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[st33d]

Making a roguelike and I'm sorely running out of inspiration and sources for elements. So my thought is, let there be a thread about these things!

I'll start with my own contributions:

The Rogue's Vade-Mecum - a guide to the items and monsters in Rogue
D&D Monster Finder
This used to be the Dungeon Master Encyclopedia - It had game guides and maps for the original Dungeon Master games. It was a fantastic resource, and now it's sadly gone. 
RogueBasin of course is a great place to mine for information - especially for roguelike algorithms

Crazy ideas also welcome

 

[st33d]

There's a lot of restrictions in the type of game I'm making, so I have to cherry pick a lot. But more examples should help me find those gems that fit into my system.

Thanks for the links.

[Retrogames]

This spends more time on my desk than the bookshelf. Absolutely indispensable.

http://www.amazon.com/Weapons-International-Encyclopedia-D-Updated/dp/0312039506/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300833125&sr=8-1

And here's a look inside thanks to Google;
http://books.google.com/books?id=iEpJYgh3gkwC&lpg=PP1&ots=L7KYv6oR0V&dq=Diagram%20group%2C%20Weapons&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

For Monsters.... http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/

For Spells... it's magic. use your imagination

[Derakon]

Angband and its variants all store their monster definitions in easily-browsed external files (lib/edit/monster.txt), so you could look through those for ideas.

[Coz]

Two things:

- If you are uninspired, seek to motivate yourself. If after trying to get inspiration you get none, go out and take a walk. Just do something radically different from whatever you are designing and that requires enough focus for you to forget about the design. If this doesn't works, sleep or try another day.

- I don't see why you have to limit yourself to realistic weapons or weapons made by other people. Make up stuff! be creative!

[Derakon]

- I don't see why you have to limit yourself to realistic weapons or weapons made by other people. Make up stuff! be creative!

For some reason, completely novel creatures/equipment/etc seems to be much more well-received in science fiction than in fantasy. Not that fantasy isn't allowed to indulge itself, but you're more likely to see a bizarre space alien than a bizarre fantasy creature. Fantasy usually seems to stick to mythological creatures and a few well-worn chestnuts like Tolkein and D&D. I'm not sure why.

[st33d]

Inspiration comes from research.

I spent the better half of my art degree researching my pictures as opposed to drawing them. People failed my degree because they didn't do this.

Most people think I draw from a blank, I don't, I draw some things related to what I'm aiming at. Then I strike out at the image proper, all the lines coming fast, dynamic and confident. Not shaky like an old pensioner, scared to cross the road.

The same goes for any field. Do some research, as much as possible, and combine those ideas together.

Here I'm gathering research.

[superflat]

I always loved the Bohemian Ear Spoon as a weapon.

[st33d]

Wow. A "what the fuck is a Bohemian Ear Spoon?" search lead to this:

http://www.kongregate.com/forums/60-anti-idle-the-game/topics/142199?page=1

Exactly the sort of pixel art I'll be using in my game!

[baconman]

One (incomplete) design of a "spell wheel" I'm working on is color-based, rather than elemental. It's very RGBW-oriented, and works like this:

Each primary color (Red, Blue, Green) is related to a gameplay element: Red is usually raw damage/health, Blue is statistics-affecting, and Green relates to status conditions. The "lighter" the color, the more negative/healing effect it generally has, and the "darker" the color, the more positive/inflictive effect it has.

Players use the basic core spells first, and then gain the ability to compound the spells, resulting in magic of different intermediate colors, with combined effects (and costs). All it really does is allow you to cast "multiple weaker spells" all at once, instead of individually. Natrually, there's a learning-tree style to acquiring them, but a player can begin their "tree" wherever they would like. The player's character (and enemies, for that matter), will be colorized to reflect where their abilities lie.

Finally, I'm also design-planning on implementing this into the weaponry itself, as opposed to it being a totally seperate element. So finding a new weapon will be very rare, but what it'll do is allow a second "starting point" on the learning tree/grid/circle Likewise, finding colorized defensive equipment grants them resistance to that type of magic; but only to a degree (an "intermediate" armor will offer lower resistance across two types; a "core" one may make complete immunity but only from one). Not only is it simple and effective (and possibly original?), it also completely ducks the trope of "elementals."

[st33d]

Ah, thanks for bringing up the subject of spells - it reminded me of the Dungeon Master system of experimenting with combinations of magic words. I google for it and then I go find the new home for the Dungeon Master Encyclopedia:

http://dmweb.free.fr/

Yay!!

 

I was considering getting Magika to try out its magic system for ideas, but it's on PC 

[punking]

grow troll: when it gets scared it becomes a 3 by 3 creature
a creature that comes back from the dead after a set number of turns
burrowing creatures
snakes that can only move diagonally
crabs that move half speed vertically
Dark owl: as long as they are alive the room is dark
a monster that throws other monsters at you
a monster that flees to 5 squares away and then follows you
a monster that does no damage but moves randomly swapping places with whoever is on the tile it moves to
some monsters can push other monsters around some can pass through other monsters

[hmm]

I really like games that don't overwhelm with hundreds of nearly identical weapons/monsters/spells, but instead offer up a few of each that are well thought through and each have a significant impact on the gameplay.

[superflat]

Ah, thanks for bringing up the subject of spells - it reminded me of the Dungeon Master system of experimenting with combinations of magic words. I google for it and then I go find the new home for the Dungeon Master Encyclopedia:

http://dmweb.free.fr/

Yay!!

 

I was considering getting Magika to try out its magic system for ideas, but it's on PC 

If you use the DM spell system, I'll be made up.  I've been waiting for another game to do that ever since!

[DeadPixel]

I worked on Lost Souls (a 20+ year old LP MUD) off and on for about a decade.  We're pretty steeped in fantasy/literary stuff with a lot of races, damage types, items, etc.  You may try trawling through the wiki (http://wiki.lostsouls.org) for random inspiration.

Notables:

Skills
Damage Types
Beastiary (not comprehensive)
Races
Guilds

EDIT:  Oh, also, gesture-based spell casting if using mouse/touch input.

[Doktor_Q]

If you want more ideas for monsters, you can always scan through some of the cryptozoology stuff.

http://www.cryptozoology.com/

Quite a few seem to be "animal X but bigger," but there's some legitimately weird stuff in there too.