"On A Role" Now it's about time I get down to some more specific details for my first episode. It will start in the city of Towz. This will be a medium sized city with houses and farms on the outskirts as well as some general quarters and shops within the actual city. In this episode there will be a king, a standing army, weapons, money and minor threats both out and inside the city.

This is where the player will begin. In one humble house in this city of Towz. The opening scene basically the player seems to have just woken up and is standing in a bed room. Upon exiting the room is a staircase going to down to a larger room, a pub in fact filled with many characters.

The pub will be filled with many NPCs being very vague about the world outside but this will eventually be a source of henchmen for the game.

Here is where the player receives his first quest: an old woman across town is having a rat problem and needs someone to kill the rats. This does of course lead the player outside.

Outside is the basic city; the old woman’s house will be on the opposite side of the same map. The main quest will not start until the player has found and completed the quest for the old woman. I'll put in a variable flag or something.

The old woman, lets call her Ursula just for irony sake, gives the player much information and hints at a powerful new magic found out in the woods.

Upon finishing this kill-the-rats quest the player is suggested to speak with someone about more problems in the city.

From here there can be any number of general-purpose quests ranging from magic wands to rescuing kidnapped children from the local orcs living outside the city. As I said, we're starting with standard NWN fodder.

At some point we need to be assigned the main quest: finding and retrieving the magic item. Now this can be an ultimatum, like "find the item or this kingdom will cease to be" or something more subtle like "our kingdom is slowly declining, only this magic item can save us".

In any case the player must leave the city to find this magic item. Now the item can be an actual item, a book or ring or sword or something; or something conceptual like a phrase, word or actual person. Doesn't matter, the player has to get this item.

Oh sure, there will be warnings along the way, subtle hints as to what's going to happen if the player's quest succeeds, but the ending is a fore-gone conclusion. The player is responsible for creating Towz.

Finally the player manages to retrieve the long lost magical item and return it to the city. This initiates a ritual by many of the main NPC characters. Perhaps even a cinematic (cut scene?) is order at this point. Seems the implementation is a multi-step process. The counsel initiating the ritual won't inform the public of their plans but the actual ritual will be rather hard to miss.

This is where the civil war comes in. Perhaps the player has to pick a side at this point. Still unsure as to what the ritual will result in, player must choose to either help fulfill the ritual to the end or help prevent it from taking place (or at least put it on hiatus until everyone knows the consequences of it).

This may as well be the mid-point. From here the player is either hindering or helping with the completion of the ritual. Either way the player is pro-longing the civil war and bringing the ritual that much closer to completion. The player helps and he's disagreeing with a part of population that that wants to stop or post-pone the ritual. The player hinders and he's disagreeing with a different group. Either way there's fighting of one sort or another.

Ultimately there needs to be a mechanism to force the completion of the ritual. Upon completion the terrible secret will be revealed, the city transformed and many of the citizenry will choose to leave.

That should be the end of the first episode. The player, not knowing the secret when choosing if he's for performing the ritual right away or preventing it will see this as either a bad ending or a happy ending. In any case I would have to tweak it to make it at all seemingly conclusive.

Alright so the "outsiders" won't make much noticeable appearance in this adventure. Perhaps I can make hints of it in different conversations. Perhaps some characters seem to think and act a little differently from the rest. The themes I'd like to include are basically about how much a utopia such as this would be worth, what price a populace would pay, along with how even this lofty goal would meet with some resistance because of the shift in the status quoi.

Gee, I thought this'd be hard or somethin'. This story practically writes itself (hah-hah).

  ¶ 11:02 AM