Casual social game feature draft

Casual social game feature draft

Introduction

This is a rough draft of a feature designed for casual social game like Second Life. This feature is intended for players already familiarized with the game mechanics and it is designed to create an incentive for the players to spend money on the game, socialize with others and invite their friends to the game.

Note that the vampire theme chosen in this particular documents is in no way necessary for the whole concept to work. The narrative part of this feature might as well be a generic VIP setting or something similar. Given that, the vampire theme used here was not chosen by accident – the vampire mythos became quite popular in past few years (the Twilight franchise for example) and it is a great setting for creating semi-closed communities that compete with each other (think Mafia Wars). Also, use of a supernatural vampire motive in a casual social game might generate quite some publicity, if enough PR effort is made.

Become a vampire!

Players can choose to change their avatars, which are human by default, into vampires and become a part of a vampire community, getting access to new, exclusive for vampire players content and becoming a part of or creating their own bloodlines.

Both vampire and human players have to manage a blood resource, which is expended on several occasions and can be transferred between vampires and from human to vampires. Assuming that vampires have at their disposal 100 blood points, humans would have 20 blood points. Of course using this resource brings no harm to vampires or humans. Human players regenerate blood by themselves at a very slow rate.

How to become a vampire?

There are two ways of becoming a vampire. First way is to find a player who has already become a vampire and then convince him to share his blood. This way the changed player becomes a member of his “parent’s” family.

Second way is a bit more complicated – the player wishing to become a vampire first has to purchase using the in-game currency a Tome of Vampirism (or something like that) and then find five human players, which already spent at least few hours on the game, willing to became donors. All they have to do is spend few hours in the game getting some experience in-game, become friends with the vampire wannabe and then confirm their willingness to help him. A player can become a donor only once in a while as his blood resource, which is spent on this occasion (20 points – all of it), regenerates quite slowly.

Note that vampire player has to spend 100 blood points to change someone and as a newborn vampire has no blood resource at his disposal - it has to be acquired from other vampires or humans - “I change you, you change me” scenarios are rather hard to achieve.

Why become a vampire?

There are several reasons for a player to want to become a vampire:

-          access to exclusive content like face expressions and animations (showing off fangs, biting necks, changing into a bat, etc.)

-          access to exclusive areas like vampire-only clubs and meeting places (cemetery, old mansion, etc.) – human players can receive an one time invite to such a place from their vampire friends

-          opportunity to be a part of an elite community

-          opportunity to create your own bloodline by recruiting human players then changing them into vampires and therefore members of your family

-          opportunity to compete with others in a popularity contest (whose family is bigger and cooler?)

-          being a part of a family gives the player access to additional ways of earning in-game cash

Vampire families

Some players will want to become vampires just so they can enjoy all of the game’s content, role play the undead or become a part of a more close-knit community. But some of them will want to become leaders of their communities and compete with other similar minded players. They can do this by creating their own bloodlines and, just like in Mafia Wars, recruit their friends and strangers alike to their side and compete in popularity with other families.

Large enough bloodlines can acquire through their combined wealth and influence their own special areas (havens) which could serve as a visible proof of their status and prestige. Vampire leaders will be able to choose a distinct name for their bloodline and perhaps even a symbol.

Rivalry between families is driven by a struggle for influence and resources. Havens that become property of a particular family can generate in-game cash for all of its members. The more members a family have, the more havens it can have and produce more revenue for its members.  

Invite your friends and make new friends!

Introducing new players to the game is a crucial part of the whole vampire gameplay. Players wishing to change themselves into vampires will encourage their friends to start playing so they can became donors. Vampire players will encourage their friends to start playing so they can strengthen their bloodlines and grow their provider herds.

Organizing player communities into semi-closed groups that make their members feel special and chosen makes bonds between players that more stronger. Common property like family name or family haven encourages players to keep on playing and makes them feel like they matter and belong.

Monetization

Vampire players have to manage carefully their blood resource and spend it wisely on introducing new members to their family and perhaps bartering with other vampire players. There are two sources of blood for vampires.

First one is the obvious one – humans. Vampire players wishing to extend their bloodlines will tend to gather a herd of human providers which will give their blood to the vampire for an invitation to a vampire-only area, promise of being changed into a vampire themselves or for a completely different reason (in-game cash?). Humans regenerate their blood very slowly by playing the game, but this regeneration can be boosted with certain foods and drinks on which players may want to spend money. Second way for a vampire to get some blood is to visit a blood bank and purchase there a blood pack.

By making blood regeneration a more cost effective way of acquiring blood than buying blood packs, the game mechanics creates an additional incentive to socialize with others – vampire players would rather buy food for their human donors than spend their money on blood packs.

Also, buying the Tome of Vampirism for the in-game currency would be quite expensive. which is a great reason to spend money.

