Hey everyone my name's Adam and Ive just started working on an RPG with my friends.

What I came up with was a world based on alchemy (not in its anime context or the usual, I wanna get pretty deep into it as the game progresses), now the story is very much short as of now as me and my teammates decided not to continue writing over our basic concepts untill we have our research of the topic complete.

The story goes like this up to this point: the story of a mother coming back from work once, finding her husband and daughter missing, after realizing that she grabs her childhood friend (a male, to clarify) and embarks on a journey to find her lost husband and daugther, unravelling great mysteries about the world in which alchemy is nothing but a product distributed to the masses- who in turn consume the products of alchemy with out questioning.

The world we settled on for now is a medieval world, with light touch of "steampunk", in hope that we could merge Magic&Science (Alchemy, and steam tech). The game will feature no combat and instead will fature many minigames relating to alchemy of course.

http://www.strawpoll.me/12148391/r

I have also added this poll I made, just to know how many of those who read this thread are intrested in the concept and would like to know more about our progress in the coming months.

Your concept is somewhat vague, but the premise for the story is fairly straight-forward and the inciting incident gives the MC a very strong reason to embark on the journey. That's good. My biggest gripe so far is the setting...you're going to have to pull a lot of writing gymnastics to justify a "medieval world" that's somehow advanced enough to have early steam technology. It's not just a 50 year jump (in technology) we're talking here, it's more like a 250-400 year jump. Even if you use alchemy to try and justify it, it's still going to seem weird. Especially if you're trying to give the concept of alchemy in your story a more down-to-earth, less anime feel. Unless the kind of technology you're thinking of is Magitek ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Magitek ), but that's more magic than anything else really.

I got an error when trying to see the straw poll. I like the base concept, although I hope alchemy doesn't turn out to be something evil that people should stop using. There are a lot of really cool illustrated manuscripts about alchemy that you could use as art inspiration, or maybe directly license images of for use in the game. One suggestion though, maybe the male childhood friend should be the woman's brother. That seems like it would strengthen the various character dynamics.

I dont plan on making it a sort of an "evil force sold to the public" like you see in alot of other games (If you get what Im referencing, as I dont have examples on top of my head). The point, that I at least have rignt now is to showcase its beauty, as alchemy has alot of very beautiful things tied into it, but also showcase the destructive side it has, theres no good with no evil- and vise versa.

Your concept is somewhat vague, but the premise for the story is fairly straight-forward and the inciting incident gives the MC a very strong reason to embark on the journey. That's good. My biggest gripe so far is the setting...you're going to have to pull a lot of writing gymnastics to justify a "medieval world" that's somehow advanced enough to have early steam technology. It's not just a 50 year jump (in technology) we're talking here, it's more like a 250-400 year jump. Even if you use alchemy to try and justify it, it's still going to seem weird. Especially if you're trying to give the concept of alchemy in your story a more down-to-earth, less anime feel. Unless the kind of technology you're thinking of is Magitek ( http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Magitek ), but that's more magic than anything else really.

I see what is your concern, I think you misunderstood, which is a mistake on my part now that I see what you are on about. The world isnt supposed to have the characteristics of one or the other "Titles" I gave to it. it's supposed to be an original mix. In my mind it isnt any of the two:It'll not be a heavy world with knights, kings and princessess but it also wont be a world full of scientists. I hope for a world that takes from the aesthetics of both of those concepts and merges them into a polished one big world (at least as big as we can afford, hehe).

-Thanks both of you so much for the comments, just this is very helpful.