[quote=Hanon Ondricek]I submit for your consideration a type of quality called a “Clock Quality”.
At bare-bones minimum, all this would do is declare a quality which increments by one every time a storylet is played through a result branch (essentially at the time the player clicks ONWARD!) when the clock quality is greater than zero.[/quote]
Actually, it’s suddenly occurred to me that I sort-of want this too. Without giving too much away, a key mechanic I’m working on now involves a quality which steadily increases as long as you do (let’s call them) Type 1 Things - and which you have to manage by occasionally doing Type 2 Things to bring it down. Having it tick up all by itself would certainly be easier than remembering to increase it on each Type 1 Thing branch.
In reality, it wouldn’t quite work for me, because there are cases where I don’t want the quality to tick up even though you’ve done a Type 1 Thing. But it’s another motivating example, perhaps.
Or… perhaps what you’re really looking for are Living Stories, but which trigger based on a count of actions (or cards played) rather than wall-clock time? I can see that would make a whole load of tricks, including your mobile NPCs for example, a lot easier to organise. Maybe it’s getting a bit away from the core SN “feel”, though.
[quote=Hanon Ondricek]Uberman: Sure…but shouldn’t the character be the person answering the riddle in world instead of the player? If I know the answer to the riddle, it seems as though I could skip a section of the story that the character is supposed to experience in search of the answer. I know what you’re going for, I’m just saying that it kind of breaks the conceit of a character in the world if the player is doing the work.
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I find this a bizarre argument. It’s a part of most if not all games for challenges (mental in the case of puzzles, or physical in the case of action games) to be presented directly to the player, with the character just acting as a conduit.
I’m suggesting a feature that could add a wide range of extra content and puzzles, I don’t see why you’d bother spending your time suggesting workarounds that are not as good and don’t do the same job.
Having living stories that trigger based on actions played instead of time passed is a good solution. It has the advantage of (1) not needing to perform all sorts of platform-level magic and (2) not creating another kind of “weird” quality that deviates from the current setup of qualities as number buckets.
(I’m not against deviant qualities. I think Objectives are swell. And I desperately want universal qualities, which either exist independently of characters or simultaneously on all characters. But the Clock quality would be convenient, not an expansion of what SN could do.)
I think the culture’s developed in this thread of suggesting workarounds available with the existing tools - because we all want to crack on with authoring our worlds, and we also all know that it will be many months or years before all these suggestions are implemented. It’s not always helpful, and I can see that it might be frustrating, but I’m not sure it justifies being actively rude.
For what it’s worth, it [edit: “it” being the original suggestion] does feel to me like it breaks the model, just a little bit. The thing is, StoryNexus is a platform that’s based around role-playing and stats - so the character isn’t just a cipher for the player, in the way it often is in other games. The fact that, in real life, I’m so astonishingly handsome and awesomely strong doesn’t mean that my character breezes through Charisma or Strength tests… so it’s not obvious that my real-world intelligence (or lack thereof) should rub off on my character either.
Of course, that’s just a matter of opinion! But I don’t accept that it’s a completely bizarre thing for Hanon to say.
Richard : As soon as there is a choice in the game, and you as the player make that choice, you’re ‘driving’ the character. This is the difference between linear narratiives such as a movies or novels and games, there is an element of the player being brought into the game. Just because it’s a roleplaying game and just because it’s stats based doen’t remove the presence of the player as a driving force. I really don’t see the difference between saying ‘I choose decision X over Y’ to ‘I choose the answer to this puzzle to be 12345’. Suggesting that one type of choice is somehow more valid or fitting than another seems very arbitrary to me. And yes, bizarre.
I’m making a suggestion in the ‘Suggestions’ forum. Explaining a couple of ways to do things that I don’t want to do isn’t particularly helpful and comes off as unneccessarily defensive of the status quo. If this is something that can’t be implemented, then fine. Just making a suggestion.
