Custer

Not because I'm too busy; because I don't think I can do anything with them. The pointless little things you see finished are only because I have difficulties finishing a 'real' scenario.

You know, this is among my first visits to this forum, and I was reading through the Ideas topic, and I realized something.

 

I've got some nifty ideas for scenarios -- or ideas that could potentially be nifty, if done right.

 

The problem is that I will never make a competent scenario to go with them. Yes, I've designed 3 scenarios (perhaps as many as 5, depending on what you count as a scenario), but the ideas remain good.

 

If anyone else cares to share their ideas here, it's their perogative. Also, bear in mind that I make no guarantees as to how good any of these are; the last time I did any kind of collaboration with someone the result was 'Two Strands'.

 

So here goes.

 

* The Philosopher's Stone

 

Call it a material, a process, whatever -- but for whatever reason, matter synthesis has been discovered and is readily available in an Exile-tech world.

 

The result is, naturally, disaster on an unparalleled scale. Since it is possible to create mountains of gold from a handful of sand, there's obviously no need for riches -- or anything conventional economies need.

 

Where you go from there is your own business -- the angle I took, in which the only thing with any sort of scarcity is human life, thus leading to mass slavery -- is a little heavy-handed, but would be fun to work with. Plenty of potential conflict.

 

* The interactive party

 

A prefabricated party of more than one member which can dynamically be inserted into the plot of a story. Sounds tricky? Oh, it is! But hey, at least it's a little bit rewarding. Sorta.

 

Member 1, Ambrose, has 1 mage lore;

Member 2, Bertrand, has 3 mage lore;

Member 3, Card, has 5 mage lore;

Member 4, Donatello, has 10 mage lore;

Member 5, Engelbrekt, has Cave Lore;

Member 6, Famagusta, has Woodsman.

 

Now, it would be murder to program this, and it'd probably be better to work it on a smaller scale -- cutting out, say, Donatello and Card to slim it down to a modern 4 members, or ridding it of Bertrand to reduce it to a svelte 3.

 

If-then: Woodsman? If NO, F. is dead.

If-then: Lore? If NO, E. is dead.

If-then: Mage lore 19? If YES, break: A-D are alive. If NO:

{

If-then: Mage lore 18? If YES, A. and only A. is dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 16? If YES, B is dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 15? If YES, A and B are dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 14? If YES, C is dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 13? If YES, A and C are dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 11? If YES, B and C are dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 10? If YES, A, B, and C are dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 9? If YES, D is dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 8? If YES, A and D are dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 6? If YES, B and D are dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 4? If YES, C and D are dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 3? If YES, A, C, and D are dead, break.

If-then: Mage lore 1? If YES, B, C, and D are dead, break.

}

Mage lore is not 1: A, B, C, and D are dead; break.

 

As it's 6 AM, it might well be that I have these reversed. In that case, work the other way around. The method should still work, though.

 

And as for integrating it into dialogue? Maybe you could set up a little timer that runs those checks every 3 turns, and increments flags as appropriate. The caveat is that the party could never change their statistics by trainer, or they'd have to be warned NOT to change Mage Lore or it'd ruin the scenario.

 

I'll get back to this tomorrow. (Or maybe not -- I'm not missing my own birthday party for it.) Until then, well...

 

Any thoughts?

Utica.

How the hell can someone be this retarded? I mean, I'm being earnest here: did someone drop you as a child? Into lead paint?

Why not?

The Vahnatai town, for much the same reason as the above. Yes, it's been long enough since playing Exile 3 I've forgotten its name anyway.

Relhan also took requests, and he was an amazing artist.

Lord V is too stupid to live.

Uh, by volume it has to be at least 80% someone else's work -- I'd avoid that like the plague...

Drake's Quest is a bad name for a scenario. 'X's Quest' generally is, esp. if X is a mythological monster.

An alien beast is faster, perhaps. But have you ever seen one kill a horse?

 

Have you ever seen anything kill a horse? They're completely invincible.

Wait, I got it.

Is there somewhere special I'm supposed to put BoA or its editor? I unloaded the BoA editor into the BoA directory under the default subfolder, and it refuses to work -- it says something about graphic 2000 and crashes whenever I try to open a scenario. What's wrong with it?

Alec punches people who speak in the third person and doesn't feel badly about it afterwards.

In a battle between a horse and a Vahnatai Lord, the Vahnatai Lord dies of old age 100% of the time.

Vahnatai are misspelled and there's no option for who would really win the war: the horses. They are completely indestructible, after all.

I disagree with saying your first will probably be your worst. After all, some of the better early scenarios -- Trouble in Mendor, Tatterdemalion, Farmhands!! -- were made by people who wouldn't go on to finish any significantly better works. There are probably more and better examples of this; some people just catch lightning in a bottle.

The biggest injustice is that people probably know everything there is to know about Geneforge and GF2, but we're still finding things out about NG.

TM, you have made the mistake of confusing karma and reputation.

Karma makes you evil, reputation just makes you ill-received; it's possible to have miserable karma and good reputation (your evil deeds are accepted wherever it is, or no one has heard about them yet) or miserable reputation and good karma (you do good, but are a jerk and the good isn't obvious).

 

Fallout would be a worse game for a nonseparate karma and rep system, I think. There's no logical reason that stabbing a beggar in the woods should drastically affect a guard's opinion of you; they'd have no way of knowing it was you, or even that it'd happened.

Karma would, ideally, be divine reputation; the idea of having priests and priest spells in an apparently amoral universe has always bothered me a bit.

Hell, most FF villains are exact opposites of what you should do; their motivations are power, insanity, insane lust for power, and so on.

I'd say that the biggest thing to avoid in making a villain is a lust for power. Unless you can do something unique with his/her methods or give him/her a hell of a backstory, it's pretty much fruitless.

 

Purpose is an important thing, and ruling/destroying the world is a piss-poor and unrealistic purpose.

Where does insanity show up? I've never seen a scenario portray it in either the "crazy crazy" or "cute crazy" sense.

 

I haven't played the worst of the worst, but surely someone of some skill must be guilty of it.

I'll be applying when the time comes.

 

Probably won't get into the beta -- I've got nothing but superannuation going for me -- but eh.

Problem I can see with that is this: Who uses the Priest monster type, anyway? Outside of the Arena, I wouldn't predict it being too widely-used.

 

The name is a good, sound reason for keeping the item around, though.

Unfortunately, this goes back to the Exiles -- had Jeff felt like adding area-of-effect spells to the Av series ( ), this sort of thing would have been avoided, among other things.

 

For you and all who come after you, no, nothing stops you from taking damage on terrain. Not even intervening impassible terrain -- even if you found yourself IN one of the walls, you'd take damage.

You're reading fan mail from nonmodular games, though; the best scenarios according to that market (so far as I am aware, it is nigh-on impossible to pirate BoE or get scenarios to work outside of a registered version, so I can assert with some confidence that most people who have opinions on scenarios have, in fact, paid you for it) are the ones with the best plot.

The scenario experience is too short and shallow to allow a great depth of combat action. Ivory makes beautiful sculptures, but it takes an idiot to try and make a wall out of it.