[Epic]

Hello all,

I'm in the process of making a game system for a multiplayer turn based strategy/rpg game. For this game system we are making stand alone modules that function as complete games. Naturally I thought of the Malazan Empire as perfectly suited for a multi faction, high fantasy/power game. So I wondered how much interest there would be for such a game? Note: I'd have to get licencing rights from Erikson to realize this game module.

I can explain a little about the game. It somewhat resembles the ancient Warlords game. Likely few know about this now so maybe better to compare it to Total War, except that you have a much stronger rpg focus and no tactical or real time combat.

* You have a race, stats, skills and levels, powers, marks, a supernatural status, familiars, titles, perks, equipment, religion, spells both arcane and priestly, warrens and more for each character.
* You have multiple fighter, covert, arcane, priestly, administrative and army related skills. You can be a sorcereress, a warlock, seer and several other arcane skills that will likely stretch the Erikson world a little bit, like Conjurers, Warlocks, Mages and so on. Or a thief, assassin, berserker, engineer, merchant etc.
* Characters start with having access to the human warrens. Some starting character may be of the Edur and they'll have access to the the Eldar Warren of Kurald Emurlahn and may gain more through gameplay.
* You also start with ownership of a small city with a small amount of soldiers. The city and it's population produce weapons and armor for your soldiers. Characters can train new soldiers, if you have the proper skill and money. Soldiers can be of any race and skill and equipment. Even summoned from the demon warren.
* You have thousands of hand made items that may have restrictions for race, skill, religion, gender and so on. Finding good items that you can use is important.
* You mainly find these items by defeating monsters, which will riddle the land. Even though this is a deviation from the books, some concessions must be made. Fighting monsters developed combat oriented characters for their various challenges later in the game.
* Toward the later stages of the game you may control dozens of characters and tens of thousands of soldiers, maybe even hundreds of thousands. You may also control one or several Ascended.

---

The game will have multiple Factions. I'd start at an early age where the Malazan Empire is just starting to grow. So you can play as the Lethreii, Tiste Edur, Seven Cities, Genabackis Free Cities, Malazan etc. Maybe Awl'Dan, Barghast and other small factions. Likely the smaller nations will be minor factions which may be conquered or influenced. A typical game may have 10-20 players in each faction.

All the major and minor characters, all the way up to the Ascendants and the various planes(warrens) will be in the game. All the major religions will have their priests and their own spell list. All the players of the High Houses of the Deck and the Holds of the Tiles will be in the game. A major focus will be to gain control of the various characters that have a position on the Deck or Tile and then use them and their powers to win the greater struggle for supremacy.

It will not be a never ending game. It will have fairly few turns compared to a normal game. There are many techniques to create a fast developing game, yet keep the complexity. The main idea is to get rid of farming and time consuming chores and focus on the gaming instead. This follows a well tested game system. You have a build up phase with low player vs player conflict where people build up and discover the world and the possibilities even though you can fight other players right away. But fighting other players usually means you will lose momentum vs the other factions and may get left behind. So each factions builds up, then they clash. Fairly simple in it's basic structure but uncommonly rich in texture.

While building up, and while fighting other factions, there will be thousands of adventure to discover and complete. The adventure rewards will blow you away. They're essential to the game, They will lead you to any type of challenge, more often than not with a reward at the end. Most of them will not be discovered in one game. This is not a simple walk through game that yields it's secrets just because you win. So the replayability factor is high. Each time you may just play one faction and since they're maybe 10+ factions, you could play many times with very different factional strengths and adventures.

With characters, spells, abilities, team play and more affecting the success of armies, you have a very team oriented game. But don't worry if you're not big on teamplay and coordination. Each player gets ranked according to playing skill, and will find a game with players on the same level. This ensures that you will always have a game that is viable, as opposed to most online multiplayer games where experienced players will knock you out mercilessly. If we get enough player's, we're planning on offering a champions game with cash prizes to the 100 highest ranking players. So the ranking can be important. We hope that this will slow the spread of in game knowledge which even if they're partially randomized will still offer advantages. Those that have and use knowledges will likely advance in their ranking. This again means if they join a new game, they'll have to play against other players with equal ranking and knowledge so that the game balance in preserved.

