FredFirefly
Recruit
Hello everyone !
I was thinking about what could be cool to make the political life of Calradia more alive. Because right now, past the quite interesting political view of each clan leader that we get when in the dialogue options, there is not much happening about their personal inspirations. And I thought it would be cool to have the player being able to get involved in realizing or not a Lord's will, by getting a unique quest from them. I do not know if it would be reasonable to imagine one quest per clan, but some of them could be connected, as the example I will give below, we could imagine quests shared between two characters, with the player having to choose a side between the two.
Those unique quests should only be available if reaching a certain relationship with given noble. Maybe the traits of the player could also be a condition to a Lord agreeing to give you a quest or not. For example, a devious Lord that is up to no good would only give his quest to a devious player. This would make it so depending on which faction you choose, or even if you choose twice the same faction, depending how you play, you get different quests given to you at the end of the day. Those quests could also have a more or less important impact on the faction of the clan you're helping. I'll give an example of a quest that could have a enormous impact on Sturgia.
For my example, the quest giver would be Olek the Old, who is not really fond of the faction leader Raganvad. We can imagine a reversed scenario on Raganvad's side. It would be about putting an end to the rivalry that appeared between them at the end of the big war where Raganvad's father died.
Quest example: Long live the prince
Once you reach a high level of relation (80 or 90) with Olek the old, you get a new dialogue option with him to start a quest to get rid of Raganvad. We can then imagine several scenarios (there would be only one, I don't think we need different path, but I'm just throwing my ideas):
- Olek wants to duel Raganvad to the death, you need to poison Raganvad so he is weakened for the fight, we can imagine dialogue phases to convince servants to let you handle the drink or Raganvad, or some sneak phase (not sure that is on point in the game)
- Olek has paid bandits to beat up Raganvad, you just have to lead him in a specific location. That would give you a unique opportunity to raise an army with Raganvad, you go to the designated location, and once you get there, you get to play on the side of the bandits.
- Olek thinks it would be horrible if Raganvad were to not come back from the next military campaign, wink wink. On the next declared war, you need to make sure Raganvad suffers a defeat. That could be more or less scenarized with Raganvad creating an army where you and Olek are supposed to join. An army of equal force or a little weaker to yours is showing up at some point, while Raganvad is about to engage combat, You get a conversation with Olek that now is the time, and he leaves the army and goes away, you have to do the same.
Once Raganvad is dead, Olek could become the new prince of Sturgia, give you a settlement for your help, you could gain relation bonus (not very important as you would already be almost max by the time you accept the quest), and maybe a few unique bonuses when fighting in the same army, he could give you a unique piece or armor/weapon of his family... On the other hand, Raganvad's faction would become your enemies (considering they would hear about what happened), they might even leave Sturgia. We could imagine some hard chase of witnesses/dialogue convincing mini-games to try to avoid negative consequences of the quest.
We can imagine that there is always a way to change your mind and save Raganvad instead, with a dialogue option to snitch on Olek. I think my last scenario would be the most interesting for that as changing your mind last minute and actually stay with Raganvad in the battle would make a good challenge. Screwing Olek's plan should give you a huge malus in relation, -150 wouldn't seem exaggerated as you would expose him as a traitor (also you need to go from something like +80 to a negative value). From that point, either we want to make it fast and Olek is exiled from Sturgia at that very moment with all his clan and Raganvad gives you all of Olek's settlements for saving him. Or we could have a new objective to find Olek and bring him to Raganvad to decide of what will happen to him. There could be a dialogue game to try to convince Raganvad to execute, exile, or spare Olek (but why would you spare the guy?).
I haven't looked deep in every character's biography/dialogues to know if it would be doable to make such interesting quests with every lord (press X to doubt), also, I do not know much about the in depth relation of Raganvad and Olek and about Sturgian lore in general if there is something of sort somewhere, so my scenario might make one of them out of character, but I've just set that as an example of the kind of stuff I'd like to see in the game after I noted the two guys were not really friends.
