Brain Drippings instead of converting Horizons to Fimfic, because I just suck like that. · 2:56am Nov 21st, 2015
Another game idea. Call it a side effect of playing FO4 too much.
So the game would be first person shooter / exploration sandbox. Like I said, FO4 side effect. The setting would be steam punk fantasy in a major metropolitan area called Dyne.
The game starts with you on a train (Like I said, steampunk), with a fellow passenger asking if you are all right. You were tossing and turning all night and he's afraid you might have a sickness called The Phage. He suggests you go into the bathroom, wash your face, and straighten yourself out. You do, and then look in the mirror.
This is when you can select your race, sex, and look. Races are humans, elves, dwarves, and hobgoblins. Then you bend over, start coughing, and hack up a handful of blood. After cleaning up, the other passenger asks if you are okay. If you tell him about the blood, he warns that's definitely a symptom, but he's heard that they're coming up with all kinds of treatments for it.. If not he makes a few comments about your background. This is when you pick your background. Did you grow up on a farm, in a slum, small town, big city, or noble estate? Then he asks you what you do for a living. Are you a fighter, magic aspirant, scholar, merchant, explorer, criminal, laborer, or courtier? After suggesting there's lots of opportunities in Dyne for that occupation, he asks why are you going to Dyne in the first place? Money? Training? Mysteries? Power? Family? Love? None of his business?
All of this lets you establish who your character is fairly simplistically and organically. It's not nearly as involved as FO3's start from birth, but it lets you play who you want to play. It doesn't confer a lot of immediate benefits or penalties, but it gives you some special options and quests related to who you are and what you want. Just because you know nobility doesn't mean that you're personally wealthy or powerful, yet.
In any case, he introduces himself as Tobias and asks if you've ever been to Dyne before, and when you say no, he offers to answer some questions. To help ease the 'tourist' in. You can find out that Dyne is the largest city in the world, where the magical substance called dyne is produced. That dyne is a mysterious, magical substance that makes miraculous feats of magic and engineering anyone can use, not just people with decades of free time to learn how to do magic. No offense if you said you were a mage. He's just a gambler returning home after some trouble in the Republic.
When questions are done, and you can skip them if you want to, the train is attacked by men in gas masks. One bursts through the door and you have to punch him into unconsciousness with left clicks. After he falls, an announcement is made that the passengers are all going to be killed to protest in inequities and abuses of the Houses and Guilds. Tobias reveals that he's got some weapons smuggled. Which would you like: a dagger, a rapier, a long sword, the attacker's truncheon, brass knuckles, or a revolver? Weapons vary in speed, their ability to parry, how easily they are concealed, damage, and reload. While a revolver is a powerful, ranged weapon, it leaves you very vulnerable up close. A dagger is extremely effective if you can ambush someone. A rapier does high damage, but is less able to parry large, heavy weapons, so you have to keep on your toes. Knuckles knock a person out before killing them.
Tobias picks a melee weapon and you now have to clear the train. Otherwise they're just going to crash it into the station and kill everyone on board. So you make your way through the car. Along the way you come across other terrified passengers. One you have to make a speech check to stop a hysterical man from screaming. If he screams, two mooks charge you. At the next car, there's a long hallway with two mooks at the end. Tobias suggests you sneak closer and ambush them or it'll be a shooting gallery. When in sneak mode, your aggro radius is decreased. Running or walking affects it too. You can get up close behind one and use a dagger or knuckles to disable them silently, then take out the second.
You come to a locked door and can choose to either pick the lock or blow it with explosives that you find on a defeated enemy. Tobias gives you the pick and you turn it back and forth, hitting space bar. The closer you are to the position, the clearer a musical note plays, and when you find the right spot, the lock opens. Explosives just blow open the door, but alert the Union mooks beyond who immediately attack.
Next car you reach a sealed door. No lock to pick or blow, but there is a control panel next to it that's been sabotaged or a Babbage style reader. Tobias suggests you look around for parts to repair the panel, or start trying to work out the combination of numbers. In essence, it's basically a math problem. 2x=y [420] enter in 2, 1, 0 and pull the lever and you unseal the door. Repairing requires you to have the right parts, and then you have to plug them in. Depending on what you're repairing, the parts you use can improve the device or give special bonuses. Some panels have special results if you enter in a different number.
Next car, you have a mook behind a barricade with a machine gun. Tobias suggests you use the pyrodyne from the oven on the gunner. He'll distract the gunner so you can grab it. While melee are your bread and butter attacks, dyne can be used to create special effects, depending on what dyne you have equipped and how potent the dyne is. When you get the pyrodyne amuple (it looks like a little bottle of softly red glowing fluid) you can hit the machine gunner with a gout of flame that interrupts his firing as he struggles to put himself out, letting you take him out. Tobias is amazed. He just expected you to throw the damned stuff at him, but he won't complain about results.
The last car is outside, where a boss in steam powered power armor awaits. There's also a woman in a blue military style uniform fighting him. The boss laughs about ramming the train right up the Transportation Union's ass. She introduces herself as Sargent Batallia of the People's Militia and would really appreciate help with this Union thug. As the boss is damaged (and there's a variety of ways you can do this, from sneaking up behind him to repairing an automated turret to just charging in) parts of armor fall off, exposing the person inside. Hitting exposed flesh causes double damage. If the head is breached, the boss might cover the vulnerability with a hand, making their shots less accurate. When defeated, the boss taunts that they're just patsies for the Guilds and uses a steam powered jetpack to launch himself from the train. You then stop the train at the next station, right before it slams into the train ahead of it.
