There are three obvious questions here.
1) Why would the three kingdoms each risk the lives of four of its best fighters for a tournament?
2) If there's a very well known castle that no one ever returns from why hasn't something be done about it (with actual armies)? It it was considered needlessly dangerous, then go to 1 again.
3)If there's a bunch of scientists that left the castle after the monsters appeared, how come no one knows what's inside?
edited 10th Sep '12 1:53:34 AM by Dealan
Four warriors from a whole kingdom isn't a very large loss, that's perfectly acceptable unless they are really tiny city-states.
Nobody knowing about what's in the castle & nobody ever surviving are problems, though. Maybe people could know about the monsters, but not what causes them. IMO it would also work better if there was some plot token that they had to collect - go to the cellar and bring back a bottle of enchanted wine, first one out wins, that sort of thing - and have some people having succeeded in the past.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Admittedly, that very much depends on the setting, but four champions could be a significant loss. Those four champions would most likely be some of the most popular figures in the kingdom, and would belong to noble families you wouldn't want to piss off. It could be a significant morale loss when you explained to the populace that the warriors you advertised as the best of the best all went inside a castle and never returned.
It's not really a big probelm with the premise, but I think it needs to be adressed. Maybe no one visited the castle for so long that nobody really thinks of it as a real threat, and the whole thing was supposed to be a publicity stunt as well as a competition. Or the champions are just more disposable than I assume they are for whatever reason.
think about how you are going to give this backstory information. Through rumours, or through non-playable sprite dialogue. And what skills do the protagonist and her younger brother bring to the table, melee, guides, THE POWER OF HEART *sparkle*, etc. and for what reason are they at this castle where mages, power users- fear and die. Also the issue of sending prime mages to a death hole as part of a 'supervised' competition (not underground or illegal). I think the kingdoms need more of a motive for sending these mages to a tournament, simple glory is weak. Maybe a talisman of sorts, which the kingdoms are in search for, in a deadly informal competition, and the mage who wins recieves the rank of nobility (the magicians could all be outcasts or of lower classes). Good luck with your project
edited 18th Oct '12 11:58:57 PM by kingdomain6
I hope I'm not saying anything stupid, bothering, or annoying you.
As I mentioned before, I wanted to make a fairly simple game in RPG maker, with a simple story (but one that made some sense). Could you please tell me if it's too silly, or something?
Someone gave the idea (more or less) for a story about a tournament in the style of the Triwizard tournament, from Harry Potter. But rather than three schools, it would be three kingdoms competing. Which kingdom would send four champions to fulfill certain tasks.
The last task would be entering in a castle no one has ever returned from. It would be set in the same world one of my stories is set, and the background (Fantastic Racism against mages because of a war fought with magic, that nearly destroyed the world) would be pretty much the same.
Turns out there's a reason no one has ever returned from the castle (monsters). With champions dying left and right, oponents are forced to band together to survive. And because things aren't bad enough, some monsters can only be killed with magic.
The protagonist (Kaya) and her brother (Kai) aren't big on mages, because one of them killed their father. Some of these mages distrusts non-mages because of the way they've been treated their own lives. But these people would have no choice but to trust each other, if they had any intentions of ever leaving the place.
Why no one has ever returned from said castle?
A long time ago, experiments with magic were performed in the castle. One of them, with astral projection, went horrifically wrong: it caused one of the researchers (named Seyr) and his assistant to fall into a deep, nightmare filled sleep she couldn't wake up from.
These nightmares manifest themselves as monsters. All attempts to save them backfired horribly: among other things, trapped the sleeping Seyr into a crystal (which made it hard for Kiria to Mercy Kill her friend, when they realized maybe Seyr would be better off dead). When the monsters became too strong, all researchers but one, named Kiria, left. Kiria was close friends with Seyr, and desperatly wanted to save her.
The monsters from the dreams Seyr was became too powerful for Kirias to stop. Not to mention Seyr's dreams started to screw the castle's layout badly. Fortunatly, the researchers had enchanted the place, so whatever experiments they performed would never affect the area outside the castle.
The protagonist meets an adventurer named Naida, who had gone to the castle in hopes of finding treasure. She found Kiria and Seyr's journals, and manages to convince the protagonist to help her either find a way to leave the either kill or cure Seyr, so they could leave.
Naida explains she uses her magic to generate plants, that can be used as food, and there's another adventurer, who can use magic to generate water. So one can say they have their most basic needs covered.