Rules - Ideas That Don’t Deserve Their Own Thread

So I'm having a little trouble deciding what I want to do in regards to one of my character's backstory.

This character is the antagonist of the story; a ghost girl who was murdered in the past. She's a vengeful spirit, and although I want her to be a sort of sympathetic character, I want to make her evil as well.

I don't want to go into too much detail about my story just yet, but the two protagonists end up in a haunted mansion. Let's just say the ghost girl is trying to kill the protagonists. So the ghost girl is already a somewhat unlikable character. However, I don't know if I should take it a step further.

Here are two options for ghost girl's past:

1. Leave her as is. She was murdered, plain and simple. Now that she's an evil spirit, she's trying to kill the protagonists for her own personal goals.
2. When the ghost girl was still a normal, living human, she was murdered. She returned as a vengeful ghost and killed someone who was very nice to her when she was still alive - she considered this person family. She killed the person as revenge against her murderer. Now that she's an evil spirit, she's trying to kill the protagonists for her own personal goals.

I'm a little conflicted here because I want her to be a somewhat sympathetic character to an extent, but I want to make it clear that she's still evil. Going with route 2 seems like a good way to go since it hammers into the player that she's pretty evil, and although I don't want to redeem her , I want the player to feel like what she did was understandable in the moment, but wrong and terrible.

I brought this idea up with a friend, and they said they would go with option 1 since if I went with 2, they wouldn't like ghost girl at all. However, I'm not really trying to make the player like her. I was thinking that maybe not all evil characters need to be redeemed or entirely sympathetic. On the other hand, maybe I'm taking it a little too far with option 2, and I should play it safe with 1 instead. Perhaps I should go with 1 because the fact that she's trying to kill the protagonists in and of itself is enough to show she's evil.

Any opinions?

EDIT: tldr version: Should I make a sympathetic antagonist? (I'm not asking how, but if I should.)

The easiest way to make a sympathetic antagonist (in my opinion) is to give them a righteous goal, but doing the wrong actions to get to that goal. One of my favorite examples is Poison Ivy from Batman - she's a scientist doing everything in her power to save the environment - but, well, a lot of the actions she take towards that goal involve stuff like murder and mind-control - which are definitely, uh, evil. What are your ghost girl's personal goals? Is it revenge? Is it some secret way to come back to life? Is it just immense grief and a grudge against the living? Make her goal something people can get behind - she wants revenge on her murderer, she wants to come back to life in order to get justice/confess to her crush/apologize to someone/etcetc. Maybe every person she sees looks exactly like her murderer, or she hallucinates that they're laughing at her. There's a lot of different directions you could take here, depending on how the rest of your story is set up.

@Idiot
The thing is, I'm not really trying to make her too sympathetic. Also, she already got her revenge against her murderer a very long time ago. The murder and everything took place during the mid 19th century, and now the game will take place in modern day. The ghost girl is trying to harm the protagonists so she can possess one of them, and escape the mansion she is bound to. Basically, her goal is to be able to be alive again in someone else's body, even if that means selfishly killing that person in the process.

My question isn't how to make a sympathetic character. My question is should I?
Going with option 1 would would leave room to sympathize with ghost girl. Option 2 would make it a bit harder to sympathize with her because she actually kills the one person who was actually nice to her in the past.

I think having a character who decides to just throw all her morals out the window because life was totally unfair to them would be sort of interesting in a way. -This character is aware what they're doing is bad, they just don't care anymore.

So yeah, I'm not sure if I want to make her a sympathetic character and go with option 1, or make her a bit more unsympathetic and go with 2.

I wasn't really going to delve too deep into ghost girl's backstory on the forums, but if you would like, I could give you more context/details about it.

@Akihiko This is just my opinion, but your antagonist is really evil, so it will take some doing to get the players feeling bad on her behalf. You could add in some dialogue (self or otherwise) where she antagonizes over doing the things she does. She doesn't *want* to hurt others, but the protagonist has the same color hair (trigger). The neighbor's dog was barking when she was killed, so anyone with a dog gets her wrath. Anything that makes her feel pain as she's doing her evil. Even an occasional comment like, "Get away from me, I don't want to hurt you... Kill you... DESTROY YOU!!!"

