overview¶
Technically, Hired Guns is an RPG, including story, character progression, choices and combat. It lacks maps and free movement though: exploration happens through (illustrated) text.
From narrative point of view, Hired Guns is a set of loosely connected stories - “missions” - about a space mercenary squad. Missions can be mandatory or optional.
Hired Guns is set in a pulp sci-fi world. Humanity is spread over galaxy and co-exist with other sentient races: cyber-cats, sentient robots, humanoid crows, etc. There are few large “countries” consisting of many planetary systems and lots of smaller planet-states.
structure¶
As game is built around missions, main structure includes two stages.
- off mission: pc is at the base and player interacts with a network-connected computer, which can be used to get info, buy/sell stuff, hire mercenaries, browse and accept or deny job offers, communicate with other characters, travel to other planets
- on mission: after pc accepts a job and flies to target planet, mission starts; missions usually have branched scripts and include somewhat random events and combats
narrative¶
Simply put, narrative is split into missions, but is kept together by characters. It is quite possible there will be a global over-arching plot, but it won’t have big effect on most missions. Characters (especially mercenaries), on the other hand, are present constantly and effort should be made to make them as live as possible. Thus, they will both affect mission flow and have their own personalities, dialogues and even stories.
Mission narrative is more mandatory and easier to make (it’s more linear and isolated), while character-based narrative provides more depth and non-linearity. It’s best to balance them properly.
grand scale gameplay¶
This includes:
- character relationships (related to narrative as well)
- character building
- economics
On global scale, player should maintain each of these aspects on basic level to succeed. However, viable balance can be acquired using different strategies.
character building¶
- mix fixed classes and flexible approaches: each player character has aptitudes towards a specific ‘class’/build, but you can alter their development with some experience penalty
- no main character ‘level’, all aspects are controlled by individual skill/stat levels (?)
- ‘proficiency’ level, which is related not to a generic skill, but to a specific weapon model; it goes down if weapon is not used, thus penalizing constant weapon switching
combat¶
Combat is tightly coupled with character building: stats, skills, items - all come into play here. However, while specific enemies should be designed appropriate to mission and expected difficulty, there are basic principles to combat as well.
First of all, combat happens on a grid to have some variety and space for tactics. However, grid is small (currently used one is 5x4, may slightly change in future), resulting in somewhat middle option between full-featured battle ground with long ranges and obstacles and simplified menu-driven combat.
mercenaries¶
Basic mercenaries are predefined and unique. They have proper personalities, back stories, etc.
It is also possible that additional ‘generic’ mercenaries will be available for hiring to compensate loss of proper mercs. However, they will generally have less interesting stats/skills/price.
missions¶
Mission can be completely isolated or related to other missions. But in either case, if it doesn’t have dependencies (i.e. require to finish some previous mission), it should be able to stand on its own. Connection can be by place, characters or organizations involved.
It is possible that apart from proper missions, there will be random-generated generic ones to allow for recovery from heavy economic loss.