[almondblight]

Maybe his ramblings should contain some hints that would make half sense later on, and even serve as a warning.  Like "aha... it might be that thing C. was talking about".

I'd honestly just prefer a crazy guy.  I don't like when everything seems magically tied to the main quest.  People should have lives that are not connected.

[Scott]

Regarding the customized diary:  My intention with character backgrounds is to provide the player a past which affords certain extra options, but does not restrict the player in his decisions.  So while you might not expect the Dissipated Nobility to dedicate all his time to doing charity for the church, or for the Professor of Archaeology to become a gun-toting thug, you can still take that route if you want.

If I interpret journal entries according to my conception of the player's background, I'm interrupting the player's own internal narrative and opinions and putting my stamp on the experience.  So if you're playing the archaeologist and you decide to walk into an old woman's house and kill her, because you need some money, maybe you're thinking he's just a cold calculating soulless bastard.  What am I going to write about it in the journal, that you've turned into a cold bastard?  Or that you're horrified by what you've done?  I don't think that's a good way to go, and even within the confines of a quest it's going to be impossible to guess the player's motives.

[Morbus]

My take on that issue is:

Don't make player's real motives play a part in the game. Make it all about how NPCs perceive his actions and then let him choose how to react to that perception.

This is only theory, of course, but can work, depending on the setting, and on how seriously you take dialog mechanics.

[Ellorien]

Morbus is right. You are trying to accomodate the players who "roleplay" paladins stealing coppers from the donation box.

If someone plans to go this route, they should have a clear understanding that a better way is to play non-background.

I always liked when in BG2 NPC would leave the party if they disaprove of your actions. I understand the difference between PC and NPC but if my drifter would act out of character (then why bother with backgrounds at all?), the diary should reflect that.

[Wrath of Dagon]

There are no paladins in this game. And the professor might find out he's a lot more ruthless than he thought he was when push comes to shove. What Scott said makes a lot of sense to me, his own interpretation of the player actions would mess up roleplaying. May be even the serial killer feels remorse at times, who knows?

[Scott]

Don't make player's real motives play a part in the game. Make it all about how NPCs perceive his actions and then let him choose how to react to that perception.

I don't have any problem with this, it makes sense.  In the real world everyone's motives are inferred by their actions, since we're not telepaths after all.  I don't see what it has to do with the customized journal entries though.

The background is not the player character.  It is a story which offers a starting point with as many future possibilities as the game will allow.  It is not a template which the player is supposed to follow.  Even the starting quest(s) are optional.

[Ellorien]

Don't make player's real motives play a part in the game. Make it all about how NPCs perceive his actions and then let him choose how to react to that perception.

I don't have any problem with this, it makes sense.  In the real world everyone's motives are inferred by their actions, since we're not telepaths after all.  I don't see what it has to do with the customized journal entries though.

The background is not the player character.  It is a story which offers a starting point with as many future possibilities as the game will allow.  It is not a template which the player is supposed to follow.  Even the starting quest(s) are optional.

Well, let's imagine some situation and all possible actions and then decide. If you give one-two in-game examples, that will be helpful.
Or we can concentrate on the Case of the Escaped Lunatic if you wish.

As it is currently envisioned:
You can fail to get any reward or xp, but the lunatic won't ever escape.
You could end up killing him, but since he's crazy you wouldn't be charged.  The consequences of killing him might be a lowered reaction from people sympathetic to the mentally ill.  You also might run into trouble if you are later committed to the asylum yourself.
There won't be dialogue skill checks.  You have to make the right choices in dialogue to get him to come along, or overpower him physically.

That calls for several different journal entries, right? Will you show how you are going to record each of the outcomes?

[Dicksmoker]

Allright, I saw this thread while visiting from the Codex and simply had to register. Basically, I agree with Edward and the others who say that it's a bad idea. This is because, as others have said, it conflicts with the backgrounds. In a more standard game with no backgrounds, it would be fine. In AOD, the opening vignettes are also fine because in that game the background only determines your opening reputations with various factions, and doesn't, as is the case with Cyclopean, also determine a large part of your skills, stats, motives, and personality. So, since these backgrounds are so detailed and specific, I can't see a plausible way that they could all see it in their best interests to go after an escaped lunatic, or why the police would be unwilling or unable to do it themselves. Also, giving a player a list of very detailed and colorful backgrounds to choose from and then starting the game off with a quest that has nothing to do with any of them is not a good idea, in my opinion. So, in other words, give me a standard opening quest, or backgrounds, but NOT both.

