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Death With Consequences (NOT DiD); A system of game play with consequences for death
Topic Started: Aug 10 2017, 10:37 PM (935 Views)
neildarkstar
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Death with Consequences
This is a slightly different competition-oriented style of game play I'm experimenting with. Currently, this would be in the "alpha" stage, and I'll be posting rules and any updates on my test character in this thread.

Discussion is encouraged, and of course anybody who wants to give it a try is welcome to give it a go under any posted rules (with the understanding that there is not really a competition underway, and the knowledge that this whole concept is entirely unproven). You can't just make up rules as you go along, but we the people involved might choose to modify any rules in midstream as we see fit if there is sufficient reason. Then someday, we can have a real competition in this manner with rules tested and proven.

For the sake of creating a competition in which to play, I'm going to set up a points schedule so we can see how death affects a character in a competition.

Because this system is being designed to work with various themed competitions, points will only be given for what the system is based on.

Let's say then that the competition is over for a character when the main quest is completed (regardless of which ending is chosen), or when a character reaches an arbitrary level. Let's just say level 100.

It occurred to me that somebody might say "Why complete the Main Quest then?" and here's my theory for your consideration. If a character has had multiple deaths, he might be afraid continuing indefinitely will reslut in him getting a negative score or a score that will be very small and never be close to the top among other players.

It also occurred to me that someone could just sit in Sanctuary and build the settlement, but you gotta know that's a cheat, right? Besides, you'd run out of resources sooner or later and have to go do something.

As a stratagem a player might choose to end the competition for his character simply by rushing to complete the main quest in whatever fashion he can. That's fine, but remember, it limits his attainable score while other braver souls might go all the way to level 100.

I think since avoiding death is the main objective here, that there should be points given for stayin' alive. So lets say 100 points per level. For convenience, let's call them "Life Span" (or LS points), and that works out to 1,000 LS points every ten levels, or 10,000 LS points for reaching level 100. That would be the maximum possible in this scenario, eh?

Of course if life gains points, then death must surely take them away, so I'm thinking of the following scale.

First Death 1,000 points.
Second Death 1,250 points
Third Death 1,500 points
Fourth Death (and each death beyond) 2,000 points.

My logic is that by the fourth death, you will have lost LS points equivalent to 57 levels. Losing that 20 more levels with each death after that will have you in irrecoverably negative territory by the 7th death.

We could have two winners! One gets the soon-to-be-coveted LS Award, which includes a beautifully gift wrapped No-Prize that will be housed somewhere in the Twilight Zone in your honor, the other a fine Darwin Award for achieving the lowest negative score, kept in the same place as the LS Award so both can be seen at once.

A side bet to consider...
How could you reduce your losses incurred from a death?
Here's my thought. When you reload, you will then be at the point of your last save, right? Right then and there (you may move to a clearing if you are in tall grasses or brush) you drop all of your weapons and armor and run to "touch base" for 500 points.

You can use any weapons and armor you may acquire along the way, but your previous armor and weapons must stay where they are until you touch base and return. Underwear (even if it gives some defensive value, but nothing over DR/ER of 5) may be retained to protect your modesty if you have no regular clothing. Clothing kept and worn must consist entirely of a single body/chest piece that, like underwear, cannot have any kind of DR/ER over 5. No hats, helmets, jewelery, gloves, bandanas, goggles, sunglasses, etc. may be worn.

You may not use Fast Travel of any sort to touch base even if Fast Travel is allowed in whatever competition you are playing in. Once you have touched "Home Base" you may continue on with your game, and go back for your gear or not according to your own wishes.

So, where or what is "Home Base"? I think for now it will be the Dartmouth Professional Building. It's centrally located, easy to find, easy to reach, but... it's often the scene of respawning warring factions. Scavengers and Rust Devils, Mechanist bots vs Scavengers and Rust Devils, you know, that sort of thing. To touch base, you must actually go into the building itself and stand behind the reception desk. A screenie of the moment would be nice (especially if you are still in your underwear :hubba: ).

You DO NOT have to pass through the closed door into the secondary lobby area inside the building.

This system as currently viewed is for Fallout 4, but I don't believe there is any real reason why it couldn't be modified to work just as well in Skyrim.

That's it for now, I guess. No doubt some changes will be coming along. :)
Edited by neildarkstar, Aug 10 2017, 11:18 PM.
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Areial
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Et'Ada
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That sounds good so far Neil...
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glargg
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A logical "Home Base" for Skyrim would be the interior of High Hrothgar, I think. :)
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Rick
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Neil. Think you should call it......."Dead is....nearly, but not quite actually really...Dead" :D
I was a third into this before I realised 'Sanctuary' meant it was FO4 themed. Watching with interest.......


