Café de Nuit

Hey! My name is Karstein (not to be confused with the Von Carstein Warhammer vampire family).

I'm 22 years old and a game design student on the last year of my bachelor's degree. I have played D&D for about a year now (Pathfinder) and other RPGs such as Rogue Trader, Dark Heresy and My Life With Master.

I have an assignment to make a fictional D&D video game with the Ravenloft setting. I will define it in great detail, including 5-10 hours of gameplay, a story arch and combat, environment interaction and story mechanics . For me to (fictionally) make a video game in the Ravenloft setting, it's important to me to know what you enjoy the most about D&D and Ravenloft to make it a game you would enjoy, so I need your help!

If you want to help out with answering these questions, I would be very grateful. The insight will be of great value to me.

If it would be of interest I could use the thread as a development log of the game as well (it will only be text and images), if that is appropriate for this forum.

Best regards,
Karstein

Submitted my responses though I don't know how helpful they will be..... *shrugs*

I did it, and I hope it helps, though I suspect my inner grognard will be contradictory to what was wanted.

Thank you very much Zilfer and Deewun! Your feedback is super helpful!

Dude, that has to be the coolest assignment ever!

Baron Zamedi wrote:Dude, that has to be the coolest assignment ever!

Yeah, it's super cool We actually have a 'game curriculum' with D&D among others. I spend a lot of time on these assignments and i'm glad they're so enjoyable.

Done! Good luck!

Done!

Best of luck!

Thank you all, your feedback and experiences are really helpful

The game concept is taking shape! I have fleshed out a lot of the story and the way the game will work, as well as quests, characters and places. The focus of the game will be on storytelling, dialog and choices as this is what makes Ravenloft such a great setting. I aim to give the player the power to shape their own story with interesting characters and stories, as opposed to fighting orcs and getting the phat loot (I understand this thanks to you guys). I aim to do this by using a hub structure of quests that can be completed in any order before unlocking the final hub. The experience i'm aiming for in every quest is that you can't save everyone.

The choices will be hard to make as there will be pros and cons (pros: gain powerful allies, item rewards that help in some way, for example a family heirloom amulet that makes you trustworthy + the feeling that it was the "right" choice. Cons: Strahd is displeased, doesn't give you dark powers, takes away something, maybe if you made a good choice earlier, takes item?) . I have taken some inspiration from My Life With Master when it comes to this mechanic (player is in service of an evil master, following orders or not = their humanity vs becoming a monster/villain).

The characters are currently: (although not 100% decided) Strahd, Tatyana and Sergei (ghosts), Van Richten (at the time he was writing his guide to vampires, so still alive! ) and Revan ( at the time he is struggling to break free from being a werewolf, so he doesn't have the title Wolfbane yet). I wanted to use some familiar characters and give the player a chance to impact how their stories unfold as well as their own.

I'm currently working on a combat system, dialog system and environment interaction system (such as climb, pick lock). I'm pondering which of them that shall be skill-based (assignment requires me to make at least one of them skill-based, but I feel something like real-time, skill-based combat doesn't fit the setting very well, but on the other hand, how does skill-based dialog work? I can only think of L.A Noire as something comparable).

Sounds good to me. Tell you the truth I'm just excited to see what comes of it, even if it's a short five minute game or so.

Is it going to be a hub type and then multiple adventures and some of those unlock others? Or all quests are available from the start just the last one unlocks like it sounds from your prior post? Would be nice for this quest unlocks this quest or doing this means this quest is no longer available. *shurgs* Just an Idea Your assignment.

Zilfer wrote:Sounds good to me. Tell you the truth I'm just excited to see what comes of it, even if it's a short five minute game or so.

Is it going to be a hub type and then multiple adventures and some of those unlock others? Or all quests are available from the start just the last one unlocks like it sounds from your prior post? Would be nice for this quest unlocks this quest or doing this means this quest is no longer available. *shurgs* Just an Idea Your assignment.

Unfortunately i'm just making the game design document, which means that I will flesh out how the game will work, but it won't be made into an actual game, sadly. I will however post the assignment after it has been graded, if you're interested! (if I post before that, I will probably run into problems with the plagiarism control).

As of now, you are correct in understanding that it's only the last one that unlocks Yeah, doing quests that way is also an option! It makes for maybe more linear experience, but you can control the order in which the player experiences things.

Today I played a "weekend in hell" Ravenloft session with my lawful evil Monk, such a great setting.

Oh i see. That's cool, I get the idea of the assignment now. xD

Look forward to it!

Hey guys! Today I got my assignment back and I got the highest grade

I really want to thank you for your help in this project and your invaluable feedback!

Here is the download for my paper for those interested: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uta3uf9t37oaw ... Design.pdf

The one major flaw I did in this assignment was to change the fully functioning combat and XP system of D&D, when there was no reason to do so. Never innovate just to innovate, especially with such an established IP as D&D. Feel free to ask questions about anything in the assignment.

Thank you all!

Best regards,
Karstein

Congrats on your work, glad we could help!