I was thinking about what could be cool to make the political life of Calradia more alive. Because right now, past the quite interesting political view of each clan leader that we get when in the dialogue options, there is not much happening about their personal inspirations. And I thought it would be cool to have the player being able to get involved in realizing or not a Lord's will, by getting a unique quest from them. I do not know if it would be reasonable to imagine one quest per clan, but some of them could be connected, as the example I will give below, we could imagine quests shared between two characters, with the player having to choose a side between the two.
Those unique quests should only be available if reaching a certain relationship with given noble. Maybe the traits of the player could also be a condition to a Lord agreeing to give you a quest or not. For example, a devious Lord that is up to no good would only give his quest to a devious player. This would make it so depending on which faction you choose, or even if you choose twice the same faction, depending how you play, you get different quests given to you at the end of the day. Those quests could also have a more or less important impact on the faction of the clan you're helping. I'll give an example of a quest that could have a enormous impact on Sturgia.
For my example, the quest giver would be Olek the Old, who is not really fond of the faction leader Raganvad. We can imagine a reversed scenario on Raganvad's side. It would be about putting an end to the rivalry that appeared between them at the end of the big war where Raganvad's father died.
Quest example: Long live the prince
Once you reach a high level of relation (80 or 90) with Olek the old, you get a new dialogue option with him to start a quest to get rid of Raganvad. We can then imagine several scenarios (there would be only one, I don't think we need different path, but I'm just throwing my ideas):
- Olek wants to duel Raganvad to the death, you need to poison Raganvad so he is weakened for the fight, we can imagine dialogue phases to convince servants to let you handle the drink or Raganvad, or some sneak phase (not sure that is on point in the game)
- Olek has paid bandits to beat up Raganvad, you just have to lead him in a specific location. That would give you a unique opportunity to raise an army with Raganvad, you go to the designated location, and once you get there, you get to play on the side of the bandits.
- Olek thinks it would be horrible if Raganvad were to not come back from the next military campaign, wink wink. On the next declared war, you need to make sure Raganvad suffers a defeat. That could be more or less scenarized with Raganvad creating an army where you and Olek are supposed to join. An army of equal force or a little weaker to yours is showing up at some point, while Raganvad is about to engage combat, You get a conversation with Olek that now is the time, and he leaves the army and goes away, you have to do the same.
Once Raganvad is dead, Olek could become the new prince of Sturgia, give you a settlement for your help, you could gain relation bonus (not very important as you would already be almost max by the time you accept the quest), and maybe a few unique bonuses when fighting in the same army, he could give you a unique piece or armor/weapon of his family... On the other hand, Raganvad's faction would become your enemies (considering they would hear about what happened), they might even leave Sturgia. We could imagine some hard chase of witnesses/dialogue convincing mini-games to try to avoid negative consequences of the quest.
We can imagine that there is always a way to change your mind and save Raganvad instead, with a dialogue option to snitch on Olek. I think my last scenario would be the most interesting for that as changing your mind last minute and actually stay with Raganvad in the battle would make a good challenge. Screwing Olek's plan should give you a huge malus in relation, -150 wouldn't seem exaggerated as you would expose him as a traitor (also you need to go from something like +80 to a negative value). From that point, either we want to make it fast and Olek is exiled from Sturgia at that very moment with all his clan and Raganvad gives you all of Olek's settlements for saving him. Or we could have a new objective to find Olek and bring him to Raganvad to decide of what will happen to him. There could be a dialogue game to try to convince Raganvad to execute, exile, or spare Olek (but why would you spare the guy?).
I haven't looked deep in every character's biography/dialogues to know if it would be doable to make such interesting quests with every lord (press X to doubt), also, I do not know much about the in depth relation of Raganvad and Olek and about Sturgian lore in general if there is something of sort somewhere, so my scenario might make one of them out of character, but I've just set that as an example of the kind of stuff I'd like to see in the game after I noted the two guys were not really friends.
