Soon after I discovered ARPGs around a decade ago, I started to think about making my own. This seems to be a common sentiment. And it's logical. After all, ARPG players often love creating things.

Since then, I've done tons of research, mostly by looking at ARPGs, but also games outside the realm of ARPG, focusing on their mechanics.

This year I actually started working on coding the base for my game. I'll talk about detailed plans for implementation in future posts.

But first I'd like to share the underlying ideas and design guidelines that I'm trying to follow in developing this ARPG.

Abstract - What is Earthen Song?

In Earthen Song, players create characters that then go on to live in a collaboratively designed and evolving world full of strange beasts, technological progress and magical power. They will form relationships with other characters, build their reputation, and create a life of the player's own choosing.

The game encourages personal story arcs, while also letting the players influence the world's story.

The game is a mix between Art RPG, (journaling) Tabletop RPG, Farming/Life Sims and Deckbuilding Cardgames.

The implementation takes advantage of automation to keep management overhead as low as possible, letting players focus on immersing themselves in the game as well as minimizing staff required to run the game.

There you have it. Sounds fun, right, but also not distinguished from the pitch of many of the ARPGs already out there.  So let's get into detail of what I'm trying to build here.


Core Mechanic: Adventure Stories
I'm aiming for a mechanic that promotes creating individual, connected stories. Many people do this with their ARPG creatures already, and that's great. I personally want it gamified, as well.
In ES this mechanic will take the place of classic ARPG activities, specific repeating prompts as well as associative prompts. The classic mechanics might still exist, but they won't be the central gameplay.

This is probably the most important part of this project, and has also been very hard for me to figure out. What I'm currently working on is basically a somewhat random order of prompts with a range of results to them. The prompts aim to hit a sweet spot between specific and abstract. The player combines these with previously defined attributes of their character. The goals is to encourage a narrative to emerge by sparking the player's creativity and using the human brain's love for stories and patterns.

Players will likely be able to pick a mission for the story to help give it direction.


Art Requirements and Rewards
In principle, I'm aiming for very low requirements with appropriate rewards for exceeding them. The goal is to make it worthwhile to make high quality pieces whilst also allowing non-refined exploration of techniques as well as plain recreational pieces of any quality.


Items
The aim is to reduce useless item piles as much as possible. Rewards will likely involve being able to pick and choose from a selection of items. There are plans to create a customizable crafting system that allows players to create their own crafting recipes.


Did you say Card Game??
Character attributes and items are represented as trading cards with lots of customization options. They'll have narrative implications as well as mechanical impact on your results.


Streamlining: automation, judging, rules
I'm aiming for a smooth experience that really lets players spend their time with the game creating, as well as appreciating the creations of others.
Many ARPGs have their own websites by now, reducing overhead for players compared to comment/journal tracking systems, so I'm sure most people in the community already know the value of automation.
For judging of pieces and designs I want to try out a peer-based system, where other players review submissions and get rewarded for doing it. There will still be cases when admins will need to step in and give a final ruling, but I expect that it won't be necessary most of the time. Players will be aided in this by an intuitive interface that takes them through the necessary steps.
Speaking of intuitive interfaces taking players through steps, those will also be in place for the game play itself to minimize the need to read walls of rule-text. (So, much unlike this wall of text ;D)


Creatures
There will be breedable creatures of different species, with genetics. Breeding will let players choose what they get to some degree, if they like.
The main characters will probably be player created humanoids or anthros with the option for a feral form.


Did I forget something? Probably. Come back for more information soon(-ish) :)