Hi, I've recently had an idea to do a game set in middle earth. I was wondering if anyone thought it was a good idea and if anyone wanted to join.

Basic storyline (rough outline): You are a dwarf living in Khazad-dûm who happens to become a warrior, purely coincidental, when the Orcs attack the mines, starting the war. You are sent with a few other dwarves on special missions ordered by King Durin VI himself that may stop the Orcs from winning the war. On this quest, you end out leaving Khazad-dûm and traveling around middle earth for a unique army of human, Elves and any other races, of special skill to help defend the oncoming horde of Orcs. While you are gone the dwarves mine further into Khazad-dum and accidently release the Blarog of Morgoth. King Durin VI tries to kill it and fails, he dies tragically and the Balrog is now named Durins Bane. You return with your army and manage to save a lot of dwarves but eventually it becomes apparant that with both the orcs and the Balrog in the mines, its no safe place to dwell, so instead you, the army and all the remaining dwarves fight your way out of Khazad-dum and find a new home in Erebor (the lonely mountain).

Only a few ideas of characters:

YOU: No set name yet, maybe custom name. Stereotypical dwarf, young. Has a unique intrest in adventure that no other dwarf has, except your best friend Gromlick.

Gromlick: Your best friend, also sets out on the quest with you. He loves the idea of adventure and becomes a very useful friend as you travel middle earth.

King Durin VI: The king of Khazad-dum. Sends you on your quest. Fairly young for a king, gets killed by the Balrog of Morgoth.

Morglum: Leader of the Orcs that are attacking Khazad-dum. He just cares about taking the mines for himself really, and doesn't care how many orcs die in the meantime.




Feedback would be really useful. Thanks.

Thanks to elliot20 who has helped me explain and envision more of what I want from this game. Not fully finished but I hope its better than before.

Can I just say, we need more to this topic than
'Hey, I am making a game set in Middle Earth, would you like to join?'

No one would want to help you with this game with as little info as this. I for one wouldn't.
We need characters. No game (as far as I know) are good without characters. You need to introduce some characters.
You need a well thought out plot. For example, you said:



How exactly does he become a warrior? Explain this.
Why did the orcs attack the mines? Give reasons to this. Unless it was just a random attack, but I doubt that.
Seriously? For attacking a mine, it started a war? We need backstory. Was there rivalry between Moria and the Orcs or something?

I know this is just an idea, but we need more than just a 2 line plot. Simple as.

That's all from me. Any other comments?

~DarkNesa

Okay first off, I'm sorry for what it seems like insulting you. It was a spur of the moment idea. The idea of a rough storyline is...its rough, not detailed! You don't need to dig into me for saying an idea. Secondly, I'm going to edit it now that I have worked out a better plot though the orcs attacking will be difficult. Hence the asking for help, I'll work something that works into the year that it happened.

I've bolded the parts of your last post which make no sense. Seemed to me like DarkNesa was giving you good, objective, constructive criticism. Where on Earth is the insulted tone you see in his post? Unless there were some posts that got deleted or massively edited, I stand by this.

And, uh, you said you would edit your post, but that critique DarkNesa gave can still apply (maybe you haven't actually gotten around to editing your post yet). Sure, a game with a setting in middle earth can be cool, but you oughtta think it through more. Think about what DarkNesa suggested you think about in order to craft a good story.

BTW, I'm not insulted either. Just giving useful advice..

Moved to game theory and design. This topic doesn't really have enough content to warrant being in the Game Under Construction forum.

I just wanted to throw my opinion out there. (Feel free to ignore it and/or disagree) A poorly worded post with terrible grammar and zero interesting new ideas is about 0.43% likely to get any sort of a fanbase. I could literally right now, at this moment, without reading your whole post (yeah it was that bad) come up with an idea that is twice as good as yours, and word it better and people would be interested. Right now I am in the planning stage for a game I'm going to start work on near the end of the year. (Stage; As in not a 100 word topic but a massive idea complete with formulas and other important details that will make my game not only unique but special too.)

