Story draft version 2

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psi29a
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by psi29a »

My idea for a story was as follows: "World's End"
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Putting your pounding head between your hands, you try to make sense of your current situation. You look around and take it all in; shoreline as far as the eye can see and wreckage strewn across the beach. A book catches your eye, half buried, you pick it up and brush away the sand. Thumbing through what looks to be a waterlogged journal, you find it remarkable that it is still legible though missing many of its pages.

It suddenly occurs to you while reading through what look to be log entries, that you don't know who wrote them let alone who you are and how you got to this island. There seems to be some sort of table that maps to several entries that strike your curiosity: Dreams, Research, Contact, Location, Plans and Embarkation... going all the way to the back to Embarkation, seemingly the last entries detail chartering a ship to take you to an Island. The last entry details how worse the storm has gotten and that they should probably go topside to lend a hand.
---

At this point... you as the player character are then tasked (quest) to look through the rest of the journal entries and to hunt down the rest of the entries to complete the story.

You don't know if the person in the journal is you or someone else. However as you begin to unravel the story, whatever that person was doing, it wasn't good.

I want the story to eventually let the player to make a choice, to follow through what was 'planned' in the journal or make up their own mind as to what to do.

The Island include forests, jungles, ruins, water falls, caves and at least three inhabited areas, two small villages and one large town/port. This needn't be implemented all at once, but one step at a time that can be built on as we gain more features in the OpenMW-CS. Each new page found gives more information and "quests".
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Grilly
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Mystery of the Cave

Post by Grilly »

Most of the Elder Scrolls games start you in a dungeon and you eventually find your way out. So I'm taking that as inspiration.

Mystery of the Cave

You awaken at the very bottom of a cave system. There are dead bodies all around. You have to fight and solve puzzles to unlock room after room until you finally discover what happened in this place, why everyone is dead, why you are the last sole survivor, and ultimately who you are (since you have no memory).

After collecting all the clues you discover that your memories were destroyed by a cult who wanted to use your body as the avatar for some deity to enter the world but things didn't go to plan, different factions betrayed each other, miscommunication lead to accidents, and in the end all the cult members died after they killed off the miner/workers in the caves.

After leaving the caves, my hope is that the player will feel great relief at finally being free to roam anywhere, and also energized to get to the next mission objective to stop the great evil that only the player can stop.




SIDE NOTE: This might not be the place but I have some ideas for the leveling system, skill system, class system that I'll like to talk with you guys about. Regardless of if you want to use my story or not (There's a lot more to it than I put above but I'm not locked in and am open to suggestions) I'd like to see some of my level advancement ideas implemented.
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DestinedToDie
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by DestinedToDie »

It´s fine. What are your leveling ideas?
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Grilly
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by Grilly »

DestinedToDie wrote:It´s fine. What are your leveling ideas?
Glad you asked. I had this idea of really making skills more immersive. I think the easiest way to explain the system is with magic but I've worked it out so all the skills could potentially work this way.

When you learn a new spell, the spell starts at level 1. Let's say you learn a fire spell. As you use that spell you advance that spell up to level two and so on, all the way up to level 100. Every time you learn more about a spell you gain a little bit of health, a little bit of stamina, and a little bit of magicka. Maybe because it's magic you gain a bit more magicka than the others but they all go up. Just getting one spell from 1 to 100 won't really increase any of these enough to be noticed but they are very slowly always going up. Once a spell is at level 100, if you continue using it you will continue to get xp for that which goes towards increasing health, stamina, and magicka, and for bonuses to stats on level up. As the spell goes up from 1 to 100 it becomes more powerful and consumes less magicka.

Because you are using magic, the levels gained by that fire spell apply a small bonus to other spells which raise their level indirectly. A slightly larger bonus is applied to magic in the destruction school, and an even larger bonus is applied to any other fire spells the player learns or has. If you have one fire spell at 100 then the next fire spell you learn might start at level 5 instead of 1. If you have a lot of fire spells leveled up to 100 then the next fire spell you learn could be at 50. No new spell should start at 100.

Spells can still be easy and difficult regardless of how much a player has used a spell. One of the easiest spells at level 100 might still not be as powerful as the highest level spells at level 1. However, the higher difficulty the spell the greater the change that the spell will fail. A novice spell will always work. An expert spell will only work consistently after you raise it to something like level 50 or higher. Because of this, a player will want to spend time using easier spells so they can build up their bonuses so that when they are able to learn expert level spells they can actually use them without them failing all the time.

There could even be some interesting story aspects to this. An honorable mage might not want to teach a particular spell to the player unless the player has the enough bonuses to be able to use it but an evil mage will go ahead and teach you anything so long as they like you and you pay.

This same idea could easily apply to a bow. A low powered bow can be used by anyone but you need some skill with a bow before you're ready to use a high powered bow. If you happen to find a high powered bow and try to used it right away you might not be able to pull it back and even if you do a bit, you'll likely miss fire. In real life, a light sword is easy use and can be used by anyone. However, a heavier sword is more difficult to pick up and carry. Besides that, if you do swing a heavy sword, it might go flying out of your hands if you can't control its inertia.

It also applies to hand-to-hand. You could learn fighting techniques the same as spells and certain gloves could be learned the same as weapons.

The only real problem with this sort of system could be with skills like athletics and sneak. But if you just allow the player to continue getting xp infinitely no matter how much they use those skills (though they are maxed at 100) then I think it's acceptable.

