TM Pyromancy Studios
www.pyromancystudios.webs.com/
“Ignite your
imagination”
Copyright 2013
About Pyromancy
Pyromancy Studios is a new gaming studio
start-up that was created with one purpose in mind: to create games that do not
adhere to the main-stream gaming trends and instead inspire our players to
imagine new possibilities in our games.
“You
can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of
conversation.” Plato
“Humanity
has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible,
and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.” Tom
Robbins
“We
are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play.” Charles
Schaefer
“Combinatory play seems to be the essential
feature in productive thought.” Albert Einstein
Pyromancy plans to create games
that immerse the player into worlds where they invest their time and create
legacies that hold meaning to the world around them, where all their actions
will have positive and negative consequences, and where players are encouraged
to explore their choices with the knowledge that they will be responsible for
the outcome.
Chosen of Blood
Our first game is inspired by the
classic games of the Dungeon Keeper series. However we want to deviate from the
typical approach that other remakes have taken in making the game more or less
age appropriate for everyone. Our game will be both a gritty and gruesome MMO
RTS with heavy RPG elements that will cater to players looking to feel
nefarious glee through taking the mantle of a barely human creature known as a
Blood Lord.
As a Blood Lord the player will be
in command of powerful blood magic that needs one thing to cast - blood. As a
Blood Lord your own personal supply is very limited so you will need to find
humans who will supply you with this much-needed blood to ensure you acquire
and keep your rightful place among the other Blood Lords who also desire the
same sources of power and are willing to plot and conspire against you to keep
you from your rightful place.
The game will be limited
free-to-play with a premium store for perk items that can be purchased with
established forms of currency. With our game being for a more adult audience we
will keep the things in the game and the store that are less appropriate for
children being unlockable and accessible only though official Pyromancy Studio
memberships. These memberships will used to ensure that there are fewer
opportunities for lawsuits and to help preserve the purity of children from
content that probably won’t meet with parental approval.
Features
1.
Lair and Dungeon Building
One of the foundational features to Chosen of Blood is that
the player gets to build and rebuild to their heart’s content. The player’s
home will be divided into two areas:
The upper
floor will be the Lair and will consist of all the living and working space for
the player, their minions and the player’s slaves.
Downstairs is the Dungeon, where all prisoners are thrown
when they are captured and held until they have either outlived or expanded
their usefulness.
Rooms and hallways may be built into these two floors,
which, because the lair is deep underground, will need a space carved from the
stone first, and then fixtures which will serve as both decorative and
functional in purpose. From every skull that adorns the walls to the marble
tiles there will be positive and/or negative effects attached that will impact
anyone who enters the home that the player builds.
2.
Prisoner Management
Prisoners will be kept in the dungeon in holding fixtures
that will contain one or more prisoner at a time. The usefulness of having
prisoners is that they can be tortured and questioned for information and
eventually can be bound into service as one of your minions. Alternately they
can simply be executed for their blood, the most valuable and powerful thing a
mortal possesses but never fully grasps.
Eventually players will want to take the time to
sufficiently tame these prisoners without breaking them, then they can be used
either as slaves to work in the Lair and Dungeon, or the player can release
them to serve as heralds or spies, one to spread information/lies and the other
to collect and deliver information back to the player.
3.
Minion Management
Minions are the twisted combat related servants of the
player. In Chosen of Blood we will be replacing the classic leveling system
used in pretty much every RPG available on the market with a system that works
on a combination of gear-based and skill-based systems that will determine the
role and the effectiveness of a player’s army.
Minions will have equipment slots for each and every
purpose, but their function and effectiveness will be determined based on the
type and quality of the gear that the player chooses to use. If the player
wants to train his minion in the ways of melee combat then equipping a sword
will do the trick. If the player wants that same minion to cast curative spells
then putting a magical wand in the off-hand and equipping a healing spell tome
will do just that. The trade off of versatility is that a versatile minion will
lack the single function effectiveness that they would get if it were built for
only one purpose.
