The book of Krûn.

Naugil · 20th April 2008, 09:50

Hello everyone, while we wait on the awesomeness of Mortal, Darkfall and the other sandboxers, why not have some fun trying to design the ultimate-realistic-medieval-fantasy simulator?

Here you have a my rough vision of the Next next generation MMORPG. The MOW!

Massive Online World design document
- A world without death is dead -

What is a MOW?

It’s the ultimate sandbox.

It all begins with this question: “How to make permanent death playable in an online game?”

The best solution I’ve seen so far is the “family system” (think “Sims with swords”). It’s not perfect. You have to give up on the one main character focus you are use to from other online games. It’s a sacrifice, but it opens up a whole new area of features that previously were impossible to implement without totally ruining the fun.

The world

The world is known as “KRÛN” witch means “dawn after the fall of the immortals”. It is big. I mean really big, in fact, it’s annoyingly big. A full Krûn day is ~72 minutes long and a complete Krûn year takes ~three real life weeks.

Lore and history

The game begins in a post high fantasy world (think the fourth age of middle earth). The eight divine families have left the mortal realm. Elves and dwarves are gone, only ruins remains of their once great civilizations. It’s our job to find out what happened. The world is at peace as there are no preset factions or wars in Krûn, that’s up to the players to start.

Player account

First of all you need to come up with a cool account name. This will be your characters family name and included in everyone’s full name. You can have up to 10 player characters (PC’s) per account.

Let’s say I make “Macleod” as a family name.

Character creation

There are two ways to get new PC’s, they are either created or born.

Created PC’s begin at the age of 15 to 30. Born PC’s begin at the age of zero as infants and are somewhat playable at the age of five. At age of 15 they too are fully playable.

I call my first created male character “Duncan”. Now I cannot choose the exact numbers for his attributes, but I can emphasize some areas at the expense of others. Attributes can be set very high/high/normal/low/very low. If I set strength to very high then I must set another attribute to very low or two others to low.

I want him to be 20 years old at the start. This gives me 15 times to choose what skills he has trained each year and those skills are tied to certain attributes so this also decides what chance they have to get higher.

The family system

This is the key system that makes all the other crazy features possible. Basically it lets you jump between any of your 10 PC’s no matter where they are in the world.

A truly persistent world

Nothing and none ever leaves the world just because you have to log out. They continue doing whatever you told them to do. That can be crafting, training, traveling or something else.

Schedules (Macroing)

Setting your, or others under your command, PC’s on schedules is fully supported and necessary in this game since many things takes long (compared to a standard MMO) time to do. Let the PC’s do the boring stuff so you can have some fun with your friends when you log in.

Races and classes

No elves, dwarves or orcs, just different races of humans. Since interaction between the players is such an important thing in this MOW, it’s not a good idea to divide them in smaller groups.

No classes, you define your PCs’ profession or “class” by the skills you choose to train.

Attributes

There are 10 different stats, ranging from 1-100, that define your PC:

Strength
Endurance
Agility
Dexterity
Senses

Intelligence
Willpower
Charisma
Creativity
Spirit

Skills, levels and experience

Skills range from 0 to 100 and rise by training witch is time consuming. Skill caps and skill decay are not needed because of the ageing and death of your PC.

Levels are not needed. You can use the PCs’ age as a measure of “level”. But since some abilities start to decline with old age it’s not an accurate way to tell who’s a “high level” character.

There are no experience points to gain as there are no traditional NPC quests to complete.

Ageing and death

Every time a PC has a birthday there’s a chance (or risk) his attributes gets higher (or lower), depending on what skills he has been training during that past year.

Eventually every PC will die. This can be from wounds, sickness, poison or just plain old age.

Magic and religion

You cannot choose to have PC with strong magic abilities. Created PC’s can never be mages, only a certain percentage of all born PC’s have the chance to be gifted with high enough spirit. A created person’s spirit ranges from 1 to 10, so everyone have some, if very limited magic abilities. A born person spirit can be anything from 1 up to 100, depending on the parents’ genes. Finding and “trading” the right persons to get a child with a high spirit attribute can be a long term quest for the players.

