Blood On the Cobblestones: The Birth of Violence
Brutal Tournaments are at the heart of The Red Village game; they launch January, 2022.
Lightly tread, for she does not rest,
Nor close her lidless eyes;
Fight the dread, quiet your breath,
She listens through the night.
From Realms afar she blazed a trail,
With death her calling card;
Blood upon her heavy veil,
And red her storied past.
A Taste of Blood
From across the Realms they come, drawn by a power that they cannot describe, yet cannot withstand. Barbarians, Druids, Rangers, Paladins, and Wizards. Orcs, Undead, Elves; The Ethereal. Fierce warriors of every breed, carrying weapons of all manner of design, fixated on one thing; violence. Unrelenting, unbroken, fearless, they march toward the village, haunted by visions of heavy iron gates. Blood is upon them.
As the midwinter storms beckon and the snow banks up across the Darklands, violence draws nearer The Red Village. Tournaments, To-the-Death, and Faction Fights are an integral part of the game — so let’s explore them in a little more detail. Battlemasters, stoke your fire and get comfortable around the hearth. It’s time to learn about where Champions go to die.
Tournament Mode
There are three main modes of fight in The Red Village; Tournaments, To-the-Death matches, and Faction Fights. Tournaments will launch first, with To-the-Death and Faction Fights coming later on the Roadmap. An important note: Tournament mode is at the heart of The Red Village game and as we are committed to quality releases, we will endeavour to make sure that it runs as smoothly and effectively as possible before expanding into other modes.
Tournaments are the most crucial element of The Red Village game. Champions live and die by their performance in Tournaments, where they fight for glory and riches in front of the ever-watchful eye of the Blood Queen. Tournaments are single-elimination in format; losers are eliminated immediately, and winners fight on until only one remains. The last Champion standing is crowned the victor.
No Champion may freely leave the village, but also, no Champion may ever truly die within its walls. They are destined to fight, to bleed, and to die, over and over and over again, for all eternity. They suffer endlessly for the entertainment of the Queen and her court.
Tournaments will initially be held for 8 Champions. If a Tournament is not filled, the start time will be pushed back. (If the Tournament is still unfilled, it will be cancelled, and the buy-in will be refunded). We don’t expect many instances of this, but it is hard to predict initially and we will be reactive to community demands. Eventually, we will accommodate Tournaments that are not completely filled.
Tournaments will initially occur sequentially, and only one at a time. Eventually, we will have multiple Tournaments running simultaneously. Battlemasters will be able to view them on The Red Village website. We are working on developing and introducing dynamic viewing so that you can swing, swerve, and observe your Champions fighting from different angles in real-time.
At launch, Tournaments will be set 24 hours in advance — this enables the tech team to keep a close eye on them and ensure everything runs smoothly and to plan. As the village grows, they will be planned much further in the future, and with much greater frequency. It is important to note that we definitely have the capacity to scale the frequency and number of Tournaments; the reason we are limiting their frequency to begin with is to ensure that everything is playing without any issues from a technical perspective. After all, on the blockchain, everything is final.
Battlemasters will choose Tournaments based on two main factors: buy-in and battle class. Buy-in is the cost to enter a Tournament; fees will range from less to more expensive in every fighting class, but will tend to increase as Champions progress into higher fighting classes.
Free Tournaments, which will run from time to time, will not have a buy-in. These are also sponsored the Community Chest.
Battle classes are dynamic. They help group Champions by their ability, to make fights compelling and interesting. The exact method behind their distribution and calculation is still being tweaked to perfection, to ensure the most challenging, fair, and fun outcome is achieved. Champions who have never fought, or fought less than a set amount of fights (exactly how many will be revealed soon), are known as Unblooded.
Once Champions have fought enough to be able to issue them with a class rating, they will be assigned to that class. It may take some time for these ratings to be assigned and Champions sorted properly. While Battlemasters are asserting their positions in the class system, expect some bloody encounters as your Champion will be exposed to other Champions of many and varied abilities.