We want our players to experiment and find what gear
mixtures work best for them, players can be as ingenious in their play styles
as they like. Pyromancy Studios approves of this pursuit and wants to publicly
support creative game playing in Chosen of Blood and all our future games.
4.
Crafting and Enchanting
Players will have the ability to craft some basic items at
the beginning of the game that can be used to build their armies and their lair
and dungeon. But eventually players will want to trap skilled craftsmen from the
surface and tame them into slaves that can be put to use. Blacksmiths, once
tamed and bound into slavery, will then put their skills to use unlocking a
variety of craftable armors and weapons that they alone can make. As more
craftsmen are found, tamed, and finally bound into slavery there will be
further crafting recipes unlocked.
Crafting recipes will cover everything from minion and
player gear to fixtures, even certain types of rooms will require specific
craftsmen to create. Also each recipe will require specified amounts of
materials, but the final product will be determined by the choice of materials
used and the quality of those materials used.
a.
Materials
There will be various materials that will be categorical and
sub-categorically divided. The main categories will be: Metals, Hides, Cloth,
Stone/Minerals, Bone, Wood, and Dyes.
For a few examples Metals will include Iron and Copper; and
Hides will include Deer Pelt and Cow Hide; and Wood will include Oak and Yew.
b.
Qualities
Materials will be stored in large piles in the storerooms
built into the Lair, and the overall quality of those piles will be the average
of the qualities of the materials in the pile as they are added.
Items that are not needed can also be converted into salvage,
but when items are salvaged for their materials there will be an initial loss
in quality of the materials. Fortunately, with the right specialist craftsman
any and all materials will be able to be purified in quality, but at an
increasing cost based on the number of items being purified and the current
quality. Item quality cannot be improved once crafted, so players will want to
use the purest quality materials at their disposal when crafting for the best
results.
c.
Enchanting
All items will be able to be enchanted with a single special
effect. This effect might be an added fire damage bonus, a defense to fire
damage, a bonus to HP or a bonus to melee damage.
All enchantments will be blood magic based and will need
blood to apply the enchantment. These enchantments can be increased to an
unlimited degree but the cost to do so will rise with that increase at an
exponential rate that will quickly make the cost itself a hindrance to any
further enchanting.
Furthermore, enchantments will be item bound and will not be
able to be salvaged along with item materials, so players will want to be
selective and not waste blood on vast amounts on enchanting garbage equipment.
5.
Skills and Magic
a.
Player
All of the player’s skills and magic will be tied to the use
of blood magic, which will require the consumption of blood. Most of the skills
or spells will drain the blood of the player directly, but some will drain
blood from the target and replenish the blood of the player.
When defending his own home the player will be able to tap
directly into the blood pool and will cast his spells from that first, draining
himself only when he foolishly depletes his greater, non-vital supply. Whenever
anyplace else the only blood he will have access to will be his own blood and
the blood of creatures around him, should they have any blood of their own.
b.
Minions and NPCs
Minions will be different from players in their use of magic
and skills. Spells will be tied to gear pieces called tomes and scrolls, and
will have a limited number of uses just like quivers of arrows will have
limited shots before the minion will be out of ammunition.
Skills will not have a limited number of uses, but will have
HP costs associated to them. However, there will be some situations where
players may find ways to circumvent these costs if the players are creative
enough to look for those.
Minions will gain their skills based on a set time using the
discipline into which that skill falls. There are also training fixtures for
the minion to practice their combat disciplines on, and if not in use they will
train themselves for a period of time before stopping to make room for another
minion to practice. Similarly, skills will be learned during actual combat, so
long as the skill is of the same discipline as the weapons they are using—learning
a melee skill can be done with a sword or an ax but not with a bow.
6.
Areas and Dominions
Players will trap the humans of the surface world from
towns, estates and cities referred to in the game as areas, every gate and/or
trap portal that a player makes in their lair can only connect to one area at a
time. And while it will be possible, there is no practical reason to have more
than one gate or trap portal per area. On the surface these areas will be tied
together either by geographical similarity or through political provinces,
serving under the command of a surface King vying for political sway over the
other lords on the surface.
a.
