harvest moon sandbox (recruiting)

[Xenar1]

[character sheets]

1, Ying/ elf druid (Xenar1)
2, Cecile/ human priest (Panic_memors)
3,
4,
*more are always welcome

[ Setting Information/Background ]

Mineral town has been expanding in recent years and is no longer able to support itself. The dwarfs of Steelforge Mountains that also depended on imports from mineral town is getting desperate. In a desperate need for more farmland both the people of mineral town and the dwarfs of Steelforge Mountains came together to build a new town in Forget-me-not valley.

In other parts of the world great discoveries have been made. Near the sunshine islands elves have been discovered living on a large island. The reclusive and proud elves are at friendly if cool relations with the other races, only interacting when necessary. Harvest sprites are becoming for than just a myth, still shy and reserved the sprites are becoming a little known fact of life in more rural areas.

[ Game Introduction/Plot ]

A small town has been built in the center of the alley, it is a nice quaint oriental village. It has few people still but with a second group of settlers arriving and a third group on the way the village will grow quickly enough.

all has gone well at first but odd things started happening. The wolves in the forest started almost multiplying and the archeological big closed down for unknown reasons. Being with a second group of travelers it will be up to you to tame the land and make something of it for yourselves.

[ Character Creation ]

Classes: core classes only

Careers: farmer, rancher, fisherman, miner. These are the basic ones more will be available as you can afford the startup costs. You don’t have to pick one (3k gold if you don’t). Also you are not restricted to just the actions of your career it is only used to allow something to start with.

ECL: 1-2

Gold: 2,000g and basic tools for one's career -or- 1,000g, 1 small shack, tools, and seeds (500g worth) if farmer -or- 500g, 1 small shack, 1 small barn or chicken coop and 1 cow/sheep or 2 chickens respectively if rancher -or- 500g, 1 shack, 1 fishing, 1 1-man boat if fisherman.

currency: for character creation 55 standard gold for equipment. After that HM currency, it contains no copper or silver coins. Basic gear found here cost 100 times of normal (or rounded to nearest 1 gold piece if they are under) and magic items here cost 50% of normal.

Races: human, elf, dwarf, gnome*
*they will be the harvest sprites

NCP races; mermaid, with more to come with story progression

Ability Scores: 3d6 (may do 2 rerolls if desired)

Hit Points: use max value for starting HP for first level.

Pantheon: harvest goddess or witch princess

Backgrounds: Optional (you'll be building from the ground up in the valley so unless your char is already old this won't be needed)

rules;
no sex (romance is allowed and encouraged but lets leave bedroom games to one's mind)
this is for the fun of rp  

[Xenar1]

time passage;

the rate of time passage depends on activity. If a lot of people are active it may take a while to get to the next day. If there are few active then time will speed up, this will allow those RPing to finish conversations and those in dungeons time to clear them.

If one has been inactive for 4 days one goes on ‘auto’ and returns home to do his career. Wheather it is managing an inn or farming or even fishing. He will become like an NCP. If in battle one goes on auto after 3 days, the character can’t truly die but can become injured and will auto attack until the battle is done then return home.

if requested or current dungeons cleared can time jump a few years into the next 'act' of the story.


weather;

7d20 will be used for figuring the weather for the week.
Spring is a rainy season and it will rain more often than other seasons. There will be bad weather but nothing serious.
Summer will be sunnier than spring but in all it will be rather average in weather. Hurricanes may happen and unlike in harvest moon games you will not be confined to your house but it may be unhealthy to leave it.

More to come…..

crops and animals

crops*;
tomato, watermelon, melon, strawberry, turnip, potato, carrot, yam, wheat/fodder, rice,

fruit trees*;
apple, orange, banana, grape,

animals*;
cow, chicken, sheep, goat, duck and horse.

* More will come as story progresses.


Deities and demi gods
*will be expanded upon and not all are shown or known by mortals, all domains will be represented in due time.

Harvest goddess;
Water Domain, Sun Domain, Plant Domain, Healing Domain, Good Domain

Witch princess;
Trickery Domain, Magic Domain, Knowledge Domain, Evil Domain, Chaos Domain

the map

this map was made by a geographically and artistically challenged map maker. it is not 100% correct.



recent update
Fixed problems that arose due to oversight. Added both the map and deities  

[Kowsauni]

...might I suggest basing it on rune factory instead, or directing more along that style? Rune Factory is like harvest moon but with dungeons and monster fighting as well as all the farming and romantic interests. My wife and I are big fans of the series.  

[Xenar1]

Kowsauni

...might I suggest basing it on rune factory instead, or directing more along that style? Rune Factory is like harvest moon but with dungeons and monster fighting as well as all the farming and romantic interests. My wife and I are big fans of the series.

indeed, while I have read about it I have no personal experience with it. I will take a closer look at the 'dungeons' and monster part.  

