hero's starting weapon more powerful and count as silver
Ancestral Relic(level 9) - Makes the hero's starting weapon even more powerful and count as adamantine
Ancestral Artifact(level 15) - Makes the hero's starting weapon a powerful artifact and count as blessed
Toughness - Increases hitpoints by 200
Rapid Healing - Increases hitpoint regeneration by 50%
Improved Rapid Healing(level 9) - Increases hitpoint regeneration by an additional 50%
Power Attack - Increase melee damage by 10
Improved Power Attack(level 9) - Increase melee damage by an additional 10
Cleave - 25% of melee damage hits adjacent enemies
Dodge - 15% chance to dodge attacks
Dash - Increases move speed by 15%
Precise Shot - Increases ranged damage by 10
Improved Precise Shot(level 9) - Increases ranged damage by an additional 10
Rapid Shot - Increases ranged attack speed by 15%
Iron Will - Increases mana by 100
Spell Focus - Increases mana regen by 50%
Greater Spell Focus(level 9) - Increases mana regen by an additional 50%
Craft Wonderous Items(level 3) - Allows crafting of rings, gloves, boots, belts, amulets, cloaks, potions, and scrolls
Craft Wands, Rods, & Staves(level 7) - Allows crafting of wands, rods, and staves
Craft Arms & Armor(level 5) - Allows crafting of melee weapons, ranged weapons, armor, shields, and helmets

Players will be able to craft their own items, provided they have the needed Craft feat. In order to craft something, a player will need to rent a workshop from a city-state. They will order their hero to enter the workshop(which will work like a transport) and then the appropriate crafting abilities will be enabled. All items will cost half the market value to craft. Weapons and armor will be able to use a special material and a gemstone to increase their effectiveness or give them extra abilities.


Damage Reduction
In D&D, many creatures have an ability that reduces physical damage unless certain conditions are met, usually that a weapon be magical or made of a certain material like adamantine. To simulate this, I will be using the damage and armor types. Unfortunately this does not allow for a very large range of damage reduction types, however, I believe it is enough to get the idea and add a new strategic element to gameplay. Players will be able to craft or find armor that gives them damage reduction, for instance, mithral armor will give a hero the Magical armor type, adamantine armor will give the Constructed type, and starmetal armor will give the extra-planar type. The Cleric of St. Cuthbert's Righteous Might ability gives him the Divine armor type while it is active; this is the only way a player can have the Divine armor type.

Armor Types
Normal - Reduces no damage
Natural - Slightly reduces all damage
Supernatural - Slightly reduces all damage from Normal weapons
Magical - Moderately reduces all damage from Normal and Silver weapons
Constructed - Moderately reduces all damage from Normal, Silver, and Enchanted weapons
Extra-planar - Greatly reduces all damage from Normal, Silver, Enchanted, and Adamantine weapons and slightly reduces damage from spells
Divine - Greatly reduces all damage from non-Blessed weapons and greatly reduces damage from spells

Weapon Types
Normal
Silver
Enchanted
Adamantine
Starmetal
Blessed - The only way to get the Blessed weapon type is from the Knight Protector's Bless Weapon ability or from the Ancestral Artifact feat

Sounds well planned out. If i must comment, have heroes start off at specific locations according to their position. For example a rogue-type hero will start off at the forests edge; while a palladin starts off in City A.

Thanks for the comment. I think you are right and that the heroes should start off in specific places.

Update:

I now have a working inventory system that allows you to carry 16 items on your hero and have a backpack that holds 6 items. You can have 1 each of the following item types: Weapon, Armor, Shield, Helmet, Cloak, Gloves, Boots, Belt, Protective Ring, Other Ring, Amulet, and Trinket. You may also carry 4 Wonderous Items which includes things such as potions, scrolls, and wands.

The way this works is that your hero starts out with 5 "bag items" called Backpack, Weapons & Armor, Clothing, Jewelry, and Wonderous. Clicking the Backpack item will actually deselect you hero and select a special, invisible and invulnerable backpack unit, which has a 6 slot inventory. Clicking one of the other items will remove the 1st 4 items from inventory and replace them with the 4 items you have in that category. These items are real items and can be dropped, traded, sold, or given to the backpack by dragging the item onto the backpack item, which is always in slot 6. A Back to Inventory item is placed in the 5th item slot while any of the categories are open. Persistent effects will work even when you are not looking at the appropriate category, but to use an active ability of an item, you must open the proper category and then click that item.

When you pickup an item, a check is made to see if you already have an item of that type, if not the item is added to the appropriate category, if you do, then a check is made to see if you have room in your backpack and if so the item is added to it, if not the item is dropped and an error message given. You can sell items directly from your backpack so there is no need to swap items back and forth a lot.

Also, I will be needing some help on terrain, as I pretty much suck at it. I can come up with a map that has everything I need, I just can't make it look good, so if anyone is willing to help beautify my terrain, let me know.

With the release of RotD, and the bugs that insues, I must insist that you ensure your inventory system is bug-free as much as possible.

Cases to look for bugs:
Dying with a "bag item" open,
Saving (and hence loading) with a "bag item" open.
Going to sub maps with a "bag item" open.

there are bound to be more cases so make sure you get good beta testers.