Magic do not replace common skills or items, so no “summon bread” spells. Magic deals with the mind and environment. Pure magical combat takes place in the spirit world and can be just as fatal as normal combat. At some holy places it’s possible for created or weak spirited persons to enter the spirit world but it’s like sending a child into combat.

There are eight main religions, each devoted to its god or goddess. Some are opposites of each other. For example: the god of order vs. the god of chaos. A PC devoted to order is very uncomfortable in the presence of a follower of chaos. The eight gods are:

The god of light/courage/health
The god of darkness/fear/sickness

The god of order/stability/safety
The goddess of chaos/luck/freedom

The goddess of growth/plants/animals
The god of crafting/building/

The god of water/air
The god of fire/stone

Player driven world

The goal is to make as much as possible up to the players to decide. How big and deep can the “sandbox” be?

Clans and guilds

A clan is a political group, formed by players whose families share the same clan name. Clans can form different kind of governments like city-states or kingdoms.

A guild is a group of PC’s that shares a common interest. It can be a religious order, mercenaries, a trade company or anything the players can think of.

Prestige points (PP)

Every PC you have gains prestige points by doing certain things. Donating money to a city’s common buildings like walls or temples gives you points. Killing a monster that have a player made bounty on its head also gives you points. When a PC die a percentage of his PP goes to the players’ family/account.

These points are used as a political currency in the game. (This idea is a little hazy at the moment, help me)

Politics and citizenship

In a city, for example, there is a distinct difference between a PC that has a civilian status and another PC who has a political status.

A civilian PC lives, works and pays taxes. He has no in-game vote on the city’s policy or planning as he is not a member of the ruling group, but he also doesn’t have to do military duty. If the city is taken by another group he can continue as usual.

A politician is part of the ruling group. He has a vote in the city’s business, but he also has to fight if the city gets into a war. If he is defeated and survives he loses his status and becomes a civilian, if they let him, under the new rulers.

Combat and warfare

No hit points. Wounds are directly applied on attributes.

Defeat without death is an important concept that lets people win a battle without killing the other person. This makes robbery, kidnapping and slavery possible.

Player vs. player (PvP)

PvP can be so much more than just killing and looting each other all day long, but the game must give the player a chance to compete with other tools than pure violence.

Player vs. environment (PvE)

PvE can be so much more than just killing and looting monsters all day. Weather, terrain, hunger and thirst should have severe and in some cases even deadly impact in the game.

Law and crime

The rulers of a community decide what is considered a criminal act and how severe the punishment of that crime is.

Players create safety zones by appointing a house as a military house. Based on the number of guards this house can hold the bigger the zone is. Civilian PC’s in a safety zone cannot be killed or dragged away. They can however be robbed or knocked out. Political and criminal PC’s have no safety zones.

Prison and slavery are fully possible.

The comfort system

This is another key element of a MOW. Its main purpose is to give all those useless items and skills a real in-game meaning. It’s basically a system that shortens the gap between role-players and power-gamers. It’s a measure of how good or bad a PC feels. This “comfort level” works like a positive or negative factor in any thing a PC do.

Crafting and arts

Items made in this game gets different qualities (Q) based on a number of factors.
Like this: Q of raw material + Q of tools + skills and attributes + comfort and environment = Q of item.

The same goes for non material things like songs or ceremonies.

Items

Every single item must have an in-game function. There are no “fluff” or role-playing items.

Economy

The game has a player driven trade economy.

No universal bank. You want a bank? Build a strong house with good locks and hire a guard.

Immersion

First person view only is the goal, but I can see benefits with 3rd person view as well.

No global/general/guild chats. Cell phones just kill the whole medieval feeling for me.

No global map or mini map with gps radar. Maps are made of paper and drawn by the PC’s with the right skills.

Travel

No teleporting or any kind of instant travel. Use your legs, a horse or a boat. Instant travel kills the trade economy and strategic warfare.

Monsters, NPC’s and animals

Monsters are creatures that can use and/or collect items, you know orcs and dragons and so on. They do very little crafting and even less trading. They like to kill and loot PC’s though. They spawn in their favorite terrain at random spots. Weak at first they slowly grow stronger and more skillful. As they are not part of any skill/level/exp system, they don’t have to stand and wait for a PC to kill them.