Areas
There will be four types of areas in the game: Towns,
Estates, Cities, and Wastelands. In the game any area that starts with or is
reduced to a population of zero will be rendered as wasteland. There are a
total of 3876 areas, but we plan on less than a third of those being populated
at the start of the game.
Towns will be rural countryside and while having a small population
they will be the key providers of food for the rest of the province. Strong and
prosperous towns will increase population growth rates and also material
abundance and quality across the whole rest of the province.
Estates are the seat of provincial nobility, here provincial
learning and safety increase with prosperity. When the provinces estates are
prosperous there are fewer bandits and more mages in the province, meaning
there is more coin and better enchanted gears can be found on higher tiered humans.
Cities are the main population centers and are tied directly
to the crafting prowess of a province. The more highly developed and prosperous
the Cities of an area are the more Craftsmen can be found in that province and
the better the quality of the gear that can be obtained from prisoners.
Just because an area is a wasteland does not mean that it is
useless to the players. Material harvest/gathering mission will result in
greater harvests because of the lack of human presence. And should a player decide
to invest into such an area they will have the options to send a sufficient
number of slaves on a settlement mission to create a new town that the player
can both name and hold dominion over from its inception.
b.
Geological Regions (Geo-Regions)
The terrain of the surface world is varied and diverse, and
the crafting Materials that can be found will vary from terrain to terrain.
Areas in these various terrains have been assembled into similar terrains to
create the different Geo-Regions in the game. The assigned Geo-Region of an
area will be the dictating factor in what Materials can be harvested in that
area.
c.
Provinces
Collections of neighboring areas will be banded together as a
Political Province. Provinces are political in
nature and might crossover between Geo-Regions, so the resources that will be
found in Provinces with the wealth to encourage trade might allow for players
to discover Materials in an Area that cannot be found in that area based on
it’s Geo-Region. Also certain special events in the future will be region
specified for those events.
At the game start there will be over 100 provinces, but over
time some might be destroyed or absorbed by other provinces, and in some rare
cases new provinces might spring up with player help.
d.
Dominions
Players will have the opportunity to lay claim to an area and
hold it as a dominion, and while there is no limit to the number of Gates that
a player can build they can only hold up to 5 Domains at any one time. Once
owned they will receive tributes in the form of currency, blood sacrifices,
and/or local materials available in the Province. Players will also receive
missions and have management setting that can be used to prosper or oppress
their domain to their hearts content.
Every action that a player takes involving their domain will
not only impact their domain, but also the rest of the areas in the Province.
With each decision the player makes there will be an impact on Dominion
loyalty. Should the loyalty be high the area might start hunting Heroes who come
to town looking for the Blood Lord, or if loyalty drops too low there might be
a revolt or there will be an increase in heroes in that area looking to
liberate that area which is so sorely oppressed by the Heroes’ sworn
enemies—Blood Lords—our Players.
Lastly if a player’s domain is reduced to a wasteland then
the symbol of Dominion will be destroyed and the Dominion will no longer be
under control. This will apply to any area except for the specialty Exclusive
areas that we are offering only in this funding campaign.
7.
Combat
All combat will managed on a RTS basis, in which both player
and NPC units will be actively attacking and advancing in real time. Player
Minions will operate under limited AI unless given a direct order from the
Player. All player orders will supersede any AI decision, and once the order is
completed the unit will revert to their AI behavioral logics. This is designed
so that if a player gets attacked while offline his minions will still defend
the lair, and for those players who do not like to micro-manage battles they
will not need to.
a.
Player vrs. Environment
Players will lure and/or trap humans from the surface world
into their lairs where the player will either defeat the invaders, throwing
them into the dungeons below, or the player will be beaten and the humans will
liberate treasures and prisoners from the Lair and Dungeon.
