A Little about Deathlord and a Bunch of Thoughts on a Mistborn RPG

The party battles a large group in some ruins.

      

Ugh. Despite being "off" for the entire month, I'm having the worst time making progress with Deathlord. I never give up and look at online maps this early in a game, but with this one I've been tempted so many times that I keep forcing myself to stop playing rather than spoil the game.

What commenters told me about training was true. A few more combats and everyone had his "+". I headed back to Tokugawa, which had the only training center I'd found, and leveled everyone up. It just about doubled their hit points, but my mages only started with 2, so they remain pushovers compared to their fighter colleagues.

      

Leveling up in the training hall.

       

I resumed my systematic exploration of the continent, focusing on the interior this time. During my travels I again came upon the ruins of Wakuzi, which is supposed to have pirate treasure, and decided to explore it fully. This didn't take long, but I'm sure I missed a lot, considering I never found any pirate treasure. The western edge was all water. I don't know if you can bring boats into dungeons, but if so, perhaps there's more to find across the water (it will be a long time before I have the Level-6 water-walking spell). There were also some poison squares that I declined to cross because just a few steps kills my spellcasters.

An NPC standing by a wall said "pay up!" I consulted the manual and saw that I could bribe such NPCs with one of the "orate" subcommands. I think I've missed such opportunities in other places. I gave him 20 gold and he told me that the pirates' treasure would be found in the "caves under the town." But I never found a way to those caves, so again perhaps the entrance is beyond the water or poison.

     

How much more for directions to those caves?

   

Outside, day had turned to night again. The exploration window becomes so small at night that the manual just encourages you to sleep until morning. It's a good idea anyway. Hit points and spell points regenerate at a rate of about 1 every 70 moves, or about every 25 game minutes. I've been able to make it through most days with that slow regeneration, bolstered by castings of my one "heal" spell. But by the end of the day, I'm usually at the end of my resources, and a restorative night's sleep is the best approach. My food still continues to deplete at a slow rate--I'm on about 88 of my original 100 meals.

 

Pitching camp for the night.

      

After exploring the interior of the entire continent, I had only found one "new" location: a dungeon in the eastern part of the island. (I might have missed something, though.) The two-level dungeon was full of zombies, skeletons, ghouls (who can paralyze, a reload condition since I have no spell to cure it and it never wears off), harpies, gremlins (who can summon other gremlins), kobitos, and something called "stonebrows," which are hard to hit but die easily. I confirmed that monsters do re-spawn in dungeons. 

     

"Stonebrows" sensibly look like stone creatures with large brows.

     

The levels were large enough but had no special encounters or treasures. As usual, I felt like I must have missed something, but I did test every wall square and search each one for secret doors. I'm hoping it isn't the case that I need to search each wall square multiple times for secret doors. That might be a deal-breaker. In any event, when I left the dungeon, "+"-es were starting to appear next to the characters' names again, so it was time well-spent.

     

I repeated this process on every wall square.

     

At this point, I basically decided it was time to start over, systematically explore every inch of the towns and dungeons, and re-engage each NPC with the full range of dialogue options. I still don't know about mapping. The game manual suggests mapping on graph paper and insists that each dungeon level will fit on a standard 8.5 x 11 sheet. This may be true of dungeons, but I'm skeptical that it's true of towns, which seem a lot larger. 

I did find several secret doors in Kawa, but they all just led to unproductive dialogues with guards.

     

I suppose he could be blocking yet another secret door, but this doesn't seem like the kind of game where you kill innocent guards just to find secret doors.

        

I also smashed my way into a graveyard, and then to a small area beyond with graves surrounding some kind of mausoleum, but I couldn't find anything to do there.

       

This seems like a location that ought to have some purpose.

     

Since I'm basically starting over in my exploration efforts, I might punt Deathlord a little later on the list and focus on something that lets me achieve more momentum. I don't really like the game, but it's a bit too early to call it quits. I haven't really accomplished anything yet.

Time so far: 13 hours

*****

      

Since this post is so short, let me talk about something else that's been occupying my attention this week: how you might make an RPG out of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn setting. I've been re-reading through all 7 books in the series and I've become obsessed with how good an RPG it would make, particularly if the game was set in between the original trilogy and the more recent "Wax & Wayne" series. I particularly like the idea of playing it with guns, so I suppose it would have to be closer to the latter.

