Influences
about 7 years ago
– Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 08:24:43 PM
Let's talk about the influences for Companions' Tale.
This game is deeply influenced by Avery Alder’s The Quiet Year, Bioware’s Dragon Age Series and Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind.
The Quiet Year inspires this game, in the mapmaking game mechanic, in thematic choices that I suggest in the theme cards, but in attitude as well. There is a paired down attitude and equal room for joy and agony in the narrative that emerges throughout gameplay.
To me, Dragon Age is the closest representation of how to have fantasy that feels contemporary, rich, complex and multi-faceted. When I started designing face cards that would represent the Companions, I looked at Dragon Age. I want Companions’ Tale to tell complex stories of people in an extraordinary situation.
The Name of the Wind brings the ideas of culture (in all of its forms) having equal weight in the narrative as the story itself. From this book, I mined the ideas of the Lorekeeper, who interweaves the ideas of ingame events and culture as a contribution to the map and overall story. Another aspect of The Name of the Wind that I leaned on, was the mixture of the mundane and the fantastical.