Roak wrote:
Once i get started.. I keep brainstorming..
- Thought of doubling up runes for increased power.. like slotting
a certain rune twice for additional effect.
- There are about 7-10 dead runes within the list of 45 researchable
runes but perhaps they're runes that are beyond the understanding
of mortals or need to be used in certain areas to trigger. areas of
power
- one of the dead runes opens up a random runemaze which is tuneable to
easy, medium or hard depending on the rune its chanted with and either
an offensive, defensive or neutral style dungeon-maze.
-Creatiion power. Once you've researched enough runes, you can channel
all your mana into random creations. Depending on the amount of runes
researched to 100%. could generate an item, a mob or even a small
area-world.
-Runic research should also give hints that certain runes are more
asociated with certain materials. Like carving an iron will rune out
of Iron produces a better rune than any other material. Also each
rune researched has a better chance of being researched if that
particular material is investigated.
-Forbidden runes- Runes are creation power and the building blocks for
making the world but creatures are outside of that. A new and forbidden
area of research is killing mobs and finding rare bone runes within the
dead. Soul runes?
-Accessing other worlds might also give opportunity for finding runes
this world hasn't seen. I imagine there are certain methods in the game
for accessing these.
All i have for now.
submitted for your entertainment.
I love runemage, but I agree that once the initial quest is done, there isn't
terribly much to continue with, unfortunately, it seems...
I like some of the ideas you have here. Some, like doubling runes, or using
special runes for spell effects, are practical extensions for a good min-maxer,
and so add attractive mechanics. Mechanics like that are useful for attracting
players. We have 10 dead runes to work with, for example. Lets figure out
some neat things to do with them!
The other thing, things I like more, are the flavor to really explore or do.
For example, I'll run with your idea of opening worlds. And some other things,
some of which you mentioned or expounding on what was mentioned.
So to that end, I'm going to pop my own ideas here. You explore your runes,
and 10 of them are dead. Not because the gods sought not to use them, but
because they have faded from reality with time. But... You can revive them!
The runemages could have some special quests of sorts to 'revive' dead runes.
Some could be solo quests, some require a party - and for those requiring a
party, there could be benefits to party members as well to joining them.
The quests could involve entering the realm of the lost, by a portal of their
own make. The realm in question is a dystopian world of dead forests and
fallen civilizations, creatures varied and tentacled, horrors morphed by years
of magical influence, and persons and places lost and forgotten, unused
material the gods have discarded with each creation. A wordly garbage dump of
all those things too absurd, or too horrid, for reality. And some say, of some
of the old gods themselves, sealed by their bretheren for one nasty reason or
another.
This portal could be randomly generated, and require some special task to
figure out the sequence of the runes for opening the portal. These could be
all sorts of things, like chess puzzles, sudoku, or just seeking out particular
legendary locations (special explore rooms) prized by the gods who are often
proud of their creations.
Hints could be like:
'You think that 'amalenapop' (or whatever your rune may be) is a noun.
'You think that 'breplopterix' is the subject of a sentence, and does not come
first'.
'You think that 'prepollopssptic' is a verb, chanted commandingly'.
And the result of those sorts of puzzles could be ausret prepollopssptic
amalenapop pritingskit breplopterix
And that could be the first portal. Then, one is able to enter the realm of
the lost with or without companions. This portal would bring them to some
challenge, some creature or puzzle they must overcome. It could even be
interactive, like a chess match and when a character reaches the puzzle they
and their allies must, on the board, play chess against an old god, except that
each time one or the other captures a piece, the piece, variable horrors,
actually attack the party. Or something crazy like that. It would have to be
an event, though, to make sure proper wizzes were on.
Additionally, other more regular runes could be used to generate specialized
worlds. Add the rune for fire, and you get a fire world. Add a rune for
invisibility, and you get a world where duplicates of everything exist, much
like the real world but filled with the usual horrors (see The Upside Down in
the netflix original Stranger Things). Add a rune for weak power and you get a
weak world, or maybe one you can only enter alone, but add the rune for great
power and you get a powerful place, or for multiple people to be able to bring
multiple people there.
And in the end, one discovers the errors that have seeped into the runes, into
the code of the world, to cause dead runes to become dead runes. And learning
these, they repair and revive one of them, at least for their own use. And
that rune allows them to open ever more intricate worlds, as well as now having
a meaning in and of itself (like being a descriptor that, when added to the end
of any chant, changes the effect, as roak suggested).
Some worlds could be mazes, where there is little rhyme or reason to
directionality, space being twisted beyond reason. Navigation would be crazy,
and one would need to learn by trial and error each time, though there would be
stops along the way where they could 'mark zone' so that once they've overcome
one zone, they can always return to that zone and move forward from there.
Perhaps there could be some special puzzle to this.
Some worlds could be wastelands, regions so vast they are unending. Or themed,
like the mentioned fire worlds and such.
Some worlds could be akin to the cow world of Diablo, where an unending stream
of creatures beset all, but these creatures get ever more powerful with each,
as they consume the lives of those that came before them.
