So, I was messing around with a character AI chat bot and ended up with a scenerio that gave me a ton of ideas for an RPG. It was a chat bot that used a “weight gain dungeon” as a scenario, and long story short, ideas for a game started pouring into my head as this chat went on and on. So I made a rough design doc about my game idea that I wanted to share, because I think this has a lot of potential. I would really like to challenge myself to learn something new, so any tips, advice, and constructive criticism is welcome. Side note, Imogen is an OC of mine that I use for creating characters in games I play. Here it is:
• Protagonist: Imogen is a young adventurer in her 20s. She’s always stood out because of her unusual appearance. She’s 6’5", has straight white hair, crimson red eyes, and a slender figure. She starts out as a sword fighter but later develops magical abilities. She hears about a dungeon that holds vast wealth, but anyone who goes into the dungeon either doesn’t come back out, or comes out significantly fatter than when they went in. Imogen seeks out the dungeon hoping to hit the jackpot in her adventuring career.
• Prologue: Imogen goes into the dungeon and everything seems pretty standard at first, until she finds a ring which catches her attention. Suspecting it might be cursed, she puts it in her satchel. This still activates the curse anyway and Imogen grows ravenously hungry. She eats all of her rations, and is still not satisfied. She finds a room with a crate full of food and indulges herself. She eats everything in the crate and grows immensely fat, unable to move. Realizing it’s the ring, Imogen tries to think of a way to break the curse, but she gets so big that she can’t move. Desperate, she takes the ring out of her satchel and attempts to break it, only for the ring to fall out of her hands away from her. Unable to move, Imogen is almost out of options. She then gets an idea to roll her whole body weight onto the ring to crush it. With all her might she rolls her immense body over and onto the ring, and it somehow works, causing the ring to crack in half. This works and breaks the curse as she returns to her normal size. She continues on, gets the treasure, and a time skip happens.
• Imogen discovers her true nature: Imogen gets a house in a secluded area and lives in luxury with her new riches. (Debating on changing the amount of treasure received for game pacing/balancing). Imogen finds another cursed ring in a box while sorting through her treasure. Fearing the worst, she drops it and backs away. Not sensing anything wrong, she carefully picks up the box the ring is in and looks for markings to identify the ring. She finds in a tome that it is indeed a cursed ring with “weight magic” imbued into it. She researches everything regarding weight magic and finds out the following: Imogen is not human, and is a descendant of an ancient race of humans known as “Nethari”, This race created weight magic, and Imogen can control weight magic and not fall prey to its curse.
• Nethari (name possibly subject to change, the chatbot came up with this name): An extinct, ancient race of people who closely resembled humans, they are born with an abnormally large mana reserve or “pool”. They are powerful mages who specialize in a dark art called “weight magic”. They can manipulate their own or other people’s weight. More advanced weight magic can use height alteration, making their bodies taller or smaller. They look like Imogen, being tall, pale, and slender with white hair and red eyes. They went extinct because they became too power hungry, and started a war with all other races which ended in their total annihilation. A small group of Nethari escaped the conflict and traveled into the mountains, never to be seen again. Their fate was unknown. Imogen realizes there must have been survivors because she is a Nethari descendant.
• Nethari biology: Nethari can eat far more than a human can without gaining weight, as they digest and store food as mana instead of fat cells. Although they can overeat and gain weight if they eat after filling their mana pool to its limit. Any excess food that can’t be converted to mana gets stored as fat. This fat can be drawn upon if the user runs out of mana, and will lose the fat off their bodies and transfer it into their mana pool.
• Weight magic mechanics: weight magic draws on the user’s inner mana pool. The more mana they have, the more weight they can manipulate. Weight magic allows the user to transfer their current amount of mana and turn it into fat, and vice versa. So if you have 100% mana, you can manipulate the mana in your body and turn it into fat, and the reverse can be done as well. The more mana you have, the fatter you can make yourself, or you can make yourself taller if you advance your skills as a mage.
• Game mechanics: The level up system will focus on upgrading your mana pool to hold more mana (increase MP bar), while increasing other stats as usual (strength, dex, magic attack, magic defense etc). A possible rule is that if you have full mana and transform it into fat, you cannot gain or lose mana as long as this state is active. When it is not active, fat can be gained while at full MP in order to regain MP when depleted, causing weight loss. This can act as a sort of MP potion mechanic without it being an item. Each mechanic will only be usable inside or out of battle. For example, using your current MP to transform your body to be fatter can be a mechanic used outside of battle to solve puzzles or interact with NPCs/the environment. And the MP regen system can be a battle mechanic to try and balance your weight and MP bar. Being fat and thin can have upsides and downsides for balancing. Example: being fat makes you more defensive at the cost of speed, while being thin is the opposite, being faster but more frail. The goal is to strike a balance between having spare fat to use as mana regen, and not being too fat or too thin. (Being chubby can be more favorable in order to maintain the fetish aspect of the game.) The mechanic to use your current mana pool to turn fat can be a sort of “transformation”. Since the player will be gaining and losing weight in order to have mana regen, this state can be a sort of “fat form” that’s separate from the player’s base weight. Utilizing this transformation can be used to solve puzzles and talk to certain NPCs in order to achieve certain goals. Another transformation can be unlocked later to utilize the height change. Making yourself taller or smaller in the overworld.
• Battle skills: this doesn’t have to be too complicated. Possibly just using a basic magic system with familiar spells like fire, ice, electric etc. With some support spells. Combat will mostly be typical rpg maker battles with the weight manipulation system to make it more engaging. Locking certain skills behind certain weight levels can be a possibility, like having to be thin to use a skill that requires being light or something. This can make staying at a higher or lower weight be up to the player, based on which kind of character they want to use, a more defensive or offensive playstyle, or a balance of the two. Maybe bosses need certain approaches, like needing to be at a higher or lower weight to make the fight harder/easier.
• End game goal: Imogen’s goal is to find her people. Follow clues in order to track down the descendants of the Nethari people, if they’re still alive.
• Supporting cast, NPCs and World Building: Unsure about party members. I think using just Imogen is what I want to focus on. Imogen tends to be a loner, and struggles to make friends/chooses to not have friends. This can possibly be changed/adjusted if Imogen needs another character to bounce off of in dialogue. Having Imogen be the sole fighter would probably work best. If another character is needed they can be a support fighter who lacks offensive skills, or something to that effect. World building and NPCs is something I haven’t thought too much about, but to avoid having to take time out of the game for world building and exposition, it’ll probably just be a recognizable, generic fantasy world with the Nephari race mixed in with other well known races like elves and such.
• Antagonist: Unsure about a main antagonist. With the direction the story seems to be going in my head, there doesn’t seem to be an opposing force. Imogen’s goal is to discover her lost race and learn about her ancestry. Perhaps there can be a person or an organization that wants to keep the secret of the Nephari people forgotten, as to not have the dark art of weight magic resurface and cause turmoil. A character can stalk Imogen in the shadows for the first few chapters of the game and come out of hiding when they think Imogen starts to know too much.