Homeland progress report

[Kelandon]

Digging into Chapter 3 now. It is definitely true that finishing and extensively testing Chapters 1 and 2 made designing Chapter 3 easier. Chapter 3 has a lot of combat, and I have a pretty good sense of how to make the elaborately scripted combat that I had only conceptually mapped out before. And I also have a much better idea of what dialogue to write at different points.

 

But Chapter 3 is very incomplete. I left a lot to be done when I skipped over most of Chapter 3 to get to some pieces of Chapter 4 and Chapter 5, and Chapter 3 is the longest chapter in the scenario. It's going to take a lot of work to get Chapter 3 anywhere near playable.

Spoiler

As I've mentioned earlier in this thread, there are essentially three parts to Chapter 3. For those who've played Chapters 1 and 2, it's probably not a surprise that those parts center on, in this order, Kathda, Pohsa, and Ihrghthen. The Kathda sequence is the most complete, and even that still has a lot left to go (and desperately needs some rewriting at points). The Pohsa sequence is barely designed at all. The ending of the Ihrghthen sequence is designed — that's perhaps the most important scene in the whole scenario — but essentially no other part of it is.

 

So there is a long way to go.

 

[Warrior Mage]

Too excited for the homeland to arrive.

[Kelandon]

One thing I'm noticing is that I'm going to have to add a lot of towns in Chapters 3 and 4. Part 1 (Prologue + Chapter 1 + Chapter 2) was 49 towns. I had only about 22 towns for all of Chapter 3 (of which only 15 had any substantial designing), but that's clearly not right. I've already added 7 more, and there's a pretty good chance I'll be adding a few more on top of that. Chapter 3 will be about 30-35 towns. The upshot of this is that Chapter 3 was maybe 20-25% designed when I picked it back up about a week ago.

 

The same is true of Chapter 4, which had 17 towns as originally set up, but there's no way that's going to stick. I'd bet Chapter 4 will end up with more like 25 towns. Chapter 5 was 16 towns as originally written, and it may end up close to that number (though I've added a 1-town Epilogue).

 

I think we're looking at a 120-130 town scenario, at the end of the day. That feels about right. Part 1 felt like about 40% of the scenario. Part 2 (which is just Chapter 3) will be about 25-30% of the scenario. Part 3 (Chapter 4 + Chapter 5 + Epilogue) will be another 30-35% of the scenario.