Scenarios!

[BeigeSand]

Have different flags for each aspect of character creation that enables or disables making changes. (main problem being the UI)

I have something similar to that for professions done. Basically, there’s a whitelist of professions you can pick from or a flag that enables access to all of them, it hides all non-listed professions unless you have the flag. Sort of like a soft-lock. It would be fairly easy to do something similar with traits and skills. The biggest problems would be stats (STR,INT,ETC…). Also making sure the player cannot choose an alternate profession or skills, and then go back and pick a scenario to cheat out of the restrictions is also a TODO.

Two Questions:
A) Should scenarios be assigned point values?
B) Is the thing I did with professions acceptable, and can be applied to the rest of chargen? (If not, what then?)

That’s basically what I need to know to move forward with this.

[vache]

I don’t think so. There’s a handful of basic systems:

Predefined character in predefined situation, in which case you wouldn’t be spending points anyway because your character would be defined for you
Undefined character in predefined situation, in which case you should let the player create their character as normal
Predefined character in undefined situation, as above, the character is defined already
Undefined character in undefined situation, this is basically the game as it exists now

[kevin.granade]

Yes and yes.
If someone wants to make a scenario that’s “free” just assign it 0 points, no reason to not allow scenarios that cost or give something if they DO leave chargen unlocked.
Having interlocks between professions, traits, etc sounds like a good idea to me, I’d like to see your implementation though, that has lots of potential to get messy.

[BeigeSand]

In order to flesh out some of the scenarios, I was thinking about adding mutations to certain scenario-specific professions. At first, I tried just having a flag on the prof and randomly mutating the player, but I quickly realized people would just remake the character until they got a desirable outcome. So instead, I propose this, using my system where certain professions won’t show up unless you are doing a specific scenario, what if certain mutations, that normally aren’t available at chargen, were made accessible if you were playing a certain scenario (say…escaped lab experiment), these would cost or earn points, and would allow people to have (mostly) balanced mutations to start.

[kevin.granade]

Yea that sounds reasonable.

[Zireael]

I like BeigeSand’s idea, too.

[Catfoodbob]

I have bean thinking about thins for a bit today, and this topic seems relevant enough.

But why not have a separate tab for starting skills and professions in the char creation screen, to where there is a seperate point pool from the attributes and stats.
Basically Prof, Skills, and some sort of starting disadvantage/advantage tab.

like you can get points for already having a bite wound/ infected arm in exchange for skill points or a certain profession.

a small list of advantages and disadvantages.
-Mined (you start in the middle of a minefield)
-Mining (you start in a mine
-House fire (you start in a house that is mostly on fire in random locations)

• House arrest (You start handcuffed with electronic handcuffs in your house and they go off when you leave until you return zapping you)
  -broken leg (start with broken leg)
  -Broken arm (start with broken arm)
  -Survivor basement (start in a house with a survivor basement inside the basement)
  but those are just examples, there are many possibilitys

[Zireael]

That’s some cool ideas.

[BeigeSand]

[quote=“Catfoodbob, post:27, topic:7039”]I have bean thinking about thins for a bit today, and this topic seems relevant enough.

But why not have a separate tab for starting skills and professions in the char creation screen, to where there is a seperate point pool from the attributes and stats.
Basically Prof, Skills, and some sort of starting disadvantage/advantage tab.

like you can get points for already having a bite wound/ infected arm in exchange for skill points or a certain profession.

a small list of advantages and disadvantages.
-ideas[/quote]

From if I’m understanding you right, that’s basically what I’m doing. You can compile the source from my branch too see if it’s close. As for your ideas, a lot of them are good, although the fire one just seems like too much of a crapshoot for the player on how bad it is. But I’ve basically just added a scenario tab that functions similarly to what you’ve suggested, if I understand you correctly.

[Snaaty]

So, I’m not sure if this is still being discussed, but I believe scenarios should provide a very specific challenge for the player, otherwise it really wouldn’t make that much sense.
Starting positions and professions may be already chosen manually, so the biggest feature of scenarios is to actually take away some decisions from the player to let him struggle with the new challenge.
So I believe keeping the manually changeable thing in scenarios as low as possible is a good idea.

[KA101]

Well, they’re live now, so I guess we’ll find out!