@Glargg,

Absolutely High Hrothgar :)

You know I did trial a version of Death with Consequenses based at High Hrothgar years ago with Ulda. Not a competition of course...but the DwC method was trialled as part of Ulda's journal writings at the time on Bethsoft.

Went like this....


Who in the whole game world could know if Dragonborn died...no matter where she was....yes! The Greybeards. They would feel the loss of Thu'um in the world.

And who has enough mystique....power....and secret mentoring to be able to RP bringing the char back from the dead via a time rewind....yes The Greybeards and Paarthy.

So....

She stood on the "sacred flames of remembrance" as I termed them, in the council chamber (they don't harm the char...burn cold) where a SAVE is taken. This became the only save point allowed....no fast travel to HH either...this deliberately made taking a save a long process to discourage frequent saving......also making a save into a real pilgrimmage eh!

The consequences.....well because saves were (and meant to be) infrequent....death dropped Ulda by several levels and all the goodies she accumulated since the last save.

It worked really well....strongly enouraging one to keep alive to avoid losses....yet still meaning over time positive progress could be made without losing everything.

Why did I not keep it up......simple.....the Dead is Dead mindset mentality.....once I saw Ulda die...I could not continue with a reload....I mean, I did try, but the longer I went the stronger the feelings get that she should really be dead. In short....it felt like a cheat (to me) becsuse Dead is Dead has such a grip on ones mind.

Maybe after Adella's Trial....I might re-visit the concept....maybe...
Edited by Rick, Aug 11 2017, 05:47 AM.
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neildarkstar
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Well... I spent the night playing Holly, and it was was... interesting, although no death occurred. First there was the issue of no PiP-Boy (again) and then I thought I'd figured a way around it. I opened a wooden crate above ground that had Holly's black bikini outfit in it (BTW I watched "The Net" again last night to beat the boredom, and Sandra Bullock was on a beach wearing an almost exact duplicate of Holly's outfit. Her top was the same in front, but had a different back).

So, it opened up, and I had access to the stuff in Holly's inventory, so I traded the Vaultsuit for the bikini outfit... just one problem. while I could unequip items by putting them into the box, there was no way to equip anything. I had thought thee was an equip option in transfer, but I guess that's just for NPCs.

So, completely nekkid, Holly made a run into Sanctuary and went down inot the cellar. She told me (confidentially, so don't tell anyone) that she knew it was there because the woman she was having an affair with was also having an affair with the guy who owned the cellar.

Anyway, she took a little nap dreamed of Ruth, and then awoke to find her PiP-Boy restored. When she had climbed the hill up from the creek earlier, she had noticed a shack on the other side that seemed to have someone moving around in it. She decided to go check it out and see if they were friendly.

She had climbed down to the creek when a swrm of huge flies attacked her and threw crap on her from a distance! the crap itself was toxic, and squirmed almost as if it was alive, and the flies did her a lot of damage. She tried to shoot them, but they moved so fast and dodged so nimbly that they were almost impossible for her to hit... In desperation, she ran to that shack on the far hill while crying out for help, and guess what?

That little piss-ant of a man tried to shoot her! She ran past him, and around the base of the bluff that rose from his shack, and at least one of the flies turned and went after the man. The man's really scary attack dog came running after Holly too, but he stopped long enough to kill one of the flies. Holly managed to kill the other one and just as she breatheed a sigh of relief, that damned dog turned on her!

She didn't want to hurt him, but she had no choice and simply killed him out of hand. She thought the dog had attacked because his master had attacked here earlier, so Holly went up the bluff and dropped a molotov cocktail on the piss-ant's head. Taught him a permanent lesson, eh?

Well, Holly did manage to find one antibiotic in Sanctuary, and she's happy about that, but her dog (Dogmeat) has vanished. She had thought to take Dogmeat into the Vault with her, and he was with on the lift as she started down, but he was gone when she got to the bottom. Holly searched everywhere, and he's nowhere to be found.

As soon as I leave here, she's going to try the PRID moveto command and see if he turns up. hey, anybody using the journal, I think it's great but how can I export her entries? Anybody know?

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Areial
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I don't, sorry... sounds like a funky night...

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Serethil
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I dunno neil - you might need a clean reinstall.... way too many issues lately!
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glargg
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@Neil...Missing PiP-Boy...didn't I see something posted here recently about you trying a modded version of that? Is that mod (or part of it) still active, and/or could there be a load-order problem that's preventing the PiP-Boy from loading at the proper time?


