[cerveza_fiesta]

C'mon guys...how cool would it be to set any one of the books in the infinity engine (baldur's gate 1 and 2, Icewind dale 1 and 2, planescape torment). I would personally play the crap out of it.

What do you think would be the best plot arc to fit into such a game? It'd be kinda tough cause there's like 100 protagonists as opposed to books like Wheel of time where there's only like 3.

[Dolorous Menhir]

Not sure. You've got the Icarium-Nameless One parallel. Imagine playing an adapted plot of Planescape Torment, with Icarium as the one searching for his identity and Mappo as the companion rather than Morte the skull. That would be great.

I'm trying to think of other plots that would lend themselves to a game - starting with a weak character who know little, goes on to travel and become progressively more powerful and important. Paran would definitely work well, and his storyline would lend itself to both combat and dialogue, Baldur's Gate style.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Dolorous Menhir;209886 said:

Not sure. You've got the Icarium-Nameless One parallel. Imagine playing an adapted plot of Planescape Torment, with Icarium as the one searching for his identity and Mappo as the companion rather than Morte the skull. That would be great.

Agreed with the trell = morte point

I guess it wouldnt' have to be based on any primary protagonist at all. You could make up a side story that ties in strongly to one or more of the plot arcs, but uses an as-yet unseen character. Kind of like the Korbal Broach thing - how they have their own side-books by another author, but are present in a few of SE's important scenes. They kind of do this with the Star wars video games, where you're a generic Jedi/sith, and movie events are happening around you to keep the plot going, but you're basically a unique character.

If you wanted to get ridiculously complicated with it, you could have each DnD class following a different character... Crokus = rogue, Karsa = barbarian, Whiskeyjack = warrior, QB = mage, Fiddler = bard etc...
That would take a super long time to make though. Basically a separate game for each class. Ok...nevermind...that's a bit ridiculous. Stick with the above idea.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Dolorous Menhir;209886 said:

Not sure. You've got the Icarium-Nameless One parallel. Imagine playing an adapted plot of Planescape Torment, with Icarium as the one searching for his identity and Mappo as the companion rather than Morte the skull. That would be great.

This could happen as an aside to the books, where Icarium's past remains largely a mystery, but he keeps running across stuff he's built and regaining fragments of his identity. I guess its actually pretty identical to the planescape plot, but set in a different world with different magicks.

[Mr.Warren]

use the growth of empireas a story, choose an empire, leather, malazan, pannion, or whatever and expand, use your team of 6 characters chosen from a horde that you have or something, and i syppose you could go around collecting characters to use on your campaigns against other cities and such.....

actually, i think if they wanted too, it could be really awesome

[Flawed]

I would play too if i knew what the fudge you were all on about.

[Shurque's biatch]

I think the Darujistan tyrants would be a great backdrop.

But as for character classes, sappers, moranth cavalry, mott irregulars, claw...

This is a fantastic idea.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Flawed;209899 said:

I would play too if i knew what the fudge you were all on about.

the baldur's gate, icewind dale and planescape torment games are all based on the "infinity engine" which is a top-down rpg game engine for computers. Pretty much takes care of all the combat /damage / resistance rolling that would happen in a normal RPG like Dungeons and Dragons, but does it via a graphical interface.

The game world consists of a large patchwork of maps, which are just 2D artwork with boundaries of where you can walk and where you cant. Your character walks around these maps under your control and interacts / fights with other computer controlled good guys / baddies that it comes across. The map also has doorways that lead to other maps like building interiors, and adjacent map tiles. Like other rpgs, you get a character sheet, an iventory, ratings for stuff like "strength" and "intelligence", you can use magic spells, set traps, pick locks, use different weapons, armor and all that.

On top of the basic game mechanics, there is a lot of conversational written dialogue with computer-controlled characters, to which you can reply with preset responses in a choose-your-own-adventure style. The dialogue advances and gives background to the story, and your responses dictate how much a computer character will reveal to you, and also your good / evil alignment. So if you help everybody who asks for it, you end up being good, while if you kill everybody who looks at you funny, you end up evil.

Soooo there you go. Just look up infinity engine in wikipedia. I'm sure it'll tell you all you want to know.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Shurque said:

I think the Darujistan tyrants would be a great backdrop.

But as for character classes, sappers, moranth cavalry, mott irregulars, claw...

This is a fantastic idea.

yeah, I like abandoning the DnD generic "rogue", "mage", "warrior" classes for the unique ones in the Malazan Empire.

I wonder if there is an open-source version of the infinity engine out there so that you could just start plopping in artwork and dialogue without coding it from the ground up.

[Clip]

Any Malazan RPG would have to be different from other RPGs in order to deal with the scale of the Malazan world.

The character you play shouldn't be a character from the books, the game should be completely open-ended (like EVE Online). Maybe the characters from the Books are in the game as a background story line, but not set up so that you yourself can change that storyline. But the rest of the world is completely open and can be changed.

