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Request: Branching Objectives & Alternate Endings
bardaaron
Member Posts: 545 Bounty Hunter
I know this has been brought up before, but I want to make sure it stays around as something we desire. I really want to be able to create options on the story tab. We can do so in the dialogs tab, we can even have a Dialog objective end in more than one way, but no matter what, the objective that follows is always the same. But if we could just do the same thing in the Story Tab that we can do in the Dialog Tab, it would open up a whole world of possibilities!
-Choices and consequences: Players could make choices with consequences that affect the outcome of the quest. Helping someone could affect the course of the whole adventure. I can either save the people in the burning building, or chase after the fleeing villain. If I give chase, the townspeople die. I'd have that on my conscience, and maybe there are some family members who will hold a grudge later on. If I help them, the villain escapes to do more evil.
-Role-playing and Immersion: DRAMATIC increase in the role-playing potential for characters--Do I want to find a way to sneak in through the second story window in the back, kick in the door & fight everybody, or do a favor to convince the guard to look the other way for 5 minutes? This way characters with different classes might choose to proceed differently; the quests could be made to adapt to different play styles, and players would get the chance to enjoy having their characters act in a way that makes sense to THEM. Players could also play their characters as evil if they so chose. And while some of this can be managed off the storyboard as-is, allowing branching objectives would make such situations much clearer for the player, and allow us to make much more intricate causality chains in objectives.
-Exponentially increase re-play value: If players know that a quest has different outcomes, they will play it again and again, to try and find them all.
-No more DM railroading & fiat!: This is a Dungeons and Dragons game, and as the foundry authors making up the quests, that makes us as close to DMs as a computer game can get. Every Dungeon Master's Guide and source on GMing ever* warns against railroading the Player Characters into a certain course of action, but with the linear quest line in the current foundry, that is exactly what we are FORCED to do. But branching objectives would give us the option to be GOOD DMs, and give our players options.
*exaggeration not meant to be taken literally
-Choices and consequences: Players could make choices with consequences that affect the outcome of the quest. Helping someone could affect the course of the whole adventure. I can either save the people in the burning building, or chase after the fleeing villain. If I give chase, the townspeople die. I'd have that on my conscience, and maybe there are some family members who will hold a grudge later on. If I help them, the villain escapes to do more evil.
-Role-playing and Immersion: DRAMATIC increase in the role-playing potential for characters--Do I want to find a way to sneak in through the second story window in the back, kick in the door & fight everybody, or do a favor to convince the guard to look the other way for 5 minutes? This way characters with different classes might choose to proceed differently; the quests could be made to adapt to different play styles, and players would get the chance to enjoy having their characters act in a way that makes sense to THEM. Players could also play their characters as evil if they so chose. And while some of this can be managed off the storyboard as-is, allowing branching objectives would make such situations much clearer for the player, and allow us to make much more intricate causality chains in objectives.
-Exponentially increase re-play value: If players know that a quest has different outcomes, they will play it again and again, to try and find them all.
-No more DM railroading & fiat!: This is a Dungeons and Dragons game, and as the foundry authors making up the quests, that makes us as close to DMs as a computer game can get. Every Dungeon Master's Guide and source on GMing ever* warns against railroading the Player Characters into a certain course of action, but with the linear quest line in the current foundry, that is exactly what we are FORCED to do. But branching objectives would give us the option to be GOOD DMs, and give our players options.
*exaggeration not meant to be taken literally
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by bardaaron on
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Comments
That being said, everything mentioned and more is doable and even without any background combats/timers/whatever. Am not saying its easy (actually the storyboard is limiting the possibilities partially). It takes thinking and more work.
What would make things way better tho is mixed conditions (dlg reached AND cmpnt completed) and, ofc OR condition (well or NAND and be done with it definitely XD ).
All the railroading is caused by authors, relying on the story board. And so far, in the hundreds of foundries i played, i saw only one which had a good dirrection (even tho poorly designed/not rly finished idea). And ofc our players here are somehow very far from real dungeon crawling, exploring and decision making (well especially when a reading ability and/or environment awareness is required), just notice the whines when someone gets stuck in a quest (being it foundry or main content) just because the fairy trail is not present.
Nvm, dont take it wrong, i sure am not against anything that improves the foundry.
Hack/Workaround: Advanced Foundry Topics:Missing Boolean Logic
Encounter Matrix | Advanced Foundry Topics
However it should also be noted that with genuinely creative construction of Foundry quests (and missions in Star Trek) most of these requests can be achieved right now, except that the final goal of the adventure must always be the same.
Player choice affect outcome: I've done this before, though it does require a lot of work.
Role playing immersion - as exampled: doable. Unfortunately we have no way to animate "kicking down the door" and other visual limitations. But the example as described is 100% doable.
Regarding DM railroading: it's unfortunate the very design of the game engine more or less defaults to this approach, it is *lazy* adventure creation to "follow this paradigm". It takes a lot of work and passionate resolve to create everything you want to create and it is doable. A really good UGC adventure might take months to create and construct.
The OP requests are legitimate and wanted. But there also are limitations to what the game engine is capable of and it currently leans toward the side of safety (error trapping: so it's easier to not create broken ****e, even though it's still easy to do).
My response to the OP: Yes, I agree. However, if you truly want to create the scenario you describe, create a thread asking how. @Eldarth and myself and many others deeply experienced with Foundry are more than happy to help you do these.
Again you could have it all easy just by having none of it being part of the main quest itself, but players often complain about not having any indication in the quest tracker...
Yeah, it's a thought at least, and probably a pain to do like others have said.
I have many alts, I am a class and race rainbow.
Actually this bit isn't even that hard to do. You can have different dialog options just by clicking "add response" to whatever the NPC says & filling it in. I don't know of a limit to how many responses you can come up with. I've seen quests where these options are simply present, and some where the author has tagged them with "[polite]" and so forth to make sure you know what tactic you are using.
As for the consequences, it's a bit of work to make far reaching consequences, but in the short term you can trigger an encounter to spawn at "Dialog prompt Reached," so if they say the wrong thing, you can make a fight occur.