What if....

Lets not exaggerate with "no way". One can just wait till your fatigue restores, heal rate per 10 seconds. I survive on my own body that way quite well, and as a rule I prefer relying on heal rate than potions.

All in all, your suggestions are interesting, for they have potential. Possibilities - yes. But I'm far from calling it balance, since for me (and anyone playing my way) it will in general add power to the already overpowered path of magic.

 

That's why you buff guns with more damage and range. Besides waiting for fatigue to get restored is so booring and if you aren't using magical weapons (that are better then per say a quality axe) then what do you use? Even those swords and maces give bonuses to Fatigue.

Anyway as long as guns do more damge (wayyyyy more damage) and have a longer range you shoud be pretty much on pair with a mage.

Spells deal slightly more damage, guns deal much more damage and have more range, melee weapons now have diffrenet speed/damage so that everyone can get their hands on something similar to Kryggird's Falchion.... Balance?

 

Once again, I use the disclaimer that when I was writing these notes, I was approaching it from the perspective of adding to the existing campaign, but some of this material could be useful if the Half-Ogre Conspiracy is the direction being taken for a main plot (or even a side plot).

The Gnome in Arthur Tyron's House:
Although it's a very brute force thing, one of the extensions I always thought should have existed (although this obviously only makes sense for a very very small percentage of characters) is that by using a Dominate Will spell, you should be able to manipulate events a bit further. Have him give an interview to a reporter, or call a press conference (only to be killed by other gnomish agents right when it looks like the conspiracy will break loose, making tracking down the killer another quest or series of quests.)

The Newspaper:
The second approach to advancing the plot is through the newspaper. After you get burned going to the newspaper the first time, a bit more force is needed to get the word out. Through manipulation, bribing, threatening, or dominating the editor, you finally get the article published...only to have it all retracted the next day with an article about how the editor went mad before unfortunately committing suicide. Once it's out there, it's out there however...and it might be fun to have conspiracy enthusiast groupies pop up much like they do in the real world. Some of them could actually find real info, others will have totally bogus stuff, but there would be so much out there, nobody would really know what to believe.

The Industrial Council:
One thing that is not included in Taurant (and that would be hard to find a spot for honestly) is the offices of the Industrial Council. I see this being the most secure highly guarded place in the game. Tons of technology and and a half-ogre army keep the place safe, but within it's confines lie some of the deepest darkest secrets of Arcanum. I could see rumors and eventually quests leading here to finally get some answers about the half-ogre conspiracy. A victorian looking skyscraper would look great for this as a building exterior, but even if graphics for it could be found/made, it would be hard to fit into Taurant without extending the city.

 

Nolanoth, your contributions to this thread seem to be rather game mechanics based when this thread is actually plot based. I think it would be good to either separate this discussion and take it elsewhere or just discontinue it. This is still in its 'What if?' stages in which this sort of discussion should occur much later after the project has actually started.

Robert I really like your ideas about the Cumbrian civil war and I can find little to elaborate on. It is a very well chosen subject for a main quest in my opinion and it allows for many possiblities that would be fitting for a full Arcanum 2 idea. With your presentation of the idea I totally agree with your prioritisation of the current plot ideas.

 

When playing a pure mage I use magical gear, naturally, preferably staves. Yet all weapons regenerate mana at the same speed (=very slowly), so even for an Arcane Staff, once you drain your the mana in a dungeon, your pretty much on your own anyway, making it just a little help at the beginning. In my first playthrough for a long time I didn't know that for example mage staves added mana (no description was added prior UAP), so I spend a lot of time wandering around with a Sword of Pretection. Now I use magical weapons which often store mana, but just one item at a time. Having several Arcane Staves and switching between them once the mana drains out leaves too much of a cheat feel for me.

You are right when you say that guns are underpowered. That is one factor I surely will say deserves balance, as well as any tech domain really. mages are overpowered because of harm and such, thieves/assanins are overpowered because of backstab being DEADLY at higher levels, melee are overpowered just because they are. Only tech fellows are left out. Some consider it a chellenge and a fun need to play with more strategy, I partly agree with this. But for balance, just increase guns and such and voila, much balance added.

