Story/Intro for a new RMXP project - suggestions/critique needed...

[ShawnBaxe]

I am currently in the process of developing an introduction for my current project. It is a scroll text.

Here it is:

Spoiler

It was a time of darkness. Emperor Anon's
reign of chaos ravaged the world. Wars,
famines and greed slowly divided mankind.


The High Elven tried to smoothen the
conflicts, but soon had to flee from those
they were trying to help...


Brothers became bitter foes and the world
was populated with gruesome monsters,
which now left their subsurface habitats
to take over the world...


They were defeated, but still mankind
fought brother against brother...


The Gods saw all that, but couldn't
interfere. They started to cry about the
waste of life and the lack of humanity...


Each of them cried one crystal tear, which
fell to the ground. The Divine Tears were
filled with magical power...


Scattered all over the world, the last
Mages of Light retrieved them. The Divine
Tears used by those Mages eventually broke
the dark spell of Emperor Anon...


Mankind was saved and the Mages, aware of
the enormous magical power the Divine
Tears had, sealed them in hidden caverns
scattered all over the world.


1000 years have passed since...


The prophecy says, that the Divine Tears
will be needed, in dark times, when evil
is going to rise again...


It is said, that only the combined magical
power of all 7 crystals can banish the
dark ones again...


Only a mortal can unite the Divine Tears
and with the power of a god, he will
strike the Lord of Darkness once and for
all, so the evil ones will vanish...

What do you think about it? Any suggestions? Did I make proper use of the English language (it's not my native language)? Any help is appreciated.

I'm not much of a story writer, so this is my first attempt on creating an interesting (?) story. I tried to avoid things like "The crystals fell down from the sky without any warning" etc. cause I think it's much better to wrap a story around things and of course there should be a reason for the crystals to even exist.
But I am not sure if this is an interesting story or something...so tell me your opinion, please :D

Thanks in advance.

 

[Venetia]

That sounds like the plot from Zelda: A Link to the Past.

If a custom-made RPG has any of these keywords, I won't touch it with a 10-foot pole:

- Elf/Elven
- Crystals
- Evil/Dark Spell
- [Special] High Mage

And that story has the lot of them. It sounds rather played-out.

I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound harsh. I'm sure someone'd like it, after all it's cliche because everyone wants to do it/has done it.

And anyway it's your hobby man, unless you're looking to sell the thing it really doesn't matter if it's cliche, as long as it's fresh to you.

 

[ShawnBaxe]

Hmm...then I better start writing a better plot. My game isn't a commercial project, but I want an original story. Thanks for pointing me into that direction

Btw. I never played any Zelda game xD

What I want is that the player has a reason to play my game...it must be a fun game of course, but it also has to "bind" the player with an interesting story that keeps the player's motivation on the highest possible level.

 

[Tassadar]

In that case, follow the same path many anime series go. School! It has proven to work for anime series, so why would it not work for a rpg? It steps out of the box: No leveling up, unless you would have to make tests (which people do not like, so just stay away from that) and something different from the usual idea: Fight monsters and kill the big bad boss. Instead you would have things like sneak into your school without getting caught, just because you are late. It would provide people with a different experience and, of course, has a high chance of success.

Well... should you go with this idea, keep in mind: Do not make your game similiar to specific anime series. Instead, have a look at how the plot unfolds in certain series, and then create a story of your own. Some of the best examples would probably be:

I, My, Me! Strawberry Eggs
Ichigo 100%
Great Teacher Onizuka
Tokimeki Memorial Only Love

Have fun!

 

[Venetia]

I'm sorry, Tassadar, I usually like your ideas, but no, PLEASE, don't make it about highschool. Highschool-based animes annoy me to no end and there have been plenty highschool-based games before, just mostly in Japan and not ported to other countries so much. The only highschool-based anime which I really liked was Ranma 1/2, and even then it wasn't about being in highschool so much as it was about transgender issues :'P.

TBH, everything's been done before. There's no way to be 100% different. The key is to find a nice balance between the cliche and the unique. And teens always seem to want to stray into moody and melodramatic territories with their games (I guess because they are), but stray from that, too.

If you wanted to be really unique, you'd make it starring an old woman going to the grocery store after the apocalpse has turned the worlds' children into mushroom zombies.

But see while that sounds rather funny I doubt it'd make a good RPG. Unique doesn't necessarily mean good.

Ways you could be unique:

~ Make the main character female.
~ Make the main character or most/all of the characters adults, even going into their thirties and forties.
~ Make no love interest at all.
~ Make there be a love interest, but you actually marry them or get them in the sack instead of just having sexual tension the whole time and giving them a peck at the end.
~ Make the main character already married to someone in the party.
~ Make the main character die halfway through.
~ Make the main character have a kid, or already be a parent when the story starts.
~ Make the main villain a large group or society with no one person as the big baddie.
~ Make the main villain a monster instead of a person. And what if they couldn't talk English?! A dragon or something could be intelligent enough to form convoluted schemes without being able to speak the language.
~ Make everything based on a single island instead of the whole world.
~ Make the main plot involve only the main character and not the whole world. (i.e. He'll die if he doesn't win--the world's not gonna blow up)
~ Make everyone in the party family members, and someone has disgraced the family (I'm not saying mafia, there are powerful families outside the mob)
~ Make the main society monsters instead of people. Or monsters against people and the people are the bad ones.
~ Make the main character NOT human.
~ Set the story in the Old West.
~ Set the story in Atlantis.
~ Set the story in ancient times.
~ Make it so there's no magic.
~ Make guns the best and most powerful weapons.
~ Have the main character use something other than a sword.
~ No collecting crap to save the day.
~ Nobody royal in the party.


I could go on and on forever. These are just a whole lot of slightly unique ideas that'd make your story not so run-of-the-mill. Crystals and elves and mages are fun in Middle Earth, but not everyone is Tolkien and you can only see it so many times before you want to stab yourself in the eye with a fork X'D.

Hope that helps! :')

 

[Tassadar]

It's true most things have been done before, but trying to come up with something 'semi' original is always worth the effort... if you are willing to execute that idea. While you give some general tips, I like to pick a certain subject and start working around that. Then again, the only reason why I started writing about a high-school game is because it is currently one of my side-projects. Things like this can really get the best out of yourself. With this side-project, I made 100 charsets and 2 tilesets, and even started to learn how to script. After that, I looked at some manga-drawing tutorials, and decided to draw some myself. Heck, I made my first manga-styled head yesterday! Things like this take some time to learn, but as long as you are having fun, it does not matter.

My point is, it is very difficult to make something unique, but if you do come up with an idea, be sure to test it; it might just be the thing you needed to become better at making games, be it mapping, scripting, spriting or whatever. As long as you are having fun, it's never wrong to try out some ideas. Cheers!

 

[Danton Lavergne]

Okay, cool. But that is way too much scroll text. When people want to play video games, they generally want to actually play video games, not read a book.

http://rpgmaker.net/articles/9/