Chapter 9: brainstorming

Now all I have to do is figure out a chapter 9. This could take a while, possibly a few entries. I think I have a name for the city where most of this will take place. I got it from an extremely bad B-Movie I'm fairly certain virtually no one has heard of or seen. The movie in question is called Knights and can sometimes be found on premium channel Showtime or one of it's many off-shoots like "Showtime Beyond". Any movie with the line ah no! Am I on fire now? and you've been programmed with a lot of confidence chips has to be great. Right? 

Well it will be the city of the "secret keeper" as in chapter 10 and where something like half the story will revolve. The name of the city is Taous. I have no idea if that is the proper spelling, I didn't capture the captioning. I would do this as kind of a subtle reference to it more than anything else, I'm not planning to work any plot elements from the movie into this story. Maybe I should make a separate module based on this movie.

Now that I think about it I could call the whole module Taous. Or perhaps "Towze" or some other creative spelling.

So chapter 10 starts with the proverbial player character entering some run down house that looked much differently than all the other houses in the city. So obviously the end of chapter 9 will say something about Dubois finally running off to see what's inside the run down house. If he does that obviously the other characters are forbidding him to do so and he can no longer stand it and goes to the house anyway. See, now we're getting somewhere! Progress and more progress.

So obviously even from the first chapters I need references to the forbidden house, right?

Now that we know the end of chapter 9 we need the rest of chapter 9. I was planning to have a civil war followed by a combining of fighting forces for fighting an invading force followed by a return to hostilities and a truce. So do I need an end to most likely one of these in chapter 9? Maybe I can figure some way to reference the end of something without being specific. For instance whether chapter 10 happens after the end of a civil war or the end of the joining forces and return to hostilities the ending description can be made to sound similar.

So do I write end the end of a conflict in chapter 9, or put that off to chapter 8? Remember I do have 10 chapters as a goal. But also remember this will be a game some day and games, especially NWN modules need lots of stuff happening, preferably some sort of combat. So how about a big dramatic conversation with choice between talking through a confrontation or fighting through it, depending on the player?

See? Now I'm getting some place. I've got some kind of dramatic conversation going on here, along with some sort of confrontation.

Now what about henchmen/NPCs? What about the cleverly witty side kick always cracking sarcastic remarks but really has the deep down secret purpose for being there...

I could do it so it's not a cliché, why not? Not so much a I'm-really-your-father or a sidekick that turns out to be the villain, I'm thinking something more along the lines of a plot device to indirectly point out holes in the "perfect" city of "Towze". Yah, now I like that as a title even more. Too bad I don't have feedback on this, but I'm contemplating "Towze" as a title. What does anyone think?

Ok, so I'm making progress on this. I will think about this a bit more and make another entry soon. In case it hasn't been said enough, I could use some feedback.

  ¶ 12:49 AM