Quality Help (Morality Status Bar?)

StoryNexus
#1

Hey all,

I have made a good decision. Having all of three days experience with Fallen London, I want to throw myself in the deep end and create a world of my own!

To be fair, I’m not really angsting about that too much, that’s basically my modus operandi.

But I actually need help with one of the qualities I want to make. I want to make a morality-amorality scale, but am not entirely sure how to go about doing that (I’ve read the manual, but I’m still confused). I think I need to use the Level Descriptions, right? But I’m not sure how to make qualities decrease, and I’m not sure whether this quality needs to be a minor lateral, a story, a circumstance or whatever.

I’ll be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing.

Would it be easier to create a Moral Quality and an Amoral Quality, and somehow make them mutually exclusive?

Whatever it is, I’m then going to turn around and do the same thing for a Reputation Quality (yes, both these things are fairly central to gameplay, as in I’m not sure the game could function without them).

Bonus Questions:
Best sort of Quality to use as a tally? There’s two things I want to keep a constant count of, without them being too obtrusive and getting in the way (they’re ‘total number of partners’ and ‘current number of partners’ if it matters).

How many Qualities is too many/few? So far I have between 6 (if Morality and Reputation can be consolidated) and 8 (if they have to be made into two Qualities) with one more that I’m not entirely sure is necessary (I can possibly get away without it, because it can quite easily be assimilated by another Quality, but I think there’s a chance it could really enhance the gameplay if I can make the two a little more diverse).

Thanks guys!
edited by Draconigenae on 2/17/2014
edited by Draconigenae on 2/17/2014

#2

First of all, since you’re new, the Reference Guide is a very handy reference and has helped me a lot :)

Personally I’d put the Moral and Amoral Quality as individual Qualities, set them as pyramid qualities, and then add and remove from them as you will. for example the character gives food to a homeless person so +1 to moral and -1 to amoral. You’d also be able to test them individually if you need to. I’d set them as story Qualities but maybe one of the more experienced people will chime in with a better idea lol.

Again for the reputation Qualities I suggest doing them individually as It will be easiest to deal with. Setting them as Circumstance or Story would both work in my opinion and don’t forget to set them as pyramid qualities.

For tallies, if you don’t set them as pyramid qualities then they will add up just like items would.

As for how many qualities, it’s all up to you. Fallen London uses a crap tonne, I’m sure I have close to a hundred by now so having a lot isn’t a bad thing. They’re great for tracking mini-storylines, grand quests, and everything in-between.

#3

Thank you for your response :)

I’ve got the reference guide. Parts of it are useful, but most of it appears to be written in Greek (like broad and narrow difficulties - I suspect these could be really useful if only I could figure out what they actually are, how they work, and what on earth they even do).

This sounds like a solid recommendation, but why pyramid qualities? Is it just because they make it harder to gain levels (at least I think that’s what they do), or is there another reason?

Another question, based on recent musing. In Fallen London, you can equip things to boost stats. You also have like, little subheadings in your inventory (rumour items, for example, or wines). Can I implement these features myself? (I know some things in Fallen London can’t be done in general Story Nexus games). If so, how?

I’m asking because of one of my Qualities. I think I might turn it into an item range. Probably called ‘attractiveness’ or something, and you would be able to buy, say, make-up, or nice clothes, and have them boost your Seduction stat. I was going to have Attractiveness and Seduction both as stats, with Attractiveness working to boost Seduction, but I don’t think that’s possible with the way the engine is set up (I can have a two-tailed challenge, where you need a certain Attractiveness, and a certain Seduction, but as far as I can tell that generally worsens your chance of success rather than boosting it).

Thoughts? Is doing it this way likely to work? Or should I just give in a scrap Attractiveness? (I really don’t want to, but if it’s going to be a nightmare to implement, I might have to).

#4

You could use a rich test for that - test seduction, but have higher attraction make the test less difficult. If attraction is between one and ten (just for example), and you wanted a maximum score to make the test half as easy, the difficulty formula would be:[li]

x-(x0.5([q:attraction]/10))

where x is your own number for however difficult the test is. If you wanted attraction to influence the test more, increase that 0.5 (or vice versa). If attraction’s out of 20, say, rather than 10, just replace the 10 at the end of the formula.

#5

Yes!

That’s exactly what I want to do. Thank you. I suspect I’ll have to do some testing to get the weightings right, but I can work on/with that.

Thank you!

#6

Glad to help! You can do some really pretty powerful stuff with rich tests and effects, although yes, balancing can become a pain. You can use rich formulae for branch requirements (min and max) too, although not on card requirements, unfortunately.