Space Opera

An online collaborative storytelling game.

What is it?

It is the first proof of concept of the "Turnstyles" game design principles. Principles that I intend to support with an engine and set of phone compatible web components.

The Turnstyles principles focus on games that mix the best features of online play with those of tabletop play.

They are designed for folk with busy lives, but who want to play a game with their friends, one that eventually tells a story.

More on the "Turnstyles" game design principles

There is much more to be said and discussed about with turnstyles and I'll eventually put that up and link to it, but now on to Space Opera.

Game Design

The game design is broken up into phases, a very minimal first phase and a more complete first prototype.

We'll start with a single game with up to 8 players and 8 npc positions, plus two explicit gm positions. Eventually games should be able to reach up to about 40 or 50 players in a single game, but more than that might require players to keep track of too much even with a month long turn phase.

The Turnstyle is paralell, as opposed to sequential or realtime which are not long term goals the exception to this is that diplomacy is done in pseudo-realtime.

The initial CommunalMode is freestyle as opposed to cooperative or competitive which are long term goals, though my assumption is that the initial playtesters will be playing largely cooperatively which is my hope for the default style, freestyle allows conflict between players and the engine should support that from the begining just so that we can test out both cooperative and competitive styles as we wish. Cooperative and Competitive modes will probably pair with differnt plot elements that encourage the communal style of play that the players have chosen.

There will be two initial map types, a point based stellar map and a hex based planetary map.

Positions consist initially of

1. a ruler

2. a race

3. 3 other leaders

4. some units

5. a faction

6. a map position

7. a generated or drawn planetary map

   C-Feature: someday the ruler might just be a governance type, allowing for democracies, collectives, hives, packs or other mechanics, for now we'll call this governance_type 'feudal'

Races

1. Humans

2. Arachnids

3. Robots

4. Spores

   (there are also ancients and grey to start, but not as pcs)

Grey Factions

1. good
2. bad
3. ugly (or chaos/irony)

Grey factions are npc prompts that try to pit players against one another or just cause trouble and interesting story events in general.

Maps

Maps are largely how someone determines how they are doing, so how big they are and what they display at various zoom levels is key. Score can be based on story, plot points that translate to 'dramatic impact'. (fate or karma?) mysteries solved via plot garden story arcs but there are things that a player will always guage their progress on via the maps and so what is seen on the map is a sort of scoreboard

Things that a player is trying to determine from the maps are

1. who controls where

2. what you can see at locational privacy levels

   • player positions in general with markers and labels for general direction, but no boundaries?
   • environment and terrain
   • planetary and regional public (see all at once)
   • planetary and regional private (see one at a time)

3. what you can see at plot levels

   • markers, such as ?
   • mysteries with descriptions (prelude, actions, midstatement, actions, conclusion)
   • story threads as it unfolds (based on transmission devices?)
   • hot spots, special important story threads

4. Trade status and economy

5. Regional Production Values

   • research
   • money
   • materials
   • population
   • mana (for esp?)
   • environment (habitability and terrain)

6. Stellar, one map that maxes out at 2560x1600 A point map like in stars, but with the points as locations in hexes each point is a planet or asteroid or space station, etc that is controlled with the hex, each position starts off with a home planet, points are seen at the start, but planetary details can be seen after scouting. stellar environmental effects include planet habitability and physics pockets which can change like in vernor vinge's books, the map should have things like invading fleets, solar flare-ups, pirates, and mysteries

7. Planetary, one per planet visited that maxes out initially at 760x480. A hex map like cruenti dei each hex is a region with locations in it

Plot Devices

Plot devices should have some properties these properties might eventually match with game types to describe it's size and scope the quantity of players it affects method of distribution (random, from a direction, manually positioned) how it affects certain factions differently than others plot points with decisions and effects location type(stellar, planetary, region, location) possible conclusions and how to trigger them point values for the various conclusions based on faction race position Plot devices are set up with three defaults on creation A GM can adjust the initial plot devices before the game starts add new plot devices as the game progresses choose a path to follow explicitly override the results

prototype examples

1. ancient robot releases
2. pirates
3. gravitional flux or dark matter

Detail Views

• Map
• Leader (Leader Actions)
• Realm (Realm Actions)
• Army (Army Actions)
• Diplomacy (Exchange, Relations, Thread, History)
• Research
• Mysteries
• Rule
• Item
• Story at the Stellar Public and Private levels
• Story at the Position Public and Private levels
• Story at the Leader Public and Private levels

Actions

Realm Actions

• Send a Message (continual)
• Propose Trade (continual)
• Propose Alliance (continual)
• Broadcast Message
• Research Item
• Upgrade Leader
• Upgrade Robot
• Upgrade Ship

Region Actions (requires hex control)

• Colonize
• Terraform
• Upgrade Economy
• Upgrade Resource Mining
• Upgrated Research Facilities

Unit Actions Leader(suit) Robot(chassi) Ship(hull)

• Scout - like movement but into unexplored terrain, typically much slower
• Move
• Investigate
• Mine
• Diplomacize
• Spy

Suits can allow a leader items like a research team, a mining crew, a ranged weapon, a melle weapon, items
Leaders have their own small ships for free that can support a research team or mining crew, but generally not both. Items can be things like bombs or scanners or research tools or any sort of mcguffin

Chassis the robot version of a suit

Hulls the ship version of a suit

Current Status

Right now I'm working on

• move this design content into it's own folder
• polishing the design of phase 1
• a quick swipe at the design of phase 2 to know where I'm going
• Login and hosting screens with authentication
• the ability to draw hex maps
• a single stellar hex map
• a single planetary hex map
• ground troops and combat rules for human and arachnid forces
• A fog of war view of the map using authorization

Next up will be

• the view to read and navigate a story which is synchronized to a map
• a plot device with mysteries placed on the map that triggers story events

Setup

from the root

bundle install rake db:migrate rake db:setup

rails server -b 0.0.0.0 -p 3000 -e development

rake test will run the tests

Thanks

Thanks to Daniel Kehoe for his tutorials and startup scripts

John Cinnamond and Alex Korban for their fun Ruby videos on Pluralsight

David Black for "The Well Grounded Rubyist"

Dan Chak for "Enterprise Rails"

Obie Fernandez and friends for "The Rails 4 Way"

Noel Rappin and his "Rails4 Test Perscriptions" book

The Tech Valley Ruby Brigade and Ruby and Rails communities in general for being friendly and making it such a reasonable climb for a client side guy to finally implement a personal server side project