Greetings everyone! It’s nearly time for 4th of July celebration in America, and it falls on a Friday, so long weekend for me! Looking forward to spending a lot of time debugging, looking into game performance and generally doing nerdy game dev stuff!
As promised last month, we’ll talk a little bit about the game world for Revenge of the Firstborn and a few interesting mechanics that folks have been asking about. Hopefully this doesn’t end up being a boring lore dump!
The Titular Firstborn
The most common misconception about the game is related to the title. The Firstborn does not refer to any sort of royal heir. It refers to a group of immortal beings that were the first beings created by the gods at the beginning of time.
These Firstborn were imbued with immense power, enough to rival the gods themselves. The Firstborn eventually disobeyed the one commandment they were given, to not create life, with dire consequences. So, within the game, you are able to play characters of species created by the gods and those created by the Firstborn.
Prejudices between the gods-created species and the Firstborn-created species have simmered down over the millennia, but you will still run into characters who, for instance, think that the species created via the Firstborn’s disobedience are beneath their contempt.
For their disobedience, the Firstborn were imprisoned, though the methods used to do so were hidden from all but the gods themselves. During the course of the game, it will be your task to decide if this forbidden knowledge should remain hidden and work against those trying to reveal it, or whether knowledge is power that is yours to take. Throughout the game, you’ll find numerous factions looking to exploit this knowledge, or just the pursuit of it, for their own gain and it’s your task to decide whether to help or hinder them.
The Familiar… With a Twist
Whenever I’ve played a game based on D&D’s open-source rules, I’ve always enjoyed the sense of familiarity that comes with the bestiary and spells. Knowing what monsters I’m likely to see and how they are likely to behave has its draw. In Revenge of the Firstborn, I’ve tried to balance that familiarity with a few twists on why those familiar things are the way they are. Why do dwarves and elves not like each other? In D&D, it’s generally because that’s how it was in Lord of the Rings, and that’s explanation enough. In Revenge of the Firstborn, there’s a very specific reason for it that you can discover as you play the game. This is just one example of trying to put a bit of a twist on the worlds that such a familiar ruleset tends to generate.
To Sandbox or Not
One of the other questions I’ve gotten about the game is how ‘sandboxy’ it is. While it’s certainly not on the level of a Skyrim where you just pick a direction and walk, I’m designing the game so that the main questline has a strong through line, with as much choice and consequence as I can fit in (foremost choice being to help or hinder the search for the Firstborn). My intention is for it to be generally necessary to do some side questing in order to be high enough level to tackle the entirety of the main quest.
Most towns of any significant size will have things to do in them. Short quest lines that don’t necessarily revolve around the main plot, but which have enough content for players to take a break from the main quest and find something to keep them busy for a few hours.
There are also random dungeons scattered here and there to challenge the party and hold rare loot.
That’s a brief look at a bit of the lore in the game and a bit of what to expect from the gameplay in the campaign. If you have any questions about what’s covered here or what’s missing, please reply to this thread!