Class restricted Quest mini-games

[Baron]

The following is an idea I'm kicking around for a mod project. Thought I better post something constructive instead of just the melee in /gd/

Class restricted Quest mini-games

I love RPGs with replayability. While I'm including a great deal of D&D Alignment branching of dialogue this only effects the story and character. Class specific options can provide a completely different gamestyle. The game uses the 4 classic Classes, and my goal is that the gameplay is changed so that...
- The Warrior PC will be impulsive, reckless, and will problem solve primarily with a cudgel. A Man/Woman/or Other of Action.
- The Thief's gamestyle will be cautious, investigative, devious. Theft and spying can destroy an enemy NPC's ambitions just as easily as killing them off.
- The Priest will be diplomatic, machiavellian, incense mobs and apply political pressure to existing factions.
- The Mage will be unorthodox, discovering creative solutions via books or divinations. And then Meteor Swarm someone's pate.

All Class mini-game/Quests would occasionally have solutions that could only be achieved by committing deeds that fall within a particular Alignment. This system benefits Neutrals who may be tempted to bend their moral code to get a desired outcome, and Evil PCs who obviously have no dilemma breaking any legal or social mores, even being nice to someone if it leads to what they want. The idea is one of many that penalises Good PCs who require discipline and sacrifice to follow this path, and leading the majority of players to Neutrality by default, instead of games where Players remain Good merely by refraining from asking for more reward. Law and Chaos alignments are also affected, with NPC and factional repercussions for deviating from them.

As a solo modder I'm unlikely to develop fullly programmed mini-games, so I've been looking at easy in-game solutions using dialogue or item use. Note, these would primarily be for key points in the story for more memorable scenes (due to the workload of creating them all.) For the rest of the game all Classes are free to kick, bludgeon and fireball their way through the game and its inhabitants.

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1) Warriors - mini-games not really applicable; they're largely catered for in the hacking up people mini-game with the occasional boss monster. The Warrior has additional combat as a result of confrontational dialogue and kicking in people's front doors and thereby summoning guards.
- May include a 'Lead an army' option (or merely joining it if low Charisma). Recruitment would involve Diplomacy, or the standard 'I challenge thee to duel, with morning stars-' The war resolved via a succession of combat maps, interspersed with NPCs with whom to give or receive orders and battle updates. The rule here would be to reward Warriors who chose non-combat stats.

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2) Thieves
- A system where Thieves find dialogue activated puzzle doors reminiscent of Monkey Island sword training. They would need to learn solutions based on clues from various NPC Master Thieves - a true thief apprenticeship. The PC requires specific inventory tools and a knowledge of how to open the doors. The amount of dialogue options would be based on the PC's Intelligence (low Intelligence PCs would have to choose between more), and Wisdom would insert additional lines - Low Wisdom would include seemingly safe (but unwise) suggestions such as those that made noise or jammed the door. High Wisdom would add lines such as listening, or clues that convinced the Thief to just leave the door alone. A wrong selection must result in critical penalties, such as guards, poison, or potentially lethal damage to ensure tension and reward deduction.

"It's a heavy iron bound door with an open latch portal. The heavy stone gargoyle above the doorway seems to stare at you."
[Reach through the slot and feel for a bolt]
[Pull the gargoyle's horns]
[Peer through the portal and shout "Helloooo?!"]

By randomly associating the correct answer to a thief tool you can avoid the Player from knowing the answer from a previous playthrough. Star Trekian pseudo-babble solutions avoid logical guessing (they should learn from masters, but risking luck is certainly okay). ie.

[Use the circular woodsman's saw]
[Apply chicken grease into the keyhole]

- These doorways provide the Thief to a variety of quest solutions; wealth, sleeping Bosses in need of garroting, blackmail information, caches of weapons. The goal is to make the Thief feel like a Thief, and not as a support Fighter.
- Other activities would involve Scouting, although no mini-game devised for that yet.

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3) Priests
- Priests begin despised, the kind you turn away from your door with blasphemy. Much like on Earth they follow a Disease god. They can become very powerful through their political power, and achieve this by-
a) Converting heathen communities: Exploring and talking with key community NPCs. Success is Intelligence based checks (say No to dump stats!) and choosing arguments appropriate to the NPCs. Wisdom will again provide options that could anger or please the NPC. Still largely to be determined, but essentially the PC should befriend the community, understand the local customs, and then exploit their fears. Some villages could be persuaded of the power of the Priest's god. Others may require to have their menfolk slain.
b) Benefactors: or, getting your tentacles into a wealthy patron. As above, but this provides financial power to the Priest's cause.

