Aevum: The Ancient's Song, Need aid with plot ideas. Options

[Lydyn]

Okay, so my original thought is to use a custom setting that I had made for a role-play, but a slightly different plot. There's several elements to the world (yet unnamed), so I'm going to go about listing them.

History/Lore

As far as anyone is concerned, there is only one continent, named Alteria. The only races being humans, orcs, ogres, and goblins. For the most part, humans are the only "civilized" race while the other three are anywhere from barbarians to evil monsters. To top it off, there are various sub-races of humans; Alter (what one might consider a 'normal' human), Kilee (Darker skin, known as the best sword arms), Cerins (physically weaker, but stronger magical affinity), and Barbarians (live in clans & tribes, but have the ability to increase awareness and perception).

The kingdom of Alteria is ruled by a single person - a king or queen of that generation. There are then lords and ladies, knights, and then commoners, with serfs and slaves being all but nonexistent. What makes this setting a fantasy setting, besides some spoilers, is magic.

Magic

• Magic: Magic is dependent on two things; focus and words. Focus is the act of literally focusing your magical energy into an idea. A word is part of an ancient, unknown language that all magi must study and after a time, depending on the magi's ability to learn magic, they will gain automatic understanding of it's functions. Words can only be studied in written format, therefore for another magi to teach the other, the former must write the symbol or word. Combining focus and the words, the magi can produce a wide variety of effects.

Focus: Focus is a strange thing to measure, but it is the measure of a magi's magical ability to manipulate the idea of the words. This being said, there are several general levels in which to describe a magi's ability to wield the words, though the higher levels have more focus to give up before feeling fatigued.

• Novice: Normally, novice magi can only use the smallest of the effects of words, but this is still a huge feat compared to normal humans, whom can use no magic at all.
• Apprentice: While more focused than novices, apprentices still can't produce any great or even moderate magical effect. More like being able to shoot fire in a quick stream.
• Journeymen: These magi are more noticeably different because of their ability to produce moderate magical effects, such as consistent fire streams or hand-sized firebolts.
• Expert: Experts define themselves even more by being able to cast spells like throwing full fireballs, which explode and if left unchecked, burn entire buildings down.
• Master: The masters are few, but very powerful in nature. These few masters are able to produce effects such as entire firestorms, engulfing multiple enemies at once and destroying entire towns if so desired.

Some Common Magi Words
• Farecus (Fair-coos): Flame. Depending on the focus of a magi, it can range from lighting a fire to creating firestorms.
• Fray (Fr-a): Frost. This can range from chilling a mug to freezing opponents in solid ice.
• Soka (Soo-ka): Force. From a simple push of a cup across the table to pushing entire brick walls down, this spell is very useful.
• Seka (Ci-ka): Lightning. To a small shock to creating lightning storms. A more uncommon, but powerful word.
• Helo (Heal-o): Healing. This can range from healing a small scrape to fully recovering a person from near death.
• Enta (En-ta): Energy. A less understood word, this can range from recovering from a sprint to allowing for a much larger magical pool of energy.
• Flua (Flu-ah): Organize. A very minor word that organizes spaces or things. The more powerful, the more things one can affect with this word.
• Vesta (V-s-ta): Move. A word that moves the user in any one direction, varying from five feet to one hundred twenty feet at the mastery level. Does not allow the user to move through objects.

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With the obvious disclaimer of, if you have any questions or think something needs clarification from the information from above, feel free to ask / comment. Besides that, my thoughts on a plot are this - there is a civil war, a large group of rebels rise up against the crown and Lyna the main protagonist is a part of the king's army. At least 10% of the game is spent exploring this war (maybe bringing it to an end, unsure) and everything involved. However the real plot begins when things that were once fairytale stories, such as elves, start appearing for an unknown reason. Whether they were real before or something else is happening, Lyna finds out something that forces her to get involved with this unusual situation.

Here's some things that I'm having trouble with ...
• How to introduce the game and what Lyna's main goal at the start is. Is she ambitious enough to stop the war? Is she just following orders? Does something happen to drive her to the rebel leader?
• The civil war story. Is the rebel leader in the right by going against the crown? Is (s)he just greedy for power?
• What sort of politics might be involved in a civil war against rebels? Would Lyna get involved somehow? For that matter, what rank would she have in the army?

Also some mechanic things that are bothering me ...
• What sort of battle system should I use?
• Are there any good menu systems out there?
• How should I translate learning new words into gameplay? I was thinking of earning focus crystals from battles and using them sort of as a "payment" to learn words. Is this the best way of doing it?

[Kaust]

The problem with these suggestions is you'll get half the answers being Yanfly's (I forget the name but frontview essentially) script and the other being the Tankentai Sideview battle script. That's why I'm saying there's no right or wrong, its your preference. You can't win everyone over, so you're just gna have to hope the other aspects of your game cover it.

For the class thing, there are a couple of skill tree scripts about; I just think with something as accessible as words if the format in which it was applied were a book, why wouldn't they read on without the required crystals? If its the traditional sort of skill tree route where the words essentially come from no external source then it doesn't make sense that the player didn't know the words without the crystals.

Maybe I'm looking too far into it, but the whole thing seems a little too sensitive.