“The Minstrel’s Fable” Is an Ultima-Like MMORPG; Online Demo Available Now
The Minstrel’s Fable bills itself as an “Ultima-like sandbox and massively multiplayer online role-playing game”. The game is browser-based, and an early build of it can be played online right now (more on that in a moment). The Minstrel’s Fable, true to its old-school aesthetic, is meant to be played primarily with the keyboard, although it does support mouse interaction as well (I haven’t tested it on a touchscreen, however).
One notable feature of the game, apparently, is the scale of its world:
12 Billion Locations!
The world map is a whopping 10000 x 10000 tiles. Each tile can be explored which opens another 11 x 11 tiled location – it’s like zooming in and getting a closer look! Dungeons, towns and keeps, special locations, and combat utilize this “zoomed-in” view. Yes, much like the Ultima games from the 80s! Only in TMF, EVERY single tile can be zoomed-in and explored, all 100000000 world map tiles! Again, a zoomed-in location is represented by an 11 x 11 tiled area. That’s 10000 x 10000 x 11 x 11 = 12.1 billion actual locations! And, that doesn’t include the underworld locations!
12 Billion Locations!As noted above, an early build of the game is playable online for now. However, that will change in the future, as the team behind it prepares to bring The Minstrel’s Fable to Kickstarter.
We are still putting it together, so don’t go looking on KICKSTARTER for us. Our marketing strategy is simple. First, release “pre-alpha” so everyone can see that this is a REAL work-in-progress. We want full transparency with our backers! As we develop new things, our backers will be able to get a firsthand look and give-it-a-go!
Currently, we are opening up the game to everyone. We are calling this our “public pre-alpha” launch. Everyone is invited to create an account and try it out. But, during and after our KICKSTARTER, ONLY our backers will be able to participate in “pre-alpha”, so if you’re interested in being a part of development, testing, and QA you’ll need to back us!
If you’re curious to explore the game in more detail, you can check out their online lorebook for a start, browse their screenshot archive (or download wallpaper), or register an account and give the game a try.
Their zooming structure is a fascinating concept!
Thesaurus version of The Bard’s Tale?
Is there a problem creating accounts? I created one and received a fail mail message and didn’t receive the verification e-mail and now i’m stuck in limbo
Hi all! This is Dan from Minstrel. Sorry Robert that you were having issues with logging in. I’m currently looking at that issue. I’ll let you know when you can try again. And Yes, Infinitron! You guessed it and nice that you picked that up – the title is a play on words with “The Bard’s Tale”. Initially, Minstrel was going to look-and-feel like the original Bard’s Tale, but decided to go with Ultima! 🙂
Ok, I see the issue…our emailing component is failing (for some strange reason!!). Once I fix that, you’ll be able to register. You’ll get an email, you’ll need to click on the link in the email to validate your account. Be sure to check your junk folder, just in case it got put there.
K, you should be able to create an account now. We welcome anyone who would like to help “play test”. Use our test script (appropriately titled “Walk, Chat, and Look”) and run through the existing features/functionality — you’ll learn a lot about the mechanics behind these features, along with way. Things you wouldn’t know without going through the document. To get the document, go here: http://www.minstrelsfable.com/pastbuilds.aspx
I hope today’s Twitter Cancel Culture doesn’t shut them down for using the word “minstrel”.
I won’t tell if you don’t.
I really like the zoom function. Reminds me of Fallout, where you could technically stop anywhere and explore, but it was usually a generic location. Like Ultima too I suppose, though you only ‘explored’ when you entered combat, and it was generic as well.