---

There are some problems though. We're just two guys and the work load is high even though we outsource parts of the work. We hope to raise extra cash at kickstarter.com so that we can speed it up even more and raise the quality. So even though we've been at it for a year, it's still maybe a year till we can start offering the game to players. So because of this work load, it would have been nice to have some aid with gathering the data for this Malazan Empire module. Like list of names for factional characters and cities, lists of races and possible factions you'd want to see in the game. Lists of possible characters for the various characters in the High Houses and Holds. Many will have to be created and you can help do that. Also sorting out which gods and religions are the main ones and what theme they have. Themes for factions, like faction strenghts. Racial themes. Lists of special features that should be in the game. Lists of possible quest gains, both from the book like the Empty Throne, or made up ones. With our quest system, almost anything is possible.

Did I mention we have flying castles? Anyone want to control the Garden of the Moon? And that we will have Eleint characters that can veer between dragon and man. And D'ivers and Soletaken. And so much more.

---

This is a game I have planned to make for many many years and are now finally realizing. Having played most of the high quality turn based strategy and rpg games since the mid eighties and been a GM for many a decade, I think I have found the optimal solution for a game that doesn't take too long time to play, yet are more rich and rewarding than have yet been realized in the multiplayer turn based genre.

I do hope this sounds as interesting to you as it is to me. Perhaps we could have a poll to see how many is interested?


Regards,

Andrew Thorson

[worry]

Out of curiosity, if I invested say $5-10 to your enterprise now, at this early stage, roughly how long after release date would I become a millionaire?

[Epic]

worrywort, on 25 September 2012 - 12:54 AM, said:

Out of curiosity, if I invested say $5-10 to your enterprise now, at this early stage, roughly how long after release date would I become a millionaire?

I'm afraid you'd have to wait a very long time. Kickstarter doesn't work like that. It's not an investment. And I'm not looking for that now. Seems like I shouldn't have mentioned it at all. Anyway, when we get the artist graphics and web page with some early game shots and a kickstarter page, then it will start to shape up and those that like what they see may of course donate 10 bucks if they choose.

What I'm interested in is knowledge of the Malazan game world and also if there is an interest in such a game or if the forum mainly consist of readers.


Andrew

[D'rek]

Hmm, how can I put this delicately...

A new topic like this appears roughly once every six to eight months. Silencer even had a significant amount of work into a Malazan MMO at some point years ago. But none of them have really ever achieved a significant milestone, that I know of. I would not expect to get any financial assistance until you can demonstrate that you aren't going to, uh, fizzle out so many others have before...

As for gathering lists of races, figuring out which religions are most widespread, the distinction between pantheon, Deck divinity, religion and warrens and other information inquiries, feel free to send me a PM on these forums, I can answer pretty much anything like that, point you to a reference for it or tell you who someone even more qualified to ask is.

[Silencer]

Aside from workload, the key trouble you're going to have is obtaining said licensing rights. Even with some significant work to show, it'd have to be such that Erikson is comfortable signing off on it. He has a vision for how a Malazan computer game would work, and unless you meet that he's not likely to be interested in it. Still, I for one would be interested in playing the completed project if it gets off the ground and licensed - that would be neat!

[Dolmen 2.0]

The one problem I see is that there is a very definate presence of powerhouses within the malazan world that are an army unto themselves. I personally would hate to see a situation where one letharii swordsman can kill of a seguleh or a member of the avowed gets killed off by a crossbow.

If you want a gaming system to work in a malazan context you will need to be careful about character weighting. A forkrul assail must be over powered. A thelomen toblakai must be hard to kill. And ascendants and soletaken must be boss level powers/resources. Killing a character like osserc should significantly reduce the power of liosan forces etc.

I agree that malazan game systems are suggested fast and often. I encourage you to give it a shot. Really, you just need to be careful about presenting a game that's authentic to the title, artisticly, narratively and in all aspects of gameplay. Doing this well could easily break new ground in gaming aaand get you Eriksons nod of approval.

[Shadow of Shadowthrone]

When I woke up this very morning, a dream of a Malazan MMO still lingered in my head. No, it wasn't *another* run-of-the-mill linear MMO, it was an entirely different beast,and I wish I could show you the imagery from that dream. Anyway, I realize that a Malazan MMO would need all the computer power in the world just for the character creation screens, but still...I long for more immersion in the Malazan universe so I'm interested but also wary.

[Epic]

D, on 25 September 2012 - 03:09 AM, said:

Hmm, how can I put this delicately...

