54 réponses à ce sujet

[Eguintir Eligard]

Some ideas I have had in mind for faster module production. Thought I would point some out in case they appeal to anyone else.


Episode modules:
-Little 1 to 2 hour efforts. Could be a series with the same saga thats simply released 1 chapter at a time. Or could be a new adventure every time (tho maybe keep the levels in continuity) like episodes of Quantam leap.

An idea I had for this: Your character is the right hand man of some good God/Goddess like Lathander. Whenever there is unrest in a region of the realms, he "reincarnates" you as person. In the prologue it briefly describes where you lived and how you grew up and you start an adventure to save the area. Your character of course never remembers they are being reincarnated and approach the adventure like all of us; with no true knowledge of life after death. But when the adventure ends you die of old age in the epilogue, and each time you wake up in  "heaven" you suddenly remember everything like your life was a dream. But you know it happened and you go talk to your god again about how well that last mission went and when is the next one. Then it repeats the next time he needs you in the realms. And that sets the basis for a new adventure every episode.


R.A.D. Campaign with no planning and no censorship of ideas:
Alright I'm sure we've all done this to some extent (building part of our modules not knowing how a dungeon should end or even be laid out) but we usually have characters, a start, middle and end in mind for a campaign.

What if you threw out the pre-thoughts but also, threw out the book on restricting yourself to things that are coherent/made good sense.

This would be a way to make a full size campaign, but just faster. I am the biggest proponent of planning ahead. I know through real world work experience that it cuts time in half or more. But thats only because it keeps you on task and eliminates rework or scope creep. What if you didnt have to keep to a task? For this idea to work its critical that you throw out any rules that would force you to stop and think or curb you hammering away at the toolset.

So you get in the toolset start an area, finish it, put in some characters and a way to progress. Likely you aren't thinking more than one area ahead. And maybe you just "feel" like doing an area with a completely different environment but you cant see how its possible within the story. So you change it. It can be far out and ridiculous.

You start out in a fishing village. You kill some marauding sahaugins on the shore, but now you want a winter area. So you step in a mysterious portal to icewind dale. You fight some crazed frost giants and then a giant dragon swallows you. Inside his guts its so big however, that there are several other creatures living inside, and you fight for your life inside his stomach. Then you want to do an elven tree forts area so the dragon can conveniently drop you off somewhere with elves. You wouldn't stray out of the D&D lore or rules, its just you wouldnt stick to the "low level characters must stay in low level places and progress slowly", you would go wherever you felt the need and with whatever monsters should be there. Its critical not to waste time stopping to think is that ok to do this with that, or to go back and redo something you put more than a few minutes work into because you think you have a better idea. Just add it in to the next area.

The pros with this kind of design is you might get a long playable adventure, that still looks like it has polish in the areas and encounters with much less time. Especially if its linear there is far less variables and quests to track backward or in circular progress.

Cons are it likely wont have any kind of foreshadowing. A lot of people might find it just too ridiculous to fight through githyanki in Sigil and then warp into a tavern full of topless vampire ogresses. Could be very disjointed.

Modifié par Eguintir Eligard, 21 avril 2011 - 05:26 .

[The Fred]

I have to say, despite the fact that I avoid thinking if I can help it, and generally don't plan too far ahead, being able to throw stuff together without constraints would be pretty cool. How about some sort of portal campaign? Maybe portals (possibly even planar portals) are really common in your setting (a la Sigil) and it's common to hop from one area to another seemingly randomly. You could even make quite a well-planned and "jointed" (opposite of "disjointed") module with a main storyline like this, but not be restricted by being set in a cetain locale. In fact, you'd probably be free to change any area you had planned at any time, because you're not constrained by geography. I have to say, this sort of idea is quite appealing.

[Eguintir Eligard]

If you had a camera on you even for your typical unplanned style, I am willing to bet you pause and think for about 10 to 30 seconds before every thing you do (starting a new terrain texture, placing a new variable etc).