I couldn't even read half of your post and it held no interest to me whatsoever. LOTR is great, LOTR games are great, but unless you rethink what will make your game unique and/or special from all the other LOTR RM games out there (Yes they exist and they suck) then you will never gain support for it. Read my blog (Or just a small portion of it) to see how you should go about making your game look unique.

Okay, first I'd like to apologise to all, especially DarkNesa who I flipped out on because I had read it wrong and was in a bad mood. Sorry. Second, I'm sorry. It was spur of the moment. The reason why theres not much idea is that it was an instant idea and I was wondering if people wanted to talk and collaborate. Evidently not, so theres no point.

damn klokinator, easy there.

Yes, it's true that he could have done more leg work before announcing it, but you kind of bit his head off there.

having said that, I do agree wit his sentiment. If you want to be able to rally a team behind you, you need a clear vision of what your doing, especially if you're talking about a project that is driven entirely by hobbyists. Otherwise, people will have a hard time figuring out what to deliver to you.

You need to have a vision of what the game will play like, feel like, and communicate that to world.

These are not things you can just rattle off a couple words and hope to achieve. It takes some investigation and you know what, you can totally use this space as a means of getting ideas, but you need to make sure that ultimately you're the one with the vision. And then you have to be able to get that across as clearly as possible.

Once you've got all of the big pieces figured out, and have a good idea of what works need to be done, THEN you can start recruiting for team members.

It doesn't matter. I'm scrapping it. Can't be bothered with the hassle, its already caused too much and thats for saying a goddamn idea. Ah well.

how about this, let's try to start small here.

What is it about the LOTR setting that entices you? Let's start from that.

Oh my goodness. I'm not trying to be rude but jesus. If you truly want people to help you with your project you're going to have to go back to the drawing board and develop your storyline a whole before coming back. Ain't nobody is gonna want to help someone on a game that don't think has a good storyline. Just saying....

Well, I've always wanted to do a game set in Middle Earth, as it's my favourite fantasy place ever. Also I've always been intrigued by the Dwarves of Khazad-dum. So I thought this was an good idea. I did some research and figured out that there was no real reason why the Orcs attacked the mines so I've been thinking of it and still can't think of a reason, I have a few ideas but they are weak (hence, asking people to help but can obviously see now that if you get a rough idea to keep it to yourself or everyone tells you to "go and rethink it" even though the point of posting the topic was for help :/) I know that as the Orcs attacked, the dwarves mined deeper to be safer and ended out mining so deep that they accidently released the Balrog. I have some ideas but just gunna keep them to myself this time.

That's the wrong attitude to take. The reason why people are not willing to help is because they are having a hard time envisioning what it is you want to accomplish. What is the scale of the game? how long is the game going to be? what is the core experience you're trying to deliver? What is the emotional response you're shooting for? What are the major mechanics that you might need to work on? What makes this game has it's own voice? If it's the setting, then what exactly are you doing that makes your setting come alive? Do you have a kick ass narrative? Are you really good at building atmosphere? Do you have a unique interpretation of the setting?

You'll note that most of this while might touch on the story, are about much bigger things than that. Yeah, the lack of a story is going to hurt, but what's really hurting you here is your inability to deliver a vision. I feel the role of this board, if anything, should be help foster that very thing, this is why I'm asking you questions that can hopefully lead to the core of what it is you're trying to deliver to people.

It seems what you're trying to do is to fill the story gap about WHY Khazad-dum fell. That's fine and dandy, but if you just have a storyline, you might as well just write it. As a game, you need to deliver a bit more than that. Again, vision.

In fact, at this juncture, telling people what you have in mind is probably the best way to get people talking and maybe even interested in your project. So I say share your ideas, and let's see what we can do with them.

