Call to Adventure - Work in Progress

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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So I’ve had way too much free time on my hands lately, and I’ve started working on a Choicescript game.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/86817576/web/mygame/index.html

Call to Adventure is sort of my homage to old school fantasy RPGs. The main story involves gathering allies as you go on a quest to defeat an evil warlord, with a heavy focus on character and story. There’ll be companion quests, romance sidequests, moral decisions, all that sort of stuff.

This is my first time writing or coding anything this complex, so technical, story, all kinds of feedback would be really welcome.

4 Likes
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Very nice, I like the story. It moves nicly and draws you in. Did not hit any errors.

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Hm, I like it so far, the exposition could have been delivered a bit better, rather than just heaped on from the characters. I liked the implementation of stats, it felt nice helping the town out. But that said, the town could definitely use more flavor, we need a reason to care about the town, to want to defend it to the death/avenge it. Or less vague reasons for the protagonist to want to defend/avenge it.

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I Like It

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I would add different classes like mages or archers. Other than that I liked it. Im thinking of making a game now…

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It’s super good, I like the different sloutions to problems. Keep up the good work :slight_smile:

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Just played the game, my game was good at intelligence but was decent in charisma and combat. I love the style of it, can’t wait to see more of this. Def Bookmarking this one.

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That was really good bravo

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Thank you so much for all the kind words, I’m really glad people liked it.

@13ventrm What do you think would help give the starting town more flavor? I’d like it to stand out as a distinct place of course, but I also don’t want to dictate too much to players about how their characters should feel.

@revanrulesrussia I’m going for a low fantasy setting, so no mages are going to be running around. I’ve thought about the idea of adding archers, but I’m still undecided because of how much ranged combat can change encounters. I might go back and add it in later once I get more comfortable with coding.

Also, as a general questions, I’m curious what everyone thought of how the stats were handled. Did they seem more or less balanced and equally useful? Also what did you think of the way combat was handled?

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@KelaSaar for the town, te character has lived there his whole life, he must be known. Is he liked, is he feared, do people trust him? Answer these questions and make it a HOME and i think that would work.

And i liked the stats because i assume i will be able to increase?

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I agree with @Raven. Good game.

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@Raven Good feedback. I’m definetely going to go back and beef up some of part 1. It’ll give me something fun to work on whenever I get stuck while working on the next section.

The stats will increase throughout the game. Basically, anytime you use a skill successfully the skill will increase, and there’s a few sort of “training” moments where a skill will increase without a check.

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Grammar error, when talking to Ean:

Well, I certainly can’t complain about the company, you say with a flirtatious smile.

It should be:

“Well, I certainly can’t complain about the company,” you say with a flirtatious smile.

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Amazing. I’ve been working on a DnD / RPG style fantasy game myself, but I’m glad to finally play one! I think the world you constructed and your prose are great. Thanks for writing this.

You asked for some feedback, so here goes…

1) No magic?! Noooo!

2) You used *Join instead of *New Join, so when you pick the “real” reason you joined the militia, you’re asked if you’re telling the truth a second time. Only “Yes” is available, so it’s not really that big of a problem.

3) You can hit on Ean regardless of gender. Mistake? It’s cool if it’s not. But I think making seduction gender dependant may add more depth. It could give a player more reason to replay with another character “build”.

4) Stealing the medical supplies only affects stats. It would be interesting to have the player encounter wounded during the battle for Westhaven. The player could decide to use to stolen items and help, at risk of having to explain where they got it, or doing nothing and letting the wounded die.

As a writer / GM, you know what’s happening to the player’s stats, but the player doesn’t, not really. It does add extra burden on writing, which sucks, but doing something like this could provide greater feedback to the player.

5) Need moar evil choices.

How about having a second battle encounter when the player is with Ean? That way the player has a chance to abandon Ean and run off.

I think, even if the player has less than 2 bloyalty, there should be a 50/50 chance of encountering Ean. So they could abandon Ean.

How about an option to loot something from Carran’s corpse?

