How to turn Starbound fantasy-themed.

Hey there guys. Since Starbound seems to be rather modfriendly, turning it into a more fantasy-styled game this way would be a cool project in my opinion. You could say that we have Terraria for that, but Terraria is lacking a huge load of functionality and basic depth to achieve the longterm enjoyment that Starbound could provide.
So here are my main ideas how Starbound could be turned into a fantasy-themed game.
If you have any further ideas on how to replace certain features, just keep adding to the list.

THE SHIP
From a visual standpoint, the spaceship could be turned into some kind of airship to represent your HQ. Just change the design of the body and replace the space background with a blue sky and clouds and some birds that fly by from time to time.
The act of beaming down could simply be replaced with a message, that you left your ship and set food on land.
The idea of travelling with lightspeed would have to be removed of course.

THE PLANETS
The concept of having multiple planets would be replaced with having multiple islands or continents, that are part of one gigantic, expanding planet. This way it would make sense that you are travelling with your airship between them and you could still have the mechanic of randomly generated levels.
The idea of having different gravity levels and such things could easily be explained with, well, magic...Kinda lame, I know, but that's the fantasy genre for ya!

STARMAP
The starmap would be turned into a regular map, with oceans and continents. The need for constellations would be redundant, because you could give the islands unique shapes.

THE ENEMIES
I think nearly all of the randomly generated monsters, except for robots, could be a part of a fantasy world aswell, so no need to make big changes there. They also already breath fire and toxic gas and all of that neat stuff which could be explained by magic aswell.

ENERGY
Just call it mana and make it vanish when you use a magic item. Done.

WEAPONS
Also very very easy. Just replace the guns with bows, wands and crossbows...One thing that could be problematic here is the feature of having randomly generated guns, atleast in regards to their visual appearance. But this could be countered by adding more possible effects to the weapons like doing fire damage or summoning minions when you use them and jazz like that.

BUILDING
Stays the same conept, just with different block types that exclude things like steel and other advanced materials. Instead of the matter manipulator you could have like a magic wand that does its work.

RACES
Easy, just make them orcs and elves and dark elves and dwarves and all that stuff. No big deal here.

MECHS
Just make them normal mounts that you can tame and equip with armor and backpacks and all other kinds of cool stuff. If you are willing to implement steampunk elements, the concept of mechs could even be kept.

 

From the title, I assumed this thread was going to be a complaint about Starbound's theme. XP

 

These are great ideas for when vanilla gets boring.

 

Hmm. So who's going to mod this in? Any volunteers?

 

Hehe, I would do it if I could mod, but I think we are fine for now with the current theme. It will keep us interested long enough.

 

I think that the races should be as they are, because I still want it to feel like Starbound and not a new game. Possibly adding orc's n' stuff as new races?

 

Maybe remove the Glitch. And give Humans their racial equipment. >_>

I say this because among the races/armors we've seen, only the glitch race (and human clothing) come across as really modern/scifi. At least at the start anyway.

 

Hey, look at some of those steampunky alchemists. Goblins in little wooden mechanical power armor. Etc.
Would love a decent blend between them.

 

Rather than the planets being represented instead by continents or islands, it might be functionally easier to do separate planar realms.

The Glitch could easily be intelligent golems. You'd probably still have to rework the models a bit, but the general concept works.

 

I could try... >__>

 

I also thought about that, would be a nice idea too.

 

Personally I think it would be awesome for the ship, and even the original Starbound content, to all stay almost exactly as it is. All you would need to do is integrate Robert Heinlein's Continua device into the ship, and explore the World as Myth theory. Given the nature of fan-made mods, that would allow content and characters from a variety of copyrighted worlds. After all, who wouldn't want to take a Fat Man from the Fallout universe and bring it into Helms Deep to unleash its wrath on invading orcs? Why not pop into the Shadowrun universe and get outfitted with some cybernetic implants, and bring them along to the battle of Serenity Valley and see if you can help the browncoats win? With the Continua device, any fictional realm could be (the work of a dedicated mod team, and) a set of coordinates away. In the end you could acquire magical tattoos from the Planescape universe, artifacts from the Numenera universe, and pop into Stephen King's worlds to slaughter the minions of the Crimson King. It's the sort of thing that only a mod team could get away with, a cohesive binding together of any fictional realm you care to attempt to recreate and the means to travel from one to another.

 

I personally would love to play with all of this after I got bored with vanilla Starbound.

 

Or you could play Terraria

Seriously though, Pure Fantasy for Starbound won't work. Steampunk with a lot of SCIENCE! might

 

That's what I was thinking. Why try to explain away robots and guns when you're using airships? Just call it all steampunk and the rest of your explanation works.

 

Fantasy doesn't mean "medieval mythology full of elves, dwarfs, and wizards", that is ONE FORM of fantasy. Fantasy is anything the mind can imagine, so using the same old races with the same old magic with the SAME OLD DAMN SETTING over and over again tends to get extremely dull extremely fast. I'm not saying "Don't do this, my opinion is law", I'm saying don't limit yourself when you're making something in a fantasy setting, because there are no limits.

(Check out http://www.escapistmagazine.com/art...on/9460-Elves-and-Dwarves-Dont-Define-Fantasy for a little bit more on this)

 

But on the flipside, you don't need to ditch those things (races, magic, etc) to have a unique setting.

 

I wouldn't really call it a "unique" setting if you used the same races, magic, etc that everybody else has used a million times over.

 

Creation of the setting is the most difficult part of storytelling. Even if you use the stock elements you have to use them in a way that works. That is they need to be coherent and make sense. To use a "Dwarves vs. Elves" thing so prevalent in fantasy thing as an example. Bad setting will have it there just because it is expected with some cliched explanation, like dwarves live in the mountains and hate nature LOLOLOL (or no explanation at all). An unique, good setting will give actual history to that conflict. Maybe it started over a diplomatic slight, or just a blatant miscommunication. It's not about WHAT you use for your setting it's HOW you use it that matters.

 

So, in about a decade?

SpaceMonkey, this sounds like it COULD be an awesome mod! It'd have such a different feel...