Adaptation design brief
From a tabletop investigation
to a tactical cRPG
The tabletop adventure supplies a setting and a mystery. The digital design has to make the party’s possible actions explicit.
The player experience
Prisma cRPG is envisioned as a PC-first, single-player, party-based RPG: semi-isometric exploration, tactical turn-based combat and close-up dialogue. Its first bounded slice is based on the Dustmere investigation.
The design pillars include Tabletop Freedom, The World that Remembers, Self-Expression through Game Systems, Companions Have Agency and No Single Point of Failure. They guide what the slice must support, rather than serving as a promise of unlimited scope.
A lead is progress, not a prescribed route
Information, physical entry and social permission are different design problems. An investigation should let the party obtain a useful lead through more than one supported channel. Reaching a mine entrance should not automatically resolve the questions of access, risk or whose help the party has accepted.
Represent the consequences
The adventure’s epilogue tracks a rescue outcome, public disclosure and support for the workers separately. A digital adaptation needs to represent these as distinct facts and use them in later scenes. A single good-or-bad ending variable would lose the structure of the source.
Companions retain agency
Companion agency is part of the ratified vision. Dialogue and encounter design therefore need space for a companion’s stance and response; a companion is not just another set of combat statistics.
Current scope
The product vision and design principles are established. Dustmere is the selected slice baseline. The complete feature catalogue remains a long-term direction, and this portfolio does not present the slice as finished.
Source context
An edited English portfolio brief based on the Prisma cRPG design document v0.3 and the Dustmere slice-planning direction. This is a design explanation, not the full internal specification.