A simple blurb about how she doesn't want to hurt others, but by being trapped in the world the antagonist turned completely evil. The, an occasional reminder comment would get the job done without having to really flesh out that part of the backstory.

@Mrs_Allykat @Idiot

I think I will go ahead and explain her backstory a bit so you guys have more context. This backstory isn't entirely fleshed out, but I'll let you guys know what I have so far.

I'll be referring to ghost girl as "Bow" for now.

Around the time Bow was born, her biological mother had died. I haven't decided how I want the biological mother to die exactly - either a murder or some accident. In any case, for whatever reason, Bow's father wasn't interested in taking care of this baby anymore, and sent her off to an orphanage. Bow's father got married to another woman, and he had a child with that woman. The new born child is a boy.

Fast forward 8-10ish? years now

Bow's father is a wealthy man with a nice mansion, and he had hoped to make his son heir to it all. However, it turns out this boy has a weak body. In fact, he doesn't have much longer to live. The father, realizing his son did not have long to live, decided to make Bow take his place as heir.

The father traveled to the orphanage where he abandoned his daughter as a baby many years ago, and against what Bow wanted, brought her to the mansion. The step-mother absolutely hated Bow because she viewed the little girl as her son's replacement. The step-mother was pretty abusive to Bow, and everyone in the mansion treated the girl cruelly ever since she arrived - except for one person.

The step-mother's son, Bow's half-brother, was especially kind to her. Since her half-brother was always bedridden, she would often go to his bedside and play music for him - violin or whatever instrument. Being with her step-brother was the only place in that mansion where she could relax.

This is the part where I am conflicted. The backstory can go two ways from here

1. Bow's half-brother ends up dying due to his illness. This drives the step-mother mad, and eventually, she murders Bow. Or the step-mother somehow frames Bow as a witch or something, and manages to make everyone in the mansion fear and turn against her. I'm not sure which option to pick here - the step-mother killing Bow, or the step-mother framing Bow as a witch and then killing her. In any case, Bow ends up murdered either way. Bow awakens as an evil spirit. She is engulfed by wrath and revenge. Not in her right mind, she ends up killing everyone in the mansion.
2. Bow's half-brother is getting sicker and sicker by the day. Each day is torment for the mother. The mother is constantly asking her husband to find a better doctor for her son, but no matter how many doctors they go through, they can't seem to cure the boy. Feeling like her husband, who is apathetic about the entire situation, isn't doing enough to help her son, she becomes resentful. The mother resents and despairs at the fact her son will be replaced. Each day, the sicker she saw her son, the more emotionally unstable she became. The mother (and pretty much everyone in the mansion) would often abuse Bow, but one day she just took it too far. She snapped and murdered Bow. Bow returns as an evil spirit. Not in her right mind, and engulfed by wrath and revenge, Bow begins to kill everyone in the mansion. The mother, realizing what is happening, runs to her son's room in order to leave the mansion with him. Bow finds her step-mother along with her half-brother in his bedroom. However, instead of killing her step-mother right away, Bow wanted to make it especially painful for her... Bow gives her step-mother a choice: "I'll let one of you live. Decide who should die." Immediately, the mother chose to sacrifice herself for her son. Bow listened to her answer, and instead of killing her, she killed her son. Bow decided to let her step-mother live, thinking that seeing her son die before her eyes was worse than death. The step-mother, who was left in the mansion all alone with nothing but carnage from the massacre, commits suicide.

I'm not sure if I should go for 1 or 2. If I go with option 1, Bow is more of a sympathetic character. If I go with option 2, Bow is less sympathetic.

I sort of like the idea of having an evil character that isn't too sympathetic, and I sort of like the idea that Bow did something so heinous by betraying the one person who was good to her. But I'm still conflicted.

I want to make it very clear that Bow, as an evil spirit, does not mind hurting other people to get what she wants. She has thrown her morals out the window.

My question isn't how to make a sympathetic character. My question is if I should make a sympathetic character. I guess a more appropriate question would be: What would make for a more interesting backstory: 1 or 2?

If we look at similar themes in nature there is allways gravity or time. If we imagine light as the electromagnetic phenomena thing and darkness as vaccum or space itself.

I was wondering if RM could be used to make a SRW-style game, i'm no expert but the most technical complex part in those kind of game seems to be the fight cutscenes, although i wouldn't know how to go about replicating any of the mechanics and what few fangames with that kind of gameplay are usually made by people who coded the game by themselves.

