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Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Sat Sep 01, 2018 22:15
by Anth0rx
Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

This thread is meant to summarize and collect development efforts regarding role-playing game elements for Minetest.

The idea is to create a bundle of reusable self-contained mods to realize a role-playing game experience in Minetest.

Available projects
  1. Lord of the Test - [Forum] - [GitHub]
  2. rpgtest - [Forum] - [GitHub]
  3. minerpg - [GitHub]
Unfortunately those projects don't seem to have seen a lot of activity for the last couple of months, but we can learn from those projects and incorporate concepts into our project.

Desirable elements

Character
  1. Races
  2. (Classes)
  3. Levelling
  4. Skills (e.g. lock picking, blacksmithing, farming, etc.)
  5. Weapons
  6. Armor
  7. Spells
Environment
  1. Creatures
  2. NPCs
  3. Commerce
  4. Dialogs
  5. Combat
  6. Quests
  7. Items
  8. Lore
  9. Achievments
Useful resources

All resources used must be compatible with the projects license.

Game mechanics
The following resources are meant for pen and paper role-playing games. Still, it should be no problem to reuse them for a video game as well.
  1. Dungeons & Dragons System Reference Document
  2. Basic Fantasy RPG game system
  3. Warrior, Rogue & Mage game system
  4. Myriad RPG System, Myriad Lite for Opensim, Myriad Universal RPG System for Opensim
Game world
This section gathers material for the lore of the game. The free and open source turn-based strategy game The Battle for Wesnoth offers a tremendous amount of material (see the [Wesnoth] links down below), which is available under the terms of GNU GPLv2+ or CC-BY-SA 4.0.
  1. Races - [D&D 5e] - [Wesnoth]
  2. Figures - [Wesnoth]
  3. Geography - [Wesnoth]
  4. History - [Wesnoth]
Miscellaneous
  1. Unofficial Dungeons & Dragons Wiki
  2. The Battle for Wesnoth Soundtrack files on GitHub
  3. The Battle for Wesnoth creatures and races portraits in their units section.
Specific ideas
An idea is to reuse the "default" mod of Minetest Game (subsequently referred to as MTG) and strip it of unnecessary elements. Additional mods could be either reused or developed from scratch in a self-contained manner.

You are very welcome to bring in your own ideas. Thanks to all helping to further this project.



Original post

Hey folks,
I wanted to know if there was interest in creating a subgame placed in the world of Dungeons & Dragons? We could use the official System Reference Document and the organized D&D Wiki to set up fundamental elements like levelling, races, classes, items, creatures, lore, etc.

What do you think on this?

Re: Dungeons and Dragons - Forgotten Realms

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 11:53
by Hamlet
Anth0rx wrote:Hey folks,
I wanted to know if there was interest in creating a subgame placed in the world of Dungeons & Dragons? We could use the official System Reference Document and the organized D&D Wiki to set up fundamental elements like levelling, races, classes, items, creatures, lore, etc.

What do you think on this?
I would be interested, my concern is if it would be legal: does their license allow to use their system without paying them for the royalties?

Re: Dungeons and Dragons - Forgotten Realms

Posted: Mon Sep 03, 2018 19:44
by Anth0rx
Hamlet wrote:I would be interested, my concern is if it would be legal: does their license allow to use their system without paying them for the royalties?
The System Reference Document is licensed under the Open Gaming License, Version 1.0a which is prepended to the document. It is a license with a share-alike character which states:
4. Grant and Consideration: In consideration for agreeing to use this License, the Contributors grant You a perpetual, worldwide, royalty‑free, non‑exclusive license with the exact terms of this License to Use, the Open Game Content.
It has some restrictions concerning Product Identities though:
The following items are designated Product Identity, as defined in Section 1(e) of the Open Game License Version 1.0a, and are subject to the conditions set forth in Section 7 of the OGL, and are not Open Content: Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master, Monster Manual, d20 System, Wizards of the Coast, d20 when used as a trademark), Forgotten Realms, Faerûn, proper names (including those used in the names of spells or items), places, Underdark, Red Wizard of Thay, the City of Union, Heroic Domains of Ysgard, Ever‑Changing Chaos of Limbo, Windswept Depths of Pandemonium, Infinite Layers of the Abyss, Tarterian Depths of Carceri, Gray Waste of Hades, Bleak Eternity of Gehenna, Nine Hells of Baator, Infernal Battlefield of Acheron, Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus, Peaceable Kingdoms of Arcadia, Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, Twin Paradises of Bytopia, Blessed Fields of Elysium, Wilderness of the Beastlands, Olympian Glades of Arborea, Concordant Domain of the Outlands, Sigil, Lady of Pain, Book of Exalted Deeds, Book of Vile Darkness, beholder, gauth, carrion crawler, tanar’ri, baatezu, displacer beast, githyanki, githzerai, mind flayer, illithid, umber hulk, yuan-ti.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons - Forgotten Realms

