Me too ! You really got word of that old gem out here. I had heard of it before, but only in the context of Argo and had assumed it was bog standard 70s pulp sci-fi.
God I'd kill for a Lord of Light game. My thought for the jumping around in time had always been that you had a modern "mortal" who maybe had fragments of memory of what happened, but she could only make sense of it through the language and mechanics of the religion. The big twist would be the character finally understanding that their world was controlled. I always love sections that play with metaphorical or dream logic and the player sort of has to piece together what's going on as they go, but when you replay you get a very satisfying experience of being able to put things into context.
A lot of old school sci-fi would translate beautifully into a CRPG format. If anyone is familiar with the Hainish Cycle by Ursula Le Guin those novels would be perfect for an exploration focused RPG.
Wow I was looking for a video like this. I'm glad to see people are still reading and enjoying this book. I have entertained the idea of making a tabletop campaign based on it. You rock!
I have yet to read Lord of Light, but the part about splitting the game in two, with the first half having "normal" player character classes, and the second half having "god" classes, really reminds me of the way classes worked in KOTOR. Have you played that? You start off playing as a pretty regular person with normal classes, and then eventually you get inducted into the Jedi order and get to choose a Jedi class.
Haha I read the Lord of LIght about a year ago and it was immediately one of my favs. I stumbled upon it quite accidentally when I looked up 100 best sci-fi books and read them all one by one. I got to Canticle for Liebowitz the same way and I was like "that's Fallout!" and then Tim comes with his new video series and confirms it :)
Just finished reading it after hearing you talking about it in a prior video. Amazing blend of fantasy and tech - the mystic quality of it never broke for me. And Sam was a wonderful character. Beyond a CRPG, I think a focused game following Nirriti's exile and how he grew in power would be cool.
I'd love to see a CRPG adaptation in line with what you're talking about, both because I think it would be fun and because it might get more people to read the book, which like much of Zelazny's work is an all timer.
Lord of Light was one of my favorite books growing up. One of the first things I remember exciting me on my first read was the mention of Yama's assassins who have been chemically treated so their skin can't be pierced by weapons (or something like that, it's been a while). Getting a chance to upgrade the characters through weird "magical" physical upgrades along with finding more mundane swords, spears, etc. would be incredibly cool.
Since your first video l have spent far too much time theory crafting a game based on what is my favourite book as well, so I took your ideas and ran with them. The setting - When Sam is in “Nirvana”. At this point the”Demons are loose again, and there are active “Accelerationist “ and Buddhist movements, the Gods have been weakened by this and Niritti lurks. The factions - Heaven, Niritti, Accelerationism and the Indigenous Lifeforms. Prologue - The PC is caught up in a faction attack on a temple/Hall of Karma, mortally wounded he/she is offered reincarnation and comes to the attention of the Gods. This leads to character creation, choosing a deity as a patron/minor attribute and a personal visitation to kick off the main quest. ( I think it is important to introduce reincarnation early as this is the mechanism that enables the subjugation of a society) Act 1 - Life Amongst Mortals. Patron quests lead to exploration of world, investigation of factions, uncovering of some of Sam’s story and eventually Godhood. Act 2 - Life Amongst Gods. More of the above but with tech and increased powers altogether more epic but with lots and lots of decadence, discovery/revelation of Origin. Sam Returns. Act 3 - Finding Sam, choosing a side, War for/against Heaven. This is probably just nonsense but I am thoroughly enjoying it, thanks for the inspiration.
