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Game Design for an Unnamed Game of Light and Darkness

The one-line summary: Light contends with Darkness in a bid for the world.

Individual creatures are good or evil, and make their way in the world as such. Their behavior will tilt their power toward light or darkness. Eventually, they can become a champion of a faction of good or evil.

Players and NPCs are fairly mobile, and escape and travel are pretty easy. It's not hard to slip through enemy lines, nor to escape from a battle when it's not going your way. This is similar to a standard MUD. Light and dark each have safe areas that are, y'know, pretty safe, though not absolutely 100% safe, but most areas are disputed. Disputed areas may lean to one side or the other, and usually do.

When a character is a champion of a particular faction, he gains the ability to use the equipment specific to that faction. A faction may have shrines, seige machinery and followers. While the player is personally pretty mobile and may move and escape very freely, the faction's equipment and followers move slowly, and are probably visible at a significant distance.

Shrines are visible at a significant distance, and move slowly. Some characters or followers may be able to detect them at an even greater distance. Shrines are expressions of good or evil, and will change the balance of the land toward good or evil. The more powerful the shrine, the more slowly it moves, and the greater its influence. Shrines are vulnerable - powerful characters may defile them, reducing their power and influence. A shrine in a friendly area will tend to 'charge up' and become more powerful, while one in an enemy area will tend to discharge some of its power while slowly making the land lighter or darker.

Characters are a sort of 'special forces' - excellent for infiltrating enemy areas and performing missions of stealth, subtlety or cleverness. However, great military victories will require greater power than an individual player character can reasonably have. Followers will be either numerous or very powerful, or both. They move more slowly, and can be destroyed by combat with enemy followers, or by travel through hostile lands. Different followers may have different abilities.

Player characters should be easily able to escape enemy followers unless severely outnumbered or otherwise pinned down. However, destroying enemy followers should be quite difficult except by using followers of one's own, or if the followers are in severely hostile territory - light followers in dark territory or vice-versa.

If territory is disputed, but tilted slightly toward light or dark, battles will tend to cost the oppressed side more deaths than otherwise. If the territory is severely tilted toward light or dark, oppressed forces will lose *far* more followers in every battle. Travellers passing through severe opposing territory will occasionally be weakened or destroyed. This will hinder followers very severely, since they are slow. It will hinder characters, but not nearly as much as followers.