[kamal_]

I can't find the threads right now, but I've previously tossed out a number of quick module ideas and a concept for a portal based epic campaign

[Morbane]

kamal_ I think it was in one of the community project threads where you mentioned the idea. Possibly in the olde forums...

Modifié par Morbane, 21 avril 2011 - 01:35 .

[M. Rieder]

I think the episode idea is very good. With all the prefabs on the vault, it would be easy to get a half-dozen of them or so together to make a setting for the episodes. From there, it's just add quests. I think that would really streamline things. I also think that collaboration is a key. One person making one module just takes an insane amount of time. If teams of modders could organize well with each modder taking a piece, you could produce a module in a fraction of the time.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

Just a random thought, but maybe what we need, rather than teams of modders, is some sort of open-source free-for-all. Like a big forum where different content creators hawk their wares, writers just offering up conversations, short-story style plot summaries, and others throwing up pre-fab areas, creatures, and scripts.

I think managing a team of amateur hobbyist modders is next to impossible, but many people work well when they can take a finished piece and work with it, just like the PnP conversions or the romance mods for the OC.

It could work like this: A writes a short story, B creates a companion character for the story, C creates a few areas for the story, D scripts out a quest using A's story, and asks A to write all the quest-giver dialogue. Then B sees this other cool area that C came up with, and writes a side quest about it. D puts the two together, and A starts thinking about the next chapter in the story. The point is, they all don't really have to work together, with schedules and task sheets, rather they just all churn out their own bits of raw content, and somebody else stitches them all together.

I think the key is to get the logorrhetic writer people together with the quiet area people, and keep everything simple enough that you don't need master scripters to take care of everything. Really, once you've got a nice plot and a nice area, everything else is just painting down encounter triggers.

[MokahTGS]

Actually, speaking of prefabs, I've always wanted to do a prefab adventure challenge for the community. Everyone takes a prefab and creates a short adventure that only uses that prefab. This concept would fall into the short mod (1-2 hours) concept and keep builders on a short leash, keeping development time to a minimum...as long as people didn't grab crazy huge prefabs...

Perhaps I'll spearhead something like that at a later date...

[M. Rieder]

Lugaid of the Red Stripes wrote...

Just a random thought, but maybe what we need, rather than teams of modders, is some sort of open-source free-for-all. Like a big forum where different content creators hawk their wares, writers just offering up conversations, short-story style plot summaries, and others throwing up pre-fab areas, creatures, and scripts.

I think managing a team of amateur hobbyist modders is next to impossible, but many people work well when they can take a finished piece and work with it, just like the PnP conversions or the romance mods for the OC.

It could work like this: A writes a short story, B creates a companion character for the story, C creates a few areas for the story, D scripts out a quest using A's story, and asks A to write all the quest-giver dialogue. Then B sees this other cool area that C came up with, and writes a side quest about it. D puts the two together, and A starts thinking about the next chapter in the story. The point is, they all don't really have to work together, with schedules and task sheets, rather they just all churn out their own bits of raw content, and somebody else stitches them all together.

I think the key is to get the logorrhetic writer people together with the quiet area people, and keep everything simple enough that you don't need master scripters to take care of everything. Really, once you've got a nice plot and a nice area, everything else is just painting down encounter triggers.

That is sort of what I had in mind, loose organization with each modder taking care of different modular part.  I really think this model will work.  It has to be the right group and everyone has to be willing to designate and listen to a final "executive" so that things can actually be finished.  I think a small group of 2-4 could put out a 5 hour module in 2-3 months with this format.  Cut the time if there are premade areas. 

I was thinking that a group of modders could use the Tales of the Sword Coast prefab areas and pump out modules pretty easily, or so it would seem, as long as there was a good plot.

[Eguintir Eligard]

I dont mind doing a lot of the building process, scripts, areas, vfx and all. But what sucks more than anything on this earth is when I have to do conversations. I hate the editor, I hate writing multiple reply lines I just hate hate hate it. That said its not just about me, but if there WERE a pool of people sowcasing certain talents, I would really only need the writers who enjoy making conversations, given a basic outline. Thats assuming such a demographic exists. Im not even a bad writer, I can do a story easily in word. I hate the way a conversation has to be written tho so I tend rush through it with generic replies and every character speaks the same way.

