Allegedly, Your Death - arc 65297, Vigilante 4-mission arc

[sponazgul]

Colleagues,

Just created a new mission arc, called Allegedly, Your Death, it's arc number 65297

 

I make use of some upper-end villain groups, so I think it might be a challenge if you aren't in your 40s, level-wise. But the mission arc storyline expects an experienced vigilante with a well-seasoned Rogues Gallery, thematically.

 

If you try it out, please provide feedback and recommendations for your own arcs for me to try.

 

(I just published it, and of course I then noticed at least one typo, and I need to fix a game mechanic in the final map - it's a minor thing)

 

Thanks in advance,

[Kyksie]

A nice fun romp which casts the player as a Batman-ish hero, with the butler as your contact. There's plenty of dialog, text and clues as you explore a cross-dimensional mystery. There's a lot of humorous touches and injokes, especially the one about the asteroid 🙂. No kill-alls or tedious glowie hunts. It breaks the Ocelot Rule, but I can live with that when the writing is this good.

 

[Jiro Ito]

On 12/7/2024 at 9:35 PM, Kyksie said:

A nice fun romp which casts the player as a Batman-ish hero, with the butler as your contact. There's plenty of dialog, text and clues as you explore a cross-dimensional mystery. There's a lot of humorous touches and injokes, especially the one about the asteroid 🙂. No kill-alls or tedious glowie hunts. It breaks the Ocelot Rule, but I can live with that when the writing is this good.

 

 

What is the ocelot rule?

[cranebump]

15 minutes ago, Jiro Ito said:

 

What is the ocelot rule?

Writing what the character thinks or says. EX: Instead of "Accept the mission," the choice is "I'll be glad to do your bidding, my master." (okay, that's an extreme example, but, you get the idea).:-)

[Jiro Ito]

ah ha!  now i know!

 

does not mean i won't disobey it though.  

[Kyksie]

Generally, it's considered bad form to the tell the player what their character thinks and feels, or to put more than basic dialog in their mouth. To use the example above, when the contact Mynx asks the player to investigate a Vahzilok hideout, the dialog option should be "Sure thing", not "I live to dispense justice!!" or "I better get paid enough for this..." or "I worship your furry tootsie-wootsies."

 

Granted, this is more of a guideline than a rule. It's okay to tell the player what they feel if the story already makes broad assumptions about the character. For example, if the mission is titled "JUSTICE QUEST!!" and the mission blurb is "Join Mynx on a valiant quest to rid the city of the evil Dr. Vahzilok!!!", then it's okay to assume the character is a do-gooder. Also, IMHO it's okay to break the rule if the story is primarily a comedy. All my humorous arcs do this, and almost all my stuff is for laughs, so it turns out I break my own rule a lot. This particular arc doesn't really fit into either of those categories, but still the writing is so good that it works out.

 

It's called the 'Ocelot Rule' because the people who care about this are all playing six breasted ocelots named "La'shy'a Ravenhair" in Pocket D at 1pm on a Wednesday. And their bio mentions Mynx's furry tootsie-wootsies.

 

 

Edited December 13 by Kyksie

[sponazgul]

On 12/7/2024 at 11:35 PM, Kyksie said:

A nice fun romp which casts the player as a Batman-ish hero, with the butler as your contact. There's plenty of dialog, text and clues as you explore a cross-dimensional mystery. There's a lot of humorous touches and injokes, especially the one about the asteroid 🙂. No kill-alls or tedious glowie hunts. It breaks the Ocelot Rule, but I can live with that when the writing is this good.

 

 

Kyksie, thanks for running the arc, and the feedback here in the forum thread, and thank you for explaining what the Ocelot Rule is --- I totally get that. I know the actual game (particularly the Dark Astoria arc) has a lot of that dialog as decision tree things - basically for the Hero vs the Villain response. I acknowledge your assessment on it being poor form, and I appreciate your exception for comedy (since this arc was kind of whimsical)

[Kyksie]

1 hour ago, sponazgul said:

 

Kyksie, thanks for running the arc, and the feedback here in the forum thread, and thank you for explaining what the Ocelot Rule is --- I totally get that. I know the actual game (particularly the Dark Astoria arc) has a lot of that dialog as decision tree things - basically for the Hero vs the Villain response. I acknowledge your assessment on it being poor form, and I appreciate your exception for comedy (since this arc was kind of whimsical)

 

This arc was so well written I can totally ignore that it writes for your character. Besides, since it's obvious from the very start that this is how it plays out, anyone who objects to being cast as Batman can quickly bail out.

 

[sponazgul]

31 minutes ago, Kyksie said:

 

This arc was so well written I can totally ignore that it writes for your character. Besides, since it's obvious from the very start that this is how it plays out, anyone who objects to being cast as Batman can quickly bail out.

 

 

Thank you again!

 

[Zhym]

This is a fun arc, start to finish.  FWIW, I don't think the "Ocelot rule" really applies here when it's made clear at the start that your character is of a certain...archetype.

 

BTW, the moment it went from being merely great to one of my all-time favorites was this:

 

Spoiler

"I'll make sure that any invasion force ends up in a holographic simulation of an asteroid, populated by pyromaniacs."

