OD Story / Campaign story

[hwoarangmy]

I know it is early to begin to code the campaign but we can begin to talk about its story. That will help to do the levels.

Concerning the creatures, do we want to have some history or not ?

So, if you have imagination and want to write your ideas, please do so

[Danimal]

I was thinking into Evil VS the not so good United Kingdoms and Empire; just a few general lines:

Gamewise:
the world is a continent with small islands around it, it constains all climates (jungle, ice, desert and temperate)
You start by conquering the surrounding small islands that will serve as tutorials (early game)
Then you move to conquer the continent (middle game)
Each biome has unique creatures that are presented on their maps (Jungle-> lizarman, swamplings...), giving chance to use them later into maps not belonging to their biome
Later you move to take the enemy main strongholds in the continent core (late game)

Storywise
I had a disscussion with elvano a long ago, he was offended that i considered his setting to be very boring:
viewtopic.php?f=35&t=5367&p=55911&hilit=plague#p55579

This was my proposal:

- we plunge the world of man in chaos little by little, they are doing more or less fine until we get to the action, there is an unstable balance between good and evil, corruption running deep in the men realms.

- i have been thinking and while specialization should be fully accesible in multiplayer maps, in single campaign something should limit the levels you are able to advance in it, and there enter your relics, each relic allows you to research one more level on specialization. That way the new players start with basics rooms the first levels of the game and as they capture relics on the world map they grow stronger with the increased access to the specialization tree. That way the relics have a story and gameplay role.

- the plague seems to be your limit storywise, lets expand that, the plague is a first goal/consequense (opening pandora´s box) for your actions, and we will achieve it along the way, but our objective should change to destroy the Ligth Gods that are pulling the strings on the men realms and corrupting them so a "holy cleansing" begins, wiping out all other races as well(evil+dwarfs+elves+...), and of course they will appear as their saviors. (and we are supposed to be the evil ones?),the humans are collecting the relics for unknown purpose (later revealed, the ligth gods want to cause the plague on all races except men); so once we get them all the plague starts and the ligth gods see how their prospective human crusaders die by the millions, they enrage and start directly attacking you. On that moment our objective changes to first running away from heaven´s hordes, next destroying them and becoming ruler of both the land and heavens.

So to recap:
-We are just born as a Deep Lord, we start conquering lands (first levels, tutorials)
-We hear of the relics that have great power, and start hunting for them (midgame levels, introducing specializations with first relic)
-We get them, activate them in a gamemap that force us to defend against hordes of heroes and other Deep Lords, and unleash the plage; the ligth gods along with their fanatic pet human kingdoms directly declare war on us.(mid-late levels)
-When all seems lost we learn of an ancient divine superweapon (the Godslayer) hidden away in an ancient and long forgotten underground super fortress, get it and start a war on the heavens strongholds(last levels)

As you can see, a bit of conspiration really spices up the whole story, the "we start the plague, THE END" lets a lot to be desired as an ending, its evil but not enougth. Also, please lets not stick to real event dates, lets cause all of them over that poor continent but in the same timeframe if possible, i find it hard to add dark humor to missions (or even some beliable contuinity) when they happen decades or centuriess later. A year apart or two is fine.

Basically we first start by conquering small un-allied kingdoms and later go agaisnt the human empire (expect Warhamer emperor jokes by the lots) that is trying to purge the lands of anything non-human with the help of angels.
Along the way we cause a few calamities like the plague or revolutions

[eugeneloza]

Mission 1
Hey you, fledgling!
Big boys are gone hunting to the surface. You're to keep everything clean in here, got it?! And if any raw meat shows up, we want it for barbeque when we return.

I.e. the player first does 'dirty' work for some 'powerful' keeper faction, and then he starts building his own underworld kingdom. Makes some allies and eliminates the faction of his origin entering 'a big stage'. The process is sometimes broken by raids to the 'castle undergrounds' or heroes raids to the dungeons. And so on.

