In the mood to design a JRPG! Thread

Is anyone else here a JRPG fan who would enjoy collaborating to come up with worldbuilding, characters, plot, etc. for a 3D fantasy JRPG? Because there's so much story in a JRPG it seems ideal for 2 or 3 designers and/or writers to collaborate in planning one out. We'll need some mysteries, a bit of humor, a bit of romance, perhaps a time loop/new game plus dynamic...

What is the setting of the story? Is there anything you want written specifically?

I am looking for one or more co-designers to submit ideas for things like the setting, and we will then collectively choose the most interesting one from all suggestions. At this time there isn't anything I want written specifically, unless you want to write a description of what you think the ideal JRPG would be like, or a list with descriptions of your favorite JRPG features from various games you have played.

For my personal preferences, I don't really like high fantasy or horrific fantasy. I would like to avoid the common fantasy races found in tolkien, D&D, WoW, etc. I would also like to avoid the common horror races like werewolves, vampires, and zombies. I want to see original worldbuilding of quality good enough for a fantasy or science fantasy novel. My previous worldbuilding has included: 1. A biofantasy setting where the main characters have magic related to monsters, plants, and shapeshifting (the freeform kind, not the werewolf kind). 2. A world with a metal-based humanoid species (rather than carbon or silicon-based, they are tin and they eat a lot of metal) that has a high rate of positive mutations (like kekkei genkai in Naruto) and an island/sailing setting with a difficulty gradient (like One Piece). 3. A gamified world which is completely digital/virtual that was created by aliens who wanted a place to live when they wanted to shed their physical bodies and upload their consciousnesses somewhere - the main character is the first human experimentally pulled into this world. 4. A low-tech alien planet where they have never heard of humans; the alien species has 3 sexes and common magicical abilities, on which most of their technology is based.

So, you can see I like a variety of settings. What kind of settings do you like?

Pick a country that doesn't make a lot of games or that you know nothing about, they most likely will have hundreds of stories, legends, myths, monsters, real life saga's that the gaming community has never seen or heard of. It will all be fresh and new in our eyes, while still recycling something old. You can add a slight twist, take the story and change the setting and names.

I mean sure you can write a new story, but haven't we all trekked through imaginary world with that one evil and oddly highly technologically advanced civilization, with monsters running around. There are so many great real world stories of long ago, it would be a shame if they went ignored and become lost to history.

I would like to avoid the common fantasy races found in tolkien, D&D, WoW, etc. I would also like to avoid the common horror races like werewolves, vampires, and zombies

I agree with the former but not the latter. Seeing a town/city built and inhabited by werewolves, troglodytes or harpies is rare to me

The real challenge is to show to players how race and anatomical difference could affect culture and knowledge a tribe has. For instance, in town/city built by harpies, there won't be ladders nor stairs cause they can fly

What kind of settings do you like?

I like variety and something new myself. Though you need to define alien properly cause non human races (monsters included) can be defined as alien

Back to topic, are you collaborating to create JRPG with brand new unique story and world or just regular one with regular or cliche story?

The point of avoiding werewolves and such isn't really because they're common, it's because supernatural tropes in general make no damn sense and are terrible fantasy worldbuilding. I'm ok with either shapeshifter that are not limited to a specific animal form or villages of wolf-people that don't have a shapeshifting ability. Similarly a species of harpies which is not nonsensically all female could be ok.

People tend to get confused if I say "non-Earth setting" which is probably the correct term. Non-human intelligent bipeds is also kind of long and awkward. I don't usually hear the word alien used to mean non-intelligent beings though.

The question of what is cliche is somewhat subjective, though I definitely want a unique new world. As far as plots go, many of my favorite JRPGs have stories which are 'regular' for that genre but would be considered pretty crazy in most other contexts. Very little about the story is decided so far, I only have general preferences and some minor elements I'd like to include, and a few things I'd like to avoid (like having the setting be a dystopia, or having gods or demons be behind the plot).

One of the design goals I'd like to aim for is an excellent new game plus system where the story actually changes after the first playthrough based on the main character remembering the first go-round and having then time-traveled or been reincarnated or whatever to start again. To motivate people to play through the story a second time, that probably means the first playthrough should have some disasters that the player will want to fix on the second play. And the second playthrough should allow the player to get a perfect happy ending (and not have any massacres taking place, unless it's the player choosing that they should happen). So that all puts a few restrictions on what the plot can be like.

I'd like to have some mysterious ancient ruins or a mysterious alive culture that's completely foreign to the main character in the first play through, while their knowledge of this allows the player to seem like a genius or highly educated/skilled person during the second playthrough. While there should be a single main character that the player identifies with, who is the only one to retain knowledge and skills (but not stats/gear/money) between playthroughs, it's not yet decided whether that character should be the lone combatant or there should be an adventuring party the player controls in combat. I like the nakama trope but the friends don't necessarily need to be fighters, they could be civilian NPCs.

For the main character's story arc, it will probably follow that rags-to-riches plot where the main character starts out weak and knowing nothing, whether because they are a native teenager or a marooned foreigner, then they build up strength and mastery over some kind of magic powers to become like a demi-god by the end. I'd like to have at least one minor villain who is some kind of bigot, but the worldbuilding will have to supply what kind of thing he should be bigoted against. I'd be interested in a theme which reverses the usual stereotype that mutations and/or science = evil. But I'm open to other themes.

Feel free to describe what you think would make a good story.

You have a lot of good ideas, mate.

Especially the one with different playthroughs - it reminds me of Dark Tower's plot.

But good ideas are good and that's all. The main thing to-finally-start-doing-something, because usually good ideas just remain to be good ideas.

I'm not interested in working alone though - it's just no fun. So I kind of need to settle into an arrangement with at least one teammate before I can move on to nailing things down and making concept sketches and all.

I am sure that if you polish your ideas and concepts and post it in different game/dev forums, you will finв colleagues.