ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

We used to have a T2 frontpage wiki where people wrote interesting module ideas and concepts, even if they didn't develop them personally.

I'd like if we did some of this here.
So I'll start - even if no one personally develops this, they could take minor parts.

In most(almost all?) roguelikes, when you die that's the end.
There are situational exceptions, ToME has a few(one is a difficulty setting, other ways are obtained in way).

But what if that wasn't how it worked?

You're an adventurer, you do adventurer stuff, you kill monsters.
Then a monster kills you. But...it's not the end.

You find yourself - minus equipment. Maybe you keep "soul bound"stuff. Maybe what lost was grabbed by an unique if it was around. Whatever.

I will call the afterlife 'hell' from now on, just because it's a place you're trying to get away from(usually), but it's not negative per se, and doesn't have to be full of horned demons with pitchforks.

Actually, maybe it's not so bad. Not even worse than some dungeons you were in.
Still, you'll you'll want to go back to the land of the living eventually.
You had a MISSION did you? Some sort of epic quest that you can't complete as long as you're well, dead.

So how we do this?
See, 'hell' is a zone. A challenging, maybe creepy and different but not superhard so zone(at least at the start).
You might have to pass a few puzzles, fight a few monsters and then find an exit. Then you're back to the land of the dead.

But what if you die...in hell?

There's two ways of handling that.

1)Death in hell is final. Your soul dissolves or is eaten by some horrible horrendous horror.
You had a second chance - a RENEWABLE second chance because you could die and escape several times - but lost it.Meh. Start a new character.

2)You can't EVER permanently lose.
You got that right.
You can't lose.
Ever. Not even if you work at it really hard.
Well, not in the long term at least....You can certainly put yourself into an unpleasant position.

What happens when you are defeated?

2a)You respawn in Hell. Although maybe the level is regenerated, and you're moved. If you were close to the 'exit', you're now fairly away. Gotta start from scratch, but hey, things can't get much worse when you're in hell, can they?

2b)Wrong. At every respawn, you lose some resource - that can be regained. Perhaps you lose a level and random high-level talents. Thus losing makes your next attempt harder, up to a point(when you have no levels to lose).

2c)Or...you end up in a 'deeper' layer of hell. The dungeon level below it basically.
There doesn't have to be a hard limit(other than computer limitations, like with the Infinite Dungeon. Feel free to sue the management of Hell for false advertising).
This new layer/level would be slightly harder, meaning that if you had trouble handing the level earlier well...you're in even more trouble now.
And 'death' will make things worse.
You can break the cycle though. Win the current stage and you go back one layer.

This is my personal favorite and what I will assume is the default in the rest of the post.

Here's other thoughts:

1)Make (some?)uniques killed end up in hell too, and 'abstract' their chance of resurrecting/ending into deeper levels(so some could effectively never be faced again).
You aren't necessarily the only individual who can walk from the land of the dead to the living. Hell(pun intended), it might even be an everyday occurence for people.

2)Some layers of hell could have interesting things in them. Perhaps even worth dying for...Not all rewards can be brought back to the land of the living.

3)Some abilities/talents/things(a few available in life) should interact with the way afterlife works, or your starting position in it.
You don't need to start on the uppermost layer, for example. You might suffer a curse before death that makes you start deeper.

4)Stepping from the 1st layer to the material world doesn't have to be so simple.
Maybe it's not a resurrection proper but a partial reincarnation - your stats might be rearranged a bit, or one of your descriptors switched.
Alternatively, there could be an unbeatable(...or is it?)guardian that gives you a random quest. This could even be a 'deal'.
You go back to the land of the living and have to 'bring back'(=kill) someone else who escaped...unfairly.
If your time is up, either you instantly die or progressively stronger demons are sent to kill you(they can't send them against the 'hunted', because they aren't geased).

5)For those who like challenges - the game SHOULD keep track of levels of hell visited, times you died, total turns lost...finishing the game earlier would be overall 'better'.
Doing it without ever dying could be a major accomplishement. Although some could see that as 'missing the point' of the whole game.



Might add more stuff later on.


Thoughts? Anyone interested in developing or discussing this? Any ideas which you think are horrible or particularly charming?

I we're going to do the reincarnating thing, then your incarnation ought not be something having to do with your self while in hell. So....

- You have your soul-self and your body-self. Your soul and your body have different levels (though they might start out the same). Every time you're clothed in flesh, you get a brand new first-level body, but your soul maintains all of its growth and development, along with any soul-powers it may have developed.

- Actually, one further. This is a world where people die and are returned to life all the time - and that's the core of the magic system. The top level of hell is basically an enormous bazar of the dead - where various people offer various ways to return to the living for various prices. You might be able to get out by performing a quest or two, or bringing a special item that can be found in the lands of the dead, or perhaps paying enough with the coin of the dead (which stays with your soul, unlike the coin of the living. In the living world there are places where you can convert living money to dead money, but not vice versa). People with certain skills can go direct, revenants or wraiths, and there are places in the living world where you can do things that will be pleasing to various small gods or important dead individuals - some of whom can give you an incarnation that you might find useful. Of course, anyone can walk through the reincarnation gate, and take their chances. It may scramble your memories of the afterlife (and what you've learned there) and give you a body and profession that's essentially random, but your *strength* of soul remains, and hey - it's free.