The goal of Priests is to exercise their political power in the capital city, and to stave off assassination.
- As mentioned in another thread [link?], the use of political influence should be judicious. The PC will build up favour or leverage, and can only use so much. Political leverage is the mini-game.
- Priests can also Disease enemy armies that threaten their land. This involves devout prayer and, obviously, dropping a dead goat into the enemy's water bore.

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4) Mages
- The goal is to research rituals and cast mighty spells, and would be the most creative path designed for the intelligent problem solving player who didn't mind the additional reading and experimentation. Effects could involve summoning demons for answers, elementals for destruction, teleporting across deserts, turning rival Boss NPCs into swine and enchanting their armies with a Ravenous Hunger.
- Evil magic would be abundant with a wealth of macabre, power crazed villainy.
- Good magical outcomes would be quite limited to quite subtle effects requiring careful application, akin to triggering a line of Dominos.

These quests would probably require considerable scripting of spell effects and annoying cutscene construction, plus the time taken to create the puzzles of the spell rituals themselves (spell incantations, cauldron ingredients, etc).

Have you got any ideas for enjoyable mini-games that would bring PC Classes to life and significantly alter the gamestyle... with a minimal amount of programming work?

 

[JarlFrank]

Sounds good, but I wouldn't call them "minigames".

 

[Baron]

Call them alpacas for all I care.

 

[Phelot]

I like your ideas especially about quest solutions being restricted to classes. Though this effectively gives the player 4 games to play along with a lot of replayability for each class. Pretty lofty goal.

But it also sounds like players are still railroaded into a specific path depending on what class they choose. Which is OK in my opinion. So, the priest would be say a follower of Moander and he has to be so? He can't suddenly be good?

 

[Baron]

Actually, it's an insane amount of work. But it's a hobby, and most of it is writing conversations of which I'm pretty productive.

Each of these alpacas, whilst only used in key story points, would not just have 4 solutions as that would mean one each. And, as you say, the PC is railroaded. So yeah, you would have a minimum of 3 per class.

The Thief's doors are not a problem, you just invent 10 door descriptions, multiple solution paths, and some item keys. As it's largely done through dialogue, it won't take long. This is probably the closest to the concept of a "mini-game" of the lot, but I'd like to improve all the ideas so they did feel like puzzles. I'll try to find the link for someone else's Persuasion mini-game, it was a good idea whereby the Player effectively 'spent' points of accumulated favour. Whether to hoard a favour, or spend it.

You could solve a Quest using the mini-game or pursue conventional Quest methods; kill a monster, bribe, rescue a child. I want Players to feel they have options, so you have the generic options plus hopefully a couple of Class specific solutions. Some Thieves are grabby. Others are stabby.

The goal is to completely alter the gamestyle of the playthrough. Warriors embracing more challenging combat with reduced dialogue and understanding of events. Priests focusing on NPC interaction. Mages procuring scrolls, scouring books, and gathering macabre components. And Thieves, stealthily sniffing and poking about for opportunity. All doing the same quests... but different paths, and different playstyles.

Writing not finished but already has very different information revealed, ie. dumb fighters don't understand what is happening, and they don't care. Just like the Codex, those with low Intelligence or Wisdom really tend to embrace it in the dialogue options. Intelligent PCs will understand most through their perception and analysis, and Wise PCs make the best decisions based on their analysis. Ideally, the Classes will understand parts of the story from their own perspective (Priests see the political angle, Rogues the money, etc.) although only key points to reduce the workload.

But I'm more interested in creating or improving the Class mini-games for Thieves (Skullduggery), Priests (Manipulation), and Mage (Uses and Abuses of Power). Let me know any ideas to kick around.

Regarding the Priests, any Alignment is okay; same for any class. The setting has monotheism, and like the real world Priests are free to be Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil. It was important to me that they all followed the same god because the Manual of the Planes got that wrong.