Also, the whole "class" mentality of RPGs these days would be too constricting, you should be able to choose where you were born and maybe what race and have a skill set based on that, but where you go from there is up to you and not dependent on your "class".

Oh, and this should be in the Phoenix Inn

[Trotts]

Don't tease me with the prospect of a Malazan game

[Slum]

Definitely, I'd play the shit out of it. Would it necessarily have to be on the Infinity engine, though? What about the KotOR or Jade Empire style RPG? I'd think they'd be more suited to such an extensive world. It would certainly be sweet, but I somehow doubt companies are scrambling to make video games based on novels.

[Sixth Blade]

I would love to play a Malazan game as long as it was done with the same plot as the books. Imagine having a flashback to the Tiste wars or watching Rake and Kilmandanros assail the attempted Shadow usurpers. The Baldur's Gate series were my favorite games.

Also, I would love to see the Malazan story arc on HBO like A Song of Ice and Fire is going to be. HBO does some really good work, and I think that it would need to be a series to do the books justices as the movies would be 10 hours long each.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Slumgullion Spitteler;210123 said:

Definitely, I'd play the shit out of it. Would it necessarily have to be on the Infinity engine, though? What about the KotOR or Jade Empire style RPG? I'd think they'd be more suited to such an extensive world. It would certainly be sweet, but I somehow doubt companies are scrambling to make video games based on novels.

haha, "play the shit out of it" describes my sentiments exactly. And I also agree that it wouldn't likely happen unless it was a homebrew fan-contributed project.

I like the KotOR engine idea, those were the only good LucasArts games as far as I'm concerned. Solid RPGage based on the DnD 3rd Edition rules (with different terminology of course). Those games really brought the jedi world to life and had some pretty good storylines.

I was thinking Infinity engine because it doesn't require any 3D rendering, just solid 2D artwork which I'd think would be a bit easier to come up with. When you boil the infinity engine down, you're just moving a little game sprite around a big painting. Of course I'd love to see the malazan world rendered in the kind of engine that "Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" uses, but I brought up the infinity engine because I figured it would be easier to implement an outdated game engine in a homebrew fan-project.

On that note, is anybody on these forums a software developper that might be able to comment on implementation? Are there any open-source engines that would suit this kind of project?

[Mentalist]

Umm, im not much on RPGs.. but i've eard that Neverwinter NIghts had a wicked Engine for world Building........anyone can give more info on that?

[Tarsonis]

I'd play a Malazan game but DnD ruleset seems really insufficient for a world such as this one.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Tarsonis;210565 said:

I'd play a Malazan game but DnD ruleset seems really insufficient for a world such as this one.

I agree to an extent, the level advancement might seem out-of-place, but the combat would certainly work. It is unlikely with this that you'd be able to truly incorporate SE's magic system at the degree of control mage characters have on Wu. Likely you'd have to set up toolbars for each warren, and have accessible spells under each, much like the fire, ice, (insert elemental school) magic categories in DnD.

kud13;210292 said:

Umm, im not much on RPGs.. but i've eard that Neverwinter NIghts had a wicked Engine for world Building........anyone can give more info on that?

Yep. I looked into that. Its called the aurora toolset and is mainly geared toward developers that want to make mods and addons and expansion packs for the original NWN game, beyond the 2 official expansions. There are now (I think) four official mods that incorporate new maps, characters and all that to the original game. Plus probably 100 other fan projects at various stages of completion.

That said, I'd like to know if it is a true modding program. The game could be as different from the original as counterstrike or Day of Defeat was from half-life. Based on the same graphics engine and basic game physics, but new skins and textures for everything, new maps, new baddies etc.

Whatever you set up would be an adaptation (unless you develop a completely new game). The trick would be to adapt the malazan world convincingly enough that people would like it and play it. That's why I originally suggested the infinity engine..In this, the combat serves to advance the storyline, rather than the storyline being inserted during the breaks in combat like the NWN engine. It allows more liberties to be taken in the adaptation, since somebody playing an IE game isn't probably playing for the stunning graphics and the convincing physics engine. They play for an involved story and strong RPGing.

[Rowan Redwing]

This world is too big and complex for such a game, I personally think it would be more suited to being an MMORPG.

[Lisheo]

Anyone ever play Morrowind? Thats whats needed for the Malazan world. But even more vast.

[cerveza_fiesta]

Rowan Redwing;211136 said:

This world is too big and complex for such a game, I personally think it would be more suited to being an MMORPG.

Something more like World of Warcraft then. That would be pretty much incredible. I'd love that. It would be great to have it very PVP based too...so you could put together hundreds of people on opposing sides and have giant wars (such as letherii vs. Malazans) or smaller battles like a malazan marine unit vs. 7C rebel raiding parties. Very tough to implement and expensive to develop though. It would be good for the masses too, because you can take or leave as much story as you want in MMORPG type games.

EDIT: I'm not talking about modeling the entire of Wu though, Just getting SE to write a choose-your-own-adventure type storyline set in the malazan world, but perhaps not using any of the protagonists from the novels as the in-game playable characters.