I’d like to introduce sub professions eventually. The game is already crazy difficult to code so any more additions adds development time. I would like to have this released by early 2015, so the current customizations and professions are 99% locked.
So there is still a 1% chance that there will be a secret Void Assassin profession that you can get by having the name Porter Void
It’s funny, I was going to ask ‘what ever happened to him’, then I realized you had changed your profile pic… I’m mentally blind like that sometimes
Woah! #200!!!
I don’t know why that is a link…
If choose region first you could include specialty region professions like Farmer for country, or Waste Management Plant Worker for Big City
@JimD I kind of wonder if having individual intros for each profession is really worth it. I mean, in the end when everything converges it’ll just become apparent that none of the stuff that happened before actually mattered, won’t it? If you’re a teenager you’re forced to watch helplessly as a bunch of your friends and potentially the person you have a crush on are brutally killed, and then shortly after your best friend is as well, but will that make things any different from starting off as a bank robber and watching one stranger be horribly killed and then saving your partner? Realistically the difference should be huge. It feels like it may hurt things more than help depending on the scenario since it makes it seem like your choices don’t matter.
@Shoelip But your choices greatly affect your stats, correct? Your skill levels and experiences and areas of expertise? So in that way the backgrounds carry over throughout the game.
I’m interested to see what comes of the bank accounts. Is money even still useful?
Do they affect your stats? I mean, I imagine so, but that is on a different page entirely so the feedback isn’t particularly natural. Also, this isn’t a hack and slash RPG so stats aren’t what people are playing for presumably.
@P0RT3R I’m not 100% sure what a Void Assassin is, so there’s less than a 1% chance I’d include it. But there’s still a chance.
@Doctor Not a bad idea. It works well for some (such as Police Officer can be Sheriff). I’ll consider adding it though it leads to the next topic.
@Shoelip I wondered the same thing after writing four of them. I committed to writing individual backgrounds, so I kept going. If I could go back in time, I would not commit to so many. Likely, I’d break it up by region (country, suburbs, city).
Originally I had only the take-your-date-to-the-movies vignette but some people didn’t like being forced to go on a date, or felt it didn’t fit their characters. My style is always to make people happy at the expense or complexity (I’m working on that in therapy), so I thought, “why not add a background story for every profession!”
As I started to write them, some things became apparent (which reminded me of why I considered doing such an elaborate character building portion).
- People enjoy getting into character, and feedback has been extremely positive on all backgrounds. Readers seem to be entertained by those extra stories.
- I have added ways to customize within professions, such as college students picking a major or MMA fighters picking styles, which will follow through the story.
- Going through the background gives perspective. I’ve had several people say they’d never choose a Social Worker but having played the background, they are interested in replaying with those skills/background.
- As Fiogan stated, readers set starting morality stats through choices in those backgrounds.
- I do have ways planned to interject details from those background vignettes into the rest of the story.
I also find that one of the major types of readers for ZE are those RPG fans who want to min-max/build their characters. All of this character customization (hair color, tattoos, etc.) really appeals to them. I got a dozen emails just asking me to add certain tattoo types. Is it necessary for the story? Hellz no. If this was a CoG official game, Jason would tear out that virtual page and e-scold me. But the group of people on my face book page who discuss best handheld weapons to use against zombies enjoy that level of customization.
TLDR: I agree the backgrounds are not necessary for the story, but once I committed to writing them, I found them worthwhile and readers like them.
@Fiogan money has an impact for a short time. Chapter 2 is the start of the outbreak when most living people still think this whole infection-thing will blow over soon enough. While you can loot and steal for many basic things, you will still cross people who can be persuaded by money, at least until they realize civilization is gone.
My job here is done.
::bows::
@JimD Are you sure you’re talking about min/maxing? Min maxing and choosing detailed aesthetics are two completely different things. Practically the opposite in fact. “Min/Maxer” refers to someone who disregards roleplaying in favor of optimizing the mechanical aspects of their character in order to most efficiently win die rolls and stat checks. The typical min/maxer is exactly the kind of person who wouldn’t care in the slightest about customizing their character’s tattoos… unless they were stat altering tattoos. Not really the kind of person I’d imagine would be attracted to a story focused game like this.
