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I'd like to become a professional writer in the next decade.

7 (29.2%)

Less than videogames.

6 (25%)

I am a professional writer.

3 (12.5%)

More than my health.

2 (8.3%)

I'm not sure.

5 (20.8%)

More than videogames.

0 (0%)

Not at all.

1 (4.2%)

Total Members Voted: 24

Voting closed: April 23, 2012, 11:42:36 pm

[Fishbreath]

Suggestion #1: name the NPCs something beyond NPC1 and NPC2. It'll help us keep them straight. I think there's a place or two where you've switched them in your description, and that certainly doesn't help.

It's an interesting plot if I'm reading it right. Are you planning on showing when the NPCs switch, or leaving it to the players to figure out?

[lordnincompoop]

I'm planning on leaving the player figure it out, as it's supposed to confuse the player and stuff.

I just read the thing through though, and I didn't switch the names. I will name them something else in the mod though.

[Supermikhail]

I didn't catch - mod for which game? Also, are you sure that's the end choice you want to make? I don't feel like it's critical (or epic) enough. I didn't notice you mention the Boss before the end fight, so I don't think we're going to care enough for him, even though he murdered the (mad) NPC2, who asked for it anyway. And in general I'm not a fan of such forced endgame choices. If you're gonna have choices, give us a choice not to murder NPC2's family.

Edit: Further thoughts. It's a good idea to introduce the end boss as early as possible. From the general story point of view, and as a drive, a purpose to the player's actions.

[lordnincompoop]

It's Oblivion, if that helps. If you want to suggest another game for me to mod for, go ahead - I'm all ears.

And I'm not actually sure about the endgame thing, now that you mention it.

I do want lots of moral ambiguity, and for there not to be too much of a black and white thing, but I'm not totally sure how to go about that.

[Supermikhail]

I originally thought you were going to do this in ascii, although modding an ascii game with such an elaborate story felt suspicious. Hm... sitting here on Linux, sinfully craving for commercial games... Well, if we were to talk hypothetically, that is, if it had modding capabilities (which it might, but easily might not), I'd probably suggest the Temple of Elemental Evil. Hypothetically, what would you say to this suggestion?

You do moral ambiguity by making your charcters realistic - give them deep motivation, establish relationships, strengths and flaws. First you've got NPC1 who's got to get into a close relationship with the PC (well, unless you go with Oblivion, in which case NPC1 is most likely to come out annoying to most players)... You know, thinking about that, ToEE would be a poor choice because it doesn't support interaction between members of a party, gotta think about that... Anyway, then you've got your endgame boss, who's probably a driven, power-crazy character, a strong but cruel leader. And something made him this way. Was he, like Genghis Khan, oppressed in youth? Did he win the power in battle? Or was he a prince surrounded by palace intrigue and backstabbing courtiers? Why does NPC1 want to overthrow him? Is he oppressed now? Or is he a backstabbing courtier? Or a now prince? Why does he turn to the PC and deceive him? Is he a coward? If so, is he pitiable?

Well, maybe that's too many questions, but thinking in this direction can help difficult choices. Also, is there a (genetic) reason behind the two NPC's similar appearances?

[lordnincompoop]

Well, my original idea was for the endgame boss to have orchestrated the whole thing, and for NPC1 to be simply an agent in this (but with hidden motives).The Boss would be nonhuman, and would have lived for long enough to have grown immensely bored with the world, and found entertainment in toying with people. Now that I write it down, I think I need to change that too - it doesn't seem interesting enough. And I clearly need to give some depth to them all, and think of a backstory.

And no, the similarity isn't genetic - NPC2 would probably have done this several times with other people, and as such will be using disguises and modification and stuff, magical or otherwise. Making them related might be interesting, but I don't know how too work that into the story and where that would fit, and it would probably end up as clutter.

As for Temple of Elemental Evil, I don't know what to think of it as I haven't even tried it. I don't think it'd be too appropriate though, because of the way it's presented.

And yeah, Oblivion has a bit of a problem with cinematics and character presentation. Which is why I'm wondering whether it's the best choice. Perhaps DA:O, but I can't get my head around the SDK and DA2 is coming out in a bit.

[Supermikhail]

Oh. Oh. I didn't expect that I'd still get that weird puking feeling at a mere mention of DA:O with its "mature content", after all this time...