Hiya Cambrago! Thx for trying out our pre-beta release! And, thanks for the feedback!! We are trying to follow the original Ultimas (in how areas could be zoomed in to, like shrines and combat; however, towns broke the “scaling” a little, since they warped you into a 32×32 tiled area, and we ARE NOT doing that, we want to keep the scaling “true” and somewhat accurate). So our feelings was why can’t that happen on ANY tile. So then the question becomes, why ever travel in zoomed-in mode?! It’s takes longer to move from point A to B! When we have the questing engine done, it will make more sense why zooming is needed on generic, arbitrary, locations. For example, the quest might be “Collect 20 Nightshade and bring them to me!”. You’ll be given the location where the quest area is (like in WOW or other MMOs). When you get to that quest area, you’d zoom in to search the area. You may want to place a house in some arbitrary location, or maybe you want to bury an important item for safe keeping, etc. So we have good ideas, and reasons for having this feature. Any ideas that you might have are surely welcomed!!!
I haven’t been able to get in game yet to give things a try, as I don’t have Chrome. I’ll keep trying though, assuming other browsers will be supported soon.
I have recently been doing some brainstorming and work on this exact concept in my own (non-competitive) project. I came to the assumption that zooming (in Ultima IV) would be to a 32×32 tiled area. The Icons of the towns, villages and castles represent a ‘unit’ on the world map, and we zoom in to them when we enter them. The 11×11 map can be zoomed into from the world map or a town, and I think represents a deeper/further level of zoom. Zooming to a 11×11 with accompanying appearance of companions would not allow for the type of game play (exploring, conversation etc.) that we would want out of the zoom function. So for me 32×32 seems better. However, for your game, without companions, all this is moot, and an 11×11 zoom might make sense. Depending on how you handle towns and other locations. If you are zooming to 11×11 then will they have mult-space icons on the World map? Otherwise the scaling will be broken. But multi-scale icons on the game world certainly breaks with the expectations of an icon based World map. At least on that is broken up into discrete ’tiles’.
I can fully understand why zooming is needed on generic, arbitrary locations. It just adds so many quest/exploration/interaction options! Very exciting.
Is Chrome a hard requirement, or will other Chromium-derived browsers work as well? If so, you can avoid the Googley-Eyed Monster and hook yourself up with Brave or Vivaldi.
It’s not hard to cross-platform a browser based game, Dragon. Just haven’t gotten around to testing. I might switch gears and get a few of the other browsers tested. I won’t test IE or Edge because, as you might already know, they are going away (for good). So I won’t support deprecated browsers. As for Brave and Vivaldi, of course we’ll get those on the “Supported” list. 🙂 I’ll see what I can do.
Hey Cam! I see you’ve put thought into this whole zooming-in idea, as well! Trust me, we’ve battled over it. Me and my son went back and forth on the whole 32×32 zoomed concept…it’s a debate that I eventually won. 🙂 He wanted to go 32×32, and stay true to Ultima. He didn’t like the idea of having a town or castle spanning multiple world-map tiles (as you guessed it, calling it “multi-spaced icons”)…which was my idea. This is how we solve the scaling problem. One world map tile is 55ft x 55ft (55×55=3025 sq ft), whereby every zoomed in tile is 5ft x 5ft (5x5x11x11=3025 sq ft). What could fit onto a 55ft sq ft area (in real life)?? A house! Nothing too big, but a house could definitely fit into that area. It’s scaled correctly. 🙂 The 11×11 world map is a couple of square acres if you do the math (roughly). A building might span multiple world map tiles, or it could be fully contained in a single tile. A city could conceivably take up an entire 11×11 word map area – not sure how that would look. But it’s interesting to think about! 🙂 I do like your idea, as well. 32×32 stays true to Ultima, and that’s what I like about it. Good luck on your project, man! I like anything old school, so whatever you come up with, I know will be right up-my-alley. 🙂
Multi-space icons can definitely be cool too. In particular they can help to represent growth and change in the world, which is always important if you want to draw players into caring about a ‘world’ more, and not just completing the final quest (difference between single player and multi).
