Writer needed for Legend of Arcana

Check out my game here.
http://legendofarcana.blogspot.com/

Right now the story is just ideas and the game is far from completion, so it's still open to all kinds of ideas.
If you're interested please respond to this thread or email me stephen(dot)arnquist(at)gmail(dot)com

The style I'm looking for
It's a game, not a novel. I want dialogue to be fairly brief and not interrupt the game play too much.
Beyond that I'm open to just about anything. Can be comedic, dramatic, suspenseful, philosophical, whatever, it's all good.

Note: This is a non-commercial game, I'm just making it for fun.

Check out my game here.
http://legendofarcana.blogspot.com/

Right now the story is just ideas and the game is far from completion, so it's still open to all kinds of ideas.
If you're interested please respond to this thread or email me stephen(dot)arnquist(at)gmail(dot)com

The style I'm looking for
It's a game, not a novel. I want dialogue to be fairly brief and not interrupt the game play too much.
Beyond that I'm open to just about anything. Can be comedic, dramatic, suspenseful, philosophical, whatever, it's all good.

Note: This is a non-commercial game, I'm just making it for fun.

I'm sorry to say dude, but Hero vs Evil Empire = Redundant.
You'll need a better story, But I hope you find a good writer for you soon! 

P.S, I like the way you potray Arcana though. Changing her hair color when casting
a spell.. I like that 

Your game looks way too ready for someone who only needs a writer.

But AbsoluteIce is right, Hero vs Evil Empire is overused and that would make writing your game pretty undesirable.

Do you have anything else planned for it besides Arcana fighting the empire?

It seems to me that she just learns magic from spirits and then fights the empire,
I would go with the spirits actually doing something more useful after teaching her magic.
Like maybe they liberate some parts of the world for you, or directly fight your enemy for you.

Also, how long do you plan on making the game playable?
(10, 20 hours, etc)

I myself wouldn't be interested in a really long game, so I wouldn't expect many others to be interested either.

Awesome, I wasn't expecting replies so soon, thanks!

I agree, the hero vs evil empire is pretty lame, but it's all I got >_< That's why I need a writer.

I'm more interested in making the gameplay part of the game using the XAS engine. The story, characters, the order of events etc, are pretty open to change.

I don't want it to be too long either, I'd say 10 hours tops, probably much shorter than that.

If you don't really have a story going for you, then you should consider teaming up with someone who has, and use your focus on gameplay/eventing (or whatever else you're good at) to help make their game better.


However, if you still want to work on your own game then you'll want a pretty skilled writer to get your story into a game that is only around 10 hours long or less.
This would probably require NPC characters to fill in the blanks...


Hopefully some other people are willing to modify your story for you.
(I get too creative with stories, and they'll probably just turn into my own story completely, so I won't do it for you).


But you'll need to be sure on a few things:


Are those all the characters that you are using, are there anymore?

Are the spirits/guardians necessary?
(Maybe some of them could be doing something else)

Why is the empire capturing mages, what is their purpose in doing this?
(I know the empire drains their energy, but why? What is their reason?)

Is Arcana on a quest for revenge, or is it something else?


You'll need to answer these questions first, before any good story can be created for you.

I'll make one up for you right now, see how you feel about modifying it.

Spoiler for Story:

I'll give you a story I made in my head just now:
Just for reference

The leader of the empire (named Douchebag) was born with the gift of Holy and Darkness, it never influenced him before but in recent years they began to corrupt his mind, leading him down the path of paranoia and anxiety.

Douchebag seeks power, the power to bring his madness to an end. His entire staff (or Nobles) have abandoned him, afraid of his darkened right eye and his brightly coloured left eye.

Douchebag experienced his first relief when a rebelious mage thought it was a wise idea to attack him.

It took him many nights to consider the reason for the relief, deciding that the magic itself was not the reason but rather, the energy that was emitted from it.

He had ordered his army to capture any and all mages they could find in the hopes it would cure him of his pain.

A few years later, Douchebag has regained his sanity, but his lust for relief has turned almost every mage in the once thriving world into a slave for his desire.

Arcana a young lass was discovered by the military using her Holy magic.
This magic (thought to be rare in this world) was just the type of energy Douchebag had been searching for.

Arcana was locked up in the cells in the royal castle awaiting direct visiting from Douchebag himself, she learns from her nearby cellmate Wallace, that he plans to harvest her magic energy to cure his own.

Wallace (who was caught stealing from the castle) ended up in the cells with his own set of lockpicks. He picked the locks for the cell and the two escaped.

Arcana left a note in her cell saying:
"You really do live up to your name, you could have simply asked the guardians to help with your problem, but apparently you really were a Douchebag".

And so they left to journey the world for some reason which I don't really want to think about yet.

Douchebag is naturally pissed off about her words and declares war on all those who use magic (Reminds me of Merlin).

Douchebag attempts to fuck with the guardians and gets his ass handed to him,
the military gets sick of his shit and leaves him.

Arcana, now a powered up magic user, kicks his arse. But his death causes Arcana to inherit his madness, just as he did when his mother died at childbirth.

End

Oh goodness me, anymore and I'll feel like I'm typing an essay.


I'm willing to write your intro scene for you, but that is as far as I'm willing to go.
(You want Arcana to be shown getting captured by the military as the intro scene, correct?)

 

I might have some material for you. I'll email you when I get home.

The leader of the empire (named Douchebag)

Lolwat.
I laughed my ass off this. 

Lolwat.
I laughed my ass off this. 

Part of the joys of story telling. 

I couldn't think of a name at the time... but his name helps end the story.

I found some pretty solid ideas on these two sites. I might give it another shot writing it myself.

http://vgstorydesign.com/overview.php
http://www.hbgames.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=846990

Good luck to you arnquist

Revised my story again, take a look, tell me what you think!

http://legendofarcana.blogspot.com/2012/02/story-final-version.html

Thanks again for your replies! I posted this in like, 5 or 6 different forums and this is the only place where people gave me any feedback, so this is the only forum where I'll bother to post this follow up.

She must recharge the 6 elemental crystals that keep Cerulea in the sky, fire, ice, water, wind, earth, lighting

You'll want to be clear on what this means, lighting generally means holy magic (which if I remember correctly, you didn't want that in your game).

I don't wanna write any of that lovey-dovey shit

Haha me too man, me too.


Story is sounding much better now, an isolated city is found in a lot of RPGs but very few actually have you start in them, so that would give your game a feel of mystery right from the beginning.

Travelling to the surface world in order to recharge crystals gives me the feel that I would be playing a character who is just doing errands.
But saying that I need to do it before a catastrophe happens gives me the sense of doing my job quickly.
(That means it was a good idea).

I'm looking forward to see how you implement Wallace. I think that a character who bases his thoughts on technology would be arrogant to a mage, but we'll see how you make it work

Killing a god? You'd have to make Arcana VERY VERY powerful to make any chance of defeating a god plausible.

yeah, that was a type, I meant Lightening (or thunder? I guess most games call it thunder).