The Eternal Vanguard
The Eternal Vanguard is a project I worked on alone in the RPG Maker MV engine. I set out with the large but simple goal of telling a story and creating something that I could call a passion project. That is just what this game or level became. When I set out to start this project, I gave myself a few goals to accomplish.
Create a full game in the classic JRPG style.
Create a branching story that would change depending on your actions.
Create my own party system where you can swap out characters between missions at your Guild Hall.
It is not yet fully complete as there still is a lot I want to do with it but when it is I plan on putting the full game on here. My next goal is to add another quest line and clean up some of the bugs and issue the game has.
The Process
Start with a name and work from there
The idea for this project came about when I was thinking about how I could show a potential flashback from another character's point of view to a player in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign I was running. My players always wanted to learn as much as they could and would go to any means to find any book or tome to teach them ancient secrets. So one day I decided that I'd make a level for them and they could play through it and it would serve the same effect as their teacher giving them a lecture about adventuring in her days. It was going to be a surprise for them so I worked on in secret, having so much information about all these characters already available in my notes or in my head the more I worked the more this stopped being about my players until one day I realized this was about telling Veronica's story or a part of it at least. From there I shifted my goals and worked to create something for both my players and myself. After a long while and some struggles and hickups, I finished what I wanted them to see and let them play it. They were excited that I gave them such a gift and played it but not without critiquing me on anything they could. After they finished and the campaign moved along, I still wanted to tell more about Veronica and so I continued to work on the project.
One of the very first things I created was the combat system. It was not super complicated but the more time I put into it the harder the more work I needed to do with the numbers and even some event systems (RPG Maker's versions of scripting). From there I continued to mess with combat numbers until I made a big decision: less but harder battles. The player wouldn't have to fight an enemy every fifty steps or so but when they did encounter something, they were needed to be careful and balance their skills and items. This even led to some of the bosses getting buffed and changed to make some figths rather hard. No matter what though I made sure the combat didn't interfere with the narrative but instead worked with it to weave a story together.
A rather annoying challenge I faced was the party system. The player could at any point, return to the Guild Hall and change their party members around, save for Veronica. This was really fun to watch in playtesting since different people would build very different teams and that led to a lot of different ideas that I think made the game better. The biggest thing I saw was seeing how similar some characters were and making them totally different. The paladins had higher armor, low mana, and light/healing spells while the priest had medium armor, high mana, and a repertoire of healing and light spells. They felt like they could almost be interchangeable in some ways so I gave the paladin a taunt and added different types of elements to the priest as well as buffs and debuff spells. This small change made them feel much different than one another and playtesters agreed. Another thing I changed was some of the skills that the rogue had. I end up accidentally making them stronger than the other classes because I am so drawn to the archetype. This was also very true while working on Guardians' Legacy. I nerfed some of their numbers, poisons, and health total to make them a bit weaker overall but still keeping the jack of all trades vibe.