[WhimsicalXellos]

Yes, the only Harvest Moon game I ever played was the first Rune Factory. I was pretty addicted to it until I got distracted by life. The weeks I took off killed my motivation to salvage my farm at the time, so I never really finished it. ^^;  

[panic_memors]

First this sounds amazing, great idea! Second I agree Rune Factory would be a better fit, I has all the good points of Harvest Moon and enough adventure to be able to make a wide variety of "classes". There are also multiple races in Rune Factory which could give some NPCs (or PCs) a little more flavor to their background.  

[Kowsauni]

I have played every game in the Rune Factory line (though not all of them to completion ><) and I would be happy to explain to you any questions you ahve about the world or the games, but not tonight, got to go to bed then work.

In the meantime here is a good site for source material.
http://therunefactory.wikia.com/wiki/Rune_Factory_Wiki  

[-Explosion-Array-]

Interesting! And yeah, Rune Factory would be better fit. Most the people above nailed the exact reasons why, too. ^_^  

[Xenar1]

source material is enough (wish I could get pictures to display but then I don't need them to know what a dwarf and elf looks like). they seem (much like harvest moon) to be clones of each other.

they seem to be the action games of the 2 different lines and put, for the most part, farming in the back seat. I understand what you guys are asking for and it is doable. farming and town life, while peaceful, is a little boring in a story of it's own.

i'll have to make time passage for of a dynamic based on activity than a set schedule. this will allow dungeons to be cleared, hopefully, in one game day (as one battle I am watching is on it's 8th real day) and allow RP to finish. if activity slumps or there is demand time can be sped up for crops and animals to grow.


there is also room for expansion; in the game the forests to the north and west were impassible but that will not be so here. also this won't be a clone of forget-me-not valley. some things I felt a little sad about, carters dig wasn't what I would think of when I heard 'excavations'.  

[Xun Ira]

I normally stay out of games based on games/movies/books/etc, because I have no preknowledge of such things normally. Rune factory and harvest moon are two that share this fate....

But, might join this one, if I could get my head wrapped around how the system would work without ability scores  

[xX_Terei_Xx]

I'll just throw these ideas out there:

How about having everyone work on one farm and giving them different roles based on what needs to be done? There could be a Farmer, a Rancher, a Dungeoneer, etc.
You wouldn't have to stick entirely to your role. It would just be your main job within the farm. That way people wouldn't step on each other's toes, but would have to learn during their free time if they wanted to "multi-class".

Also, while Rune Factory is nice, I think you should only take the dungeoneering aspect from it. They did have the ability to befriend monsters to use on the farm, since there was no ability to buy farm animals, there's no need for that in this setting. That way, dungeoneering would be used to get materials for crafting and some cheap coin, instead.

Another part of Rune Factory were requests, which would also be something to add. Townspeople need things done from time to time and the main PCs will eventually need something to do. Requests are a great way to fill the void.

As for races, these are the ones I remember seeing: Humans (a lot), Elves (a few), Univir (2 in one game), Mermaids (1 in two games).
______________________________________________

I do have some questions, though....

How do you plan on doing the romance portion, if at all?
Do you plan on doing affection for the animals (for festivals and such)?
Do you plan on having the festivals and, if so, which ones?
Is it going to be the same people from Forget-Me-Not Valley, or are there going to be new people?
Do you plan on keeping the money system and prices from the games for crops and seeds?  

[Kowsauni]

Well I sort of liked the whole taming monsters to work on your farm thing that took place in rune factory. What's more there is actually a system for it in pathfinder, put that handle animal skill to use.

To be honest I've never played a harvest moon game but they seemed to me to be just like rune factory without the monster fighting and dungeon craws and much less pretty art.

Races in rune factory so far consist of.
Dwarves ( they are not fat and wide like traditional dwarves but have same dwarven personalities)
Elves
Dark Elves
Mermaids
Univer (a Human with a unicorn horn)
There's sort of a sorcerer race as well.

There are also a series of characters who are also monsters.
There's a, uh, sheep lycanthrope
There's a girl who is a phoenix
There's a butterfly girl
There's a man who turns into a unicorn.

Rune factory also has a distinct set of monsters that appear in every game that could easily be adapted from pathfinder monster races.

There major thing is were going to have to develop game mechanics for everything that is not directly related to combat, such as all the farming and stuff and how you craft food.  

[xX_Terei_Xx]

Kowsauni

Well I sort of liked the whole taming monsters to work on your farm thing that took place in rune factory. What's more there is actually a system for it in pathfinder, put that handle animal skill to use.

Ummm....Handle animal is not the skill you're looking for. Handle animal is for training a tame animal or taming a baby wild animal. It's not supposed to be used for full-grown creatures. That's a druid-specific thing, I believe.

But, anyways, in Harvest Moon you have to save up in order to get your farm critters. It's far more realistic than going into the forest and brushing an animal a couple times. It was implemented in Rune Factory only because you're usually too poor to afford your own animals. Haha.

