"flooded" game world?

[deuxhero]

By "flooded" I mean water is everywhere, with a few floating and mountaintop locations.


Would having a sea-faring game-world be interesting? Present unique mechanics?

I think the overworld would best be done Fallout style, possibly with the need to figure out drift for the "floating" locations. Survival would also be important (Fresh water carried by your ship would limit your range, but carrying too much would prevent carrying other things, food is also limited, but a player with the right skill may fish)

The flooding would obviously hurt the access to materials (plus metal generally doesn't take to sea air very well, typically cording) and would force non-metal stuff (Jawbones, mauls, all the fun stuff)

I know Wind Waker (and Phantom Hourglass) did it (though are hardly RPGs), but they didn't really do much with it besides replacing the fields and horse with sailing and a ship. Link fought pretty much the same as always ( but also using most of the same items, also most of the game was in a dungeon anyways) and the towns really weren't impacted by the "island village" thing, working like the LoZ towns in any other game.

 

[Zed]

build it in minecraft

 

[Excommunicator]

I would take water over wasteland, certainly

That is how it should be done with a Pirate RPG, anyway, and that is something I would really like to see (done properly).

Water is so frequently an afterthought and an undeveloped feature even in water-focused games that it makes you wonder if people even live in the same world. The potential is huge

 

[Shemar]

Fresh water carried by your ship would limit your range.

Unless a setting like that has pretty widesperad technology that distills drinkable water from sea water, you would have an extremely limited population. Even if you (unrealistically) assume fishing as the main food source, you would still need to explain what the people drink.

Also, I alwats felt that deciding on the setting first and coming up with a story that fits the setting second is backwards design. I know a lot of people have the "wouldn't it be cool to play a game in such and such setting" but a good story, especially a flexible RPG story, is hard enough to come by without trying to squeeze it to a specific pre-determined setting. Of course if you are building just a sandbox that's different.

 

[deuxhero]

I was under the impression that flame+salt water=fresh water steam and sea-salt and you only needed another 2 containers to capture the steam, let it become water again and fall into container 3. Given they apparently figured out the flame+salt water=salt thing early in history, figuring out the water part doesn't seem unlikely if there is a need.

What would the primary food source be (I just said fishing as a way to get food in the middle of nowhere)?

And hey, this is the design forum, mostly just throwing out design ideas that will never get anywhere. Plus sailing should be fairly good for an open world, the water doesn't react to

 

[laclongquan]

IT's absolute shitload of work to do though, because everything must be rewritten.

For example:

The limit of potable water:
1. Source: Rainwater is all important. Wherever there's rain, people will gather there.
2. Adaption: Force people to drink salty water. Body organs will change and either work more efficiently to separate salt from water and/or better adapted to high salty content of body fluid, or whatever.

The limit of building materials: your ship is your home, your survival, so you damn well better take care of it. Every scrap of lands will be devoted to treeplanting, both hardwoods and vines. Every kind of experiment with sea materials will be excuted with great vigor: fish skins, bones, seaweeds, etc...

It will put a shitload of challenge for your writing and mechanic portion of the work.

 

[oscar]

Worms. The water level slowly rises, forcing you to move to higher ground (while also flushing out campers).

 

[SacredPath]

If you tone down the magnitude of the flooding a little and allow for more than "mountaintops", you would save yourself a lot of hassle and could stick with a more traditional, ancient or medieval layout of settlements & cultures. The idea of small, isolated or interwarring city states (island states?) would be agreeable IMO. Think the Aegean Sea in the Late Bronze Age/ Early Iron Age.


But really, any game that feautures well-done ship to ship combat would be great.

 

[Excommunicator]

Also, I alwats felt that deciding on the setting first and coming up with a story that fits the setting second is backwards design. I know a lot of people have the "wouldn't it be cool to play a game in such and such setting" but a good story, especially a flexible RPG story, is hard enough to come by without trying to squeeze it to a specific pre-determined setting. Of course if you are building just a sandbox that's different.

I don't understand the relevance of the design differences you're pointing at. You need both to fit each other anyway.

