PARPG searching for a lead writer!

Team name:
PARPG development team

Project name:
PARPG - Post-Apocalyptic RolePlaying Game

Brief description:
The project has been originally founded in early 2009 and has been in production ever since. The game is heavily inspired by gems of the golden age of Western isometric singleplayer 2d RPGs such the Fallout series (especially Fallout 1 & 2), Arcanum and Planescape: Torment. While we released a first techdemo of the project in March 2010, I had to step down from my position as project manager to focus on my studies. Unfortunately the project slowly fell apart back then as I was not able to attract a new project manager to take over where I left. Now I'm at least partially back in action and want to try to get the project back on tracks with the help of ... YOU

The game is set in an alternative future post nuclear Scandinavia. Can you stop the nuclear winter that threatens to turn the Earth into a giant snowball or is the fate of our world sealed?

Target aim:
Open source and free of charge

Compensation:
As the project has no commercial ambition, the only reward we can offer is the satisfying feeling to work on a project in the spirit of the golden age of isometric 2d RRPG classics. So this is mainly for people who would either like to have a portfolio project under their belt or simply love these old school RPGs and would like to work on such a game themselves.

Supported platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac

Talent needed:
Lead writer
In a nutshell: our writing efforts never took off in a consistent and structured way. When the project started, we've agreed upon some basic setting guidelines and wanted to leave the rest to the to be found writers. Unfortunately that process didn't work out well in reality. Interested writers in the past mostly focused on fleshing out NPCs or proposed potential storylines for the game. At the same time, no writer was really willing to commit to fleshing out setting elements and what kind of writing themes would be worth exploring in the game. So now we've got loads of writing ideas (TM) sitting in the wiki but there is almost no consistency to them. Therefore we have decided to tackle the problem from a slighty different angle than in the past.

We're looking for a lead writer who would be willing to commit to the more substantial parts of the writing process. We're looking for somebody who is not afraid from making decisions in the fields of setting, themes to explore and storyline of the game. Obviously somebody who is familiar with the post-apocalypse genre would be strongly prefered.

For a more information about the lead writer position, check out this advert: http://wiki.parpg.net/Finding_a_lead_writer

Website:
As mentioned above: the entire infrastructure for such a project is already in place. We're hosting our own blog, wiki and forums while our SVN and Trac repositories are hosted by codesion.com. Furthermore public releases of the project are offered at sourceforge.net:
* Blog
* Forums
* SVN
* Trac
* Wiki

Contact:
The best way to get in contact with me is to visit the IRC channel of the project: #parpg at irc.freenode.net (freenode network). In case you don't have access to an IRC client right now you can also simply join the channel via your web browser: join #parpg IRC channel in your browser

If you prefer email communication for first contact, you can email me as well at Martin DOT Vohland AT googlemail DOT com. Our IRC channel is pretty much the established way of communicating with the other developers so interested writers do hopefully have no IRC aversion

Previous Work by Team:
I've been working as project manager of the FIFE project from mid 2005 to mid 2008. FIFE is the isometric 2d engine that we're utilizing for PARPG. We shipped eight public releases of the engine in this timeframe and I was pretty much responsible for the same tasks that I listed above, including recruitment of new developers. Furthermore I've been maintaining the FIFE win32 devkit, a collection of tools and libraries to easily and painlessly build the FIFE engine from source on Windows systems.

Additional Info:
Here are a couple of screenshots from our March 2010 techdemo release:




And here's even a fancy video nothing beats moving pictures:
PARPG techdemo 1 video at youtube (switching to 720p quality recommended)

Other project-related art (concept art, portraits, renders, etc. click on the thumbnails for fullscreen versions!):
















Feedback:
ANY

We appreciate all kinds of feedback. If you want to tell us something, even if you're not interested to get involved, shoot right away We can take it.

Quite surprisingly for us, we had quite some interest in the open lead writer position. Our initial guess was that interest would be rather low, so we were not really well prepared for this situation.

I'll sit down with the other lead developers this week and we'll figure out a process how interested writers could present their writing concepts to us in a somewhat consistent and representative way. We think about using one of our setting articles at the wiki as starting point, and letting interested writers flesh out a number of themes (prolly around 3) that they would like to explore, based on that setting article.