After a player has grown sufficiently notorious, bands of
NPCs will begin to attack on their own volition, and the player will need to
ready to defend against anything that might come after them whether they are
online or offline. This will require suitably equipped minions, expertly placed
traps, and a carefully laid-out lair.
There will also be wandering parties of Heroes who will hunt
the Players that they have a fair chance of defeating. As these parties
successfully raid players’ lairs for treasure and fame, their strength and
numbers will grow until they are a large enough army to attempt liberating
entire provinces at a time. Defeating these heroic parties will be of vital
importance to players who will want to prevent massive heroic armies and also
because heroic units make the best minions.
b.
Player vrs Player
Players will have the opportunity to invade the lairs of
other players so long as they know the name of player they are raiding and one
of the areas where the targeted player is living. The attacking player will
then be able to send in his minions to raid the target Lair, being able to
destroy the powerbase of the targeted Player, take treasure and or prisoners,
or even Dominions.
Players should beware, though, of a few things. To die in
another Lair means that their body is not absorbed into the resurrection ritual
and will remain in the defending player’s along with a portion of the attacking
player’s strength and the player’s gear, the body will need to be reclaimed
before the attacking player will be able to regain full strength. This can
either be done through force or through negotiating a ransom for the body.
Also attacking another player requires a sufficient number of
troops and the defender might have friends reinforcing him with their own
troops, or the defender’s friends might launch a counter attack on the
attacking player while he is occupied on his offensive.
c.
The Abyss
The Abyss is the place that exists between dimensions; here
there are no laws of logic or reason and here monsters dwell that range from
the normal to the bizarre and from the harmless to dreadful. This dimension
will serve as an arena for players to hold arena events where players can enter
solo, with a group or can send their minions into events that are either solo
or grouped events. Events are either elimination or survival in nature and
prizes will be awarded based on performance in the events.
Since the laws of logic do not apply in the Abyss death does
not exist in the same form, so Blood Lords and their Minions need not fear
dying. While dying will end their participation in any of the events being held
there they will find that they are simply returned to the Insanity Gardens
which are used as the entry and peaceful gathering location in the Abyss.
8.
Prestige
Prestige is the measure of renown that a player has
accumulated through their actions and will be the only listed ranking system in
the game.
Players will gain a small amount of prestige for every human
that they defeat and throw into their dungeons. The larger the party of humans
and the higher tier that the humans are the greater the gain will be for the
Player. For defeating parties of heroic humans there is an additional boost for
each human defeated and thrown into the dungeon.
Likewise prestige can only be lost through failure to
adequately protect your home or through failed attack attempts on other
players. The victor in player vrs player combat will gain a percentage of the
prestige that the defeated player loses, should the victor suffer no losses
then he will receive 100% of lost Prestige.
As player prestige rise so do the odds against that player.
Both NPC armies and other players will seek to topple and cast down the highly
prestigious player. At a certain point it will become possible for a player to
name their lair, and if he does not name the lair within a set time it will be
named for him. Once named the prestige gain will be reduced but the difficulty
of the humans that will attack the player will increase.
In the event that a highly prestigious player is defeated
the player or NPC human party leader will receive the title of “[player name]
Slayer”. These titles can be stacked indefinably and will add to the prestige
of a player or will add to the strength of the NPC who overthrew the highly
ranked player.
After being laid low again a player will be able to
resurrect some of their former troops and will be able to rebuild, but his lair
name will remain and his prestige gain will remain reduced, however the added
difficulty will remain proportionately harder for their current prestige than
it would be for a new player making the same climb.
9.
Alliances
There will come a point in the game where every player will
find added benefits in making or joining an alliance. As a member of an
alliance, a player will have access to the assistance of their fellow members,
and will have access to additional challenges and benefits that can only be
found in an alliance.
a.
Leadership
As an alliance, the leadership is rather democratic, where
the major decisions are made through vote, and the leverage of each player is
based on their prestige. So a player with enough prestige to cast over 50% of
the vote will be the de facto leader of the alliance.