 

[Baron]

Thief alpacas - Doors

In the mod Stats are not numbered, the PC chooses Low, Med, or High (you can only take a High if you choose a Low.) And I've dispensed with Constitution leaving STR, DEX, INT, WIS, CHA... streamlining, bitches. I anticipate Players specialising in the other Stats but I can't provide adequate CON advantages in dialogue with any frequency to justify it, apart from the obligatory drinking game so it is merged with STR.

First step is to create a selection of door descriptions to be triggered as dialogue when the PC attempts to open the door. Note, non Thieves still get the description but will have no way to open it given the doors will be too strong to break down and noticeably unresponsive to the Priest's attempts to proselytise.

["It's a heavy iron bound door with an open latch portal. The heavy stone gargoyle above the doorway seems to stare at you."]
["A solid stone door set into the wall, it's outline barely identifiable in the gloom. One brick is loose."]
[etc etc]

The solutions to opening these are randomised at the start of each playthrough to reset the challenge and stop metagaming. Using nonsense items as solutions ("Use the star chisel") allows solutions to fit most door descriptions. I don't care to explain how the mechanics work, just that this particular door needs a goddamned star chisel, k?

However, I'd like some thought put into it therefore deduction will play a part by eliminating clearly wrong answers that are inserted (or removed) by a PC's low WIS stat. The goal being a multiple choice exam where you have discarded several erroneous answers and have to decide between two. Tension is provided by humously lethal repercussions. If you have received the clues from NPC master thieves you should obviously be able to guess it. Although, they are only likely to be helpful and provide the clue based upon your CHA (because I don't know about you, but if I could give someone bad information or withold it, that would lead to someone being impaled upon a bed of spears, then I would do it for more than a couple of people I know.) In my mod, all alignments are accounted for... even amongst the NPCs.

Right, next is to create some potential solutions to the door. Note, all of these are just a few examples, the final version would have a more comprehensive and logical list; so don't pick apart the illustrative examples, pedants.

[Reach through the slot and feel for a bolt]
[Pull the gargoyle's horns]
[Peer through the portal and shout "Helloooo?!"]
[etc]

Add some decoy solutions that lead to considerable harm, guards or traps. Some will involve obvious stupidity, and others (hopefully) less obvious.

[Hammer repeatedly upon the door]
[Peer through the keyhole]
[Pull the adjacent chain]
[Walk through the door for it is undoubtedly a clever illusion]
[etc]

Med WIS will add two decoy solutions, High only one, and Low five. ...snigger.

An NPC master Thief would provide a clue to solve a door puzzle, selected randomly. The PC learns these solutions like they learnt the insults in Monkey Island. (Yeah I know, but if you have a better idea, please post your suggestion.) To continue, "It's a heavy iron bound door with an open latch portal. The heavy stone gargoyle above the doorway seems to stare at you." could be solved by NPC clues such as the following.

NPC. "Fools think they can frighten away thieves adorning their walls with terrifying murials..."
NPC. "I'm not afraid of monsters."

would = [Pull the gargoyle's horns]

NPC. "An elementalist, whose home I once raided, guarded his lairs with his bastard creations. I was terrified..."
NPC. "But once I proved I was not a threat, they would let me pass in peace."

would = [Peer through the portal and shout "Helloooo?!"]

In essence, the game provides an internal mini-game only for Thieves, that rewards the collection or theft of thief tools, and advice from NPCs. The ease is based on the Thief's mental skills, and the quality of information imparted on the PC's CHA.

DEX would be used frequently elsewhere, during dialogue pickpocketing attempts, a chance to avoid a lethal door trap, and avoiding guards.

 

[Baron]

I've just realised some of the solutions would be perfectly achievable by non-Thieves, ie. A wizard could try pulling the gargoyle's horns.

So I will probably allow for others Classes to open a few of these doors, to give them a taste of the thievin' life. But without the necessary tools, and without the advice from master thieves they'll be unable to open most doors, and those that they attempt will still probably kill them.

OH HOO-RAH!

 

[Unradscorpion]

Sounds like dumbing down to me.

 

[SCO]

Play the quest for glory games.

They did this not by classes but by statistics. I mean the storyline was different for the classes, and the quest hooks would only appear to the relevant class mostly, but nothing stopped your paladin of robbing the bank if you had the relevant skills (or some of the magic) and didn't care about taking a honor hit.
Key is matching each puzzle to a statistic of the char or action the class can do (for example "thief sign" to thieves).

They are some of the most replayable games ever, if you care about story.