Sense of Danger

One of the more difficult things I find with creating any sort of game is creating mood.  A big part of that is the environment and what kind of creatures are in that environment.  Exalted did an exemplary job with their use of different fantastic elements, but it is difficult to try to draw inspiration from something like that and still be original.  I wanted to try to make the monsters and adversaries in the game be a blend of both the fantastic and the futuristic, but maintain a sort of consistency.  To this end, I enjoyed the aesthetics found in many of the final fantasy games, #13 in particular, as it had a rather beautiful blending of the two.  The image is used to show a sense of movement, while providing a more fantastical concept.  It was a piece I did for the sake of humor in my Digital Imaging class, but I enjoyed it a lot, so I found it fitting.

Distilling Thoughts

Most of my ideas are rather abstracted and need to be put into a more solid form.  I tend to have difficulty bringing thoughts into reality, even if I have a fully formed idea.  This is one of the reasons why I wanted to have user feedback and influence over the game I was going to create.  That way, I could bring thoughts into greater clarity and seek aid in coming up with things that fill in the gaps.  The first image is an old abstraction of a rose that I did when I was in high school.  It is an old favorite of mine, breaking the image down into more basic colors and shapes.  The other image is an image I did for illustration, though I added texture to try to bring the image more depth.

Man vs. Monster

The scope of the game is to have give an epic feel, but not quite as overwhelming as, say, Exalted.  I want the player to feel the growth and development of progress more than simply having huge jumps in power.  I wanted the titular Havoc power source to be a primal shaping force of the world in the game (similar to Essence in Exalted), but rather than having it be the energy of the world, I wanted to be the actual matter of the world itself.  Every creature would have a manifestation of Havoc and its associated powers to one extent or another, even common domesticated animals.  Monsters would be more common, but as a result, the basic playable races would be similarly epic, even the most mundane.  As for the image, I went with a sort of asymmetrical balance, trying to balance the larger monster on the right with a more detailed character on the left.  My aim was to try to demonstrate the concept of progression and challenge in order to spark more ideas.

Armor Motifs

One of the signature groups in my game are the gravity knights, soldiers trained to wield magic that controls space and mass to increase their physical capacities.  For their armor design, I wanted to go with simple geometric shapes linked together in plates rate than standard contour.  I drew from suprematism, which is what the image of all the basic shapes above is.  I wanted the armor to have sharp angles, but it was difficult for me to bring such an abstract concept into a more relatable motif.  In the end, I went with sort of a compromise, but the effect seems promising.  The version ended up using the contour to follow the geometric shapes and give them more depth.  The initial concept for it was commissioned by me and drawn by Phil Fruend.

World Blender

I'm working more with idea blending, and I'm trying to think of ways to mix sci-fi and fantasy.  I want to have something similar to Rifts, but there is a lack of consistency in that system.  Rifts tends to reinvent the wheel for each type of class, making the system extremely complex.  I find the d20 system much simpler to use, but not fluid enough.  Part of me like the idea of formal classes, but without the concept of levels, more like set paths of proficiency with general, but more customizable paths for all to learn.

Unfortunately, making such concepts tangible is a very difficult task.  I am trying to work with transferring the d10 system to something more scalable (rather than simply counting successes), and possibly a d6 system.

Character Driven Design

I am focusing a lot on developing a system that works heavily on character customization.  One of my favorite features in White-Wolf's games is that they don't rely heavily (or at all even) on classes to define the progression of how a character develops, but rather uses the base stats.  I want to do a system that is more general in nature, though, that can branch out into many themes.  As you can see above, I put together several pieces from the Final Fantasy franchise to serve as sort of a conceptual idea for mixing together different themes.

Havoc Symbol

This is a simple iconic symbol I was working on.  Much like the D20 system has its own little symbol with the graphical die and the D20 label on it.  I have a separate logo, but I figured I'd work on creating a different and much simpler symbol to be used for the site and other things involving the game.

Brain Storming

The design for my game is in a very early stage, and I am still trying to group together ideas.  The collage above are of different sources of inspiration for me that I want to use in the flavor of my game.  I am a big fan of Exalted from White-Wolf as well as their Scion and World of Darkness games, and I wanted to implement a similar, though not necessarily as grand, a level of epic heroism and power into the game.  Also, I enjoy D&D's classes, but I wanted to do something like that but retain the freedom of character development that White-Wolf has in its games.  I also really found Rifts fascinating, blending the mystical with the sci-fi, but wanted a more final fantasy-like feel to it.  I really would like to hear some ideas.

Images for collage citation:

"Kain Highwind (Dragoon) - Artwork for Final Fantasy IV - Playfire." Playfire - Bringing Gamers Together. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. <http://www.playfire.com/a/game/final-fantasy-iv/images/24668>.

"Monsters of Faerûn Art Gallery." Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards of the Coast. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. <http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/mof_gallery/MonFaePG42.jpg>.

Paizo.com. Paizo Publishing. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. <http://paizo.com/image/content/SecondDarkness/PZO9013-Drow.jpg>.

Rams, Vinod. "Planar Handbook Art Gallery." Dungeons and Dragons. Wizards of the Coast. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. <http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/planar_gallery/82523.jpg>.

"Rifts Picture by WttWoA - Photobucket." Image Hosting, Free Photo Sharing & Video Sharing at Photobucket. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. <http://s190.photobucket.com/albums/z179/WttWoA/?action=view&current=Rifts.png&newest=1>.

UdonCrew. "Exalted- Alchemicals." Browsing DeviantART. DeviantART, 5 Jan. 2009. Web. 10 Feb. 2011. <http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=&section=&q=alchemicals#/d1smlas>.

Introduction

Hello, my name is Luke Schwarz, and this blog is going to serve as a means of promoting a project I am working on to create a tabletop RPG called Havoc.  The game will also have another site to serve as a method of organizing all of the rules and other information.  The site itself will also take in information from viewers to help construct the game to provide a wider range of ideas and concepts.  This blog is used to compile a series of images to work through various thoughts.