About the other characters on the IFS; I'm thinking that you shouldn't do too much about their past. Remember that you actually can play as those characters (most of them in any case). Wouldn't it be silly to find Solomon Doone's house as Solomon Doone (not sure about that name), for example?

Good point! I'll need to plan any addition like that with care and allow for the possibility of a pregenerated character being used by the PC.

It shouldn't be too hard to rig a check in a NPC's dialog scr.

IF object Triggerer is named XXXXXX,
Then goto line xxx
Else goto line 1.

Something like that.

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If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

Arright.

Something I would like to see more of is... The Schyler family. I think they deserve a bigger part of the game, with Troika having given them quite a story to begin with. Maybe you could find their old house in Caladon, of which they speak. A haunted manor or something (I'm thinking a "house" for an evil/necromancer character) in the outscirts of town.

I didn't know you were a mind-reader.

That's one of my original ideas but I haven't found a suitable story to use with it. All I keep coming up with is a generic evil necromancer or a crazy hermit determined to keep his privacy. Yawn.

One of these days, I find something exciting.

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If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

Is the concept of an evil necromancer captured by his own creations too cliché or does it have some merit? I mean, imagine the quest potential, good characters could sway him over to the side of good after they've rescued him while evil characters could convince him to keep on necromancing or even kill him and seize his laboratory for their own benefit!

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Lacy: How did I fall in love with such a jerk like him? Why can't I ever meet a nice man?
Tom: You've met lots of nice men, Lacy. I'm a nice man. The biggest lie all of you women tell yourselves is that you like nice men, when, in fact, we bore you silly.
The trouble is, you tell this lie out loud and so damned often that some of us more gullible types hear it growing up and work hard to become nice men.
Well, from all the nice men in the world, Lacy, fuck you very much.

That's what I keep finding. I might have to go this route.... Unless -

How about a neutral spellcaster whose apprentice summoned up something he can't handle.....

Never mind - I've already done that.

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If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

Did you ever visit the Stonecutter caverns?

Hey guys! I think I've found a possible storyline...

Winston Schuyler's dialog - line 177:

"I told you before, we can trace our history back to the Age of Legends, where the great Necromancers ruled along with the Elven Council. The days when mighty Kerghan, perhaps the first of our kind, battled the Bane of Kree in the Dead Hollows, and the very stones burned there for three days in their passing..."

Tie the Schuyler's ancestral home in with your search for more info on Kergan.... Perhaps with a mention of Caladon in his journal.

I need to examine this idea a little more closely.

Edit: I just spotted a fly in the ointment. The grandfather, Basil Schuyler moved to Caladon and started the original business.

This still has potential.

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If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

grandfather moved to Caladon doesn't mean great great grandfather didn't move from Caladon.

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*whispers* "I see dead people.
on the floor right after I killed them"
"Rise my minions rise."

"yes I practice Black Necromancy but I'm not Evil I'm just Misunderstood."

A quest to track down the origin of the Schyler family?

You know...if you're interested in ideas for corssovers here's set of ones I think I discussed with you in the past.

It's basically a "tip-off" to comic fans and such....so without getting too caught up in the details of how it all comes together...here are a few of the conceptual points:

- A large Mansion (a la GB) where the exploring PC finds only one person wrking, a butler named Fredal (Alfred?). After a little exploring, the player finds a secret entrance to cave with some very odd equipment and a dark brroding young man named Bruce Bayne who wears dark leather and weilds some nice boomerangs. Although he prefers to be called the Chiro-Man (Chiroptera = bats).

- A small farmhouse out in the yonkers has an elderly coupl talking about how they found a baby in a strange container that fell from the sky many many years ago. The boy was amazingly strong and gre up to become a reporter for the Tarantian. (and there could always be a strange green gen nearby that poisons, weakens and kills him if used on him).

- A detective in Caladon named Harry East (Barry West) was experimenting on something when lightning struck him and his chemicals and he gained superspeed.

- Group of four beings: A very intelligent man full of gadgets, a man permantly affected by Body of Stone, a woman who turn invisble and a man who can go Body of Fire at will and use fireball, are found soewhere in teh yonkers looking for something called "the ultimate nullifier".

But on a more serious note:

one thing that could be done with the half-ogre issue, to make it a bit better but witjhout closing the chapter on it, would be something like:

- The gnome who tells you everything and mocks you, if you kill him, should have something on him like a slip of paper thas has a reference that would lead you to the library of Tarant. Once there, there should be a book that when opened, is blank but also loosens a page that contains the names of many important and powerful figures in Arcanum: Willoughsby, Bates, The Mayor of Black Root, The King of Dernholm, King Praetor, etc...

