Quantomas
Savant
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2017
- Messages
- 260
Concept for a The Codex building in Pathfinder: Kingmaker
In the palace
A clearly shaken guard enters the palace and hurries towards you. With a frightened voice he reports: "Your grace, a powerful mage has appeared in the ruined watchtower facing the town square and said that he will tear this place apart, if it is necessary in his search for a gateway to," he pauses a moment, "--I didn't catch the name." He sighs. "I was too frightened. He just turned Miller who was with me on guard duty into stone and claimed that he is a dark underlord. I ran as fast as I could to report to your grace without delay." A moment later he adds: "He is a kobold."
"A kobold, you say? Let me investigate."
In the ruined watchtower
You enter the watchtower in full armor and in the company of your trusted party, everyone fully armed. You spot the interloper immediately. He is indeed a kobold in a richly embroidered robe sitting on a makeshift bench.
You approach: "I heard you are threatening our citizens and I will not—"
"No, no, you are getting it all wrong. I am not interested in this place. There are much bigger powers at work and your best chance is that they won't take an interest in you. I am merely passing through in my search of the gate to Ranglator."
"What with the guard you turned to stone?"
The kobold grins, "Merely a cantrip. He lacked courtesy and will reanimate before noon."
You grit your teeth, "What is this intrusion about?"
"You see, I can provide you with lore and priceless knowledge in exchange for your help."
The general concept is to have a mysterious character providing you with lore and sending you on a well-written quest that demonstrates Codexian writing prowess and mostly utilizes assets already in the game to keep implementation costs to a minimum. The kobold claims to be a dark underlord (DU). Naturally the citizenry scoffs at this notion. The kobold makes up for his small size with a mean tongue and shows enough magic aptitude that there remains a measure of uncertainty whether his bold claims could be — against all odds — true.
The quest has multiple stages, each asking you to acquire a rune. Upon receiving each rune the DU extracts a small polished pearl from it and hands the rune back to you, stating that you will need these to unlock a bigger mystery.
Each quest stage sends you in search of the carrier of a rune whom you will meet in a random encounter area.
The general idea is that the Codex does quality encounter design (it's one thing to round up on games for poor encounter design, but another to demonstrate how it goes), including extraordinary composition of the target's party with interesting and skilled combatants, lots of synergy effects and proper level-up scaling.
Naturally, we should provide more options for the encounters that offer alternate solutions through dialog, stealth, alignment and more. Plus the encounters should provide narrative, like the enemy boss giving you cryptic hints with his dying breaths about who the DU truly is and how you may thwart him.
Regarding lore, the DU should have a handful of books with Pathfinder lore on his shelf in the watchtower. But this lore will be written with a twist, authored by a supposedly famous figure, for example a disturbed mystic. Each book of lore will provide an observant reader with hints how to find and engage a rune carrier.
Additionally, the entire quest chain should have an alternative solution with a better reward for exceptionally smart players who get the rune carriers to talk in confidence and reveal clues about the alternative. It could easily be cryptic enough that only a small fraction of the players figure this out.
Prerequisites
If approved, this proposal will require $10,000 in funding for the design a building and design a NPC rewards (each 5K) plus some negotiation skill to convince MCA/Owlcat that this indeed enhances the game. As Owlcat is giving us rewards double our money, we will need to reach $5,000 in the Codex campaign.
Also, Owlcat's Kickstarter attracted a fair number of Pathfinder table-top players who boast with lore on their forums. I could set up a thread in their forum to get them to help writing the lore for the handful of quest books and promote The Codex fundraising campaign.
I will only do more if this desired.
In the palace
A clearly shaken guard enters the palace and hurries towards you. With a frightened voice he reports: "Your grace, a powerful mage has appeared in the ruined watchtower facing the town square and said that he will tear this place apart, if it is necessary in his search for a gateway to," he pauses a moment, "--I didn't catch the name." He sighs. "I was too frightened. He just turned Miller who was with me on guard duty into stone and claimed that he is a dark underlord. I ran as fast as I could to report to your grace without delay." A moment later he adds: "He is a kobold."
"A kobold, you say? Let me investigate."
In the ruined watchtower
You enter the watchtower in full armor and in the company of your trusted party, everyone fully armed. You spot the interloper immediately. He is indeed a kobold in a richly embroidered robe sitting on a makeshift bench.
You approach: "I heard you are threatening our citizens and I will not—"
"No, no, you are getting it all wrong. I am not interested in this place. There are much bigger powers at work and your best chance is that they won't take an interest in you. I am merely passing through in my search of the gate to Ranglator."
"What with the guard you turned to stone?"
The kobold grins, "Merely a cantrip. He lacked courtesy and will reanimate before noon."
You grit your teeth, "What is this intrusion about?"
"You see, I can provide you with lore and priceless knowledge in exchange for your help."
* * *
The general concept is to have a mysterious character providing you with lore and sending you on a well-written quest that demonstrates Codexian writing prowess and mostly utilizes assets already in the game to keep implementation costs to a minimum. The kobold claims to be a dark underlord (DU). Naturally the citizenry scoffs at this notion. The kobold makes up for his small size with a mean tongue and shows enough magic aptitude that there remains a measure of uncertainty whether his bold claims could be — against all odds — true.
The quest has multiple stages, each asking you to acquire a rune. Upon receiving each rune the DU extracts a small polished pearl from it and hands the rune back to you, stating that you will need these to unlock a bigger mystery.
Each quest stage sends you in search of the carrier of a rune whom you will meet in a random encounter area.
The general idea is that the Codex does quality encounter design (it's one thing to round up on games for poor encounter design, but another to demonstrate how it goes), including extraordinary composition of the target's party with interesting and skilled combatants, lots of synergy effects and proper level-up scaling.
Naturally, we should provide more options for the encounters that offer alternate solutions through dialog, stealth, alignment and more. Plus the encounters should provide narrative, like the enemy boss giving you cryptic hints with his dying breaths about who the DU truly is and how you may thwart him.
Regarding lore, the DU should have a handful of books with Pathfinder lore on his shelf in the watchtower. But this lore will be written with a twist, authored by a supposedly famous figure, for example a disturbed mystic. Each book of lore will provide an observant reader with hints how to find and engage a rune carrier.
Additionally, the entire quest chain should have an alternative solution with a better reward for exceptionally smart players who get the rune carriers to talk in confidence and reveal clues about the alternative. It could easily be cryptic enough that only a small fraction of the players figure this out.
Prerequisites
If approved, this proposal will require $10,000 in funding for the design a building and design a NPC rewards (each 5K) plus some negotiation skill to convince MCA/Owlcat that this indeed enhances the game. As Owlcat is giving us rewards double our money, we will need to reach $5,000 in the Codex campaign.
Also, Owlcat's Kickstarter attracted a fair number of Pathfinder table-top players who boast with lore on their forums. I could set up a thread in their forum to get them to help writing the lore for the handful of quest books and promote The Codex fundraising campaign.
I will only do more if this desired.
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