6) What about limiting the player’s choices?

The “What would you like to know?” choice loop with Commander Carran could be reduced to only a single question. If he’s busy, he may have only a slight moment to spare. The revealed information could then be used to help the player later on potentially.

If the player chooses to know more about…

Commander Carran > Carran could reveal info or an item to the player before he dies.

The threat > the player could not be caught of guard at night, and have some sort of edge during the battle of Westhaven.

Neron > the player could identify him Neron when he appears vs seeing some dude in dark heavy armor flanked by two lackeys

Being attacked > a stealty/cowardly character could bypass all combat and the dying Carran encounter, but still know that the Gorinth Pass is their best bet for survival.

Limiting the what to do in town before the battle choice to two or less choices could also add to replayability and more story/choice depth.

I know that this would take a while to do, especially with having to re-tweak stats, but it’d be awesome.

7) Typo:

“As you make your way to the marketplace on the edge of town,the sounds of fighting grow louder and louder.”

should be > “edge of town, the sounds”

8) Typo:

"Neron … not human anymore … somthing dark.

should be > “something dark.”

9) Typo:

“Your clever plan works, and the Neron’s men head off in the direction you tricked them into going.”

should be > “and Neron’s men”

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Thanks for the help with the typos. I tried to catch most of them, but at a certain point I think you just start seeing what you think should be there.

@pipebrain Thanks for the super detailed feedback. To address some of your points specifically:

  1. No magic for the PC :frowning: I find a sort of low magic world to be easier to write.

  2. There are definitely a few spots I need to iron out in the coding. I think you can definitely tell what sections I did first because I’m a lot more comfortable with coding now than when I started.

  3. All of the romances are open to players regardless of gender. It’s easier for me to code, and I think it’s fairer for players. Besides you’re the PC, you’re awesome enough that everyone is PC-sexual :wink:

  4. When it comes to the medical supplies, I’m currently trying to decide if I want to include an option for you to use them to heal yourself in the next section, or if you probably wouldn’t have thought to/had time to grab them when you’re suddenly under attack

  5. There’ll definitely be more evil choices in later parts. I’m trying to make sure that evil (especially the smart kind of evil) is a valid and equally rewarding way of playing. And don’t worry, you’ll be able to do plenty of horrible stuff to Ean later. Also, I’m trying to stay away from looting/equipment because as much as I love the inventory system in Zombie Exodus, I’m really not comfortable coding anything that complex yet.

  6. I view this first part as something of a tutorial level, so I’m not planning on having too much branching in it. The real branching stuff starts in the next part and goes on from there (assuming my eyes aren’t bigger than my stomach, so to speak).

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I approve of the no magic/low magic setting. It always bothers me when fantasy settings have “mage” or “wizard” as a job, with magic academies and such. It makes the magic seem much less mysterious.

If there are large numbers (a least a few dozen or so) of people with access to magic why are they wasting their time throwing fireballs at each other and summoning demons? You would think they could easily earn a comfortable living providing an endless supply of heat and light to all those nobles with drafty castles, or better yet, using their powers to help gurantee a good wheat harvest or a healthy flock of sheep. These skills would be a lot more valuable to a feudal society than “magic missle”.

Some setting even have spells that create food out of thin air! Can you imagine how useful this would be in a society where even preparing a simple meal could be a labor intensive process.

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@Vermander Everything you said is pretty much why I decided to go low fantasy. If I had to come up with a magic system that made sense, didn’t act as a game breaker, and affected society the way it logically would, I’d have been too busy with that to actually work on the game. Besides what magic there is becomes a lot more interesting and serious of a threat if it’s a rare and poorly understood thing.

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What About Religion? Just Wondering

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@Zed I have put some thought into religion in this setting, but it’s not hugely relevant to the plot, so I was planning on just having it mentioned off-handedly in conversations and the like and not really going into a lot of detail. I can certainly elaborate on it more if people are interested though.

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Make Zealots. Zealots Are Always Fun!