Tuesday 12 August 2014

First Law: Override - Story Pack Themes (A Call For Aid)

Greetings friends!

So over the past few days I've been discussing a number of things including the Story Progression System and how to improve your character.

One thing that has come up again and again is the idea of Story Packs having themes.

So what sort of themes are we looking at?

Well ultimately we are looking for a wide number of themes, all of which ultimately return back to classic SciFi themes and tropes.

Ideally every Story Pack should have a different theme.

To begin with players until they unlock Sponsors along with spacecraft, will only have access to the Starter stories; 5 Stories that all take place on a single world. After all without access to ships having a space combat mission in a starter story would be redundant.

Now these 5 starter stories will not focus on any particular races, factions or sponsors as at this point these will not have been decided, they will instead be loose and vague stories designed to teach the players how to play the game and begin to get them immersed in the world.

After players reach level 5 they then get more stories available to them while keeping the starters available for quicker low impact games.

Of these new stories, 5 will be available to everyone, there will be 2 Faction Specific Stories, and each Sponsor will also have 2 Sponsor Specific Stories.

What this means is that a solo player would have at their disposal a choice of 14 Stories they can play at any time; 5 Starter, 5 Basic, 2 Faction and 2 Sponsor.

If that player was to play with 2 other players from allied Sponsors, then that number jumps to 18! (5 Starter, 5 Basic, 2 Faction and 6 Sponsor).

Obviously as Factions and Sponsors are fleshed out then their stories will begin to write themselves, but in the meantime the Starter Packs and Basic Packs will need suitable themes.

This is where you come in!

Now I can cobble together themes and stories without any problem, and once we reach a certain point many stories will write themselves as with the Sponsors and future planned expansions, but what about the basic non-aligned stories?

These have to be stories that you the players want to play.

Now this could be anything from the storyline of your favourite Sci Fi film or game, or maybe it's something that just fits a need but if you want to play it, I want to hear it!

Currently my personal stories of choice are as follows:

1). Bring back the lost ship.
- Think Dead Space crossed with Alien. Get to the deserted ship, reactivate it's dead engine and get back home. Sounds easy, but wait! What's that noise coming from the air vent?

2). The Bounty Hunt.
- Someone has done something bad, maybe they are a murderer, maybe a crazy cyborg! Either way you need to track them down and bring them in; dead if necessary but preferably alive.

These are just two ideas that I'm playing with at the moment, so tell me; what stories do you want to see played out?

And on that note, stay safe and I'll see you on the Outer Fringe!

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley

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