I hope somebody with more recent experience with current-gen games come by, because I lack at this department.

Are you set on the genre of the game? It occurred to me that it could benefit from being in the pure action genre, although I guess there are few pure action games that are in fantasy setting and support modding.

[lordnincompoop]

Oh. Oh. I didn't expect that I'd still get that weird puking feeling at a mere mention of DA:O with its "mature content", after all this time...

I hope somebody with more recent experience with current-gen games come by, because I lack at this department.

Are you set on the genre of the game? It occurred to me that it could benefit from being in the pure action genre, although I guess there are few pure action games that are in fantasy setting and support modding.

I don't know a lot of games in that genre, nor have I played many. And as you said, moddablility is scarce. I'm using current-gen games because I think I'll be able to reach a good audience that way, and tell the story better. I'm more used to those games, I guess.

As for the genre change, it's already rather action based. I dunno.

[Fishbreath]

I know that the Neverwinter Nights series has some great tools (I've played around with the scenario editor for 2, and have seen the things people made with 1). More than that, last time I checked there's still a huge community of module builders for both games.

[Supermikhail]

I wonder if anyone here would care for a writing prompt. I've got an idea that was inspired by writing challenges at another, screenwriting forum. Basically, they had a Halloween themed writing challenge, and I thought, maybe it's a good idea to have national holiday writing prompts (lots of associations and easier to remember deadline). And speaking of national. I suppose there's a fair bit of people who wouldn't want to participate because they're saving their brain tissue for NaNoWriMo. But hopefully, somebody isn't (for example, I've got lots of other interesting and gut-wrenching things to do). So, for all slackers, a prompt for this month-long national holiday.

A perfect introduction to your real/hypothetical novel. That is, not a blurb, but a few beginning paragraphs to hook us, show us the protagonist, give us a glimpse of the conflict and the setting... Well, perfect for the action genre, I guess.  You wouldn't want to open you cards up like that in a mystery novel. But you've got to hook the reader even if you're writing a mystery novel, right? So do it, and I'm gonna go learn myself some US holidays, because I assume that's the reasonable country to go with here... Aha, I guess on Thanksgiving we've got a turkey as a protagonist!

[Supermikhail]

Okay, that was not the best idea for a thread pick-up line. How about another try?

Anyone been there done that? I don't have any ideas to make into shorts, but if the site doesn't lie, it might be a goldmine, maybe even for this thread. They seem to have a fair selection of sets, but you can only have one or two characters and you have to sign up (well, I guess, naturally) to make something.

[lordnincompoop]

Meh.

What about this: Try to have the most silly/humorous story taken seriously. Cope with an exceedingly non-serious topic and make it so.

Or what about the other way around?

[Supermikhail]

What? I, frankly, am, or at least consider myself to be, bad with humorous stories. So the first step would be the most challenging. Although, no time for prompts for some days, and in any case I've still got a storyline crisis ongoing, so no creative writing until I figure that one out, just trying to keep the thread afloat.

[Supermikhail]

Another bump.

Besides theatre plays, another cool promotional idea might be an audiobook. And I find there's such thing as LibriVox, but nobody's going to make an audiobook out of a work of an unknown author. Besides the author him/herself. So I watched a couple of pretty dumb movies and letsplays over a past few days, and thought it would be a cool idea if I could instead listen to a good audiobook... After that I fed one of my few poems into an Internet text-to-speech engine and found that even spoken by a machine it sounds pretty nice... Then I thought for some reason, it would be even cooler if these audiobooks took up as much time to go through as a movie or an lp set by a decent person... that is, from half-an-hour up to two hours. Well, first I thought that just a book of such size would be cool, and counted the size as 28,000 words, if you read it at 200 words per minute (which is novella, I guess). For an audiobook this has to be cut down, and a quick Google gives me 150 wpm, which gives a story of 18,000 words. Which is 2.8 times less than what you need to do for NaNoWriMo, by the way...

In any case, and numerology aside, maybe my thoughts are better fit for this, shorter, genre. Also, I think this audiobook idea is rad... does anybody agree?

Edit: Oh... Yeah, I'll have to get some good sound-recording equipment, I guess, and improve my pronunciation, to realise the idea to its full potential.

[Talanic]

If you're that interested in making an audiobook, I could let you have the full text of Chains of Loss.