Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG

hellfrog

@Jumpscare holy crap this is SO MUCH WORK and it looks amazing

Jennkryst

Well now I feel extra bad and lazy for

SQUIRREL

and losing track of all sense of progress on the Star Wars thing.

(I do not really, I am joking about the lazy/bad parts. NOT joking about this being awesome progress!)

crawfish

So exciting!!

Gasboy

This sounds pretty neat, and I don’t usually go for horror games.

Pyrephox

This is remarkable. I have to say, I’m in complete admiration of your thoughtful approach to building the game to engage different types of gamers. The level of coding is remarkable.

You’ve mentioned creating and descing NPCs; will these be like MUD NPCs in that they’ll have objects in rooms, and be interactable? What role do you see them serving in day to day RP?

Jumpscare

Thanks! I’m glad you all like it.

BONUS SHOWCASE: PARKOUR

Here’s a short story involving 3 other game mechanics:

Shouting
Looking from afar
Gravity

Testament

I’m here for it. 100%

Jumpscare

@Pyrephox said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

This is remarkable. I have to say, I’m in complete admiration of your thoughtful approach to building the game to engage different types of gamers. The level of coding is remarkable.

You’ve mentioned creating and descing NPCs; will these be like MUD NPCs in that they’ll have objects in rooms, and be interactable? What role do you see them serving in day to day RP?

Thank you so much, and thanks for asking!

I love RPing, and I feel like I do my best on the other side of the screen. I want to help weave all sorts of stories players have, and provide you with prompts when you’re out of ideas. I’ve come up with a cast of NPCs that each have their own likes and dislikes, wants and fears, histories and goals. There are dozens upon dozens of potential storylines they can kickstart, and it all depends on what the players would like to explore.

While the history and “rules” governing the supernatural state of Silent Heaven are set in stone, the story of the town post-launch is fluid. Plots won’t go on rails, and NPCs are there to help facilitate the actions players want to do.

I haven’t coded NPCs yet, so this could change a bit in the end, but there are both automated and Storyteller purposes that NPCs will serve.

Automated:

Some provide history and information for characters, as they’re long-time residents of the town.
Some provide necessary services such as medical attention when there’s no PC around to do the same thing.
Some are able to induct PCs into groups / factions, such as working for a cafe.

Storyteller:

They help kickstart RP and storylines. They’ll never take the spotlight, instead taking the backseat to give characters opportunities to do things.
They run events, both plot-related and social.
You can request scenes with them when you need their input on a matter.
You can use the Story Action system, which serves as part of what you’d see in a normal +job system.

STORY ACTIONS
If you want to attempt to do something that isn’t codedly possible, such as investigating something in a room description, or trying to dig a tunnel, or attempting to blow up a building, your first step is to talk to an NPC who your character suspects might support this action.

This gives storytellers an opportunity to review and prepare ahead of time for any potential story actions that may take place. The more a request could fundamentally change the town of Silent Heaven, the greater the difficulty it’ll be for your character to garner the support of an NPC. Some story actions will be downright impossible or come with severe consequences, which the right NPC will let your character know of ahead of time.

There’ll always be an NPC that’ll be up for something you have in mind, and I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction.

Before you propose a story action to an NPC, make sure you’ve thought of what your character will do in the event the action fails, and how you can make a failure fun. Story actions aren’t required to access anything Silent Heaven has to offer. Story actions are for when you have a creative solution or harebrained plan that the game code doesn’t support.

Story actions are the moments I hope will be most memorable. I predict they’ll take a significant amount of time to set up, though, so my only request is to bear with me if there are times when a lot of these come in.

crawfish

@Jumpscare fucking laughing in a grocery store parking lot

Testament

How dare you update me on a game that I had put out of memory for so long because I really wanted to play it and couldn’t because it wasn’t open. Now I have to live through all that angst all over again.

Gasboy

@Jumpscare Oh gosh, that looks painful. Might have to go back to character gen for that one. xD

Jumpscare

@Gasboy said in Silent Heaven: Small-town Horror RPG:

@Jumpscare Oh gosh, that looks painful. Might have to go back to character gen for that one. xD

Good news! Due to lore reasons that I’m not spoiling, characters can’t die while they’re in the town of Silent Heaven. Your character can be an unconscious, bloodied, broken mess on the sidewalk, but they will eventually recover from it.

However, if you’re specifically looking to kill off your character, there will be periodic opportunities to venture outside of town.

GF

@Jumpscare I assume it’s because the town is built atop the wreckage of a prehistoric spaceship built and flown by the tommyknockers, which emits radiation in the spooky EM spectrum causing all the town’s inhabitants to become tommyknockers themselves.

Jumpscare

I was notified that some of the images got broken in the post at the top of this page. For anyone who missed out, they’re back!

Gasboy

@Jumpscare Owie still, laying around until you recover. xD

But that’s a neat premise.

shit-piss-love

I really like this concept. Might get me out of retirement.

garden

Super excited about the work you’ve done so far, the investigation/analysis systems and depth are fascinating! I can’t wait to check it out.

Testament

let me in

Just a reminder that I have not forgotten about this and it is something I’m still excited about.

Jumpscare

Thanks!

I’m still on for a May release. Probably late May, but definitely May. That’s in 50 days or fewer from now.

Raeras

@Jumpscare exciting