If something is already too powerful, why bother giving it more power if you want to balace the game?

That's why for balance we shouldn't boost up something which is already too powerful. In this case, magic. Also, I don't fancy the idea of every mortal wielding a power equal to the Kryggird's Falchion. Unique endgame uberpowerful weapons are great because nothing equals them, while balancing in this case should be more like "making everything equally average" than "making everything equally godlike".

 

I was sitting around, trying to mod myself, when I had this idea of making an Arcanum overhaul, and create my own Arcanum 2 a few hundred years past. I tried to create a prequel module to make its debut, but it appears that my modding skills aren't even enough to put a ship facade together. So, I decided to post my idea up here instead.

General Story: It is about 150-200 years after the Living One. Arcanum is now mostly technological, with even Elves using "Magickal Firearms" instead of their bows. The politics/diplomacy is slowly failing though, as everything boils down to a... World War!

The main character could help one of the main factions to win and take over Arcanum, could try to make a profit out of the situation, or could join the angry Vendigrothians eliminate everything magickal.

I wanted to make the prequel about a guy who lives with his sister in the Vendigroth Wastes finding about his Vendigrothian heritage, and then finding the last living Vendigroth Military Post in the (Northern) polar region of Arcanum. The prequel would end with the Velorienic Knights (which would be again like the Brotherhood of Steel, but before the Dragon Knights reappear) gunning down an Arronax who has just resurrected Vendigroth City itself.

So, the sides of the conflict would be:

Elves
Using Magickal Firearms and living in wooden apartment buildings warded with fire resistant spells, these Elves are trying to adapt the technologic developments of the new ages to the magickal world of theirs. After wiping out the Dark Elves (by Raven's command,naturally, as she's the only one with the guts to do something like that), Elves have "cooporated" with nature, magick and the forest to create their own political force Northwest of Arcanum. Tensions have been high with the Dwarves because of the pollution caused by Dwarven mountain-cities, which is slowly poisoning anything natural around it.

Northern Dwarven Kingdom
The dwarves of the north have been ever expanding in their forests, and at last, they've carved out the whole mountain they're living in. Dwarves now live in huge mountain-cities, with buildings, dwellings and factories carved in and out of mountains hundreds of meters high. They use oil and coal for power, hence the reason they are at odds with Elves. They tend to stay out of the Tarant-Cumbria conflict as they strictly live in their mountain-cities. They also might have some problems with the Iron Clan.

Iron Clan
Found again by Magnus, who was a "little" sensitive on all things dwarven, the Iron Clan has been found on the principle of the supremecy of everything dwarven. Revising the old dwarven traditions (for they became obsolete when the Iron Clan fell), these dwarves are expanding by creating new dwarven colonies - on grounds without mountains! Their rapid expansion has started to worry Caladon, as well as the Elves - They are racists, after all.

Caladon
Caladon is a slightly more technologically advanced version of what it was - a flourishing city where technology and magick lives together. It has seperated from Tarant again for reasons I'll mention soon, and is trying to stay neutral in the Tarant-Cumbria conflict. It will have trouble from the Iron Clan though.

Kingdom of Cumbria
With Maximillian, Cumbria is strong and rich - both of them more than it ever was for any state in Arcanum. It is technologically advanced, hosts an elite army of technologically equipped Dragon Knights, and has both the richest port city and the greatest city in Arcanum (Black Root and Tarant). However, because of ideological differences, another war with Tarant might brew in the future, as while Cumbria became stronger with trade and naval superiority, Donn Throgg turned Tarant into the...

Socialist Republic of Tarant
Yes, you didn't think Donn Throgg, with all his Labor Union and Worker's Rights talk, was a capitalist, right? Donn Throgg has managed, through great leadership, what people in real world could not manage - a working communist system. The problems are:

- Tarant hosts a powerful army.
- Tarant sees the other countries as capitalistic hellpits who need the help of Tarant.
- Tarantian government members and citizens will not hesitate to fight to spread their ideologies.

