Game Idea: REAPER

I have had a few ideas floating in my head about what I wanted to do for my game concept. I know that for certain I wanted something that had a strong narrative and was highly immersive. After all, one of my main passions is Dungeons and Dragons. It is because of this that I have chosen to do the following:

REAPER

Hagoroth cleansed the lands of evil during the orc invasions. Gamari purged evil magic from the cities by starting the Serenity Revolution. You are their child. All grown up, you had decided to leave the lavish and wealth that was brought to your family and leave the thrill of adventuring to start a life as a simple common farmer. Having started a family of your own, you have settled into the Kiltoa province, one of the provinces your father cleansed. The land has been at peace for three and a half decades.

Having finished a long day of harvesting, you were just about to fall asleep as a rattling in the tool shed woke you up…

This is the story I thought of for my story. Similar to Dungeon Siege, it had a story of the humbled unlikely hero rising to his or her true destiny. I was able to test this story with six gamers and rpg fans. Some either really liked the story or thought it was alright. I decided to further develop it and test more of the plot I had developed.

You decide to go and investigate. You grab a lantern and a club to take with you. Rats from time to time have been known to eat and chew on things they are not suppose to.

Most of the users expected to encounter trouble while one particular individual expected to find child crying with a very well developed narrative regarding the child rather than the survival story I had originally intended.

When you arrive at the tool shed, you hear growling sounds and high pitched grunting. When you open the door, you are surprised to see two small green goblins looking and stealing your tools. Goblins haven’t been seen near this area in more than 20 years, you think to yourself…

When brought to this point of the story everyone was looking for a new weapon and reacted either with caution or with blood lust.

One of the questions I had asked that I was most intrigued about was "after your encounter with the goblins, if you heard screaming from in the house, what would you do?" All answered with "investigate."

The major flaw with this game concept is that it would only appeal to a very specific kind of gamer, the strictly Role Player. As rare as it is to find, I know a market exists for it. However, I feel this may have to develop into a personal project rather than an academic project.