- If the player searches the locations related to these guys he begins to find several small clues that when put together, reveal the location of where all the stuff from Half-Ogre island was taken too. Like a secluded cave system.

- Once there, the player and the party go through a series of heavily trapped and guarded rooms (Half-ogre soldiers with insane strength) until they reach the main room. This place has several women locked up in cages who need their freedom (quest point)

- Once freed, they all flee ((or teleport away) and the player reaches one last door where the person behind all of this is supposed to be. In the room they find some equipment a a strange diary that when read reverals the intricate plot behind the entire operation and how each person on the earlier list was involved (i.e, Willoughsby got rid of the legal hassles, Bates lent the technology, Preator and the King of Derholm funded the operation etc...)

- As the player reads on, he finds about a set of protocols being put in place in cas eth eoperation is ever discovered and that the secret must remain hidden at all costs.

- That last page says, I hope the gods can forgive me for what I've done.

- Once the player reads the last page, it should trigger a dialog text where the player says..I can almost make out the name in the siganture...it says....oh my god...<insert>.

(Queue dark music)...that's the secret...before losing his/her memory, it seems the player ordered the whole Half-Ogre thing to be done (or inherited the operation from family, whatever fits the time span bettter).

This realization should boggle the mind, while still adding some closure.

Wolfsbane: Made a note!

FourHorsemen: Heh! I like them but I think I'd better leave the first four for Quaid as he's the one with the knack for adapting comic-book characters for use in Arcanum.
Check out his Doomsday module. It's pretty good.
BTW: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has crossed my mind a time or two...

Your ideas for the Half-Ogre quest contains angles I hadn't considered - Bates for one and especially this:



Up to this point, it's entirely workable and even better than a couple I had come up with. I'm printing it out and adding it to the expanded quest folder.

However, given the wide range of backgrounds you can play, making the PC (or family) be the key figure in the conspiracy doesn't seem realistic. I'd have to go through the backgrounds and set up every one of them to include amnesia.

I believe that expanding this quest from you finding the fake newsman just before he escapes from Caladon would be a better angle. It's used all the time in detective movies. You know - the hero catches that one lucky break that gets him back on the trail. In this case, if the player happens to go to the docks, there's the fake newsman heading for one of the ships. From there it branches out like this:

If you kill him, you get the journal back and give it to the Tarantian where the story gets published, but the forces behind the half-ogre conspiracy make sure that it's discredited and you get a bad reputation that's known across the continent. (And possibly some assassins after your hide.) Echos of the flying machines downing the Zephyr....

If you beat him into submission, you also learn a few more details - this would be a good place to insert your ideas! - that when followed up on before giving the book to the Tarantian, makes an air-tight case that blows the entire conspiracy wide open. You get a sterling reputation that negates just about all the bad things you may have done.
As for all the gnomes in the world - well, it's not a good time to be a gnome!

Instead of getting the journal back, the fake newsman or the shadowy figure manages to "buy you off". Thus the situation is status quo.

Of course, I'll need to make crossover links between the ideas to allow for a wider range of options.

Opinions and ideas welcome.

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If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

Thanks for the feedback...now that I have a powerful laptop at my disposal...I should be able to have a stable platform of editing and testing stuff so I'll try to help in any way I can once I learn the basics!

And by Amnesia, I mean't Amnesia resulting from the blimp crash...or at least a partial regarding the conspiracy events.

No, I don't think amnesia is the answer. If you were a barbarian before your amnesia, then how the hell would you have been able to order that kind of an operation? It doesn't make sence.

Personally, I think that you should find a destroyed passageway just behind the place where you found the diary (in the Half-Ogre dungeon that you mentioned), indicating that whoever it was who did these things just got away.

This wouldn't be a bad ending; no, you wouldn't be able to get to strike at the bastard who did this yourself, but you DID bring the conspiracy to an end.


Another idea of mine is that Arthur Tyron could be the mastermind of the entire thing, also running the "opposition" to ensure that nothing of great importance is never revealed.

Why Arthur? Everyone else, including me, has been leaning towards Willoughsby.

Tyron always struck me as being a conspiracy nut who stumbled onto the real deal.

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If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

Willoughsby is OBVIOUSLY Mr. X. If you've ever visited his cellar, you simply know.

Tyron, on the other hand, would have created the perfect cover in pretending to be a conspiracy nut. In controlling the opposition of the HO-project, he can make sure that nothing of importance slips through the Industrial Council's fingers.