Modifié par Eguintir Eligard, 21 avril 2011 - 06:59 .

[kamal_]

The prefab stuff would be all done if you separate out your areas from your released modules. I released my PoE areas long ago, but no one has ever told me they use them.

[Eguintir Eligard]

I kind of have a different take on this "you must use a prefab" contest. What would intrigue me more and I think would kind of unofficially force people to use prefabs anyway, would be a time limited contest.

One month adventure episodes.
That's it everyone has a hard deadline that their version 1.0 must be done by and how you use that time is up to your judgement (and ya, pretty much forced to use prefabs arent you?).

I think it would help alot with people who question if they really do need to spend as much time as they do perfecting things, or can they make something equally polished by curbing bad time sink habits. If the feedback from the players is much the same as they get from their full blown 1+ year development campaigns, it may give them food for thought.

[The Fred]

Prefab areas are common but prefab convos, quests and even mini-adventures could be quite cool.

The problem with a short-time-limited contest is that some people are too busy to be able to do something is such a timeframe. That said, if it was very short, you could run the contest more than once and people would be able to join in when they felt they were able.

[Arkalezth]

@Kamal:

http://social.biowar...7/index/6292469

[Shallina]

I like making area and scripting event.

Conversation related stuff can quiclky becomme a nightmare.

[The Fred]

Yeah, I don't mind convos too much myself, but they can quickly grow into mammoth tasks which I tend to get bored of before their conclusion.

[M. Rieder]

I really enjoy writing dialogue, but it is very difficult to playtest, especially when there are multiple branches for different skills, genders, options etc... Good conversation writing is one of the more time consuming things.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Another fun idea (along the lines of ridiculous and inconsistent storylines/ no planning) is to plan a 10 level campaign. One author starts it off and has 2 weeks and then they pass it to the next person with no input whatsoever on where they take the story and so on for 3 months.

[The Fred]

That could be quite cool, a bit like that game where each person writes a sentance, and kinda like what we're doing with Project T. The only trouble would be if there were half-finished things languishing when it was passed on.

[kamal_]

Everyone should feel free to pick pocket as much as you wish from PoE.

[The Fred]

I guess there really is no honour amongst thieves.

[Eguintir Eligard]

youd have to be pretty dense to leave half finished things knowing you have a time limit. Stop assuming the worst of every idea and get on the band wagon

[Shaughn78]

I like the idea of a builder making an area for a story, having some type of main quest for the area, then passing the campaign onto another builder to continue the story. This could turn into a neat thing. Once you pass on the campaign you lose all say over direction and all that.

Another idea:
A single prefab is choosen and builders can do some minor changes, lighting, a few placeables and whatnot, but the area as a whole should be very similiar. Then each builder makes a story for that area. Some type of reason why the player can't leave the area and why it keeps changing will be needed, prehaps they entered a faulty portal or have been cursed with a Groundhog Day effect. This would be similiar to EE's R.A.D. campaign, with each visit to the area being very different and possibly quite outlandish. I think it would be interesting to see how the different builders create a story using the same area with total freedom.

Modifié par Shaughn78, 23 avril 2011 - 01:45 .

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

An idea I put up on the old boards was to have an overland map campaign with 'hooks', scripted transitions to different modules. That way, you could have a massive game that keeps getting added to, one quest at a time. All the players would have to do is to download the individual modules, and maybe stick a little override script into the campaign folder.

As for the hook, say a trigger on the overland map, maybe near a forest, runs a script that uses ExecuteScript("into_modA1003", OBJECT_SELF);, or something like that. Each mini-module maker signs up for a hook, "A1003" in this case, and writes their own script to pull the PC into their module. The overland map could be littered with hundreds of these hooks, and they would just get gradually used up as modules are added.