AE Radios!

[Clave Dark 5]

I was talking about doing this not long ago and finally, despite losing the early draft due to janky-nes, here it is!

 

Missions designed to be played/PUGed by a level 50 leader who's careful enough to not keep it set at +4/+8 if the rest of the team is 12th level or whatever.  Or play it solo at reasonable difficulty and have fun yourself!  Just like real PI radios, no weird mechanics to worry over, no clues to stall your game play, and the stories are hardly connected except for the contact, so they can be safely ignored past the very basic "get the P.L.O.T. device" type of bare-bones framework.  I tested this with solo a 50 tanker and scrapper and things went just fine. 

 

I'm sure there's typos aplenty and labels I forgot to change etc., so please feel free to let me know if you see anything.

[Darmian]

Good stuff! I've used Chris Jenkins myself and since he was officially introduced in the Corlett arc it'd be cool if he was added to the Contacts list for the AE. 

[huang3721]

I've sent a few typos I found via PM.

Also, I thought at first that Mr. Essiggurke's friends trashed Jenkins' office because I had ruined their pickle party. I didn't know Council pickle lovers can be so peaceful and chill.

[Clave Dark 5]

15 minutes ago, huang3721 said:

I've sent a few typos I found via PM.

Also, I thought at first that Mr. Essiggurke's friends trashed Jenkins' office because I had ruined their pickle party. I didn't know Council pickle lovers can be so peaceful and chill.

Very big thanks for that typo report, @huang3721!  I've fixed those now.  As I wanted these missions to feature different groups you might not see much, and to be like the usual radio missions that story wise go nowhere past the mission exit, it didn't occur to me make Me. E's friends be the same group that later attack the office.  Seeing how either group is really pretty much the other with a reskin, maybe I'll go change that and drop a note about it in the dialogue... food for thought!

 

@Darmian I did a cursory search and didn't see anyone using Jenkins before, which I would have expected by now - and there you go.  Are you arcs still up?  I'll take a look.

Edited Saturday at 01:36 AM by Clave Dark 5

[Darmian]

19 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I did a cursory search and didn't see anyone using Jenkins before, which I would have expected by now - and there you go.  Are you arcs still up?  I'll take a look.

Alas he appears as a character in the LOOONG story that is Dark Deeds/Darker Deeds/Darkest Before Dawn...somewhere!  A few times actually.  He's not front and centre but he's a part of that story.

Edited Saturday at 08:45 PM by Darmian

[ZamuelNow]

It seems like someone else noted typos so I won't dwell on that unless you want.  Instead, I'll focus on structure.  I'll say that the arc has some quiet things that pull it away from it's stated mission of feeling like radio mission.  The really quiet thing is the insistance on no clues.  While I have more experience with newspapers than radios, they often still have clues.  Mind you, the clues are simple and it's only one per mission if they exist, they still exist sometimes.  In fairness, people probably ignore them on teams.  Chris having the exact same outro four missions in a row feels...unfinished?  I know that it's to keep things moving but, eh.  On difficulty, I would be careful with the Kallisti Wharf offices since the spawn placement is rather dense.

 

Otherwise, it was fun overall.  Conceptually, I liked the fireworks mission the most.  Will there be a newspaper variant in the future?

[Clave Dark 5]

@ZamuelNow If you spotted more typos, please let me know!  I fixed all the ones that @huang3721 found, but I have fumbly fingers so there are indeed probably more.

 

I am at a point where I am indeed "down on clues."  Even my past works with multiple clues, they all felt like "stop - start": defeat this guy, stop a moment to read, now go over there, wait, here, read another... They remind me of a comic I was reading in the 80s that intersperses pages of the usual comic panels and such with a couple of pages of text.  This is like putting nuts in a muffin (or more like pebbles) to me, they didn't fit there, they interrupted the flow of what a comic does (mostly).  I'm also thinking of other comics I read with some text material, but they always stuck it at the back.  That's a better choice, imho.  Here, I guess that would be only using clues that drop at the very beginning or end.

 

....which segues me into the outro ha ha!  IIRC, team members don't get to see those, so like a radio or newspaper, they're kind of extraneous for this project (just like the Still Busys, but I wasn't much a fan of those before either).  They can be a good place for some text about the story though for soloers, sure, otherwise.  These stories, like radios, being so thin however, I also didn't really see there was much else to cover.

 

Newspapers vs. radios:  hm, interesting point!  I mean, PI radios by design would be hero-based, but why not expand that concept?   I don't have any solid plans yet, but I am kicking around some ideas for more.  The story in the last mission in this one was an idea I've been kicking about for some time, but I knew it would be worth about one mission... Writing an anthology around the character was a good way for me to shoe-horn that in somewhere.  I have lots of notes and need to just keep looking for other one-shot stories I guess.  Next first thought was something with Sam the Bartender from Pocket D, which would open things up for pan-alignment stories if nothing else.  Anyway, rambling now.

Edited Sunday at 04:29 AM by Clave Dark 5

[ZamuelNow]

Mission 2

 

Pickling Herbs & Spices
This is a large cargo crate you used to sneak onto the Sky Raider ship. Blast your way out of here!
-I think this is the original description for the box?  Most wouldn't notice but just noting.

 

pickle tank
This is weird high-tech tank-thing is just about human-sized, but what would they be for?
-I think this is also the original description but the main thing I noticed is that the name is lowercase.

 

Mission 4

Voodoo Programming
Voodoo Programming is naively constructed code that you hope will work, despite a completelack of proof that it will.
-'complete' and 'lack' need a space between them.

 

Mission 5
6 Office Furniture Needs Protecting
-Grammatically incorrect but in a way I've seen official missions do.  Should be something like '# Pieces of Office Furniture To Protect'

 

---

 

Now, it's quite possible I'm fundamentally the wrong person to critique a radio style mission.  If I get a chance, I'll try to run this with a team and see what they think.

[Clave Dark 5]

100% correct on the crate from 2.  I think that's something I had written in before I lost the file and then just forgot about needing to redo.

 

100% on the lower case, but I'm pretty sure that's my writing inside. With the pickles.

 

100% on the space between the words in 4.

 

100% on 5 too.  I knew it felt clunky but I let it slide for the time being.  Being optional, I'm not sold on "need to protect"; also, I put those in just for their destruction, sort of like writing your villain to kick a puppy just to highlight their evil nature.  I will still reconsider that wording though.

 

Thanks for the notes!

 

ETA: turns out I forgot to write a Compass Task for the furniture when/if it gets down to one too.  So I made the singular "Protect what Officer Furniture is Left (optional)" and the multiple "Office Furnishings Being Destroyed (optional)"

Edited Monday at 05:54 AM by Clave Dark 5

[strix_]

This looks cool as hell! Gonna play through it soon

Edited yesterday at 05:43 PM by strix_