Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters


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Dungeon Master

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Post Tuesday, 23rd July 2019, 05:00

Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

I've been considering the problem for a while of how to give Crawl more "flavour" without meddling with gameplay too much. I considered how Dark Souls tells a story, since I think Dark Souls tells its story quite well without affecting gameplay. One thing I noticed was that some of Dark Soul's most memorable NPCs tell a story by having multiple encounters with said NPC in different parts of the world. So I considered how to do it in Crawl.

The simplest way would to have multiple uniques, each of which represent the same character at a different stages of their journey

Example:

Act I: Asterion, King in Exile
A simple, early-game melee unique (replacing Terrence?). He fights you with a weapon, has a headbutt attack, but doesn't do much else. His description implies that he was ousted only recently, and the replacement government hasn't yet gained legitimacy. His dialogue lines indicate desperation.

Act II: Asterion, the Fallen King
Same as the Asterion currently in the game.

Act III: Asterion of his second zenith

This unique replaces one of the random pan lords (the kind guarding copies of the demonic rune) in Pandemonium, having gained a new Kingdom. His mechanics are similar to Act II Asterion.

More complicated example:


Act I: Dowan, Brother of Duvessa and Duvessa, Sister of Dowan
As in the game now

Act II part 1: Duvessa alone
Duvessa without Dowan in late-D, worshipping Trog. She has access to Berserk Rage as a spell-like ability, along with Brothers-in-Arms. She might have a spriggan berserker friend with her.

Act II part 2: Dowan alone
Dowan without Duvessa with a superior spell set, appearing most in Elf but also occasionally in other branches. Description mentions his search for magical knowledge.

Act III: Duvessa, last of her line

Duvessa spawns next to several corpses, including dead spriggan berserkers, dead elf wizards, and a elf wizard corpse labelled as "Dowan". If you examine her she has the status "paralyzed by sorrow", which functions as sleep except it can't be removed by noise. You can just ignore her. If you want you can attack her, in which case she'll fight like Act II part 1 Duvessa.

Less fleshed out examples:

A mage (Erolcha?) and their unnamed pet slug -> Gastronok
Melee unique with distortion weapon (Pysche?) -> Louise
Purgy -> Purgy in a band with Transmuter -> Snorg (reskined)
Human Boris / Natasha -> Natasha alone -> Boris alone
Nergelle in Orc Mines -> Nergelle exiled from Orc Mines
Margery pre-dragonslaying (Jessica reskin?) -> Margery (as now)
Prince Ribbit pre-curse -> Prince Ribbit (as now)

Ensuring the player sees each of the linked uniques:


There are multiple ways of making sure the player sees the full story. Options I see:

1) Stochastic. Basically leave it to chance. Don't spawn more than one encounter from each unique's story, but have the encounters behave like individual uniques otherwise. This has the advantage of being simple, but the player might need to reassemble the story backwards. (Example: they could see Pan!Asterion 3 before Dungeon!Asterion 2)

2) Same game. If you encounter Asterion 1, you know you'll see Asterion 2 and 3. This requires special casing for when you "kill" Asterion 1. It could be that it prevents Asterion 2 and 3 from spawning, but that is kind of spoiler-y and might prevent most players from ever seeing Asterion 2 and 3. You could also have Asterion 1 and 2 "surrender" when they would die, dropping their items and disappearing from the game, but this would raise questions about why no other monster ever surrenders.

I strongly believe in the importance of making every game's randomization an independent event, and don't believe this feature is worth compromising that. Therefore I have discarded several alternative ideas which would use such "meta-game" elements.

Feedback requested:
Would you enjoy this feature if it were in the game? What do you like/dislike about this idea?

What do you think is the best way to ensure the player encounters the character at each stage?
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Slime Squisher

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Post Tuesday, 23rd July 2019, 06:32

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

Honestly, having to fight enemies you've already killed seems very weird. More practically, an Act I encounter would serve as a warning that the other acts will follow, which feels like a reduction in randomness / unpredictability / replay value.

I know recurring villains work well in TV series, so I can kind of appreciate the appeal of the idea from that perspective, but while it works well for TV series and fixed-content, linear-progression games, I don't think it's a good fit for highly randomized, non-linear games.

bel

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Post Tuesday, 23rd July 2019, 07:04

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

Looks fine. In general, I don't really care too much about flavour. But, as long as it's mostly cosmetic and doesn't affect gameplay too much, I'm fine with it. I would prefer option 1 over option 2.

I think comparison to the Souls games is a bit misleading. In Soulsborne game, the whole game is written as part of a story; and the story often gives you clues as to what kind of stuff you are looking for, and what to do when you find it. Crawl isn't like that, because it has never cared about flavour and there are too many "cooks", so to speak, for good flavour. This attempt is retroactively tying pieces of Crawl into a lore. Which is ok, but not really anything like Dark Souls.

Zot Zealot

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Post Tuesday, 23rd July 2019, 08:42

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

I would love option 1. I always like flavour.

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Zot Zealot

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Post Tuesday, 23rd July 2019, 12:05

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

I like the idea of building a few more story links into the DCSS universe.

Some of the best stories in DCSS now are the little hidden links. Like seeing Boris for the first time and realising "hey... this is the master of Natasha!". You probably won't see them in the same game, but the fact they are always the same across many games means you discover their story regardless.