I understand what you are saying and I must thank you for talking to me and not just having a go but i think i've just given up because i understand everyone is trying to help, but I'm just not cut out, I think to explain every part of the game I envision. I don't know how to explain. I know I want it to last for at least a couple of hours minimum, but I'm focusing a lot on storyline because for someone to want to sit there and play it, the storyline has got to pull you in and be different, unlike "You are a boy, who's family is killed and you want revenge". I want Khazad-dum to appear dark, unlike the way they tell it in LOTR: Fellowship of the Ring. I want it to, not be a horror, but have that eery feeling you get from horrors, where you actually don't want to go somewhere because you don't want to die. It's so hard to explain in text, and I have been trying but, evidently, haven't.

dude, that's okay.

That's why you need to practice. The ability to communicate your thoughts to a would-be team member is an extremely important skill for a project lead. And it's not like you got to get it across in a single line. (At a later point you will have to be able to do that for an executive summary, but that's much later) For the most part, this is why you TALK to people about this.

But now I'm starting to get a better picture.

You want a tale about how Khazad-dum fell, and you won't it to be dark, but not horror. okay, I think that to me spells a tragic war story. You want something that fundamentally ends on a downer note, and the tone is generally quite serious. The mood of the game might go from complacence, urgency, mounting tension, darkness, hope, and then fall back into hopelessness.

But wait, that still sounds like it's a horror story. Well, you can give it a note that might let it end on a better note. Add in maybe a last sacrifice somewhere that puts the balrog to sleep, and let's some of the remaining dwarfs get away. Though Khazad-dum fell, the dwarven way survives through the brave sacrifice of those who lay at Khazad-dum.

Heavy emphasis will be placed on the relationships between the various characters living and defending Khazad-dum to create empathy for each character.

I would study some war movies to get a good idea on how these kinds of stories can work. Try saving private ryan for a more gritty example.

I gotta honestly say, dude, that you are awesome lol You have helped me and I think I can explain it in an understandable way now, partly robbing the way you've described it so thank you for that. Click the spoiler to see my vision.



EDIT: I've changed my first post also so if you can check that. Might as well ask, as if it's unclear or too vague then I can change it.

Please tell me if you think thats okay elliot20. And again, thank you.

It's fine. Right now you're still in a preliminary planning stage, but at least you know what it is you want to convey. Now your job is to start researching how you can deliver that feel.

Again, I suggest war movies for research. But you can also think about how this can be achieved through game play.

Okay, thanks. Just watched LOTR: Fellowship of the RIng, (not that I needed to lol as I watch it all the time) so that I can get that LOTR feel from it and watched some of Band of Brothers. I've realised that I'm going to need a lot of custom tilesets and characters...a lot to make the feel I want right, that eery feel you'd get being in mines with Orcs in. The musics another main thing, and I think that that would control a lot of the game. I have no hopes though, of finding people willing to do them...

well, if this is going to be an atmosphere piece, than yes, music and art direction are of paramount importance. The out of the box stuff will just not do. You will probably have to drastically increase the number of frames each character has to show all the range of emotions you need.

Here's the thing though, if I were you, I would at first just borrow some place holder assets like stand-in music and sprites in the beginning while you recruit. Hopefully, eventually you'll have solidify enough of a vision and you'll have made enough headway into the project that people won't think it'll become vaporware. Once that happens, people will start signing on.

Yeeah, i guess. Will do some seraching for lotr music and epic, dramatic. Will do a demo, i guess, with the some rips and some scripts added to see it feels right. I dunno.

alright dude, good luck.

Its okay, and whether you want me to or not, I'm giving you an acknowledgement for helping me out...a lot! Started the game already

coolness. Just make sure you upload the demo when it's done so we can try it out.

I shall was just moving stuff around in my attic and found my special edition of The Hobbit and having a flick through has given me more and more ideas. Just wish I had good LOTR mine tilesets :/

Just an update, unfortuantly I have had no choice but put this poject on hold as I cannot find any dwarven sprites and no-one will make any. *sigh*

dude, it's really not that hard to make. just shrink the legs, add a faux-beard and BAM, dwarf.