Run Rincewind Run

Motivation

Over the summer I’ve been playing with ideas for a few web based mobile friendly games and apps. I’ve posted links in the Projects drop down, but not shared what I’ve done… so here we are with a collection of one sub genre that I got thinking about – Pick-up-and-Play Rogue Lite RPG’s … PuaPRLRPG’s, gotta work on a better acronym 🙂

This idea came about when I was thinking of how I first was introduced into the concept of Role Play Games, by the legends Steve Jackson, and Sir Ian Livingston, with the “Fighting Fantasy gamebook in which YOU become the hero!” – The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

This title hooked me into the idea of interactive storytelling, and I wanted to try and migrate this concept into a simple game. I don’t have the time, or skills, to write a full on quest, so decided to try a kind of rogue-like build, and I wanted something that was suitable to a bus ride kinda time-frame, gives the endorphin hit of success, and stacked progress to entice replay.

Roguelike (or rogue-like) is a style of role-playing game traditionally characterized by a dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels, turn-based gameplay, grid-based movement, and permanent death of the player character. Most roguelikes are based on a high fantasy narrative, reflecting the influence of tabletop role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons.

I’m a big Pratchett fan, I picketed up Dark Side of The Sun around the same time as I got into the Fighting Fantasy series, and given there are so many Discworld novels (41), there’s heaps of content and characters to play with for inspiration, so Ankh-Morepork seemed like a good place to start, and who better to have as the chief protagonist than the coward survivalist Rincewind.

Run Rincewind Run

INSTRUCTIONS

Goal: Survive 10+ turns to reach Unseen University.
Panic: Taking damage raises Panic. High Panic helps you Flee but hurts Combat/Trade.
Items: Buffs carry over. Food reduces Panic.
Branching: Choose your path wisely at the end of each turn.

The game starts with Rincewind at a random location in Ankh-Morepork – his mission to survive 10 rounds, he has 20 Hit Points, and begins at 0% Panic.

Each turn a scenario is presented, players chose an option that could be LUCK, TRADE, COMBAT, ITEM, RUN – after each selection A D20 is rolled in the background (a roll of one is critical fail, a 20 critical success). If successful a reward in the form of a buff, item, or health may be awarded, fail and a nerf, effect, item, or damage, may occur. Then select one of the two (random) locations to travel to next (locations can currently repeat in a game – something to fix)

It is Rincewind that you’re playing, and his superpower is fleeing, and staying out of trouble. Each time you RUN, your PANIC meter increases by 5% – higher PANIC means Rincewind has a better chance of escaping, but has lower LUCK. Running may seem like an easy option, but any character that you flee from has a chance of becoming your NEMESIS – they have a chance of re-appearing in later stages, and will be harder to beat.

The other motivation not to run, is that you have the opportunity to win buffs, health, and items, sometimes using an item presents you with one of the crucial ones to beat a Boss.

Make it to round 10, and there’s a Boss Battle – the key to winning these is having a correct item available that you’ve picked up on your run… but as this is Roguelike, it could have been on a previous run, and you carried it over.

So pass the Boss Battle and you gain an item, that’s hopefully of benefit (not always a buff). It now takes an extra round to reach the Boss, longer to survive – but you still have all of your items, gear, buffs, and I’m afraid nerfs.

Continue on, see how far do you can progress. Very unlikely that any two breakthroughs are the same – although remember one in a million chances do occur nine times out of ten on the Discworld 🙂

But it’s a web based game, how do I save my progress?
Great question! After each game a Resurrection Code is generated, save this, paste it in at the start of a game, and you can continue from where you left off – or just hit the “Resurrect & Retry” button to continue the session.

There are Achievements for bragging rights, and a Daily Challenge option where the seed of the progress is set – so everyone can play the same game to compete how far they can progress.

I had fun making this, hope you give it a try and it brings a smile to your face too 🙂

Click HERE TO PLAY: RUN RINCEWIND RUN

Bookmark it so you can get back and continue

But wait… there’s more!

In true Fighting Fantasy novel style, I wasn’t going to leave this at one ‘novel’, I decided to try it for other themes that I’ve enjoyed over the years… and another to try and entice my son to play 🙂

So here we have:

I really like the droid noises, although a common theme through these new ones I tried to add is that the locations usually don’t align with the character / event – something to fix
Geek out with Jedi references, and survive hyperdrive jumps across the galaxy

This is the one for our Son, and maybe my Wife?
Try to survive a year at Hogwarts, familiar characters, events, and locations – see what spells you can cast and items that you can attain.

Together with the others authors mentioned William Gibson changed how I considered writing, and technology – I’m eager to see the upcoming Neuromancer TV show, know he had input, so it’s gotta be good.
This PuaPRLRPG (say it enough, it could stick :p) is based around the Sprawl Trilogy (Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive) – you play a Netrunner (think hacker in VR space), working their way cross nodes to reach Straylight
Same format as the others, I want to put more work into this to polish off, but here it is to try