16 réponses à ce sujet

[kamal_]

In PnP, it's up to the player to think of their character being able to take an action, let's say casting Identify to make a conversational puzzle easier. As a builder I have to anticipate that the player might want to do this, and account for it. But how do you both program that option in and not make it automatically appear (if the character knows identify in the example) in some rational fashion? Or should the option automatically appear?

If you automatically allow the character to cast identify if they know it, the element of the player having to think of the option is removed. The difficulty is reduced because the "solution" is automatically presented to the player just by having a spell available. I can move the "think of it" element from the player to the character via adding a statistic DC check. That might annoy people who do think of casting identify but are not presented with the option even though the pc knows the spell.

Outside of conversations, it's simple of course, you program behaviors into the OnSpellCastAt of the placeable, and like PnP it's up to the player to think of it.

Edit: changed topic title.

Modifié par kamal_, 27 novembre 2011 - 08:31 .

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

With a computer game, the problem is that the player knows that the game runs on a limited set of rules, and largely restricts their thought to those known rules and conventions. With a DM, though, he player knows that the DM is flexible enough to bend and break rules, so the player doesn't limit their thinking to rules and conventions, but rather to what they think they can convince the DM to do, and thinking in-character is a great way to convince the DM to do something unusual. Without a DM to observe, interpret, and answer questions, though, players tend to think in very narrow terms. So I would just make the identify option always available as long as the spell is available, assuming that any PC intelligent or wise enough to know the spell would also think to use it. You might also try hiding the identify option behind a skill/ability check, something like "Hmm...let me think about this for a moment...", so the player knows they had a chance to do something and why they failed.

[The Fred]

Yeah, it's tough in conversation. I can only really suggest trying to rig up most of these things so that the innovation happens outside of conversation.

[Shaun the Crazy One]

I think Lugaid hit most of the key points here.

The real trick is to be consistent in game play. Don't make 1 or 2 conversations where a spell can be used if it's memorized, make it a core part of the game play. In fact I specifically remember a part in SoZ where you had to cast darkness on a door to open it, something they had never done before leaving myself and many other players at a loss until we give up and check game faqs. Learning from the same example, there should always be more than one solution to overcome obstacles like these.

[The Fred]

That's certainly what I am doing with spells like Charm Person, and I think what Kamal is doing too. The only probably is that doesn't lend itself to innovative solutions, since they wouldn't be quite so innovative if they were built into gameplay. You do want to make it so that these sorts of things aren't too hard for players to think up, though.

[M. Rieder]

I have struggled with this. In some situations I make it pretty obvious. In others, I will handle it out of conversation to keep the mystery, but I will put nodes on companions that give pretty good hints. that way people who want hints can get them and people who like to slug out a mystery get their fix.

One other option is using the text entry box. That's the one that you use to rename objects when crafting. If you have a password or something like that and you want to make it a puzzle instead of a dialog option, you can use the text entry box.

The code to control it is in one of the crafting includes.

[Morbane]

M. Rieder wrote...

One other option is using the text entry box. That's the one that you use to rename objects when crafting. If you have a password or something like that and you want to make it a puzzle instead of a dialog option, you can use the text entry box.
The code to control it is in one of the crafting includes.

This has possibilities out the b'zang 
Now all I need is a reason to try it out:devil:

Modifié par Morbane, 21 novembre 2011 - 07:58 .

[M. Rieder]

It's a pretty neat little trick. I used it only minimally in TWA2. I'm going to try to think of some way to implement for TWA3.

[M. Rieder]

Another option is to use tag-based scripting. For example, there is one area that has lots of puzzles and keys that are supposed to go with different placeables. If I were to use the dialogue approach, the answer would be super-obvious because the dialogue option would be there. But if I use tag-based scripting, I can make it where the PC has to choose which key to activate on the placeable that it goes with. I put a little DM note on the description of the key to let players know that it is used differently than most keys.

[manageri]

Shaun the Crazy One wrote...

I think Lugaid hit most of the key points here.