Thank you for responding to my question! It's always really interesting to see the creative thought process behind such "projects"! Your idea really reminded me of Owlcat's "Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous". You start up as a "normal" adventurer in a "way-above-your-level" situation and then slowly do normal cRPG stuff. Meanwhile, as part of your exploration and choices, you come across and unlock special encounters that, depending on your choices, at a fixed point in the game they'll be available options for you to decide to take one of them as your "Mythical" aspect (be that Angel, Demon, Dragon etc). That approach seemed really neat to me, the fact that not all options will be available unless you go out of your way to find/earn specific choices. As such, in a possible Lord of Light game, I wouldn't leave it as a class-based thing, not even as a skill-based alone. I'd add some amount of active action in it, like "we counted the number of times you used Persuasion/Lock-Picking/Combat" etc and that would be a factor in the type of god. Especially if we divide that in a more "Elemental" type so you could be a god of Thieves but then you have an aspect of an element so you are this unique combo (Kinda like what Titan Quest did, you could have a combo of any two skill-trees you decided). Choice should be there in some form, but yeah, there should be some type of "incentive" to choose what the game proposed you based on game-style. For the universe, you're spot on. One thing I loved in games like Lord of the Rings Online was the use of little lore bits, like a sentence, and expanded upon into a fully fledged place, quest etc. In that sense you could definitely have a lot of the only referred to places as main areas or even hubs for exploration, questing etc. I could imagine the main city where Sam visited in order to get a new body at the early flashback chapters as a "Baldur's Gate" like city with multiple neighbourhoods, shops, NPCs etc. There are definitely a lot of options to choose from depending on the story you'd wish to say. And that brings me to the story. I 100% agree with the notion of "you don't want to retell the already known story, you want to tell another story based on the same world". I'm not sure what story I'd like to say specifically. I like your take on it, start up as a simple person, slowly quest, earn Godhood, expand on the Godhood and then start deciding whether to be part of Heaven, or join other factions (even the undead God faction, would be a cool idea). It reminded me of how Tyranny worked, in the sense of you start by default at the side of "power" and then decided whether to uphold or oppose the "status quo". However, I'd definitely want to add the "immortality/reincarnation" aspect to the story somehow. I believe it's one of the main cores of this world, especially if you are a God. It could start as a story bit, perhaps you do some extremely important thing in order to be offered Godhood, but you're mortally wounded in the process and then you are offered a new body as part of your Ascension. And perhaps you could have a mechanic inspired by survival games in order to change bodies, like you pay some type of price for changing body (be that story, like time passes and you miss quests or something) but you earn something in return (like buffed stats for a period, until the body starts aging). That could also have some other dialogue based issues, like if you request too many bodies, you might be told off, or if you have the same body for too much time, it starts getting older and you lose stats. Of course, the story should be designed around that, and be in the span of decades or even centuries for it to have the real pay-off of that world-building. Could be unfeasible from a technical perspective though, I don't have experience in actual game deving, but I can see this being really hard to correctly implement in some form and being actual "fun to play" instead of just "fun in paper". These are some of my ideas on the subject after I saw your video. Would love to continue this discussion somehow, and also see your take in the possible implementation of "Immortality / Reincarnation" presented as a main theme in the book! Hope you leave a comment here!
As a recommendation of yours, I was fortunate enough to find a hardback at a decent price so, this video is on hold until I finish it, but ty again can't wait to hear your thoughts on this!
Jumped up on my list. Your recommendation for Canticle for Leibowitz got me to read it and it now regularly dukes it out for the spot of my favorite or second favorite book. What are some recent books that you've read that you've connected with or inspired ideas?
This reminds me of a design I created way back in like 7th grade. First, you create your character by creating your grandparents. The 4 of them could be any race\job combination, even half races. But, one has to be chosen to be the fallen king\queen. The story is the classic orphan has to win back their kingdom but it would all randomly generated. Sometimes, your uncle is the usurper, sometimes the king dies naturally, sometimes the uncle is young, strong and the final boss. Other times, he's old and uses others to fight. The game would allow players to choose how they want to retake their kingdom or even decide not to and establish a republic. There would have to be multiple sets of mechanics to allow standard rpg combat, big army based combat or sneaky, stabby stealth. But, eventually the game would switch to being more a strategy game than rpg.
Your thoughts on setting the game in the "beforetimes" where a lot of mythological creatures were still around mirrors my own when it comes to why I personally like Old Republic era of star wars so much more than the current one. There's so much room for invention and cool new ideas both narratively and mechanically that just doesn't really exist in the same way when you have to adhere to the rigid standards of the movies. Being able to handwave away a lot of things with "it was thousands and thousands of years ago" lends itself to a lot of fun creative ideas.