@Rick...I like your idea of the Greybeards having the power to restore Ulda. This brings to mind other possibilities of Restore Locations to suit different characters.

For instance, a Dunmer might have Azura's Shrine as a resurrection point. You've even got the priestess Aranea standing there with her arms in a "raise the dead" position!

Any of the Standing Stones could be used. Likewise any of the Shrines to the Divine. A Hall of the Dead, perhaps?

Mages could be reborn in the Hall of the Elements, in the College.
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Areial
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What I did with Akemmi , once the competition she was in was over, I used bench mark's in the MQ, as her "resurrect" point. The Cart Ride, Way of the Voice ( Ie the end of meeting the Greybeards). Meeting Paarthurnax, Reading the Elderscroll, and I think the last one was right before trapping Odahviing.

Which leaves huge gaping holes in play time.. that I lost on her "death" before she was "resurrected" .. Fact is, she only died a few times and most of that was during the competition and I had to start over again anyway. The last time was in Skuldafn ... and she had to start over right before trapping Odahviing.. and We made her some better armor.. and more potions.. ( Immersive Creatures and ASIS made it a bitch at lvl 25)


I like Glargg's idea's also... not every play through has to go to H.H... though many can and make sense. The Hall of the Dead closest to the "faction" or nominal chosen home base for the round, would be a very good bet.
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Poncho
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I might borrow the Hall of the Dead idea for a respawn point....

Already have a character drafted up that i've not had chance to run through yet....
basic gist, for any interested:
Spoiler: click to toggle
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neildarkstar
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Serethil
Aug 11 2017, 10:43 AM
I dunno neil - you might need a clean reinstall.... way too many issues lately!


I don't really believe it's to that point yet. Most of the things that have happened have actually been fairly normal for FO4, although it's been dumping bad luck all over Holly. :D

The only thing I can actually point at and say "Hey! That's a game screw up is the missing PiP-Boy, and that is happening because I had installed two different PiP-Boy mods. Once it shows up in the root cellar, there are no further problems in that area.
I mean, I'm not going to do a reinstall because Holly can't seem to hit a bloatfly with or without VATS... That's just something that happens.

glargg
Aug 11 2017, 12:07 PM
@Neil...Missing PiP-Boy...didn't I see something posted here recently about you trying a modded version of that? Is that mod (or part of it) still active, and/or could there be a load-order problem that's preventing the PiP-Boy from loading at the proper time?


Yeah, I had iPad Pip-Boy, then tried Nuka-cola Pip-Boy, and deided it didn't fit, so I ended up installing the Black Widow mod which adds an altered PiP-Boy as well as some other goodies. Somehow after the install, the Black Widow doesn't think it should install immediately after character creation because it is supposed to be "found" I believe, and designed for the vanilla PiP-Boy to be used prior to discovery of the Black Widow stuff.

I don't know why exactly the vanilla pip-boy isn't showing up, but that's life when mods are involved.




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Brambleberry
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I am currently using this black colored pip-boy mod and it doesn't have any extra accoutrement. You see it on the Doc's arm at the beginning and it is what you loot off him 200 plus years later.
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neildarkstar
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Ain't no damned way I'm changing PiP-Boy mods again for the foreseeable future. That one looks cool though. :)
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Serethil
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Heh. Can't blame you at this point.
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glargg
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neildarkstar
Aug 11 2017, 03:46 PM
Somehow after the install, the Black Widow doesn't think it should install immediately after character creation because it is supposed to be "found" I believe, and designed for the vanilla PiP-Boy to be used prior to discovery of the Black Widow stuff.

I don't know why exactly the vanilla pip-boy isn't showing up, but that's life when mods are involved.




Are you starting replays of this character from a save after the point in the game where the Pip-boy is normally given to the character? If so, it's likely that uninstalling the previous mod wiped the object, and reinstalling this "find later" item doesn't replace it. So you're starting with no Pip-boy because technically the character doesn't have it.

I've had glitches like this before when using mods that assume they'll be used on a "new" character, or conversely on mods that assume they'll be added to an existing character.

There are scripted events that occur in Bethesda tutorials, like adding pip-boys. If those events are overwritten by a mod at the "wrong" time, you can get glitches.
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Rick
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Spawn points for a DwC playthrough......

Hmmm....well, folk will set up there spawn points as they please, 'natch. However, let me add this...
Part of the reason I chose High Hrothgar was because it is purposely hard...or long winded, to get to.

If a spawn point is easy to reach....then saves there are a tempting thing to do frequently....and death has a greatly reduced 'consequence'. The game could easily revert to a straight forward re-loader style.

So...in order to make saves inconvenient and infrequent....the save point needs to be hard to reach or at least pretty remote.

