I think I am coming to the realization that I am running into the very same obstacle with #Nemaril as I was never able to overcome with #Kaendor in something like 10 years.
All my really good fantasy ideas are about aesthetics. It's all visuals and feels. And those are very calm and chill.
Which would be a great setting for painting. Or even a farming game or a chilled survival game.
But the aesthetic is so conflict averse that it's never getting suited for my kind of RPGs or ImSims.
I do tend towards going with a "no spellcasting" magic system for #Nemaril, though.
With systemic open-world games with mystery and exploration, solid, consistent, and theme-appropriate worldbuilding is particularly important. And a more Conan or Lord of the Rings approach to magic is just much more my natural personal style.
Going against my aesthetic instinct to have additional mechanics to an already complex gameplay system feels like an unnecessary risk.
Both gameplay mechanics and worldbuilding for #Nemaril is coming together nicely, but there's still the big open question where the two intersect.
What are magic spells?
Can NPC sorcerers cast spells? Can the player cast spells?
I'm not a fan of the wave your fingers and shout gibberish and sparkling light comes out to replicate a laser gun or force field in general.
But in a fantasy ImSim, stuff like levitation, invisibility, telekinesis and so on would really expand the gameplay...
My ideas for game mechanics and controls for #Nemaril would allow to have no GUI elements on screen unless you open your inventory or journal. Which seems desirable for an #ImSim to me.
On the other hand, 90s style stone carved GUIs are so petty and evocative...
State machines are a great model to script dynamic NPC behavior.
But are 11 states too much?
I started with just "idle", "guard", "alert", and "engaged" when I began drafting a flowchart.
But now I also got "taunt" and "threaten" before initiating a fight, "evade" when avoiding a fight and "panic" when escaping a fight, "surprised" when being attacked while idle, and "stunned" and "disabled".
Seems easy enough on paper, but there has to be a reason not every game does this already.
I had been stuck for probably a good six months on coming up with a plot idea for a Thief-like Fantasy ImSim that is both reflective of my favorite themes and allows for players to have great freedom creating their own emergent story.
And now there's a sudden landslide of ideas building up into something fantastic very quickly.
I am tempted by the idea to make both gnomes and ogers playable in my fantasy ImSim.
Gnomes are much stealthier than humans and can run in places that humans have to crawl, but are slower, can't climb the higher ledges, and can carry less gear.
Ogers can carry more, are much stronger fighters, and climb and jump better, but aren't as stealthy and can't fit into the tightest spaces.
Fun idea, but could be a really bad design choice that complicates level design and balance a lot.
Today I realized that with me pursuing a high fantasy setting for my stealth heavy game instead of a space opera setting, and doing it in first person instead of third, I have a great opportunity to get creative with monster designs.
I've long been thinking that grimlocks could be quite interesting creatures, and they would be fitting for #Nemaril. A sightless enemy with great hearing and smell could be really interesting and refreshing in a stealth game.
Having successfully fused my recent fantasy worldbuilding project #Darkwind with some of my best ideas from my earlier #ttrpg world #Kaendor into something that I really like, I settled on naming it Nemaril.
I don't think it's a particularly good or interesting name, but I checked and there's nothing like it on the internet already, and it doesn't totally suck.
Which is really everything we can ask for when naming our creations. 😎
And "Shadows over Nemaril" is a cool game title.
A lesson that I made my peace with years ago:
Every fantasy worldbuilding idea I have will inevitably turn into a Frank Frazetta painting.
I can not stop it, and really, why would I want to?
Yora