Question: How do you feel about mods, modding, modders and overall - Community activly working on games after they are released? I'd be especially curious of your take since a lot of games you've worked on had VERY active modding community after release. Some of those mods are even considered essential like Circle of Eight for Temple or Restoration Project for Fallout. (Also a lot of stability mods for Arcanum) etc. So do you think modding is great, are you indifferent or maybe you don't like the fact that modders tinker around existing games especially if their work is now considered on-par with developers work? (When it comes to modders pretty much fixing games after the release)
Zelazny's The Doors of his face, the Lambs of his Mouth inspired a CRPG when I was reading it one day at the library. Like you, it's a game idea I put in a notebook and will likely never be made. Only reason I'm particularly proud of it is cause I came up with it in 2018, and it happened to have the stranding system from Death Stranding, which came out a year later. And instead of being about strategic environmental traversal it was about gaining the trust of underwater cities/settlements in order to connect them to a growing network.
I think what would work really well for this, is something like Pathfinder, where you have Mythic which is this Stage Two you talked about, and you have normal Class Progression. Or at least something like this.
Back in the day when we were discussing the future of BG3 over at the old Black Isle boards, the naysayers kept bringing up the argument that there couldn't be a continuation of a narrative which ends with ascension to godhood. Now, however, you make it sound really fun and kind of make me wish that that's the BG3 we had got. Embrace or try to change your portfolio, seek allies and worshippers, beat Cyric at his own game of intrigue...
I would love to see a video done about the distinction between sequels and spin-offs of established games... series that are continued, along with the creation of new titles derived from the older ones. Legacy gameplay verses new (, and often times contradictory) gameplay mechanics. For example: a Descent to Undermountain 2, or a Stonekeep 2, where they both play like a Fallout Shelter clone or even a Bard's Tale clone, rather than their respective predecessors. A prime example of this (other than Fallout 3) would be Wasteland 2-which has nothing in common with Wasteland [1], and plays very much like Fallout Tactics. Could games like these really be considered #2's if they are so unalike to the earlier titles? Do developers have any kind of obligation to respect their source material? Is it ethical to just exploit the name reputation of a famous title, and deliver none of what made that reputation stand out?
i think you want to start as skill based and then progress to class based in this game rather than the other way around. That way you get full freedom about your skills when you're just a normal person, but the powers of the gods are tied to archetypes. Also rather than simply being offered godhood, while that should be a path, instead a "god level" conflict should be occurring first, the player should *really* want god powers before they ever have them, and their should be ways to bargain for or steal or cobble up such. And while maybe not for the base core game, having options to deal with demons instead, or some witch path to magic powers, as alternate ways through the game could also be great.
Even though it's a good idea to separate the theoretical game from the novel, for the sake of argument... what class would Sam be? Given his very broad expertise and multiple fields of expertise... what would it be? What would be in such a class? 😏
I read Lord of Light because of your reccomandation and I'm very glad i did. It became one of my favourite books!
Me too ! You really got word of that old gem out here. I had heard of it before, but only in the context of Argo and had assumed it was bog standard 70s pulp sci-fi.
God I'd kill for a Lord of Light game. My thought for the jumping around in time had always been that you had a modern "mortal" who maybe had fragments of memory of what happened, but she could only make sense of it through the language and mechanics of the religion. The big twist would be the character finally understanding that their world was controlled. I always love sections that play with metaphorical or dream logic and the player sort of has to piece together what's going on as they go, but when you replay you get a very satisfying experience of being able to put things into context.
A lot of old school sci-fi would translate beautifully into a CRPG format. If anyone is familiar with the Hainish Cycle by Ursula Le Guin those novels would be perfect for an exploration focused RPG.
Vance Jack's Dying Earth would work too but with Disco Elysium's Metric System
Wow I was looking for a video like this. I'm glad to see people are still reading and enjoying this book. I have entertained the idea of making a tabletop campaign based on it. You rock!
