Creative Runoff

See? I told you I’d post today.

In the next few posts, I will concentrate on flushing out our Dinosaurian world more. I shall be looking at the cultures of the various races, various political stances, hell, maybe I’ll even draw a map. Of course, it’s also entirely possible that I’ll lose all interest and start talking about something completely different.

So, today I’m going to talk about the various struggles and quest themes that would exist in our wonderful Dinosaur MMORPG. I’m going to start with the Chiros, because I have actual ideas for them.

The major battle the Chiros are currently fighting is against an empire of beings known as the Dromik, based on Dromiceiomimus. This race would basically be the equivalent of the Romans, as the Chiros are the equivalent of the Greeks. Many quests would involve the freeing of Chiros slaves, including a quest line that basically rips off the whole Spartacus thing. Spartacus was such a badass. Too bad he died. Asshole.

Let’s talk about the Orod a bit. The Orod are, as you should know if you’ve read all of my posts on this subject, boring, medieval, castles and wizards, plain-ass, humans. Of course, this means that there’s several nations of them all hating on one another at once. The playable Orod race should probably only be one of these nations, so the others can be used for quests, dungeons, and grind fodder.

Perhaps there should also be a situation in which a player could ally with one of two neutral Orod factions, thus becoming hostile to the other but gaining the perks of one. ‘twould be interesting.

Now I am going to talk about the inclusion of large therapods in our Dinosaur MMORPG. In case you’ve forgotten, therapods are the big, hungry dinosaurs that will eat your face and laugh while doing it. This is basically the role I want them to play in this game: large, violent antagonists. The nastiest would, of course, be the Tyrannosaurus Rex (I don’t care what anyone says about Carcharodontosaurus or Spinosaurus being bigger, T. Rex is infinitely more popular, and that counts for so much more).

I envision the large therapods as the ogres and trolls of the dinosaur world; they would basically be feared by everyone, mostly because they’re really, really big. The tyrannosaurs would probably be collectively referred to as “The Tyrants” by the less large of the races. Of course, the therapods (basically all of them) would have achieved sentience by the time our game occurs; only the large, quadrupedal herbivores would be left stupid.

This would lend tyrannosaurs and large therapods in general to being epic raid encounters. This would seriously kick ass.

I actually have a plan for an epic raid encounter… several, actually. They involve a family of Tyrannosaurs (a father and three sons) who are all subtle references to Slayer albums. Blizzard does shit like this, therefore I should be able to too. I’m not sure what the actual names of these four Tyrannosaurs would be, but they would all have titles. The father would be *something* the Slayer, and his sons would be *something* the Merciless, *something* the Bloodletter, and *something* of the Abyss. Yeah… the sons are all references to Slayer albums. Of course, I’d go even further, because I’m me… for example, *something* the Merciless is going to have an underling named *something* the Tormentor… which is a reference to a song on the album that Mercilessness references.

This is the kind of stuff I spend my time planning.

So, that’s all for today. Next post (probably not tomorrow) shall be more culture stuff, and I think I’ll make a map of the known world. Yeah.

Sorry about not updating for a few days. I have no excuse; I’m just a lazy bastard and that’s the best excuse you’re ever going to get.  And I was grinding past level 69 on my Warrior… I’m level 70 bitches!  Hellz yeah!  Flying mounts are awesome, by the way.  I think I’ll have them in my dinosaur MMORPG.  It will be wonderful.

So, new classes. Having nine classes was unsatisfactory for me. I wanted more. So, I made more. Logic. First off, I would like to announce that the Berserker will now be available to the Chiros. Woot. And I’m taking away their Knights. Take that, Greece.

The first of the new classes is the Seer. The Seer is a class with healing capabilities almost matching that of the Priest, but with more capacity for damage than the Priest. The Seer will also be able to go into a “spirit form” of some sort. This will amplify spell damage dealt and reduce melee damage received, but heavily amplify spell damage received. So, use it while fighting a melee class and hope there isn’t a Wizard sneaking up behind you.

