Overall Theme (open)

The base class should be an undead monster in order to explain respawns. I was thinking about a backstory to the costumes and it went something like this:

Long ago, 2 kingdoms went to war. The war lasted decades, wiping out the landscape whereever battles were fought. One particular battle took place near a witch's home. She had no interest on the war. All she cared for is tending to her garden (pumpkin patch?) and doing whatever witches do. When the 2 kingdoms fought they trampled all over her garden.

Angered by this, the witch cast a curse on both armies to engage in never ending battle. She also created the costumes machines for the armies to use. It was a way to emphasize how humans were the "true" monsters. The witch would sit back and enjoy a cup of pumpkin juice while watching the armies butcher each other.

At this point, the first level would be played in the game. It would be a TDM game. This would allow the player to familiarize themselves with the mechanics of the game without having to worry about strategy.

Fast forward a few decades, and now there is a witch hunt going on by humans. The witch uses her undead army against the humans. The humans seek help from the wizard. The wizard makes the scarecrows. The witch manages to snatch one of the scarecrows (this way both teams have one). The wizard defeats the witch. He creates a guardian to oversee the scarecrows (Pumpkinhead). People pay tribute to Pumpkinhead for years but eventually stop. Loneliness makes him bitter and a bit derranged. He sees what Halloween has become and decides to anihalate humans. One undead soldier (the player) manages to escape with a scarecrow and raises his/her own army.

OK, I gave your request more thought, redquill. I referenced some other popular Halloween motifs, hopefully you find some of it useful. Since All Hallows Eve is when the barrier between the natural world and the spirit world is its finest, that is how I'm introducing evil to the story.

On Halloween night, four young mischievous girls set out looking for trouble. One of them is charged with taking her little sister trick-or-treating, but she is pressured by her other three friends to bring her along with them. The five venture into a dark forest and after getting lost, they stumble upon a mysterious abandoned hut. Inside, they discover the Necronomicon, which describes how to call forth a vengeful demon on All Hallows Eve. The child implored her sister and the others to leave the book alone, and leave the hut, but the four outcasts, each representing a corner of the earth, decide to conjure this demon anyway to wreak havoc on the town that has shunned them for their differences. The four then perform the ancient rites to summon the demon, and from the ether emerges Pumpkinhead.

Still weak from the ritual, Pumpkinhead learns that the monsters running around town were not actually real monsters, but masked people asking for treats from their neighbors. Slightly affronted by this display of fraudulence, he places a curse on the town, so that anyone bearing a mask is transformed into the beast that the mask portrays. In an instant, the town was plagued by monsters, and unsuspecting candy-givers were ravaged by their own neighbors.

Seeing the carnage that was happening in their town, the four girls realize the mistake they made, and demand that Pumpkinhead reverse the curse. Of course, Pumpkinhead refuses to do such a thing, and when the girls claim that he must do their bidding, Pumpkinhead steals the Necronomicon and takes hold of the child. With an eerie, toothless grin, he tells them that the young girl is the only one in the group with true magic power with dominion over him, and that the four of them can do nothing without her. In fact, he planned to use her power to breach the portal to the spirit world forever, enabling the lost souls in Purgatory and the demons in Hell to run rampant on earth. He then attempts to eliminate the four amateur witches, but the young girl saves them by using her will power as a protective charm. He then vanishes with the book and the child, leaving the four witch wannabes to fend off a town full of monsters.

The girls quickly seek the help of the remaining townspeople who have gathered to stand up against the onslaught. When they explain their actions and the consequences, the town goes in search of the missing girl. Hours pass, and many of their own were defeated by monsters, but eventually they find the missing girl shackled in the abandoned hut's cellar, repeating the same phrase over and over again in an unrecognizable language. She told her rescuers that while Pumpkinhead was out gathering supplies for his ritual to open the Hellmouth for good, she was visited by the ghost of her deceased mother, herself a powerful witch, who explained how to reduce Pumpkinhead to an effigy in his weakened, freshly materialized state by repeating an incantation. The townspeople quickly discover that the scarecrow outside of the hut is Pumpkinhead in his reduced form, but no one- not even the young girl- knew how get rid of him completely.

So the small coven of wannabes recover the Necronomicon and search its pages for the answer. Eventually they discover that they must scatter the individual parts, bury them in hallowed ground, and perform another ceremony to send his essence back into the ether. When this is done, they find that the curse didn't die with Pumpkinhead. Monsters are still terrorizing the town, and the Necronomicon didn't provide any clues on how to break the curse either.

The townspeople throw up their hands, "What do we do now? These are our loved ones, how will we ever find out how to break this curse?" In a bout of frustration, one of the townspeople picks up a jack-o-lantern and smashes it on the ground. To their surprise, the monsters that were being held captive began to revert back to their human form. "That's it!" they cried, "It's the pumpkins that are cursed! To turn our friends back to human, we have to smash all of the pumpkins!" So the citizens of the town made it their mission to destroy all of the remaining pumpkins. By daybreak, the entire town had returned to normal. The four girls vowed never to attempt another spell, or do anything that would betray their town. And the young, powerful girl, who desperately tried to prevent all of this in the first place, smiled back at them with an eerie, toothless grin.

***

The feminist in me thought it would be cool if instead of being a damsel-in-distress, the captive young witch ends up overcoming Pumpkinhead by her damn self. Depending on how it's told, it could offer comic relief to a story that's somewhat dark and oppressive. I think that this story could also unfold through gameplay chapters, and I added as many devices as possible to use in the gameplay: pumpkins, masks, Necronomicon, scarecrow parts...

I see it this way: humans are the base class, and they start with a variety of weapons that harm all monsters and inflict crucial damage to specific ones; silver kills weres, holy water kills vamps, fire kills witches, etc. The way to upgrade to monster classes are to obtain cursed pumpkins to activate the monster masks, and this will give the teams more leverage in combat. A third evolution of characters can also happen, so that maybe the monsters can use a special attack, though I'm not sure how to go about that. I thought maybe the Book could open that up option, but then it would mean that it could only be in the possession of one team at a time. Maybe the Book could be FP's princess, like a Rescue the Necronomicon, but if it only accesses a third upgrade, how is the game won?

Death Match is the easiest to concieve, and I thought a scarecrow piece scavenger hunt could be like Invasion, but that still leaves other game types unaccounted for. Maybe my suggestions can inspire. If not, I can keep helping with ideas.

The story is excellent, but will be difficult to work from a gameplay standpoint. Something to keep in mind is that all factions are created equal and will operate in the same way. It's not about humans being better at rushing and monsters better at ganking and witches better at defending... everyone has the same options. Part of the game is deciding how to approach the match and how well you and your team adapt to the opponent(s). Granted there will be some special situations in the story mode, but those are special restrictions, objectives, and enemies for the most part. Being free to pick up whatever hat you wanted whenever you saw one is part of what made FP great. That formula gets screwed up badly if Red Team has better Warriors and Blue team has better Mages. High tier play was already pretty gimped by the metagame in FP; I don't want to encourage it in our game.

That said, I -love- the story. I will definitely be working elements of it into the final product, whatever theme we go with. Good work. I'll be talking to you about story a lot more in the future, I think.

Been working on a story for the last 4 days. It's already 10 pages long but less than halfway through. I'll post what I have so far tonight.

I need an editor. STAT.