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 12:45
by Hamlet
Anth0rx wrote:
Hamlet wrote:I would be interested, my concern is if it would be legal: does their license allow to use their system without paying them for the royalties?
The System Reference Document is licensed under the Open Gaming License, Version 1.0a which is prepended to the document. It is a license with a share-alike character which states:
[...]

It has some restrictions concerning Product Identities though:
[...]
Thus it is legal to use their system (v3.x if I understand correctly [Stack Exchange], and [Wikipedia]) but it isn't legal to use any creature/place 's name. Please consider that I am not fluent in English nor in "Legalese", thus I might be wrong.

Anyway, let's assume to start developing it; it would require at very least:
1) a basic environment (not Minetest Game *[1]) offering biomes and basic furniture (e.g. doors, chairs)
2) a mobiles API developed to allow the RPG's mechanics (i.e. levelling, dialogues, commerce,*[2] etc.)
3) models for the mobiles

I can provide the basic environment and the mobiles API, and very simple texturing - I can make a grass texture that doesn't totally look like crap but I can't draw a sword; I can't provide 3D models, thus unless you know how to use Blender we must find someone willing to join the team.

[1] unless you want to use it removing mese and tnt
[2] actually I don't know how to use formspecs and inventories, but one can learn

This is the help that I can offer, what about you?

Re: Dungeons and Dragons - Forgotten Realms

Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 20:34
by Anth0rx
Thus it is legal to use their system (v3.x if I understand correctly [Stack Exchange], and [Wikipedia]) but it isn't legal to use any creature/place 's name.
That is exactly right, as far as I understand. Although I am referring to the 5th edition of the ruleset.

But this should not make that much of a difference, since the mechanics described in the ruleset are for a pen-and-paper scenario and have to be tweaked to work for a video game. My idea is to use some game mechanics like races, classes, weapon types, basic items and so on and create a game based off of that.

Since we cannot use Product Identities my initial idea of creating a game placed in the world of D&D can be regarded as deprecated.

Thus this discussion can be boiled down to creating a game with generic role-playing elements. Is there a minetest game with rpg elements except rpgtest? Unfortunately there has been no activity since january this year on GitHub.

Some further interesting input could be:
Homebrew D&D Material
Basic Fantasy RPG game system

Regarding your points:
1) a basic environment (not Minetest Game *[1]) offering biomes and basic furniture (e.g. doors, chairs)
Starting all from scratch would be an unnecessary complicated task, wouldn't it? The needed mods used in Minetest Game could be cherry-picked separately, right?
2) a mobiles API developed to allow the RPG's mechanics (i.e. levelling, dialogues, commerce,*[2] etc.)
3) models for the mobiles
Agreed, this will be the main task to work on.
This is the help that I can offer, what about you?
I do not have that much experience with game development in general, but as you said: "one can learn".

I think it would be more important to collect all the RPG-related efforts that have been made so far and start working as a team.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons - Forgotten Realms

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 12:50
by Hamlet
Anth0rx wrote: Thus this discussion can be boiled down to creating a game with generic role-playing elements. Is there a minetest game with rpg elements except rpgtest?
I agree (you can change the thread's name by editing the first post).
There is the "Lord of The Rings" game, its name is "Lord of The Test"; it has been forked by Nota and renamed "Tolkien Test".
Anth0rx wrote: Starting all from scratch would be an unnecessary complicated task, wouldn't it? The needed mods used in Minetest Game could be cherry-picked separately, right?
Yes and no.