Perfect. :)

[sponazgul]

4 hours ago, Zhym said:

This is a fun arc, start to finish.  FWIW, I don't think the "Ocelot rule" really applies here when it's made clear at the start that your character is of a certain...archetype.

 

BTW, the moment it went from being merely great to one of my all-time favorites was this:

 

  Hide contents

"I'll make sure that any invasion force ends up in a holographic simulation of an asteroid, populated by pyromaniacs."

Perfect. 🙂

Zhym! Thank you! I'm glad that people are resonating with that bit, in particular.

[Jiro Ito]

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

 

[Police Woman]

Meet the Flying Fox! A flying rodent-inspired street vigilante battling the criminal underworld of Paragon City!

 

 

Flying Fox's loyal butler gave her a list of possible leads, but in her usual brilliant way, she deduces that one of these leads is actually a distraction from the real danger, a Family ship smuggling weapons into Paragon City!  Flying Fox is on the case!

 

 

Left-Handed Leo was a known associate of the Puffin.  This leads Flying Fox to search the Puffin's lair, where she finds another clue and gets ambushed by ... the Imperial Defense Force?  Weird, but okay!

 

The trail leads to a base on Striga Isle where Flying Fox rescues Full Birdman Junior, a hapless sidekick captured by the IDF.  His writing is hilarious.

 

 

The boy hostage tells me about some kind of portal device, which Flying Fox swiftly disables.  By this point there are enough clues pointing to Praetoria that Flying Fox has no choice but to jury-rig another portal device to break into Praetoria and stop the smuggled weapons at the source.

 

There, Flying Fox runs face-to-face with her evil twin!

 

We are not so different, you and I

 

Unfortunately for the evil twin, she has very low perception and Flying Fox starts the fight by sucker-punching her RIGHT in the face.

 

 

Through some sort of evil cheat code, the evil twin gets back up after being defeated - then demonstrates her brilliant mental ability by running away as fast as she can.

 

Until next time!  Same Fox-time, same Fox-channel!

 

After beating my evil twin, I discover she wasn't even the final boss ... the true powerhouse of the story arc is revealed:

 

Spoiler

The butler's evil twin!!  GASP!!

 

After defeating the last boss, Flying Fox sets some charges to blow up her evil twin's evil base, then goes home and gives the butler the night off, neatly wrapping up the case.

 

 

Overall I thought this was amazing and fun. The story arc did a great job of setting the ambience for a Batman-ish adventure. As others have mentioned, it was a little weird to have so much of "my" dialog written for me, but doing this did help give the feeling of being a brilliant detective vigilante. I liked the name drops of alt-Batman-villains and the rivalry with Manticore. I liked how the hero learns from the story arc to give the butler some time off.

 

I gave this story arc 5 stars.

 

Some typos I noticed in the spoiler tag.

Spoiler

corrrect -> correct

 

occurence -> occurrence.  Maybe "coming right from where you've landed" should be "coming from right where you've landed" too.

 

Formatting is a little awkward, maybe either delete the line break between "still alive" and "RIP", or add an extra line there?

 

Minor, but the period at the end of "compromised Portal Corp machines" should probably be blue to match the rest of that paragraph.

 

endevour -> endeavour

 

Tillman -> Tilman

 

Using four different colors in this text box is garish and confusing!  Can I suggest you use just two colors - blue for the protagonist, and a different color (yellow or red) for the evil twin, with a blank line between them?  Then use italics or boldface for emphasis.

 

"lets both get some rest" -> "let's both get some rest."  (note punctuation)

 

Also as a minor suggestion: instead of "IDF" enemies, make a custom group named "YDF" (Your Death Force) that contains the IDF models. (Not very important, I just think it'd be funny.)

 

[sponazgul]

@Police Woman, thank you so much for the detailed breakdown and the typos you found. That's a tremendous help to me. I'll clean that up soon. I appreciate you running the arc and your reactions

[Uncle Shags]

I loved it!

 

In particular:

 

1. I soloed it and went right for objectives, which was great, but I could tell the enemy composition and density would have been challenging, fun, and fruitful for a full KM team of 8.

2. You somehow took my costume colors and flipped/mirrored them! That was an awesome touch.

3. The final bosses mechanic was great.  Even as a invuln tank it had me...flailing.

 

Thank you.

[sponazgul]

On 12/19/2024 at 9:56 AM, Uncle Shags said:

I loved it!

 

In particular:

 

1. I soloed it and went right for objectives, which was great, but I could tell the enemy composition and density would have been challenging, fun, and fruitful for a full KM team of 8.

2. You somehow took my costume colors and flipped/mirrored them! That was an awesome touch.

3. The final bosses mechanic was great.  Even as a invuln tank it had me...flailing.

 

Thank you.

 

Uncle, thanks for running the arc! I'll tell you how the flipped color things worked out:

 

Spoiler

The Your Death boss is a Doppleganger, when selecting the enemy group of the boss, look for Doppleganger. You can then have the boss have different attributes on look - a mirror image, or flipping the primary and secondary colors, or the inverse colors.  The boss will default to your powerset, but you can also have the Doppleganger have random powers, which I've done in some of my other AE arcs (my Into the YOUniverse arc in particular)

 

I enjoyed putting that mechanic into the final boss' arsenal.