BlindSide wrote:"Dugpa" seems interesting. Can you tell us more about it.
Dugpa is a very interesting story. It's actually very hard to type it all out, but I always tell this story to people when they ask about my work. This game is based off a chapter that is just beginning in my life. Take it as you wish, though.
I'm afraid I have neither the time nor the resources to actually work on the game currently, but it started back about 7 years ago. I began having these weird dreams, which I initially shrugged off. They became so frequent and vivid I began writing them out. It seemed like a really good idea for a story to tell, at least, and I'm a game designer at heart so I like a good story to base things off of. I have not stopped having them since, and I have them still today.
The dreams featured a group of people that liked to refer to themselves as "The Adepts." I discovered that in the dreams I was one too. They were somewhat like angels, protecting people behind the scenes, and gently guiding them towards bigger and better things. They were like helpers that no one ever knew about, and they seem to be normal, everyday people if you met them on the streets. And in fact, they are.
The antagonists are a group that known as the Adepts as well, but they are the lower order; the Dugpa. I won't go too far into it, but as far as people go, they are not all without morals. But they do act against everything good in the way they carry on in their lives. They destroy people--some of them are even well aware of what they're doing and they enjoy it fully.
Anyway, let us fast forward 4 years. These dreams began to become so regular, that I eventually wrote the design out for a game based on them. I entitled it, "The Adepts." But before I got started on it, I did a quick google search to ensure I wasn't stealing the name from any other game (adept is a common English word anyway). Go ahead, google "the adepts" yourself. The first result is probably the same article that caught my eye 3 years ago. The one by William Quan Judge. It matched my dreams perfectly. If you search deeper and deeper, you will find more and more on it. If you do some heavy research, you find it ties into a lot of historical events. You find that it seems they've been with us since the beginning of written history, but we've only been fully aware of it for 300 years or so.
Artists depict them in paintings and stories. They are people that guide us and help us, and only few of us know their names.
(Side note: Leon Maurer, an acquaintance I've met during the research stage of this project, had discovered Einstein owned a worn, dog-eared copy of "The Secret Doctrine" by H.P.Blavatsky. His niece had gained possession of it, and reported that it had scrawled notes in the margin. This is one of the books that was written by a creator of the Theosophical society--the society that studies the teachings of the Adepts, now commonly referred to as the Theosophical Mahatma/Masters).
Reference:
http://users.aol.com/uniwldarts/uniworl ... stein.html
The article cites it's sources.
I spent the next 3 years of my life researching this. I've read hundreds of books and articles on it. It all began to fall into place. I even went to the Theosophical Society in New York to discover a little bit more about these people. It just seemed like they were trying so hard to let me in on something.
I eventually renamed the game, "Dugpa" because it's a little bit more eye catching, and the dreams mainly involve trying to stop what they're doing.
This story goes much deeper, and no matter how long I explain it I could never do it any justice. I'm stuck with almost no money to work on the game. I'm living in Ohio with my wife, just waiting for the day I can start working on it.
So why am I working on The Master Legacy now? Well, the reason why it's called that, other than just being a play off of the NES game "Guardian Legend," is because I'm using it to fund my true legacy. I'm going to eventually sell this game, and it's going to give me the funds that I need to create my vision 7 years in the making.
-Mark H.