I would imagine you need some kind of algorithm to make sure walled ‘city’ icons match together nicely, then surround them with more rural, farm like icons to give a. nice medieval feel to the cities representation/growth etc. A lot of work for multi-space icons though…Then questions like, can you walk over the city in the world view, or would you automatically be zoomed in at the border, etc. According to your scale plan, you could conceivably have world space icons that are actually tiny versions of the zoomed in map buildings. Tricky, but fun stuff I think.
A related question: How are the zoomed in regions generated? Aside from obvious hand made stuff such as towns etc.
Yep, it’s going to be a little tricky making sure seams line up. We’ll build a “town creation” tool that will allow us to build a town without worrying about borders (we can go as big or small as we want). When we place the town on the map (through the tool), it will chop up the town into 11×11 areas. As to your question about the 11×11 regions…we have an algorithm that looks at the adjacent world tiles, then builds the 11×11 sequence of tiles randomly. The 11×11 regions are blended with adjacent world map tiles. So if there is a “forest” world map tile to the north, the southern edge of the current 11×11 region will be scattered with “forest” tiles, etc. We use the X and Y location as the seed (since XY uniquely defines a world map tile) , so this is how we can be assured that the randomly placed tiles are in the same sequence every time. So our DB contains records for 10000×10000 world map tiles, but the 11×11 regions are generated at runtime – this is how we get to a whopping 12.1 billion locations without jamming our DB with records. 😀 FYI. Stack is ASP.Net, AngjuarJS, Canvas, Web Services, SignalR, with a SQL Server backend.
I really wish they had a forum.
But since they don’t, this will have to do 🙂
> 12 Billion Locations!
Please don’t make the same mistake as “No Man’s Sky”.
Though in their case, it was probably intentional.
> zoom function
I love the zoom function.
IRRC http://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Nazghul had something similar.
There are many things you can do with this feature, such as hidden ruins that look like normal tiles in zoomed-out mode.
Only thing that bothers me: Zooming is sometimes automatic, and there’s no way to know beforehand.
> cities, dungeons, etc.
Are there in the game yet?
So far, the only “area of interest” I’ve found is a resurrection shrine.
Hey Hans…the forum will be up soon! So, yes, let’s use this for now. 🙂 Let us know about any pitfalls that you might see. We really want this effort to be a collaborative piece of work between us and you. It’s the reason we put this game out with still MUCH work to do. You can walk, chat, and look (and zoom!). 🙂 We are depending on our community to create this game!
As far as the rules for zooming, and the logic behind that…zooming is self-induced, or you are “auto-zoomed”. You’ve seen that. Think of it like this, every world map tile is represented by an 11×11 area, so that area might have structures or things in the way that might prevent you from moving through that “world map” tile. Things like “a river”, “a wall”, or “a stream of lava”, etc. So simply passing through this area via the “world map” is not allowed. You must navigate yourself around it or through it (and sometimes decide if you want to take damage, or risk drowning, etc.). Also, stepping onto other players will auto-zoom you (not sure if you tried that, you’ll need another player online to test that). The reason for that is, if you want to steal (or attack, etc.) from another player, you’ll need to continue walking up to them (in 11×11 mode). The same rules apply to NPC and monsters – stepping onto them will zoom you in.
That said, we can change things – nothing is in stone. This is our initial thought on how zooming should work.
And, yes, the only place of interest is the shrine!! We are working on the next release of features.
Thanks Hans!!
Again, I invite EVERYONE to read our first release document! You are all pioneers of TMF, and, will be long remembered at the ones that help build the game! Our hope is that some of you will become experts in knowing the in-and-outs of the game (and evening understanding what’s behind the hood, to some degree). You get there by reading through our release documents! We try not to leave any stone unturned. The document says it all. 🙂
Go here to get the document: http://www.minstrelsfable.com/pastbuilds.aspx
Hi again Dan,
I have tried all the tests in the document, except the hood feature. Everything worked fine. However, I have found an issue with exploring. Somehow my character has locked itself into an impassable valley. Moving in the zoomed-in mode, between maps, I somehow have been locked in, while in ghost mode. My character is Iolo, if you want to log in and check his predicament. Technically this should not happen, so some kind of bug. Unless I am not locked in and just read the situation wrong.
