So I have a couple - just a couple for now - of ideas regarding making the world a bit more active place for the player and the playercharacter whoever he might be at any given runthrough. This is all, I'd think, somewhat unusual in games today, but in my books that's only a good thing. Break the conventions and do something out of the ordinary. And something to keep in mind, none of this is meant to be something the player is required to tackle if he/she doesn't want to, just something to possibly occupy the player with at idle moments. Also, if you decide to read this all and possibly even comment, don't get stuck on details, this is just broad strokes stuff here not "exactly like this or bust". Mind the typos.
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I recently suggested something of a "text adventure" type building exploration to make the prop buildings and their lifeless doorways a bit more meaningful to the player, I mean... it's nice to look at a drawing of a door on a render of a building and all, I'm sure people stare at the all the time for how awesome they are, but certainly in a "game" it would be preferable to have it interactive interactive in some way, no?
Of course in huuuuge city, making everything physically enterable along with all else that's going on in the game is next to impossible, and also stupid and pointless a endeavor. RPG's have always had some level of abstraction, and I don't think such would hurt here either. So... Link the otherwise uninteractive doors as gates to a sort of text based minigame (not unlike those text adventure phases in Pillar of Eternity, but less prosaic and more stylized for Cyberpunk).
The first part is entering. The player steps in front of a door and a tooltip might say [Locked], the player then presses RMB and a small dropdown (or radial) menu appears giving the available options. Here it might be something like:
- Pick lock [related skill check] (or Hack if the door is electric)
- Force [str.feat check]
- Knock/Doorbell [Luck check] (randomly pressing buzzers and somebody might open the remote lock and let you in; they might also call the cops though)
Failing picking or forcing will reinforce the buildings security mechanisms and you have to come back some other time. Failing persuasion checks might build up and at some point the denizens might get suspicous on who's ringing peoples buzzers one at a time, and they'll call the cops, time to run away. Or something to that effect.
The difficulty of entrance would depend on the zone in the city. I.e. some high tech skyscrapers might require retinal or DNA scan so only a real pro can manage those (let alone what's inside).
The second part is, well... Once you enter a building via what ever method, there's a timer that starts (a couple of minutes, real time). You are trespassing in a building without anyones invitation or recognition, someone will eventually notice you skulking around. It might be a bit gamey, but I don't think it matters here, it just represents that you can't go in without risk and tension. Anyway, if there are several floors in the building, you have to choose which to go. The higher you go the less time you have, the more difficult it is and the more rewarding the results might be (or might not, nothing's certain).
After choosing the floor you have a choice of apartments (few of them). With each door you can
- Evesdrop [Awareness/notice check; if 0 there little chance of hearing anything]
- Bust in [Strength feat check; if 0 you can not do it]
- Pick lock [skill check; if 0 you can not do it]
Evesdropping tells you if the denizens are there at the moment (the higher the skill the more certain you can be of it), and what they might doing; you might hear a muffled fight, a television program, a phone, a videoconversation, someone getting shot, people having sex... it can produce little bits of trivia on the citizens and their moods in general, and perhaps even some kind of investigative intrigue if the guy in apartment #97 at Mercystreet 1 hates the bitch in apartmet #66 in Arasaka Square 29, maybe something can be done with that (a kind of a random task to look at when there's time -- weren't some people here for random unlimited tasks? Here's a possibility for that in a manner that's not about killing or fetching stuff for someone, but doing shit on your own initiative -- and if the result is blood, maybe you can read in on the papers, or perhaps you hear talk about your current [major NPC] acquaintance that can be of use with him/her....).
If you go in (busting the door will give you an instant time penalty as people hear it; lockpicking is silent, but that's not immediate either, i.e. three attempts might be costlier timewise than the penalty from kicking the door in) you have once again a few options:
- Investigate (harder awareness/notice check via Intelligence -- possibility to find higher level valuables (what ever those might be), maybe you can even find a hidden safe that has something of real value in the black market)
- Loot (easy awareness/notice check via Intelligence -- just take what looks like you can get an eurobuck of two of it)
- Vandalize (depending on the part of the city a Strength feat check from easy to hard -- just for fun, maybe you can see mention in the papers if you do it enough times, "A serial fecal vandal afoot in Arasaka Square, several apartments destroyed and soiled, police investigates", maybe you can even gain some respect from some lowlifes by bragging with it...)
If there's people inside when you bust in, there's a brawl (related skill checks) that ends up either dead or unconscious (randomly chosen based ont he brawl results) denizens or you being thrown out of the building. If the former, you better run because no mercy awaits you when the law arrives and finds you with blood in your hands.
The difficulties and results like loot and what you hear while evesdropping is drawn radnomly from a pool specific for the zone in the city (with a certain range so that it's not always the same), and it is also possible that you find nothing inspite of succesful skill check. And since it's all text based there can be a metric ton of variety and nuances cheaply implemented.
This all sounds longwinded, cumbersome and timeconsuming, but it's really meant to be just a quick little task where you click for few options and read short descriptions. All the attempts take a bit of time, so you really can't rummage houses forever and so the whole thing lasts but a couple of minutes at max and a few seconds minimum. If the timer runs out, cops will intercept you and what happens then is a topic for the police and law thread, it might be set up based on what you've been doing.
This is meant to be taken as a callback to the PnP... Those who have played it, imagine a situation where you decide to go rummage a random house. What would happen between the GM and the players. That's approximately what this is trying to emulate. And all it really does, is it gives the whole city a different feel when you know there might be some kind of interaction to be had with the building renders and the doorway-art you're standing next to most of the time.