Just an idea, though. Maybe he could simply be a double-agent.

about Half-Ogre Island a possible evil end could be the Gnomes bribe the player with 2 Half-Ogre bodyguards of their own that don't count against followers. tho as a shady good guy my technologist would say ok and then do the good part after getting his 2 bodyguards. maybe have the char hand over all evidence and say the bodyguards will be waiting for them on another map and game check that evidence is on the right person when player leaves map before bodyguards are placed. if not they know the player stole the evidence back and didn't send the bodyguards. or make it like a Alter (shredder) evidence goes in triggering 2 bodyguards on players side to show up. making it so you can't have good ending to Half-Ogre Island but you get 2 Half Ogre Bodyguards that don't count as followers.

_________________
*whispers* "I see dead people.
on the floor right after I killed them"
"Rise my minions rise."

"yes I practice Black Necromancy but I'm not Evil I'm just Misunderstood."

And, if you don't accept the bribe, you'll have to fight the Ogres instead.

True, the theme is already in.

The Schuylers are jewellers though. Jewellers that also dabble with necromancy and prefer to have their creations do the dirty work. Problem is, good zombies are hard to find... and there's also the matter of competing jewellers hurting the profit margin.

Of course, skilled jewellers make the best zombies, and thinning out the competition is always a good idea, a task that might interest the passing adventurer.

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Lacy: How did I fall in love with such a jerk like him? Why can't I ever meet a nice man?
Tom: You've met lots of nice men, Lacy. I'm a nice man. The biggest lie all of you women tell yourselves is that you like nice men, when, in fact, we bore you silly.
The trouble is, you tell this lie out loud and so damned often that some of us more gullible types hear it growing up and work hard to become nice men.
Well, from all the nice men in the world, Lacy, fuck you very much.

Update:

I have formated C:, installed windows xp (rather than 2k) and now I have a fresh install of arcanum. I downloaded the module, and began playing. Issues.

1) The whole map is visible.
2) All location markers are visible, not including the ones you added.
3) Town maps look... um, distorted.
4) No new features.
5) If I pick a premade character, the game crashes.

Again, I bought Arcanum. Maybe my disk is scratched and a file is not getting read/extracted? I'm going to try 2.2 now and mix/match a few files there.

#3 Tells me there's a video driver problem. At least that's the usual cause.
I'm still in the dark about the rest.

If you're wondering about your disks, get a magnifying glass and check the back side of both. If you do see a scratch, many video and music stores will buff them for a reasonable fee.

You can do this yourself, but I prefer to let the pros do it.

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If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

Yep, plenty of scratches.

I don't think I even want to go to all the effort, I'll just stop playing for a bit.

Okay I agree....the amnesia woudln't work considering you could play any background...well spotted...

Willoughsby obviously has to be deeply involved...I mean he's almost like the X-Files Cancer Man in that regard.

Now what if we put a spin on my idea and make the scientifc head honchos the part of some secret brotherhood....you know...real cloak and dagger tyoe stuff...and instead of the person behind it all ending up being the PC, you could have it so that it ends up being a surviving member of the Vendigroth race....perhaps seeking to create and army of brutes to get revenge on Arronax and Nasrudin and their magical ways.

It could be storylined in such a way that this surviving Vendigrothian is responsible for "providing" the dwarves with technology as well as some "key figures " in arcanum...i.e the Brotherhood members.

Now this Vendigrothian would be a new character or could be someone else already in teh game, who's been hiding this secret all along.

Hell, it could even be Willioughsby himself if you like.

"Surviving Vendigrothian" - How to survive 2,000 years without magick.....

Perhaps he or she was a test subject for cryogenics?
That is really weak.



This much has begun evolving in A:WIP as Dwarrowdelf was founded during Vendigroth's heyday and supplied much of it's minerals.....

..... Bingo! Not a Vendigrothian, but someone - a clanless Dwarf perhaps - who braved Dwarrowdelf long after it was abandoned and found the Vendrigothian tech and manuals that had been left behind.

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If you can't go through a problem, go over it, under it, or around it.

The surviving Vendigrothian could have been a willing test subject or a victim of going into a specially engineered chamber that somehow used large vacuum tubes and various diameters of copper pipes to speed your body to the speed of light for any amount of time and the term of that action would determine when you popped out of the tube at a later date, and maybe you were in something that someone had wanted shipped from there in Arcanum, like H.T. Parnell. That could mean an interesting encounter with Parnell when you get to Tarant, and perhaps you'd meet the person who went to Vendigroth to get the chamber. That would be an excellent idea. If Liam was able to build that gate, then I'm sure the Vendigrothians would have something that crazy actually working during their prime.

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