[color=#009900]OK, to move on from this argument:[/color]
[color=#009900]
[/color]
[color=#009900]- text-input-based branch requirements might happen at some stage, though they aren’t a priority.[/color]
[color=#009900]- suggesting workarounds, and having a conversation that might elaborate the underlying requirements, is part of the culture on this board and we encourage it. Even if the poster who makes the suggestion doesn’t find it useful, other people reviewing the thread might.[/color]
(Idea sparked by someone’s random comment in the Sunlight topic…)
I would love to see some sort of behind-the-scenes webseries on the development of StoryNexus in general and Fallen London in particular. I don’t think it would take TOO much work, just fire up a screen recording program whenever you start working on some project you think would be interesting, and maybe whenever you read the forums. Slap that puppy up on YouTube and you’ve got the internet’s next big hit! :D )
If I have an ‘Agility’ stat, and someone succeeds at it…I want them to see and pay attention to my text about it, or whatever change text I have related to the encounter. If they’re succeeding at an agility test, it’s probably changing their stance, and I want them to focus on that.
I don’t want there to be a "You succeeded on a Agility challenge!’ spam text with a little help sign after every roll. It’s not even grammatically correct. It will become exceptionally repetitive. I’d like to turn it off. I am already taking steps to provide the player with substantial feedback and it’s becoming overkill, with nothing added. edited by clearsighted on 3/2/2013 edited by clearsighted on 3/2/2013
If you want to handle your agility stat manually, change the type from “BasicAbility” to “Sidebar Ability” It won’t go up automatically, and you won’t see those messages. You’ll need to increase it manually based on your default/success branches.
[quote=Hanon Ondricek]If you want to handle your agility stat manually, change the type from “BasicAbility” to “Sidebar Ability” It won’t go up automatically, and you won’t see those messages. You’ll need to increase it manually based on your default/success branches.[/quote]’’
I have it set as a MinorLateral. (for reasons of not wanting the real messy number to display, but a QLD of it).
Okay, so you’re talking about the messages that display just before “Onward!” that shows you every quality that has changed. I had that same problem for a while in that I had some areas that were checking for qualities and I wanted it to happen surreptitiously because it could spoil something that happened later.
I asked about having “silent” qualities, and FB is averse to that - they want the player notified on every change. There are ways around this.
One way is to use QCD - Quality Change Descriptions so you can control what is displayed. Sometimes it’s just a matter of making the message more vague. “You feel stronger” instead of “Your strength has increased from 7 to 8.” so it doesn’t annoy you. I’ve heard of someone just using spaces as a QCD so all the result shows is the icon, which can be a decent tradeoff.
What you can eventually get the hang of is to use your QCD’s as your text that you want them to see instead of putting it in the storylet so that it’s duplicated by the QCD. That gives you the advantage that you don’t have to mention it all the time as SN will print your message automatically.
[quote=Hanon Ondricek]Okay, so you’re talking about the messages that display just before “Onward!” that shows you every quality that has changed. I had that same problem for a while in that I had some areas that were checking for qualities and I wanted it to happen surreptitiously because it could spoil something that happened later.
I asked about having “silent” qualities, and FB is averse to that - they want the player notified on every change. There are ways around this.
One way is to use QCD - Quality Change Descriptions so you can control what is displayed. Sometimes it’s just a matter of making the message more vague. “You feel stronger” instead of “Your strength has increased from 7 to 8.” so it doesn’t annoy you. I’ve heard of someone just using spaces as a QCD so all the result shows is the icon, which can be a decent tradeoff.
What you can eventually get the hang of is to use your QCD’s as your text that you want them to see instead of putting it in the storylet so that it’s duplicated by the QCD. That gives you the advantage that you don’t have to mention it all the time as SN will print your message automatically.[/quote]
That’s good advice Hanon, and it’s actually something I already figured out for other stuff. Since indeed, I too wanted some variables to be more silent, because they were more about NPC logic than anything else. (I wish FB would give us the choice instead of taking it out of our hands).
What I actually meant by my post…Is that I have a series of events which check one of the minor laterals. No matter what, there is a base display that pipes up:
“You succeeded in a Agility check!” With a big old help symbol right next to it.
It’s not connected to any QLD. It just pops up if any kind of broad or narrow check has been passed. It is cluttering the information that I am presenting about their success (and in fact, I am using the QLD that is being changed to show what is happening).