The real trick is to be consistent in game play. Don't make 1 or 2 conversations where a spell can be used if it's memorized, make it a core part of the game play. In fact I specifically remember a part in SoZ where you had to cast darkness on a door to open it, something they had never done before leaving myself and many other players at a loss until we give up and check game faqs. Learning from the same example, there should always be more than one solution to overcome obstacles like these.

I remember actually casting the spell on the door outside of conversation, then thinking I had the wrong answer because it only worked through conversation (and the spell didn't show up in convo for some reason, maybe it was the drow racial version or something), and didn't figure it out until several playthroughs later /shakesfist.

I do like spells in convo a lot though, Tiberius used it a lot in Maimed God's Saga.

[foil-]

If you are talking in conversation only then:

Would it be possible to add a skills, spells, feats system into conversation.

For spells, you would always have available a spells tree to go to that would list all spells you have memorized (not sure if that is possible). Clicking on the spells option brings you down a tree that organises the spells into groups. Most would just lead back to the original conversation tree. One or two may open up new dialogue trees.

It seems that the SoZ dialogue system is able to recognise character skills. Would it be possible to add another level to a spells tree specific to each character in the party?

I can see players wasting oodles of time in a system like this. And loving every minute of it. Of course we are getting into adventure game territory here where you have to combine non-nonsensical items together for a desired effect. Ah well, the adventure genre needs some new life breathed into it. Why not marry it with D&D.

When I read the topic title, I thought this was going to be a meta gaming topic. Turns out its much more interesting than that thankfully.

Modifié par foil-, 27 novembre 2011 - 02:26 .

[kamal_]

foil- wrote...

If you are talking in conversation only then:

Would it be possible to add a skills, spells, feats system into conversation.

For spells, you would always have available a spells tree to go to that would list all spells you have memorized (not sure if that is possible). Clicking on the spells option brings you down a tree that organises the spells into groups. Most would just lead back to the original conversation tree. One or two may open up new dialogue trees.

It seems that the SoZ dialogue system is able to recognise character skills. Would it be possible to add another level to a spells tree specific to each character in the party?

I can see players wasting oodles of time in a system like this. And loving every minute of it. Of course we are getting into adventure game territory here where you have to combine non-nonsensical items together for a desired effect. Ah well, the adventure genre needs some new life breathed into it. Why not marry it with D&D.

When I read the topic title, I thought this was going to be a meta gaming topic. Turns out its much more interesting than that thankfully.

Adding the ability to detect if a party member has a spell memorized or is under the effect of a spell in conversation is pretty trivial. Determining a useful application of a spell can be harder. There's about 30 spells I check for in Crimmor, charm and fear type spells obviously, but also things like sleep, hold, poison. Haste and True Strike are great ways to cheat at mumblypeg for example. You also have to remember npc's aren't going to just stand there while you cast a spell on them.

Crimmor's Hidden Theurgy "feat" allowing you to cast a spell on someone in conversation requires you have the feat (it's technically a local int), know the spell, and pass a hidden set of skill checks. Only then is the option for that spell presented. You have to disguise the spellcasting into the conversation. It requires concentration (to keep track of what you're doing, conversing with the npc and casting on them), sleight of hand (hide the somatic component/work it into a natural seeming conversational motion), and spellcraft (you have to understand the intricacies of the spell beyong just memorization to be able to make it work outside "normal casting").

Instead of casting directly on the npc, I'm casting on an ipoint at the npc's location. This gets around the inability to cast these spells on non-hostiles. You can get options that wouldn't necesasrily be useful, such as Cause Fear on a npc too powerful to be affected by the spell. This is because in PnP a player might think to try to Cause Fear on an npc that wouldn't be affected, try it, and waste the spell.

The other thing is some situations call for the npc to remain in the spell affected state for a period of time. If you need an npc to cooperate with you for an hour or two, Charm Person isn't going to cut it, since it only lasts a few rounds. In cases like that I try to think ahead of the player and give a Hidden Theurgy conversation option that says there's no point in casting a spell because you need continued cooperation past the spell duration from the npc.