You said you were looking for a way to introduce players into the world and let them get known by some people at the beginning of the game. As far as I can tell, you already have that mechanic with the backgrounds. Simply make an opening quest for each background. (which I assumed is happening anyway?) Put that quest on rails (i.e. don't make available any other quests until it's finished) and give multiple solutions for it. And make it so that by the end of the quest the player will have done something to get the attention of SOMEONE or some group of people, but it will vary based on the background and possibly on how the quest was solved. This is a more realistic way of "gaining reputation" for each background, while still staying true to said background. I mean, is it really necessary for every character to get his name in the paper? A serial killer would certainly want to keep a low profile.

So that's my solution. You could make the escaped lunatic quest the starting quest for the None background. Or better, think of something else for that background, and make the escaped lunatic just be a standard side quest for everyone. But don't have it so extreme that everyone would be locking their doors.

Also, have you considered just dropping the None background entirely? Since your backgrounds are so fleshed out and varied I wouldn't mind that, and I don't think many other people would either.

[Scott]

That's a well thought out reply. 

Each background does have an opening quest, but none of them are extremely urgent.  Also, not all of them take place in Arkham or can be completed all at once.  I'm against having quests on rails, period, so the last thing I'm going to do is force the player to go through the background-specific quest(s) right away.  The Escaped Lunatic is a one-time exception for the reasons already stated, but it needn't be on rails, it might just want some tweaking.

If you're in a bank and it's robbed, you have to see the scene through, but it wouldn't feel like it's on rails and it would be short enough not to be tedious.  Likewise, if E.L. shows up and assaults you, you have to do something about it.  Also, it has to be public and get the attention of a lot of people in Arkham (thus the newspaper).  That's the kind of opening I want.  The serial killer presumably does not want his name in the paper, but tough.  That will be a difficult background choice for a number or reasons.

So I agree that in its present incarnation it's less than ideal, but if done right I think it would be a fun starter. If anyone can suggest a different sort of low-stakes start to the game that would achieve the same results and fit with the theme and setting, I'm listening.

I'm keeping the None background because there's no reason not to.  It might make for a less refined experience, but gives the player complete freedom from the start, which I'm sure will appeal to a lot people.

Thanks for posting, hope you'll keep coming around.

[Dicksmoker]

Each background does have an opening quest, but none of them are extremely urgent.  Also, not all of them take place in Arkham or can be completed all at once.  I'm against having quests on rails, period, so the last thing I'm going to do is force the player to go through the background-specific quest(s) right away.  The Escaped Lunatic is a one-time exception for the reasons already stated, but it needn't be on rails, it might just want some tweaking.

Okay, it looks like I had some misconceptions about the backgrounds. It seems I may have thought that they were more important than they actually are. The impression I got was that the goals and motives specific to each background would continue throughout the entire game, at least in some fashion (perhaps the completion of the starting goal would spawn another, for example). So that while each background character would get funnelled into the main quest fairly soon, he would also be following a secondary goal(s) relating to his background. But from reading your post it appears that the backgrounds are there just to get the players started on the main quest, and are largely irrelevant afterwards (with the exception of specific traits, of course). If such is the case then the Escaped Lunatic quest makes more sense, though I would prefer the former option. So which one is it?

Also, is Cyclopean an "open-world" game, or is it more linear?

If you're in a bank and it's robbed, you have to see the scene through, but it wouldn't feel like it's on rails and it would be short enough not to be tedious.  Likewise, if E.L. shows up and assaults you, you have to do something about it.

But the Escaped Lunatic is a lot less pressing. A more appropriate analogy would be if he actually comes to you.

Also, it has to be public and get the attention of a lot of people in Arkham (thus the newspaper).  That's the kind of opening I want.

Why is it so imperative that the player gets his name in the paper? Is it important for the main quest?

Thanks for posting, hope you'll keep coming around.

Probably, at least for Cyclopean. AOD gets a lot of discussion at the Codex, though, so I'm not sure about that one.

In any case, thanks for your consideration.

[almondblight]

So I agree that in its present incarnation it's less than ideal, but if done right I think it would be a fun starter. If anyone can suggest a different sort of low-stakes start to the game that would achieve the same results and fit with the theme and setting, I'm listening.

You stumble across a house on fire/person being attacked?  If you don't do anything, you can at least be a witness, which gets your name in the paper.  Or you can choose to intervene.

[renkin]

Will I be able to kill the lunatic in a dark alley and then report that I found his body? Thinking of the serial killer background.