I have yet to read Lord of Light, but the part about splitting the game in two, with the first half having "normal" player character classes, and the second half having "god" classes, really reminds me of the way classes worked in KOTOR. Have you played that? You start off playing as a pretty regular person with normal classes, and then eventually you get inducted into the Jedi order and get to choose a Jedi class.
Can't wait to play your LoL game when it comes out Tim.
Been reading Lord of Light alongside God Emperor of Dune. Heck of a one-two punch. Thanks for getting me into it!
Haha I read the Lord of LIght about a year ago and it was immediately one of my favs. I stumbled upon it quite accidentally when I looked up 100 best sci-fi books and read them all one by one. I got to Canticle for Liebowitz the same way and I was like "that's Fallout!" and then Tim comes with his new video series and confirms it :)
Just finished reading it after hearing you talking about it in a prior video. Amazing blend of fantasy and tech - the mystic quality of it never broke for me. And Sam was a wonderful character. Beyond a CRPG, I think a focused game following Nirriti's exile and how he grew in power would be cool.
I'd love to see a CRPG adaptation in line with what you're talking about, both because I think it would be fun and because it might get more people to read the book, which like much of Zelazny's work is an all timer.
Lord of Light was one of my favorite books growing up. One of the first things I remember exciting me on my first read was the mention of Yama's assassins who have been chemically treated so their skin can't be pierced by weapons (or something like that, it's been a while). Getting a chance to upgrade the characters through weird "magical" physical upgrades along with finding more mundane swords, spears, etc. would be incredibly cool.
Since your first video l have spent far too much time theory crafting a game based on what is my favourite book as well, so I took your ideas and ran with them.
The setting - When Sam is in “Nirvana”. At this point the”Demons are loose again, and there are active “Accelerationist “ and Buddhist movements, the Gods have been weakened by this and Niritti lurks.
The factions - Heaven, Niritti, Accelerationism and the Indigenous Lifeforms.
Prologue - The PC is caught up in a faction attack on a temple/Hall of Karma, mortally wounded he/she is offered reincarnation and comes to the attention of the Gods. This leads to character creation, choosing a deity as a patron/minor attribute and a personal visitation to kick off the main quest. ( I think it is important to introduce reincarnation early as this is the mechanism that enables the subjugation of a society)
Act 1 - Life Amongst Mortals. Patron quests lead to exploration of world, investigation of factions, uncovering of some of Sam’s story and eventually Godhood.
Act 2 - Life Amongst Gods. More of the above but with tech and increased powers altogether more epic but with lots and lots of decadence, discovery/revelation of Origin. Sam Returns.
Act 3 - Finding Sam, choosing a side, War for/against Heaven.
This is probably just nonsense but I am thoroughly enjoying it, thanks for the inspiration.
Thank you for responding to my question! It's always really interesting to see the creative thought process behind such "projects"!
Your idea really reminded me of Owlcat's "Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous". You start up as a "normal" adventurer in a "way-above-your-level" situation and then slowly do normal cRPG stuff. Meanwhile, as part of your exploration and choices, you come across and unlock special encounters that, depending on your choices, at a fixed point in the game they'll be available options for you to decide to take one of them as your "Mythical" aspect (be that Angel, Demon, Dragon etc). That approach seemed really neat to me, the fact that not all options will be available unless you go out of your way to find/earn specific choices. As such, in a possible Lord of Light game, I wouldn't leave it as a class-based thing, not even as a skill-based alone. I'd add some amount of active action in it, like "we counted the number of times you used Persuasion/Lock-Picking/Combat" etc and that would be a factor in the type of god. Especially if we divide that in a more "Elemental" type so you could be a god of Thieves but then you have an aspect of an element so you are this unique combo (Kinda like what Titan Quest did, you could have a combo of any two skill-trees you decided). Choice should be there in some form, but yeah, there should be some type of "incentive" to choose what the game proposed you based on game-style.
For the universe, you're spot on. One thing I loved in games like Lord of the Rings Online was the use of little lore bits, like a sentence, and expanded upon into a fully fledged place, quest etc. In that sense you could definitely have a lot of the only referred to places as main areas or even hubs for exploration, questing etc. I could imagine the main city where Sam visited in order to get a new body at the early flashback chapters as a "Baldur's Gate" like city with multiple neighbourhoods, shops, NPCs etc. There are definitely a lot of options to choose from depending on the story you'd wish to say.
