Writing Direction

[Xae]

I'm posting this as a new thread just to get attention. It was either that or wear my Spongebob Squarepants costume but Deeza borrowed it last week and he hasn't returned it yet.

One question. Should we more or less scrap the vanilla Oblivion quests structure and instead write mostly questlines instead of scattered single quests? I don't mean factions, just sequences of many quests that all have their independent development as proper stories.

In essence, what I'm suggesting is dividing all quests into three types:

Main quest: Longest, involving main storyline with cool embellishments (and possibly chapter videos). This is what'll carry the player through the beta region. Obviously, it'll end on a massive dick move cliffhanger.

Quests: Storylines of several quests as independent storylines. These are the primary quests that the player will encounter as he's exploring and doing stuff. They're all independently told (obviously, the key word is "independent") and significant in their own way.

Side-quests: These are the standard Oblivion-quests. Scattered, single-task quests that aren't part of a cohesive whole. These would be very rare and almost exclusive to factions.

One effect of this would be that most dungeons (i.e. places on the map) are connected to quests instead of being lottery hunting grounds with little connection to anything.

Now, I could go on elaborating on this but I'd like to hear some feedback from the peoples of the BM forums. Also, if you run into Deeza, tell him the costume is dry clean only.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Originally posted by Xaeaix
wear my Spongebob Squarepants costume

Is that the cheeky one from the 'alternative adult' shop with the bottom cut out? That would certainly get attention.

Originally posted by Xaeaix
Obviously, it'll end on a massive dick move cliffhanger.

Well put. :goodjob:

Originally posted by Xaeaix
Quests: Storylines of several quests as independent storylines. These are the primary quests that the player will encounter as he's exploring and doing stuff. They're all independently told (obviously, the key word is "independent") and significant in their own way.

I think that's an excellent idea. One thing that stood out from the vanilla quests was that joining one Faction did not prevent you joining another. In fact, I didn't come across anything which made you come into conflict with the opposing playable Factions in a way that would set your character into a particular way of life. Obviously, the intention was to make sure that you weren't restricted in terms of what you could do with one character....and yet I found that not only unrealistic but counter-productive in terms of having Factions in the first place. Surely if you're a thief, you're a thief but how can you be a thief/warrior/crusader/mage/assassin and so on? There's no storyline there and it makes joining a Faction meaningless as it's essentially just a drawn-out storyline and doesn't really affect anything else other than some people may feel more obliged towards attacking you. Personally, I barely noticed.

Therefore, separate storylines make sense. You just act out whatever the requirement is for the task. I'd like to bet a lot of people did things like the thief quests by twatting the holy shit out of the guy with the money whenever the rules allowed them to....which makes the PC a fighter or assassin.

Anyway, the point is that Factions are just Factions and, yes, we shouldn't feel obliged towards writing long Faction storylines simply because we have the Faction in the first place. Let the storylines take precedence or you risk creating missions for the same of it which tends to lead towards very generic plotlines....the sort of crap that anyone writes just for the sake of having a quest.

What attracted me to games modding initially was their potential for telling interactive storylines. Many of the modern games are beautiful but soulless and rarely do you get a really good, challenging story. So having the Factions and giving the option of rising ranks in the first place but involving you in something totally immersive in the next are independent of one another....and you may even bump into a Faction member or increase your esteem with one of them along the way.

Is that what you're meaning, Xae?

[Koniption]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost
I think that's an excellent idea. One thing that stood out from the vanilla quests was that joining one Faction did not prevent you joining another. In fact, I didn't come across anything which made you come into conflict with the opposing playable Factions in a way that would set your character into a particular way of life. Obviously, the intention was to make sure that you weren't restricted in terms of what you could do with one character....and yet I found that not only unrealistic but counter-productive in terms of having Factions in the first place. Surely if you're a thief, you're a thief but how can you be a thief/warrior/crusader/mage/assassin and so on? There's no storyline there and it makes joining a Faction meaningless as it's essentially just a drawn-out storyline and doesn't really affect anything else other than some people may feel more obliged towards attacking you. Personally, I barely noticed.[...snip...]

Just keep in mind, that players already into their Oblivion game when they start to play Blackmarsh, will most likley have already joined a faction or more. So if they were used to being a thief, but also a fighter, it wouldn't make sense to all of a sudden have fighter guild or thief guild attack them in Blackmarsh, whereas those guilds had not done so in vanilla Oblivion worldspaces.

......wait, maybe we can just BS that since the player has traveled to a new "country" per se, and is far from where news normally travels (if it travels there at all do to the dangers and conditions of Blackmarsh), that those guilds wouldn't know their background status with the fighter or thief guilds back in vanilla worldspaces. This can play out like this:

1) If the player had gotten in trouble with the thief or fighter guild back in vanilla worldspaces, when they enter Blackmarsh, they are not in trouble with those guilds - at least up until they cause trouble in Blackmarsh for those guilds. I think maybe a Quest script can detect when the player enters "Blackmarshes" worldspace for first time, and can delete any bounties and faction malice on the player at the time, then remove them...but when the player goes back to vanilla worldspace, the bounties and malice/disposition are put back in place for those guilds.

