Got an idea for a Storyteller incident?

[Hypolite]

I like the silent serial killer. You would find dead colonists once in a while without warning, and he/she would always be in the vicinity... But you'll never know until you actually see him/her in action.

[Gazz]

Hordes of murderous psycho zombie pirate raiders don't really scare anyone. Just enemies to be dealt with the way we were trained to by a hundred other games.

The unknown. Uncertainty. That gets people worried. =)


But there are other useful avenues of attack.

To use a quote...
"The most delicate and vulnerable part of any delver cannot be armored, it cannot be strengthened by magic or regrown after drinking a potion. I speak, of course, of the character's ego. All too often is is forgotten and unmarred by Dungeon Masters who scarcely deserve such an honored title. It is to the pursuit of ego shredding that this new volume of traps is dedicated."
Grimtooth (Grimtooth's Traps Fore)


Dangle a powerful artifact (or technology...) in front of the player's nose or better yet - let him acquire it with moderate effort - and you can pretty much take it for granted that he is going to use it in his colony.
That is when the fun starts.

• A hydroponics fertilizer that increases plant growth by 60%.
  Which is awesome. Except for the fact that when the plants are fully grown, you need a rifle squad to stop them from eating the hydroponics workers.
  
  
• A stolen emergency power core that provides backup power in case your generators get disabled.
  Too bad you were supposed to steal it and bring it into your colony and tie it into your power net. When the owner executes his planned attack on your colony, a radio signal triggers the power core to overload and temporarily disable your generators.
  
  
• A nanobot injection that makes your colonists heal at amazing rates. Like no more deaths from all the minor incidents that happen all the time!
  
  Until some raiders make a concerted - and successful - effort to kill a few of your colonists.
  Then the nanobots repair them, too, and "help" them continue what they were doing at the time... which was fighting and killing people.
  You see where this is going...

Ah, the fun things you can... help... the player do to himself...

[Enjou]

Well, Void Gods are something that has said might be added, so here's a few...

You have angered a Void God...
- All your crops die suddenly
- Muffalo on the map have gone berserk
- Zombies are rising from your graves
- One of your colonists bursts into flames

You have pleased a Void God...
- All crops grow faster for a certain period
- A group of raiders attacking you are all struck by lightning
- One of the colonists you buried in a grave comes back to life
- All damage to your colony is instantly repaired

A Void God is bored and is using its all-powerful jerkass powers for selfish amusement...
- Muffalo on the map turn pink
- An insane "prophet" has been sent to your planet to scream and rant at your colonists about random insane stuff
- Your colonists suddenly change sex. All of them.
- Your crops start talking

[mumblemumble]

A contaminated food dispenser, requiring tearing down and building a new one. Wont find out until someone gets sick. Perhaps a small chance of food born viruses having helpful effects? If left UN-touched though, the molding food could grow sentient after enough time.

[Mundicus]

After seeing few youtubers and their mass graveyards and masses of not buried corpses:

1) During the eclipse an unusual sighting attracts the attention of the colonists. A lengthy flaring comet passing the colony by leaving traces of brightly sparkling dust in its tail.

The radioactive dust settles on the colony causing something:
-Dead and not buried corpses come back to life once exposed to the radiation from the unknown celestial body.
+A sighting of the comet warns player that they have approximately X days/hours to bury the corpses before the dust settles down and causes radiation.

-Some animals (squirrels, boomrats, muffalos) to catch radiation and mutate into radioactive squirrel/boomrat/muffalo that is either more aggressive or dangerous or spreads disease or detonates walls, etc
+Player is warned of the strange behaviour of the animal and can hunt it down before it gets offspring/lay eggs/infects other animals

2) Another idea is for the comet to crash/fall onto the "mass graves" and cause dead to rise back in 2-3-4 days due to mutations caused by radiation, etc.

^ These ideas play to the "zombie" theme.

3) Colonist or colonists designated as "researcher(s)" bond over a project and develop a side project of their own - to control other colonists, to kill certain colonist off, to transmute XX food into XY amount of metal, etc. (For example they transmute the entire colony's food supply into... erm.. 20-30 squirrels or into 5 metal ingots, etc). To resolve the situation the player has to "capture" the mad scientists and "interrogate" the possible cure out of them; (and) or research a cure, or counter the effects (hunt down the squirrels and make food out of them, etc).