And that brings me to the story. I 100% agree with the notion of "you don't want to retell the already known story, you want to tell another story based on the same world". I'm not sure what story I'd like to say specifically. I like your take on it, start up as a simple person, slowly quest, earn Godhood, expand on the Godhood and then start deciding whether to be part of Heaven, or join other factions (even the undead God faction, would be a cool idea). It reminded me of how Tyranny worked, in the sense of you start by default at the side of "power" and then decided whether to uphold or oppose the "status quo". However, I'd definitely want to add the "immortality/reincarnation" aspect to the story somehow. I believe it's one of the main cores of this world, especially if you are a God. It could start as a story bit, perhaps you do some extremely important thing in order to be offered Godhood, but you're mortally wounded in the process and then you are offered a new body as part of your Ascension. And perhaps you could have a mechanic inspired by survival games in order to change bodies, like you pay some type of price for changing body (be that story, like time passes and you miss quests or something) but you earn something in return (like buffed stats for a period, until the body starts aging). That could also have some other dialogue based issues, like if you request too many bodies, you might be told off, or if you have the same body for too much time, it starts getting older and you lose stats. Of course, the story should be designed around that, and be in the span of decades or even centuries for it to have the real pay-off of that world-building. Could be unfeasible from a technical perspective though, I don't have experience in actual game deving, but I can see this being really hard to correctly implement in some form and being actual "fun to play" instead of just "fun in paper".
These are some of my ideas on the subject after I saw your video. Would love to continue this discussion somehow, and also see your take in the possible implementation of "Immortality / Reincarnation" presented as a main theme in the book! Hope you leave a comment here!
I read the four Books of the New Sun last year and can"t stop thinking there should be a game based on it.
As a recommendation of yours, I was fortunate enough to find a hardback at a decent price so, this video is on hold until I finish it, but ty again can't wait to hear your thoughts on this!
There it is, the Kickstarter pitch we've been waiting for. (I'm sorry, Tim, I couldn't resist to fantasize a little bit.)
Jumped up on my list. Your recommendation for Canticle for Leibowitz got me to read it and it now regularly dukes it out for the spot of my favorite or second favorite book. What are some recent books that you've read that you've connected with or inspired ideas?
This reminds me of a design I created way back in like 7th grade. First, you create your character by creating your grandparents. The 4 of them could be any race\job combination, even half races. But, one has to be chosen to be the fallen king\queen. The story is the classic orphan has to win back their kingdom but it would all randomly generated. Sometimes, your uncle is the usurper, sometimes the king dies naturally, sometimes the uncle is young, strong and the final boss. Other times, he's old and uses others to fight. The game would allow players to choose how they want to retake their kingdom or even decide not to and establish a republic. There would have to be multiple sets of mechanics to allow standard rpg combat, big army based combat or sneaky, stabby stealth. But, eventually the game would switch to being more a strategy game than rpg.
I love your intro's and outro's!
Your thoughts on setting the game in the "beforetimes" where a lot of mythological creatures were still around mirrors my own when it comes to why I personally like Old Republic era of star wars so much more than the current one. There's so much room for invention and cool new ideas both narratively and mechanically that just doesn't really exist in the same way when you have to adhere to the rigid standards of the movies. Being able to handwave away a lot of things with "it was thousands and thousands of years ago" lends itself to a lot of fun creative ideas.
Question: How do you feel about mods, modding, modders and overall - Community activly working on games after they are released? I'd be especially curious of your take since a lot of games you've worked on had VERY active modding community after release. Some of those mods are even considered essential like Circle of Eight for Temple or Restoration Project for Fallout. (Also a lot of stability mods for Arcanum) etc.
So do you think modding is great, are you indifferent or maybe you don't like the fact that modders tinker around existing games especially if their work is now considered on-par with developers work? (When it comes to modders pretty much fixing games after the release)
Zelazny's The Doors of his face, the Lambs of his Mouth inspired a CRPG when I was reading it one day at the library.