If you're not familiar with the setting, the series uses an ingenious magic system based on metals. The original trilogy only has 10 metals, but by the latter books, the characters have discovered 16. The magic-using characters, called "allomancers," swallow metals and "burn" them to achieve various magical effects, including being able to push or pull against a metal object, strengthen their own bodies or senses, inflame or soothe emotions, and predict an opponent's moves in combat. The pushing-and-pulling mechanic is perhaps the most detailed of the powers. Sanderson pairs the magic with realistic physics: You can only push directly away from you or pull directly towards you. If you push against something heavier than yourself, you go flying backwards; something lighter, and it goes flying backwards. The characters in the novels use these powers somewhat like Magneto, shooting metal objects at enemies, sending armored opponents flying off castle ramparts, deflecting bullets, or imparting additional force to their own bullets.

Much is made of the allomancer's ability to essentially fly using his push-and-pull powers. They use all the accoutrements of cities--nails in doors, window latches, lamp poles, and so forth--to launch themselves high into the air and fly over the streets. When they lack an obvious object to push against, they drop coins or bullet casings on the ground and use those.

I'm not a huge fan of action RPGs, but I don't see how you'd make this one fun without an action approach. I figure a Dishonored-style interface would work well. You'd have to have a meter for each metal, which deplete depending on the speed at which you use the associated powers. You'd pick the powers themselves from a wheel on a console or function keys on a keyboard. Pushing and pulling would be so common that you'd have map those to easily-accessible controls--perhaps the two triggers on a console or the two CTRL keys on a keyboard.

You'd have to use some kind of highlighting system to determine the metal object against which you're pushing or pulling, as well as available metal objects in the area. A simple mouse approach would handle that on the PC; on a console, you'd have to combine looking with the left stick with perhaps a "cycling" approach using the arrow pad. Either way, you'd have to give the player the ability to pause the action to fine-tune the selection of the metal object. Perhaps you'd do this in a VATS-style interface in which the action kept going, albeit slowly.

What I haven't decided is how you'd handle the acquisition of allomantic powers. In the books, characters are either "mistings," with one power, or "mistborn," with all of them. Mistborn acquire their powers by "snapping," and then they get them all at once. But for a classic RPG approach, you'd have to make the character earn his powers through experience and leveling. While this isn't supported by the novels, you could come up with some plot device that makes it necessary for the RPG protagonist. Levels would also impart health and perhaps the ability to burn metals more efficiently so they'd last longer.

I also don't know how you'd handle atium and the "atium shadows" that it produces, showing which actions an enemy is likely to take next, allowing you to fine-tune your own attacks. But if you set the game after the original trilogy, I think all the atium is gone (sorry--spoilers), so perhaps it's a non-issue. Gold and electrum wouldn't be very useful in-game but might serve at various plot points.

What really excites me is how you'd incorporate feruchemy and hemalurgy into the game. Feruchemy is another magic system by which the character stores attributes--speed, healing, strength, weight, and so forth--in pieces of metal and then draws upon them later. The neat thing about the system is that the character has to purposefully weaken himself in order to store attributes. To be able to move at double speed for a few minutes, he has to move at half-speed for a few hours first. Imagine how cool that would be in an RPG. You have to spend a few game hours walking around at half-health to store up healing abilities for later. You have to suffer with an encumbrance of only 50 pounds for a few hours so that later you can jack up the encumbrance to 400 pounds for a while. There would be a lot of tactics associated with this trade-off.

Hemalurgy, meanwhile, basically allows the allomancer to "steal" the allomantic powers of another allomancer by killing him with a metal spike and then driving that spike into himself. It's considered an evil power, and thus it would give evil characters a way to acquire powers without having to level.

There are a lot of ways you could take the plot. There are something like 300 years between the two sets of novels, so you could envision plenty of adventures during that period as the new world finds its legs, as cities grow and pioneers begin populating the "roughs." It's too bad that you wouldn't see the ashmounts and ashfall, but perhaps there could be mechanisms for "flashing back" to the time of the original trilogy. Ironeyes, Harmony, and some other obvious characters would appear as NPCs. Enemies would be tough since Sanderson doesn't really put any "monsters" into his setting, except perhaps the koloss. I think they would mostly be other allomancers, and you'd have to study their powers to figure out how to defeat them. Or maybe the plot could involve the kandra taking various bestial forms. Maybe you could play as a kandra, swapping out various "blessings" as needed--that could be really cool. (I've long since lost people who haven't read the novels.)

Whether they take my advice or not, some developer really needs to get moving and make this. After Downfall, of course.