Callaxes
Arbiter
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2007
- Messages
- 1,676
I'd really, really love to see a developer dig allot of stuff out of a particular area of folklore and introduce it in a CRPG instead of making a fantasy world.
It could either be modern day, like American Gods. In which you can make an average Joe discover old magic and interact with creatures or gods that have a tangency to old beliefs they came from.
A Kobold would be a young kid with spiked hair that hangs around the alley ways of Brooklin, collecting bones of dead hobos. He has power of disease and weather, which he rarely uses.
A Fairy would be a traveling loner who sleeps in the forest, or in this case, in Central Park. The only thing that he loves more then trees is kidnapping young boys and girls. He sometimes brings back changelings in their place.
An Elf would be a con artist earning small bucks on the street and running a non-existent insurance firm. Also, in his free time, he either poisons the water supply to a certain district or sets fire to a homeless shelter, not because he's evil, but because it's fun.
A Einhaejar or a dead viking would be a superstitious biker who runs an illegal gun shop and throws empty beer bottles at the windows of the nearby churches when he's drunk.
You'd end up with WoD, but with less bullshit and no Highlander.
OR! You could do a Dark Age CRPG set anywhere you like. Do a research of the culture of the place the game is set in. And then try to merge the atmosphere of the world with its belief. Maybe you never ever see ghouls in pagan Arabia and you never see magic or anything that's paranormal. But the NPCs and story make you belief that the developer could at any time make a genie apear, because that's what they believe in.
Edit: Also, there's an interesting quote that Neil Gaiman put out in an interview about AG. The book was not about religion, it was about belief. Religion is the side effect of belief and where there is belief, things change and take shape. The point of adding folklore in a game would be to make the player understand belief. KoDP did this very well, you didn't realy belief in their gods, but you were aware of them and they became apart of the game.
It could either be modern day, like American Gods. In which you can make an average Joe discover old magic and interact with creatures or gods that have a tangency to old beliefs they came from.
A Kobold would be a young kid with spiked hair that hangs around the alley ways of Brooklin, collecting bones of dead hobos. He has power of disease and weather, which he rarely uses.
A Fairy would be a traveling loner who sleeps in the forest, or in this case, in Central Park. The only thing that he loves more then trees is kidnapping young boys and girls. He sometimes brings back changelings in their place.
An Elf would be a con artist earning small bucks on the street and running a non-existent insurance firm. Also, in his free time, he either poisons the water supply to a certain district or sets fire to a homeless shelter, not because he's evil, but because it's fun.
A Einhaejar or a dead viking would be a superstitious biker who runs an illegal gun shop and throws empty beer bottles at the windows of the nearby churches when he's drunk.
You'd end up with WoD, but with less bullshit and no Highlander.
OR! You could do a Dark Age CRPG set anywhere you like. Do a research of the culture of the place the game is set in. And then try to merge the atmosphere of the world with its belief. Maybe you never ever see ghouls in pagan Arabia and you never see magic or anything that's paranormal. But the NPCs and story make you belief that the developer could at any time make a genie apear, because that's what they believe in.
Edit: Also, there's an interesting quote that Neil Gaiman put out in an interview about AG. The book was not about religion, it was about belief. Religion is the side effect of belief and where there is belief, things change and take shape. The point of adding folklore in a game would be to make the player understand belief. KoDP did this very well, you didn't realy belief in their gods, but you were aware of them and they became apart of the game.