Like you, it's a game idea I put in a notebook and will likely never be made. Only reason I'm particularly proud of it is cause I came up with it in 2018, and it happened to have the stranding system from Death Stranding, which came out a year later. And instead of being about strategic environmental traversal it was about gaining the trust of underwater cities/settlements in order to connect them to a growing network.
Hopefully your coverage of it will increase the fanbase, and we'll get to see a proper game of it someday. Or, failing that, maybe a TV show
I think what would work really well for this, is something like Pathfinder, where you have Mythic which is this Stage Two you talked about, and you have normal Class Progression. Or at least something like this.
Question: What criteria do you use to come up with a good soundtrack in games? You can also apply this question to sound effects if you wish.
Just got this book a few weeks ago!
Well, now you just have to make this game!
Back in the day when we were discussing the future of BG3 over at the old Black Isle boards, the naysayers kept bringing up the argument that there couldn't be a continuation of a narrative which ends with ascension to godhood. Now, however, you make it sound really fun and kind of make me wish that that's the BG3 we had got. Embrace or try to change your portfolio, seek allies and worshippers, beat Cyric at his own game of intrigue...
I loved Lord of Light so much as a kid that I'm afraid to reread it as an adult.
I reread it once a year. It holds up very well. Although there is a lot of smoking.
@@CainOnGames That sounds like Neuromancer.
I always felt Zelazny's "A Night in the Lonesome October" was essentially a board game turned into a novel (a great novel, mind you).
Wow, this video I great! I really feel like I just watched a pro poke and prod a setting for potential.
I need that LoTR game
Bought The book too! Gonna check it out 🎉😂
Give this man a billion dollars! Stat!
I would love to see a video done about the distinction between sequels and spin-offs of established games... series that are continued, along with the creation of new titles derived from the older ones. Legacy gameplay verses new (, and often times contradictory) gameplay mechanics. For example: a Descent to Undermountain 2, or a Stonekeep 2, where they both play like a Fallout Shelter clone or even a Bard's Tale clone, rather than their respective predecessors. A prime example of this (other than Fallout 3) would be Wasteland 2-which has nothing in common with Wasteland [1], and plays very much like Fallout Tactics.
Could games like these really be considered #2's if they are so unalike to the earlier titles? Do developers have any kind of obligation to respect their source material? Is it ethical to just exploit the name reputation of a famous title, and deliver none of what made that reputation stand out?
I'll have to watch this one later - I wanna read Lots of Light first, now lol
Hey Tim, have you ever played the TTRPG Exodus? It was supposed to be the original Fallout TTRPG. If you have what are ur thoughts on it?
I'm up for it. When is it coming out? ;)
i think you want to start as skill based and then progress to class based in this game rather than the other way around. That way you get full freedom about your skills when you're just a normal person, but the powers of the gods are tied to archetypes. Also rather than simply being offered godhood, while that should be a path, instead a "god level" conflict should be occurring first, the player should *really* want god powers before they ever have them, and their should be ways to bargain for or steal or cobble up such. And while maybe not for the base core game, having options to deal with demons instead, or some witch path to magic powers, as alternate ways through the game could also be great.
Even though it's a good idea to separate the theoretical game from the novel, for the sake of argument... what class would Sam be? Given his very broad expertise and multiple fields of expertise... what would it be? What would be in such a class? 😏
If only
Do it!
this is a 3D recreation scene from Fallout 1's necropolis and military base. How do you like it?
/watch?v=c7vhWirRSq8
BECMI: Immortals Set...?
I can see how in your mind you are synthesizing your GURPS experiences with the Theological Planescape setting.
Do I hear a possible game, where Tim would come back from his semi-retirement and take the lead?
for the love of god Tim please make it.
I wonder who holds the rights to the book adaptations.
I'm already getting quests from heaven,so don't need to look forward to this game
I dig it Tim!
Apparently Sukhavati still thinks the book sucks.
He doesn't get it...
I know you're reading this Sukh.
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❤
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