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An Overlord Roguelike

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Jreengus:
Because I can't think of a decent name for it yet.

So I recently convinced myself to sit down and actually finish  Overlord, simply because I hate a game unfinished. Whilst playing it however my mind was constantly occupied on how I would have made it better. I thought the basic principal of building up an evil empire from a first person standpoint was sound but disliked almost everything else. Shortly after this I read The Roguelike Development Megathread and decided that I would make My own visions as a roguelike. The main problem however is is my utter inability to complete a project I've started So I decided to make a thread devoted to this one as a way of helping force myself to see it through to completion. As such this thread will serve as a place for me to present my current musings on the game along with more solid ideas for you guys to critique. On top of this I'll probably post my progress reports both of me learning c++ pretty much from scratch and eventually of the game itself.

Aaaaanyhoo, with no futher ado I present to you:
The Overlord Roguelike Project(Please someone suggest a better name!)
Content:
1: The World
1.1 Geography
1.2 Races
1.3 Magic
1.4 History

2. Game Mechanics
2.1 Basic game mechanics
2.2 You
2.3 Minions
2.4 Relations
2.5 Your Tower/Fortress/Straw Hut of doom
2.6 Your Mistress(es)
2.7 Magic

3.Me


More may be added if I think of it, I've likely left a lot out.



1: The World

1.1 Geography:
So my current musing on the  geography of the world are less than substantial. Ideally I think I probably want to get in a lot of different environments without it seeming like I just grabbed a bunch of different regions and slapped them down together, realism I supposes is key here. Ultimately I'm going to have to draw up a map of some kind but I'm going to put that off for a while since I'll probably find to be very difficult. I do know that I want the starting place at least to be pretty much a middle of the line area, temperate and not massively wet or dry.


1.2 Races:
This is one of the more difficult ones, humans are a given and I'm fairly sure I want other races in there but I want some interesting and different races, elves if there are any will of course be cannibalistic, maybe I'll invert the whole elves love trees by making them use a lot of wooden products leading to a slow deforestation by them in any area they inhabit eventually forcing them to move to areas with more trees. Dwarves I'm thinking will be good miners but that wont mean they live in them. That always seemed a bit off to me I mean if someone's a good farmer it doesn't mean they go out and sleep in the mud every day, rather I'm thinking most dwarven villages will be a collection of shacks based around a mine entrance which is their key source of income. Most minerals they dig up will be traded away for food so as a result most dwarven villages will be quite poor and unable to keep the minerals long enough to work them as they need the food immediately kind of thing. A mine getting depleted could often lead the surrounding village starving to death or else being abandoned as the dwarves seek out another village to take them in. Other than elves and dwarves I'm not totally sure on what other races should be available. Please feel free to make suggestions.

1.3 Magic:
Yay for magic! It's definitely going to be in but I'm not sure what form it's going to take. My current thoughts are thus, magic is controlled by gods, there are lots of gods and some people are born with the ability to channel their power and thus perform magical acts. Some people devote their life to a single god or small group of gods and thus become priests. Others channel all the gods calling those that will help them most and become magicians. It is worth noting that both magicians and priests control the gods not vice versa, priests however are more respectful of their chosen god than magicians and thus devote their life to serving their god, compared to magicians who just call on the gods when they need them then dispose of them when they don't. Some god will also be partly or entirely bound to an object, these items will have massive power which a magician/priest can unlock if they perform a certain ritual (will vary per artefact) Some of these will be central points of a temple dedicated to the trapped god while others will utilised by magicians. Yet more may be hidden away somewhere. The main advantage of these over the other form of magic is that the artifacts can be left somewhere and they will continue to perform their magic unlike other enchantments or whatnot cast by the user which will fade as s/he goes further away.