4) Colonist(s) start "stealing" from the general storage room some metal to.. construct their own escape pod/rocket from the planet. If not "arrested" or captured - the colonist(s) leaves the colony. Player keeps losing mineral/metal while the secret construction is underway; situation can be affected by improving conditions on the colony.

5)Ancient tomb/grave is discovered on the planet with some evil thing/alien buried inside. The player is notified that some evil is soon to be awakened; the player can try to detonate/cause collapse of the mine; block the corridor/doors ... or kill the mummy/ancient astronaut, etc.

[UsF]

I would like to repeat my idea for a modular story teller, that the player can set at the start and have the storyteller just be the person that decides on how to play it out:

I think if you are able to create multiple storytellers, wouldn't they be things like "Spaceship arc" "Pirate arc" "Trading arc" "Wildlife arc" "Xeno Arc" and things like that and you would want to be able to have your storyteller to mix them together? I am currently unsure where the random context comes from. I think a mixing of story arcs that is randomized and could be customized by the player at the start would be a good thing (think setting Pirates to high would not mean more pirates but more pirate story arc events). Those story arcs shouldn't all be fixed (pirates always being negative), but be branching paths and somewhat randomized paths to give lots of re-playability. Imagine the pirate-arc having a randomized path of the pirates suddenly deciding to communicate with you, asking you to turn the area into a pirate base, which would suddenly mean that you, if you accept, would need to take care of several uncontrollable NPCs, but they would protect you (as long as you provide for them). In the end, there could be branching paths like them demanding you build a spaceship for them too, where you could do so, not do so (possible fight?) or try to secretly escape when they are busy fighting something.

I hope that made somewhat sense. People could decide to have a calm game by setting arcs to low/none, so story events wouldn't fire as much or even never to just try and survive.

So for endgame that would mean
"Spaceship arc" - build a spaceship to escape
"Trading arc" - maybe possible to get a trading spaceship to land, if you are really trade heavy, could trigger things from the pirate arc of course
"Pirate arc" - try to steal a pirate spaceship as a possible endgame, should it happen
"Wildlife arc" - I guess this would cause a lot of savage animals roaming your area in the search for food
"Environment arc" - dangerous environmental changes could happen (flooding, climate change, wildfire spreading to your area)
"Xeno arc" - hostile non-humans threaten your existance (could be sentient plants or people, natives from the homeworld)
"Science arc" - trying to build a teleporter to get you off planet could lead to the teleporter turning back on you, opening a portal to a "fun" place, which you must survive until you can reprogram the damn thing to work again (and try a second time)
"Society arc" - could lead to people demanding democracy, dicatorship or simly cause trouble from people starting to hate each other as things get better and better and they don't have to work with each other as often
"Economy arc" - Things like farming could cause endgame plants to mutate from your crops by science, so you can get better output or it could cause catastrophe

It would create a better overal feeling and narrative for the players by providing the idea of a living world behind you, where the storyteller gets to decide how to put it together. Players could be able to use custom storytellers where they would be able to set the frequency of certain story arcs or select a random option and have a totally different experience. Like for example one storyteller being on random deciding that you get a lot of pirate story arc events making you feel like in an appropriate heavily infested star sector, while others might give you the idea of being right on the main route of an automated merchant stream or on a very hostile planet that throws natural disasters at you like no tomorrow.

Additional arcs could be modded in by players or added in updates or future expansons and would increase the scope. Another idea would be to add a planet arc that decides on what planet a player will spawn and how it progresses in general as it goes along. Those would give more replayability by offering different environments right away, hostility like cold, no natural food or the likes or friendly like more minerals etc.

All the ideas currently suggested would be fitted within the story arcs to make the story teller a modular experience instead of randomly deciding and it would then be able for the player to increase or decrease the difficulty or set out for a specific challenge (hostile world, pirate overwhelmed and no traders?).