No human NPC’s what so ever. They are not needed. Offline players PC’s are the new NPC’s.

Animals do their own thing. Unless they are hungry or threatened you have little to fear from them. An animal, like a horse for example, is not an item or a vehicle but a creature with its own attributes and skills.

(to be continued and fleshed out)

Drudley · 27th April 2008, 19:31

For a sandbox there sure are alot of artificial rules/systems or whatever you call em, like the civilian/politician thing and the comfort thing, whatever that is.

Most things should just be made/decided by the players, not programmed code.

F0rd · 28th April 2008, 03:51

I think he used the term "sandbox" metaphorically. The sand was the actual game play and gaming environment, while the artificial developer-made structures were the walls of the sandbox. Otherwise you'd just be playing a "sandpile" game.

Latro · 28th April 2008, 05:05

*beginning edited out due to noticing my poor reading* If it takes 15 years to get a "born" character to full health, and a year is 3 weeks, that's 45 weeks, or almost an entire year in which you basically are not allowed to die. That seems too long for me.

Other than that seems like it might work pretty well. I'm not a fan of permadeath for various reasons, but I don't disagree that it could work, just like full loot can work. The game just has to be designed around a core feature like that.

Naugil · 29th April 2008, 21:34

Ford, thats very well formulated. I cant say it better myself, but that won't stop me from rambling.

Drudley, my vision of a MOW is that the coded systems gives the players as many choices as possible within every set of systems.

Latro, Its not 45 weeks without any risk. Its more like 17 (2 weeks before born plus 15 weeks as an infant) after the age of five the child can be killed from PvE things like animals or severe weather.

All these numbers are of course only suggestions and not set in stone, but I think concrete numbers makes it easier to discuss the whole subject. For example, how long should a game year be? If it goes to fast it will feel like a real time strategy game. If it goes to slow it can become boring when things takes to long time to do. For me two to four weeks feels about right so thats why its three weeks for now.