A new topic like this appears roughly once every six to eight months. Silencer even had a significant amount of work into a Malazan MMO at some point years ago. But none of them have really ever achieved a significant milestone, that I know of. I would not expect to get any financial assistance until you can demonstrate that you aren't going to, uh, fizzle out so many others have before...

As for gathering lists of races, figuring out which religions are most widespread, the distinction between pantheon, Deck divinity, religion and warrens and other information inquiries, feel free to send me a PM on these forums, I can answer pretty much anything like that, point you to a reference for it or tell you who someone even more qualified to ask is.

Ah, then the previous reply makes sense. And of course we have to show that we actually will achive something. My partner is a professional programmer who has worked for several Fortune 500 companies, although it's been about making programs for banks and not making games. He claims that our game is much larger than most banking systems Since I'm not a programmer, I can't verify that, although I am quite numbed by the project of entering the data into the already collossal SQL database. The cross relations between tables and the sheer number of data is staggering. But parts of this complexity is because we are making a flexible _game system_ and not a hard coded game.

I might take you up on your offer to answer some questions. I'm currently struggling with narrowing down the number of religions. Having 30 religions will bog down the system in various ways, particularly for item restriction but also cross religious influence modifiers. It may also offer to many choices for the player. And some religions shouldn't be allowed as starting choices.

[Epic]

Silencer, on 25 September 2012 - 03:32 AM, said:

Aside from workload, the key trouble you're going to have is obtaining said licensing rights. Even with some significant work to show, it'd have to be such that Erikson is comfortable signing off on it. He has a vision for how a Malazan computer game would work, and unless you meet that he's not likely to be interested in it. Still, I for one would be interested in playing the completed project if it gets off the ground and licensed - that would be neat!

So he equates giving a license with vouching for the quality of the game? Ok, that makes it more difficult. Do you have a link to Erikson's vision for a Malazan computer game?

Also, what is the best way to get in touch with Erikson? Going through his publishers or just send him a mail? I have assumed he doesn't have all that much time for answering mails.

[Epic]

Dolmen+, on 25 September 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

The one problem I see is that there is a very definate presence of powerhouses within the malazan world that are an army unto themselves. I personally would hate to see a situation where one letharii swordsman can kill of a seguleh or a member of the avowed gets killed off by a crossbow.

If you want a gaming system to work in a malazan context you will need to be careful about character weighting. A forkrul assail must be over powered. A thelomen toblakai must be hard to kill. And ascendants and soletaken must be boss level powers/resources. Killing a character like osserc should significantly reduce the power of liosan forces etc.

I agree that malazan game systems are suggested fast and often. I encourage you to give it a shot. Really, you just need to be careful about presenting a game that's authentic to the title, artisticly, narratively and in all aspects of gameplay. Doing this well could easily break new ground in gaming aaand get you Eriksons nod of approval.

Racial and supernatural status weighting is very important and correspondingly easy within our system. The combat system does not allow easy killings (or freak accidents). You could send an army of 10 000 soldiers toward Osserc and have great trouble killing him. If you did kill him, the liosan warren could be shattered (or whatever would be appropriate) and characters with access to that warren would lose the power they derive from it. But since this is a competitive game and not a single player roleplay game or a historical re-enactment, the player characters need to be able to aquire the power (ascendancy) to kill the powerful beings, This is in keeping with the books logic though, but naturally not in keeping with the actual events. Anyone can, with enough wit and luck, aquire ascendancy in his world. So an average letherii swordsman would die instantly when faced with a seguleh, avowed, eleint etc, yet a player's main character letherii swordsmaster could gain enough power to successfully do so. Another important breaks from actual events, is that the early Malazan empire may not win over it's nearby nations. That wholly depend on the players' skills.

But there has to be deviations from the Erikson books (but maybe not the world as he sees it). Monster bashing is prominent in the game for instance. Erikson has none of that, very possibly because it's rather trivial as a book topic. It may or may not exist in his world as he sees it. In particular it has to do with ensuring that players develop their positions properly before they get into conflict, because conflict means someone will lose and exit the game. With primarily other players to fight, this would knock players out before they have properly entered the game.

The overall goal is to have a living breathing world that feels like his books, with a truly flexible yet balanced multiplayer game system.