At the train station, you are forced to disembark in one of the suburbs surrounding Dyne itself. No trains will be proceeding for now. Tobias offers you to stay in his place, since he lives near by. Batallia will thank you for your assistance, and give you a small reward in dynemarks. Your money is worthless in Dyne, but Tobias says he'll exchange it for you. A speech check convinces him not to rip you off. Now you're in the borough of Graygirder, a run down slum, and you have to figure out what to do next.
You have some quest leads. Given what you told Tobias, he'll point you towards a racial quest, a occupation quest, and an economic quest, as well as other folks who need people to run odd jobs. He'll point out that if you just get a regular job, you'll be spending the rest of your life in Graygirder. The trick is to find those people with extra money, find out what they want, and get the money from them. Sometimes that means dangerous work. Sometimes it means convincing other people. Sometimes it means making things people can't make themselves.
You have to set one location as 'home'. Given that you just arrived, Tobais' very dirty apartment is automatically set as 'home'. Then you have to set 'lifestyle'. This is a day to day loss in money. At 'subsistence', you'll have major penalties to certain actions. They scale up as 'meager', 'rationed', 'adequate', 'comfortable', 'luxurious', and 'extravagant'. In Tobias's house, you can only set it as high as adequate, which is no penalties. At higher settings, you get increasing bonuses and opportunities.
You learn that Graygirder is dominated by the Transportation Guild, which maintains a massive trainyard and train factory in the city. Coal lies in bins and the sky is sooty. Guilds have locks on the day to day economics around Dyne. The Union are either terrorists or heroes, depending on who you talk to, as they are the only ones taking on the Guilds. However, the Guilds are nothing compared to the Houses, which actually produce the dyne used around the world. Fantastically wealthy doesn't even begin to describe it. It used to be better fifteen years ago before the Dynelord was assassinated in a coup. Now the Houses run Dyne. Any children who survived the purge are patsies for the Houses, who needed the Dynelord as a source of raw Dyne.
Anyway, that's all I have right now. This has been more boring brain drippings from Somber...
I really need to get more Horizons up...
Edit: The drips continue...
So since Dyne is a populated sandbox rather than lots of wide open with a few settlements, I was thinking of how the masses of NPC will react to you. Your character has six 'social' traits that all start at zero: Respect, celebrity, worship, desire, fear, and hatred. You can be a hated celebrity (think Mel Gibson). These traits rise and fall depending on quest choices, lifestyle, actions, and apparel. Yes, how you dress affects how people treat you in general.
Respect is how people in power regard you. The weak and powerless, or criminal, tend to respond poorly to respectful figures. Guards and people in authority tend to react well, giving you a chance to surrender or granting access.
Celebrity is how much common people are interested in you. While the criminal tend to think of you as a target, and the powerful think you're a fop, most common people will go out of their way to facilitate your greatness. In addition, not only does dress factor in, but so does your money and lifestyle.
Worship is people believing you are divine, or represent some higher power. Those in power tend to be worried about these people, and the commoners might think them a joke or a threat. For believers, no request is too high.
Desire is more a tool for manipulating people of all walks of life. People who aren't interested in you deride you. People who want you... well, you can't sleep your way to the top, but you can jump up a few levels. A note... desire is not actually being a slut. It's playing off people's expectations that you are.
Fear is people fearing you doing harm to them. It's the primary currency of criminals and the underworld. It's not just a reflection of what you have done, but what you might do. The higher, the more seriously people take your threats. However, it puts you at odds with the guard, and it's very easy to be sucked into a cycle of clashes with the guard.
Hated is people wanting you dead. It's something to try to avoid, as it's the KOS trigger. When hatred is low, they won't do things for you, or sell to you. If hatred gets too high then people start actively trying to kill you. At this point, it's a survival and evasion game as you become the most notorious monster to hit the streets of Dyne. It's very hard to come back from hate, though it is possible.
Can you raise two? Certainly. You can be a respected celebrity or a feared respectable person. Think Tom Hanks vrs Jon Gotti. Can you raise all five? No. Many are mutually exclusive. It's simply impossible to be everything to everyone, and you shouldn't try. Simply play through however you want and enjoy.
Also, 'disguises' offer a temporary shift to your attributes with certain people. There will be NPC's who will see through your disguise if you're not careful, and the more that call you on not being who you are, the more difficult it becomes to fool others as they suspect an impostor.
Bro that sounds sick
Sounds like a much better Dishonored.
The only suggestion I can offer is maybe allowing the player to manually consume the foods and live the lifestyle they wish, making it a setting might be taking away too much control.
I'd probably play that... Reminds me of how TES3 did character creation.
"The boss laughs about ramming the train right up the Transportation Union's ass."
Was that supposed to be "Transportation Guild's"?
Also, adapting that setting for a game? Interesting. :)
I'd play it
I've sure you've been asked this question already, but are you playing Fallout 4 yet?
Dude, Fimfiction converting sucks ass. I don't think anyone blames you.
I'd play it... A lot. And if I had the skill, time, money and crew I'd make it
You know, it's things like these that make me wish you could favorite blog posts!
Approach bethesda with this pitch !!!!
I like it. Hmm. Very Bethesda-esque what with the meshing of the storytelling in the intro with a tutorial.
Personally, I'd go for a PH total conversion of FO4. I want to dive into the hellish depths of Hoofington and return a hollow and twisted shell of my former self.
With all this dripping your brain is doing, it sounds like you need a brain plumber.
*Badum Tsss*