The Seer will be available to the Troodon, the Chiros, the Neimong, the Alvarez, and the Gracilin.

The second new class is the Beastmaster. The Beastmaster is a melee fighter with pretty crappy damage. However, the Beastmaster may tame and train an animal companion to help it beat things into tiny pieces. I like this class idea because it allows us to access dinosaurs that weren’t eligible for player races (i.e., those nasty quadrupeds). Along with the Shifter, it’ll give us some really cool creatures to work with.

The Beastmaster shall be available to the Anserin, the Veloks, the Orod, and the Prenoks.

Those are all the class ideas I have for right now.  I might think of more, and believe me, you’ll be the first to hear about them if I do.

On to general design philosophy.  I am now going to rant about factions, alliances, and things like that.  Feel free to tune out.

So, about factions.  World of Warcraft has factions.  It’s the Horde versus the Alliance.  The Horde is made up of the Orcs, Trolls, Tauren, Forsaken, and Blood Elves.  The Alliance is made up of the Humans, Dwarves, Gnomes, Night Elves, and Draenei.  This works fairly well for World of Warcraft; players of both sides cannot communicate with players of the other side and are automatically hostile to them.

I do not want this in my game.  My game shall be more… free.  Gank whoever you want, group with whoever you want, and do quests for whichever group of people you want.  This means no factions.  Any player of any race can do quests and gain reputation with the other races.  The game lore will have some bearing in what you can do, of course.  For example, Velok players will start at Unfriendly reputation with the Orod, but this may be changed with some hard work.

And that’s all I’m going to rant about for today.  I’m entirely sure I lost some of you with the World of Warcraft references, but whatever.  Tomorrow I’ll do something.  Or something.

Okay, then. In this post, I diagram which races can use which classes, and maybe *attempt* to justify it. Here we go:

First off, we have the Troodon. To the Troodon will be available the classes Stalker, Priest, Wizard, Sorcerer, Battlemage, and Shifter. I didn’t give the Troodon the Knight, the Berserker, or the Paladin because I thought that these classes vaguely conflict with the image of the Troodon as intelligent, sneaky people (berserkers usually aren’t intelligent). Most of these classes fit pretty well, but I’m debating whether or not Battlemage fits.

Next we have the Anserin. I believe the Anserin should have the Knight, Priest, Wizard, Battlemage, and Paladin. I’m seeing the Anserin as vaguely religious here for some reason… dunno. Whatever, it works, and I’ll change it later if I feel unsatisfied with it.

Third is the Chiros. The Chiros should have the Knight, Priest, Wizard, Sorcerer, Battlemage, and Shifter. I’m not sure of the rationalization behind this either, but it seems to fit. Since it’s based on Greekness, there’d logically be classes that involve the seeking of knowledge, such as Wizards and shit. Logic.

Fourth is the Neimong. The Neimong should have Knight, Berserker, Wizard, Sorcerer, and Shifter. Again… a lot of this is vaguely arbitrary.

Now for the Alvarez. The Alvarez have the Stalker, Priest, Sorcerer, and Battlemage. They don’t have the Knight because they’re small, and that plate armor would totally not work for them. Four classes may be too few, but World of Warcraft does it with Gnomes and Tauren, so we can do it too.

The Veloks have Berserker, Stalker, Sorcerer, Battlemage, and Shifter. The Berserker is just a given for the Veloks… nothing screams goth like the flailing swords and screamed profanities.

The Orod have the Knight, Priest, Wizard, Sorcerer, Battlemage, and Paladin. Again, I’m envisioning the Orod as our control race here, so they can’t have anything too wacky.

The Prenoks have Knight, Berserker, Sorcerer, Battlemage and Shifter. I’m noticing that a lot of these races have Battlemage… oh well, that’s their issue. The Prenoks are the sister race to the Veloks, so they need a lot of the same of what the Veloks have. Berserkers are fun.

Finally, we have the Gracilin. The Gracilin have Knight, Priest, Wizard, Battlemage, and Paladin. I’m pretty sure I already used that combination for the Anserin, but whatever. I’ll funk around with it later.