[Silencer]

Epic, on 25 September 2012 - 06:20 PM, said:

Silencer, on 25 September 2012 - 03:32 AM, said:

Aside from workload, the key trouble you're going to have is obtaining said licensing rights. Even with some significant work to show, it'd have to be such that Erikson is comfortable signing off on it. He has a vision for how a Malazan computer game would work, and unless you meet that he's not likely to be interested in it. Still, I for one would be interested in playing the completed project if it gets off the ground and licensed - that would be neat!

So he equates giving a license with vouching for the quality of the game? Ok, that makes it more difficult. Do you have a link to Erikson's vision for a Malazan computer game?

Also, what is the best way to get in touch with Erikson? Going through his publishers or just send him a mail? I have assumed he doesn't have all that much time for answering mails.

I wouldn't necessarily say "quality" so much as the vision itself - though obviously being able to show you can create a solid platform is going to be important. As for his vision, no, I don't have it (if I did, I would be a very, very lucky man, lol), but from what I've got through his liasons and I believe it was in an interview somewhere too, is the fact that he has a "very specific vision; knows exactly how it should be done" but is waiting for someone with the requisite skills and backing to come forward and ask about it before he does anything further.

Your best hope is more likely to make the system you want to make and then say, "Hey, look, this is awesome!" and get him to sign off on licensing that way rather than actually trying to shoot for his "ideal" Malazan game (because unless you know what that is, getting it right is unlikely, no?). My point with referencing the vision was more that you're fighting an uphill battle at this point, and that you're not likely to get licensing based off the concept alone UNLESS it's what he was thinking; but once you have something to show him, it's a different ball game altogether.

Contacts...hrm, I'd say best line is either his publisher or Bill and Hazel (that is, Malaclypse and Hetan, respectively, on this site; the site's owners and SE's friends). I had the benefit of having another point of contact with him for a while, too, but Clip isn't really around any more. So yeah, publisher or Bill/Hazel.

[Epic]

Silencer, on 26 September 2012 - 01:09 AM, said:

I wouldn't necessarily say "quality" so much as the vision itself - though obviously being able to show you can create a solid platform is going to be important. As for his vision, no, I don't have it (if I did, I would be a very, very lucky man, lol), but from what I've got through his liasons and I believe it was in an interview somewhere too, is the fact that he has a "very specific vision; knows exactly how it should be done" but is waiting for someone with the requisite skills and backing to come forward and ask about it before he does anything further.

Your best hope is more likely to make the system you want to make and then say, "Hey, look, this is awesome!" and get him to sign off on licensing that way rather than actually trying to shoot for his "ideal" Malazan game (because unless you know what that is, getting it right is unlikely, no?). My point with referencing the vision was more that you're fighting an uphill battle at this point, and that you're not likely to get licensing based off the concept alone UNLESS it's what he was thinking; but once you have something to show him, it's a different ball game altogether.

Contacts...hrm, I'd say best line is either his publisher or Bill and Hazel (that is, Malaclypse and Hetan, respectively, on this site; the site's owners and SE's friends). I had the benefit of having another point of contact with him for a while, too, but Clip isn't really around any more. So yeah, publisher or Bill/Hazel.

Thanks Silencer! Very good information!

[Martin K]

Hi everyone im Andrews partner on Epic.

One or two people cant write a game ( especially an MMO which is far more onerous than our game on the graphics side ) you need a team.. I'm a professional programmer with over 20years development experience.

We are self funded , mature and working full time on the project and have been developing this since October last year , these parts are completed ( Gameplay design (70%) , DB design , DB access , Module Creation / Editing ( 50%) , Create Game , Module to Game Generation (80% ) , Joining the game and character creation ( 70%) , Conan module (10%) . The next phases is playing the first turn and the GUI which will be done in parallel. Without any funding the game will be made - expected release is end 2013 with no funding or mid 2013 with funding. The funding is to improve the quality of the product not to deliver it , at present we have some contract art , a game designer and 3 programmer's funded ( 2 contract)



Please note its a unique game , though some parts are based on very old games you cant really put it in any category. It wont be heavy on pictures and graphics , which look nice at first but don't help the long term enjoyment ( though we will have a beautiful map similar to Civ V and some basic character/race art and that may change depending on funding) but game play will be first class. It will especially allow the creation of great Epic stories in a grand RPG style . It will also not be a time intensive game requiring you to be online with your team at the same time - the goal of the game is to think about it when your not playing it.