In this one, dying in the deadlands might destroy you utterly - but most of the Deadlands won't actually kill you. The rules are different there. Instead, they'll transport you to various soul prisons or gardens of contemplation or whatnot. Of course, some thigns will cause soul-death, but those things are relatively rare.

Of course the deadlands aren't just there as a place you want to leave. They're also the place you go to channel and train your soul arts - and the difficulty is set so that your starter character, with no trained soul arts and only the most basic of mortal forms, is eventually going to hit a point where he's almost guaranteed to die to superior firepower. Getting through the game without dying once would essentially be the ultimate challenge game for this mod. For most folks, your first life (as an adventurer) would be a way to set yourself up for your first death.

Of course, roguelikes are all about failure. Here, the failure isn't about death, as death isn't an issue. Instead, it's about time. Dying takes time. Reincarnating takes time - and if you don't manage to achieve certain things before time's up... well, that's just rather unfortunate, isn't it?

Mind you, there might be multiple ways to achieve your goals and stave off the end of the world - both from the lands of the living and the lands of the dead.

Alternately, if that's a bit too brutal, let there be a soul power stat. It doesn't usually decay - but when you die it goes down a little, and certain forms of reincarnation can cause it to go down a fair bit. A few attacks also harm it in small degrees. If your soul power drops to 0, you become a zombie, and have no access to soul abilities until you can recover some soul power. If you die as a zombie (or if your soul power is reduced to 0 while in the lands of the dead) you're just gone. Recovering soul power is doable, but not easy or cheap.

Sirrocco wrote:I we're going to do the reincarnating thing, then your incarnation ought not be something having to do with your self while in hell. So....

Not necessarily. Some real world beliefs have people end up in an afterlife based on how they behaved in life and then reincarnate.
But here it could be the other way around - everyone starts in the same afterlife, and how you behaved *in death* affects reincarnation.

- You have your soul-self and your body-self. Your soul and your body have different levels (though they might start out the same). Every time you're clothed in flesh, you get a brand new first-level body, but your soul maintains all of its growth and development, along with any soul-powers it may have developed.

Although what you say is quite reasonable - in addition to perhaps being the basic assumption - I'd say the the body-soul division doesn't have to be as significant in this setting.

If you *really* wanted you could even make the whole Deadlands place *physical*.

When someone dies, some 'Agent of Death' grabs and drags him there...it's an actual place in the material world, almost as if death was a crime and the deadlands were a prison(and you have to earn your way out rather than simply waiting).
A bit like the greek Hades, which was said to have physical entrances.
However, this might make the game less interesting overall.

This is a world where people die and are returned to life all the time - and that's the core of the magic system. The top level of hell is basically an enormous bazar of the dead - where various people offer various ways to return to the living for various prices. You might be able to get out by performing a quest or two, or bringing a special item that can be found in the lands of the dead, or perhaps paying enough with the coin of the dead (which stays with your soul, unlike the coin of the living. In the living world there are places where you can convert living money to dead money, but not vice versa). People with certain skills can go direct, revenants or wraiths, and there are places in the living world where you can do things that will be pleasing to various small gods or important dead individuals - some of whom can give you an incarnation that you might find useful. Of course, anyone can walk through the reincarnation gate, and take their chances. It may scramble your memories of the afterlife (and what you've learned there) and give you a body and profession that's essentially random, but your *strength* of soul remains, and hey - it's free.

That's pretty cool stuff.

The 'currency of the dead' could be called obols, a reference to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charon%27s_obol).
You could even have Charon-equivalents who 'ferry'(teleport) you to different location of the Deadlands that are impossible(or just ridicolouly hard/annoying)to reach normally.

I really like the idea of 'shopping for a body'
You could have even have cheap bodies - they would be temporary. You resurrect, but the body gradually rots, and soon...you're back in the Deadlands.
That's what you get for being cheap!

Could also be interesting if there were talents/abilities that consumed obols.
Some could be usable while alive.
Say a Necromancer could spend obols while in the realm of the living to 'pay' summoned spirits.

This is also a decent idea for a 'random quest'/event. You're doing your stuff in the Deadlands, when...you're in the material world(as a spirit, not a 'true' living being), summoned by a Necromancer who gives you a task - with obols as a reward. At the end of the task, you return to the Deadlands(or you get a chance to haunt/try to stay in the land of the living for a while?).
You could also give obols to undead spirits in the living world to persuade(bribe) them to go back to their 'proper' place.

In this one, dying in the deadlands might destroy you utterly - but most of the Deadlands won't actually kill you. The rules are different there. Instead, they'll transport you to various soul prisons or gardens of contemplation or whatnot. Of course, some thigns will cause soul-death, but those things are relatively rare.

That was something I considered but didn't post.
Good catch.
Basically 'themed' levels/'vaults' in the Deadlands.