[galsiah]

[bear in mind I have read very little about Cyclopean outside this thread - so apologies if I'm basing anything on wrong-headed notions]

A few thoughts:
I agree with the misgivings others have on PC (rather than player) motivation. If the lunatic is no threat to him, just waiting for someone else to deal with the problem really ought to be possible. Since that's no good in game-mechanical terms, I think the scenario needs adapting.

Is it necessary for the escaped lunatic to be well known to the townspeople/authorities in Arkham? If not, one obvious way to pull the PC into the mess would be to have townspeople/authorities mistake the PC for the lunatic (even if the lunatic is more-or-less known, they could 'happen' to look similar).

If no-one outside the asylum had seen the lunatic for a long time, it's a pretty natural thing for people to see: "Lunatic on the loose" and "Strange new guy in town no-one remembers seeing before", put the two together, and have the PC arrested/accosted/hunted-down.... Of course you could have a variety of different situations, depending how the PC handles things, who he meets and his appearance/traits..., but the basic PC-as-focus-of-investigation/suspicion premise could obtain regardless.

If you've no appetite for a thrilling-escape-from-jail-before-saving-the-day possibility, you could have the authorities capture the lunatic themselves after the PC has been detained (if he happens to get detained). Then you might have the PC get his name in the paper as a suspected lunatic and/or as a fine-upstanding-citizen wrongfully accused etc. etc.
[[EDIT: here the 'quest' could be the conversations/interviews/interrogations with the authorities, with a few newspaper outcomes from "Upstanding citizen helps provide critical information in manhunt" to "Alleged madman and pet-molester released: insufficient evidence". This way the quest focuses on the PC, rather than being entirely about a madman the PC never met (yet)]]

So it makes more sense that the PC is forced to become involved, and allows a few different name-in-the-paper scenarios, depending on how it's handled.



[warning - potentially unworkable stuff ahead]

On the journal customization issue:
I agree that it doesn't make much sense for things to depend specifically on background, but I think it'd be interesting to customize as much as possible according to skills, attributes, traits, health, actions(naturally), and sanity level. You don't want to prejudge the PC's motives, but you have data on his knowledge/skills etc., so using them is entirely in order. You could certainly include inserts for observations relying on skill X, or trait Y.

Sanity-wise, you could again use some relatively 'mad' inserts - perhaps with tangential, or entirely unrelated, significance. You might also experiment with screwing up the general run of the writing for the truly insane. That might well turn out to be a bad/unworkable idea, but I think it deserves an attempt: having a supposedly utterly mad PC write neat, coherent journal entries, seems silly [I presume you want an actual 'journal' rather than an abstracted quest-log with no connection to the game-world??].

E.g. a more-or-less insane PC might:
Insert strange tangential statements which have some game-world / quest significance, but not to the matter at hand.
Miss out important options/conclusions/observations, only to have them show up in the middle of a later, unrelated entry.
Substitute one word for another without much significance (looks a bit mad, acts as a red-herring, potentially poetic)
Substitute one word for another with some underlying significance (e.g. an NPC's name for some dangerous creature; a town's name for a mortuary...).
Emphasize/repeat/re-order words with little clear reason.
Rhyme without reason.
Annotate lines as if they're part of a play script.
Repeat/group/phrase lines as if they're part of a song.
...


Naturally that all scores pretty high on the daft/unworkable meter, but I still think it's worth a little experimentation. Of course the aim would be to automate as much as possible, rather than giving yourself huge amounts of writing to do for each case [keeping a few dictionaries of potential substitutions; marking points where certain insert-types are possible; categorizing inserts; keeping a dictionary of words which shouldn't be substituted/moved... (e.g. 'the', 'to', 'and'...) etc. etc.]. I suppose you'd be against mechanized inserts/exchanges/conversions in general, but I'd say that an insane character ought not to be writing flowing prose - at least not prose that flows in any conventional way. Messing around with things in strange ways would be pretty reasonable.

I think one of the main things to aim for if you did try this sort of approach would be a measure of consistency to the style of madness - the layout/structures used, the frequency of alterations etc. Unless the sanity of the PC changes radically, the player ought to be able to get into his character's 'style' of madness.


Of course almost all of this could apply to dialogues too, but that's trickier - since you'd have to cope with NPC reactions to procedural PC weirdness. I think it's somewhat reasonable to have madness impact dialogues less than the journal anyway - in dialogue, most PCs would be making an effort not to look mad, and to communicate effectively; in a journal, there's no-one to object to any insane scrawl.


Anyway, the PC-as-presumed-lunatic is a reasonable thought, I think, even if the journal stuff is daft.

