Ancestral is an idea I wanted to pitch to Bethesda in the hopes they would make it and I could eventually play it. But they don't accept unsolicited ideas from people outside of the company and suggested I join the forum to post it instead. Here's the general idea.

The premise of the game is that you are the embodiment of the characters that lead to a myth beyond you - i.e. you play with a team of characters in a mythic past, that changes and characterizes the mythic landscape you later play through as the Hero.

Let me give a scenario. You're in a swamp, anticipating to fight a raging Hydra that the townfolk have told you about, with your heart in your mouth, you pass a skeleton lying prone on the ground. A not so lucky adventurer - but you search them and find a powerful gem perfect for deflecting the Hydras terrible poison attacks. Here's the good bit. YOU, know that gem is there, because YOU played the Elfling grasping the gem back in the past where as that Elfling you wrested it from some hard-won dungeon and set it up so you would die there in the swamp and could then retrieve the gem in the future as the hero that YOU now play.

Most games tend to reward you for avoiding death. ANCESTRAL would allow you to fully explore as many gruesome and wonderful, clever and legendary deaths as possible to feed the strength of the Mythic landscape that your later Hero inherits. Its a game where you must die to the strongest monster to help give it the fearful legend it comes to have, or die strategically to give your later hero the tools he needs to overcome impossible odds. IN effect, you die in the past, to make your hero look better in the future. How many times have you walked into a dragons lair or dungeon and seen the hapless victims that have come before you - what if, you could play them?

This is a game where what you do in the past, is important to the future. A game that changes the later aspects of the game by the legends you have wrought pending what you did to influence various myths. Maybe as a King you sent a formidable army to rid the lands of a dragon and were utterly destroyed. Not only do the creators of the game get to relish the utter destruction of the characters that come to play inert skeletons

but they get to surprise you when thousands of years later as the Hero you walk over a hill and see a graveyard inhabited by roaming wraiths - wraiths that might be controlled by your blood right to the King pending the character you chose to play the Hero - or perhaps simply row upon row of stones marking the brave hundreds that were defeated at the hands of the Monster, single you, are about to engage.

Back in the past, send out the fodder, champion, mystic, knight, wizard, and other classes, individually or enmasse, far and wide across the lands to get the best myth total you can, to make your deaths make the townsfolk leave their homes or merely shudder at the thought of your name. Know that these characters will all die ignominious deaths and revel in their destruction that makes way for the Myths to arise that greet your Hero in the future.

Dude trust me when I tell you this get into game design and work out your idea own your own with people you trust. ideas always get changed when hand over to another party and you probably won't like what they'll do with your baby.

I'm willing to take the risk. I want the idea out there, certainly people are going to try and take an idea and change it, that's the beauty of ideas - but even if a game came close to employing this, I'd be happy. The point for me, is that idea is out there. I'm realistic enough, and well aware of gaming enough to know that any concept of 'my baby' is naive to hold. But it's better to have the idea there at all in some form, than not at all.

Translation of the idea aside - what do you think of the premise?