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What book would be a good foundation for an MMORPG?
Sunnybeach
Member CommonPosts: 20
I vote for Codex Alera by Jim Butcher. It is not only great reading material, it also has all necessities for RPG. Different races (PVP) and one uber powerful enemy, furies as personal powers which would translate in different builds, strong character for lore and most importantly, it has a feeling of potentially good RPG.
What do you think? If not Codex Alera, which other books would be good?
Comments
Ahhh. Another of the great series, with a plethora of great characters, stories and settings. Completely agree.
Shannara books
Dragonlance Series with Raistlin Majere
Xanth series was very unique offering hundreds of different races. They had a mating pond and the first two creatures to drink from the pond would mate and have a baby. They were located all over the world.
The Death Gate Cycle involved maze running and special tattoo's all over the body that did different things for the beholder.
These books offered strange new worlds to rival that of LOTR and tons of lore.
Wheel of Time
Dune
Dragonlance
Dune certainly.
Lord of the Rings because that P2W abomination Turbine runs is no good imo (I admit that I liked Lotro until Mirkwood).
Maybe something partially inspired by Robert A. Heinlein for a space based MMORPG? Although I guess nobody would want to play a bug (as in Starship Troopers). Still, I loved his books when I was a kid. Including the space colonization ones. So I just had to throw his name out there.
Edit: and a second for Tolkien's Middle Earth done some real justice (to me that means a big, open world sandbox game).
I would like to go with the popular options, Tolkien's works but in a different era than the 3rd age as well as Robert E. Howard's books done right instead of what Age of Conan was. But everybody will know those, so maybe I will go ahead and mention something different.
I recently stumbled upon K.J. Parker's book The Folding Knife. It was a very good read, definitely worth a recommendation, but what stuck with me from it along with the story was the setting - a low fantasy setting, drawing a lot of it's inspiration from ancient Rome. There is no magic, not as far as I could tell by the book, but rather the setting is almost like an alternate history of Europe. With all the various peoples, characters and nations the author has come up with, I think it would make for a very interesting MMORPG setting, most certainly different from the mainstream. The political stuff especially would be intriguing.
The Weekly Wizardry blog
Lol. I second this idea too.
Now that you mention it, why isnt already an Dune mmorpg out there?
- Albert Einstein
Doesn't matter for any MMO we might get within the next 10 or 20 years. I hope for every good book that it doesn't get made into an MMO any time soon.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
the bible
with a hardcore pvp Server...
and the old RIFTS RPG by Palladium Books
Paradox Gaming Network
Paradox YouTube Channel
Ashes 101
Discworld by Terry Pratchett.
It has plenty of races to pick from (human, dwarves, trolls, undead, vampires, werewolves, zombies, and so on), classes (warrior, wizard, witch, barbarian, ninja, guard...). It could be done as a parody of the common MMO tropes, just like the novels are a parody of fantasy novels (and real life things as well)... things like asking a quest giver "so, let me get this straight... instead of hiring an exterminator to get rid of your rats problem, you're just standing outside your house asking random people to go in and kill 10 rats for you?".
It would work as a TSW style story based MMO, IMHO..
What can men do against such reckless hate?
Like others I think Dune would make a fantastic MMO World.
Asmiov's Foundation series, but it could be a little tricky.
Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Series. They're making it into a Television show like Game of Thrones.
Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.
Any mmo worth its salt should be like a good prostitute when it comes to its game world- One hell of a faker, and a damn good shaker!
All die, so die well.
Does no one else remember (and revere) Niven's Ringworld as much as I do? Anything set in his Known Space would be interesting. For the PvP types, there are lots of options to set up conflict. Organlegging and mother-hunts in the pre-contact days, then there's the whole Kzinti situation once the humans are able to build light-speed drives. Finally, the humans could stumble on the Ringworld post Lewis Wu and try to conquer the entire Ringworld before the Kzin do.
Besides, who wouldn't want to play a Puppeteer or try to track down the Fleet of Worlds?
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
DUNE
But whatever Dev company got it, they would FUBAR it all to hell so its pointless to try
Tried: EQ2 - AC - EU - HZ - TR - MxO - TTO - WURM - SL - VG:SoH - PotBS - PS - AoC - WAR - DDO - SWTOR
Played: UO - EQ1 - AO - DAoC - NC - CoH/CoV - SWG - WoW - EVE - AA - LotRO - DFO - STO - FE - MO - RIFT
Playing: Skyrim
Following: The Repopulation
I want a Virtual World, not just a Game.
ITS TOO HARD! - Matt Firor (ZeniMax)