So, that’s what races have what classes. Feel free to argue with me over some of my decisions later. I’m not sure what I’ll do tomorrow… I might post a few more class ideas, and I might also post some basic game design ideas. I’m sure you’ll know by the time you finish reading tomorrow’s post, though, so it’s a moot point anyway.

This post is slightly different than the others, in that I actually have no idea what I’m going to do with it. Classes are hard because I can’t find an obvious way to make them interesting, and have them, like, involve dinosaurs. And stuff.

So I’ll just start ranting and assume a good or two idea will come out of it.

So, first of all, we need to talk about melee classes. We should have a few of these. First of all, we need the boring, plate-wearing, beat-the-crap-out-of-things class. This would be the equivalent to the Warrior in World of Warcraft. Since we’re attempting not to totally rip off World of Warcraft, and also attempting vaguely to parody medieval-ness, we’ll call this the Knight.

Of course, one melee class is not sufficient in any way whatsoever. So, let’s pull some more out of our collective ass. I’m thinking of two more right now. The first one is the Berserker. I want a Berserker because berserkers are bad ass mother fuckers. The basic theme of the Berserker is a melee fighter who focuses on speed and on his opponents dieing painful and horrible deaths.

The WoW equivalent of this is a Fury-spec’d Warrior. The Fury talent tree focuses on anything that happens being good for you. Do you get hit by a critical hit? Great! You deal 25% more damage for a few seconds and 3% of your health gets healed. Do you hit someone else with a critical hit? Sweet! You hit 30% faster for a few seconds. Does someone dodge your attacks? Awesome! Use Overpower (only usable after your target dodges) and, if you have the right talents in the Arms tree, you’re basically guaranteed to get a critical hit. This is what I want for the Berserker: a fast striking melee fighter who, upon getting hit hard or hitting hard, gets pissed. Obviously, he wouldn’t use Plate armor like the Knight, as that would slow him down.

The last pure melee class I have in mind would be based upon the WoW Rogue. It would be called a Stalker, because that’s just more dinosaury (totally a word). It’d basically be able to sneak around, sneak up behind people, and feed them pure ownage through convenient and recently created puncture marks. This class would, in all likelihood, be available only to the carnivorous races, as its roots would be in those races hunting for survival.

Now we need some ranged classes. These are probably going to be various magic classes, as I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of dinosaurs using bows. It just seems kind of silly. I don’t actually play any ranged classes in WoW (I play a Warrior and am also currently leveling a Paladin), so this part is going to be hard for me, especially since most magic classes would probably be based on religion of some sort, and that would require actual work on my part.

Let’s start at the beginning: we need a class that can heal. Okay, then. Let’s have a Priest. They’re religious, therefore they can heal. Logic. They would be ranged, because… uh… they would be ranged. I’m sure there’s a rationalization in there somewhere.

Okay, now we need a magical damage-doing class… let’s have a Wizard. It’ll wear robes and be cool and stuff. Since we need multiple magic damage classes, because they’re by definition pretty damn popular, let’s get ourselves a Sorcerer too. The difference will be that you attain Wizard magic by years of study or something boring like that, and you obtain Sorcerer magic by making a deal with some demon lord… which could lead to some interesting class features. Imagine getting punished by some otherworldly force every time you screwed up. Ouch.

So, we’ve got some ranged classes. I might add more if I feel like it, I’ve got some rough ideas that are, as of yet, not fully formed. Now, let’s get some hybrids up in here. For those of you that don’t know, a Hybrid is a class that combines multiple roles. And example of this in WoW would be the Druid, with the capability to heal, do damage, or tank depending on spec.

For our first hybrid class, let’s have a Battlemage. I’ve always liked the concept of a battlemage: you use magic and then you cut people. Hellz yeah. The Battlemage would probably wear mail, and would have limited magical abilities supplemented by some mad sword skillz.