Koniption

[Xae]

@Kp: You're right, I think it's best if we make it all separate. However, the BM FG/MG/Thieves etc shouldn't be part of the ones in Cyrodiil, and so nothing you did in Cyrodiil will affect them. We'd have to name them something like "Black Marsh Fighters' Guild/Mages' Guild etc" in the quest journal anyway. In scripting-terms, they'll be entirely different factions.

@IG and general: I'll elaborate some on the details and the practice of it. The intention is just like you say, to bring more story into it rather than filling the mod with generic quests and repeating Bethesda's mistakes.

Factions in Oblivion: In Oblivion, all factions follow the exact same premise. You're the most gifted and fantastic do-it-all who can rise to the top of the ranks in less than a month. You're so exceptionally skilled at completing tasks that you get promoted for almost all the tasks you perform. Apparently, the FG hires grunts to kill rats and moderately sized animals, where as the MG hires new apprentices to pick flowers. There are no hunters or Alchemist's assistants in Tamriel.

Quests in Oblivion: You stumble into Chorrol and find out that someone's missing. You find out that they're in Hackdirt. You go there, the town makes no effort to hide its malevolence, you slay them, rescue the girl and go home. End. Find new "quest".

Now, Oblivion is a very popular game to create mods for (it is, haven't you heard?). Overtime, though, one needs to break free from the original title in order to create something really rewarding. Instead of creating more Bethesda-esque content, we should create Sticky Guar-esque content (yes, we're Sticky Guar). My idea is as follows:

Factions in BM: Expressed purely in semantics, I suggest that we shift from Faction storyline to storyline involving the Faction. We've already come to the conclusion that being a Shadowscale is a birth right and as such it would make no sense for the player to join them. Instead, he gets tangled up in a plot that's largely focused on the Shadowscales but he's not a part of them.

This structure can be applied to any faction, big or small. MG, FG, Sotho Tren, Topal Tigers etc. It will take away the rinse'n'repeat style of quest-promotion-quest-promotion (and so on) and replace it with a cohesive series of events.

A few examples of what this means in practice.

1) The player discovers/stumbles upon something related to the faction. After a few quests, the faction's actual involvement starts. After some more quests it ends and the storyline moves on. The player leaves the storyline no more a member of the faction than before.

2) The player becomes quite involved in a particular situation. Maybe it's a town plagued by a necromancer, or one built directly on top of Satan - whatever the case. Some steps down the line he counters the MG. He ends up assisting them a few times and is then asked to join. He follows a few proper quests, rises in rank once or twice, and then either moves on to something else or the storyline ends there. The player does not reach a high rank because that was never the point.

3) The player joins the faction while doing something proper. Using FG as an example: being hired as a mercenary for a shit suicide job, like killing big trolls. You return, impress them, and get to join. Then they send you out on more of the same (this is Black Marsh and the FG would be literally swamped with things to do), albeit longer and proper quests until you rank up once or twice. Then that whole business with Laric happens and the story takes a completely different direction.

This then becomes not the FG storyline, not the Laric storyline, not the Jerek Hend storyline, but just "storyline X". It involves many things, develops, changes, reaches its own climax and ends far off where it started. In other words, factions are no longer quest-hubs. They're not at the top of the quest hierarchy. They're second to the storyline that involves them.

Yes, this essentially removes the factions as they were in Oblivion.

Storylines not involving any factions are not significantly different. There'll still be characters, places, tasks, enemies etc. And this is the key point: Factions will not be treated as special cases. They're only parts of storylines.

That being said, we could create faction storylines without the quest-for-promotion structure but still contained solely within the faction, but this seems like just a step below the fully developing option.

The Storyline Structure: For the sake of keeping things organised and structuring how to write storylines, they can be split up into a macro and smaller micro parts. All storylines would be built as follows.

• Storyline: This refers to the entire content; the top of the hierarchy, named something fitting. Using the FG example above, we could name the storyline "One Life For Another". Since it begins in the FG the player will gather that that's what he's doing: risking his life for others. Also, once the storyline progresses the name still fits with what happens next.
  
  
• Chapter: This refers to the largest sections of the storyline. Using "One Life For Another" as an example, this leaves us with: the mercenary chapter, the FG chapter, the Jerek Hend chapter and so on. They're not restrictive in length other than consisting of more than one quest.
  
  
• Quest: The individual tasks performed by the player. No quest that's part of a storyline will be a self-contained part, with exceptions only for particularly long quests and very special cases. The intention is to keep the red thread alive and well throughout the entire storyline, and as such present in all the quests.
  

[morcroft]

Originally posted by Koniption
I think maybe a Quest script can detect when the player enters "Blackmarshes" worldspace for first time, and can delete any bounties and faction malice on the player at the time, then remove them...but when the player goes back to vanilla worldspace, the bounties and malice/disposition are put back in place for those guilds.