But this is nothing that is set in stone at this point. If things go as planned, we should have fleshed out some kind of starting task for interested writer around Friday or Saturday. I'll post a link to the starting task in here as soon as we have figured out the details

P.S.: If we go down that route, we'll prolly use that setting article as starting point for the task: http://wiki.parpg.net/Setting

Sign me up. I'll do it!

SimpleComplexity said:

Sign me up. I'll do it!

Click to expand...

As this is RPGCodex, this is either:
a) Reading comprehension 2/10
b) Sleep deprivation 8/10
c) Trolling 3/10

You be the judge!

No no no look i have this idea, the earth is cold because Amerikwa used HAARP on the whole planet to take over the world turning it into a new ice age, all the electricity is shut down too. Now the NWO is moving in with their soldiers who have super secret technology from Area 51, their goal is to kill all the political leaders and establish a New World Order.

That's only the short version, lengthy version only if interested.

Alrighty, color us not interested in this case

An original Post Apocalypse scenario is not easy. Real life example is only about Europe post Pax ROmana, because at that time China and East Roman Empire/Ottoman, India, were all in bloom.

So if you want an original Post Apocalypse scenario, the answer is no.

BUT, an original Post Apocalypse scenario for Scandinavia alone may be possible. Cut-off Scandinavia with very limited communication with outside world, limited food production lead to famine situation and food scarcity, fuel scarcity, hot-type weapon scarcity, isolated community, wandering bands of bandits, wildlife prevalence...

Yeah, I think I can make some more. COlour me interested and test me if you want.

EXP: none in game developing. I do read a lot of PA setting novels, and play a lot of PA rpgs (on PC). Current game: Unreal World.

laclongquan said:

Yeah, I think I can make some more. COlour me interested and test me if you want.

EXP: none in game developing. I do read a lot of PA setting novels, and play a lot of PA rpgs (on PC). Current game: Unreal World.

Click to expand...

We'll publish a "starting task" for interested writers soon. I'll update this thread as soon as we've fleshed out this task.

The game is actually set in Scandinavia, see:
http://wiki.parpg.net/Setting#Theatre

Here's a proposal for the game map area:

Just read the proposed setting. I have, like, no problem with it.

But the game world like that is too big: Once you can reach Gdansk, and Riga you can reach the bread basket of Poland and your problem can be reduced enormously, PA-wise. And you gotta take sea travel in, which is a stone cold bitch....

Keep it in Scandinavia alone will simplify the matter greatly.

I think you are approaching the whole thing wrong, lead writers want the power over their own stories, by giving them guidelines of what you want this:

* WWIII occurred in 1988-1989 between NATO and Warsaw Pact
* Pre nuclear conflict could start as early as 1985 before the nukes start flying
* Soviet ground forces penentrated Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark & Germany (and possibly central/southern europe as well)
* Many tactical battlefield nukes were used
* Many strategic (city, military base) nukes were used
* Chemical and biological weapons were used in some areas (as useful to the plot of PARPG)
* US / USSR collapse due to nuclear war; these events ended the war
* Long and devastating world wide destruction wiping out 99% of population, 99% industrial capacity

Click to expand...

you are taking away their job, the only guideline that should be a requirements are the following:
realistic setting, US/ USSR, guns, nuclear war -> nuclear winter, (scandinavia)
The thing is if you already exactly know what you want why not write the whole thing yourself instead of hiring somebody to fill out the gaps? Writers enjoy writing if you give them the power to make their own setting and not dictate them what to do.

Because write the whole thing is a tedious task. If I gotta I gotta. The writers write detailed stuffs but if the lead writer dont realize what's wrong with the outlines he will make unnessary works for his minions by NOT arguing strenously before the writers put words down.

I dont expect to interfere myself into writers' process of writing and style. I do want to have input in WHERE they are going before they write, though.

Have I mentioned that I am a book editor before? 7years of exp, yeah.

My fault. The post wasn't directed at you. My point was barracuda has to give the lead writer more power by removing 80% of those guidelines and only leaving the most essential ones behind like realistic setting, guns, etc. as mentioned before.

Does writing duties also involve creating dialogue trees and story and quest branching?

And why are you giving it away for free?

I'll get back to you once all of this username madness is fixed here. I can't stand replying to all these numbers.

To clear up the situation: I'll discuss stripping down the assumed setting for the starting task. You'll have to set some limitations nevertheless as the starting task is meant to give us an idea how interested writers can work with some basic guidelines.

I agree with SimpleComplexity that the current Settings article might be a bit too restrictive for the task.

