The standard model for RPGs is to have a main quest and side quests. The main quest is usually a big epic world-ending problem, that the player is taking the part as a Chosen One to solve for a unique reason. There is a big bad guy, and they need to be stopped, and you need to stop them. Along the way, you can farm, collect items, and help people out in various ways.
It’s a good model, and it there are a lot of good games that use it. All Hail Temos is doing something different.
All Hail Temos puts you in the position of a non-Chosen One, so you are not foretold to solve the world ending problem, and the world is not ending. Instead there are many problems and situations in the world that create adventures and opportunities, and you can live heroically solving or taking advantage of those situations.
Side quests are usually very simple, and are also usually disconnected from other events in the world, but in All Hail Temos, many adventures are connected by some characters you could interact with on a previous adventure, changing your future outcomes.
So how does this work?
Anatomy of an Adventure
Let’s start with a visualization, an adventure flowing from left to right:
The blue, green and red arrows represent different ways you found this adventure:
Maybe you are travelling with someone who wants to do something, and they introduce you to this adventure.
Maybe you run into a group of cultists performing some ritual and decide to introduce yourself, or sneak in and see what’s going on.
Maybe you are asked to rescue someone being held captive, and have to break into a fortified location.
There can be several or many ways into a given adventure, but once you start it, most of the situation flows forward from there. There can be different ways of dealing with the problems in the adventure, and then eventually the adventure will come to a close.
When the adventure ends, depending on how you started (blue, green or red), you will have a contextual ending to the adventure, which may open up new adventures, or resolve the issue.
In any case, the world is now changed, the characters you interacted with have changed, and the adventure is complete.
How will this affect the gameplay?
If you previous made choices that block the red path into an adventure, maybe you can still find the blue or green path to finding it, or maybe choices you have made have cut you off from it.
Branching narratives mean that you get different results, and different results over time can create unique situations where something may or may not be available by the time you find it.
I think this will keep the situations feeling more natural and connected with your actions, and am hoping that this creates possibilities for replayability.
Conclusion
This was a short introduction to the method I am using in All Hail Temos to create adventures that live out in the world, and giving you many ways to find them. I’ll write more about them in the future, once I figure out how to do it without too many spoilers.
If you’d like to learn more about All Hail Temos, or follow the development, please Wishlist and Follow.