There could be, as mentioned, an 'upside down', where absolutely every area of
the mud is duplicated but where none of the regular creatures exist, instead
being populated by its own ecology of horrors. Every individual's upside down
could be different, so exploring the highest highbie areas might give naught
but newbie monsters, but one's newbie areas could as likely be populated by
tentacled demigods, and a group of explorers would not know if they are going
to enter the hundred acre wood to find a few gelatinous blobs (and the
alchemist can happily harvest tendrils), or the black goat of the woods and her
thousand young (Be. Ware.). Whole parties would get together to explore these
realms, and there could be unique things found there to make it worthwhile.
That's one idea.
Also, the dead runes could be, instead of powered up all at once, powered up
over time by completing more tasks or distance in worlds or such. Like
releasing demigods in an up-side down, killing creatures in a cow world,
completing areas in maze worlds and finding the rune fragments therein, etc.
Then there's what one does with the dead runes themselves. Here's some ideas.
1. One of the runes can be part of a spell that binds creatures from these lost
realms above. The spell must be cast on the creature, and the individual
runestone is then permanently bound with that one creature until it is used up.
Then, a spell can be cast to temporarily summon that creature from its realm
to ours to fight by their side, for a few rounds, or a few minutes. But once
that runestone is used up, that ability to call that creature is lost, and one
will have to go get more creatures. Each runestone scribed with rune can bind
only one creature, and once bound is only that one creature. And the creature
is an actual creature, so if it is killed, it disappears, and the runestone
either breaks, or loses some large amount of charge, or simply becomes an
unbound runestone.
2. The rune could have various effects, like being an adjective at the end of a
chant. This is similar to what Roak is suggesting. For example, one could be
'speed'. Adding it to the chant can speed the chant up by a round, but it
still takes a runestone slot and is used up a little just like any other each
time it is used. One could be Parvo (Power) and could increase the power, at
an expense of itself (and perhaps at higher SP cost). One could be 'effect',
and cause some effect based on the spell, like catching on fire for fire
spells, or stunning with cold spells, etc. One could be time, extending the
duration of spells. One could be steadily used up to decrease the SP cost of
the spells.
3. Several of the runes could give spells that do abilities, off of some list.
Like alchemist, but instead of there being a set number of things (197), it
could be a lower number, and you don't know what you're going to get. For
example, 3 runes, and 27 total abilities (3x3x3), from some list of 100, and
it's the same over reincs, only rebirth can change them. And they might vary
from all over, from tiger abilities to druid abilities.
4. There could be unique spells, that only the runemage gets, and only by
reviving their specific runes. There could even be a long list of possible
spells, and each runemage gets some small subset of this list even when they
have gotten all their spells. And it could be different only by rebirth. This
makes for flavor that would actually require lots of runemages joining the
guild and completing to be able to even get a good sampling of, like if there's
100 unique spells but the runemage only gets up to 6 or 10 or 24 of them. The
kicker, however, it that unlike one's individual runes, these runes are
hard-coded in their name, so that these can be traded between runemages. This
flavor increases dependence of runemages on each other, because if there's many
unique runes and spells from them, and each runemage gets some subset of them,
they must seek each other out and make runestones for each other, buying or
trading.
5. A special runestone that is chanted alone, or a group of 3, that is
something between liberator's ghost slash and mage's prismatic burst. It
drains a little bit of everything from one's runestones. The total number of
runestones determines the overall power. The effects are all manifest at once.
Each elemental runestone adds an elemental damage component. Healing adds
healing. Invisibility adds a blurring effect. Etc. Burst effects give a
chance of it being a burst, while power effects increase power depending on
their power. And it all is manifest all at once. POW! Dazzle! Shazam! Or
maybe this could be a proxy runestone. If chanted before any other chant, it
conserves the runestones in the chant, using its own charge, and perhaps its
own quality, for the spell. Or a mimicry runestone whose very nature is to be
fungible, and a chant with it would specify what runestone its supposed to be
put in for in some way.
6. Some mercantile crossover, since runemage-merch is already a pretty nice
combination, with the ability to take an item and put a spell on it, sort of
either autoprots, or autospells. For example, there could be 4. Trigger on
hit (for weapons), trigger on getting hit (for armour), trigger on use
(creating the equivalent of wands), trigger on activate (for more willful
activation). To do it, one would require having runestones of each of the
runes to be scribed, including the special runestone. For example, the 3 runes
for magic missile, plus the rune for trigger on hit (for weapons). Then,
thereafter, the weapon will very rarely, on hit, cast magic missile and the
power and charge will be as if cast from the runestones that were used to make
it, though the charges are limited and it will eventually be used up. Also,
there could be some strain involved, with higher power spells having some
probability of damaging the item they are on. Another way this could be done,
is using the rune to add only a single use of the spell. Basically, the person
would use runescribing, and scribe the 3 spell runes plus the binding rune, and
at the end of the runescribing would cast the spell itself, thus binding that
casting to the item in question. This would not survive boot, but could
thereafter be used during that boot to cast the spell one time spontaneously.
There would be stipulations, like, for cast on hit, the combat would have had
to be going on for the duration of the spell, or the wearer would have to cast
the spell itself so the duration still is limited.
Many of the above play on the idea that, since they are using a more versatile
and more universally integral mode for casting spells, they have more leeway in
what they can do to those spells, readjusting and tinkering and fiddling with
them. Among other functions.