Here's a new thought about permanent soul-death, if you're interested in it: what if souls were not TRULY destroyed but merely irreversibly trasformed in...items?
Maybe not directly, but the soul-equivalent of a corpse, a "soul husk" is dropped and it can be worked into items.

Powerful items - usually ego, but sometimes artifacts.

Soul-killing uniques(so they don't com back) could get you a basically guaranteed randart, based on the flavour and power of the unique.

And if it's *your*character that dies permanently, they might become an artifact which could show up on later playthroughs.
Yeah, exploitable, but I think the world persistence thing could be fun...

Of course the deadlands aren't just there as a place you want to leave. They're also the place you go to channel and train your soul arts - and the difficulty is set so that your starter character, with no trained soul arts and only the most basic of mortal forms, is eventually going to hit a point where he's almost guaranteed to die to superior firepower. Getting through the game without dying once would essentially be the ultimate challenge game for this mod. For most folks, your first life (as an adventurer) would be a way to set yourself up for your first death.

Yes, that's how I'd want it to be.
Except that the 'being dead' part should be so fun that the ultimate challenge would be almost silly.
It's not just making things harder, but missing out on a VERY significant part of the game, almost (but not quite?) like playing ToME without ever using a talent.

The deadlands(I like that more than hell. perhaps 'hell' could be used for the particularly inpleasant layers...)aren't a way for the game to punish death less harshly than other games, but basically *the*point of the game.

However...we have to strike a balance - we DO need interesting things to do in the world of the living, or else one might as well have the player start in the deadlands.

Of course, roguelikes are all about failure. Here, the failure isn't about death, as death isn't an issue. Instead, it's about time. Dying takes time. Reincarnating takes time - and if you don't manage to achieve certain things before time's up... well, that's just rather unfortunate, isn't it?

It's very different than other games, and that's the point.

Here's a comparison which I think might be relevant:
other games are a bit like most sports where you can win(finish the game "properly") or lose(die permanently).
Some victory and defeats are better than others - for the former, consider multiple endings, for the latter, a 'glorious' end as opposed to Yet Another Stupid Death.

This game concept would be more like a...kind of marathon.
As long as you're persistent and have time, you are GUARANTEED to make it in the end.
But how long is it going to take? Are you going as fast as you can to get to the goal, or taking your time strolling along enjoying the pleasant landscape?
Both are valid approaches.

Mind you, there might be multiple ways to achieve your goals and stave off the end of the world - both from the lands of the living and the lands of the dead.

True. I've actually thought about the narrative/storyline/setting a bit, here's some rough thoughts(and excuses for quests)...

What if the(or "one of the"..) 'ultimate goal/s'/endgames were found in some upper dimension, which is geo-spiritually opposed to the Deadlands.
The Deadlands are "below", the lands of the living "in the middle", the "upper plane" above.

Or you could reverse the Deadlands and this Upper Plane - no reason death has to be 'down'. Or have the planes be parallel/side by side.

This wouldn't exactly be "heaven" - just like the Deadlands aren't hell.

It could be a place where ascended spirits who have broken the cycle of death and rebirth(or just...death and more death...)reside.
You could go there on a quest for enlightment, or whatever.
Alternatively, the 'other' realm doesn't have to be spiritually superior or whatever. Maybe it's the Realm of Life-as-chaos, while the Deadlands are fairly(but not overly so)static, even if stuff happens in them.
Maybe you end up in the "Upper Realm"(the realm of the ....extra-alive ?) by going through the opposite of death in the material world.
Anyway...

You could have final bosses/NPC for these 3 dimensions.
Defeating - and while death against them doesn't HAVE to be final, it would be interesting if failure got you banished from their plane and you had to work REALLY hard to get another attempt - or interacting with them could get you different endings which decide the fate of the Universe.
Storylines, basically. Stuff for the player to enter in. Again, excuses some quests.
Some thoughts:


The Deadlands boss
You could have something stereotypical like a power-hungry Necromancer who just wants to take over the other dimensions.
Invade the Material World and then the Other Place(Other Place...That's not so bad a name) with an army of shades.
Or a more nuanced, sympathetic character, like the greek Hades.
It's a grim and thankless job but someone has to do it. Goals...'close down' the place and get a vacation - something interesting would have to happen to the souls of the dead. Can't just do that because of a geas, or because there would be consequences unless some epic quest is performed first.

As for how they got their place...perhaps the first human(or intelligent being) to have ever died and thus became ruler of the place by 'default'.

The Material World boss
A kind of Demiurge. Not very spiritually minded, I guess.
It likes to create, shape - and maybe once in a while, destroy - stuff.
Trapped in the middle, perhaps its goal could be to reshape the other worlds to a more physical form. Or maybe it doesn't care at ALL for the other realms, and is just happy being left alone. Although the player might have different thoughts.

The Enlightened/Upper World boss
The ruler could be some sort of spiritual entity - but not merely "a" or even "the" god/God/Deity/Creator.

Rather, I'd go with one of the first people to ever die and to gain 'enlightment' and who made itself ruler of the dimension.

Goal could just be to unify the 3 worlds by "enlightening" the other two
They don't want to? Well, these denizens of the lower realms don't know what's good for them anyway.