Silgrad Tower Rumor Structure

[SACarrow]

I'm sure there has been much discussion on this topic before, but with the aforementioned vocal structure in place, sandor & I felt the discussion should be re-opened.

In vanilla Oblivion, overheard rumors were (to me) a fascinating way to acquire (possibly false) information about events in Cyrodiil and around the Empire. From what I vaguely remember, there were a couple of changes proposed for ST:

• The disabling of vanilla OB rumors,
  
• The ability to get rumors as a conversation topic, MW-style.
  

What I'd like to provoke with this thread is discussion of how rumors might be structured, including:

• Who "knows" certain things, as in factions, classes, races, or localities.
  
• The use of these rumors both in overheard and direct conversation.
  
• One I just thought of: the ability to tell malicious falsehoods given the NPC's Responsibility and his/her disposition to the PC.
  

I have no real concrete ideas as yet, but my general thinking is that very few NPCs actually know more than a little about anything, and most of what they think they know is obscured by the fog of rumor. OTOH, there may be a nugget of truth that can lead the PC to a great fortune...

... or a deathtrap ...

... or just a couple of rocks.

Opening the floor,
Steve

[Ibsen's Ghost]

This would require a certain amount of scripting expertise if the more ambitious of these ideas came to fruition. You (or someone else) would also probably need to manage the rumours very carefully in order to make sure they're not too obscure but my main initial worry was that, apart from being 'happy accidents' missions may equally prove difficult to find.

But I guess that's where the scripting came into it. It may need some serious thinking or an especially smart system to be able to track responses and follow leads. The potential is truly mould-breaking and I'd love to have a crack at making the dialogue more inter-active. That's exactly what I've been doing on 'Lost Spires' tonight by adding rumour lines but to a lesser extent.

What I found is that it offered far more potential to explore hitherto unnoticed lore elements, quirks of the Oblivion world, such as the issue of whether it is indeed possible to cross-breed the 'beast' races with the other races, and a lot of humour.

What also concerns me deeply is that I've come from a community (Thief) that prides itself on it's story-telling. Applied correctly, it would make the mod far more human and involving and that's something I've wanted to see more of in games for a very long time. To be honest, I don't actually play that much anymore. I just like the creative side of things.

[bob196045]

Howdy


Rumors are everywhere


If you remember we had discussed this previously I do not believe we finalized anything

I remember we had


Regional
Local
Personal

Regional: General Rumors which are known by many, these would be about things like pirates on the coast, or Vivec has gone missing
MOST of these would not lead to any quests but may.

Local: Rumors about local things, known by most of the town folk but not all, you may also hear of a local rumor from someone who travels to and from that place often (I think we used Sparrow as an example of this) She would know local rumors about Steadhelm, though she does not live their.

Local Rumors may lead to quests I would consider about 20% of the time, but not more

Personal rumors: Or the GOSSIP LINE

these are the rumors known individually and most often lead to some sort of quest, personal information about someone else, true or false.


Now how do you break this down to the NPC level ?

We know all NPC's which have knowlege of General Information

All NPC's within a region should have knowledge of rumors for that region

All NPC's within a town sahould have knowledge of "Local Rumors"
with exception that possibly someone will say, I don't know anything about that" no matter what your disposition

Then of course their is the personal stuff, which is individual of course more than 1 NPC may know about "Mavins affair" but I would dis-agree that everyone whould know and I think that most of the time a personal rumor should have a quest involved even if that quest is to just debunk the rumor by confronting the NPC which the rumor is about


Of couse if someone told you Mavin was having an affair, and you the player decided to tell everyone else then they would know ( I think this might be a fun idea to work on)



Enjoy
Bob

[Ibsen's Ghost]

That does seem like a workable scheme and one to which the individual quest modders can work towards with the added bonus that you have another option with which to exercise some creative flair.

For example, there are a lot of references to things and events in Oblivion that are potentially very amusing but are not further developed. Take the female Dunmer in Skingrad, for example, who implies her own necrophiliac sexual preferences. It's not the best example but it's certainly an intriguing one, in a rather perverse way as not only can you have a lot of (strictly adult) fun with the premise but you could also use it as a lead-in towards something necromancy-related.

