Pocket Heroes - D&D meets Words with Friends

[Vovin]

Awww... come on, guys. Take my money already!

[Brandon Pollet]

Wow, lots of great responses since my last post.

Originally Posted by Misguided

You know, I'm an old school D&D player; started in the 70s. But I haven't been able to play for years. It is tough to get a group of people together to play these days, not to mention, as one gets older, other things like families, work, kids, etc. have a tendency to make scheduling more difficult.

I've played PBEM games before, and those are fine, but you still have to know a group of people ahead of time. If Pocket Heroes turned into a way to meet new people interested in this sort of game and play together without the massive time commitments, it would be fantastic.

I may have missed this, but have you guys considered licensing D&D 4th Ed under the GSL (what was previously the open gaming license)?

I think you're absolutely right that a big part of the game has to be focused on building a network of like-minded players. For the initial launch we're looking at ways to make it easy to connect with your friends and also have the ability to include other players that have marked themselves as available. So if you don't know anyone else that wants to play you can set your character up as available and we will work to place them in a game that needs a member.

Beyond that, and this would be beyond the launch as well, we're talking about building some social and community aspects into our website to allow players to talk about the game, join into new adventuring groups, and compare their characters, equipment, skills etc. That will be something we build on over time but I'm really excited about the idea of building a Pocket Heroes community that we can all be a part of.

As far as licensing, it is something that we thought about but it just wasn't something we could really do. I think there are a number of game systems out there that would work with this style of game and we would definitely be open to building a licensed game if anyone was interested

I'm also a big believer of building and controlling our own IP and so it made sense for us to do the extra work and make Pocket Heroes its own world that we can continue to extend in the future.

Originally Posted by krispydp

I am really looking forward to this game. It's one of the best ideas for a video game concept I've seen in a while. And with the replay function it looks like it's coming together really well. What is the window for a release looking like?

That said, there's free-world mechanics in d and d that will forever be hard for video games to match because it's being played out mostly in the minds of the players and not on a screen. I could, for example, kick a rock at an enemy instead of with my weapon. It's the imaginative part of d and d that I like the best.

I'm wondering if you guys are looking at ways of interacting with environments and enemies in any other way than just weapons and magic. It would be really cool if a friend and I could, for example, push a boulder in the map onto enemies or barricade a door closed with other big environment pieces to protect ourselves from enemies for a while. The ability to interact in a large variety of ways in a fight would bring a really imaginative element to a game like this, in my opinion. But you guys are the developpers, so do what you will. Man this games looks soooo promising

My mind really started running after I read your post about interacting furniture sprites and environmental interaction! We are going to have some of those things but, like you said, it's not going to be as free-form as a D&D game. However, as we do updates it's something that I'm going to put some real thought into, so maybe in the upcoming campaigns we can enable more of that interaction.

My goal right now is to get the first release and campaign out the door so we can all play it. There are a ton of great ideas, a lot of them from this thread, that we want to implement but we're holding off for updates. Over time I want this game to build into a full mobile role-playing system that can be driven by the community ( think LittleBigPlanet ) but we're not going to postpone getting the game out there to make that happen.

I'm still dodging the release question, at least for a little longer. We're going to have more announcements and updates for you in the weeks ahead and as soon as we can nail down our release time frame I'll let you know. I will say it's coming out in 2012

Thanks for all the great comments and responses, keep them coming!

[Misguided]

Brandon,

Just to clarify, you could license a ruleset like d20 without cost and still develop all of your own IP. I don't know how detailed your mechanics are going to be but I'm hoping they have some meat to them in terms of being able to develop an interesting character (hence why I asked about potentially licensing an established system, even something light like FUDGE.

I really hope you are working on an editor for people to create their own adventures. User-created content could be a tremendous boon for a game like this.

I'm very pleased you are going to include a way to find other players.

Thanks!

[krispydp]

Thanks for the reply, it's great that you guys are interacting with your future customers this way. Add another vote for user-created content! I realize it's probably pretty hard to do this but it would add such a lasting and ever expanding experience to a game like this. How would you guys go about doing it?

I thought of an idea around this subject. What if you had to connect with other players to discover new quests/fights/stories/content of some kind? So, say, you could connect with another player, whether you know them or not, and check out what quests they have done. If one sounds good, you could download it to play next or another time. Of course, that might require you guys to have a pretty extensive server for people to load their own quests they made onto. And, obviously (and hopefully) a way to create a quest to do. I just think that saving user made content to players would force people to play together and would take away the work of you guys choosing which user made content should be made available to everyone. All that being said, it would be sad if people could create their own easy battles or something to game the system and make their characters stronger.

Oh man sorry for the long posts but your game just sounds like a very good idea. And these features might be something you're looking at way down the road. I trust you guys will make the game awesome, so these are just some suggestions on my part. Keep it up!

[krispydp]

Well I read through most of the forum finally and it's changed what I think about a few things for the direction of the game. Personally, I want to play this game in the quests you provide for our parties and an extensive way to play through the game after.

Is there going to be random matchup with other players online? Or do we just find friends to play with that we pick? If you can do it randomly (which would make sense since not everyone who buys your game is going to be from this forum, sadly ), then the problem is that players you don't know could just ignore the game indefinitely or even might be a douche and stop playing the game. What happens to all the hard work then? I think your idea of a vault between missions is really something needed in the first version of the game because of inconveniences like this. But could there also be a way of leaving a game with your character If the other people are being unresponsive? Maybe you join another group that is a quest behind or something?