And to add not every building needs needs this treatment, it'd be quite enough for the player to know that this stuff is readily available where ever he goes, but it doesn't need to be every building.
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Another thing. The AI bots roaming the streets like robotzombies that you can't strike a conversation with. A somewhat similiar method could be utilized here as above. Not "text adventure" stuff, but adding interactions with random results based on the area.
I.e. you walk to a random bypasser, right clikc and the dropdown menu would give something like the following options
- Pickpocket
- Interrogate [cop] - Interview [media] - Blackmarketing(?) [Fixer] - Charm [Rockerboy] - Chat/somethigsomething [other roles]
- Provoke
- Seduce
- Stalk
Pickpocket would iniate a short animation sequence in third person that's either the PC bumbs into the NPC and lifts his hands for "Sorry pal, my mistake" and continues on, or enages into a short interaction similiar to this (starting approx. at 5 minute mark):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZGY0wPAnus
Nothing major, just a couple of seconds during which the skill check is made and the possible loot drawn from the pool set for that NPC (difficulties and pools according section of the map and NPC social level).
Interrogation, Interviewing and such might provide class related interactivity with similiar semi-abstract implementation a pickpocketing above (not much extra dialog needed, just some subtle indications of what's going on)... cops might get random tips about lawlessness nearby or perhaps the NPC himself cracks up at the spot, Medias might get story tips and perhaps hints for something big that can be collected together during the game, Fixers might try to acquire customers that he can sell to someone (lowly NPC's might be easier to get and sell for less and vice versa for higher classes) with supplylines for what ever merchandise or maybe he can "try to" sell shit on the spot for few EB (might require some human perception to know if offering drugs to "this particular NPC" is such a wise idea, he might be a civilian cop, some militant antidrug maniac, or a cyberpsycho just on the edge) and so on...
- Provoke can get you a fight on the spot, but if cops see you two take one each other, there'll be an intervention
- Seduction might get you a temporary follower (few minutes), and who knows what else
- With Stalk you can mark an NPC and use the Shadow/Track skills to follow him (maybe for nothing else than to get him suspicious and panicked for fun), or maybe he at some point enters an alleyway to the a piss and you can mug him there, maybe this is a useful skill in some missions.
All kinds of little things to try and see what happens and perhaps collect a bit of a reward there. And of course using your skills might ease their future increases (depending on how CDPR goes with it). And I only used the most common skills as examples... What possibilities are there with the rest of them....
And not all NPC's need to have interactions all the time. They could just push you away with a "Piss offf, punk!" regardless of what your intentions were.
It is kind of a reward in itself already when you find an NPC to "interact" with, and that goes for everything else too that I've written here. Getting to this stuff need not be guaranteed all the time even if you had the skill. Some NPC's refuse to be interacted with, some houses might be under renovations or under police surveillance for what ever reason so you can't enter, some items are just too hard for you to meddle with... Although it'd probably not be hard, you'd have to seek this stuff out if you wanted it.
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Then theres the rest of the environment. Lamp posts, ATM's, firehydrants, carbage bins, parked cars, manholes electric boxes, camera surveillances, guard robots... All can have something small character related linked to them. Hack an ATM, or pickpocket a credit card and steal someone's pension (if you have the skills for those things). Overload an electric box at a wall (related skills check) and pry a firehydrant open (strenght feat check, eaier if you have a pipe wrench or a similiar tool with you) to soak the area with electricity, or kick a lamp post down (str feat check) to the water for same effect. Rig cars to explode with the right tools and skill to use them. Open manholes to hide under or possibly check if a hobo has a nest there (similiar to checking the apartments).
There's all kinds of little possibilities for interesting intearactivity.
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And then there might be some kind of narrative hook to keep your eyes open all the time. Maybe you're looking for someone or something, or maybe that someone or something is looking for you and it's not certain whether it's a good thing. And that cou oh shit I'm tired....
I could probably go on but this post is quite long enough here. The chief purpose would be to add PnP like interactive elements to test the characterbuild in small ways all around the game in a more or less abstract manner in order to keep the feel of the world from succumbing to the emptiness of other open world games where there's very little to experience beyond the storyline and where most of the game is a cardboard stage prop. This stuff might not appeal to everyone, but I don't think it needs to. As said, it isn't meant to be antything else but offer dynamic intrigue to the world for who ever wants to explore it deeper than what's obvious.
And I repeat, dont' take these too literally, they're just broad strokes examples for concepts I think might work in some manner with relatively little effort of implementation and design (compared to other, more major-league stuff you do in the game).
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A couple of small additions...
Additionally to what as said above, the player might observe the NPC's - not just watch them, but click and choose an action "Observe" - and learn little things about them through the human perception skill. These things might offer special lines in dialog, and help spotting dishonesty or part truths (not much more needed than a behind the screen check and a "He's lying" or "He's hiding something" banner at the dialog, and you'd make it known that you are aware by clicking it) and help spot unusual behavior (like soon to pop cyberpsycho).
Additionally, you might be able to examine objects to potentially learning something (which might open up previously hidden details on objects that you can interact with). I.e. investigating corpses as a medic, you might have a chance to learn a bit more about human anatomy which might turn out beneficial in situations where such knowledge is called for. Examing computers and terminals not just to "hack better" but to gain knowledge on the subject that can be used elsewhere in dialog, or perhaps even in practice. And so on.
This is the sort of little stuff you might not even know is (and don't necessarily even need to, it's not mandatory) there before you decide to try it out, see a hint that there might be something like that, or see some other player do it. You find it out on your own, "Wait, I can do 'this'? That's cool! I wonder what else I can do?"
