The Story Of How The Ideas for Proeject Ilmatar Idea Evolved By Hawke Robinson
The goal is to have a VERY accessible turn-based RPG that will work with just about any disability to provide the benefits of RPGs electronically.
It has to work with someone that is tetratpalegic and/or only has a Brain-Computer Interface (EEG) to play the game in a multi-player online setting successfully.
Multiplayer, cooperative, online, cross-platform, turn-based, cross-genre/genre-agnostic, and social with all the elements of the TRPG experience, but using the advantanges of the electronic format, while trying to mitigate the problems and shortcomings of electronic games (compared to the benefits of tabletop RPG).
Regarding Cross-genre requirement. Many (most?) people (some of my clients included) can't stand fantasy, and/or science fiction, and/or superhero stuff. They do love modern or period procedurals, or mystery pieces..
So the game is also designed to allow the exact same story to be played with the player's genre of choice.
Initially just targeting three genres:
- Medieval Swords & Sorcery style Fantasy
- Science Fiction / Futuristic
- Modern-day non-fantasy non-scifi
We script it like Mad Libs, with variables for objects rather than hardcoded, so that based on the player's Genre Preference decision it uses the words, creatures, devices, scenes, appropriate to that genre.
For example:
- The Babarian fired his crossbow at the Orc above the swirling planar vortext portal...
- The Space Marine fires his plasma rifle at the Lubrechtian Alien above the Stargate's event horizon...
- The detective fires his --.38 revolver__ at the Kidnapper above the dam's spillway... etc.
All open source. All 100% volunteer developers.
This project is results focused, not timeline focused. There are no set deadlines for delivery. Instead delivery is all about meeting scope.
Two major phases: Phase One: Prototyping concepts and training using NWN:EE Phase Two: Develop tools and game from scratch using what was learned from Phase One.
Phase one to work out the first scope, and idea of the tools we want to develop, we used Never Winter NIghts Enhanced Edition Aurora Toolset to train all the developers.
We started with around 14 developers. We have held on to 10 for the year!
We created a practice story based on William Shakespeare's "The Tempest", using Twinery's Twine.
We trained everyone on how to use the NWN: EE Autora toolset.
I created a grid map of the Bahamas (Shakespeare based the Tempest loosely on real-world shipwreck events in that region around early 1600), and then each developer was assigned one or sectors to fill.
Last week (July 2020) was the second time Valerie (our fabulous developer team lead who has done a great job keeping this going while I've been so busy) merged all the different contributions into one module and put up on our public servers. And they were debug play-testing it (we broadcast this whole year's process live on our youtube channel each week https://youtube.com/rpgresearch ).
We meet every week Thursdays 6-8 pm to keep it moving along.
Out Github is here: https://github.com/rpgresearch/erpg/wiki (needs some updating).
Current Status as of 20200712: Phase 1, the NWN prototype is nearing completion and should wrap up in the next few weeks or so. We hope to have general RPG Research players debug it further soon. Then we'll let the general public have access.
Then we move on to phase 2, developing the toolset we need from scratch.
When that is finished, we use that toolset (there..... discord truncated and lost the next few paragraphs, I need to rebuild this .... ..... .... .....
Origin Story
This version started in my head about 8 or 12 years ago when I was talking with Patty who in the past used to be VP at Mattel for the Barbie and He-man products.
She wanted me to develop a tablet-based turn-based RPG for her rehab facilities specifically for teenage girls dealing with substance, dysmophia, and similar in-patient issues, as part of her facilities treatment programs.
I unfortunately had to tell her I didn't have the people or connections any more for the software development necessary, but I could help with the scoping, development, management, and therapeutic testing of it.
She then began talking to game development companies she had worked with previously. But a wacky trend in the US software developer's industry was making that problematic (have spoken about this on some of my blogs over the years). She was getting increasingly frustrated trying to find a team that wasn't demanding to take away some of her rights to her intellectual property (IP). So I started contacting people trying to put my own team together.
Then she fell and had a severe head injury, wiring her jaw shut, and brain injury. After several attempts to contact her, she was not well enough to proceed, so the project was set aside.
During this process, I had spoken with ZOE's Ben Dobyns and Matt Vancil about the potential to shoot live-action scenes that could be added to the game in the "Dirk the Daring" style based on the player's choices. Folks were excited about it, and it turned out Andy Dopieralski and Matt had prior experience with a similar style.
That all stopped when Patty fell.
But I always regretted that I couldn't say yes to being able to develop it, and how impossible it was for her to find any other developers who "got it" enough to be able to help. I did the work pro-bono, but it was slated through investors she was lining up to be a fully paying gig for everyone involved.
So ever since I have been trying to build up the infrastructure and network over the years so that if something like that happens again, I could say yes.
Meanwhile, over the decades all my work with people with disabilities, I kept being frustrated with how few games did anything considerate of people with physical disabilities, brain injuries or slow cognitive speeds, or other needs.
I have been involved with role-playing games since 1977. I have been involved with software development since 1979. I have been involved with long-term care facilities briefly in 1979 for a few months, and then increasingly since 1989/1990. I have been involved with Therapeutic Recreation / Recreation Therapy since 2004.
For about 16 years I've been dabbling with EEG / Bio/neuro-feedback equiipment interfacing with music and games. I gathered up various EEG interface equipment, and dabbled with a variety of commercial and opensource hardware and software.
Nowadays people call this Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) (The buzzwords keep changing each decade).
When I started seeing the more consumer-grade, more affordable and user friendly, BCI equipment, that is when I thought maybe we could make this a reality at last.
Alas, still nobody knows about us exposure-wise, and we have no funding, so we are once again relying on the 100% volunteer model I've used with RPG Research and other projects. This is hit or miss, depending if we get critical mass, and enough truly dedicated and reliable people with good ethics.
Fortunately this one has had better attendance and the volunteers have stuck to it better than a number of other projects I've tried this way.
There is some "enlightened self-interest" on their part.
The volunteers are mostly either currently in college, or just graduated, with computer science / software developer degrees.
Of course nobody will hire them until they have 2-3 years real-world work experience. But how do they get that real-world work experience if nobody will hire them?
So that is the majority of our team, and then I have to draw on my decades of experience to help guide them along.
So far it is working better than expected.
I hope when we go to the more challenging next phase we can hang on to folks, and better yet get even more people on board, with the core 10 as the guides for the new ones. I hope. We'll see. Time will tell.
I expect Phase 2 will take 2-3 years to be ready for public use (only if current momentum is maintained). It could be sooner if more people help, or longer if we experience significant attribtion.