Closing comments

This very basic description of an idea for a feature in a casual social game is in no way a complete design, as creating such a document would require much more insight in already planned or implemented features and main game mechanics of the particular game. Also, there is a problem with the blood mechanics that remains to be solved – it would seem that the game would require a constant influx of new players to maintain its human payers to vampire players ratio and if not, the whole system would collapse similarly to a financial pyramid scheme. 

Like two rain drops

Like two rain drops

An adventure for the Dark Heresy RPG system

Introduction

“Like two rain drops” is an adventure from Warhammer 40k universum in the Dark Heresy pen-and-paper RPG system (a dark low-fantasy/sci-fi game). It’s an adventure designed for an inexperienced group of Acolytes (servants of an Inquisitor). The adventure is designed for a rather short session with a “detective story” theme.

Background

The adventure takes place on a dark and industrialized world of Necromunda (in high gothic it means literally “dead world”) where countless billions live in gigantic cities covering almost whole of planet’s surface. Cities of Necromunda are these stretching over the horizon clusters of hives – black towers so high, that they pierce lover altitudes of stratosphere and reach planet’s core with their foundations. Sky is covered with dense and toxic smog and only the most privileged have the right to live above the clouds, where air is relatively clean. Rest of the population endures living on lover levels, suffering from acid rains and lack of sunlight.

On the bottom of the social ladder (on the surface of the planet or under it) live only outcasts, mutants and heretics who fled there, where no imperial laws could reach them. Economy and industry of the planet is based on recycling seas of wastes that accumulated here after ten thousands years of aggressive exploitation of planet’s natural resources. Just like the whole economy is based on recycling wastes of past generations, the same way lover castes live off garbage that gets thrown into the abyss below by the more privileged living closer to the clouds.

Most of the population is uneducated and unaware human mass, cheap labor force not knowing anything besides its own hive, working whole of their short lives in one of the many manufactories of Necromunda. Those masses inhabit middle tiers of hives.

The adventure takes place a little bit higher, just under the clouds. On these highly privileged levels can be found imperial departments and religious centers.

Inquisitor

Players are being summoned before their master, Lord Inquisitor Helvetius (inquisition is a secret political and religious police of the Imperium). His office and operation centre functions under the cover of an imperial department – Office of Internal Audits. The Inquisitor sits at the head of the office and players are employed there as Auditors. Here is a description you might want to read to your players, game master:

“After walking through the lobby and the main hall you enter the Main Calculation Chamber. It’s a spacious hall filled with several dozens of work stations centered around senior scribe desk, which rests upon an elevated platform. Disorder and racket rules here as sometimes even two or three scribes occupy one workstation – scribes and protocol servitors bustle with their work, performing hasty calculations on their personal digitalizers and processing heaps of paperwork. Single document sheets glide through the air and the floor is strewn with tape - scribbled with numbers and symbols and still pouring out of calculation automatons. A young scribe with ritually shaved head bumps into one of you - not noticing anyone before him because of a stack of files he carried, he falls down buried under an avalanche of yellowed and jagged paper sheets. Senior scribe peeped from behind towers of files occupying his enormous desk and sent a litany of juicy insults towards the boy – veins on the senior scribe’s forehead has swollen so much that for a moment it seemed that his bionic eye will pop out of its socket and soar through the chamber, killing instantly with force of impact the poor guy lying on the floor.”

Lord Helvetius is a venerable and well respected member of the Ordo Hereticus (part of Inquisition that deals with heretics). He is a wrinkled beyond belief old man, anchored permanently to his hover-chair. Surely blind and deaf by himself, he sees and hears everything thanks to servo-skulls orbiting his vehicle and observing all with their dead eyes. Inquisitor has a task for the players: few days ago a witness came up, he swears that he saw an individual who has been on a wanted list of the Inquisition for years now. Players’ job is to get to that witness, interrogate him and finally verify his statements. Name and address of the vigilant citizen is handed to the players, so finding him won’t be a problem.

Trace

Witness, a men know as Kasirer Agaton, is a retired officer of the Adeptus Arbites (imperial police). Two years ago, he and few other Arbiters were involved in an inquisitorial ambush of an extremely dangerous heretic and terrorist. Unfortunately, hastily prepared plan misfired and many officers and civilians lost their lives – the heretic managed to flee and hide before the righteous wrath of the Emperor could strike him down. Few months later, Agaton retired from the service, perhaps unable to cope with loss of so many fellow colleagues.

Nowadays, he lives in one of the residential districts of Sub Sole hive and manages to maintain his rather high social position through security consulting contracts. Left side of his body bears horrible signs of past events – stumps stick out where his left arm and leg should have be and his face is disfigured and scarred. Since they took his bionic implants after he left the service, he moves around thanks to crude prosthesis.