Character creation and magic and religion sections updated

20th April 2008, 09:50	#1 (permalink)
Naugil Newbie Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	The book of Krûn. Hello everyone, while we wait on the awesomeness of Mortal, Darkfall and the other sandboxers, why not have some fun trying to design the ultimate-realistic-medieval-fantasy simulator? Here you have a my rough vision of the Next next generation MMORPG. The MOW! Massive Online World design document - A world without death is dead - What is a MOW? It’s the ultimate sandbox. It all begins with this question: “How to make permanent death playable in an online game?” The best solution I’ve seen so far is the “family system” (think “Sims with swords”). It’s not perfect. You have to give up on the one main character focus you are use to from other online games. It’s a sacrifice, but it opens up a whole new area of features that previously were impossible to implement without totally ruining the fun. The world The world is known as “KRÛN” witch means “dawn after the fall of the immortals”. It is big. I mean really big, in fact, it’s annoyingly big. A full Krûn day is ~72 minutes long and a complete Krûn year takes ~three real life weeks. Lore and history The game begins in a post high fantasy world (think the fourth age of middle earth). The eight divine families have left the mortal realm. Elves and dwarves are gone, only ruins remains of their once great civilizations. It’s our job to find out what happened. The world is at peace as there are no preset factions or wars in Krûn, that’s up to the players to start. Player account First of all you need to come up with a cool account name. This will be your characters family name and included in everyone’s full name. You can have up to 10 player characters (PC’s) per account. Let’s say I make “Macleod” as a family name. Character creation There are two ways to get new PC’s, they are either created or born. Created PC’s begin at the age of 15 to 30. Born PC’s begin at the age of zero as infants and are somewhat playable at the age of five. At age of 15 they too are fully playable. I call my first created male character “Duncan”. Now I cannot choose the exact numbers for his attributes, but I can emphasize some areas at the expense of others. Attributes can be set very high/high/normal/low/very low. If I set strength to very high then I must set another attribute to very low or two others to low. I want him to be 20 years old at the start. This gives me 15 times to choose what skills he has trained each year and those skills are tied to certain attributes so this also decides what chance they have to get higher. The family system This is the key system that makes all the other crazy features possible. Basically it lets you jump between any of your 10 PC’s no matter where they are in the world. A truly persistent world Nothing and none ever leaves the world just because you have to log out. They continue doing whatever you told them to do. That can be crafting, training, traveling or something else. Schedules (Macroing) Setting your, or others under your command, PC’s on schedules is fully supported and necessary in this game since many things takes long (compared to a standard MMO) time to do. Let the PC’s do the boring stuff so you can have some fun with your friends when you log in. Races and classes No elves, dwarves or orcs, just different races of humans. Since interaction between the players is such an important thing in this MOW, it’s not a good idea to divide them in smaller groups. No classes, you define your PCs’ profession or “class” by the skills you choose to train. Attributes There are 10 different stats, ranging from 1-100, that define your PC: Strength Endurance Agility Dexterity Senses Intelligence Willpower Charisma Creativity Spirit Skills, levels and experience Skills range from 0 to 100 and rise by training witch is time consuming. Skill caps and skill decay are not needed because of the ageing and death of your PC. Levels are not needed. You can use the PCs’ age as a measure of “level”. But since some abilities start to decline with old age it’s not an accurate way to tell who’s a “high level” character. There are no experience points to gain as there are no traditional NPC quests to complete. Ageing and death Every time a PC has a birthday there’s a chance (or risk) his attributes gets higher (or lower), depending on what skills he has been training during that past year. Eventually every PC will die. This can be from wounds, sickness, poison or just plain old age. Magic and religion You cannot choose to have PC with strong magic abilities. Created PC’s can never be mages, only a certain percentage of all born PC’s have the chance to be gifted with high enough spirit. A created person’s spirit ranges from 1 to 10, so everyone have some, if very limited magic abilities. A born person spirit can be anything from 1 up to 100, depending on the parents’ genes. Finding and “trading” the right persons to get a child with a high spirit attribute can be a long term quest for the players. Magic do not replace common skills or items, so no “summon bread” spells. Magic deals with the mind and environment. Pure magical combat takes place in the spirit world and can be just as fatal as normal combat. At some holy places it’s possible for created or weak spirited persons to enter the spirit world but it’s like sending a child into combat. There are eight main religions, each devoted to its god or goddess. Some are opposites of each other. For example: the god of order vs. the god of chaos. A PC devoted to order is very uncomfortable in the presence of a follower of chaos. The eight gods are: The god of light/courage/health The god of darkness/fear/sickness The god of order/stability/safety The goddess of chaos/luck/freedom The goddess of growth/plants/animals The god of crafting/building/ The god of water/air The god of fire/stone Player driven world The goal is to make as much as possible up to the players to decide. How big and deep can the “sandbox” be? Clans and guilds A clan is a political group, formed by players whose families share the same clan name. Clans can form different kind of governments like city-states or kingdoms. A guild is a group of PC’s that shares a common interest. It can be a religious order, mercenaries, a trade company or anything the players can think of. Prestige points (PP) Every PC you have gains prestige points by doing certain things. Donating money to a city’s common buildings like walls or temples gives you points. Killing a monster that have a player made bounty on its head also gives you points. When a PC die a percentage of his PP goes to the players’ family/account. These points are used as a political currency in the game. (This idea is a little hazy at the moment, help me) Politics and citizenship In a city, for example, there is a distinct difference between a PC that has a civilian status and another PC who has a political status. A civilian PC lives, works and pays taxes. He has no in-game vote on the city’s policy or planning as he is not a member of the ruling group, but he also doesn’t have to do military duty. If the city is taken by another group he can continue as usual. A politician is part of the ruling group. He has a vote in the city’s business, but he also has to fight if the city gets into a war. If he is defeated and survives he loses his status and becomes a civilian, if they let him, under the new rulers. Combat and warfare No hit points. Wounds are directly applied on attributes. Defeat without death is an important concept that lets people win a battle without killing the other person. This makes robbery, kidnapping and slavery possible. Player vs. player (PvP) PvP can be so much more than just killing and looting each other all day long, but the game must give the player a chance to compete with other tools than pure violence. Player vs. environment (PvE) PvE can be so much more than just killing and looting monsters all day. Weather, terrain, hunger and thirst should have severe and in some cases even deadly impact in the game. Law and crime The rulers of a community decide what is considered a criminal act and how severe the punishment of that crime is. Players create safety zones by appointing a house as a military house. Based on the number of guards this house can hold the bigger the zone is. Civilian PC’s in a safety zone cannot be killed or dragged away. They can however be robbed or knocked out. Political and criminal PC’s have no safety zones. Prison and slavery are fully possible. The comfort system This is another key element of a MOW. Its main purpose is to give all those useless items and skills a real in-game meaning. It’s basically a system that shortens the gap between role-players and power-gamers. It’s a measure of how good or bad a PC feels. This “comfort level” works like a positive or negative factor in any thing a PC do. Crafting and arts Items made in this game gets different qualities (Q) based on a number of factors. Like this: Q of raw material + Q of tools + skills and attributes + comfort and environment = Q of item. The same goes for non material things like songs or ceremonies. Items Every single item must have an in-game function. There are no “fluff” or role-playing items. Economy The game has a player driven trade economy. No universal bank. You want a bank? Build a strong house with good locks and hire a guard. Immersion First person view only is the goal, but I can see benefits with 3rd person view as well. No global/general/guild chats. Cell phones just kill the whole medieval feeling for me. No global map or mini map with gps radar. Maps are made of paper and drawn by the PC’s with the right skills. Travel No teleporting or any kind of instant travel. Use your legs, a horse or a boat. Instant travel kills the trade economy and strategic warfare. Monsters, NPC’s and animals Monsters are creatures that can use and/or collect items, you know orcs and dragons and so on. They do very little crafting and even less trading. They like to kill and loot PC’s though. They spawn in their favorite terrain at random spots. Weak at first they slowly grow stronger and more skillful. As they are not part of any skill/level/exp system, they don’t have to stand and wait for a PC to kill them. No human NPC’s what so ever. They are not needed. Offline players PC’s are the new NPC’s. Animals do their own thing. Unless they are hungry or threatened you have little to fear from them. An animal, like a horse for example, is not an item or a vehicle but a creature with its own attributes and skills. (to be continued and fleshed out) Last edited by Naugil : 29th April 2008 at 21:40.