Officers for the leadership council will be elected as well,
but for these elections each player will only receive one vote each. The number
of Officers in an alliance can be less but cannot be more than 20% of the total
members of the alliance. Officers will be responsible for the maintenance and
management of alliance resources, inventories, minions and dominions.
b.
Alliance Hall
The Alliance Hall is built like individual player lairs,
except that it is the communal property of the alliance and will require active
player donations to craft, until the alliance is capable of taking hold of a
domain that will then provide tributes to the alliance that will cover the
construction and crafting needs.
Minion armies of the alliance will wander the Allaince hall
and be under the management of the alliance officers. During combat Minions
will follow their AI logic unless given orders from an officer, then the Minion
will follow the most recently received order and then return to following their
logic unless given another order. For this reason it is recommended that during
Alliance
battles that there should only be as many officers online as possible, giving
orders as coordinators. Minions that players bring in as personal
reinforcements will remain under the control of the player they belong to.
Inside the alliance hall players will be able to walk around,
trade items freely, engage in conversations and even duel without loss of life
energies or prestige, except during Alliance
battles where defeats and victories will be reflected in prestige losses and
gains.
c.
Alliance
Rank
Alliances will be ranked on the total cumulative prestige of
all their members. A single strong player does not make a strong alliance by
himself even though he might enjoy simple decision making processes.
d.
Alliance
Dominion
Alliances will be able to hold one or two dominions if they
have enough cumulative prestige, but unlike players who claim dominion over
individual areas alliances will claim dominion over an entire province. Or if
an alliance has enough population in areas that border each other then it is
potentially possible for them to sponsor a currently subjugated noble to be a
provincial leader over a new province that the alliance will hold dominion over
so long as they have the room to hold the dominion, to found a new province
without having the capacity to hold the domain will result in a new free
province.
Similarly, alliances with enough dominion leverage among
their members through provincially local areas can dispose of a provincial
leader and collapse a province into assimilation to another province, adding to
the wealth and resources of the province gaining the new areas.
If an alliance loses too much prestige and cannot maintain a
second dominion then it will be the domain with the greatest wealth that they
will lose and they will keep their less valuable domain.
Alpha Phase
During our Alpha development
portion we will be constructing the game one piece at a time and implementing
it onto our testing server. Our carefully selected testers will then take each
new addition and run it through a battery of trials, attempting to break the
new addition or discover ways in which the new additions causes issues with
previously implemented content.
During the last portion of the
Alpha phase, the game will receive its graphical skins, the lighting effects
for the sake of game mood, and other more cosmetic game parts will go into
development. Once the mechanics of the game have been finished and all that
needs added are the virtual cosmetics we will be open to letting our
contributors who have purchased the pre-beta access join into the game and
begin exploring the game and building their lairs and dungeons while we
finalize and confirm the stability of the game and the addition of the premium
shop as a working portion of both the game and the Pyromancy website.
Beta Phase
After the game is deemed completely
stable and the game the premium store can differentiate between members and
non-members, the game will be rolled over into Beta development phase.
During this phase the game will
become completely available to play and open to the public, with working
memberships and premium store items. Our development focus during this phase
will be to increase the content of the game and the premium store to include
all the items and choices that we have in store for the game.
Upon the completion of our various
content lists and without discovering any game mechanics related issues the
game will officially released and all the players and people who supported our
development will be given credit for the assistance that they gave to us. And
we will begin working on one or more of the other game projects that we have
already have intent to develop.
Our Needs
As a new start-up game studio Pyromancy
needs funding to not only cover our basic development costs for our game engine
and servers, but also to cover our basic living expenditures so that we can
devote ourselves to working full-time on the programming and development of our
first game with the intent that if we work hard and get our first game done
right then it will pay our needs while we produce all our future game projects.
