A couple of questions...

[Ultimo]

First, is it possible to have different quest NPCs in a mission arc?

 

For example, first mission, the contact is Statesman.  Second is Manticore.  Third is someone else, and so on?

 

Second, is it possible to make a boss run away to finish a mission WITHOUT it causing it to fail?  I'm thinking about how when Superman defeats Darkseid, he doesn't CAPTURE him, Darkseid usually is defeated and retreats.

[Jiro Ito]

You cannot change the arc contact from mission to mission.  You can work around it by completing the main objective in mission 1, then having a "rescue" or "ally" objective pop up where you have to go talk to Manticore in the first mission and he gives you some information about the next mission.  You'll still have to go back to Statesman, but he could say "based on what Manticore told you, etc etc".

 

If your boss isn't a required objective, you can have him run away at 25 or 50 or 75% health and not have it affect the outcome.  You can have a different objective (collect a glowie) required to complete.  You can still have some mission text "Defeat the boss" appear at the top so players fight the boss anyway.

 

You have to be creative sometimes within the constraints of AE.  Sometimes the inflexibility can lead to some more interesting and creative things though, which is cool.

[Ankylosaur]

I regularly have different contacts in the narrative through a variety of means, but of course the main contact is the same. 

 

Approaches

• Most often, I have you in a room with several people. In some, as you rescue people in missions, they join the conversation. For this, I give each person their own color, but also have "says" text like  "Hello, says Dr. Smith, it's good to meet you $name." because I don't expect the player to remember the colors - they are just visual cue. I will say more than three people can get a bit unwieldy, but I have done it. And this does not jive well with all players.
• I have had people off screen, so the contact says "Let me give Dr. Smith a call. Check back with me in a minute." at the end of the return text, and when you click the contact again for the next mission, they have completed the call and something like "Good news! Just got off the phone with Dr. Smith. He finished his tests and here is what he learned."
• I have used Mission Begin clues, which trigger after the player accepts, to have emails show up as pings on your phone of a new message. In at least one arc, the email thread builds over the whole arc with CC's as more people come into the convo. 
• I have used an object, like your laptop, so each message can be formatted like and email and be from a different person or an evolving person. I have had a character evolve over a mission that way and the idea was the missions had months between them. He started as a beat cop and each mission changed levels to show the passage of time. So when you met him in each mission, he was a higher level and a higher rankin the PPD until he transformed as a Kheldian. (That evolved into a series so now it just happens in my Nictus series, All That Glows - what was originally called Police vs. Aliens.)

 

YMMV 🙂

Edited August 26, 2023 by Ankylosaur