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Post by askhati on May 7, 2010 6:57:04 GMT
pi4t, how would you feel about being my official proof-reader? Think it would cut out alot of this back&forth posting/editting/re-posting! And then you'll get your name in the center of the "Special Thanks" page...?
Also, are the sections on Potions and Armour Damage clear enough? I tried to avoid ambiguity without over-explaining the ideas, but if you could read those sections and understand what I was getting at, I'm happy.
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Post by pi4t on May 7, 2010 15:37:04 GMT
Yes please! How do you edit pdfs, anyway?
As for the other question, probably better to ask someone who hasn't read this thread.
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Post by askhati on May 10, 2010 7:19:05 GMT
Progress update: - written section count is up to 4/550 (it was a distracting weekend) - have converted Zager Krahl's character into a multiplayer class on the mongoose LW boards, posted it as the "Hammerlandese Rekenarim". I'm still trying to find some indications on how those MP games and classes are supposed to work, so the character at mongoose might be total rubbish. The idea was to convert some of the characters ZK encounters in his adventure into MP classes... But I'll have to see how that goes.
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Post by askhati on May 15, 2010 20:34:15 GMT
An extract from the writing. An old termite mound, as high as your shoulder and now home to a colony of bees, stands in the centre of a small, dusty clearing, and a badger is busy savaging the one side of the mound, claws digging into the pitted flanks. The swarming cloud of bees seem strangely disorganised though, and when the badger finally breaks through the one wall of the mound and disappears into the earthen construct, many of the bees simply stop flying, dropping to the ground in clusters of writhing legs and wings. You watch the spectacle with a measure of fascination, and the cause of the malaise reveals itself moments later, when a series of yelps and growls from the termite mound culminates in an explosive disintegration of the tip of the mound and the expulsion of the badger in a blur of flailing limbs. Clinging to the side of its head is a scarlet blob the size of your clenched fist, and as the badger falls to the base of the mound, claws frantically scratching at this unfamiliar assailant, a dozen more of the scarlet blobs rise from the now-open tip of the mound, circling menacingly on black wings before descending on the stricken badge in a flurry of glowing blue stingers and serrated legs. From your position at the edge of the clearing, you immediately recognize the glowing stingers as the signature weapon of the deadly Doactar wasps, distant cousins to the equally deadly Antah wasps that occur through much of the Darklands and the Drakkarim territories. Incapable of surviving on their own, the Doactar wasps spread by attacking a regular bee colony and taking the queen hostage, using their psychic hive mind to override her commands to the colony and forcing the colony to serve their own needs, which includes cannibalistic habits and the laying of parasitic eggs in the bodies of host insects. Their glowing stingers, which contains a potent neuro-toxin, is a physical manifestation of their psychic powers, and the blur of weaving lights around the stricken badger is evidence enough – and warning - of their agitation. It does not take long for the badger to give up and scurry off into the surrounding bushes, its motions already noticeably slower from the effect of the Doactar toxin, yet the wasps do not give up, chasing after it like a cloud of malignant sparks, and within moments the clearing is devoid of any movement except the odd twitch from the carpet of land-bound bees.
My word-count per section is currently significantly higher than that of the LW books, so the writing is taking some time. Hopefully the longer text is seen more as worldbuilding than as a detriment...
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Post by Oiseau on May 16, 2010 18:02:11 GMT
It's very well written, but at the same time, I hope you don't plan on including too many of these verbose descriptions of scenes and situations which have no direct impact on Zager's quest. If the wasps are going to be attacking him, fine. Otherwise, you might want to reduce the superfluous word-count a tiny bit. (Then again, if this is the exception rather than the rule, it's not a problem either.)
Also take into consideration your adventure's overall linearity and length. If such scenes occur in spots where the player will pass every time, this will lead to diagonal reading and section skipping. If, on the other hand, they occur on various non-mandatory trails, they can add interesting background information during Krahl's travels.
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Post by beowuuf on May 16, 2010 18:31:16 GMT
I agree. The descriptions are very well written and vivid, but there is the old adage of 'if everything is special, nothing is.' This would be a fantastic world building descriptor if Zagar needed to deal with this threat (his prey just threw some macguffin into one of those mounds) but as an incidental too many of these could be a turn off. Also, you might be missing a trick. Zagar's reaction to this is perhaps more important than vividly describing the thing itself or spending time on the badger's fate. Does he smypathise with the badger? Find it amusing? Feel contempt for the stupidity of the thing? If you want to leave the reader freer to play Zagor's personality in their own head, you can still have him thinking of a time he encountered this personally. That might make a good hook between him (and hence the reader) to the world - and build some subtle emotional reaction to the sight. Did he stumble into one of these as a child, or did a friend/brother? Is enduring an attack by these creatures part of Drakkar training when young? Also, a minor thing, but I find long comma-spliced sentences make me skip quickly through the prose. Sorry, I hope you take such nit-picking as a sign you are obviously doing alot right with this! And of course, take it with as much pinch of salt as needed since I am not undertaking and similar endeavour Keep up the good work.