"Yes" example:
I have put together a medieval game named "Hamlet's Quest" which uses Minetest Game as base, however I had to "patch" it to, e.g. disallow tnt crafting, disallow digging trees when bare handed, making dirt and wood fall, etc.

"No" example:
Another example can be "Hidden Doors", developed with Napiophelios and unfortunately at a dead point: Minetest Game's doors have been developed for servers not for roleplaying, you can't lock/unlock/lockpick/block using spikes/bash through them.

The quest(ion) is: to patch or to start from scratch?
Anth0rx wrote: I think it would be more important to collect all the RPG-related efforts that have been made so far and start working as a team.
Then I would suggest you to try working with the RPGTest or LOTR 's developers, this would allow you to gain experience with an already established game/mechanics and later you might use that experience to contribute to generic Minetest RPGs. :)

In the meanwhile I will try to to learn how the formspecs/inventories/dialogues work to allow to use them with my mobiles API; speaking of, it's about time to make an alpha release: talking about NPCs levelling without trying them isn't the best!

"Basic Fantasy RPG game system" sounds very interesting, I will download it.
Another one I know of is "Warrior, Rogue, Mage" (http://www.thefreerpgblog.com/2010/09/w ... early.html).

We're already making this thread a source of informations.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons - Forgotten Realms

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 17:15
by Anth0rx
There is the "Lord of The Rings" game, its name is "Lord of The Test"; it has been forked by Nota and renamed "Tolkien Test".
I knew about "Lord of the Test" but there seems that there hasn't been any activity since july. Why isn't Nota developing on GitHub?
I had to "patch" it to, e.g. disallow tnt crafting, disallow digging trees when bare handed, making dirt and wood fall, etc.
Okay, I understand. It seems starting from scratch and reusing appropriate mods will be the best idea.
Then I would suggest you to try working with the RPGTest or LOTR 's developers, this would allow you to gain experience with an already established game/mechanics and later you might use that experience to contribute to generic Minetest RPGs. :)
That sounds like a plan, indeed. Although both project doesn't seem to be very active at the moment.
Another one I know of is "Warrior, Rogue, Mage" (http://www.thefreerpgblog.com/2010/09/w ... early.html).
That sounds very interesting as well.

Our goal should be to develop separate atomic mods and create some sort of Minetest Roleplaying Base which uses those mods and add some lore. Maybe we find some fantasy roleplaying setting which can be used in a open source project like this.

I think I will rename the Topic to "Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest" and summarize the gathered ressources.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons - Forgotten Realms

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 18:16
by Astrobe
> The quest(ion) is: to patch or to start from scratch?

As long as your game takes place in a world that looks like the standard world, patch.

The meat of MTG is in "default", which implements map decorations, ore distribution, books, chests, growing trees, leaf decay, lava cooling, keys, basic nodes, basic tools,... I had to edit it a lot for my game - disabling the wood-cutting hand, changing ores distribution a little, disabling unwanted tools, disable sapling drops, slow down tree growth... All in all, there's more useful things than things that get in the way. And you want to focus first on the interesting parts, like making sense of the armor and damage system that already exists and isn't really used in MTG and that would be useful for what you want to do (I wonder if someone already used it to implement fire/ice/etc. resistances because the basic use we generally see with "armor" stuff is really just equivalent to adding more HP to characters/mobs). Only after that, after hacking MTG's default you decide it is crap, you can rewrite it.

As for the other mods of MTG, they are easy to remove and replace. There are a few pervasive dependencies like "wool" that you can get rid of by reworking recipes.

Re: Dungeons and Dragons - Forgotten Realms

Posted: Wed Sep 05, 2018 18:24
by Anth0rx
The meat of MTG is in "default"
Okay, so this is useful input to probably just use the "default" mod of MTG and tweak it to our liking.
the armor and damage system that already exists
You mean it exists in MTG "default"?

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2018 16:55
by Astrobe
I believe the armor/damage system is directly supported by the engine because it is described in the engine's documentation.

