How do I make this scene even MORE ironic?

lonnehart · July 2013

A while back I posted a thread about a scene of irony. I'm not in the habit of necroing old threads so here goes.

You meet the quest contact who tells you an advanced group of adventurers came in before you, all with a GS of 90k. When you enter the dungeon proper, you find an exploit hole in the wall... and it's apparent these high gear adventurers used it to bypass the mobs on the first floor. Instead of using the hole, you fight through the first floor, taking care of the enemies the contact asked you to get rid of.

Somewhere in the dungeon you meet a monster who is easy to defeat. You run into the adventurers mentioned earlier... and all the evidence points to them being killed by this monster you simply brushed aside. One of them is dying, and with his dying breath he accuses you of having cheated somehow to defeat said monster. And you find the other end of the dungeon exploit hole you encountered earlier.

So would it be ironic if I made that monster that killed them something incredibly weak, like an Imp?

Yeah... this is my "take that" to the posts I've seen on the forums advocating glitching and cheating in the dungeons.

I'm also pretty sure because of this scene the quest will be onestarred to death...

dzogen · July 2013

Your scene is inherently ironic, but might be made more so if the monster used an exploit to beat the exploiters.

mee2002 · July 2013

dzogen wrote: »

Your scene is inherently ironic, but might be made more so if the monster used an exploit to beat the exploiters.

Oooo, now that's a fun idea. Maybe have the NPCs stuck n a wall...

lonnehart · July 2013

dzogen wrote: »

Your scene is inherently ironic, but might be made more so if the monster used an exploit to beat the exploiters.

So could it be more ironic if it was an Ogre who used that exploit? After all, they're supposed to be big, dumb creatures. No way they could manage the technical knowhow to use such things...

dzogen · July 2013

lonnehart wrote: »

So could it be more ironic if it was an Ogre who used that exploit? After all, they're supposed to be big, dumb creatures. No way they could manage the technical knowhow to use such things...

It doesn't have to be an ogre.

If it was a tiny imp like you initially suggested and not an ogre, that would be irony because it's an incogruity between what you think would happen (imp getting killed), and what happened (imp killing them). If the imp was using an exploit to win, that would be doubly ironic because he used the exploiters own way of winning against them, thus non verbally communicating the 90k gearscore people's own inherent weakness.

On top of that, after running across the scene of dead adventurers, your character said, "Well, looks like that GS of 90k helped," that would be an example of what is called verbal irony (the contradiction between the facts and the implied description of them establishes the irony). It would also happen to be sarcastic, although sarcasm and irony are not always the same thing.

Now imagine your character ran across the death scene, and there was visual evidence of the actual exploit the imp used at the scene, although the innocent adventurer did not recognize it as such, that would be dramatic irony, since the audience would know what was going on, but your main character does not.

Now imagine that this imp who beats these uber adventurers comes from a long line of imps who were never warriors to begin with, that would be historical irony, since the future turned out differently than the imp's ancestors had prophesized.

The list goes on and on as there are many types of irony and many ways of expressing it, but those are a few ways you could make the scene more ironic.

lonnehart · July 2013

I guess I'll go ahead and make up an "exploit" as describing actual exploits would get me in trouble. NPCs getting stuck in a wall sounds like a good idea.

As for the imp and adventurers even having access to such exploits, they probably found them by accident (as far as i can tell, a lot of exploits are found this way), but instead of telling the authorities they attempted to use the exploits for personal gain.

I'm also thinking of adding that said adventurers don't respawn because they were caught using exploits resulting in their permadeath (being hit with Cryptic's Ban Hammer). Or maybe not. Adding too much detail to a scene could ruin it...

How do I make this scene even MORE ironic?

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