Scenarios!

[BeigeSand]

A little whispering in my ear tells me it may not be far off! So I made this topic so you guys can discuss
A) What you believe entails a scenario
B) Possible Scenarios

Have at it (^_^/)

[vache]

Two things can make up scenarios, a starting condition and a victory condition.

You start in a cloning tank at the bottom of a lab, with a variety of interesting mutations. You must escape. Impossible right now since you can’t open a lab from the inside.

“The Road” - You and a friendly NPC start holed up in an LMOE shelter with a meager amount of supplies that are dwindling fast. Your goal is to escape bring the NPC safely to a refugee center nearby. Whatever catastrophe has brought the hordes of the living dead upon the world has also blotted out the sky, greatly reducing vision radius. Groups of hostile NPCs fight over the remaining supplies and won’t hesitate to engage you when they can see you. Probably doable now, but you would have to have some amount of control over the overmap layout and preventing the player from leaving the overmap.

Extraction Team - Sort of the opposite of the cloning tank. You and a team of well equipped NPCs are exploring a lab facility to recover a team of scientists who have barricaded themselves in the bottom of a lab. Along the way you have to deal with the lab’s security grid gone haywire (bots and turrets), zombies, and cloning vats shattering to reveal the mutated horrors growing inside.

[BeigeSand]

I’m going to take a wild guess and say starting condition’s are likely the thing I’m going for here.

[vache]

You could still include a victory condition in the description of the scenario, but that just puts it on the player to keep track of it.

[KA101]

[quote=“vache, post:2, topic:7039”]Two things can make up scenarios, a starting condition and a victory condition.

You start in a cloning tank at the bottom of a lab, with a variety of interesting mutations. You must escape. Impossible right now since you can’t open a lab from the inside.

“The Road” - You and a friendly NPC start holed up in an LMOE shelter with a meager amount of supplies that are dwindling fast. Your goal is to escape bring the NPC safely to a refugee center nearby. Whatever catastrophe has brought the hordes of the living dead upon the world has also blotted out the sky, greatly reducing vision radius. Groups of hostile NPCs fight over the remaining supplies and won’t hesitate to engage you when they can see you. Probably doable now, but you would have to have some amount of control over the overmap layout and preventing the player from leaving the overmap.[/quote]

Ways to escape a lab from inside? Sonic Resonator/J-Hammer, explosives, hacksaw through sewer-bars (granted, not very viable ATM, but used to be).

Scenario could have the door opened, too. Or we could install another reader on the inside. Shouldn’t be a dealbreaker.

[kevin.granade]

A) One very productive way to go with scenarios is to have them simply bundle together a bunch of other things about character creation.
Certain professions, traits, and starting locations might be locked to a particular scenario, yielding fun things like a character who starts with a lot of resources, but spawns in a dangerous location. We might even shift some bits of professions over to scenarios. Another fun thing to seed scenarios with is quests, you can be trying to find your family, or an item, or even simply have your house marked on the map.
B) Various last stand type situations, cop trying to defend a barricade, same with soldier, test subject starting deep in a vault, the classic hospital patient, prisoner, LMOE (in shelter), NPC group/faction sending you out scavenging.

[Rivet]

Can we have a scenario where we start in a library, surrounded by more books that we could ever read in one lifetime, but our glasses are broken?

That’s not fair! That’s not fair at all! There was time now!

[KA101]

[quote=“Rivet, post:7, topic:7039”]Can we have a scenario where we start in a library, surrounded by more books that we could ever read in one lifetime, but our glasses are broken?

That’s not fair! That’s not fair at all! There was time now![/quote]

And more to the point…you can find another pair and make your time. Eat it, Rod!

[vultures]

Scenarios? I think they should be very different, profoundly interesting and more horror than you could ever imagine the Cataclysm nightmare was.
Here are my overall thoughts:
A prologue in a form that resembles a biography, a preset character with locked traits and a limited choice of professions, thus skill points also; a challenging and mostly preset (few random parameters) surroundings, NPCs and items follow; a custom set of options for the WorldGen, possibly modified with a few or several specific, scenario-based map objects.
A short example: You wake up 30ft above ground level, on a Water tower structure in the nearest vicinity of a county jail. Your leg is broken and your chest is swollen with pain, wrapped in bloody rags. You’re wielding a 4/10 Codeine pack and you have a 3/21 bottle of Scotch in your messenger bag, which is probably why you have such a headache. A sharpened rebar is strapped on you with a long, leather belt. Some ragged pants, boxer shorts and worn-out boots are all you own now. When looking down below you see a violent fire raging, a few wooden structures caught in flames and another thing, which used to be a vehicle. Dozens upon dozens upon dozens of zombies are slowly swaying through the countryside.
If you inspect your badly wounded leg and thus your boot, you find one .38 bullet stuffed inside.
It’s 6 PM and there’s little sunlight, and the jail siren is rather loudly announcing the Visiting Hour end, a Dark Day Ahead.

[RipRoarinBoogerPenis]

This is a great idea, I really hope this gets implemented

[kevin.granade]

[quote=“KA101, post:8, topic:7039”][quote=“Rivet, post:7, topic:7039”]Can we have a scenario where we start in a library, surrounded by more books that we could ever read in one lifetime, but our glasses are broken?