Perhaps if you learn something particularly incriminating, you can blackmail certain people, thereby eliminating the need for persuasion, combat or whatever else you need to do in order to complete a quest stage.

This means that modders simply have to 'think out of the box', which is something that we then have the capabilities to encourage.

On a more personal level, I would like to see ST becoming more cerebral than OB. This may represent a step towards that. By that I mean having some genuine (but well-thought-out) puzzles before progress is achieved. I hate the old 'go-fetch-magic-item-get-reward' stereotype in RPGs.

Making the mental challenge tougher is more akin to the 'graphic adventure' style of playing games which is something that, at one time in my life at least, I used to love. Anyone remember 'Secret of Monkey Island'? I believe the closest and most recent relative of this is 'Beyond Good and Evil'. Although they had their typical gameplay annoyances, too, they also had the 'riddle sword-fighting' in which you had to choose carefully your responses to insults in order to win a fight. Well, here's is a model for sections of quest building.

The important thing is that it must be clear to the player that they in fact are facing a puzzle that the game expects them to solve and then to always leave the possibilities open. You then have common sense solutions that are not too obscure or that require mindless hunting. What this implies for the voicing and dialogue people is that you have to carefully deploy lines that can be picked up on later. The thinking that you do could depend upon the choices of the line that the player picks as their response in conversation.

This would work especially for mage characters whose players tend to be the more cerebral type of gamer.

I'm not really saying anything definite here but keeping quest modders aware of these potential options might go somewhere towards them using them and therefore creating a smarter, rounded and more rich gaming experience.

[SACarrow]

Moved out of The Whispering Veil in hopes of more commentary.

Steve

[bob196045]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost

I would like to see ST becoming more cerebral than OB. This may represent a step towards that. By that I mean having some genuine (but well-thought-out) puzzles before progress is achieved. I hate the old 'go-fetch-magic-item-get-reward' stereotype in RPGs.

I agree with your whole post, but I picked this portion out because of the opinion which we share.

YES

Mind Games are much more fun then hack and slash, fetch and grab

I have always been a believer in that, and I know others are as well but many hesitate to say anything or lack the role play mind set to suggest it

I hope we can get it moving in that direction


Enjoy
Bob

[Seniosh]

Just wondering, who's in charge of creating rumors, and how would i submit rumors that i need added to the game?

For example, Cambridge Spy suggested having rumors about the Morag Tong, to inform players about certain things. So who would i ask to do all of that? Or would i do it myself (and how).

Just wondering

[bob196045]

Originally posted by Seniosh
Just wondering, who's in charge of creating rumors, and how would I submit rumors that I need added to the game?

For example, Cambridge Spy suggested having rumors about the Morag Tong, to inform players about certain things. So who would I ask to do all of that? Or would I do it myself (and how).

Just wondering

Well since the Quest Development Department is currently on leave of absense :lmao:

Actually post your rumor mill

If your going to mod the quests or who ever mods the quests will be responsible to add those lines into the quest esp

Do you plan on doing a quest structure similar to what Cathalion did with the Mage's Guild ?

I would recommend that

If so then that would be a good time to so the addtion of such lines

If not then it can be added into individual claims

or you could select your npc's to have those rumors and create an esp just for those dialogues


Enjoy
Bob

[Seniosh]

Well, the rumor he suggested was something along the lines of "I hear you can't be in both the Morag Tong and the Dark Brotherhood", or "I hear the Morag Tong have spies everwhere, keeping tabs on the Dark Brotherhood"

Other rumors i would like to have are "I hear the Morag Tong is recruiting associates in Soluthis", and things like that.

They don't really belong to a specific quest. How would I add them though? Is there some giant "Silgrad Rumor Topic" that has it's own quest in the CS? Or is there some option or something hrug: i'm clueless.

And what did Cuthalion do with the Mages Guild quests that i should imitate? new ideas and inspirations are always good

[SACarrow]

The overheard rumor would also work quite well here, I think. I'll have to check the INFOGENERAL topic to see what is spoken of there. It might be time to fire up that StInfoGeneral topic I've been thinking about.

This wouldn't preclude the use of specific rumor topics, but I really like the idea of someone learning of a quest possibility by eavesdropping, even if they have to talk to someone to get the quest started.

More later,
Steve