Of course, depending on their results and the skill of their Battlemaster in placing them in Tournaments, they will be able to move up and down the class rating system. An open class, known as the Bloodbath, will allow anyone to enter any Champion, regardless of class rating, and watch the calamity unfold.
The Red Village is working with several teams to enable third party data collection, analytics, and visualisation, making understanding the results of Tournaments easier and more straight forward for aspiring Battlemasters in the near future. Know Your Champions, anyone?
To-the-Death
To-the-Death matches will follow soon after Tournaments are released. They are not for the faint-of-heart, nor the weak-of-will. In a To-the-Death fight, Battlemasters enter their Champion in a 1v1 format against another Champion. The winner takes all. That’s right: the winning Battlemaster will keep both Champions. You are playing for keeps, and this is irreversible. To-the-Death matches play out over a brutal match; while this is painful for the Champion, it shall be agonising for the Battlemaster watching.
What about the future?
So what does the future hold for the village, for Battlemasters, and for their Champions? Well, there are many and varied ways that blood can be spilled, that swords can be dulled, that bones can be broken. And, sorry-not-sorry Champions, but we plan to explore all of them. The following is all early stage planning, and is subject to change as we get more eyes on it and more and more thinking goes into the concept/s. But for an idea of some thoughts around the possible trajectory of The Red Village, read on.
Seasons — are later on the Roadmap, and will play an important part in a Battlemaster’s calendar of death. These will allow for training and upskilling over the course of a set period of time. These stats will be reset at certain intervals, meaning that Battlemasters can’t gain an indefinite or insurmountable advantage, but will be able to harden their Champions, make them better and stronger for a period. There are many different gameplay elements and devices that might make an appearance in this mode. At the end of the season, Big Purse Tournaments will provide a capstone — Battlemasters will have the opportunity to submit their Champions for true honour, glory, and real riches in the Blood Theatre and a legacy that will live on through the ages.
Sword-for-hire — this is very much an idea in its infancy, and not yet confirmed. There is a potential for a Scholarship program (Sword-for-hire) for Battlemasters to lease out their Champions for battle without selling them. This is something that requires an immense amount of thought and infrastructure, and we are working closely with some leading tokenomics experts to see if we can develop a structure that could facilitate this running smoothly and effectively if we do decide to go ahead with this model. More to come on this.
The Darklands — Champions are brutal, they are ferocious, indomitable, they are at home in the arenas. They are also independent, free-willed; free-spirited. A natural progression will be their innate desire to explore beyond the confines of the arena, the oppressiveness of their Barracks, the constraints of the village walls themselves.
In other words, Champions are going to want to kill some shit in the Darklands, too. And we certainly plan to let them. Given how game development works and how much we value high effort, high quality output, this is quite a way away, but there is certainly deep discussion around an expansion. We all want to see Champions against monsters and bosses — and we’re working on making it happen.
The metaverse — of course, we have some pretty close ties with some of the biggest metaverses out there. We are also exploring some interoperability with quests and adventures in already built environments such as The Sandbox and Decentraland.
All in all — where to now?
All in all, there’s a lot to unpack to begin with. Tournament Mode is vicious, it’s unrelenting, it’s exciting, entertaining, engaging, and it’s bloody. And it will stay that way, forevermore. That being said, we always have our eyes on progress — as gamers at heart, The Red Village team is committed to exploring opportunities as they arise, whilst ensuring that Champions always have opportunities to bleed and Battlemasters always have the opportunity to be rewarded for their Champion’s sacrifice.
In the end, we’re only weeks away from Tournaments. Weeks away from fighting, from battling, from watching the blood flow. So make your final preparations, get your Champions to draw up their final will and testament, and look sharp.
May the blood fall like rain from crimson skies upon her onyx eyes, and may your sword strike true upon those in your path.
These violent delights have violent ends.