What I mean is that the structure of roguelikes (replaying the same universe over and over again) lends itself to storytelling where the world is static but you see different aspects of it each time. Like the whole game is a giant diorama and you see just a little bit at a time. I worry that trying to show uniques at different "life stages" will just be confusing for the player. Why are Down & Duvessa fine and Asterion in his second kingdom, when last game Asterion was a fallen king and Duvessa was dead? The passage of time is inconsistent from one game to another, and I think it's important to be consistent across games.

To give an example based on Asterion (as you started with him): maybe Asterion's former kingdom was where desolation of salt is. And sometimes in desolation of salt a special unrandart spawns which references being part of Asterion's royal costume (a cloak or crown or something). The person who took over Asterion's kingdom was Boris, who ruined the kingdom (turning it into the desolation of salt) during his quest for eternal life.

I made that up off the top of my head, so it's not very good, but hopefully it gives some idea about what I like -- the existing uniques being sewn more closely into a connected fabric of background story.

Spider Stomper

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Post Tuesday, 23rd July 2019, 12:55

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

I like option 2. But... option 1 will be more effective. If this actually applies, I'll try to translate quickly.

Swamp Slogger

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Post Tuesday, 23rd July 2019, 19:30

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

I definitely like the idea. It doesn't need to be done for every unique, necessarily, but it's still a good idea.

It's a nice bit of flavor that adds to gameplay, rather than detracting from it, and it also works really well from a new-player perspective: you encounter Asterion I, so when you see Asterion II or III later in the game, you have some idea of how they'll fight.

As for design, well, I don't know how complex it'd be to set up, but I'd favor a variant option: Leave it to chance, to a degree, but only spawn the later versions if the earlier versions have already been defeated in the same game. So you can get Asterion I without II or III ever spawning, but you can't get Asterion III if you haven't already encountered and defeated I and II in the same game.

This makes the games more different from each other (Sometimes you get I, sometimes I and II, sometimes all three), but you can't get them out of order, because II won't spawn unless I has been found and defeated, and III won't spawn unless I and II have been found and defeated. Story and randomness both preserved.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 25th July 2019, 21:07

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

Maybe the easiest way to do this is just to let the unique run away to nearby stairs if they're losing the fight, or maybe if you pass them up the first time you see them. Not only does it avoid awkward questions about their survival, now it adds an interesting incentive to kill them before they get more powerful, and some extra variety from game to game.

I'm not sure it would do to have certain characters run into you repeatedly, though. Just those who are pursuing the same goal as you (or are pursuing you, as I believe Sonja or Joseph or somebody is). But you could have stories with a common thread in other ways. A note posted on TSO's temple on D:3 invites followers to a meeting on D:6, but actually it's a trap, and there's a vault full of imps on D:6 or something.

Personally, the biggest thing I feel missing story-wise is that the gods you don't worship feel rather absent. I'd be interested to put in more scripted content around altars, perhaps depending on your character's allegiance. Maybe ideas like "You see a basalt altar of Yred, and [UNIQUE]. Yred accepts [UNIQUE]'s obeisance and three goblin zombies appear."

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Blades Runner

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Post Thursday, 25th July 2019, 21:29

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

I like option 1 the most. Simple implementation that is basically adding uniques, but also gives more flavor/story to the uniques.

Lair Larrikin

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Post Friday, 26th July 2019, 00:53

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

I don't think options 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive. It might just depend what works best in each individual case. Sometimes an NPC story takes many years, and an adventurer might stumble in at an early stage or a late stage. Other times it makes sense your journeys intertwine.

The idea of missing out on story by killing them doesn't bother me. First, anybody who plays enough DCSS to see even 10% of the content will see more than one of the possibilities. Second, you can tweak the balance until players are more or less likely to kill the unique, maybe even add branching outcomes to increase variety for players that don't kill it.

Besides, are any of these outcomes more boring than seeing Grinder for the hundredth time? You want to optimize the variety and overall quality per hour that you spend, and write clean code so future developers can optimize their own time (lest they delete it). But variety per individual unique doesn't seem like an important metric to optimize, as far as I see? Adding uniques bloats the source code, but so does writing three different Asterions.
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Halls Hopper

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Post Friday, 26th July 2019, 06:30

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

I definitely think Stochastic fits DCSS much better, same game interferes too much with the procedural generation and introduces things like knowing you're going to see a certain unique later because you saw an initial version of it, so you do things to prepare for the fight you know you will encounter now and you've got to keep track of it and stuff, ew.

Also keep in mind that the early levels are seen much more often, so the low level uniques will be seen much more often.

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Barkeep

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Post Friday, 26th July 2019, 20:26

Re: Giving Stories to Uniques through Multiple Encounters

My take is that the stocastic approach sounds more crawl-like than the same-game approach, and as others have pointed out, it's not super different than the existing uniques mechanic.

There's some complexity in this approach (you probably shouldn't be able to meet two asterions in the same game, but boris / natasha... maybe?) but that's probably workable.

All this stuff is nice in that it can give the dungeon more of a sense of being a real place, kind of like the lore around the game's legendary magicians. You don't have to engage with it, but it's there.

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