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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 3, 2018 17:19:48 GMT
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One of the first things we're gonna have to figure out is how we're going to do the Elements. This is going to effect a great many things down the road, so the sooner we address this and carve our intent in stone, the smoother things will be going forward. A few things to keep in mind: - This will determine the final number of party members. In Golden Sun games, there's one character of each element per team. If we choose more or less than four elements, it changes the number of characters that will be needed.
- This will have a major effect on the class system. Less elements can make it too simplistic, more can cause it to balloon out of control. Keep this in mind if suggesting a number other than 4.
- We need to consider Dark Dawn. Dark Dawn introduced the concept of the Fundaments. Do we use them? If so, how do we interpret them? Are the fundaments used in Non-elemental attacks, or are they how spells have different shapes? Or is there another idea you'd like to put forward?
I know this may sound rather simplistic, but the classical greek elements isn't the only system, and because Golden Sun only had narrative opposing elements rather than having mechanically opposing elements, this opens up systems like the Chinese and Japanese element systems for consideration. Propose a method you'd like to see us use, and make your case for it. After several proposals, we'll start discussing it and work out what we're going to do.
Personally, I'm in favor of keeping 4 elements. Keeping with the celestial themes for naming, I propose 3 fundaments based on Golden Sun as well - Sol, Luna, and Stella. Sol is for forms based on Order and Light. Luna is for forms based on Chaos and Darkness. Stella is a reference to the Elemental Stars, and is the pure/natural forms of the elements. Each element combines with the fundaments to get a different shape. There's an interpretation that allows for 3 shapes for each element (Order/Light, Pure, Chaos/Dark), or 5 shapes (Light, Order, Pure, Chaos, Dark). I do not think that fundaments should have a mechanical presence, though. They'd be mostly flavor and worldbuilding sorts of things, but more importantly they'll let the character stand out significantly from one another. When a character changes classes, they keep their innate fundamental shapes, so that we have have each character expressing the elements in different ways. My personal system uses a 4 Elements x3 forms, for 12 total "aspects". That being said, a 4x5 version of it allows for so-called "light and dark adepts", which many Golden Sun fans are fond of.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2018 20:33:34 GMT
I agree with the 4x3 elements and aspects system, though I think we could do some interesting things with the aspects in terms of game mechanics. If we were to do so however, I think that kind of thing should be introduced fairly late into the game so that we can keep things simple and familiar for our demo.
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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 3, 2018 20:41:17 GMT
I think the easiest way to handle aspects is via field spells. For instance: ![](https://i.imgur.com/Chr6QLY.png) Using this method, each of the 12 aspects has their own weak spell with a field effect. If doing a 4x5, we'd expand it to have 20 field spells instead of 12, and would likely need to add psynergy tools over the course of the game to access spells that aren't usable by the team (4 party members, but 5 aspects per element). Edit: Also, this is merely the base spells. There'd be many others that we'd wind up making, based on the team and what not. Something akin to how new spells were learned at the Elemental Rocks - new field spells could be learned, new tools obtained. Most would likely be elemental, of one of the aspects.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2018 20:52:54 GMT
Here's my idea on what we could potentially do with working the Aspects into a game mechanics: Each "djinn" our characters collect could have an associated aspect in addition to their element. If one character ends up having a stronger affinity with an aspect than any one particular element, they could potentially access a new set of classes based around that aspect.
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capy
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Post by capy on Nov 3, 2018 21:04:28 GMT
I'm of the opinion that 4 elements shaped by 3 fundaments is a good system to use if we want to stay true to the series and keep things easy to use in a basic class system.
I think if we wanted characters to represent light and dark we could class them both as two sides of the same coin under Aether, the fifth lesser used classical element. Its powers can relate to darkness, light, vacuum and laws of the universe such as gravity and possibly even time. If it needed to be classed under a planet it could easily be Saturn, a god of time. I suggest this because I think a 4-5 member party would be fine but 6 would be too much, it'd also change up the formula slightly but be the simplest possible addition to the element system. That said 4 elements with 3 funadments is perfectly fine.
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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 3, 2018 21:10:37 GMT
@awec: You and I are on the same page on this, to a degree. I'm actually doing something like that for my personal system. The tricky part is that if you're going to do that, you have to *break the djinn*. Separate the ability to equip them from the ability to have them travel. With 3-4x the number of djinn to the number of containers, it lets the player customize what djinn come with them. The tricky part? Lots of added complexity. When we get to the djinn system analogue for our game, we'll need to discuss whether we do it then, or keep simple. capy: I figure Aether would be the third fundament. Light-Dark-Aether, Sun-Moon-Star. That's my interpretation, at least.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2018 21:26:36 GMT
Could you please explain in more detail why you'd need to "break the djinn". I don't understand why it's necessary. If it's just a case of it getting a bit messy to deal with, I'm sure we'd be able to cope, and I think some people would be grateful for the added complexity/depth.