So, hello everyone. I'm new for RPG Maker MV (and RPGM at all). My proposition is a game with many way to develop your story. How you play will give you a consequence of your choises. Like, will you take money in lower Inn level and get some money, but lose a option to take a rest in Inn? Will you kill Pub owner's wife which now is zombie? And how would you explain it to him? Will he scold you and never serve you again? Or maybe he understand that his wife was already dead. Or. Maybe he would join her in dead? You'll probably help town mayor in hunting bandits, but will you do this from your good heart, or will you took some money in advance? And what will you do when you'll find mayor's secret? Will you even be able to discover this one? And what with treasure scattered around map? Would you easly find them all or you'll rather won't lose your time for this? What will you do when you will have to chose between your closest familie, and beloved one? You can not run from decisions (or maybe sometimes you can?) and good people not aslways wining. But is it worth to be good and get sometimes ass kicked? Or you just take what you want for yourself? I'm just courious how many way you can play this game of mine. Which I've start to created, but it's on very begining level of being done.

@Aniknk If you're looking for team members, this isn't the right place. We have a Project Recruitment forum for that. Be sure to read the rules and guidelines before you make a thread.
As for your game idea itself, it sounds like a whole lot of work for you. Which might not be the best since you're just starting out. I'd focus on one of those ideas (maybe the pub owner's zombie wife) and try and make that first, before you start all of them together.

Hello, everyone! This might sound like a silly question but I figured more opinions on this would be good.

I'm trying to make a character that fits a certain mold. Her name is Ishiko and she's a gyaru girl, but not of the ganguro variety. She got more of a beach bunny tan, long dyed blond beach wae hair with some peach-streaks in it, and wears revealing but fashionable outfits and makeup. She's got a decent following on her social media platforms (she really just posts pictures of herself as she's very, very pretty, and also the things she does around Shibuya or Harajuku), queen of the selfie, and, frankly, just incredibly engrossed in herself. She's not necessarily a jerk to other people per se (after all, social media personality!), but she's not selfless in any sense. Just kind of your slightly above-average self-absorbed teenager.

With that being said, this character is being thrown into a horror scenario. I want the players to eventually feel like they want her to make it out alive, despite the beginning origins of her personality. Is there something anyone can suggest that would make her a bit more relatable during play? Whether seeing something from her, or how she reacts to things... it's hard to explain! I guess what would make her more "likable" to help the audience want to help her escape, rather than that they just have to because she's the main character?

@rpgdreamer

How much interaction will Ishiko have during gameplay with other characters, and how much of a role will narrative play in your game overall? I think the easiest ways to shift the portrayal of an initially unsympathetic character are through their dialogue and actions toward other characters, and/or through an exploration of their own personal circumstances. But since I don’t know how many other characters your game features, I’ll focus more on the latter here.

Who is Ishiko, really? Why is her identity so wrapped up in social media? If she’s just a pampered princess who’s never wanted or struggled a day in her life before the game starts, most players are going to take satisfaction in seeing her overwhelmed by adversity. But maybe it’s not that simple.

For example, maybe Ishiko grew up rich, but her parents have started going through a messy divorce in the past few years, and she’s been caught in the middle. She turned to social media as an escape and started spending lots of time on the beach, or on the streets of Harajuku. Anywhere away from home. Now she spends most of her days chasing the praises of strangers online. All the pictures of sunshine and good times help her to convince her followers and herself that nothing is really wrong. But Ishiko’s problems aren’t going away, and before long, she’s going to need to accept that she can’t handle everything on her own.

Or maybe, going another direction, Ishiko’s got an okay home life, but her self-centeredness has slowly driven away most of her real friends as she’s grown up. Even if she’s not an outright jerk to other people, maybe most of her friends have realized over time that Ishiko never really cared about them as much as she cared about herself. Having an online following always praising her beauty helps Ishiko to avoid noticing just how alone she is. Or maybe she’s really known for a while now, but it’s more difficult to change herself than it is to count her likes and friend requests and just tell herself that everyone else is wrong. Maybe she wants to change but doesn’t know how, and so she’s just carried on with what’s safe and comfortable. Growing up and finding yourself is a confusing, scary thing.

