[entivore]

I was thinking about testing out a lot of my ideas, and I came up with a reasonable way to do it, I think. The idea is a multiplayer semi-open ended rpg.

The plot: The world was in chaos after a great battle, with the followers of each of the 8 elemental paths fighting each other for supremecy. But luckily, the Divine One came, a beautiful four winged woman with fabulous power managed to unit the people enough that a normal life once again became possible. She left, saying that one day, when the 8 paths realized they all had something to give and worked together, she would return.

Shortly after, a secret organization known as the Divgodanes appeared. The Divgodanes were obsessed with bringing back the Divine one, and so formed their organization so that a member could study one path with all their focus. The rule was that no Divgondane was allowed to fight another. Unfortunantly there were only 7 Divgondanes. Not just anyone could become a Divgondane. They must possess great knowledge, skill, and power in their respective element, and have a strong drive to ever improve. After many years the Divgondanes have finally found someone who fits the criteria. A dark magician by the name of Render Raxamarten. Unfortunantly, Render has absolutely no interest in becoming the Divgondane of darkness, and seems disgusted by the idea.

Gameplay: You basically pick one of the 7 divgodanes as 'you' and then try to get Render to join, either by convincing him to join, blackmailing him, or just downright forcing him to by beating him. Meanwhile you compete against or ally with the other divgodanes to try and get him first. (If you've ever played civilization, or alpha centuari, you know what I have in mind here).

In addition, you could use the internet to play with other human players, each one taking a Divgodane. The rest of the Divgodanes would be played by NPC computer AI or whatnot.

The world could either be randomly generated, or you can take a premade map of Feldspar to play on. Localized and randomized miniquests would be scattered all over the world that you can complete to power up or help you find other players or help complete the goal of recruiting Render. The people of the world could also give you info on what the other players are up to.

Render himself would be controlled by AI and would be doing miniquests and powering up too. Also he starts off a whole lot stronger than any of the characters, so beating him will take more than just finding him.

The game would take place during springtime, which means that animals and monsters are just waking up from hibernation. Thus, it doesn't matter where in the world you are, the monsters strength depends more on how long the game has been going on.

If you "die" you basically get teleported back to the Divgodane base and thus lose time trying to get back into the main part of the world and search out some miniquests. Also, if you get caught attacking another Divgodane you have a short "in prison" spell you have to stay.

Just because you aren't allowed to fight other divgodanes doesn't mean you can't try to slow them down. You just have to be sneaky about it by hiring mercenaries, setting traps, or even completing a miniquest they are working on first so they can't.

It's gameover when somebody wins or all the player Divgodanes leave the game or get confined. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, in addition to Hp you have LP (life points). Every time you die or use a "super technique" you lose LP. Run out and the Divgodane organization will confine you to the base so that you won't die and ruin the whole plan.

The game would use the powering up system I describe in my other post (you raise your element levels and come up with "custom" techniques).

What do you think? The hardest part will be coming up with a system for all the little mini-quests you can do, and of course programming the AI for the other players.
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*Only in darkness can one truely shine*