The global scenario might look like this:

Chapter 1. Gain strength, allies and defeat you 'home' faction.
Chapter 2. Battle for domination, against other underground factions, including former allies.
Chapter 3. Eliminating the strongest underground faction.
Chapter 4. Betryal by a very strong ally.
Chapter 5. An ultimate force of good is aware of your presence and now considers you a danger. A few sieges of the dungeon. Including hopeless missions (you are unable to win, only to fulfill some goal (i.e. get the gold, or kill a creature, or hold on for 30 minutes)).
Chapter 6. Time to hit back. Some raids to the good-controlled areas.
Chapter 7. The breaking point. Conquerring the platzdarm at the continent.
Chapter 8. The final assault.

[oln]

There was some backstory on the old wiki. I don't know where that has been put now though.

[Danimal]

I will resume it to you; kingdom mines undergroung for gold, annoys beast faction on the process. Meanwhile Court mage gets in love with princess, is exiled and becomes a necromancer (underground), the kingdom makes inteligent machines to get the underground back from undead but they revolt ; meanwhile all kind of scum also enter the underground as mercenaries or thieves. The end.

It has a lot of factions and not much originality.

[Bertram]

I really do love the Danimal scheme, which is compatible with Eugene's Chapters.

As Eugene's voice as a dreadful snake is brilliant, do you think there could be a way to add a snake-type archevil, independent from the so-called good ones?
And why not, whose plans are to be using you against the good to divide and conquer at the end?

[hwoarangmy]

We shouls also define the scope we want for OD. More precisely, do we want to fight gods to dominate all the world or do we want to go for something more "funny".

If we go for the first, I usually like plot twists. For example, if we go for having to find a powerfull weapon (or some kind of powerfull creature), it would be good to somehow have some "enemy" keeper trying to get the weapon and find, in the end, that you are the chosen one, only one that can get the weapon, the keeper knew it and manipulated you to get it ^^

[Bertram]

IMHO, unless we find a brilliant fun story, we should go to the light heroes domination version of the campaign, and IMHO add side-track scenarios along it with funny meat.
That way, we keep some humour but we're not making the player think we're only guided by that. that way, those who want a story will have it, while those who don't care have a bit of humour.

We can also hide funny details in every maps. :>

WDYT?

[eugeneloza]

The good are too strong for us when they are together... But if we put a weed of division between them, they are an easy prey.
What do you have in mind?
If the problem can be solved for gold, it's not a problem, it's expences.

[Vandar]

As Eugene's voice as a dreadful snake is brilliant, do you think there could be a way to add a snake-type archevil, independent from the so-called good ones?
And why not, whose plans are to be using you against the good to divide and conquer at the end?

Snakes suffer the fate as being evil in many religions and mythodologies. But actually snakes bring or tempt the human into knowledge in those myths, to the dislike of the gods. So snakes are not evil per se, but they are disliked by the ones in power for the wisdom they bring.

Lucifer suffers the same fate - originally "bringer of light" (aka knowledge and wisdom) and now dubbed the devil.

Prometheus, the titan who brought the fire (aka technology) to the humans, also was punished cruelly by the gods.

"Good" gods don't like the humans open up their minds. I wonder why those are still imagined as good gods ...

-> Make the snake archevil an ambivalent creature, being good and bad at the same time.

[eugeneloza]

good and bad at the same time.

I've thought of a noble & cunning assassins clan Disliking keeper's evil ways. But allying him with plans to hit in the back later.
And, moreover, I've thought of Nagas rather than snakes. Maybe, some day, I'll even grow skilled enough to model and animate 'em

[Vandar]

Nagas are cool. Also they are often seen as protector type spirits, which could fit - if arch-evil naga is guarding something greater and distracts the other keepers and heroes by keeping them busy fighting each other

[eugeneloza]

Found a good concept-art of the thing I have in mind
But in armor / robes and with rattlesnake tail end.

[Danimal]

this minimal armor fits it, its from the ancient beast repository

[Bertram]

The naga clan's idea looks cool!