Do you need anymore info on this issue? I assume you know what happened. I am pretty sure I know why it happened.
Btw, I haven’t forgot about this . I will get around to trying to replicate this bug, and getting it fixed. Thx man!
Read through the document, and got into the game (with firefox via a user agent spoofer).
Swamps are as deadly as Ultima IV. Walked into one and perished shortly thereafter. Had fun exploring for awhile.
Feedback:
Graphics: I liked the overall graphics, especially the forests, hills and mountains. Character icons were good too. Interface icons are nice as well. I liked how region names appeared as you entered a region. Line of sight implementation was great.
However, I didn’t like any of the ‘modernized’ effects. They spoiled the 80s vibe. The zooming in and out should be simplified to the 80s limits. The fading in and out of titles and things was nifty, but didn’t fit with the retro feel. How about some ‘pixelated’ fade in/out as in the appearance of the ‘Ultima IV’ on that games title screen?
Interface pieces looked good, but the whole was less than the sum of its parts. I would suggest doubling up or sharing the space of a few sections, then having a toggle for them. Enlarge the size of the viewport for the world map (but keep the 11×11 view range). Get rid of the shortcuts at the bottom. Or give them a toggle. Throw one of the beautiful borders you have on the website around the whole thing to ‘define’ the game.
Exploring: I liked how the map auto zoomed to critical world areas, such as rivers, lakes etc. However, I wonder whether some of the ability to actually ‘explore’ is lost with the choice of an 11×11 zoomed size. When you zoom in you can see almost all of the map (minus some small parts from LOS). It seems easier to zoom in, look then zoom back out to the world map, take a step, then zoom back in. There is nothing to explore when you zoom in really. You can see it all.
If it was 32×32 every space would hold a mystery, loads of potentially hidden areas, people, buildings even. A whole adventure could be held in one 32×32 space.
The concept of 11×11 zooming into a smaller scaled but also 11×11 area seems neat, but I am not sure if it is the best route for gameplay. I could be totally wrong though.
Movement was a little sluggish, but that could be my use of an unsupported browser. I liked how the icon moved instantly to the next space, and did not ‘glide’ across. Maybe more feedback on the movement. That could explain to the player that it is not the connection speed, but rather their poor ‘hiking’ skill that is causing the delayed movement to the next space. Without that they might think it is just lag.
Okay, that’s it for now. Hopefully that helps, and/or you wanted such feedback.
Wow! Congrats, you are the FIRST to officially go through the 1.1.7.7 build document!! Thx for that, and the awesome feedback! I’m at work right now, and will reply later when I can devote some time to fully digest and reply!! Thx man! I’ll get back to you. Really good stuff!
Oh….forgot to comment on your comment about the increasing the size of the viewport. Yep, I will take that into serious consideration. We’ll remove the shortcuts as well. My son didn’t like that either! 🙂
As to Wft Dragon’s concern a couple of days ago, concerning browser support. I removed the “Google Check” on the client, so now it will allow any browser (for the time being). I tested the latest versions of Firefox, IE, Edge, Brave, and Viladi. All worked fine. I believe ANY Chromium-based browser will work, btw. Sorry MAC users…Safari fails to render. So I am fully aware about Safari, and will get that working in time. 🙂 Thx all!
Not sure if you are aware, but currently when logging in, the upper part of the play area (map,info, character sheet) is black. Only the lower section with the shortcut info is visible. This is on Firefox.
Oh! I’ll check that out. Strange that it worked when I tested Firefox – might be the version. I tested with the latest version of FF. That might be it.
