Police Woman

I had fun beating up tons of Nazis! I thought the middle of the arc dragged a little bit pacing-wise, missions 2 and 3 both seemed to be "find the thingy... Nope, we lied, it's in the NEXT mission!" You might consider cutting one of those missions to make the story tighter, or else rewriting one of them to be different than "find the sarcophagus ... oops, sorry, it's not here!" to avoid being repetitive. You may also want to change the default "Accept" message to custom text, something that supports the story, like "I cleared the outside of the ship, I'm going in!" I had fun fighting all the custom bosses, but found the final encounter with the Nachzehrer to be pretty hard. It IS the final boss so maybe that's OK. However, the third time it spawns, it used both Unstoppable and Siphon Life, so it healed a LOT and dragged out the fight to be very long and annoying. I was able to solo it on a heavily IO'd level 50 brute, not sure how squishies will fare. Sounds like you know it's hard and intend it that way though! Overall I had fun. And now, screenshots of ... Action Girl versus the 5th Column! (Spoilers for the arc) Some minor typos:

Thanks much for running this contest and playing through my story arc! The history and LGBT themes were really fun - I learned a lot about 17th century Rhode Island while doing research for this story arc.

Thanks for organizing this contest! For your consideration, I'd like to submit: Arc ID: 68284 Arc Title: The Unexpected Witch Author Global: @PW Discord Handle (If relevant): yaj2 Number of Missions: 3 Level Range: 25-34 Description: In colonial America, Abigail McCollum asks you to find her missing nephew, who has gotten lost in the magical woods outside of old Salamanca.

I vaguely remember seeing something similar when a patch invalidated some of the custom NPC groups or custom characters that I used to have, due to powersets changing or something, resulting in the story arc becoming broken without any obvious change on my part. You might try re-checking any custom characters you have to make sure they are still working, or removing custom characters from your arc until it becomes testable.

Thanks for the play-through! I'm sorry you had to restart the last mission. I can't fix soft spots in the terrain, but I've now removed Fran's ability to fly, in hopes of reducing the chance that they get stuck - I think the "walking" logic seems to do a better job of staying above ground on uneven terrain. Thanks again!

The Unexpected Witch (arc #68284) In colonial America, Abigail McCollum asks you to find her missing nephew, who has gotten lost in the magical woods outside of old Salamanca. This is a first-playable draft of a story arc that I plan to submit to the LGBT+ Histories contest. I like getting player feedback and often make changes based on input, so any feedback on the story, the gameplay and/or the writing would be welcome! I'm planning to submit to the contest on Wed 6/25/2025, but I'll be sure to incorporate any suggestions or corrections that I get before then.

Yeah, there are some in game, but as mentioned above I think they are usually NPC hostages. They look something like this:

Is there any chance of adding one of the female PPD officers as a costume option? (For admittedly selfish reasons.)

I write a lot of low level arcs and I agree that custom characters are often too hard for characters under level 20 - especially when the arc has factions that are entirely custom characters. But custom characters are a big part of the fun of Mission Architect, so I try to use a few to give a story arc more flavor. For a low level arc I'll try to make the custom character's powers fairly weak; avoid giving them two attack sets, or defensive powers giving high perception. I also try to use a mix of custom characters and low level standard characters to make missions more balanced. A technique I like to use is to make a custom character that's member of a standard enemy group, then treat the custom character as a "boss" objective, like this: This spawns exactly 4 "Vahzilok Bride" enemies (and despite being a "Boss" objective they are still only "minion" difficulty); they're optional objectives, so the player doesn't have to track down every single one, but there's enough that the player will definitely see them. They are surrounded by regular Vahzilok so the player character doesn't get overwhelmed by the custom characters. This can also let you give your NPC fewer powers that award less than 100% xp without it being too noticeable, since the standard mobs will still award full xp. Another trick I use is to construct a "custom group" out of mostly recolored/renamed standard NPCs, like this: These Corrupted LARPers are actually a mix of Luddites, Warriors and Circle of Thorns. Since they are canon NPCs, they are already balanced against their respective level ranges, and award full xp. The major downside is that most NPCs are very recognizable as belonging to a particular faction, so it may be hard to get the exact look that you want by doing this. Hope that helps, and happy architecting!

So I really liked @ZamuelNow's suggestion to link the mediporter mission with Roy Cooling's arc, and I made some changes to incorporate that idea. Changes based on feedback: Thanks for the play-through and the ideas!

I've noticed this too. It does not seem like you can select a renamed/recolored standard character from a custom group as a boss. On my "Efficiency Council" arc, when I wanted to reuse a Council boss I had to select a "Council" Vortex Cor Leonis Archon as a boss and apply the customizations directly to that objective (renaming the boss and its group).

I guess it depends on whether you see the other players sitting around looking for farms as a noisy nuisance or an opportunity to lure them into a story focused arc. 🙂

Because I play CoH instead of going to therapy, I present for your consideration, ripped from the headlines: Content warnings: real life has made me want to beat up fascists in CoH, so this arc has a strong political slant. I marked it "Ideal for Teams" since I'm trying to make a story arc that would be interesting to do on a team - there's a couple AVs, there's lots of Council to stomp, and I'm experimenting with the "no clues" style suggested on this forum, to see if that helps the flow. However, there are NPC allies to help against AVs, and a decent soloer can certainly do this arc. I'd be interested in any feedback to make this story arc better, more fun, or more topical. Thanks in advance!

Most weekends I'm tied up in the daytime, but I stopped by the RWZ AE at 330pm Eastern last Sunday; I know it was way past the event time but I was hoping to catch anyone who was still running story arcs. Maybe another time!

How are people enjoying the "no clues" style? Is it making for better gameplay or do you feel like something is missing? I was pondering trying the "no clues" style in an upcoming story arc, but would be interested in peoples' reactions.