28th April 2008, 05:05	#4 (permalink)
Latro Junior Member Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 68 Rep Power: 1	beginning edited out due to noticing my poor reading If it takes 15 years to get a "born" character to full health, and a year is 3 weeks, that's 45 weeks, or almost an entire year in which you basically are not allowed to die. That seems too long for me. Other than that seems like it might work pretty well. I'm not a fan of permadeath for various reasons, but I don't disagree that it could work, just like full loot can work. The game just has to be designed around a core feature like that. __________________ Also known as alfaroverall in forumfall, if you didn't manage to reach that conclusion already.

29th April 2008, 21:34	#5 (permalink)
Naugil Newbie Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 6 Rep Power: 0	Ford, thats very well formulated. I cant say it better myself, but that won't stop me from rambling. Drudley, my vision of a MOW is that the coded systems gives the players as many choices as possible within every set of systems. Latro, Its not 45 weeks without any risk. Its more like 17 (2 weeks before born plus 15 weeks as an infant) after the age of five the child can be killed from PvE things like animals or severe weather. All these numbers are of course only suggestions and not set in stone, but I think concrete numbers makes it easier to discuss the whole subject. For example, how long should a game year be? If it goes to fast it will feel like a real time strategy game. If it goes to slow it can become boring when things takes to long time to do. For me two to four weeks feels about right so thats why its three weeks for now. Character creation and magic and religion sections updated __________________ The book of Krûn - A world without death is dead -

27th April 2008, 19:31	#2 (permalink)
Drudley Newbie Join Date: Apr 2008 Posts: 10 Rep Power: 1	For a sandbox there sure are alot of artificial rules/systems or whatever you call em, like the civilian/politician thing and the comfort thing, whatever that is. Most things should just be made/decided by the players, not programmed code.