Ok, now is probably a good time to try to respond to your feedback since I have a little down-time. 🙂 You should partner up with son, and gang-up on me! LOL! He wanted to stay true to the 80’s game. It was my idea to mix in some modern RPG/MMO feels. Your probably noticed that there are some “Ultima Online” things that we took. Like many of the skills, and how you can passively gain in certain skills. Questing will probably feel like World of Warcraft, but there are a lot of things that will still be 80’esk. Like talking to NPCs – you’ll type “job” and other key words to interact with NPCs. Combat will feel like the 80s game, too.
Your absolutely right about how the zooming-in feature seems pointless at times, especially in terms of exploring and movement. Yes, you can move faster in zoomed-out mode, and if you want to get a quick peek at the tile you’re standing on, you could zoom-in and zoom right back out. 99% of the time, you’ll be zoomed-out. The only time you’d zoom in is if you are on a quest and are told to go to a particular location. “Fetch me water from the well. You will find the well in the clearing north of the village granary.” So, you’d walk north looking for a clearing. Once you found it, you’d zoom in and walk up to the well to get the water. Chopping wood from a tree or mining for ore would also require you to zoom-in. So there’s definitely a purpose, just at this early stage, it seems a little pointless. 🙂
There would still be “mystery” and room for unseen areas in multi-area towns because of the line-of-sight logic. Buildings and structures would block LOS. You can’t see into a building without going into it. You might be able to peer into a window and get 45 degrees of visibility. If something is behind a building, you’d have to walk around it to see what’s there. The plan is to change the tiles so that they are also zoomed-in. So, a tree would actually be more true-to-scale. I want to build a “test” town, without doing a lot of work, just so we can get a feeling for it. The architecture of our game engine already allows for me to do this, with very little work. So, let me do that first, Cam. Then get you to give it a try (and more feedback!).
Yep, I totally agree about it feeling sluggish because of the logic we have in place to control movement pace. Never thought of that. But, you’re right, some people would not get that it’s by-design. But how do we educate the player, I guess, is the question. We could have “tips” that popup initially (players can elect to turn tips off). Perhaps, a tip pops “You are notice hiker! To increase your traveling speed, get your hiking skill up!”. Then maybe within the tip, there’s a link to “HIKING”. Players can click it to read more.
Loved the feedback, man! FYI. I’m working on another pretty big project (not a game, but a .COM idea), so I don’t have a lot of time to devote to TMF, atm. My son is away at college, so he’s no help!! I’ll be working on the “party” functionality, next. My son is focusing on “inventory”. We are also starting to think about the Kickstarter. Any experience with that? This will be my first attempt at crowd-funding. We are going to really ramp up coding when (and if) we get funded. Our entire goal was to get the game out there, show that it’s a work-in-progress…and generate some excitement (before we launch the Kickstarter)!!
A solution for the 11×11 versus 32×32 .
When zooming in, the player should zoom to the center of an 11×11 square. Simultaneouly, all neighboring wirld tiles are loaded (and visible if the player moves at all). So a 33×33 (3 x 11×11) is the new map. Movement then pricedes in the same fashion as the world map, but at the new scale.
You get all the benefits of both styles. Algorithim for ‘barriers’ would have to be tweaked to ensure the barrier always lines up in the middle of an 11×11 section.
You get the scale you want, with its logic. You have consistant movement styles between scales. You get exploration at the lower scale. You keep multi-tile icons at larger scales. You have smooth travel within large cities/towns/locations.
For feedback, every key press should be acknowledged by the game. Just like Ultima IV. So … west west west north north etc. When slowed, a message pops in, like now. Then, for players who wish, you can toggle off those keypress feedback messages. This is an option that is built into xu4 currently.
The way the skills are advancing now seems good to me. You feel rewarded for taking the rough roads with the periodic skill increases.
Paperdoll inventory. Could be made much smaller, iconic. The large paper doll image with arrows is too much. Unless it can be toggled away. Otherwise space is a premium.
Sorry, no experience with kickstarter. There are a few games talked about on here that have recently had successful kickstarter campaigns. Nox Archaist is one. Their creators could certainly have some tips.
