Frayed Knights: Taking Inventory
Building an indie Computer Role-Playing Game can make you crazy.

Maybe it's the milestones I've set for myself. Which are starting to slip. I've got two more days in August, and I've gotta finish the inventory system and the conversation system (which I haven't started beyond June's prototype). The pressure is on, even though these are self-mandated milestones. So I have Frayed Knights on the brain. This week has been particularly brutal. I work on the game at night. I put a few minutes into it before I go into work in the morning. This is turning me into a terrible conversationalist. I'm beginning to sound like the Rain Man.

I vaguely remember Void War getting this way during the latter stages of development. But it's been a while since I've gotten into this mode.

Inventory
I think I underestimated the difficulty of implementing the inventory system. It was something I figured I could whip out in a two or three caffeinated nights. It's turning into a somewhat higher-hit-dice beast to slay.

There are two parts to it (as usual) - the internal mechanics, and the user interface. I've now re-written both twice. I'm not sure I'm ultra-happy with how things stand, but it's workable now.

I borrowed a little bit from old-school jRPG-style inventory systems in that you've got a party inventory (which is virtually infinite - maybe its some kind of magical bag of holding) and an individual character's equipment.

I know. The Tardis-style party inventory means the player won't have to leave the dungeon six times to go back to town and sell junk. Which will cut those total gameplay hours way down and make this game compare unfavorably with mainstream games that have all that make-work in them. I'll just have to deal. Let's just consider the party inventory thing to be an abstraction, shall we, representing LOTS of trips to and from the dungeon happening "behind the scenes." So we can get that "realism" protest out of the way.

The party inventory also means that - for now at least - I'm not going to worry about a special interface to transfer items between characters. You "unequip" an item and it goes in the party inventory. Then someone else can equip your hand-me-downs or something.

Oh, yeah, and I borrowed some of the graphics I used for Hackenslash for the inventory. Gotta love stand-in graphics! Man, those are terrible, aren't they?

Plundering Clichés!
While the main storyline and a chunk of the world back-story has already been designed, I've still got a lot to fill out. And I noticed that my brain has been in programming mode getting the systems all working lately, rather than the lovely "design mode" I was in many weeks ago. So it was time to jump-start my brain to focus a bit more on the "non-crunchy" stuff about the world and subplots.

I put out a call for some common "old-school" RPG traditions, common situations, and clichés on the local community and over at Necromancer Games. Shamus Young of Twenty Sided also added his voice to the call, and has so far received over 60 responses. And then there are links to sites which keep track of this kind of thing. I was familiar with the largest one (and I've been pushing to have Dirk bemoan the killing of a "Load Bearing Boss" at some point), but they are all handy.

Why am I asking for these old-school traditions and goofy stuff? I'm glad you asked! (Oh, wait, you didn't, I did. Well, I'll tell you anyway)? I have found I use them several different ways:

#1 - I turn them on their ear. I won't give any examples here as they might be spoilers. But ... I start with a cliché, and then add some major ---hopefully unforseen - twists to bring out the funny and keep it interesting.

#2 - I turn them into jokes. This can range from one-shot snarking in a static dialog, to a whole subplot or monster (like the pus golem).

#3 - I embrace the cliché! I take some of the weird, classic idiosyncrasies of old-school games and build them into the back-story or world history - sometimes mixing them with a little bit of anachronistic modern mentality. For example, the explanation as to why all these dungeons, caves, and underground fortresses are found everywhere (often filled with monsters and long-lost treasure) is a huge part of the background of the world.

The World of Frayed Knights: Pokmor-Xang
Pokmor-Xang is the god of boils, blisters, and pimples. And also, apparently, the god of donuts. Undoubtedly, this last sphere of influence was attributed to him more as a marketing effort on the part of his followers when proseletyzing. After all, potential followers might be put off by worship services where festering sores might be involved. As in modern-world departmental meeting, one finds oneself able to stomach all kinds of horror so long as someone says, "Hey, we brought donuts!"

Likewise, while ancient depictions of Pokmor-Xang tend to emphasize his bestial, plague-ridden forms, more enlightened priests of the "Zit God" (as only heathen nonbelievers sometimes refer to him) chose more human depictions like the idol to the right that are collectively referred to as "Happy Xangs."

In spite of their best attempts at public relations, and the occasional dabbling by teenagers wishing beauty-marring pustules on the faces of their rivals, the cults of Pokmor-Xang have never enjoyed much popularity amongst human civilization. Perhaps it is because love and appreciation of boils, blisters, and pimples comes alien to most human minds, but most of the clergy positions become filled by man-eating monsters with complexion problems.

Until Next Week...
Well, that's about it for this week. Tune in next week when I'll hopefully have the conversation system done. How hard can it be?


(Vaguely) related random bits and bytes:
* Frayed Knights: Getting Around in the World
* RPG Design: Feed Me, Seymour!
* What Makes a Good Casual RPG?
* Frayed Knights: Solving the Saved-Game Problem

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Labels: Frayed Knights, Roleplaying Games

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