God Missions


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Lair Larrikin

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Post Thursday, 9th February 2017, 03:11

God Missions

I only thought about this in context of gods of battle, or at least ones that summon monsters on you when you are under penance, but if you are affiliated with and worthy to a god, you would occasionally get selected to perform a mission, getting summoned temporarily from your plane of existence. This would act like the opposite of summoning monsters under wrath. For example, if you worshipped TSO, you would join a fleet of angels and other summoned paladins in order to storm a demonic fortress. If you worshipped Makhleb, you would find yourself among the ranks of an unholy army of friendly demons, preparing to lay waste to a holy fortress.

This would probably only happen during low tension moments, since it would be an overpowered panic button.

Completion of this quest could result in greatly increased piety, and perhaps some loot and experience. I'm not sure about what would happen when you would die, and if refusing would result in depreciation. Either you permanently die, forcing you to choose your fights wisely, and perhaps try to stay in other fights more to avoid your god's search for viable soldiers, or you are summoned with full HP, and upon death, you "vanish in a poof of smoke" and return to your spot with your stats just as you left them. Resting while you are on duty for your god could quite understandably anger the god.

God-Summoned monsters will occasionally have unique names, weapons, and armor, reinforcing the flavor (is that how you use the word?).

Also, if you are of high piety ("prized avatar of Trog"), and have a high experience level, your god could summon you alone, but with massive boosts while you take on a powerful enemy or army. If you are level 25/26>, you would occasionally, instead of receiving the normal pack of strong monsters, get faced with a unique, empowered avatar of the god. This could also happen if you were at max piety with a god, with the avatar coming from a strongly opposing god. Blood Saints of Makhleb will be faced with a powerful unique angel or follower of TSO, and Berserkers of Trog will be dueled by a distinguished figure from the ranks of Okawaru's army.

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monkeytor

Crypt Cleanser

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Post Thursday, 9th February 2017, 05:06

Re: God Missions

So essentially, some gods would give access to god-exclusive portal vaults that would give a large amount of piety on completion.

It's certainly a really cool concept from a flavor standpoint, but it could be a lot of work to implement, and there's the obvious question of whether it's worth the work to implement god missions instead of implementing new vaults that any character can encounter instead.

I'm also just not sure if fighting alongside large groups of allies would really work well. It could very well end up being that the best strategy would be to wait for the fight to finish and then mop up the stragglers.

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Slime Squisher

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Post Thursday, 9th February 2017, 10:17

Re: God Missions

i love this concept. the only thing i didnt like is your god forcing you to participate. How about: Your patron god calls upon its most devoted servants to take up arms against unbelievers.
  Code:
Do you answer its call? Deus Vult! / No
[09:23] <Sequell> kroki is a greatplayer!
[09:23] <Sequell> kroki is a greaterplayer!
[03:57] <Sequell> kroki is a polytheist!
[21:53] <Sequell> kroki is a greatberserker!
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Halls Hopper

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Joined: Friday, 28th October 2011, 04:07

Post Saturday, 11th February 2017, 20:25

Re: God Missions

Agree that it's a neat concept, although I think it's kinda unfair to restrict it only to combat deities. I think if you reworked it to accomadate the rest of the pantheon, but according to contexts that fit each god's flavour, it'd be doubly cool.

For example,
- Fedhas implores you to defend a sacred grove from Kiku-worshipping ghoul necromancers, in exchange for a powerful ally like thorn hunter.
- Dith bitches at you about pyromancers desecrating one of his shadow shrines. If you defeat them, he rewards you a one time only active ability (i.e. invis+haste buff)
- Nemelex, Gozag, and Xom have made a bet. Let's say the contest revolves around a party game such as capture-the-flag. If you beat the other contestants, who will use their respective divine abilities to cheat, you receive a randart deck, a crapload of cash, or a chaos branded weapon/good mutation/absolutely nothing (in Xom's case).

These are just off the top of my head.... Despite being a royal pain to code, this idea being implemented would make Crawl a much more interesting experience, in both gameplay and flavour.

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monkeytor, Paperbell

Shoals Surfer

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Joined: Tuesday, 4th October 2016, 09:32

Post Saturday, 11th February 2017, 20:30

Re: God Missions

All gods give only one mission.

Get the band back together, do a show, save the orphanage.

Reward, new evocables that runs on invocations. Half a pack of cigarettes, sunglasses.