1.4 History
History wise I'm thinking that the basic history of your kingdom/you goes something like this:
First the world is created founded whatever. Then back when the world is new an evil magician begins conquering all of humanity, thus begins his reign of terror. A hero comes along and guts him like a pig making himself king, he appoints his council from the best at each profession in the land and these leaders create guilds dedicated to their profession. As centuries pass the power of the monarchy declines while the power of the guilds grow, the king becomes little more than a figure head and the kingdom is run by the ever squabbling guilds. Out of these guilds the magicians guild becomes the most powerful with a large part of the kingdoms resources dedicated to finding them more powerful artefacts or potential recruits. The kingdom begins crumbling as the guild devotes itself solely to increasing its own magical power disbanding all the other guilds. New small kingdoms form they are effectively independent provided they don't withhold anything magical. You are born in one such new kingdom with the power of magic after you reach a certain age you have to travel to the magicians guild to learn how better to control your power, along the way you stop off in an old abandoned tower where you meet a mysterious old man, he explains to you that he is a priest of the dark gods the evil magician relied on the most they have granted him immortality and in return he awaits someone with the power to take up the magicians mantle (you) He then takes you to a hidden chamber where you recieve whats left of the magicians wealth and the game then begins.

2. Game Mechanics
2.1 Basic game mechanics
Well this pretty much a cover all for most of this entire section. Where to start?

You as The Overlord will control yourself directly at all times, no matter how powerful you become you will only ever be able to control you yourself so even if you have an entire army you will need to command them around by giving them orders as The Overlord rather than as the player. You will need to eat and sleep (initially at least) and whatnot, initially you'll be doing this through buying or stealing food and squatting among the ruins of the castle or renting a room, once you get more powerful you'll have a fully stocked larder and your own suite of course, at this point food may become more of an annoying inconvenience for the player since it wont exactly be in short supply so I may do something about this although I don't know what. Any goal will be player set hopefully although toppling the magicians guild and becoming overlord of the entire world will likely leave little left to do, maybe some kind of a credits roll at that point and the option to keep on playing?

2.2 You
So initially you will start out as a fairly normal magician, however as you become more evil and channel the evil gos you will slowly start to mutate, some of these will be beneficial and some mainly cosmetic in a oh wow my @ glowing eyes kind of way. All of them however will make you more obviously evil (See relations) If you want to keep yourself a pristine example of humanity you will be able to perform certain rite of purification to cleanse yourself of the mutations provided they don't get too far along. The exact opposite of this is deliberately mutating yourself, players will also have the option of becoming a lich however this will take a lot of effort and work, ythe rewards will however be numerous. A middle ground for players who want some of a lich's power while still remaining normall looking ism probably going to be to hunt down a vampire, once transformed thgeir powers would grow and hunger and thirst would be replaced by a lust for blood but they would still appear human. Going out in the day would still be possible but it would weaken them significantly.

2.3 Minions
Your evil workers should of course be a major part of your evil enterprise but who exactly to hire? hopefully you should have plenty of options, local villagers will likely be the cheapest and easiest, provided they haven't realised how evil you are yet, any local bandits will tolerate higher levels of evil but even they are going to be a bit unwilling when it comes to higher levels of evil performed against potentially their own family's. Out of town mercenaries thus will be expensive and difficult to get a hold of but will have the highest tolerance of evil among humans, the actual level of tolerance should of course depend on their captain. Mercenaries from other races will be much more likely to work for you and happily accept the evils you are inflicting on humans since humans have been the oppressive dominant race for so long.

Furthermore various different monsters should become available to you depending on circumstances, if you have some giant spiders locked up in the basement breeding then their offspring should make excellent additions to your horde. A Succubus queen for a mistress will provide access to her subjects and as a vampire other weaker ones will flock to serve you.

But after all your mortal allies have been exhausted you will still have access to the gods, these can be bound to this plain of existence in one of two ways, as zombies/skeletons or as demons. Creating a zombie or skeleton would be easier than creating a demon since it doesn't require the creation of a body for the god, put simply you bind the god into the corpse so that they may control it. Creating a demon would be more difficult as you must create a body of matter from the gods magical being, however the advantage of demons is that their new body channels their magical form allowing them to travel further away from you and also allowing them to cast minor spells. The major disadvantage is that they now no longer have to obey you.

