Ash Lael

I think Areni is a successful blend.

Exactly, it's the designer's perogative (sp?).

 

Personally, I'd like to see experimentation and new ideas come into play rather than a battle between "Linear" and "Non-linear". One of the ideas behind Areni, for example, was to create a kind of macro-linearity (the story progresses in the same way), but still allow a great degree of variance on the detail level. Depending on what recipes you choose to rely on, what ingredients you use up, where you go, etc, the combat experience can be wildly different for different people, but still of a consistently high quality. One of my beta-testers said a certain recipe was only slightly useful, while it was the main staple for another. In other words, I tried to create a situation where the scenario would allow for big changes on a level that mattered to the player, dictated by the player's actions. I think it succeeded, though most people don't appreciate it, since they only play through once. But that's the kind of thing I'd like to see more of, blurring the two concepts in interesting ways. Roots is an example of a scenario that does this purely in storyline terms, though I can't really expand on that without ruining it for someone.

The Adventurer's Club scenarios are not non-linear. While AC1 and AC3 have a lot of incidental, non-essential stuff (to a point where it can be difficult to find the central, linear storyline), the main path doesn't vary to any real extent.

 

Did you ever finish any of the AC scenarios, Drake?

^Disagree. While it doesn't bother me in the slightest what my party is made of, if having certain PCs makes it more fun for you, go for it.

Like Drake said, you aren't going to get a lot of milage out of your thief/archer. As mentioned before, Archery and Lockpicking are a complete waste of time (archery never does enough damage, and you can pick locks even without lockpicking skill), and Disarm Traps is only slightly better.

 

I don't like combining magic with fighting skills, personally. It tends to make your frontliners too weak and easy to kill in combat.

 

I like the idea of, say, two fighters with 4 mage/priests. This gives the fighters sufficient magical enhancement to become real killing machines. If you really want to take it to the extreme, get one fighter with 5 support crew. I've done this, and while it's probably less efficient, it does mean you have plenty of slack up your sleeve in case you're in trouble. One guy can heal him, one guy can cure his poison, one can bless him again, another can give him magical resistance and the last can cast Sanctuary so he won't get hurt much next round, all in the one turn. You can do even more if you haste them. Very effective, and easy to use. Only trouble is when your enemies start targetting your vulnerable backliners.

 

Anyway, for your present situation, Sanctuary is a nice and cheap spell that's very effective and you'd do well to keep it handy. Cast it on your frontliners at the end of each turn and the bandits and archers won't be able to touch them. The mage will, and they tend to be resistant to magical attacks, so get your fighters up there with him and kill him as quickly as you can.

As designers have become better and better players, they've made their scenarios harder and harder to keep their work interesting and challenging to themselves and their core audience. The negative effect of this is that it becomes very, very difficult for a new player. I remember the old days when I found VoDT tough.

 

My suggestion is to either play the earlier and easier scenarios first (like, say, the Spheres Trilogy or Nightfall), or to get a bit of advice on tactics and designing a good party. Be warned, take the latter option and you'll get a whole lot of conflicting advice and will then have to decide which suggestions to use anyway!

 

That said, I'll throw in my two cents:

 

- There are a number of skills that are practically useless. Investing in these is a waste of time and money. Poison, Lockpicking, Alchemy, Thrown Missles and Archery are all skills that have pretty much no value.

 

- Similarily, there are 8 or 9 spells 80% or 90% of players use 80% or 90% of the time. Haste and Bless are the most important. Juicing up a fighter with multiple hastes and blesses is one of the most used tactics in BoE. Generally speaking I find that parties work best if you use your spellcasters to enhance your fighters rather than trying to get them to win the battle themselves.

 

- While you'd think you're better off with more people on your team, a lot of players use less than 6PC parties. This means that the XP gets split between less PCs, so they get more each, so they go up levels quicker. More guys vs. better guys. the 1PC party is quite popular. I prefer a 2PC myself.

 

- Strength is one of the best skills in the game. Aside from determining how good you are in combat, it decides how much your HP increases every time you level up. Since enough blessings will mean that your fighters hit most all the time anyway, I'll usually pour tons of points into strength early on and neglect other combat skills till later.

