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Story time: Designing the Slave Amulet


Nonseen

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i make this writing to show soem times how difficult to chose the way of devlopment, plus some of its consiquences.

 

 

Evrything started with the amulet. To be precise a Slave Amulet.


Slave amulet original porpuse to mark a salve to slave in game world and represent as a slave. I needed something that can be interacted by the player so player can remove the amulet this way freeing the slave from captivity.
This is the propuse of this item.

 

Amulets are normal items, probably not taking slots for other items like Devious device items or Toys or ZAZ items.
Plus most normal actor not wear any amulets, and i going to make sure all my npcs that made for captured by slavers not going to wear amulets by default.

From design perspecitve at first seams evrything simple: Actor when got captured by slavers get a new shini amulet, when got removed from slavery the amulet goes away.


When player remove amulet well slave got freed and no longer bound by evil slaver magic. Yes my slaver guilds hard magic users and some of them realy know what doing.
The slaver guild enchanters not only make insane powerful equipment that turn a avarage bandit to a fighter that cable defeat avarage dragonborn nope they do more insane things like this amulet.

 

The Slave Amulet designed to weaken its wearer will to resist slavers command. So if the mages so powerful and smart they sure make sure no one can remove this amulet only the ones that has right to do it.

 

So give the slavers rings, special slave master rings! This rings make possible the amulet removal in safe way.
If you wear no slaver master ring and remove the amulet the ammulet magic going to kick in and try to burn you and the slave to death.

Original idea here to give evry slaver base and slave owener uniqe Slave master identificiation code. So evry ring work only with the local slaves.  Technicly its possible but hard to do.
Problem is if the player collect 30 ring form 30 different location no way to tell from player persecitve the difference beatwen the rings....

 

Need make rings uniqe and easy to identify by player when use what ring. Naming evry ring by color its possible, but this means i need make separate copy of each ring.
Remember core disign choice of my to make the system easy to scale up! Evrything up to this point made the way very easy to scale up!

 

If evry slaver base and slave owener need own uniqe ring made this seams to me a limiting factor plus a strong possible point of failure. make the system lot more complicated. so for now 1 ring above all amulets.


in sort 1 slave master ring enught to handle all slave amulet removal.... or other functions.

 

Slave Amulet a scary thing on it self. I plan add new futures to amulet it self: wearing it long term degrade ability of the wearer, user not able to sleep....
as slavers like to work slaves mutch as possible... so if slave not need sleep can work more... so why not use some crazy magic to improve the slave productivity?
Well this solution has some side effects but the benifits outwaight the cost... at least this is what slavers hope.

 

Slave Master ring not only useful in future to remvoe slave ammulets, when you own slaves more you own the ring empower you more. Yep! Ring has incrased bonuses as you incrase slaves bleong to you!


Dont ask me the bonuses and bonus types i dont know yet!

 

Okay back to present! So we have this amulets, plus slave master rings that are not uniqe for the time.
The amulets need to be hard to removed by slaves right? Solving this thing not that easy... i mean plenty examples can be seen how items made non removable by scripts.
My problem here is this: the player might got captured by slavers and put that cursed amulet on player to! Need give a way to player to able remove the amulet without fighting a slaver who wear the slaver ring.

 

If i not think this way i force the player to become 100 pickpocket skill to able steal slave master ring for its slavers. yes its definitly a good way to remove the amulet.
My case i found a simple solution: papyrus make possible: a actor equip item and enforce a item non removable by the actor. Only allowed to drop or put a storage container.
This sounds a nice solution player can drop any time the amulet.... and free from slave amullet! Well not great idea... its to easy. Plus some slave do it even if this means certin death to the slave by deadly magic flames.
So this not allowed...

 

What is allowed to player instead reserve pickpocket to others. If the player manage pull this off on a slaver who wearing the slave master ring.... well player is considered a slave no more.
This can of corse definitly can and will end bead if the player happen inside a giant slaver complexum where lot of slavers doing own things until see the player.... who is no longer a slave but a free man...

 

Okay turn the things other way: Player go a Slave market. Here player go to slaves and one by one remove the amulets and use its superior Restoration magic called: Healing circle or Grand healing.

 

So slaves can escape and no consiquencies!

To counter this i needed build up a system that keep track what slave got freed from slavery and by who. This make possible to play a scane like this: a slave got freed by player in slave market. that slave belong by the way local slavers before got freed.

 

The slave before leave the marketplace got caught by the guards and put back to slave cage.
its immersion braking if the guards not ask the slave how slave got free, and if not allone who helped to escape?
Slave this case can point finger to the player... so slavers can actbased on this information.

 

The system that keep track of this type of inforamtion need to be flexible: i dont know how many slaves player going to rescue or mabye others going to recuse the player.
i know for sure if slavers get wind of it they going to act according to it. ( just not know yet what exactly the slavers going to do about it... yet. need to think out. )

 

So this is my little long story about how designed a littile amulet that uses 6+ script and around 1-2k line of papyrus code to make it work.

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