oops.. hello :)
>At 06:56 PM 1/9/2001 +0000, you wrote:
>>In some ways HQs are worse, you know in advance there's 3 orcs in room 1
>>and a gelatinous cube in room 2.
>
>Not really.
>(1) Hero Questers don't ever know exactly what they will meet.
>(2) The myths usually do not tell of surprise and failures.
>(3) Enemies can get into your quest and really muck it up.
Well, all true, but my point is that the basic story, if it all went right, SHOULD be entirely linear & predictable. Then the Narrator adds the 'wrinkles' above. My real problem with this is to write the original in such a way as to be interesting in it's pure form so I don't lose my player's interest before I get a chance to add these extras. Too many extras and you're no longer running the HQ you started with.
Take the HQs in KoDP. These avoid the problem of linear predictability. They're all just cut scenes anyway, and no-one expects any different! Even with Urox appearing in O&A, it's still linear & inflexible if you want to succeed. That's how I feel about my attempts to design HQ so far, a linear sequence of events with no links other than a quick "OK, you succeed. Next you meet...".
Wulf
Powered by hypermail