» Mon Jan 25, 2016 3:01 am This poll is to address the question of how the issue of player character death might be made deeper in the context of a role-playing game. To me, this is the question of setting up a Dynasty Mode as an optional alternative mode of play to the current savegame system.
Dynasty Mode would work approximately as follows:
- Playthrough by house name not character name
- Addition of buildable settlement crematoriums to dispose of corpses via placement in game-mode or designation in workshop mode.
- Multiple player characters developed and assigned settlement homes by the player and inhabited by blank companion NPC AI when not being played by the player
- New player characters can be designed and added at any point during the playthrough unless the playthrough no surviving player characters
- Dialogue option or hot-key on target to transfer player view and direct control from one player character to another when at the designated "home" settlement for the destination player character.
- All player characters are non-essential or killable and walking all remaining player characters, as a party, into a fatal ambush constitutes the end of the playthrough for the house in question.
- Player character corpses do not reset or despawn until given a proper cremation (burials are pointless when molerats rule the, ah, "underworld")
- As player characters die off, player character successors redistribute property as the player sees fit once the body is recovered and brought to its designated "home" settlement and prepared for cremation.
- Depending on the nature of the final blow or shot, another player character present may choose to carry the active player character to the nearest "home" settlement and the rescued player character may survive with permanent scars, injuries or even permanent S.P.E.C.I.A.L. damages (crippling). If damage is severe enough, the active role can always be passed to another player character.
- Arbitrarily, player character death is a 1/3 chance whenever the player character takes a final blow/shot.
- Arbitrarily, in 50% of player character fatalities, the corpse is abandoned by the surviving player characters who flee or whose retreat is burdened with another casualty. In this case, there is a "field defeat" and the game and all surviving player characters are "fast-travelled" to the nearest settlement that is "home" to one of the surviving player characters who were in the battle in question. Here, the player view comes back into the game (on load) as the player character for whom the settlement is is designated as "home".
- Field defeats can go all sorts of ways too; for example, with the surviving enemies now counter-attacking the settlement, having followed the party back. This kind of dynamic could make the choice of home settlements and their design become crucial to overcoming defeats in the field and, I think, could potentially have a very interesting effect on overall narrative evolving from the role-play.
- Using this mode in combination with survival mode restricts savegames to two: a current and previous (backup) which alternate every checkpoint, every ten minutes of play and whenever the player quits the game
- (Optionally?) Using this mode with survival mode turned off allows the player the option to save the game as a new savegame file and reload as s/he sees fit.
I'd be curious about any other ideas for a system like this...
In the meantime - the above bullet-point list as an optional dynasty mode is what this poll is addressing.