[Dicksmoker]

[bear in mind I have read very little about Cyclopean outside this thread - so apologies if I'm basing anything on wrong-headed notions]

A few thoughts:
I agree with the misgivings others have on PC (rather than player) motivation. If the lunatic is no threat to him, just waiting for someone else to deal with the problem really ought to be possible. Since that's no good in game-mechanical terms, I think the scenario needs adapting.

Is it necessary for the escaped lunatic to be well known to the townspeople/authorities in Arkham? If not, one obvious way to pull the PC into the mess would be to have townspeople/authorities mistake the PC for the lunatic (even if the lunatic is more-or-less known, they could 'happen' to look similar).

If no-one outside the asylum had seen the lunatic for a long time, it's a pretty natural thing for people to see: "Lunatic on the loose" and "Strange new guy in town no-one remembers seeing before", put the two together, and have the PC arrested/accosted/hunted-down.... Of course you could have a variety of different situations, depending how the PC handles things, who he meets and his appearance/traits..., but the basic PC-as-focus-of-investigation/suspicion premise could obtain regardless.

If you've no appetite for a thrilling-escape-from-jail-before-saving-the-day possibility, you could have the authorities capture the lunatic themselves after the PC has been detained (if he happens to get detained). Then you might have the PC get his name in the paper as a suspected lunatic and/or as a fine-upstanding-citizen wrongfully accused etc. etc.
[[EDIT: here the 'quest' could be the conversations/interviews/interrogations with the authorities, with a few newspaper outcomes from "Upstanding citizen helps provide critical information in manhunt" to "Alleged madman and pet-molester released: insufficient evidence". This way the quest focuses on the PC, rather than being entirely about a madman the PC never met (yet)]]

So it makes more sense that the PC is forced to become involved, and allows a few different name-in-the-paper scenarios, depending on how it's handled.

I don't think that suggestion will work, for one very simple reason. Some of the background characters couldn't really be mistaken for the lunatic. The noble will likely be dressed well and may have some servants with him. The professor may be travelling with colleagues, and people may know him. The big game hunter is horribly scarred. Etc etc...

Scott, I think I have a simple and elegant solution for the escaped lunatic. Simply have him be wherever the player starts. If you start in the boarding house, have him hiding in your room. If you inherit the estate, then put him on the premises. If you're the drifter and sleeping outside, then put him under the pile of trash that you've made for a bed. You get the idea. This will force the player to deal with the lunatic in a way that makes sense for every background. And the player will get his name in the paper, something you seem to be dead set on.

[galsiah]

Some of the background characters couldn't really be mistaken for the lunatic.

Maybe so, but they needn't be convicted, or even mistaken by everyone - just brought under enough suspicion by enough people (perhaps one) to get questioned/investigated. The PC's reaction to that could determine where it goes from there.

The noble will likely be dressed well and may have some servants with him.

This is also a man with a drug habit, a nervous disposition, who's new in town, and who claims he owns some dilapidated manor out in the woods. Perhaps the clothes he wears are his own - perhaps he's an escaped lunatic who mugged the real nobleman.

Clearly there'd need to be the possibility of talking your way out of things, but there'd be quite a bit to find suspicious about this 'nobleman'. If you were travelling with servants (paid with what?) you'd be less suspicious, so why not have that part of the reason for suspicion?: don't give the PC servants (since he's short on cash), and have authorities who question him consider it suspicious that a supposed nobleman and owner of a manor would be travelling with no servants.

The big game hunter is horribly scarred.

This seems like a good reason for some irrational prejudice. Escaped lunatic on the loose! Horribly scarred man sighted in the town!! 2+2=5. There's only much problem with this if there's a good description of the lunatic that all authorities are aware of.

The professor may be travelling with colleagues

And he may not - so why not say not, since it's more useful? Where's the downside?

...and people may know him.

Certainly - but not everyone will. The people who do might well be busy elsewhere for a while at least. A "But I was invited by [NPC_name]" explanation is sure to be accepted eventually, but it's not necessarily going to prevent your being detained in the first place - if there are any suspicious circumstances, and the NPC(s) in question can't immediately be reached.

Quite possibly it can't make sense anyway - I'm not really sure of the setting/situation. However, the particulars of the starting circumstances can be arranged as far as possible so that it does fit. Again, all that's necessary is enough suspicion/confusion/prejudice/misinformation for an accusation to get made. It might be sorted out in 24 hours, with everyone wondering how such an idea could ever have been entertained..., but that's good - the aim is to have the PC suspected/detained, but to have it be inevitable that everything gets cleared up pretty quickly.