Not more than two weeks ago he saw in a place commonly called the Fish Market this terrorist and heretic who fled two years ago from inquisitorial hands. Name of the heretic is Udo Nash and it seems that he actually lives there. Agaton, first not sure of his findings, observed the place and this is what he determined. Now, when there is no place for doubt he decided to come out with this news to the Inquisition, providing addresses, schedules and photos of the wanted terrorist.

Game master, it is important for players to have an opportunity of checking out details concerning those past events and profile of the wanted heretic. They can find out from their research that wanted Udo Nash is a trained intelligence operative, former employee of the Office of Internal Audits at the position of a Senior Auditor.

From his files, players will be able to find out that Nash suffered some kind of a nervous breakdown during his service – let them see an evaluation report conducted after a psychological examination that explicitly states that Udo Nash is an unstable individual with a number of mental disorders, including severe agoraphobia and fear of heights interweaved with an obsession of leaving Necromunda – a place where only living several kilometers above planet’s surface is a viable choice. After the evaluation he should have been discharged from the service or put behind a desk, but because of some kind of mistake (perhaps a scribe carrying his files tripped and misplaced the report?) no one took notice.

Few weeks later, Udo Nash took hostages in a desperate attempt to flee from the planet. Many people have died that day, including women and children.

Naturally, in this situation all that is left to do for the players is to prepare an operation of capturing Udo Nash – an extremely dangerous and cunning heretic, murderer and terrorist.

Showdown at the Fish Market

The Fish Market is simply a place where the Fish Guild decided to sell their products. This is the description you may want to read to your players:

“Between the Sub Sole hive and the Spire Minor tower long time ago was built an overpass. Wide for several kilometers and stretching between two heavily populated areas, it quickly became a new local hub of commerce and a fighting ground for several guilds. Few hundred years ago after a bloody riots instilled by the Fish Guild to rid of any and all competition, this place was completely dominated by fishmongers. Today, its a couple of dozens of little alleys and squares on which hundreds of different manufacturers sell their fish products. Sea of customers flow through the booths and stands day and night, passing countless glass tanks in which fish are stuffed to the last centimeter – hatching, growing and getting fatter without even a remote possibility of moving. All of this thanks to the wonders of ancient biotechnology! The stench is unbearable as blood and insides of gutted fish flows through the gutters into overpass borders and then pours down to the abyss below. Every single merchant loudly praises his fish, while customers carefully pick from wealth of offers, unaware of the fact that all those tanks contain the same and only fish that ever seen surface of this planet – a clone of some kind of pra-panga, which genetic code came here along with first colonists, thousands of years ago.”

Udo Nash lives on last floor of a four storey building, just at the edge of one of the largest market squares. He occupies an one bedroom flat under a false name and he has been there for couple of weeks now. He is prepared for anything and is not about to surrender.

His flat is booby trapped and it only depends on players’ wits if they manage to avoid setting off the bomb and destroying all evidence and clues that could otherwise be found at the place. Game master, make sure that no matter how the session goes, you will make Udo Nash through his actions deny in some way what players could have found out about him from his files. For example, make him try to run away by crossing a one meter wide pipe connecting two buildings, effectively doing a feat only a bit short from actual slacklining.  In the end, Nash will rather give up his life than let players take him into custody – he will swallow poison if they manage to get a hold of him.

Let players think that they succeeded and their task has been fulfilled – heretic was killed and the world is a better place. Let them think that the session could as well end right now – it depends only on them if they start to suspect something.

If they manage to not set off the booby trap in Nash’s flat, then they will find there a glass tank and other cloning equipment used by the fish manufacturers. Tank is large enough to contain a single human.

Hidden truth

Two years ago, an experienced Acolyte of the Inquisition – Udo Nash – started to doubt purpose of his work. For years fed with stories and reports of enemies of mankind – demonic beings and untold alien horrors lurking in the depths of space, fighting against whom he was supposed to sacrifice his life – he finally started to doubt they even exist. After long years of service he never saw even the weakest proof of existence of all those threats against which the Emperor and his Inquisition was supposed to defend mankind.

His job mainly consisted of fighting against “heretics” – political revolutionaries, dissidents and sometimes even people who simply asked too many questions. His fight with the enemies of the mankind started to seem more like fighting against enemies of an oppressive system which functions only thanks to countless sacrifices of its people.

His comrades knew he is going to betray before he even realized that. He was sent for an “evaluation” – an intense, pharmacologically and psionically enhanced indoctrination session, after which he could have been reinstated into some desk work and still serve his Emperor. They almost broke him, bringing the man on the edge of madness. No more he was the same person, but he did not forget who he was.

