Possible story idea

How about a blackmail story via emails?

At some point, perhaps after the character commits their first masquerade or criminal violation, you receive an anonymous email along the lines of "I know what you are/did, and unless you do what I say I'll report you"

The character then has a series of tasks to perform, instructed via email, which begin small ("leave some money in your mailbox") but get more and more dangerous ("kill someone for me")

Characters with high enough hacking could maybe trace the emails and confront/kill their blackmailer, but everyone else would have to choose between following instructions or risking exposure. Those exposed might set off police hunts, or draw attacks from hunters.

Perhaps after jumping through all of the blackmailer's hoops, a final anonymous email from your chess-obsessed secret benefactor could arrive, saying something like "I have dealt with your little... problem. Do be more careful in future"

Just an idea. And probably, like my other suggestions, problematic to implement. I'm just sitting at work, very bored.

Mr_Flax wrote:

How about a blackmail story via emails?

I like it.

Mr_Flax wrote:

How about a blackmail story via emails?

At some point, perhaps after the character commits their first masquerade or criminal violation, you receive an anonymous email along the lines of "I know what you are/did, and unless you do what I say I'll report you"

The character then has a series of tasks to perform, instructed via email, which begin small ("leave some money in your mailbox") but get more and more dangerous ("kill someone for me")

Characters with high enough hacking could maybe trace the emails and confront/kill their blackmailer, but everyone else would have to choose between following instructions or risking exposure. Those exposed might set off police hunts, or draw attacks from hunters.

Perhaps after jumping through all of the blackmailer's hoops, a final anonymous email from your chess-obsessed secret benefactor could arrive, saying something like "I have dealt with your little... problem. Do be more careful in future"

Just an idea. And probably, like my other suggestions, problematic to implement. I'm just sitting at work, very bored.

Wow,sound like a great series of quests!
Since they did that little thing with Bertram and the Noss haven,i suppose they could do that too!
...Right?

It is possible, but a lot of work. And it requires a lot of ideas for small quests. Even for that "small thing" with Bertram, I have spent more than a few hours thinking about all possible options.
Just as an example: What happens, if the character finds the photo before he knows about the quest? How can I get him to read his emails in time?
And then the technical issues: What files are involved? Keeping track of all the changes. Where do the quest states get set?
I revised this quest yesterday. I had about 15 files open at the same time, just for that purpose.

And another consideration is exerience and game balance. The character can get very powerfull as it is. If a lot of additional quests (even 1 or 2 xp minis) are added, I'd have to rebalance the whole game. Either make levelling up more expensive, or take out the books and some of the other "powerups", Perhaps turn down the number of course at the college, and/or make them more expensive.

Please don't misunderstand me. The idea itself is good. But it requires a lot of creativity, programming work, and balance considerations.

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That's cool. It was just an idea, but one that was inspired by the genuine appreciation I have for what you guys have done so far. It really is an awesome mod, and I apologise if it seems like I'm asking for too much. I guess I just want to get involved.

Regardless, keep up the good work.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

IPlease don't misunderstand me. The idea itself is good. But it requires a lot of creativity, programming work, and balance considerations.

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Isn't that the point of "post your ideas?" We suggest, you implement if you like them and they are feasible and you have the time and energy to devote to them?

Flax,

I REALLY like this idea, I mean I like it ALOT! Enough to really give it some strong consideration. What I really like about it is...

1. It is like no other quest line in the game, it's completely unique.
2. It requires very little to know voiced dialogue, since it's all done through emails, which means little to no .lip file creation. Hooray for that!
3. TFN won't have the "balancing" issue that CE might because we don't use the email college, we use street vendors that sell tomes of knowledge instead, so this idea wouldn't upset the "balance".
4. As long as the quests are simple in nature and it's a relatively short string of side quests (maybe 3 or 4), setting up the python script shouldn't be too complicated. Things like retrieve this item, put it in your mailbox, etc... gaining 1 or 2 XP should be sufficient. The last mission SHOULD be a murder quest, murdering a cop or assassinate an important person, maybe someone who hangs out in the bar of Empire Arms, where you'd suffer a Humanity loss, making the player decide, Kill innocence for XP losing Humanity? Keep your Humanity and not earn the XP.

Decisions decisions, and thats what RPGs are all about!

It might even force you to lose another side quest. If the blackmailing involved something like leaving the plague bearers alone, or getting Ash killed instead of recued.

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The idea is really really good! I would really like to see it in CE and TFN.

Well first things first, we would have to come up with the blackmailer first. Who is this blackmailer? Why is he blackmailing you? Once we have that figured out then we can start making side quests with purpose, not just random ones.

Will the blackmailer turn out to be a hunter? Maybe another Kindred? Maybe even a Sabbat? These are the things that must be decided before we can work on the side quests and this is the stuff I'm not very good at, story creation.

Let's put our community minds together on this and cook up a fun story!

Zer0Morph wrote:

Well first things first, we would have to come up with the blackmailer first. Who is this blackmailer? Why is he blackmailing you? Once we have that figured out then we can start making side quests with purpose, not just random ones.

Will the blackmailer turn out to be a hunter? Maybe another Kindred? Maybe even a Sabbat? These are the things that must be decided before we can work on the side quests and this is the stuff I'm not very good at, story creation.

Let's put our community minds together on this and cook up a fun story!

Well, it might come a little late in the game, but it could be tied to the character's meeting with Samantha. Maybe Hatter is a good candidate. He's just all mild-mannered geek on the surface. Underneath, he's a Machiavellian schemer. That could also impact the Hatter quest, but, hey, (un)life is full of hard choices.

Just throwing this out there, but it could be another agent of the Kuei-jin. During the storyline where you have to take care of the "Asian Dude" for Knox, you have the option to find his laptop in Foxy Boxes and discover that the Kuei-jin have been watching and reporting on you. This could be another agent working from the shadows to draw you out, see how you react, etc.

It could also be a plan started by the society of Leopold, with the goal to get to LaCroix.

Or someone who hated your sire, and now goes for you. Perhaps even his/her ghoul, who holds you responsible for losing his bloodsource.

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Childe of Malkav wrote:

It could also be a plan started by the society of Leopold, with the goal to get to LaCroix.

Or someone who hated your sire, and now goes for you. Perhaps even his/her ghoul, who holds you responsible for losing his bloodsource.

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Or maybe it's Copper when he realizes you were dicking him over for some easy cash. Now he wants it back with interest.

The more that I've thought about it, the more I'm thinking that if you run through and do everything the blackmailer asks, in the end you somehow end up meeting him. So, I don't think it can be anyone in the game who already has speaking dialogue, we would have to create someone new for speaking lines.

Now I think it would be cool if the blackmailer (after running all of the missions) for some reason agrees to meet you. When you get there it turns out to be a group of human gangbangers who kidnapped an innocent computer hacker and made him orchestrate the whole thing. Then you have the choice, kill the gangbangers, kill the computer hacker being held hostage, or just kill everyone. The best part would the humans had no idea you were a vampire in the first place.

The emails could be extremely vague too, because they don't know anything about you. So the emails could be like "We know who you are and we know WHAT you are, etc....." but they never come right out and say you're a Kindred, but the player would assume this is some evil mastermind like a high powered Kindred or Hunter, and it turns out to be a bunch of punk asses.