I like the idea of chunking location size in factors of 11×11 (whereby a town that took up 3 tiles on the main map would consist of 3 11×11 zoomed-in areas). I think we are thinking along the same lines now. This idea protects the “scale”. I like it. I’d have to write the town creation tool so that it forced an “expected” size/dimension. I think that makes sense pragmatically, as well, since things will fit nicely and I won’t have to offset the placement of a town (due to random town sizes). Let me give it some thought. But I like it!
We actually had actions echo every time, but we changed it. So, if you went “north” 3 times, it would echo “north, north, north”, but then chat messages got lost really quickly. So, if you’re walking with a group and chatting, you can see how that would be an issue. 😊 I just commented out that code, it’s as simple as just uncommenting to bring it back. We’ll get a general consensus on that, to see what we all want. I’m going to set up our forum page (on the TMF site). Once we have more people contributing, what I’ll do is put “new ideas” up for a vote. I want to truly make this a “people’s game”.
The UI is not set in stone, so we’ll move things around. Perhaps we default to the mini-map view…which will also show your current quest info.
Creating an Advanced Character will let you pick a cloak, then you’ll be able to toggle your hood. Your additional skills will start at 30 points. If you pick “Swimming” as a skill (as an Advanced Character), you won’t drown anymore (in shallow water). I just gave you 99 Advanced Character credits!! Start with cooler threads and a cloak (and other perks). 😊
Thx for going through the document, man!! Great grateful for that!!
Glad you like the 3 x 11 x 11 idea. I think it will work especially well for cities, because you will be able to explore them in. a natural way, or at least in the same way as you explore the world. Having to cross multiple 11×11 maps to move through a town would quickly seem tedious.
For echoing key presses, maybe just have a toggle that fades all of them out after x number of moves, leaving a log of only important information. But you still get the feedback for key presses.
The UI will definitely be everyman’s opinion. I’ve never heard of a game ui that wasn’t a disaster for some, and perfect for others. Maybe some kind of limited modularity will solve that issue.
Thanks for the credits! I’ll certainly put them to good use. And my pleasure regarding the document and feedback. I know how hard it can be to solicit help of feedback on the internet.
Quick note regarding the black screen: Only happens when logging in with a dead character. New characters don’t have this issue.
Oh!!! I’ll try that…and get it fixed! Thx man!! )
BTW, really happy, and thankful, for Ken posting our game on this site…it’s working better than Google Ads ever did!! And, that was costing me $$$$. I’m getting 2 or 3 new sign-ups a day since Ken posted the article. People are actually creating characters and exploring. Most of them are probably like, “This sucks!! There’s nothing to do! All I can do is haphazardly walk into a bog, get poisoned, then die!!”….my answer to that is, “No!! There’s more you can do!! You can also go into a river and drown to death!!”…or if that’s not enough, “Find lava and go walking around on that!! Guess what? Yep, you’ll die!!”. LOL!
…if you die, there is a “res stone” to bring you back to life (but you’ll be naked! No way to get your stuff back, we are working on that next). The res stone is at the location 1635E 629N (it’s where you started when you logged on for the first time). Cheers!!!
You should add a directional back to the stone.
Or better, add a ‘pull’ which drags you back towards the stone contantly, with some ability for lateral movement. Grey the screen and increase the ‘fog of war’ to limit the benefits of being dead to exploration.
We were hoping to have the “waypoint” functionality completed before this first rollout, but I decided to leave it out (maybe the next release, we’ll have it in). It will feel like other MMOs. You’ll have a waypoint at the edge of your radar/minimap pointing the way back to your corpse. It will also point the way for quests areas. It’s on the “to-do”. 🙂
Yeah, I kind of figured that was just on the to-do list. Not sure about the whole ghost thing. I guess that is a standard in online games now? I don’t know why though.
