Slitherine

OK, it's Friday afternoon here in San Diego, and this is where I stand on my campaign.

Of the total 41 scenarios, (I am using the existing celtic campaign structure), I have 27 completed, one in progress, and 13 yet to be done.

The Briefings for the 27 complete scenarios (and the one in progress) are all written. The camera views for those 28 are all done, and the text box sizes all adjusted.

A point to consider on the last - if someone plays the game at 1280x1024, and I designed it at 1024x768, are the text boxes going to be all hosed?

With no intro/outro movies, and no practical way to make them, I am forced to tell my tale entirely within the scenario briefings. This isn't hard, once I adjusted to the idea, since I can actually expand the briefings to 4 screens if needed, and I suppose I could use the whole screen of all 4, if I really wanted to. But I doubt anybody has the patience to read that much, so I'm keeping it short, sweet, and simple, just like Slitherine did.

One thing that gave me a qualm last night, when I finally wrote the intro to the campaign itself, (which will be displayed on the first 3 screens of the first scenario).

I am sure most of you have some idea how crazy decadent the roman imperial family had become by this period. But the honest truth is that whan I write down the bare historical facts, (with the one modification that makes this exercise in historical fiction work), it comes out sounding like a bad japanese anime movie.

Check it out -
You are Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus, son of the emperor Claudius Caesar. It is 54 AD and you are 13 years old. Though you were declared heir-designate of the empire at birth, your star has waned since your mother's disgrace and execution. With your father's re-marriage to Aggrippina, he has come to fear for your life.

Strict historical fact to this point, but it sounds, uhhhh, well, hokey somehow

Your father, the emperor Claudius, has devised a plan to save you, secretly arranging for you to be fostered with the king of the Trinovante, a friendly tribe in Britannia.~~It is his fond hope that you may grow to manhood there, uncorrupted by the treasons and decadence of the Roman capital, and one day return to restore the republic.

This part is probably Robert Graves imagination. I got this whole idea from "Claudius the God".

In actual historical fact, Britannicus stayed in Rome to contest the succession. Claudius was murdered, Lucius Domitius took the throne as Nero, and Britannicus was murdered shortly before his 14th birthday.

Though it galls you to run away from your keen rivalry with Lucius Domitius, son of the evil Agrippina, you have been raised to be a true roman, and obedience to fatherly authority forces you to agree.


Anyhow, you see what I mean. Part of the problem is my own somewhat florid, melodramatic style of storytelling/narration.

Right, back to the tangible, non-touchy-feely part of this report.

One thing I am going to need from the community very soon is a couple of playtesters, even three if that many people are available and interested. These playtesters should be experienced and skillful LA players. CoM is not required. I have carefully created this whole campaign without CoM installed.

History is stranger than fiction a lot of the time. You could start off by saying "the following is based on real events".

I think most of the people who are likely to play will know a bit about history anyway

Thank you, Ian. That's a good suggestion.

I must admit this project has really fired my imagination. I am feeling more creative enthusiasm right now than I have felt in several years, and I like that a lot.

Of all the parts of middle-age that I don't like, the general fading of enthusiasms worries me the most.

I also would mention that I owe you Slitherine guys a major debt of creative gratitude as far as scenario design. The smooth way you designed the original scenarios really taught me something.

I am referring to the way you assign the player to the left wing, or vanguard, or guarding the baggage train, and let the player determine his own destiny, but never allow him to change the course of history. Now, I am in fact going with an alternate history, but the lessons you taught me still apply, and I hope I have been able to apply them as skillfully as you guys did

I only wish I was a graphics weenie, and I could make movies, even simple ones. Then again, that could triple the hours consumed by this project, so maybe I should just count my blessings.

sounds awesome, can't wait to check it out

Well, I am down to the last scenario group at this point.

And I have to make a design decision, or perhaps revisit one I made at the start of this project.

This is absolutely not a criticism, but the stock celtic and roman campaigns had a typical wargame style final battle. Historically accurate, and very interesting, but not more difficult, per se, than any of the other battles in the campaign.

I am thinking in terms of an ending more typical of an FPS game, a "boss battle", something incredibly difficult, with at least one nasty surprise.

The obvious drawback to this FPS-style approach is that it greatly complicates the business of difficulty settings.

OTOH, I enjoy an advantage here that Slitherine did not have when designing the stock game. Their target audience was anybody who bought LA. My target audience is people who already own LA, played it, did well enough at it to enjoy it, finished both stock campaigns, and went looking for more. This strongly implies a higher level of game skill.

I would be very interested to hear what you slitherine guys think about the business of final battles, since you are the professionals here

It's definitely something of an issue in games with this kind of freedom. It's something we are working on

Cheers

Pip

We made the battles in CoM much harder than Legion Arena as we also assume a decent level of player skill by this point. The last battle is pretty tough!