What would be great is if people can help in the development of the Malazan module ( if we get a licence) , modules require a lot of detail and the lore needs to be correct to satisfy most fans. So any lore experts who can help would be appreciated . BTW this is an example of some of what is needed and it all needs to be lore correct

All characters in the game including some gods
An accurate map into say 400* 400 provinces , multiple worlds /planes are supported.
Religions and spells
Designing 2-300+ spells based on game effects
1000-3000 magic items
All Races and Monsters
Major Cities ( including Ruins , underground locations and flying cities)
Configure regions and the generation of lairs, ruins , towns and villages.
Adventures
Key Events which can are automated
Stories and legends and a timeline
Creation of the player factions , victory conditions

I hear for Malazan its hard to reconcile some stories into a coherent whole.

We are also working on a Conan/ Hyborea module , which we hope will get more people but Malazan works better due to the high magic.

Regards,

Martin

This post has been edited by Martin K: 27 September 2012 - 02:53 AM

[Sindriss]

There is a malazan wiki that already contains a butt load of information. It this thing started to garner interest, I am pretty sure that you could get more enthusiasts to support this, expand the wiki where needed and transfer existing magical "spells" from the books.

[Otataral Toblakai]

You're several years too early. My 'world domination be-a-trillionaire' plans haven't become fruitful yet. But ill see what I can spare from my piggy bank. It's fairly large.

[Martin K]

Yes we will do that , i found it yesterday ... Will see how it all translates into the game...I expect some issues , there is nothing like going from a document to data to showinconsistencies.

[Martin K]

LoL , we will have a module designer/ world builder and if you like the GUI and gameplay you can make your own modules. We plan on giving module designers 30% of the takings so if its popular it could do well.

Any help is welcome.

Martin

Otataral Toblakai, on 27 September 2012 - 01:16 PM, said:

You're several years too early. My 'world domination be-a-trillionaire' plans haven't become fruitful yet. But ill see what I can spare from my piggy bank. It's fairly large.

[Dolmen 2.0]

So whos handling the art? Do they have a blog or something we can follw? Would be interesting to see the concept art.

[Epic]

Dolmen+, on 29 September 2012 - 09:54 AM, said:

So whos handling the art? Do they have a blog or something we can follw? Would be interesting to see the concept art.

Sorry for replying so late.

Our whole project is only possible because we require so little art. Art is the main expense in many and maybe most modern games, due to the game solutions that are most popular and maybe more importantly because of the marketing effect of superb graphics. Players instantly want to play eye candy games. But it never keep players if the game play is sh**e.

Our game is like a Total War game without the real time battles. This means that very little art is needed. It's primarily the map that needs good graphics. As money permits later, we will add more and more graphics for the various races, monsters, familiars and game features but for the moment this is a luxury we don't indulge in.

It's my opinion that when you're playing a really good game, you don't need superior graphics. It would always be better with it, but it's not essential. If you look at Minecraft, a game with graphics that looks like it's from 1980, still has had huge success in recent years. With a map like Total War or Civ V, we aim to make our success by superior game play and not eye candy.

Although we will have some cover art for our web page later. Artist is not decided. There are many really good ones and the trick of finding highest quality for lowest price takes time. If you have suggestions for digital artists, I would take a look at them.

This post has been edited by Epic: 30 September 2012 - 10:52 PM

[Martin K]

As Andrew said we wont be big on art but will do more than the book covers ( which seem to get a lot of criticism) ..

Basically the project is funded with minimal art and a poor but functional GUI , we are going on Kickstarter in a few months to raise money specifically to improve these aspects.. When we get the forum up we can show a draft of the kick starter page.

At a minimum we will have

front cover / splash screen style art for the Game System , Malazan and Hyborean War
Some minor concept art for the main screen and races
Some existing licenced art for factions
1 small image for each race
1-2 character images for each race.
User uploadable character images

what we would like
Poster sized major art which you can order or get with you kickstarter donation
Artistic Cloth maps for Malazan and Hyborean war get with you kickstarter donation
More and large images for each race
4-5 character images for races ( more common races more other less)
Art for some major module locations
Art for factions
Art for some major characters
icons for the spells.

Whether we get there depends on the funding but if you think Civ V / Total war and its art requirement you will not be far of the mark how it will look ie it wont be first person and work on a larger scale .

Martin

Dolmen+, on 29 September 2012 - 09:54 AM, said:

So whos handling the art? Do they have a blog or something we can follow? Would be interesting to see the concept art.

This post has been edited by Martin K: 05 October 2012 - 05:07 AM