2.4 Relations
Ok then this should be a major part of the game, as I see it there will be essentially 3 major ways of measuring how much people like you. Fear Gratitude and resistance, good acts result in gratitude evil acts resistance and impressive ones in fear, initially you should be reliant on gratitude, by helping out locally and appearing like a good guy the local people will willingly help you, this is used to build a power base before turning evil on them. Of course the above is somewhat of a simplification but they will probably be the 3 main things indicating how people react to you influenced a bunch of other things, appearances will be everything a hideously twisted lich isn't going to convince anyone he's the good guy on the other hand if the local temple is a temple of light and your mistress is the head priestess people are more likely to be blindly trusting. ("O, I know it seems a bit weird to want to sacrifice a sheep on a bloodstained altar at midnight of the full moon naked but she wouldn't be with him if his intentions weren't pure.")


2.5 Your Tower/Fortress/Straw Hut of doom
Your choice of abode should be quite important for a number of reasons. Firstly it should affect how people view you provide you, different lodging will provide a different view of you, for example if you are still in the staying at the local village stage and the villagers offer you say the mayors own bedroom and you turn them down to sleep in the hayloft they'll view you better. Later on where you choose to build you ultimate fortress of doom will reflect on you and provide various different bonuses and penalties. The location of the old tower will be cheaper since you're rebuilding not starting from scratch and the place where you can channel your main gods most easily, the main downside of this will be fact that it's the equivalent of announcing you're evil. Building a totally new fortress wont have any negative stigma attached to it and will be much better defensively as you can pick a prime location and go nuts with designing it, unfortunately though it will be by far the most expensive and take much more time. Another alternative could be using the kings palace it would be more a symbolic statement that you have dominated/destroyed the line of the one who slew your predecessor. This would only be available as an option if you have offed all the monarchy and declared yourself king (Which would require a good powerbase) or if you've made the kings daughter your mistress and killed the king.


2.6 Your Mistress(es)
Your mistriss is probably going to mainly affect 2 different thing, your minions available with those beast that work around a matriarchy serving you if you have their queen as a mistress and your relations with humans. I'm also probably going to throw in some "Trophy" mistresses whose sole point is to demonstrate your power, ideally any woman should be available as a mistress although convincing them they want to be one wont always be easy. Once you come out the evil closet you will be able to have as man mistresses as you want but while you are still trying to put on a good face you should only be able to have a single wife.

2.7 Magic
Alrighty then I've been thinking about magic a bit and I think I've come up with a system that should be new and tie in with the background for how it works in this world. Essentially rather than you having a store of magical energy the gods do, different gods exist in different areas and as you call on one you exhaust them leaving them unable to help you for a while. Which gods are where will depend on your surrounding, at the peak of a mountain? Expect wind cold and ground gods, at a river running through a forest? Lots of plant and water gods. This will be further influenced by powerfull gods who are being worshipped driving out nearby gods, meaning that if you choose to go up against a temple you wont have many gods around to help you. Casting a magical spell itself is a case of knowing how to channel the gods, ideally I want the player to be able to experiment in order to cast different spells or to learn from somewhere to save themselves the hassle of initially blowing off an arm while learning.


3.Me
So a little section on me. I finally finished this after a lot of Pokerastination (Procrastinating by playing Pokemon). Hopefully I should take less time on the rest of the project. Anyhow as mentioned I'm currently planning on learning c++ but if I get a lot of support early on for any other language I will switch. Other than that I can't think of what else to say.

Jreengus:
Because a reserved post is handy.

BigFatDwarf:
Sounds great.

I could help a bit with the geography and races concepts, though, heh don't rely too much on me.
Oh, just a tip, not that I really have that much experience.

If you have MS Office Excel, (OO equivalent isn't good at this), it's great for getting a mental picture or to get area layout. Simply using the big cell borders and the smiley faces is good for development ideas, or even using it as a game itself (OK, irrelevant.)

Anyway, great idea. Hope you complete it.

Richochet:
I approve!

Jreengus:
Thanks for the encouragement, I'll finish that first post soon I almost had it done and then I accidentally knocked the off switch on the extension cord my computer's plugged into. Needless to say I was ever so slightly annoyed.

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