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Airwolf, Dingbat, Paperbell, Speleothing

Halls Hopper

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Joined: Monday, 21st September 2015, 03:35

Post Saturday, 11th February 2017, 21:29

Re: God Missions

Dingbat wrote:Agree that it's a neat concept, although I think it's kinda unfair to restrict it only to combat deities. I think if you reworked it to accomadate the rest of the pantheon, but according to contexts that fit each god's flavour, it'd be doubly cool.

For example,
- Fedhas implores you to defend a sacred grove from Kiku-worshipping ghoul necromancers, in exchange for a powerful ally like thorn hunter.
- Dith bitches at you about pyromancers desecrating one of his shadow shrines. If you defeat them, he rewards you a one time only active ability (i.e. invis+haste buff)
- Nemelex, Gozag, and Xom have made a bet. Let's say the contest revolves around a party game such as capture-the-flag. If you beat the other contestants, who will use their respective divine abilities to cheat, you receive a randart deck, a crapload of cash, or a chaos branded weapon/good mutation/absolutely nothing (in Xom's case).

These are just off the top of my head.... Despite being a royal pain to code, this idea being implemented would make Crawl a much more interesting experience, in both gameplay and flavour.


Hepliaklqana sends you back in time to support an ancestor in a historic decisive battle. An inversion of normal Hep play: your ancestor is the 'character' who cannot be allowed to die and you are the familiar/spirit who will infinitely respawn if killed. Reward: new ancestor ability/buff

Lugonu sends you to clear out a band of Zin worshippers who have established a sanctuary of order in the Abyss. Reward: corrupted Zin artifact, the lajatang (or whatever) or disorder

Ru sends you on a psychedelic inner journey a la Holy Mountain. Reward: your character recognizes the fictional gameliness of Crawl and is liberated from its endless cycle of death and rebirth. The game immediately ends, character name can no longer be used and they get infinity points in the high scores, written in a special font and color. You never play Crawl again.

A lot of them could be sieges or tower defenses, e.g. Beogh: destroy the dwarves/heretic orcs; Sif Muna: defend the Library, etc.

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Lair Larrikin

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Joined: Sunday, 22nd January 2017, 02:47

Post Saturday, 11th February 2017, 23:51

Re: God Missions

Sorry, I just meant to say that I first thought of it for combat gods, but there is no reason for followers of Vehumet to get taken on cathartic bombing missions, or Sif Muna followers to use their spells in a smart way to get to some book lost to time.

My ideas:
-Zin: depending on your skills, will send you into villages of heretics to preach to and kill, while saving the innocents, bring you to a lab of forbidden magics, where you can face necromancers, mutants, insane transmuters, or any combination of whatever Zin hates.
-Qazlal: rings you to a place to destroy with your elemental powers, and perhaps even to terraform environments, like a flaming wasteland with fire elementals into an ocean, with your upheaval and clouds set to water.
-Elyvilon: same place as TSO, but you are in the back ranks healing angels and holy warriors (with slightly mitigated cost), gaining piety if your heals cancel out a warrior's previous damage (no heal-farming!), and gaining a lot more if you save one's life (after the target gets healed, they sustain enemy damage that would have killed them before they were healed). You will lose piety if you wait as a warrior gets slowly bludgeoned to near death. As long as you are doing effective heals on other warriors, you will be exempt from this. This may have a person constantly healing other targets while waiting for a warrior to go to critical hp, but at least it won't be waiting for the entire army to get down on their hands and knees for you.
-Vehumet: your destructive abilities are tested by you getting put into a killzone with other mages (survival of the fittest) or hordes of trogdolytes (Magic vs. Rage).
-Sif Muna: you are transported to an ancient structure with all a manner of creatures and environmental hazards, though the kinds problems you will face are slightly swayed by your spells and resistances. (ex. you have dispel undead or control undead, so you are transported to a necromantic tower, or you have fire resistance, so you go to a volcano temple). Prepare to use your spells in a strategic way. This ancient structure has several (2-4) books that Sif Muna wants collected, and you gain piety depending on how many you manage to get. At the end, you could receive all of them, or you could choose. I am not sure.
-Uskayaw: Horde of enemies that you destroy, or a horde of enemies with a one or few mini-bosses (not sure) with high armor, evasion, and damage (your "dance partners"). The goal is to build up enough piety to merge with the bigger monsters and destroy them.
-Lugonu: a realm like the dungeon, a place similar to a fantasy overworld, or a temple of any kind of god and monks. Goal is to "convert" the shrine at the middle. Spread Corruption!
-Beogh: Similar to the battle gods. You are put onto a battlefield against other species, like nagas, humans, etc. with the occasional exception of facing off against an extradimensional race at high piety. Your entire horde gets brought along with you, along with other bands of orcs that are neutral to you. If you or your horde are acting like badasses, some of the neutral orcs will begin to follow you, all of which will be brought along with you once you return.
-Cheibrados: Discipline some speedy bastards.
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Halls Hopper