My thoughts on the dungeon master:
I'm thinking that this is the key to creating ever-expanding stories to game. It doesn't sound like it will come in the first release, but it seems like having someone direct the enemies while also being a narrator and making the enemies speak would create a new experience in either replaying campaign levels, randomly generated levels, or levels that users make. And it would be really cool if a narrator and the enemies could be seen as text in the battle, not a separate chat window. I really want to see the gameplay become addicting to play over and over because of stories others make.

[Brandon Pollet]

Originally Posted by krispydp

Well I read through most of the forum finally and it's changed what I think about a few things for the direction of the game. Personally, I want to play this game in the quests you provide for our parties and an extensive way to play through the game after.

I'm glad you feel that way! The current plan is to provide campaigns to play through ( where each campaign is part of a large story arc ) and then look at how we do user-generated content. My thought is that after we've gone through the process of building out a bunch of levels, making the graphics, coming up with interactive elements, then we can make all of that available to players at once to use in building their own quests.

Again, I want to make sure I'm clear, the user-generated stuff is going to come way after the first release, but I think it could be a really great way to keep the game going for people after the initial campaign is over.

You will be able to play with your friends, invite friends who don't have the game yet, or play with other people you don't know. We're not completely sure how to deal with the situation where a player doesn't respond forever, but we're looking at allowing the the other players to skip their turn, or maybe even play it for them, if they haven't responded for a certain length of time.

I also think that simply allowing you to take your player out of the game is a good solution but it may be tough to figure out how to get that player back into a game at the right level.

In general, things are progressing on the game very well. We just did an internal release that improved the abilities system and now I'm working on adding in some additional levels and putting in interactive areas to the quests. Things like being able to examine an artifact or statue, opening doors, flipping switches, etc. Hopefully after this next release I'll be able to put together a little video that shows off some of this new behavior.

Thanks for all the questions and comments. Keep them coming!

- Brandon

[Misguided]

Originally Posted by Brandon Pollet

Hopefully after this next release I'll be able to put together a little video that shows off some of this new behavior.

Thanks for all the questions and comments. Keep them coming!

- Brandon

Looking forward to it.

[Ap0calypse]

Originally Posted by Brandon Pollet

I'm glad you feel that way! The current plan is to provide campaigns to play through ( where each campaign is part of a large story arc ) and then look at how we do user-generated content. My thought is that after we've gone through the process of building out a bunch of levels, making the graphics, coming up with interactive elements, then we can make all of that available to players at once to use in building their own quests.

Again, I want to make sure I'm clear, the user-generated stuff is going to come way after the first release, but I think it could be a really great way to keep the game going for people after the initial campaign is over.

You will be able to play with your friends, invite friends who don't have the game yet, or play with other people you don't know. We're not completely sure how to deal with the situation where a player doesn't respond forever, but we're looking at allowing the the other players to skip their turn, or maybe even play it for them, if they haven't responded for a certain length of time.

I also think that simply allowing you to take your player out of the game is a good solution but it may be tough to figure out how to get that player back into a game at the right level.

In general, things are progressing on the game very well. We just did an internal release that improved the abilities system and now I'm working on adding in some additional levels and putting in interactive areas to the quests. Things like being able to examine an artifact or statue, opening doors, flipping switches, etc. Hopefully after this next release I'll be able to put together a little video that shows off some of this new behavior.

Thanks for all the questions and comments. Keep them coming!

- Brandon

User generated story arc?

[Brandon Pollet]

Originally Posted by Ap0calypse

User generated story arc?

I think it would be awesome to let players create their own multi-level quests. There would have to be some limit to the amount of quests you could string together but I would love to log in to Pocket Heroes and have the option of taking off on a new quest that you created.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about why D&D is still so popular, why is it still relevant after so many years and all the advances in technology. I think a very large part of it is that it empowers people to tell their own story, and to share it with their friends.

My ultimate goal for Pocket Heroes is to allow it to do the same thing. If I can give someone in Oklahoma the ability to craft an awesome set of quests and share it with players all over the world then I think we will have succeeded in taking Pocket Heroes from being a game to being something much much larger and more powerful. That's what I hope we can accomplish, over time.

[Ap0calypse]

Originally Posted by Brandon Pollet

I think it would be awesome to let players create their own multi-level quests. There would have to be some limit to the amount of quests you could string together but I would love to log in to Pocket Heroes and have the option of taking off on a new quest that you created.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about why D&D is still so popular, why is it still relevant after so many years and all the advances in technology. I think a very large part of it is that it empowers people to tell their own story, and to share it with their friends.

My ultimate goal for Pocket Heroes is to allow it to do the same thing. If I can give someone in Oklahoma the ability to craft an awesome set of quests and share it with players all over the world then I think we will have succeeded in taking Pocket Heroes from being a game to being something much much larger and more powerful. That's what I hope we can accomplish, over time.

Ooooh,
well enabling those options will lead to a longlasting game,
BUT you should release the game first, and then add, because word will spread and the game will become popular....

Now, this might sound weird, but if you want the game to be very cool, a version should ba also available in Android, Blackberry and Facebook, so Many Many ppl can play together...