Our second hybrid class should be able to change shape, because changing shape is seriously pimp. However, it should not be called a Druid, as Druids are a human invention and thus should not have anything to do with our wonderful dinosaurian world. I shall call it the Shifter, for lack of a better word. It shall be able to change into various quadrupedal dinosaurs, in the vein of the WoW Druid. I’m thinking a small Ceratopsian for maximum damage output, a small Ankylosaur for tanking (tanking is taking damage so your group of people wearing cloth doesn’t have to), and perhaps an Ichthyosaur for aquatic travel or something. Probably more than that, but whatever.

The third hybrid should involve healing… the Shifter would be able to heal, but probably not be the best at it. So, for the third hybrid, let’s have some kind of religious warrior. I regret calling it a Paladin (seems like too much of a WoW ripoff) but the only other viable option is Cleric, which doesn’t appeal to me. So… a Paladin. This would be a melee fighter with healing capabilities… that’s pretty much all.

In summary:

Melee Fighters

• Knight
• Berserker
• Stalker

Ranged Fighters

• Priest
• Wizard
• Sorcerer

Hybrid

• Battlemage
• Shifter
• Paladin

This leaves us with nine classes; the same number as World of Warcraft. This is unsatisfactory, so I’ll be thinking of possibilities for another class in the next few days. Tomorrow, however, I’ll post which races can use which classes. It will be wonderful. Farewell for tonight.

Okay, I lied. But it’s 1:00 AM and I’m bored, so I’m going to continue on with the MMORPG concept. Also, it technically IS tomorrow, therefore I didn’t lie anyway. Yeah. This post builds on my previous posts, so read them.

So, I’m going to continue with the various playable races available. So far, we have the Troodon, the Anserin, the Chiros, and the Neimong.

Before I start randomly writing things down, I shall say this: these playable races are not the only sentient species in the world. I’ve chosen representatives of various families of dinosaurs I find interesting. In all probability, the rest of these families also evolved to a state of sentience, and can probably be found in game as NPCs.

So, if we have the Anserin playable in game, we will probably also have NPC questgivers and/or enemies of the races Gallim, Garud, and Deinoch (note that those are just examples). Think of this as how, in World of Warcraft, you can play as Orcs, but you also encounter Fel Orcs, Mag’har Orcs, Mok’nathal, and Half-Draenei.

I think I have about five more playable races in mind, so I’ll start randomly writing down thoughts now.

The Alvarez

The Alvarez are based on the Alvarezsaurus. That article sucks, so here’s the link to the whole family. Alvarezsaurus are really pretty cool, they’re like little insectivorous raptors with only one digit on each hand. I’ll say that again: only one digit on each hand. Weird. The Alvarez would be roughly 6.5 feet long.

I think it’d be really hilarious if, seeing as the word “Alvarez” sounds vaguely Mexican (it kinda is, the Alvarezsaurus is named after Don Gregorio Alvarez, who’s from some dicky country in South America), to have the Alvarez be Mexican. Like… offensively so. Accents and everything. Of course, that’s just my sense of humor, and it’s probably a really bad idea, but I’m okay with that.

The Veloks

The Veloks are based on the Velociraptor. The linking of that article is really hugely superfluous, if you don’t know what a Velociraptor is you’ve been under a rock since 1993. Veloks are roughly 6.5 feet long.

The Veloks should have a very war-like culture., focused on conquering things. Lots of things. I think this for two reasons. One, most people think of violent and vicious killers when they think of Velociraptors. Two, the word “Velok” for some reason makes me think of Klingons. Maybe they should have a gothic culture or something. And I mean goths as in Visigoths and Ostrogoths, not morons in black.

The Orod

The Orod are based on Orodromeus. This is really a fairly boring race, I only include it because we NEED a fairly boring race. Maybe the Orod can be the metaphorical humans of the dinosaur world or something – you know… boring. The Orod are roughly 8 feet long. The Orod have a long-standing feud with the Troodon, stemming from the whole “you kill us and eat us” thing.

