Is magical middle ages / D&D ish lore boring? I am in the midst of developing an action dungeon crawler, and at First I thought Sword and sorcery is the setting I wanted, but I'm beginning to feel like its trite. The alternatives is converting it to a Shadowrun/mass effect loreish game where magic is technology. I was semi interested in current gen tech and magic but that seems way to Edgy.
tl;dr Theme for an action dungeon crawling game. is Sword an Sorcery Tired
>inb4 show content, I can't atm, I'm at a different computer. Plus its all Cubes and spheres because I'm a programmer, not an artist. Gameplay first
>inb4 OP can't >inb4
>>330581232
Yes.
I would definitely play sci-fi game over a fantasy game. That's just my tastes though.
>>330581232
Try making something new. Mix up the settings.
Dune (the book) is set in the future, real into the fucking future, but it has some medieval shit slapped into it. It feels fresh.
Genres are not boring, implementations are.
So my combat works as follows
Take turns moving/doing actions like valkyria chronicals but you can interact with a large number of objects. When you get attacked you have a chance to defend/block/doge with a reaction in slowmo.
My concern about jumping away from sword and sorcery is that guns are too fast. I had an idea for an alt timeline where gunpowder didn't exist and it was all electrical weapons which gave me like lots of magnetic and electrical forces to play with guns and maybe swords (if I wanted to keep melee)
I'm concerned that If its fast, reacting in an action based way instead of just (15% dodge chance). Bullet Time seems cheezy too
>>330581981
>>330581232
As this guy said. It really depends on who is writing.
>>330582072
Try looking into the Dune universe. It's sci-fi but guns are not used due to some technology which rendered bullets obsolete and energy weapons who comes into contact with the shield creates a massive nuclear explosion.
So they fight with short blades and the movements have to be somewhat slow so that it can penetrate the protective field of the shield.
>>330581232
There's nothing wrong with a medieval high-fantasy setting in and of itself. The issue is that most works that use it play extremely close to Tolkien without adding much to the equation. There's some vidya that takes the general notion and runs with it in a different enough direction to freshen up the idea (Bastion, Wakfu).
If you want to build something unique, try taking an element or two that you don't usually see in the setting, integrating them, then work backwards to figure out why those things would exist there and how they'd effect the world at the time of your story. It might not yield anything directly, but at least it could get you thinking along less conventional lines.
Go for an Ancient Greece/Babylonian
sword and sorcery setting instead.
>>330581981
They get boring when there is an over saturation. Take zombies for example. Everybody is sick of that crap and pretty much everything that you can do with idea has been done.
>>330581232
If you are really uninspired and just looking for a type of setting to rehash then all you need to do is look to the past for currently unexplored territories. I'd recommend lovecraft but that has had a recent resurgence. Still better to join the bandwagon early then late.
>Fantasy
>A genre where you can do almost anything
>Magic
>Alternate history
>Different races of sentient beings
>99.999% of it is elves, dwarves and dragons shooting magical fire/ice at each other for infinity
>>330581232
Just make it over the top cheese and will be fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlhQZFTvAn4
>>330582470
Also Native American or ancient Egyptian.
>>330582385
Read the first book, Good Idea. Thanks Anon
>>330581232
Fantasy mixed with some low tech made from magic or fantastical resources/fuel and a how society has developed from it. Think of industrial revolution but not powered by real life stuff and going in a completly different directin than in reality.
>>330583460
>>330582470
With these not much "combat magic" happens though. Native americans undergo transformation and buff eachother, egyptians don't really do anything, Greeks just transform and the occasional thunder/weather stuff
Babylons not sure, I'm thinking Sumerians but they just endured strange weather stuff and got immortal
I don't usually like medieval fantasy but I can't really explain why. It just triggers me or something. I want to say it's because it seems kind of cliché, or like it hasn't had much effort put into it and is poorly thought out, but in reality I'm probably just prejudiced.
Either way I'd be much more likely to be interested if it was in almost any other setting.
>>330581232
>dungeon crawling game
Make it a steampunk adventurers going into ancient pre steampunk tech ruins.
>>330583606
>>330582385
>>330581901
>>330583606
Alright, this was basically what I needed. I have an idea that I'll roll with. My main concern was the hate for steampunk, because thats basically the summation of these ideas.
Not that I wanted to do that, but its kinda the same general idea as to any "limmited tech through bad energy sources"
I think my biggest complaint with the above is when it gets too far and people are like 'oh yeah we can use coal to build a jet/hyperdrive
I think sticking to "the advent of powerful weapons" with some sort of alt tech tree leads to me being able to keep "slow" in terms melee combat speed while retaining interesting ranged combat.
>>330581232
You can have sword and sorcery without being traditional fantasy. Change around the magical elements instead, make up races etc.
>>330581232
Do sword and sandal instead, famalam.
>>330584563
>'oh yeah we can use coal to build a jet/hyperdrive
You have to make rules first.
How far is the technology developed?
What can the fuel do?
etc
Than you limit it around this stuff.