Koniption

That makes my programmer head twitch ( I can hear it: I keep it in the shed, don't have much use for it these days)

"Delete" followed by "Restore" seems like asking for trouble to me. Unless there's a sound CS reason why it wouldn't work I'd make BM guilds totally separate factions from the Cyrodiil equivalents. Any crossover can then be handled in code as and when required, without stuffing up the player's status back home if it all goes pear-shaped. If that means you're a thief in Cyrodiil and decide to become Mage in BM then that's no problem, but you take your lumps on how it affects your relations with the BM Thieves'guild.

Other than that, I totally agree with KPs view about effects of the way news travels.

[Edit] Trust Xae to beat me to saying the same thing, better.

[Koniption]

Awww, crap, Xae and Morcroft - you two are right. I forgot about totally separate factions for the Blackmarsh guilds. Thanks for correcting & enlightening me.

Koniption

[XXMagma5]

I think you are so right. I am in the Mages Guild and thethieves guild as I want to be a mage/thief due to being able to cast invisibilty spells. But I have never joined the FG more then once due to it:
1:Not being rewarding at all!
2:Have no BIG conflict save for the Hist tree import which made it a lil' interesting.
So I think you are all right in a way and about the quests being a stroyline like: Umbacano's quests except longer which all lead to a climax of him really wanting to retore the Ayleids. I can't remember which one of those was in your guide to writing.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Yes, that's precisely what I was thinking Xae. Thanks for laying all that out for us in easy-to-grasp terms. Your immense reward will be (drum roll!) ownership of important core details in one of our sticky threads! Hurrah!

This is because anyone working on quests needs to be aware of this essential information. I have made additions here: Quest Essentials .

Btw, an exception to the rule here might be the idea concerning the FG. Personally, I think it would be a strong idea to actually develop your own BM FG according to our previous thoughts on the matter. However, whereas you may have to buy some buildings and recruit some personnel, some Guild buildings can be left in the hands of your trusted colleages who, upon triggering something in the quests, may be able to take control over particular Guilds and set them up themselves, thus freeing the PC to undertake other tasks.

[Xae]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost
Yes, that's precisely what I was thinking Xae. Thanks for laying all that out for us in easy-to-grasp terms. Your immense reward will be (drum roll!) ownership of important core details in one of our sticky threads! Hurrah!

I never thought this day would actually come. I... um, I- I need a moment.

Btw, an exception to the rule here might be the idea concerning the FG. Personally, I think it would be a strong idea to actually develop your own BM FG according to our previous thoughts on the matter. However, whereas you may have to buy some buildings and recruit some personnel, some Guild buildings can be left in the hands of your trusted colleages who, upon triggering something in the quests, may be able to take control over particular Guilds and set them up themselves, thus freeing the PC to undertake other tasks.

Sounds like a splinter-storyline. Once you reach a certain point (be it a rank or a particular quest completed) this whole semi-sandbox setting opens up to the player. This would work for the FG since it's rather new and the player would arguably get to be one of the founding members (using the troll suicide mission as an example, say that the player is the only survivor and the other two founding members where the ones that hired all the mercenaries for the job).

There are many possibilities for this. We could even have separate mini-storylines if the player wants to open an FG in all the cities or one in an extremely dangerous area that's usually teeming with gold-lusting adventurers.

It is a good idea to include the ultimate choice at some point, to either succumb to greed and let the FG turn into the same corrupted mess it used to be, or to end it yet again after realising the inevitability of what's happened before.

Let's say, for example, that we include choices x, y and z in the FG storyline. At the moment they're obviously significant decisions (I love writing impossible dilemmas) and towards the end, right before the "ultimate choice", these choices echo throughout the last tasks. Naturally, in more significant ways than having or not having an ally, such as completely changing the setting (cave b instead of cave a, f.i.), switching between two different goals in the same setting (save or kill, f.i.) and many other possibilities. Then at the end, the corruption still happens regardless of any combination of choices.

Written well, we could end up with something really involving. Even minute changes can give the player a sensation of actually making choices. In practice, it's definitely possible to include these branching lines here and there while still ending up at the same point without it being immoderately contrived. Hell, we could follow this formula for all the storylines if we wanted to. It's just a matter of how much work we're willing to put in, and how high we want to set the bar for quality.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

The guy who was basically "the dog's proverbials" for that was Lingwei who was absolutely central to the whole set of 'choices and consequences' ideas that were once bandied around the TesNexus forums. In fact, he created the mod 'choices and consequences' and it appeared to set a trend. I remember doing the voicework for a mod with a similar structure called 'The Blackwood Company'. It looked great but there were lots of technical issues and Lingwei ended up not finishing it. I waited for the rest of the lines but I think he'd had enough and moved on. Shame - it was a shedload of voicework!

Anyway, I think the moral of the story is to just keep it very much nice and tight. Doing too many consequences will seriously screw you up....and you don't want to write loads of really good stuff only for the PC to end up choosing the other option....unless they're willing to reload and restart the mission...

Nevertheless, if we're looking for a long-haul Guild storyline, there's plenty of potential in this FG one.