- No respawning, both for us Tarnished and for NPCs/enemies. Dead is dead.
- No Flasks of Crimson/Cerulean Tears from the get-go. Let healing be done with traditional remedies or restorative magic, and let FP/mana/whatever-you-want-to-call it simply regenerate over time. Healing potions or crystal tears with special effects could be found as loot throughout the world instead, and the ability to craft them (like the perfumers) could be part of a PC's skillset.
- No sites of lost grace, or at least not in the way that they function in the game. The guidance of grace being visible as rays of light makes sense and should stay, and perhaps this light converges at locations that would make for good resting spots, but that's as far as it should go. It doesn't have a useful place in a written narrative, in my opinion.
If we are focusing on narrative based storytelling as opposed to a roleplay-ified game, then I think all of these make sense as far as removing their mechanics. You hit the nail on the head re: sites of lost grace, since I think having our band of Tarnished meet around a Site of Lost Grace a lá "you're all in a tavern together to embark on a quest" is quite a fitting start to the story.
But that really leads me to one of the bigger questions I have for this story: are we all cooperating? We're all trying to become the Elden Lord (or at least I am under the assumption, based off of what I've read so far, that most of us are) and that will inevitably lead to animosity between the characters; that's just sort of the way these things seem to go, especially if we're in a period where all of us can more or less see grace clearly rather than faintly (at least, that's how I interpreted the game; the other tarnished do not always oppose us because they do not see grace as well as us, thus they accept they are probably not meant to be the Elden Lord, but I never really finished the game that far to really know the specifics).
And, frankly, I really enjoyed the aspect of the game where certain Tarnished are just assholes, lol. So to that end; are we a merry band of Tarnished trying to become Elden Lord together, or are we working against each other in secret (but still traveling together) or is this a sandbox style story with a narrative focus but without anything that binds us together?
- The strength of runes, the ability to become more powerful by defeating enemies, should probably be a sort of passive effect that we use as a vague excuse for our characters growing in strength over the course of the story, if we don't ignore its existence entirely. I also don't think runes should be the active currency; Patches uses the word "coin" when describing wealth, so let money just be gold coins or something.
- The Roundtable Hold. I'm not very fond of including Melina in the story and her ability to teleport us to a version of the Roundtable Hold that exists outside of the world. I don't think fast travel in general is a good idea. Unfortunately, we don't know how other characters like Roderika or D are able to travel to it. Do we say that there are portals throughout the Lands Between that can take us there? Maybe it's a place we visit in our dreams? Or does the illusory Roundtable Hold just not exist yet, and we have to fend for ourselves in the Lands Between until we reach the Fortified Manor in Leyndell?
- Spirit Ashes could be reworked into an ability or a school of magic, like I suggested for alchemy earlier.
Point 1: I think the usage of runes as currency in ER is strange, like you said. I understand that Runes would be used to (magically) make you stronger in ER, but then their use as currency is kind of weird, and vice versa if they were currency, why would valuta be able to make you stronger? I agree that we'd separate them and use "runes" as kind of a way to say "oh I worked very hard to beat everyone and their mom, so now I'm stronger." I'd only question whether we even want to quantify this.. seems like a really easy way for people to get upsetti spaghetti because oh I wrote that I killed 20 of this enemy, and you only killed 4, so naturally I'm stronger now. I think with the group we have + narrative focus, we can avoid that of course, but it's the first problem that came to mind for me.
Point 2: I actually like the roundtable hold and, honestly, it could be a really fun plot device if we were ''the first'' to find the way to the roundtable hold and build the place up from a decrepit ruin into a livable place for us to gather our strength and device our plans. I'd propose that Sites of Lost Grace have the ability to teleport us there somehow, and that we just kind of close our eyes to the mechanics of it (because it's magical, like so many other things in the world that we don't understand nor need to understand) and leave it at that? Suspension of disbelief, I suppose.
Point 3: sort of like a necromancy/spirit magic thing? That could be cool.
How do you/others feel about dragon magic, though?
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