Just want to make sure I know what you’re talking about.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that they’re unnecessary. I was questioning if it’ll be worth their inclusion when they’re so much extra work, and could easily have an overall adverse effect on the game due to people expecting the rest of the game to be heavily influenced by your choice of profession like the intro was, or due to people being bothered by how seemingly inconsequential your choices in the intro are unless you do care about stats. Maybe I’m a minority here and most of your fans actually do care a lot more about the stats than the storytelling and the choices, in which case I’m kind of at a loss as to why they’d be playing a multiple choice text adventure instead of any number of games that seem far far far better suited to that kind of thing…
@shoelip I’m a fond lover of both settings, storyline AND stats. They aren’t opposite at all stats are a perfect way to help you and writer to drive your story toward your choices in a realistic way. For instance, you got zero nurse skills well certain story can say you successfully treated a person half death in pain or if you couldn’t charm describe you persuading a mad man to suicide himself. Stats in a multiple choices are really a good thing without them most of stories would be straightforward and Inconsistent to your choices
@poison_mara I’m aware of that. I was saying that not everyone is. Some people only care about the stats, and that’s what “min/maxing” is about.
@JimD Ironically, the people who don’t realize civilization is gone and think it’ll blow over actually have the most realistic outlook. 
@Shoelip sorry, I wasn’t clear. The min-maxers like to build their stats, figure out how many skill points they can get from challenges, tweak their attributes, etc. Then there’s the people who pick their eye color, tattoos, scars, etc. Those two types of players combined are those who enjoy the extended start with the plethora of choices. One of my primary testers suggested I have a quick way to bypass character creation, so I also have that path (she doesn’t like the character creation portion).
I will admit I worry about people expecting impact of early choices. I am hoping people enjoy the story enough that they realize it’s a journey, not a series of checkpoints. My first real test is chapter 2 when all of the character-building portions converge and the story starts. All I can do at that point is accept feedback and rewrite. It may come down to scrapping large parts of the game so far. I hope most people are like Marajade and enjoy story and stats. As I work on my official game for CoG, the editors do encourage writers to build up stats and then use those stats later to build narrative, so I am gaining experience writing such sequences.
I agree about outlooks on the apocalypse. I tend to be optimistic and would likely be in the category of people expecting the end of the world to just blow over.
@JimD Well, I was actually talking about the fact that the laws of physics as we know them would have to have changed for a zombie outbreak to actually end civilization (Or even happen in the first place really) without a huge amount of help from people who had decided civilization was over and began tearing it down, thus making themselves right.
I mean, zombies are the mindless rotting corpses of humans.
@Shoelip Actually, a “Zombie apocalypse” isn’t so far fetched. admittedly, the Zombie part being literal is, but any time a strain of rabies could mutate in such a way that it ate away parts of the brain, reducing humans to three base instincts- Eat, drink, live. All it would take then was an largely increased metabolism, perhaps caused by a very high fever, and we’d have a sorta-zombie apocalypse. Add a few news reports causing mass panic and riots, and humanity just might kill itself off before the “Zombies” had the chance to.
Well, zombies or not humanity lived apocalypses before and we survived and become stronger. In XIV, XV the black death, killed1/4 of European population. When the roman empire falls a degeneration and lawless state inflamates Europe during the centuries. The fall of Babilon. The Tova volcano eruption killed many human communities and let our specie near extinction, our DNA its more similar due all come from the few thousands, so apocalypse its not so strange our specie.
@Patch101 Rabies victims tend to experience, among other symptoms, paralysis, extreme terror, and hydrophobia and then shortly after, death. They’re not eating or drinking. They’re too fucked up and busy dying in agony to run around eating people. Diseases don’t give people super powers. They make them progressively more weak and helpless as the hostile micro-organism eats away at the host body.
@Doctor And that’s why the apocalypse will most likely be due to human nature rather than any outside force humans erroneously believe in responsible.
Finally there’s the simple fact that we’re talking about humans with the ability to use their most powerful asset versus humans without the ability to use their most powerful asset. Humans aren’t the most dangerous creatures in the world because we have strong jaws.
@Shoelip I see your point. I mean, I love the zombie genre but don’t believe it can happen. I rather liked World War Z (the book and movie) for how it shows that civilization wouldn’t end from such an outbreak.
I tend to like darker stories, so I went for the Walking-Dead-apocalyptic style of game.
Some civilizations did minor, small ones but yes some were overwhelmed in World War Z.