Somewhere in the college. Or at Azura's shrine, as mentioned, would just about be sufficiently remote. Maybe Blackreach! But what ever is chosen needs to discourage frequent saving....in order to make the playthrough feel special, like DiD does.
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Areial
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hmm not just a "resurrect" point, but specific bench marks? The bench mark's chosen for each round specifically. LvL's aren't good one, but specific places in quest-lines are.

I know after a couple of rounds if we always had to go to H.H. to resurrect, I'd either opt for a complete restart or just throw in the towel.. It get's seriously boring.

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neildarkstar
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I think it's great that so many of you are wanting to grab this and run with it, but I think we need to sort a few things out so we don't have misunderstandings later on.

First, I never had thoughts of creating respawn points. If that's what y'all want to do, that's fine, but let me explain what I was thinking because it seems to have goten lost.

First, the trip to "Touch Base" (what I call the "Side Bet") is entirely voluntary... You don't HAVE to do it. The way it would go is like this:

let's say you're killed at low level in FO4 while trying to sort out the thing with Trudy (not as if that would EVER actually happen of course).

On death, you reload your last save, wherever it was. Let's say you did some trading with Trashcan Carla and saved immediately afterward. That means you reload your game and find yourself standing by Carla's trashcan.

It's your first death, so you have just taken 1,000 point penalty against your total. That's equivelent to ten levels of achievment, eh? A lot to lose. If you're brave, you can take the Side Bet, but you don't have to. You can just eat the point loss and go on your way. Of course in my mind, you'll need to deposit your weapons and armor permanently in the nearest container, eh? :evil:

To take the side bet, you drop all of your weapons and armor right where you are (or a nearby point where it won't be lost in the grass). Things like Hazmat suits that offer protection from energy or radiation are considered armor, where a piece of clothing that grants say 2 to charisma, or 1 to strength is acceptable, as long as it offers no protection from ballistic, energy, or radiation damage. You then begin a run with no fast travel, and no side trips on the way to the Dartmouth Professional Building. No going to your house to grab spare weapons, or to Sanctuary (even though it's nearby), no running after Carla to buy some gear. No ducking into Diamond City to buy gear, even if your route takes you right by the front door. No buying from Traders like Carla or Cricket even if their brahmin runs over you on the road. You can however get healing from a doctor if you have a disease that requires treatment, but no trading or bartering with him.

However, if a weapon or piece of armor is laying on the ground in front of you, you can pick it up and use it, but no heading off the route for the purpose of gathering gear until... Yes, once you reach the building, you may not be able to enter without fighting your way in. That means you can scrounge around in the immediate area of the building. I will tell you that there ARE weapons available very close by (no, you don't get to go back to Diamond City) even if there are no bodies to loot at the building itself. Unless of course you have already gone there and taken them, then you might be out of luck... :)

All you have to do is stroll into the building, walk around the reception desk to the back side of it (hopefully taking a screenie for a keepsake) and you're free to go back and pick up your regular gear. You also get to add 500 points to your score, thus reducing your death penalty by the equivelent of 5 levels of achievment.

Note that whether or not you choose to take the Side bet could depend on where you are when you get killed. Imagine trying to get out of the Glowing Sea with no equiptment, eh?

Now that's the Side Bet. Some similar spot could be chosen for Skyrim as well as long as it's a place with frequent respawns or inherent danger. Some place with Falmer would be fun, eh?

I see character respawns as a different thing entirely. You want a respawn point? No problem, but it has nothing to do with the side bet, and you don't get points back for reloading your save at whatever respawn point is chosen. You see, the Side Bet is just for fun, as well as a strategic choice, eh?

Here's an illustration Holly was kind enough to provide us with (though it was unintentional, I assure you).



Spoiler: click to toggle


EDIT: One thing I wanted to add... This whole concept could get unmercifully complicated with no real effort by anybody to make it that way. When you have a thought about "improvement" consider carefully whether it really is an imprvement or just an added complication. KISS ;)
Edited by neildarkstar, Aug 12 2017, 12:50 AM.
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Rick
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Well this really is configured for FO4 and with points and what not.....so for me it is already waaaay complicated. So I'm gonna leave it to all you irradiated wastelanders to enjoy.

But seriously, I might just revisit my old DwC in Skyrim idea after her ladyship's Trial thing. For me, her Trial challenge is kinda the ultimate pinnacle of Skyrim play...so afterwards its gonna feel like a big weight off my shoulders and we can experiment freely with stuff like DwC, RPs etc etc :)

Catcha laters....
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Areial
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Ah.. I see and yah, that's a simple enough concept.
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