The Prenoks

The Prenoks are based on Prenocephale. Due to their name being similar to the Veloks, and also due to them having masses of bone on their head, which is pretty hardcore, it is my considered opinion that the Prenoks should be very warlike as well. Perhaps they inhabit roughly the same area as the Veloks, and historically, the competition between the two has been the only thing preventing either of them from conquering the world.

I like that. Perhaps they are now considering an alliance, an alliance that is heavily alarming to all the other races, who don’t particularly feel like being raped. The Orod could be the most active protestors of the Velok – Prenok alliance. I like this because it could give more depth to the Orod, and they heavily need depth.

The Prenoks are roughly 8 feet in length. They should be led by a Pachycephalosaurus, because Pachycephalosaurus are like awesome condensed into 26 feet of anger. The race of Pachycephalosaurus should be one of those really rare races that are always either bosses or faction leaders. It’ll be great.

The Prenoks should also have a goth-like culture. Perhaps we could play on the Visigoth-Ostrogoth thing with them and the Veloks. Who knowns.

The Gracilin

The Gracilin are based on Graciliceratops. That article sucks the fat one, so I’ll just tell you what a Graciliceratops is. It’s a very early Ceratopsian (those are the ones that include Triceratops), that is bipedal, and shows the evolutionary stage between the bipedal Ornithopods and the early Ceratopsians such as Protoceratops. The Gracilin are roughly 6.5 feet long.

Culture-wise, the Gracilin should be rather pathetic, and unaccustomed to violence. The Gracilin should be shocked whenever any scientist mentions that they have an evolutionary link to such brutal creatures as Triceratops, and thus have a vague distrust for science.

…and that’s all the races. Tomorrow I’ll discuss classes. However, before I go, this nugget of wisdom: Players should be able to ride Ankylosaurs and ram things violently. It will be wonderful.

This post builds upon my previous post, Dinosaur MMORPG I. Read it before you read this.

So. After a day’s worth of hard thought (well… a day’s worth of napping is probably more accurate) I am now going to show you what races will be included in our wonderful dinosaur MMORPG. In size, I’m going to attempt to keep the races from 6-10 feet long. I’ve also decided to keep the races to the Late Cretaceous period, so that earlier races can be expansion pack’d in if necessary.

Note that these are not set in stone, and if I get a really cool idea later on, I’ll fudge it in.

Before I display the various playable races of the Dinosaur MMORPG, I’m going to discuss naming conventions. Having everything end in “saurus” or “raptor” would be silly. Therefore, I’m going to be cutting off the ends of names such as those. Therefore, “Jesusaurus” would become a race known as “The Jesu” while “Muhammiraptor” would become a race known as “The Muhamm”. I might alter the root words somewhat to make it sound less shitty.

So, on to our races:

The Troodon

The Troodon is based on… well, the Troodon. Just in case you don’t know, it’s pronounced Tro-odon. So, please don’t pronounce it True-don, or I’ll have to kill you.

The Troodon are very intelligent (largest brain-to-body ratio of any dinosaur, actually) and thus lend themselves rather well to magic-using classes. They’re also stealthy little buggers, so they could probably use a rogue-like class as well. At roughly 6.5 feet long, they’re on the small end of our playable races.

I’m envisioning the culture of the Troodon in our dinosaur MMORPG (remember, this is a fanasy MMORPG, so all races have to have easily definable cultures – it’s a rule) as very advanced and intelligent, with a small criminal underworld. I considered making them the comic relief race (such as Gnomes are in pretty much any fantasy game ever) but Troodon are just WAY to cool to be doomed to Gnomeness.

The Anserin

The Anserin are based on Anserimimus. There isn’t a picture on that page, so go here for one instead. It’s pretty accurate, although there’s a large possibility Anserimimus had feathers.

At roughly 10 feet long, the Anserin are on the extreme large end of our scale of dinosaur sizeness. The species they are based on is a member of the Ornithomimids, the bird-mimics. These are very, very fast dinosaurs. Thus, the Anserin would probably have some kind of instant speed boost racial ability.