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Thu Sep 06, 2018 16:57
by Anth0rx
I believe the armor/damage system is directly supported by the engine because it is described in the engine's documentation.
Okay, that is good to know.

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Fri Sep 07, 2018 18:25
by Anth0rx
You probably know the game Battle for Wesnoth, right?

They already have a ton of awesome material (geography, history, races, figures). We could also reuse their portaits for the different races and creatures which can be found in their unit overview. In addition to that they provide a lot of good quality soundtracks available in their GitHub repository.

Of course, all their material can be reused under the terms of GNU GPLv2+ or CC-BY-SA 4.0.

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 19:22
by Sokomine
The major point where MT isn't really suitable as an RPG is IMHO the handling of mob interaction. You can kill them, feed and tame them, but...talking is very limited. Thus, quests and interaction with the inhabitants of the world is tricky.

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 23:15
by Skulls
Anth0rx wrote: I wanted to know if there was interest in creating a subgame placed in the world of Dungeons & Dragons? We could use the official ... fundamental elements like levelling, races, classes, items, creatures, lore, etc.

What do you think on this?
Are you stuck on the D&D style ruleset and play style or are you looking more for the "feel" of the game? Most of the D&D computer games I have played have been pretty much hack and slash. Weirdly enough the early ones like Pool of Radiance felt more "D&D-ish" than the later ones, maybe with the exception of Neverwinter.

D20 ruleset or just the style?

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2019 08:09
by ShadMOrdre
Here are some links from Opensimulator, for the Myriad game system.

While the Opensim links refer to a version that was coded in LSL for Opensim, the book, in PDF, describes pretty much all you need for a complete game system.

Myriad PDF

Myriad Lite for Opensim
Myriad Universal RPG System for Opensim

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2019 16:50
by MCL
Theres a mod called Unlockable Crafting, Drugs, and Beer

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2019 17:35
by pandaro
As a rpg supporter, i will suggest another repo where you can find other peaple involved into rpg game minetest based development.

https://github.com/tukkek/minerpg

I support your idea, we need a "framework" or a "toolchain" i don't know what exacly we need, but an "intrumentum", shared, supported from different developers, felexible.

Hope we can join together and work on the same project base.
Cheers at all

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 09:38
by Anth0rx
Sokomine wrote:The major point where MT isn't really suitable as an RPG is IMHO the handling of mob interaction
That is an interesting point. But I am sure there will be a way to handle mob interactions, if this idea further develops.
Skulls wrote:Are you stuck on the D&D style ruleset and play style or are you looking more for the "feel" of the game? Most of the D&D computer games I have played have been pretty much hack and slash. Weirdly enough the early ones like Pool of Radiance felt more "D&D-ish" than the later ones, maybe with the exception of Neverwinter.

D20 ruleset or just the style?
In no way I am stuck on any ruleset. I just wanted to gather some ideas. I would prefer to focus more on exploration and immersion rather than hack and slash.
ShadMOrdre wrote:Here are some links from Opensimulator, for the Myriad game system.

While the Opensim links refer to a version that was coded in LSL for Opensim, the book, in PDF, describes pretty much all you need for a complete game system.

Myriad PDF

Myriad Lite for Opensim
Myriad Universal RPG System for Opensim
Well that looks quite interesting, thanks for dropping. I will look into that.
migdyn wrote:Theres a mod called Unlockable Crafting, Drugs, and Beer
Interesting, too. Thank you. Can you drop a link?
pandaro wrote:As a rpg supporter, i will suggest another repo where you can find other peaple involved into rpg game minetest based development.

https://github.com/tukkek/minerpg

I support your idea, we need a "framework" or a "toolchain" i don't know what exacly we need, but an "intrumentum", shared, supported from different developers, felexible.

Hope we can join together and work on the same project base.
Cheers at all
Haven't heard about that, yet. Thank you for dropping.

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2019 21:43
by MCL

Re: Role-Playing Game Elements for Minetest

Posted: Fri Aug 02, 2019 22:30
by pandaro
No more interess in rpg games?

c'era una volta...https://github.com/cdqwertz/rpgtest

but no update from months...

is there anybody who is working on something roguelike at this time?