A good story incorporates the setting, and a good setting provides a wealth of potential for stories. If you have a story that needs to have its core details changed to fit a setting, then that implies there was a setting already in mind when the story was written, in which case it is probably a bad match. Either way, each needs to be personally crafted to the other at some point which requires revisions in one or both parts.

I was under the impression that flame+salt water=fresh water steam and sea-salt and you only needed another 2 containers to capture the steam, let it become water again and fall into container 3. Given they apparently figured out the flame+salt water=salt thing early in history, figuring out the water part doesn't seem unlikely if there is a need.

What would the primary food source be (I just said fishing as a way to get food in the middle of nowhere)?

And hey, this is the design forum, mostly just throwing out design ideas that will never get anywhere. Plus sailing should be fairly good for an open world, the water doesn't react to

What fuel are you using to make the flame? You are going to need huge quantities if you are going to support a society's drinking supply purely through sea water evaporation, which is a challenge (no fresh water implies scarcity of land, scarcity of land implies no way to grow wood (or anything dry/aggregated) for fuel...)

 

[JarlFrank]

Well, I was thinking of a first/third person Elder Scrolls-like RPG set underwater. The player would be an amphibious humanoid, who live mostly underwater but also have some surface outposts for trade. The game would take place mostly underwater, with exploration being truly three-dimensional since you can swim in all directions.

I don't have developed that idea very far yet because there's a lot of other stuff I'd like to do first, but I think a game like that has potential. It's entirely different from what you suggested, deuxhero, but playing an amphibious or fully sea-living race would solve the problem. Or maybe the humans in your setting adapted to the sea, kinda like whales and dolphins.

 

[Shemar]

I was under the impression that flame+salt water=fresh water steam and sea-salt and you only needed another 2 containers to capture the steam, let it become water again and fall into container 3. Given they apparently figured out the flame+salt water=salt thing early in history, figuring out the water part doesn't seem unlikely if there is a need.

Yes, it is pretty simple, which is why I said that as a response to the commend about ships being limited by the amount of fresh water they carry.

What would the primary food source be (I just said fishing as a way to get food in the middle of nowhere)?

Again, I don't know exactly what you have in mind, how big the actual islands (mountaintops) would be. Would they include fertile farmland? Forests? Would they be large enough to have multiple settlements? Because then a lot of the 'flooded' element goes away and you have a archipelago or naval RPG. On the other hand if those mountaintops are just rocky exctrusions, barely suitable as foundation for basic buildings and not use for much else, then you have an actual survival setting.

And hey, this is the design forum, mostly just throwing out design ideas that will never get anywhere. Plus sailing should be fairly good for an open world, the water doesn't react to

Fair enough. I am a programmer not a dreamer/designer/creator so my tendency is to always pin down any suggestion to more practical considerations.

 

[Shemar]

I don't understand the relevance of the design differences you're pointing at. You need both to fit each other anyway.

A good story incorporates the setting, and a good setting provides a wealth of potential for stories. If you have a story that needs to have its core details changed to fit a setting, then that implies there was a setting already in mind when the story was written, in which case it is probably a bad match. Either way, each needs to be personally crafted to the other at some point which requires revisions in one or both parts.

What I was referring to is an attitude I sometimes see: "This setting is cool/popular => I want to make an RPG with a setting like that". Many big publishers do it and I have seen quite a few indie ideas follow that logic also. Of course when you have a story idea the setting is already part of it, but I was referring to the tendency to settle on a setting before there is a story to fit it.

Anyway this is off topic now as the OP clearly indicated he is just discussuing this academically and not as a prelude to an upcoming project.

 

[deuxhero]

As for fuel, I'd imagine some Eucalyptus (that tree's strange enough to be in a fantasy setting with it's explodingness) style tree that gives a burnable oil (I'm not sure if Eucalyptus oil is burnable, but the species would have something that is) in addition to fast growing wood, if not some animal species that is hunted due to an oil that can be derived (ala Whale Oil), if not a fast growing species. Whatever it is, he who controls the wood or fuel source controls the universe, which is an interesting plot possibility.