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Post by askhati on May 17, 2010 6:44:46 GMT
@ Oiseau: That is actually an excellent idea - keep the main sections streamlined, and to the worldbuilding in the off-track sections (like this one - you need the Foraging skill to get to this section)
@ beowuuf: I agree - the description is pointless unless it affects ZK. However, what the posted section does not show, is that the scene actually DOES affect him - after the badger and the wasps bugger off, he sneaks in and breaks the mound open to look for honey. He finds some - but it is streaked through with Doactar venom, which makes it completely inedible. It does however make for a perfect combat poison (I included poison rules in the Combat Rules section, so introducing some poison early on to familiarize the reader made sense to me), and he can then use the poison in the very next section against the boar he had been tracking.
Here are the stats for the venom: Doactar Venom (Backpack Item) +2 damage per round, opponent takes -1 CS unless Mindshielded
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Post by askhati on May 20, 2010 8:51:18 GMT
Progress update: - written section count is up to 12/550 (my first release will be at the Section 118 bottle-neck, so I should maybe say 12/118 progress) - like any set of new shoes that have to be walked in for a while before they become comfortable, the writing had some wrinkles to iron out before it got up to speed. However, I am now happy to report that I have finally found the correct ZK mindset for the writing, and things are going considerably faster. He - ZK - is turning into a much colder bastard than I initially envisioned him...
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Post by Zero on May 27, 2010 13:39:54 GMT
How's this still coming along? Any progress?
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Post by askhati on May 27, 2010 13:55:17 GMT
Progress update: - written section count is up to 19/118 (about 14 pages in Word at font size 12) - progress has slowed down the last week, mainly due to exhaustion on my part. Writing an hour or two every day is tricky when you are half asleep from fatigue... However, the bones of the second adventure, The Haunting of Lajakona, have started to form in the back of my mind, so the time was not a complete waste.
Also, I realise that it might be some time before I can release the first 118 sections, so please bear with me. I have a week in July where I'm hoping to get a decent chunk done, as well a hunting trip next month which might yield some productive evenings.
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Post by Zero on May 27, 2010 15:16:25 GMT
Killer. Don't mean to pressure you; the updates to this thread were pretty consistent so I just thought I'd check in.
Do what you can when you can. This is shaping up to be pretty sweet.
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Post by pi4t on May 27, 2010 20:22:11 GMT
The trophies system: how about having a rule that after every x trophies, you get a new focus, instead of every book. That might fit in better with his character.
Just an idea.
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Post by pi4t on May 27, 2010 20:30:03 GMT
What?
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Post by askhati on May 28, 2010 10:35:34 GMT
What indeed...
The idea is plausible, except that it would encourage the player to tank in and kill everything in sight. Using diplomacy and stealth would not be an option, which would severely limit the options available to the player. XP farming is not something I want to encourage... The initial idea was to use the trophy counter as a currency of sorts, given how martial and warlike the Drakkarim are - you would use your trophy 'currency' to buy special armour, weapons, potions, and so forth. However, that will still penalise players that favour less combat, and so I decided to drop the system. I might revive it for the Death Knight series though... Maybe integrate it with their weapons and armour: each time you kill an opponent, you make a notch on your weapon; once you have ten notches on the weapon, it gives you +1 CS permanently. Same for armour, except seven notches gets you +1 EN.
Something like that...
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Post by zut on May 28, 2010 11:07:53 GMT
That would be something! I've always felt that your skills (CS) should get better as you go through more and more fights - I thought it little unfair that after a dozen fights I had managed to survive my CS is still the same. On the other hand - RNT proved to have a balancing 'power' - one started to learn how the RNT looks like and so could improve his "random" numbers. Now, I'm almost 100% sure this was not JD's intention and memorizing RNT is kind of cheating...but it does make some sort of sense that the more you fight/take a risk (pick a number from RNT) the more easier it should get.
Still (as much as I like the idea), I'm not sure whether this 'kill-count' wouldn't encourage kill-'em-all style of playing.
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