: I don't mean that I think the gameplay is particularly
: fantastic, I think the story is quite cool because its
: a lot smaller than Myth TFL and SB. This is
: particularly relevant to me because of me Myth RPG.
: Chimera is a great example of the sort of adventure
: that would be cool to play out. Its not so big that it
: will never be completed, but its significant enough
: for it to be exciting.
: By the way, how do you open Chimera levels from Loathing?
First of all, what didn't you like about the game play? It was really hard, which is good in some ways, and for those of us who have tried scripting and failed, the scripting that went into this is almost beyond comprehension.
Next order of business will be...
OK, true the story is much smaller than that of SB and TFL. That's a definite fact. The rest of this will most likely be opinion, but I just have to say it. As an RPG adventure, Chimera would be horrible. As you say, it's not so big that it will never be completed. Any campaign (campaigns are very different from adventures, and many role-players get those mixed up because they think that they are the same. Campaigns are usually long-term, and contain many adventures as either plots that are off-track or little journeys to further the campaign. An adventure is a shorter-term task that ends up furthering a greater cause or is just used to pass little amounts of time. Examples: adventure- go invade a castle; campaign- a war of east vs west)... Um, as I was saying. Any campaign that is worth the time that is put into it be good even if it isn't completed. The point of a role-playing game, as with any game, is to just have fun- not to win.
OK. If, as you are implying, TFL's story wouldn't make for a good RPG adventure because it is too long, you are almost correct but not quite. It wouldn't make a good adventure because it most definitely isn't one. It is a campaign. And it is a LONG campaign. It stretches out for over 17 years. As a campaign, though, that would contain many adventures such as (and by no means limited to): guard Bagrada alongside the forest giants, save the skrael emissary who has the eblis stone, protect crow's bridge, kill the mayor of otter ferry, escape from covenant with the total codex, smash the statue of the watcher, escort alric into rhi'anon to kill Balor.
I've completely forgotten what my point was with this whole thing, but I'll keep on ranting anyway. Read on if you'd like.
If you've noticed, the whole game of TFL was basically a campaign, with each mission being an adventure in that campaign.That whole campaign took over 17 years. Now let's look at Chimera. Was it a campaign? (Poopy, I don't have it here right now, so I'm going from memory) Campaign: find this evil that is growing in the untamed lands. Four bear silent oak hints at it in the very beginning, so we know it's there, and that it's the goal. Adventures: find fenris; repel the banded wasps; find the tomb of kyran; find ne'Ric; ... do thinz; banish Cartucke forever. That took all of a few weeks.
Oh, I think I may have found my point... stay tuned...
I guess my point is this. In a campaign that stretches over a few weeks you will most likely complete it quickly, and one that stretches over almost two decades will most likely never end (literally. Most campaigns, in fact, take about a year of realtime to go over a half a year of gametime). So Chimera as a campaign (it couldn't really be considered an adventure) would be over pretty quickly, and TFL as a campaign would not end (unless you started where the game actually started, in which case it might end after a long time). But here's the cheese and haggis... Usually, after finishing a campaign, a player will think back and realize how much he really did. If the player thinks back and sees that he travelled to the untamed lands, found some friends, and banished a demon, do you think he'd feel as much of a sense of accomplishment as he would if he'd gone through up to 17 years of the most desperate battles humanity has ever faced? It's really hard for me to explain this without using an example of some RPG that I've done in the past, and I'll try not to do that, so I'll use a hypothetical example from the soon-to-be-Myth-RPG.
First example: Four bear silent oak is a character in the game. He goes through the Chimera adventure (in RPG format) and survives alongside ne'Ric even after his fellows have died in battle. After finishing this, he sees that he really hasn't done much. Found some old friends, turned a dead friend's daughter back from the path of evil, and banished a demon. That's not so... well... important.
Second example: iu'Shee, a common archer with the legion since the 16th year of the war, was with the legion through countless battles with the fallen, saved crow's bridge, helped the diversionary force near madrigal, helped to kill scaripant at seven gates, killed a few fetch just before Alric and the berserks cut off balor's head, and was finally killed when the great devoid exploded. The player *sniffs* a few times and looks back fondly at iu'Shee's career. He was in some really important battles, turned out to play some key roles in some of those battles, and ultimately helped to end the greatest war in the history of mankind. True, he did die, but all heroes have got to go out in a blaze of glory at some point in their lives ;)
So basically what I could've said in about one billionth the time and letters is this: A larger campaign as opposed to a smaller one isn't necessarily bad. It's more of what the players do with that time that matters. If that iu'Shee character had done almost nothing with those two years, then it wouldn't have been as good as the chimera campaign, but he did have more opportunity to do more with his "life."
The real question is: Why am I arguing about this? It's taken a half hour to write all this, and I can't even remember why I did in the first place. I guess that's why they put me in the Asylum.
Still Wondering,
Duckyjo