Thus, a war with the (semi)capitalistic superpower, Cumbria, might break anytime.

Vendigroth
Hidden to all powers, who assume that Vendigroth is a huge wasteland, Vendigroth has risen to become a fascist state ruled by the military elite, the Velorienic Knights. They reject all kinds of magick, and are actually preparing a campaign to share their technology with Arcanum and destroy anything magickal, lowering the odds of another "catastrophy" to zero. The citizens are happy, as their nation is stronger than ever, and their superb technology has not only brought them superior wealth and living standards, but also cheap power and devastating bombs supplied to them by the "miniscule matter" reactors and "Miniscule Matter Vendigroth Devices". And they want revenge...

The game starts with a Tarantian frigate sinking a Cumbrian trade ship, (and the Vendigrothians using their bomb on Tulla, with nobody knowing)...

Thoughts?

 

My thoughts are that either you or me have really different and really skewed ideas about the named characters' personalities.

The game starts with a Tarant sinking a Cumbrian ship, yet the impression I get is that you want to start with the character finding out about their heritage from a Vendigrothan military. Personally I think the sinking the ship deal could happen much later.

The Velorienic knights, gunning down an Arronax that only just resurrected Vendigroth 150-200 years since Arcanum? ...

The impression I got was that the Velorienic knights themselves were Vendigrothan, and their solution to the Arronax problem was the Vendigrothan device Would they have gone to such lengths if they could simply gun him down?

The 'eradicated' dark elves could give rise to remnant oriented questlines.

You're saying a working communist system yet you are including a few of the major problems that are cause of the system to break down in the real world which didn't really have anything to do with communism just the fuckwads that were a part of it.

I thought the thing that dwarves and elves actually had in common were that they respected nature? I know there are representations of dwarfs that fall in line your presented ideas but I didn't think nature=just trees which is the feeling I'm getting from your post.

I like your ideas, but I feel you really need to work on the the presentation and consistency of said ideas... Or I'm completely misunderstanding which is way more likely

 

The guy and the sister finding about the Knights was the prequel idea I was trying to do by myself - and so was gunning down Arronax. The prequel begin at about the time the Living One is going to fight Kerghan in the Void, and end at the point Arronax resurrects Vendigroth (I don't think they would thank Arronax for making them lose thousands of years) I think I can scrap going for the facades and just put a one-use teleport script there, but it won't be the same. Anyways, the thing is, the World War happens also 150-200 years after the "prequel".

I answered about the Velorienic Knights, they'd more be like the Enclave from Fallout 2 - vengeful survivors of the old order, coming down to take over.

We could see Dark Elf "terrorists" I guess. "Elven Purification Front". Hmm...

On Velorienic Knights not using the Vendigroth device, the Vendigroth Device is used to pierce through magickal regeneration shields, like the one Kerghan used. Arronax was sitting in a prison for the last few thousand years, and would most likely deplete his magickal energy after mass resurrecting Vendigroth, which is before the Velorienic Knights come in for the kill. Not to mention that they are a surviving Vendigrothan people, meaning they'd have planned how to take Arronax like a few thousand times in the course of the şast few millenia.

For Communism, the person who screwed up the Communist doctrine was Stalin, who asserted that USSR must become domestically strong (through fascist means, it seems) before to spread the Communist doctrine. Trotsky, who was supposed to be the successor of Lenin, argued that Soviet Russia must support all attempts to knock of the upper class and fight on all fronts if necessary. Trotsky's doctrine didn't involve all those gulags and other weird method's for the "state". The "Communist" countries of today emphasize greatly on the importance of the "state" which is actually the whole point of Gentile's fascist doctrine. Real Communism/Marxism is almost anarchist. I can go on with this for a long time, but just a quick thing: Tito's Yugoslavia was a working Communism. USSR and PRC aren't.