The Chiros

The Chiros are based on Chirostenotes (what’s with all the black and white pictures on Wikipedia? Uggh). They are around 9.5 feet long. If you’re too lazy to click the link, just imagine a bigger Oviraptor. You have to know what an Oviraptor is… right?

Anyway, I envision the Chiros as having a vaguely Greek culture… not really for any reason. Just because. Maybe the word Chiros seems really greek to me. Something like that.

The Neimong

The Neimong are based on Neimongosaurus. Since that Wikipedia article is shorter than a midget that had his legs amputated, I’ll just link you to the Therizinosaur article (the Neimongosaurus are a small type of Therizinosaur). The Therizinosaur are a seriously cool group of dinosaurs. They’re therapods (those are the ones that eat meat) but they appear to have evolved into herbivores. They’re so completely strange that experts aren’t even sure what their lifestyle was like.

The Neimong are around 7.5 feet long. I envision their culture as vaguely asian, for two reasons: One, the word Neimong is totally asian in all ways. Two, what better culture to suit weird dinosaurs than that of the far east?

I’m getting lazy at this point, so this is all you get for today. Tomorrow, I’ll discuss the rest of the races. Yeah.

So, as most of you know, I’m completely addicted to World of Warcraft. Unfortunately, I am also completely addicted to dinosaurs (they’re just so awesome). This combination of addictions has led to what may be my strangest idea ever (well… not really): Dinosaur MMORPG.

Hellz yeah… God, I’m such a dork.

My brain does this kind of thing all the time. I’ll get an idea, and be completely ashamed of myself… and then end up really liking it. It happens every few weeks. I call it the Dorkian Cycle, named after the famed Dutch scientist, Thomas Dork.

Anyway, I think this would be incredibly awesome… it could be your regular swords and sorcery MMORPG… only with dinosaurs. It’d be great… imagine getting ganked by a Velociraptor while you’re farming Saltasaur livers, which for some reason only drop once every several Saltasaur kills because, apparently, the Saltasaurs you’re killing have some major drinking problems.

The reasoning for such a thing existing could be as follows: it occurs in an alternate history in which some dinosaurs managed to evolve to a state of man-like intelligence. Bam. Obviously, it’d have to be several dinosaurs convergently evolving intelligence, so that you could play as multiple races (technically they’d be species, but it’s fantasy so we have to call them races). To keep things simple, it’d be best if we kept the playable races to human-like dinosaurs (relatively small and bipedal) so as to not completely confuse the players. This would limit the playable races to the bipedal Ornithopods, the Pachycephalosauria, and the small Therapods (those are the ones that eat meat).

Since we’d want to steal dinosaurs from all periods of the Mesozoic, we’ll have to fudge a little on the timeline thing. I’m sure we can give an explanation. A wizard probably did it. Damn wizards. Always, you know… doing things.

Apparently, what with becoming intelligent and all, the dinosaurs eventually developed to a Medieval level of technology. So they’ve got swords. How do they hold them? Well, obviously, the swords had been invented to be held by dinosaurs, and therefore, they can hold them. Logic.

The plot potential of a game about dinosaurs is large, and also very giggle-worthy. You could have entire quest lines about some Velociraptor wanting to take control of the pack, but not being strong enough to take on the lead Velociraptor, so he resorts to using you to gain control of the pack.

The potential for parody is also giggle-worthy. We could poke fun at religion by setting up a mock dinosaur religion… and having them believe the earth is only 6000 years old, and hanging any dinosaurs that disagree… it makes me happy inside. Also, we could have a group of dinosaurs that are predicting the apocalypse. The joke here would be that they were right, the dinosaurs did get wiped out.

If we use the small dinosaurs for playable races, the large ones logically lend themselves to being raid bosses. You wouldn’t even have to stretch the truth a bit to get completely epic encounters… I mean, you can’t tell me a huge mass of Alvarezsaurus taking down a huge Tyrannosaur doesn’t sound completely awesome.

Anyway, I’ll be working on this for the next few days. Expect to see a post about the varous choosable races tomorrow.