After they released him, he could think only about one thing – escaping from this planet, it became his obsession. He knew that his sister and her family need to go with him, otherwise they would be the ones to pay for his sins. Acquiring fake documents and tickets for a shuttle was the easy part – they would spend rest of their lives on some galactic transporter drifting through space, anonymous amongst tens of thousands of similar passengers, but at least they would be free.

His former colleagues once again turned out to be smarter. Things took a wrong turn when few unaware of the situation Adeptus Arbites got involved in what seemed as an execution of a man, woman and couple of children. The incident was later completely covered up as a terrorist attack, from which only one person walked away – one of the Adeptus Arbites officers, horribly disfigured and maimed, he was the only witness of the terrorist’s escape, responsible for this slaughter.

After the terrorist, a man called Udo Nash, an arrest warrant was issued and his genetic code was added to the database of most wanted – he may hide in the underhive, but surely he won’t be able to leave Necromunda.

Ending

Circle of suspects is not that big so players will surely take interest in Kasirer Agaton. Perhaps they will try to talk with his former colleagues from the force or consult his file at the archives. They will find out this way that after the events he changed a lot, started to suffer from amnesia and other mental disorders. Final proof will come in form of his genetic profile matching the one of Udo Nash.

Players will find Agaton getting ready for a shuttle to the orbit. After official declaration of death of Udo Nash, his genetic code was withdrawn from the most wanted database and finally, Kasirer Agaton can go through the star port gateway and leave the planet. Agaton won’t try to resist and will come out with the truth if confronted. Instead, he will try to convince players to his findings. If it fails he will try to commit suicide – preferably in some gruesome and desperate way. For example, by stabbing his own throat with a pen.

Game master, try to sow the seeds of doubt in players’ minds through Agaton speech. Let them wonder if it isn’t really like he says – that all this talk about enemies of humankind is only a cover up for a much simpler truth, that there are only those who rule and those who are ruled.

Design concept

The Hunter Hunted

Game Concept Document

Platform

PC

Presentation

Isometric 2d

Genre

PvP oriented multiplayer RPG

High Concept

In a modern city vampires and mortal hunters hunt each other -  as mortals are no match for the undead in open combat and vampires become helpless during the day - the struggle is a contest of whoever can find out first the identity of the other.

Main Features:

-        Open world with emergent gameplay.

-        PvP mechanics that encourage players to hide their identity from each other and try to pass as mere NPCs.

-        Game is about planning, tracking, investigating and not about waging open combat.

-        Mechanics of conducting investigations is based on the idea of a „trace” – a web of connections between victim, crime scene, witness and the perpetrator.

-        Character creation and progression spiced up with permanent death hardcorness.

-        Dream World mechanics that encourages vampire players to stay in game while their avatars sleep during the day.

Vampires

Vampires are powerful undead beings who have only one, but otherwise deadly weakness – the sun. They feast on the blood of mortals to sustain themselves and on the blood of their kindred to become more powerful. By devouring the essence of other vampires of greater or equal strength, they become stronger themselves. Players choosing the vampire role will experience more of open combat against other vampires, while still being challenged with the fact that they are stalked by hunters or weaker vampires that wish to ambush them... or perhaps they too will try to hunt a more powerful brethren of theirs?

Hunters

Vampire hunters are mere mortals with no special powers. They stalk and hunt the undead, discover their havens and while the vampires slumber – they destroy them. By choosing the role of a hunter, player takes upon a daunting task of tracking down and destroying a powerful undead and all this without revealing his own identity. Playing as the hunter is all about skillfully “playing” other players and not about “number crunching” of your character. By killing vampires, hunter earns trophies which he can showcase to other players and resources that he can use to his advantage.

Invisible war

Outcome of an open combat almost always belongs to the player on whose conditions it comes to it. During the night vampires have an immense advantage over mortals, while during the day the tables are turned – hunters become hunted. All this encourages players to hide their identity “as players” and stalk others until they find out their base of operation.

Investigation

One of the ways of finding out the identity of a vampire and location of his haven is investigation. Vampires, through their sinister activity leave a trace of victims, forensic evidence and witness testimonies - all interweaved to create a “trace”. Through this chain of relations hunter can track his prey without really getting close to it until the final blow.

Dream World

To encourage players to stay in game while their avatars slumber during the day or become vulnerable to an attack during the night – and therefore give players of opposing faction an opportunity to strike – players can enter Dream World. In this grotesque and dark version of the main game world sun never comes up and no death is permanent – its a perfect place for a player to test out the game without the threat of losing his character to permadeath and a great opportunity to improve his character skills through practice.

Summary

The Hunter Hunted is a game inspired by success of games like Project Zomboid and DayZ modification for ARMA 2, where emergent gameplay, sandboxed game world and players freedom are pillars on which stands one of the most invigorating and fresh experience a mature and demanding player can get from a multiplayer game today.