If it's not, I'm back to the drawing board without having poured time and effort into it.
If it is, then it's a solid cornerstone to build off of and show others this will be fun to work on.
To make this prototype, I'm learning Python. And either I'm going to succeed in making it myself or in asking for help I'm going to gain the interest of a real programmer who can do it better and faster than me.
But eventually I'm going to need a real programmer, and so I need to explain why you should care about this game Scone. For your convenience, I will quote the document I linked above:
Everyone lives in a world full of other people.
Most of what’s most crucial in your life-- jobs, love, respect, help in trying times-- depend on how you’re able to interact with people in it. Doors open and close; friends, lovers, enemies, and allies enter and leave your life; and being able to get what’s needed for you, your friends, or the people you work with makes a huge difference in what kind of life you end up leading.
This game is about letting you take on any of many different roles in a stratified society full of differences in power, notions of acceptable behavior, and status-- basically, one like the world you live in-- and giving you freedom to play “what if” with how you could pursue what matters to you while conflicts arise from others pursuing what matters to them. You can try out approaches you’ve thought of or approaches you’ve heard of using personal influence and your network of relationships, then see what happens short-term and long-term in a way that’s not possible (or ethical) in real life.
The hope is that besides being fun, it will give a frame to make sense of the unlimited behavior of real people, to understand where they may be coming from and why.
The ambition is to make this world “no holds barred” and support meaningful responses by characters in-game to as wide an array of social behaviors as possible, both for you and the characters you meet.
You could be a diplomat. You could be a mobster. You could be a celebrity, or someone happy to stick with your own select circle of friends.
Whether the situations reflect ones you’ve been through, ones you anticipate, or you just assume a role and roll with where it takes you will be up to you, the player.
It’s just a game, but the issues it explores are fascinating, and potentially hilarious.
And that is why I want to make Scone.
I've written an outline for the Scone prototype 1, what its requirements are and the basis for judging whether it has successfully done what it needed to or not.
Also, for the curious, I've outlined the Scone development plan as I'm able to foresee it now. I just need to succeed one step at a time.
Thanks for reading. All feedback is appreciated.