On the other side: we're talking about fleshing out 3 example THEMES for the starting task. Chances are good that themes wouldn't even depend on the setting article as themes are basically meta writing guidelines even above general setting.

We'll clarify what a "theme" means to us. Think of short term memory loss in Mememto, that's what a theme is to me. It's a meta topic that gets explored in a game/film and it does actually not depend on setting details.

Wikipedia backs my interpretation what a theme is:

A theme is not the same as the subject of a work. For example, the subject of Star Wars is "the battle for control of the galaxy between Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance". The themes explored in the movies might be "moral ambiguity" or "the conflict between technology and nature".

Click to expand...

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theme_%28arts%29

Having read through the prescribed documentation, I look forward to participating in this "starting task," Barracuda. You will learn to fear the level of incompetence I'm to demonstrate.

The qualifiers of your application seemed lacking in the "Must have ability to write," though.

THIS GAME WILL BLOW YOU OFF YOUR FEET

I humbly request that this gif become a standard emote here

OminousBlueDot said:

The qualifiers of your application seemed lacking in the "Must have ability to write," though.

Click to expand...

That goes without saying

We also forgot to list: "must not suck".

SimpleComplexity said:

Writers enjoy writing if you give them the power to make their own setting and not dictate them what to do.

Click to expand...

In a way, similar restrictions can actually stimulate a writer's creativity (games like Torment or Bloodlines managed to be original even though the writers had to work with much more detailed pre-existing settings and rule sets). The result may be surprisingly good, especially if the lead designer (I'm assuming mvBarracuda in this case) knows exactly what he wants and can keep the whole project down to earth.

We shall see who sucks, Barracuda!

Oh, how I'm to regret these words.

Marquess Cornwallis said:

The result may be surprisingly good, especially if the lead designer (I'm assuming mvBarracuda in this case) knows exactly what he wants and can keep the whole project down to earth.

Click to expand...

Zenbitz is our lead mechanics designer. So the to be found lead writer will form a design tandem with him in this regard.

I'm actually focusing on the administrative side of the project: recruitment of developers, general project direction (mission, milestone planning, roadmap) as well as maintaining large parts of the project infrastructure including the project documentation at our wiki.

Why is Malmö marked on the map and not Gothenburg, a bigger and better city in every way possible?

The best cities got nuked off the map.

A glass crater at that location would be a fine testatement to the "here nukie nukie!" scenario.
Or a circular group of smaller craters.

SimpleComplexity said:

I think you are approaching the whole thing wrong, lead writers want the power over their own stories, by giving them guidelines of what you want this:

* WWIII occurred in 1988-1989 between NATO and Warsaw Pact
* Pre nuclear conflict could start as early as 1985 before the nukes start flying
* Soviet ground forces penentrated Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark & Germany (and possibly central/southern europe as well)
* Many tactical battlefield nukes were used
* Many strategic (city, military base) nukes were used
* Chemical and biological weapons were used in some areas (as useful to the plot of PARPG)
* US / USSR collapse due to nuclear war; these events ended the war
* Long and devastating world wide destruction wiping out 99% of population, 99% industrial capacity

Click to expand...

you are taking away their job, the only guideline that should be a requirements are the following:
realistic setting, US/ USSR, guns, nuclear war -> nuclear winter, (scandinavia)
The thing is if you already exactly know what you want why not write the whole thing yourself instead of hiring somebody to fill out the gaps? Writers enjoy writing if you give them the power to make their own setting and not dictate them what to do.

Click to expand...

I love pretty much everything i saw thus far about PARPG. General setting, iso-look, gfx designs etc. Reading about pre-existing setting and story elements of it on the story and NPC's Wiki, though, leads me to be similarly sceptical. There's already quite a number of elements pre-set that a typcial lead writer would probably do away with.

Still, hope the lead writer that you're gonna find or that you've already found will be able to ties this all together into a somwhat interesting narrative

To be fair: the lead writer will have substantial say in the creative direction of the project.

Set in stone is simply a very blurry category in game development. When we say "something it set in stone" it basically means: "We won't change that unless somebody brings up very good arguments against it and takes a lead role in fleshing out an alternative proposal to replace the element".

Anyway, we'll announce the details of the writer application process at our blog tomorrow. We've agreed upon a quite different writer application process as originally proposed. That's mainly because we factored the feedback given here and elsewhere into it.

Stay tuned.