That’s not fair! That’s not fair at all! There was time now![/quote]

And more to the point…you can find another pair and make your time. Eat it, Rod![/quote]
Trait: Cursed by Rod Sirling
You have a bla% chance each turn of breaking any eye wear in your possession.

[Valpo]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:11, topic:7039”]Trait: Cursed by Rod Sirling
You have a bla% chance each turn of breaking any eye wear in your possession.[/quote]

Combine with near and/or far sighted for amximum fun!

[BeigeSand]

Scenarios now allow you to choose between a list of professions for any given scenario, which brings me to my next question for the devs and fanbase. As it stands right now, you can choose traits and increase stats, and professions still cost points for a given scenario. So, my questions is, should I allow points to be assigned into stats and the such? Or should I make scenarios a neat little package that locks you in with set stats/traits/skills/etc outside of the normal point system?

[vache]

I’d say it might be worth it to leave the option open to do both. One person may want a specific character thrown into a situation, and another may just want the situation.

[BeigeSand]

I’d say it might be worth it to leave the option open to do both. One person may want a specific character thrown into a situation, and another may just want the situation.

It’s kind of one or the other, either I make stuff within the scenario cost points or I don’t.

[KA101]

[quote=“vache, post:14, topic:7039”]I’d say it might be worth it to leave the option open to do both. One person may want a specific character thrown into a situation, and another may just want the situation.

It’s kind of one or the other, either I make stuff within the scenario cost points or I don’t.[/quote]

Can you charge/pay points for the scenario? If so, starting in a more/less difficult space and time (and condition!) can compensate for the cost of a character capable of surviving in it.

Locking people into a particular setup tends not to work well. At most, I’d lock professions, so in order to have the “Swamped Police Station” you’d have to be a Cop or a Bionic Cop. (But what about a civilian who missed an evac and fled to the PD? How about a Military Recruit who got ordered to help the PD hold out? and so on…)

So when in doubt, don’t lock it.

[BeigeSand]

[quote=“BeigeSand, post:15, topic:7039”][quote=“vache, post:14, topic:7039”]I’d say it might be worth it to leave the option open to do both. One person may want a specific character thrown into a situation, and another may just want the situation.

It’s kind of one or the other, either I make stuff within the scenario cost points or I don’t.[/quote]

Can you charge/pay points for the scenario? If so, starting in a more/less difficult space and time (and condition!) can compensate for the cost of a character capable of surviving in it.

Locking people into a particular setup tends not to work well. At most, I’d lock professions, so in order to have the “Swamped Police Station” you’d have to be a Cop or a Bionic Cop. (But what about a civilian who missed an evac and fled to the PD? How about a Military Recruit who got ordered to help the PD hold out? and so on…)

So when in doubt, don’t lock it.[/quote]

An earlier discussion didn’t want points being assigned to starting locations, and since that (in my mind) is almost the main point, I’m not sure how well that would work considering that all the gear in the world won’t save you if you spawn surrounded by anthills filled with mutant bee-ant creatures. And they wouldn’t be completely locked, 90% of the scenario at this point is JSON editable, so it’s about as locked as professions are. I do see your point about locking them though, so for the time being, no locky.

[kevin.granade]

I’d say either lock them or have a scenario flag that toggles locking.
Scenarios where you can freely change the parameters are kind of pointless, there are definitely some scenarios where you would want it locked down because you’re balancing something you can’t get otherwise against specific disadvantages, making things too flexible undermines that.

[KA101]

Uh, Kevin, I thought this was locking chargen, rather than starting location/condition. Scenarios as I understand them are “defined spawn points, spawn times, and spawn condition”. Forex, the hypothetical “Swamped PD” would be at a PD, Spring, Tired and Hungry/Thirsty, possibly with random minor injuries. Surrounded Start. Different scenario, may need a better name: “Seiged PD” has been using it as a base all Spring, but finally attracted attention. Summer but otherwise the same.

OK, yeah, starting locations, by themselves, should not be worth points. I made that argument a while ago (oops, 4 points for a great base location, turns out to be next to a swamp and fungal bloom) and continue to stand by it.

What I’m thinking of here is rolling in starting season and condition–by comparison, one point for a good spawn point and paying char points for skills/traits from the same pool might not be so bad.

Season: if it’s not Spring, stuff will have spoiled, critters will have zombified, forage will be different, temps likewise, etc. Summer might be easier, but autumn and winter would be a Pain.
Condition: IIRC you’ve been able to get a char starting with an Infected arm, forex. That’s worth 3-4 points right there (strong debuff, needs specific antidote, fatal if not cured quickly; worse than meth addiction!) if you don’t start with antibiotics.

[kevin.granade]

I am talking about locking down chargen if the scenario says to. I can think of several applications where locking down everything about the character is essential for the scenario.
Challenge games where you have a specific everything and see how well you can do.
Scenarios where good gear and other starting resources is balanced against poor stats or skills.

Ways to make that happen, in order of increasing difficulty:
Don’t allow adjusting anything about scenarios.
Have a flag that disables changing anything about a character once the scenario is selected (my recommendation)
Have different flags for each aspect of character creation that enables or disables making changes. (main problem being the UI)