I don’t care what FB does in Fallen London, but so long as they are allowing us to use the Creator Tools, they should allow us more license in determining what we present to the players. Since Creator Worlds can always come with the stipulation that they are all likely to be different, and each creator provides their own support. edited by clearsighted on 3/3/2013
Ah, I see. You’re checking stats in the manner of silent die rolls as opposed to the player physically choosing to do something. If I understand now after three stabs at it, you’re wanting to control the text the player sees based on a stat-check. Yeah, that is kind of hard. It falls into the random text variation sort of problem. :)
For example, you want to have a Perception ability that can be checked silently to determine if the player hits a result branch to see a concealed door as opposed to just plain branch requirements that the Perception be above a certain level to be visible? Is that right?
[quote=Gordon Levine]Having living stories that trigger based on actions played instead of time passed is a good solution. It has the advantage of (1) not needing to perform all sorts of platform-level magic and (2) not creating another kind of “weird” quality that deviates from the current setup of qualities as number buckets.
(I’m not against deviant qualities. I think Objectives are swell. And I desperately want universal qualities, which either exist independently of characters or simultaneously on all characters. But the Clock quality would be convenient, not an expansion of what SN could do.)[/quote]
I actually love the idea of a living story that delays based on turns taken rather than real-clock time; I think that would be a nice upgrade to a living story anyway, and that would be a good compromise to a clock quality that I would definitely use.
The only thing that might be lost is the ability to show a QCD each time the clock/LS quality was incremented. If you wanted to remind the player “The bomb continues to tick down to its detonation time!” or “You’re getting hungrier by the minute.” you couldn’t do that unless you segmented a living story up into multiple parts. Again, doable.
Hanon, I think clearsighted is literally just saying that he or she wants to hide the text similar to
“You succeeded in a Leadership challenge! (Risky challenges mean you learn more.) [?]”
…which appears if you set a “Diff[iculty]” in the Qualities Required for a branch. It is indeed true that you can’t suppress that, nor can you achieve the same effect using any other mechanic I know of*.
It’s an interesting suggestion. Having played FL for many years, it’s really hard to imagine what a world would be like if it didn’t have these messages - I’d sort-of like to know.
Cheers
Richard
Footnote for the truly pedantic: except for the ridiculously impracticable approach of having a different branch unlock at each stat level and using a rare default with a percentage chance that depends on the level that’s unlocked. edited by Richard on 3/4/2013
I know! That’s why I was trying to figure out why you would want them suppressed. In my brain that text sort of is always read by a couple of sporting announcers in hushed tones. It’s like “You have defeated the dragon! Violet ichor gushes from a sizeable chest wound! [‘Hanon’s Dragonslaying stat has raised to five, Bob, what do you think of that?’ ‘Quite impressive Bill, and not only that, he’s completed the Dragon in the Dungeon Quest, and gained 446 gold pieces, let’s see what happens next!’ ‘Onward, Bob!’]”
That’s why I can only imagine he was looking for a silent stat check for something that the quality messages were spoiling…or just being redundant about. He said he’s checking Minor Laterals…if one is just checking a branch or a storylet against them, those messages shouldn’t show and should vanish or show the storylet or branch. If one is challenging the Minor Lateral, then you do get the messages.
I guess it takes a bit of experimentation before you instinctually know where everything is going to pop up in the interface and how to optimize this so the game looks great. It’s hard. I still have a bunch of clunky mechanics that happen. But I have finally learned how to think of story beats each in three separate chunks, each with a title heading. :)
[quote=Hanon Ondricek]Ah, I see. You’re checking stats in the manner of silent die rolls as opposed to the player physically choosing to do something. If I understand now after three stabs at it, you’re wanting to control the text the player sees based on a stat-check. Yeah, that is kind of hard. It falls into the random text variation sort of problem. :)
For example, you want to have a Perception ability that can be checked silently to determine if the player hits a result branch to see a concealed door as opposed to just plain branch requirements that the Perception be above a certain level to be visible? Is that right?[/quote]
You’ve got it, Hanon. That’s more or less what I’m trying to do.