To this end when you support
Pyromancy Studios your money is going to the following places:
●
Cover IndieGogo Site fees: 4% if we make our
goal, 9% if we do not make our goal. **We have chosen to opt out of the
IndieGogo credit card because of the additional 3% fee, this means that we will
not be buying anything with the funds raised here until the end of the Fund
Campaign**
●
Cover business startup fees: $4,674
Includes:
○
Unity Pro developer engine: $1,500 (one-time)
○
Website and Domain Name: $450 (one-time)
○
Banking Account and Postal Box fees: $344
(annual)
○
Additional Copyrighting and Trademarking: $380
(one-time)
○
Safety Margin for Unexpected Expenses: $2,000
●
Pay living expenses/salaries for the development
team, rent, electric, food and travel needs: **most of us have other jobs that
pay these expenses currently, but the more we can raise though this campaign
the less we will need to work elsewhere to pay our living expenses**
○
Combined Living Expenses: $17,900
○
Initial Company Salaries: $25,000
●
Hire/Contract additional personal to augment the
team: Sound Effects, Artists, Web-designers, Additional Programmers, ect. **The amount of funds that will be diverted
to any of these areas will be determined based on the funds we raise and the
future needs that we encounter**
Our Funding Goals
For all of our supporters we will
be offering the following rewards:
●
For every dollar given to our support you will
receive a 20 Pyre credit when the premium store opens (regular Dollar value of
a Pyre will be $0.10). All of our supporters will receive an email containing a
credit redemption code that can be used when the premium store opens to claim
their Pyres. **Note: This amount will be increased to 50 Pyres for every dollar
raised if we meet our funding goal of $125,000**
●
After we reach our goal threshold of $25,000 we
will be sending a wall poster that will be a map of the game world to anyone
whose total donation is $50 or more.
●
If we reach our goal of $80,000 then all our
donors will receive information on how to claim an exclusive Chosen of Blood
screensaver that will not become publicly available.
●
If $100,000 or more has been raised then we will
be offering company and game paraphernalia to those who donated over $100
(value range of $20-100 depending on total donation amount)
If
we make the following Funding Thresholds we are prepared and planning to do the
following actions.
**Please
note that all physical items offered (T-Shirts, Wall posters, etc.) will be
sent at the close of the funding campaign, this is to save us the added expense
of a crowdsource credit card, and to prevent us from having issues with
excessive inventories exclusive for this funding campaign.**
$5,000
With
all of our business start-up costs covered we will release a T-Shirt with
Company Logo and everyone who donated more than $50 will receive a limited
issue founders complementary T-Shirt in the size and color of their choice. And
the shirts will become available for purchase though the campaign as well.
(These limited issue shirts will not be available though the Pyromancy Web
Store where any additional shirts we design will be sold)
$15,000
Full
release of all the human and minion types, their strengths and weaknesses and
the concept arts for the minions will be added to the campaign. Video
introduction explaining the various uses and activities that will be related to
minions and how to employ them will also be posted.
$25,000
We
will make a 24 x 36 inch map of the lands period appropriate for Chosen of
Blood and will send a copy to everyone who donated $75 or more. Also from this
point on anyone whose total donation exceeds $75 will be sent a complimentary
map.
$40,000
Full
release explaining the prison management systems, including the interrogation
and torture features; also concept arts and introductory video will be added as
well.
$60,000
Full
back story release with illustrations giving the background behind the event
that lead up to Chosen of Blood and a sneak peak at what the future holds for
both the game and the world.
$80,000
Pyromancy
Studios will make and exclusive screensaver displaying some of the tortures
that will appear in the game, also there will be music accompaniment played by
a band of slaves in some of the outfits that they will have featured. All
donors will receive information to download this exclusive screensaver.
$100,000
A
full line of Pyromancy Studios and Chosen of Blood paraphernalia will be added
to the Pyromancy Online Store including mugs, hats, shot glasses, and clothing.
Anyone who donated over $100 will be able to choose a complimentary item(s)
valued up to 1/5th their total donation value but not exceeding
$100.
$125,000
The
Pyre value per dollar will be increased to 50 Pyres for every dollar donated.
This will affect all future and past donations.