With a system like this in place I think it frees up players to be true to their class. If you are a pure mage, you don't have to go moonlight as a knight in order to feel like you're missing out on level ups or stat increases. Those other skill are there for people with OCD that compulsively feel they need to max everything but you can be just as successful in the game playing as just a sniper who uses a bow and sneak and not really anything else.
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DestinedToDie
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by DestinedToDie »

I don´t know if that´s the only real problem. We´ll have to wait for the dehardcoding to see just how flexible things will be.
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Grilly
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by Grilly »

I was thinking about my story idea and I wanted to add a few details to expand it.

As I said before, you start at the bottom of a cave system. I think the first room should be something like a crazy ritual room with five altars. You are on one of the altars and there are dead bodies on the other five.

As stated earlier, you have no memory. The cultist who put you there are all dead, either from conspiring with each other or from the monsters they summoned that attacked them.

The room is sealed and you'll have to find a way out. You'll either need to pick the lock or find another way out. I'm sort of envisioning the cave system as maze but no matter what choice you make all the paths eventually lead to the exit. Each room with have more than one solution for how to get past it. You can kill the monster and get the key, pick the lock, or use some kind of magic.

As you go through the caves you will find a series of notes, books, and other clues so you piece together what happened. There may also be ghosts or machines you can talk with.

I guess a good reference for what I'm thinking would be Peragus station in Knights of the Old Republic 2: the sith lords.

Eventually you find a guy in a jail cell who says he's your friend. He tells you that there were six prisoners but since they only needed five sacrifices he was left to starve in jail. You have to decide if you believe him or if you think he's one of the cultist who wanted to sacrifice you that just hid in the jail to keep safe from the monsters.

Near the exit there is a boss battle. If you befriended the guy then he will try to hold off the big boss long enough for you to escape to a safe place where you can attack the boss without getting hit. If you killed the guy in the jail cell you'll have to fight the big boss by yourself with no way to get to the safe area. It isn't an impossible fight but it is extremely difficult.

No matter what, the jail cell guy will die, giving his life so that you can finally get out.

Outside the cave system you will be captured by slavers who will transport you to a farm outside the walls of a city. At this point in the game you have to find a way to get your freedom. Your choices are:

A: get enough money to buy your freedom
B: Run away, sneak away, and maybe fight your way free. You'll be a fugitive until captured.
C: do enough favors for the "master" to earn your freedom
D: get good enough with magic that a wizard takes notice of you and buys you so you can be his apprentice
E: just stay a slave and do the randomly generated missions the "master" give you everyday. You could do this forever.

If it is possible, we could implement an employment system. Your character could get a job in a shop. You show up at the shop at a certain time and then you work. Time jumps forward and then your shift at work is over and you have some money. Work at the trade house for enough days and your mercantile goes up. Work at the wizard shop and you might learn a spell or one of your schools of magic will go up. For for the clothier and your personality will go up.

If you get good enough at magic maybe a wizard will write a recommendation for you to attend college. College will work just like employment. You show up for class and then your skills go up. Once they go up enough, you graduate. After you graduate you can work for someone as their wizard. Do that long enough and the college may invite you to become a teacher there. Teach long enough and you might become one of the head teachers. Once you are a head teacher for long enough the dean of the college will retire and there will be a "conclave" where all the head teachers vote on who is the next dean. If all the head teachers like you, they might vote for your. If they don't, then they'll vote for someone else.
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DestinedToDie
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by DestinedToDie »

That´s quite a story. We´ll need to find volunteers to put hundreds, if not 1000+ hours into making the cave, city, slave farm, mage shop, college and colleges (of other head teachers). I was thinking of starting from something much simpler, but I think that if the ES gets started properly, then we will eventually arrive there.
aesylwinn
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by aesylwinn »

It is midday. In the middle of the street lays the unfortunate protagonist. Ignoring the strong stench of alcohol, the protagonist slowly rises and examines the surrounding bystanders.

“Strange… Why am I surrounded by gnomes?”

The protagonist glances to the left, then quickly to the right.

“These market stalls are quite odd. I have never seen so many stuffed animals before in my entire life. Wait, I was going to f-”

Suddenly, the protagonist experiences a massive migraine. Everything in sight gains a blood red tinge, before fading to black.

“… and that is the answer to the meaning of life, and more importantly, the key to regaining your lost memories.”

As the protagonist regains consciousness, that phrase strangely echoes from behind. Surrounding the protagonist are the corpses of many gnomes. All is eerily silent.


Just a bit of fun on my part. I know there was already a poll, I just wanted to write something. Some may say that 200 words is too little, but for me its a struggle. :lol:
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Grilly
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by Grilly »

DestinedToDie wrote:That´s quite a story. We´ll need to find volunteers to put hundreds, if not 1000+ hours into making the cave, city, slave farm, mage shop, college and colleges (of other head teachers). I was thinking of starting from something much simpler, but I think that if the ES gets started properly, then we will eventually arrive there.
Sorry. I guess I wasn't thinking about scale or manpower. I was just thinking of a good story I'd want to play or write a book about. I'd be happy to volunteer to do as much as I can.

Simpler story: You are shipwrecked and have lost your memory. You are on an island with hostile animals. You have to make weapons, find food, build a shelter in order to survive. Once you have a shelter up an npc finds you and ask for your help. There is a group of pirates with a camp on the other side of the island. They have the npc's family member prisoner and will sell them into slavery if you don't help.

You can choose to help and fight the pirates.
You can try to join the pirates.
You can ignore the whole thing and just try to not be eaten by the various wolves, bears, lions etc. on the island.

If you defeat the pirates or join them that really is the end of the "plot" but there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to just keep playing and improving your shelter.
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psi29a
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Re: Story draft version 2

Post by psi29a »

Yar!
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