#devilers

A while back, Parrish and I were working on some worldbuilding design prompts, and one of them asked us to describe monsters that were iconic to the world of Alterra. It occurred to me that while Alterra has a lot of great monsters pulled from folklore all over the world, we hadn’t yet designed any enemies or creatures that were unique to our world. And for any of you who follow my personal/hobby/writing blog @flavoracle, you know I can’t resist a good creative design challenge like that! 

I started by thinking about iconic monsters in other popular fantasy worlds, and tried to figure out what made them distinct. The ones that stood out the most in my mind were the Ringwraiths and Balrogs from Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, and Mindflayers and Beholders from Dungeons & Dragons. (There are plenty of others too, but those were the ones that kept coming back to me.) 

I decided to group Ringwraiths and Mindflayers into what I call the “Frail-Yet-Frightening” trope, and I grouped Balrogs and Beholders into what I call the “Fly-You-Fools!” trope. With that in mind, I set out to design a “Frail-Yet-Frightening” monster unique to Age of Exploration, in a way that felt authentic to Alterra. (Sometime soon, I’ll make a post about what I came up with for the “Fly-You-Fools!” trope. But that’s a story for another time.) 

It seemed to me that Ringwraiths are such a great fit for Middle-Earth because they play into Tolkien’s narrative themes of corruption and darkness. If Tolkien’s idea of paradise was the Shire with its simple life, growing things, and appreciation of nature and all its beauty, than the Ringwraiths are the exact opposite of that. Corrupted old kings who abandoned their natural lives just to desperately hold on to power and avoid death. 

Alterra doesn’t use the same good-versus-evil, holy-versus-abysmal dichotomy that Middle-Earth uses, so a focus on corruption and undeath wasn’t going to work here. But even though it doesn’t have a standard of “divine good,” there are still values that are encouraged in Age of Exploration. 

One of those values is diversity versus xenophobia. (Again, I’d love to dive into all the other AoE values we’ve discussed in creative design, but I’ll have to save that topic for a future post too.) So I started thinking about how to use that value for some monster design fuel. 

I also started thinking about how to use the monster’s creative identity to provide some potential mechanical identity. For example, Mindflayers in D&D are scary not because of their physical strength (their bodies are pretty weak and frail) but because their psychic magic is so disruptive to typical player strategies, and because losing to one presents the threat of permanent death by brain munchies. 

While permanent death can occur in AoE, it occurs very infrequently, so that wasn’t a threat I wanted tied to an “iconic monster” in the game. So what mechanics would make players feel scared? Or what players strengths are really played up in AoE that this monster could subvert? 

Teamwork. Whether it’s in combat or role-playing, explorers in AoE are encouraged and rewarded for playing cooperatively and using strategies that require teamwork. OK, so how do I subvert teamwork? 

At first I thought of a monster that might possess explorers and turn them against each other, or affect their emotions to make them behave ways they typically wouldn’t. But that violates the design principle of “player agency” that is crucial to AoE game design. I thought about monsters that created literal walls between explorers so they couldn’t interact with each other, but that felt incredibly boring, forced, and hard to execute mechanically. 

Then I thought, “What if only certain explorers could see them?” From that thought, I iterated on the idea until I came up with the following concept... 

Devilers are monsters that were created by a xenophobic cabal known as the “Gatekeepers” to disrupt and break down the integration and cultural exchange that has recently started to become so prevalent in Alterra. The Gatekeepers don’t want students of different spell schools to mix, and they don’t want people of different races to mix. And devilers are their attempt to achieve their goals. 

Devilers are created by enchanting mask made of wood or clay, and infusing it with spectral elemental magic to animate a creature with a semblance of life. What’s so insidious about devilers is that their interaction with the physical world is conditional. Some devilers can only see and be seen by beings who have learned the magic of a specific spell school. (For example, one type would only attack explorers who know fire spells, and only players who know fire spells would be able to see it or attack it.) Other devilers might have conditions based on character race. (Like a deviler that can only interact with Fauns, or devilers who can interact with everyone except humans.) 

Devilers are completely unaware of anyone outside their sphere of influence, and they are ALWAYS hostile to any beings within their sphere of influence. Once defeated, they evaporate and leave nothing behind but a broken mask. 

There are a lot of things I personally love about this concept of devilers. 

For starters, I like how their nature subverts teamwork among explorers, without taking away player agency. I like how even if an individual deviler is relatively weak, it can still present a threat to the party. And I like how they force explorers to think creatively about how they can support an ally is getting attacked by a threat they can’t see. 

From a deeper and more philosophical point of view, I appreciate what devilers have come to represent for me, and the kinds of introspective moments they could offer to players both in and out of gameplay. 

For me, devilers have come to represent the concept of discrimination and “privilege,” and embody the destructive impact that people experience in real life because of them. And highlight the danger of ignoring a threat, just because it doesn’t impact you directly. 

To illustrate the concept, imagine the following scenario: Your expedition party is approaching a Sun Elf city, and you encounter a Sun Elf Gatekeeper agent, surrounded by devilers. The Gatekeeper agent and the gang of devilers attack your party, and you and your allies enter combat to defend yourselves. 

After a difficult battle, the authorities from the nearby city ride out and place everyone in your party under arrest! You find out that guards on the city wall witnessed the fight, but because this pack of devilers can’t be seen by Sun Elves, all they saw was a whole group attacking a single Sun Elf. 

Now your party has to role play and figure out a way to convince the authorities that you’re the real victims here. But how do you do that if none of them has ever seen a deviler?! 

Now, before I end this post, I want to make something abundantly clear: What I’ve described here should not be taken as 100% official canonical lore, nor should it set defined expectations of how devilers will behave mechanically in Age of Exploration. Devilers are still a very recent addition to the game, and they still need to be playtested and refined before anything about them is officially “nailed down.” 

What I hope you DO take away from this post is some insight regarding the thought and passion we pour into every aspect of this game. I also hope you enjoyed getting a little peek behind the scenes, and some hints at other info we’ll be introducing down the road. 

Having said all that, I would absolutely LOVE to get your thoughts and feedback on the concepts of devilers and how you feel about them! Feel free to share your feedback by reblogging this post and adding your thoughts directly in the reblog. (I used a “Keep Reading” link at the top, so you don’t have to worry about the length.) If you prefer to share your feedback privately, you can send a direct message to my personal blog at @flavoracle or you can send a message to the game’s creator Parrish at @professortallguy on Tumblr. 

Thanks again to everybody already engaging and sharing your thoughts! Please keep your feedback and questions coming in!! 

- Dave (Creative Team, Age of Exploration)