Pre-made or Random?

[RustKnight]

I think that making a story for a game can be done in two ways:

Either pre-establish a story and script characters to say things, and do things that you cannot influence or prevent them, like most of the RPGs we know.

OR

Make random events that influence people, for example:

A random wondering ronin that needs cold because you script him to get better weapons and armor, thus needing gold he either steals or work for it; make a random alignment bar for him when the character is created, and then if he is a bad guy (or at least mostly a bad guy) he goes stealing from a merchant let's say, then when you arrive you talk with the merchant and script him to tell you that his goods got stolen be this ronin, so this way you get random ''storyline'' with random events.

A good example of this kind of game is Dwarf Fortress, i would suggest it for you Chris to see it a bit for any ideas you could get from the game (not saying here to copy THEIR ideas...). In essence it's the same kind of game as yours: realistic combat, very realistic wounds, very distinct people, etc., only thing is, is that it's a game with mostly no graphics (except if you take maydays graphic pack) and that the learning curve is very brutal...

[Captain Deathbeard]

Yeah, thats pretty much how I'm doing things, everything is dynamic rather than scripted. Random isn't the right word, because it implies events are generated randomly and without reason, when in fact they occur based on current and previous events and situations of individuals and factions.

I always meant to try dwarf fortress, but could never get over the lack of graphics. I hear amazing things about it, look at it and go "...how? I can't even see!". I probably should make myself some day.

[RustKnight]

I know what you are saying, but did you check out Mayday's graphic pack ? it's superb. Had another friend saying things just like you (he is on this forum too, Lisianthus) and complained about the lack of graphs... but i hear now from him he is very pleased with the actual graphics.

Check this site out, it's a very very good guide to understand the game AND getting it with graphics

http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/ ... art-1-wtf/