And Richard is also right.
I’ve never played Fallen London, but with the way I’m trying to use it, it just makes things look unnecessarily cluttered. There is no reason their attention should be brought to the stat. And there is no way around it beyond the ridiculously impractical.
It’s just sad. We already have QLD change levels. Why must there be a second message thrown in we have no control over?
I think we just get used to the way StoryNexus works. Stat challenges are not really good as a way to reveal or conceal text since, as youve found, they’re noisy. The way I would do it is just specify two branches - one visible when perception is below 15 that hides branch, the other when perception is 15 or greater that also hides the branch. You lose the slightly random factor of “rolling for” a perception check, but you still get the effect that the character can see something he did not before.
Please don’t take this as me being apologetic or making excuses for StoryNexus, because I’m not. There are some things it just doesn’t do. I went through a lot of this when I brought my game from Inform into StoryNexus, and for almost every limitation I found that I couldn’t do, I figured out an interesting way to do it with qualities and cards. Don’t get frustrated.
Put yourself on the side of the player and figure out if you really need the dieroll or if you can simulate the situation in some other way. Remember you control the deck. Could whatever your perception stat is control how many of the “you found a secret door” cards are available, and let the randomness come from deck drawing? Also remember a lot of StoryNexus/Fallen London fans who will be your audience understand and expect quality chatter. It may not bug them as much as it does you.
[quote=Hanon Ondricek]I think we just get used to the way StoryNexus works. Stat challenges are not really good as a way to reveal or conceal text since, as youve found, they’re noisy. The way I would do it is just specify two branches - one visible when perception is below 15 that hides branch, the other when perception is 15 or greater that also hides the branch. You lose the slightly random factor of “rolling for” a perception check, but you still get the effect that the character can see something he did not before.
Please don’t take this as me being apologetic or making excuses for StoryNexus, because I’m not. There are some things it just doesn’t do. I went through a lot of this when I brought my game from Inform into StoryNexus, and for almost every limitation I found that I couldn’t do, I figured out an interesting way to do it with qualities and cards. Don’t get frustrated.
Put yourself on the side of the player and figure out if you really need the dieroll or if you can simulate the situation in some other way. Remember you control the deck. Could whatever your perception stat is control how many of the “you found a secret door” cards are available, and let the randomness come from deck drawing? Also remember a lot of StoryNexus/Fallen London fans who will be your audience understand and expect quality chatter. It may not bug them as much as it does you.[/quote]
I don’t take it as apologetic at all, Hanon. I love Storynexus, and I think it’s an amazing toolkit (certainly more friendly than Inform), that’s given me many hours of amusement. But you are right that it is unfortunate to lose that random factor, and I simply wish that since all creators assume sole responsibility for supporting their worlds, we could have a checklist of which default messages to display or not.
Other than that, thanks for all your insights. You were very helpful! edited by clearsighted on 3/6/2013
The new Social Actions sound great–just read through the info in the manual. One suggestion that came to mind as I was thinking through the implications of the system is for community-wide qualities. Imagine an event the entire player base is called upon to resolve. Everyone can contribute based on his character’s skills. When the overall contributions reach a certain threshold, it triggers the next stage in the event for everyone. For example, players can ally with Country A or Country B. There’s a new storyline added where those two countries go to war. Players on both sides are working together to create armaments, spy on the enemy, etc. When either side has reached threshold amounts for swords, ships, cannons and war plans, it triggers the next stage in the conflict. The writers could tailor that next stage to whichever side actually won.
Additionally, the system could be used by developers for quick story-based metrics. For example, each time a character starts a specific story line, you increment a community variable. You can then compare that to your overall number of characters to see what percentage that is of your player base. If developers can reset those community qualities at will (even on a live game), you could make some changes to make the story line appear more frequently, reset the community quality and a “new player tracking” quality, then test again to see if your changes had the desired effects.
All we’d need to do these sorts of things is the ability to have qualities at the story (rather than player) level. :-) edited by Laralyn McWilliams on 3/13/2013