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Joined: Friday, 28th October 2011, 04:07

Post Sunday, 12th February 2017, 00:20

Re: God Missions

Great ideas, although for Uska I think a disco dancing competition versus John Travolta (via Grease) would be more appropriate. Jiyva's ought to involve infiltrating the Jello corporation and liberating the indigenous jellies from their plastic containers/prisons. IJC transports the player to a monastery, where you're pitted against one of the seven sifus in either a sparring match or a board game similar to chess, go, etc -- the loser has to make tea for the council.

Seriously though, at what level of piety does a god ask for the player to take on a mission?

Crypt Cleanser

Posts: 724

Joined: Tuesday, 29th November 2011, 11:04

Post Sunday, 12th February 2017, 08:11

Re: God Missions

Couldn't Zot Defence be reused for his?
"Damned, damned be the legions of the damned..."

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5382

Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Tuesday, 14th February 2017, 23:49

Re: God Missions

kuniqs wrote:Couldn't Zot Defence be reused for his?

Spotted the non-programmer! In other words, old code that hasn't been maintained in a while gets increasingly difficult to repurpose later on. Technically yes, it could be, but practically speaking, no, it won't be.

The general course of development has been to try to shorten the game, so adding a new mini game in the middle of every game of crawl where you have to do more is likely to be going in the wrong direction. And if the rewards are significant, it's then optimal to play it so skipping it is a poor choice; and giving a signficant boost makes the rest of the game easier than it was before, which would likely be considered a bad change (they've been trying to make the end game more challenging, to somewhat closer match the early game).

The simple version of this proposal is just to add a portal vault - those are fine and you could certainly add one which has various god's flavors. They're generally pretty quick and don't really increase your power level much, although you have a chance of finding good loot. Something like a "god's lab" to switch with the "wiz labs" we already have could work, but I would limit rewards to just item generation and the exp you'd get for beating enemies.

Slime Squisher

Posts: 377

Joined: Thursday, 12th June 2014, 06:56

Post Wednesday, 15th February 2017, 11:38

Re: God Missions

tasonir wrote:The simple version of this proposal is just to add a portal vault - those are fine and you could certainly add one which has various god's flavors. They're generally pretty quick and don't really increase your power level much, although you have a chance of finding good loot. Something like a "god's lab" to switch with the "wiz labs" we already have could work, but I would limit rewards to just item generation and the exp you'd get for beating enemies.


I'd say make the portal vaults have comparable rewards to a wizlab (i.e. good thematic items), and just take their generation weight out of that for wizlabs. That way, there's no increase in player power, but there isn't that annoying feeling of "I just played this hard level for no reward." XP and normal item generation don't feel like rewards since you get them all time.

Temple Termagant

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Joined: Friday, 10th February 2017, 22:33

Post Wednesday, 15th February 2017, 23:02

Re: God Missions

What if there were exclusive fixedarts or monster-only spells and brands that were only available to the player through completing the missions, such as Dig, or Hellfire burst? I always thought that the monsters had some pretty fun spells! Some of them might be of use to some character builds!

Ziggurat Zagger

Posts: 5382

Joined: Friday, 25th November 2011, 07:36

Post Thursday, 16th February 2017, 02:42

Re: God Missions

There's some precedent for that, with things like the staff of wucad mu generating in his monastary, or the moon troll leather armor on the lunar base...but again you want to be careful to avoid making it too common to find very powerful fixedart items. Giving the ability to cast hellfire is huge, and should be very limited (I think it's only available through a demonspawn aspect and it costs your health every time you cast it?). I don't think letting the player cast hellfire without it costing health would be balanceable...hellfire is very, very strong.

Halls Hopper

Posts: 70

Joined: Monday, 21st September 2015, 03:35

Post Sunday, 26th February 2017, 04:40

Re: God Missions

Demigods try to kill a god of their choice, or a random god.

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