[Lugaid of the Red Stripes]

With the chat-bots in The Danaan Unvanquished, I was able to make the conversation skills more useful in some of the conversations. It used a rather clunky interface, though, clicking a [other actions] conversation node in the middle of the conversation.

If you could come up with a short list of 'conversation spells' I could see this working. For specific conversations, at particular points, the player is offered the [cast a spell/use ability] option as a conversation node. Clicking on the node brings up a list of spells and other abilities that might be useful in this situation, and the player gets to pick one. Each ability would have a different effect on the conversation.

For example, an NPC reveals to you a mysterious item. You can a. Cast Identify, b. Bluff, c. use Lore, d. use Charm, e. Taunt, or f. Appraise. Identify would help you here, but even a successful Appraise or Charm check won't get you anything useful. The builder would have to write quick one-line NPC responses to both the success and failure of each option, but most of these could be generic. Different conversations would allow different spells/abilities to be used, but there should always be enough options, including a few useless options, that the player has to think a little bit before choosing.

Writing this out in a conversation tree would be complicated, but you can use scripts and custom tokens to simplify everything. The list of options is generated at run-time with a script, so all your complicated conditionals (i.e. has which version of the Identify Spell/brains enough to use it) can take place in the script, and not on the conversation node itself. At the end of the process, a simple integer is set on the NPC, which you can then use on the gc node to get the conversation re-started.

[kamal_]

I think I made a thread on conversation spells a while back. Can't find it. Generally, things fall into a few categories.

The uses of the Charm/Domincate spells and Fear type spells should be fairly obvious.
Clarivoyance allows you to see things you shouldn't be able to, it makes a good way to cheat at things like card games or "guess what I'm holding".
Mind Blank makes you great at card games, you have no "tell".
Premonition/Dark Foresight allow the pc to see a few seconds into the future, making this a good way to auto-succeed at many things since the player would know the results of their choices.
The various spells affecting player speed such as Haste/Expeditious Retreat etc allow a player to auto-succeed at reflex type things such as mumblypeg.
Identify/Legend Lore should have various fairly obvious effects.
True Strike can allow insight into things like how exactly a murder victim was killed if it was a fighting death ("he was stabbed at close range with a dagger").

Even if you don't allow casting mid-conversation, detecting if a player is already under the effect of a spell is simple.

A good thing about most of the conversational spells is that most of them are lower level.

[The Fred]

foil- wrote...
Would it be possible to add a skills, spells, feats system into conversation.

For spells, you would always have available a spells tree to go to that would list all spells you have memorized (not sure if that is possible). Clicking on the spells option brings you down a tree that organises the spells into groups.

As Kamal says, it's relatively trivial to check for spell on conversation nodes. He's doing it in Crimmor, and I'm doing it in The Dragon Dynasty (though I imagine we will have slightly different takes on the concept). However, modifying the GUI so you have an actual special button or something could be pretty neat...

kamal_ wrote...
Instead of casting directly on the npc, I'm casting on an ipoint at the npc's location. This gets around the inability to cast these spells on non-hostiles.

Actually, I found that if you are instructed via script to cast such a spell on a non-hostile, you will. It seems to be the interface which is the issue, rather than the casting action itself. I didn't really manage to make players cast spells in conversation satisfactorily, though, so I currently have it ending the conversation (it's only the Charm/Dominates at the moment, so from there you can optionally engage in conversation again).

[kamal_]

The Fred wrote...
I currently have it ending the conversation (it's only the Charm/Dominates at the moment, so from there you can optionally engage in conversation again).

Don't npc's tend to not like that (eg go hostile when the spell wears off)?

Modifié par kamal_, 27 novembre 2011 - 08:31 .

[The Fred]

No, charm and dominate effects don't seem to trigger hostile reactions (I think only damage does, everything else is scripted in). I did have to alter the script to remove the reaction checking so it would actually fire. It's probably the case that it triggers a hostile OnSpellCastAt event, but you can just change that to non-hostile if cast on an NPC.