A correction to my coords for the res shrine – it’s 1635W (not east). Hans brought that to my attention, and I fixed it. Shrine is at 1635W 629N.
Glad to have helped! It’s always a privilege to be able to bring some audience and support to projects like this, and I’m loving watching the comments here unfold.
I’m at 1480’E / 533’N
When I take one step to the east, I end up at 1479’E
(not 1481’E)
Is this a bug, or am I just too dumb to understand how coordinates work?
Not dumb at all! And, you actually discovered a bug! Your coords should read 1480’W (Not east! Bug!). Which I just fixed, and deployed. But, that probably doesn’t answer your question/concern. So, great question, btw. The world is 10,000 by 10,000 where the center of the world is 0′ 0′. So, there are 4 quadrants. The upper-left quadrant being N’W’, upper-right being N’E’, lower-left being S’W’, and the lower-right is S’E’. Get it? So, if you were at 1W, and took 1 step east, you’d be at 0. If you took 1 more step east, you’d be at 1W. Hope that clears things up! Thx, for reporting the bug!
Oops…said that wrong!! LOL! “If you took 1 more step east, you’d be at 1E” (not 1W!!). Sheesh.. Confusing you, and me!
Starting a new thread. A concern Cam had earlier about “being a ghost when you die”. Well, we took that from Ultima Online (which a lot of other MMOs borrowed later on). The other idea that we flirted around with is giving the player the ability to “Save” (like in old-school RPGs). Essentially, you’d be saving your character’s location, stats, quest flags, etc. So you could “warp” back in time (as if you never died). If you died, it would warp you back to your last save point. The only time you could be ressed if you are with a party (playing with other players). Think about that idea, and let me know what you think. Additionally, maybe we could have a “perma-death” server (if you dared to played on that server!!). If you die, you’re dead for good, and will have to start to new character (no saving!).
Right from the gut, your suggestion of being able to ‘Save’, and warping back to your save point, sounds better than becoming a ghost. There still has to be a cost associated with dying, or saving, otherwise you will have players saving incrementally as they approach challenges, and dying will have no meaning.
In Ultima IV and V, resurrection had an in game explanation: Lord British. He kept bringing you back, because he had brought you to Britannia to get something done.
Using a res shrine seems like a game mechanic compromise, so matter how you gussy it up. It is a mechanism to bring the character back to life. That’s it.
So I guess I am saying that an in-game explanation for resurrection would be preferable to a game mechanic compromise. Which means the discussion should stem from the world physics/logic/plot/background etc., rather than from the gameplay/mechanics alone.
As I don’t know much about the physics/logic/plot of the world, I can’t really produce meaningful ideas, (that are not mechanic derived).
However, If I just look at the world in a generic sense, swords, monsters, heros, evil, good etc., perhaps I can suggest something.
Place temples, shrines and altars throughout the world. Meditate at them to lock yourself to that shrine. Get resurrected there. Hmm..Pretty generic, used elsewhere a hundred times I think.
Another idea: Saving has the character build a ‘house’. When the player dies, their ‘son’ is born at the cabin, and continues in their father’s footsteps. Weaker, lacking his items etc. So no resurrection. Tack a roman numeral on the end of the player’s name for laughs, and…shame? Dominator the MDCLXVII…ooooo so ‘leet’. Death would have an intrinsic reputation cost associated with it.
Anyways, more information on the background of the world of the Minstrel’s Fable, why players are there etc., would help this discussion I think.
Currently the bulk of your game info is squarely focused on mechanics and gameplay/aesthetics, rather than a story…or fable.
Maybe we need a fable?
All good thoughts, Cam. The temple idea might work, and like you said, it’s a an accepted (and familiar!) way of handling resurrection in RPGs. The “fable” idea is intriguing. We’ll revisit this topic at a later time…it will be an excellent forum thread!!
Test
(because my last two posts disappeared)
Did they? Were you including links?
Not seeing anything in the moderation queue. I’ll check the junk folder when I get a minute.