 

- It's more efficient to have a couple of mage/priests than specialist characters.

 

Just some pointers to help you get started. Have fun!

There's a lot of serieses (sp?) out there. This is a comprehensive guide.

 

Drizzt's Trilogy (The Foresaken, Brotherhood of the Hand, and Shadow of the Stranger) - Excellent series, only trouble is you can't play with the same party right through. Aside from the difference in combat difficulty, you play different characters in different games - in fact, in Shadow, you meet the character you played in Brotherhood.

 

Zankozzie's Big Mistake/Chains - These two are a mini-series, though they probably should be stand-alones. No combat, puzzle-based scenarios. If you like them, check out Dirty Gold by the same author - a lesser scenario and not connected by storyline to the others, but in the same style.

 

Stareye's scenarios - The series begins with At the Gallows, continues with Foreshadows and then Spears (which was made before Foreshadows...), and then Emulations. Stareye's first scenario Spy's Quest is not a part of his series, and I'm not sure if his BoA scenario A Perfect Forest is or not - if so, the connection is slight. Good points, the scenarios are good, and they work well as individual scenarios, so you can enjoy one without having played any others in the series. However, if you do decide to play through the whole series, be warned - they are very big. At the Gallows takes place on an entire continent, and was the largest scenario ever when it came out. Spears is slightly smaller, but still massive. Foreshadows is a movie scenario and thus very quick, but exists mainly as set-up for Spears. Emulations is a good medium-length scenario.

 

The Arc - While we can argue about the relative quality of individual scenarios, there is no question that this is the best overall series. While there's the occasional let-down in the mix, so many of Alcritas' scenarios are so good, and there's so many of them, that this series is pretty much unbeatable. Unfortuantely, Al has pretty much stopped designing, and the series will almost certainly never be finished. The order they should be played in: On a Ship To Algiers (beginner, small, fairly difficult), Of Good and Evil (large, multi-path, high levels, difficult), Redemption (large, high levels, very difficult), An Apology (beginner, medium length, very difficult), Lamentations (high levels, fairly difficult, not up to Alcritas' usual standard but needs to be played for the overall storyline, fairly small), Falling Stars (large, use the same party from Lamentations, expect to replay it a lot so keep a save file right at the start, mostly not too difficult but has a very mean end sequence), Signs and Portents (movie scenario), and Tomorrow (continue with the same party from Falling Stars and Lamentations, short/medium size, average difficulty). He has a couple of others, but they can be omitted without hurting the story and aren't that great. You can also skip Algiers and Of Good and Evil without many troubles if you like, but you'd be missing out on a couple of class scenarios.

 

The Echoes Series - Terrors Martyr (going by Solomon Strokes on these boards at the moment) has made a frightening number of scenarios, and a fair few of them are a part of the Echoes series. However, you could probably play them in any order without it making a difference, as the plots are extremely difficult to understand anyway. I'd recommend playing Nebulous Times Hence, which is his best scenario and a stand-alone, to see if you like his style.

 

TM also made Bandits and Bandits II: Ballad of the Red Star. However, I don't count these as a series. While some of the same characters are featured, Bandits II is much more a continuation of the Echoes series than of the Bandits storyline. Heck, it doesn't even have any bandits in it.

 

The Spheres Trilogy - From way back in the early days. Riddle of the Spheres was the first decent scenario released for BoE. This trilogy is meant to be played with the same party straight through, using a brand new one for Riddle. Quests of the Spheres is the second in the series and the best by a fair margin, Destiny is the last and while not actually bad, should probably be a lot smaller than it is. The Spheres Trilogy is pretty dated now, so you probably enjoy it more if you played it early on, before moving onto the more difficult and more flashy modern-style scenarios.

 

The Adventurer's Club Trilogy is comprised of a massive scenario (AC1), a huge scenario (AC2), and the largest scenario ever made (AC3). They are fairly old school style games (AC1 and AC3 in particular), and are good ones to start on if you enjoyed the Exiles and Avernums. Just be warned that it'll take a while for you to finish them.