While you don’t have to pursue a gloomy sort of backstory like the examples above, I assume that since you’re making a horror game, Ishiko is going to be spending a significant amount of time alone. That scenario stands in direct contrast to her preoccupation with social media, so it seems like the most natural point to challenge her character on. When a girl who’s typically surrounded by internet fans and followers (possibly at the expense of real relationships) suddenly finds herself in isolation, what will she show us of herself? How can she grow, and what might she learn about her own perspective on her friends and family? How might her actions in the story represent and define those changes?

I’m not sure if this was exactly what you were looking for, but I hope it helps you to find a direction!

@Soryuju

Her background is pointedly left out in the game until closer to the end. She's trapped in a haunted forest plagued with spirits, and she is attempting to deny her heritage, she is the daughter of a Shrine Priest and she is one in training. So her home life is very religious and she has to work hard in isolation. She doesn't really mind the religion in general, she's devout enough, but she doesn't want to follow the tradition and carry it on. She's a more modern girl and she feels her parents are stuck in the past.

She has a sister that thinks she's the greatest thing, and she loved the praise she got so much that she sought it out in any way she knew how. She took up the fashion lifestyle in order to get more attention, and then boom, she was suddenly social media popular. And she likes that, a lot. So she's going from a solitary lifestyle, to being popular, and now stuck in this forest where her technology doesn't work where she is faced with the isolation once more. There are some mechanics in game where she's tested on this (having to pray to a shrine in the forest for HP, for example).

The main character's she has contact with are a boy named Chou, who is a spirit of the forest who helps her from time to time by updating the biographies of other ghosts or monsters she encounters and giving hints, and then a dead samurai from the past, Ryoumaru, who you can choose to help collect coins for the toll to pass to the afterlife. In the game you the player can choose to help them or not. So you can, if you want, play Ishiko as a total jerk at certain points in the game.

So with that being said, I don't really know if I should make her "likable" or "relatable"... If I should make her a character with a definite personality, or have it where she is sort of an extension of the players since they can make those moral decisions.

But yes! All of those are awesome points to think on, and I think it will definitely help. It already has.

So, what would you guys say it's too much when it comes to elements mechanics in a RPG? I ask because i'm kind of of laying down some ground rules for any kind of project i might work on and this is a topic i thought a lot on. Some games just stick to a simple Weapon Triangle and leave elements as mostly flavour with some status effect while others just goes crazy with it. My aim is to find a balance between too little to have any significance in a battle and too many to be easily understandable. To elaborate more on that last one i think that a good Elemental Weaknesses mechanic should be intuitive to a certain degree, so that for example the player doesn't have to try every single spell in his arsenal to discover that the Fire Devil is somehow weak to Fire. This might become a problem with too little elements because one would have too cram into one category element that might not be so intuitive, like classifying Thunder Strike and Razor Wind as both Wind Attacks. On the other hand i think some elements might be redundant, like how in D&D they have Sonic Damage, which work in that contest, but in any other RPG would probably be under Wind Element. Then of course you have those that just don't make sense like how in Pokemon Steel beats Fairy because... reasons i guess? So in the end i just want to hear your opinion on the matter.

@BlueWulf I use quite a lot. Got a post about them somewhere on page 23 of this thread if you're interested in how I did it

I'm sorry if I'm in the wrong forum, I'm new to the forums! Anyway, I need help with naming a class in my game... its element is thunder and the class mainly focuses on Area of Effect Stuns and blinds. Do any creative minds have any ideas? It's currently called Romestra Wizard.

'Tutorials' is where people who have made a tutorial for others to use can post them. It is not for asking questions.
We have a thread where people can ask quick questions like "what's a good name" so I am merging this with 'Ideas and Prototypes that don't deserve their own thread'.

Have you looked at any of the random name generators for fantasy games?

I'm not sure how creative this can be, but when I read the effect the first thing I could think to name this class was Stormcaller or Stormbringer

You know I never thought of those names xD. They're so simple too! I like Stormbringer. thanks! This one class has been bugging the crap out of me trying to figure out a name. I'm curious do you know any good names for the typical thief/assassin class? High damage low health.

@ScyallGames how about nightblade, shadow dancer, or simply cutpurse?

I'm glad to help! And mmm I have some options: Phantom, Night Slayer, Raven or Whisper, those might can help you!