It's also better to save up for a creature, if this is going to be a co-op game. Being able to fight AND tame monsters could potentially break the game. You'd think that having one person for each job would fix that, but then what would the tamer do outside of that? The fighting person could keep fighting for XP and Gold, but the tamer would be useless. In a single-player game like the actual games, that would fine.

Kowsauni

To be honest I've never played a harvest moon game but they seemed to me to be just like rune factory without the monster fighting and dungeon craws and much less pretty art.

It's a more peaceful game, to be sure. It's more for the people who like the farming aspect and resource management. I dunno. I play more RF than HM, but I can see how it can appeal to certain types of people.
Harvest Moon is more for the patient people who like realistic games, while Rune Factory is for the impatient people who are looking for more of a JRPG. They definitely each have their own feel and style.  

[Xenar1]

xX_Terei_Xx

It's a more peaceful game, to be sure. It's more for the people who like the farming aspect and resource management. I dunno. I play more RF than HM, but I can see how it can appeal to certain types of people.
Harvest Moon is more for the patient people who like realistic games, while Rune Factory is for the impatient people who are looking for more of a JRPG. They definitely each have their own feel and style.

your not wrong by any account. the harvest moons had a different focus depending on the game. the one I am taking the map from and the base (skeleton) focused on ranching. if you had the money one can make a profit off farming in the end game but it's nothing like what 2-3 milk cows can bring in. others (the original DSes) focus on economy and 'levels' which made me sad. at X4 and X9 respectively one can make hundreds of gold with one level 2 or 3 crop (99 levels total). get your crops to 4 or 5 and you can build your farm out of gold bricks......

depending on the game owning animals wasn't hard just depending on the pop limits rather time consuming.....

the tale of two towns has a request (2 actually) board and I rather like the mechanics on it I just hate the setting.  

[Xenar1]

1. could someone give me the racial profiles (what are they good at) on the Earthmates and Univir? I can't seem to find them....

Quote:

But, might join this one, if I could get my head wrapped around how the system would work without ability scores

2. originally there was no combat in my idea so there was no need for stats or HP. ability scores will be needed now

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As for races, these are the ones I remember seeing: Humans (a lot), Elves (a few), Univir (2 in one game), Mermaids (1 in two games).

so far in harvest moon (those I have played) 2 witches, 1 mermaid (that you can marry), a harvest goddess and god (he came a little late) and wolly/bear like creature. oh and sprites too. so we have options to work with either way.

Quote:

I do have some questions, though....

How do you plan on doing the romance portion, if at all?
Do you plan on doing affection for the animals (for festivals and such)?
Do you plan on having the festivals and, if so, which ones?
Is it going to be the same people from Forget-Me-Not Valley, or are there going to be new people?
Do you plan on keeping the money system and prices from the games for crops and seeds?

3. you find another player or NCP and you get started RPing. you might get turned down but that's life for you....

4. thank you for bring that up. my impulsive mind came up with several 'fixes' in the last minuet but it will require more careful thought before deciding.

5. yes! i'm thinking of taking some fro several different games.

6. there might be some. my thinking was having you guys populate the place. those that go inactive (i'm thinking 7 days of no posts) will go on auto pilot. so NCPs will pile up, you can of course start replaying at any time after you go on auto. after careful thought I know I will have to make a small number of NCPs beyond my original thought.

7. at first I was thinking of retooling that (after the DnD method copper/silver/gold). on a practical level I will be picking my favorite version of harvest moon and going with that.

Quote:

How about having everyone work on one farm and giving them different roles based on what needs to be done? There could be a Farmer, a Rancher, a Dungeoneer, etc.
You wouldn't have to stick entirely to your role. It would just be your main job within the farm. That way people wouldn't step on each other's toes, but would have to learn during their free time if they wanted to "multi-class".

I like the idea but then if one goes inactive it could stall the game. plus people have their own ideas as to what to use the farm and space for. I won't mind in the least if people pair up. my thinking was to offer something different (like a more laid back setting or smaller parties) than the large DnD dungeon party system all the other games are using.

Quote:

There major thing is were going to have to develop game mechanics for everything that is not directly related to combat, such as all the farming and stuff and how you craft food.

indeed, I thought about this first, before I even posted the idea.

think tomato's; in real life it is a green flexible 'tree' thing that gave more than 1 tomato a harvest (some HM had mutable harvests others don't). so my thinking was roll d20 (+ skill modifiers) when caring for it to determine it's grade (B, A, or S), both it's grade and a roll will determine how much you get.

other things will operate in a similar fashion; higher roles will get more (or better) items. fishing will other a chance (D%) of treasure at 1-5, 10, 15, 20 ect.... with low roles also giving junk.

as for cooking D20 with mods based on grade (-1,0,+2) to determine amount of health regain (unless you roll a 1 or unacceptable recipe will succeed) and one's need to eat can also be handled monthly like in typical DnD fashion