As I remember, the dwarves valued "natural things of matter", unchanging, like stones, mountains etc. Hence the reason I presented them as "not leaving their mountains". Still, they'd have to either advance, be assimilated into city dwarves for Tarant or be wiped out. Considering the Dark Elves faked a diplomatic ultimatum because of the opportunity presented by the destruction of the Morbihan Forest, I guessed another environmental issue could be the reason for tension.

Another possibility for the dwarves is: the Northern Dwarves trying to choose between doing the right thing by intervening against the expansionist Iron Clan (leading to another Clan War) or siding with their brethren and helping Iron Clan crush Caladon. The elves, at that time, could fight against the guerillas. Still, the Northern Dwarves are quite far away from both the Iron Clan and Caladon, so even though it could lead to interesting choices (coup against the King and make the dwarves join Iron Clan, even), I would find it real politically un-feasible.

Also a note: The main difficulty of getting something like this done would be editing the proto files and getting new .art for scenery. Even though I have no idea on how to do both, at least I can provide concept art. I'm a modest character drawer, but I excel at drawing landscape, buildings, cities etc.

 

Just remember Caladon isn't a single city, it's the capitol of the Kingdom of Arland (since that's the point of view you had about Dernholm.

I do hope you realise that after 150-200 years Maximilian is pretty damn dead. Unless you meant just that during his reign Cumbria became strong and rich, and that state has preserved to present times.

Is Loghaire still alive, or is Randver the current leader? If the first option is true, he would most propably prevent anything polluting the forests, since the last thing he wants is more arguments with the elves, even though he knows the first situation was not caused by the Quintarra ones. If Randver is the ruler however the whole polluting deal may be possible, since he propably never did find out what was the reason behind the exile of the BMC. Or was he aware about the "steam engine + pissed off elves" affair? I can't really remember right now. Surely Loghaire's point of view was respecting the elven part of nature (said forests), even when not really understanding it, yet we do not know how would Randver turn out. It could be a flaw of his youth, or maybe character, yet he seemed to be weak and possibly prone to influence, so Loghaire's politics may not last long after his demise.

Oooh, I so do like the sound of that.

All in all nice ideas. I certainly did like the prediction of Tarants situation. I never thought about it that way, even though it's quite propable. Since now I won't be that sure of the rightness of helping Donn Throgg.

 

Exactly, I just forgot that exact name.

That's the idea...

I thought that Loghaire would die already. He's ancient, you know, and I don't believe he'd survive another 200 years.

 

Problem with making a direct sequel is there's the potential to piss a lot of players off if you go down a different path than they did with there character. In that way, yes Loghaire should be dead -- just don't specify a cause and let the player decide.

 

Sogg alternative

If you're still going for a Living One number two, I thought a decent enough alternative to Sogg would be that the Mayor of Shrouded Hills had hired laborers to complete the alternative bridge. One of them could be a Half-Ogre who is the fantasy equivalent of heavy moving equipment.

There are two possibilities for this NPC to exist:
If the Living One's killed Lukan, then the laborer's have no work to complete, since the old bridge is now open again.

If the Living One paid Lukan off or destroyed the construction materials, then perhaps their really WERE disappointed members of the Theives Underground who "persuaded" Lukan to leave. The old bridge is open again, and the laborers still have nothing to do.

In either case, the Half-Ogre decides to join you if he likes you (same CHA check as Sogg).


I'm not sure if it's possible, but you could leave it up to the player as to how the real Living One had gotten out of Shrouded Hills in the manner that BioWare has taken. Something like...

Half-Ogre Laborer:
"Dat 'leafing won' come thro here and kilt da teefs dat wus on da old bwidge!"

Player Character
Option 1: Interesting.

Option 2: Really? I didn't see any bodies as a warning against future thieves... Oh well.

Option 2 cont'd: Why are all the supplies for the new bridge damaged?

etc.

Nobody can complain if you left them the option to have had the Living One character play out how they wanted.