Dungeon Master
Posts: 332
Joined: Friday, 15th July 2011, 22:43
Tuesday, 19th November 2013, 08:16
Flavoring Pandemonium
We discussed the extended endgame recently, and I orbited around the topic talking about fluff and new monster sets and things. I'll try to be more direct and concise here.
First, why? Talking about flavor and fluff is a suspicious business even on the best of days, because a lot of people bring in ideas that are too complicated, too specific, or too different for the Crawl community. Imposing a narrative on the game is one of the things that we should be very cautious about: because the emergent narratives of Crawl are attractive to many players, and because the lack of a necessary narrative is conducive for players who just want to experience the gameplay.
The best thing is when fluff and gameplay work together. Vaults, for example, works well now that we have a whole vault-humanoid set that lends a sense of organization to the place. Hell works well because the fluff informs the nature of each sub-branch (the issue of hell effect changes notwithstanding) and ties each sub-branch to its lord in a way that isn't reliant on a lot of explanatory text.
Thus, I think that Pan should be the realm of forgotten gods. The unique pan lords, and the randomly generated ones, are thus old gods without worshipers themselves, or are powerful servants of gods that no-longer exist. They don't have to be changed at all, and this would help explain where these powerful beings come from, and in the case of the big four, how they differ from the lords of Hell. This doesn't prevent the inclusion of demons in Pan, no more than Vault Wardens and Convokers and things preclude stone giants and shadow dragons and what-have-you. This preserves all the good threats that Pan already has.
In the simplest way, this change would help players know how the three big post-game branches stand in relation to one another -- one is the kingdom of devils, one is the warped tear in reality, one is literally a godforsaken wasteland. It also opens the way for additional refinements to Pan.
Related to this flavor proposal is the piety-diminishing effect that dpeg and perhaps some others have discussed for the Abyss -- I think that the Abyss has a lot of gameplay effects going on that can alter how players tackle things, and I feel that Pandemonium could use a unique one of its own. Attacking a player's piety/god abilities isn't something exploited yet in the game, and it's hard to say what would be a good way to do this; feel free to use this thread to discuss ideas. Broadly speaking, I think there are a few ways to do this:
- Piety costs of god abilities are greater
- Piety diminishes over time more quickly
- Piety gain is slowed/lessened
- Specific threats (monsters, Pan effects) that prevent ability use/passives, or harm your piety as an attack
Finally, the monster set doesn't need to be changed at all, but it can be spiced up by the inclusion of non-demonic, non-eldritch, non-undead foes. I have a couple of rough ideas, but again, please use this thread to come up with some.
Thoughts?
First, why? Talking about flavor and fluff is a suspicious business even on the best of days, because a lot of people bring in ideas that are too complicated, too specific, or too different for the Crawl community. Imposing a narrative on the game is one of the things that we should be very cautious about: because the emergent narratives of Crawl are attractive to many players, and because the lack of a necessary narrative is conducive for players who just want to experience the gameplay.
The best thing is when fluff and gameplay work together. Vaults, for example, works well now that we have a whole vault-humanoid set that lends a sense of organization to the place. Hell works well because the fluff informs the nature of each sub-branch (the issue of hell effect changes notwithstanding) and ties each sub-branch to its lord in a way that isn't reliant on a lot of explanatory text.
Thus, I think that Pan should be the realm of forgotten gods. The unique pan lords, and the randomly generated ones, are thus old gods without worshipers themselves, or are powerful servants of gods that no-longer exist. They don't have to be changed at all, and this would help explain where these powerful beings come from, and in the case of the big four, how they differ from the lords of Hell. This doesn't prevent the inclusion of demons in Pan, no more than Vault Wardens and Convokers and things preclude stone giants and shadow dragons and what-have-you. This preserves all the good threats that Pan already has.
In the simplest way, this change would help players know how the three big post-game branches stand in relation to one another -- one is the kingdom of devils, one is the warped tear in reality, one is literally a godforsaken wasteland. It also opens the way for additional refinements to Pan.
Related to this flavor proposal is the piety-diminishing effect that dpeg and perhaps some others have discussed for the Abyss -- I think that the Abyss has a lot of gameplay effects going on that can alter how players tackle things, and I feel that Pandemonium could use a unique one of its own. Attacking a player's piety/god abilities isn't something exploited yet in the game, and it's hard to say what would be a good way to do this; feel free to use this thread to discuss ideas. Broadly speaking, I think there are a few ways to do this:
- Piety costs of god abilities are greater
- Piety diminishes over time more quickly
- Piety gain is slowed/lessened
- Specific threats (monsters, Pan effects) that prevent ability use/passives, or harm your piety as an attack
Finally, the monster set doesn't need to be changed at all, but it can be spiced up by the inclusion of non-demonic, non-eldritch, non-undead foes. I have a couple of rough ideas, but again, please use this thread to come up with some.
Thoughts?