 

The lost_king Trilogy - If you value your sanity, never ever play these scenarios.

 

Demon Island I and II - If you ever choose to play these, use a God party. Mainly it's just kill demons, kill demons, kill demons, but there's some cool technical trickery (especially in Demon Island II) that may make them worth playing. Or may not.

 

Doom Moon I and II - Start with a medium level party in the first one, and take it into the sequel. These scenarios have really tough enemies, but they also load you up with really powerful weapons. Any party that goes through these scenarios will be too powerful to use again, except for stuff like the Demon Island scenarios. The Doom Moons have a shaky storyline and really bad spelling (English was a second language for the designer), but they also have good puzzles and some really cool technical tricks. Doom Moon II in particular has influenced a lot of designers.

 

Teh Grich 1 and 2 - TM, designer of the Echoes series, made these. They are very short and are designed as a parody of one of the most hated scenarios ever - The Grinch. Basically, they are intentionally really terrible. May be worth playing, one day.

 

The Chicken Plague Trilogy - Made by Brave Sir Robin. Haven't played them myself. I gather that essentially you just kill chickens for three scenarios. Was intended as a comedy series, but not appreciated by many.

 

Our Man Vlad and Our Man Vlad: Redemption - Also by Brave Sir Robin, and also scenarios that I have not played. No one seems to like them much.

 

The Lost Tunnels Part 1 and 2 - Okay, nothing special, put off these until you're done with the really good ones (which will take a good year or so).

 

The Kurnis/Uganta series - Four scenarios, designed by myself and my brother under the name of "The Creator". The first, Isle of Boredom, has some bugs and stuff and is the weakest. However, I do think it's worth playing if you like puzzles, combat you have to think about to win, and nifty technical stuff. Ugantan Nightmare was the first movie scenario, and was made in a week to demonstrate this really cool animation trick we'd developed (and has since been used in a lot of other scenarios). To Live in Fear is another movie scenario. They should be played/watched after Isle of Boredom but before Revenge, the last in the series. Revenge is our best scenario, is medium in length, and really difficult. It's also designed so that you don't need to play any of the scenarios before it - however it doesn't work in reverse. Playing Revenge first is fine if you just want to get to the good bit, but will spoil parts of the earlier scenarios. Generally, all of our scenarios are hard and are designed for people who've played a lot of BoE and know what they're doing, so you probably want to hold off on playing them for a while. We also have a couple of small stand-alone efforts called Areni and Deadly Goblins. Our scenarios tend to feature character-driven stories, really nasty combat, and really, really flashy tech stuff.

 

If I've missed any, I'll add them in later.

That depends on which scenario you're playing.

Your post is a pretty good one, and it's definitely a way to do things. However, it's far from being the only way or even the best way.

Personally, I don't see how giving the player inconsequential choices helps anything, except possibly realism.

I have a certain amount of respect for what DreamGuy, SkeleTony and Toasty are saying. At the same time, I disagree with it utterly.

 

There is a great scope for creativity in design. There is no One Way to make a scenario and there is no One Essential Ingredient. Sometimes you might like to create your own characters and let 'em lose in a scenario, and some will go to great lengths to allow you to play any sort of person you want. Others will give you an interesting character and invite you to step into his shoes for a few hours. You may like one or the other more. I prefer the latter.

 

That said, I do believe that confusion over the relationship between player and party is a common thing, and usually pretty detrimental. I think a designer should make it clear what the party is, in his eyes. Players can then take it or leave it, but it's part of the designer's vision, and should be regarded as such, rather than as a design error.

 

I think our new BoA players are used to feeling like they are in control when they play, and the simple fact that they are not irks them. But that's the way it is. Even if you feel like you are, it's an illusion created by the designer. The mindset of a player should be to approach the designer with trust, accept his rules, and allow him to take you into his world.

 

But just to repeat what I said before, I think it's the designer's responsibility to make clear what his rules and his terms are, and to stick to them.

Very interesting topic for an article, though I would have prefered to see more on the Why and When rather than How.

Yes, there is. It's called BoE.