Ocie1

Join Date 03/2006

Lore cards

Take a page from Dragon Age's Codex and have a system for Lore and flavor text. This would help make the map less generic and give more of a RPG feel. The Card-based way information is already in the game is nicely suited for something like this. Ideally this would be for a pre-designed world map but could be adapted to randomly generated maps.

Three possibilities for such a system in terms of complexity:

1. For history and lore only - Cards that describe places of interest or important mountains and forests - Forest of Balint, Plains of the Old Ones. Can include ancient history text similar to the way Dragon Age adds text about old wars and the relationships between realms like Tevinter, Orlais and Federen. When entering 'enemy' territory, could have a change in the texts to emphasize the evil there, e.g. Circle of Human Sacrifice. Interesting text for dungeons, ruins, temples.

2. Integrated into the quest system - Have clues in the flavor text to lead to quest starting points. Have cards for objects of interest like burning caravans (quest for bandit removal, for example) or graveyards.

3. Meta-game - Collect all five cards for visiting five named grandmaster leatherworkers and gain 'Inlaid' leather armor tech or have a Risk-style turn in system (pairs or triples of similar cards for gold and resources).

Ex. Collect cards for 'Friendship of the Lizard folk' and complete for a certain number of special units.

There could be minor rewards for obtaining part of a set at 3 of 7 and 6 of 7 for example.

A very flexible system could get quite involved. For example, only 4 of 12 places of interest are on the map initially. 4 get revealed if the inital 4 are visited. 3 are 'invisible' and can be figured out from the 2nd tier texts. The last needs you to find a map first.

Such a system would be useful for modders who might want to create highly tailored worlds with background text.

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From a pure history and lore standpoint, you can even spawn cards based on actual game occurences. Medieval 2 marked locations of particularly major battles on your map.

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Great idea!

I also 'ditto' Doopliss's idea - it would be great that if a hero walks onto a tile, where there have been a great fight, on the screen the lore card be visible. It would look more or less like that:

[ DEFAULT PICTURE FOR SMALL/MEDIUM/BIG BATTLE ]

[When]

[Who vs. who]

[Rough size of the armies]

[Winning side]

Of course, the same thing could be done for doing some heroic quests (killing dragon, etc.). It would also be nice if in place of an old city (it's ruins, that is) there would be a marker which would inform about the year of founding of the city and they year when the city was destroyed.

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To me, this sounds more like an achievement system and I don't think achievements should offer technology / gold because it would put players who don't like to do achievements at a disadvantage.

Besides that, I really like your proposal, the more lore that is available in a game the better.

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Battlefield markers: I like the idea - it's like 'making your own history ! In terms of game mechanics, this is like unit statistics for me - like having a page for each unit with total damage, battles fought, %damage done for your side, strongest enemy defeated, etc. Testaments to your exploits.

My main emphasis is on adding another dimension to the map - Lore. Dragon Age uses the Codex to flesh out the religions (Chantry, Old Gods), the various surrounding realms (Orlais, Antiva), heroes of the past (Andraste, Auraline), the place dragons have in the land (are the senient?, hint about dragon cults).

On the surface, marking a Lake and having a bit of text about it seems like so much eye candy. But planned out, it could be used to knit the fabric of the land together with the RIGHT text.

Scorpiana, can you elaborate what you mean by an 'achievement system'? I think I only have a rudimentery understanding about it - it's like collecting?

My main goal was to offer up ways to interact with the Lore. In Dragon Age, you can read a little lore about a past king and how a love triangle brought the land to the brink of civil war and how he disappeared to try and avert war. I'm not finished with the game yet, but it brings to mind - where did he go? Is he still alive? What happened to that great suit of armor that was made for him??

The example of 'the five armorers' was another way to interact with the lore - instead of entering a land that 'was once part of the ancient realm of Felspar, reknown for its mineral wealth and ability to craft fine armor' and that's that - you're able to seek out the five retired great masters of the land for some benefit. Just an example though. To me, it's like building in latent quests into the map.

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Yea, clollecting the 5 armorers, ect wouldn't be a Meta-game "global" achievement but it would be an in-game achievement. Sure u might get a trophy that says (you found all 5 armorers) or something, but u would only have the game-advantage in the games where u actually went and did it, and im sure they would be in different locations each game, perhaps with similar type of clues leading to them though.

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