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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 3, 2018 22:36:06 GMT
We need a justification to not just let people equip all the djinn they meet, that way we can actually factor in fundamental augmentation. Otherwise you break the hell out of pacing. Remember how fast you got poewrful in Dark Dawn? Needing 27 djinn per element (one of each aspect per djinn slot) would kinda... make that worse. Thus needing to "break" the djinn - to separate the elemental augmentation (class system) from the fundamental augmentation (spell modifying).
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Post by Deleted on Nov 3, 2018 22:54:27 GMT
Well what I was thinking of was to have 36 djinn - 9x4 - and for each djinn to be aligned with 1 of the elements as well as being aligned with 1 of the aspects, which I guess I'd class as Solar, Lunar, Stellar, and Pure/Neutral. (Solar, Lunar and perhaps Stellar would have their own special classes whereas Pure would not) So for instance our good old friend Flint might be a Pure Venus Djinn, whereas Vine would be a Lunar Venus Djinn, and Fog might be a Solar Mercury Djinn. This would obviously result in a very complex system and we'd have to ensure that no default class combinations would get obliterated by one of the aspect classes, but if we could get it to work it might be very interesting for players.
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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 3, 2018 23:14:29 GMT
Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, we could do that.
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Post by germaniac on Nov 7, 2018 14:31:42 GMT
I really like the 4x3 idea, it's really something Golden Sun itself can do. About Djinn we can do 9/12 of each element where each element has 3/4 of each fundament. Different fundament will give the same class but different set of Psynergies.
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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 7, 2018 19:14:55 GMT
For game mechanics reasons, we're not going to have more than 9 djinn of each element due to the effects it'll have on the class system. Whether or not we have mono-aspect djinn or not is going to depend on whether we adopt Awec's idea. It's a pretty good one, since it gives different effects to spells based on what relation an adept has to the djinn they're using, and we can control that on the development end pretty easily. If we want to have full complexity, we have to divorce the class mechanic from the spell alteration mechanic. My Gradient Soul system does this, splitting djinn into Gems and Spirits, but we're looking at a serious increase in complexity to the system.
Generally speaking, we should be wary of complexity. We need more than GS itself just to add some intuitive things GS lacked (it has no Magic Attack stat, for instance), and we need some base line worldbuiling rules to keep us on track and make sure we're not designing by whim. When the extra complexity gets involved, we have to ask ourselves a very simple question: Is this right for Project Flint, or better served for later iterations with Projects Echo and Pewter.
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capy
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Post by capy on Nov 8, 2018 3:11:15 GMT
I think the fundaments from djinn should either just be related to summoning or provide boosts to the power of spells using their "shape". So instead of 4 element power and resist stats we would have 7. Boosts from the new 3 would be much rarer and mainly only come from djinn. So spell damage calculation would include casting (attack for spells like Ragnarok) the elemental power and the fundamental power of the caster in that order of importance. A bit of smaller bonus but it could add something for the min maxer types of players and add more possible combos.
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Post by WitchRolina on Nov 8, 2018 14:38:34 GMT
I could definitely see certain shapes having certain ailments and effects while others don't. For example, I can't be sold on stones poisoning someone, but plants? Most certainly. I think that'd be a good idea. So, I think we're gonna go with that - we just need to figure out what the 12 shapes are. My personal system uses the following:
| Venus | Mars | Jupiter | Mercury | Sol (Light and Order) | Crystal (via Order/Light) | Explosive (via Light) | Celestial (via Light) | Ice (via Order/Light) | Astra (Pure Forms) | Stone | Flame | Wind | Water | Luna (Dark and Chaos) | Plants (via Chaos) | Corrosive (via Dark) | Lightning (via Chaos) | Steam (via Chaos) |
Each of these are in Golden Sun itself - Crystallux demonstrates Crystal, the Samshir's Acid Bath is a Mars unleash, Astral Blast and the Phaton's Blade's Light Surge demonstrate Celestial, and various mist abilities would fall under Steam. Personally, I put Volcanic spells (ex: Pyroclasm) under the explosive category for the sake of variety. I place Geyser spells under Steam for the same reason. What do y'all think?
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Post by Deleted on Nov 8, 2018 21:02:27 GMT
I still think Plant should be Sol rather than Luna. Also where does Stellar fit in?
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