[Christian]

Not sure if it's been suggested but maybe Pitch-Black style creatures that emerge during extended darkness

Also, smugglers ask for shelter. You have the choice to aid them, reject them, etc. Maybe they're being targeted by highly trained assassins or being tracked by cops. What do you do?

Similarly, political refugees need help. Could led to negotiations with some sort of galactic government faction.

[Namnai]

I thought of already existing gameplay devices and how they could have their own albeit minor or major influence on the story.

You are going to see a recurring theme here 

Malfunctioning comms: You aren't able to contact passing ships for a limited period
Malfunctioning turrets: A turret starts to fire at colonists/structures
Malfunctioning research table: Research is lost or there is an explosion causing fire indoors
Malfunctioning hydroponics table: could create a mutant strain of inedible crop that would get wild and ravage the landscape, muffalos starve and colonists have to find alternate protein source.(Suggestion: Allow colonists to hunt or domesticate Muffalos as a source of protein)

Malfunctioning solar panels: Efficiency goes down for a limited time due to equipment failure. Another variation could be decreased sunlight on cloudy days/rainy days
Malfunctioning generator: creates an EMP blast that knocks out some surrounding electronics
Malfunctioning replicators: For a limited duration construction and repair capability is drastically reduced. You are only able to manufacture/repair basic things like walls and sand bags. Can't repair comms, research tables, power generator, food dispensers or turrets.

Squirrels gnawing on power conduits: Ecological disaster makes the squirrels seek out more sources of food. Makes the player keep an area clear of squirrels. Players could place a certain amount of food next to a mine and wait till a lot of squirrels come to eat it. Then detonate the mine before the food counter runs down. Could be further expanded to allow for a research option. Rodent repellant. You place these devices to keep boomrats and squirrels away or it makes power conduits un-gnawable (is that even a word? lol)

[miah999]

This thread is getting very long so I'm sorry if this has been mentioned before and I've just missed it.

This would be a late game event, triggered only after you have 10 or more armed colonists.

A group of "Raiders" lands but instead of attacking with their full group, they build a small base first, a couple turrets, a room, a bed or two and some source of food. Then after they've established their base, they send out small attack parties (approx 50% of their group). When they flee, they flee back to their base to be healed and gear up for the next attack. Then they start another build phase. Followed by another attack. If they loose more then 50% of their original force they call in reinforcements.

This will make for a situation where the player will have to go on the offensive. If the player doesn't take out the enemy base they could end up with a huge enemy facility just out side their door.

[tothjm]

Not sure if this would be a storyteller event or not, but i think it would be interesting to include other tribes \ settlers \ colonies that you are basically able to raid, steal supplies, befriend, annihilate etc.  Let them setup minor defenses, or stronger ones.

Just my 2 cents but it could be fun

[mumblemumble]

A colonist getting addicted to drugs on his time off, making him more prone to breaks, less health, as well as draining money from buying them on the side. Could arrest them to stop them, or hope they kick the habit. Untreated drug abuse could have irreversible effects if they abuse it too much / too long.

[Gazz]

An UFO lands quite a bit away from your colony and aliens embark to pursue whatever alien purposes they might have.

A bit later a Skyranger drops near the UFO and soldiers go kick alien butt... and then they take everything that isn't nailed down back to their Skyranger and take off.


An event doesn't need to have a direct positive or negative impact. Sometimes things just happen.
Unless you involve yourself in said things. Like by pissing off X-COM. =P

[Hawkido]

Okay an idea for a (semi)random event.  expeditions (both voluntary and involuntary):
can be randomly triggered but best if triggered for a reason (high unhappiness, low resources, etc...)
The colonists want to scout outside the map for more resources, or out of boredom, or they saw a meteorite fall, or ship crash just off the map.  You must select colonists to go, they will be gone a period of time, and require resources or may have to forage on their way, possible outcomes (mostly random but also based on the goal of the scenario): never heard from again, captured by pirates (possible rescue as follow-up scenario) if not rescued they return as raider-converts, or are found in a gibbet cage on the edge of your map, or you find survivors, metals, food, supplies, rare trinkets to be placed in houses for happiness boosts, rare/unique/exotic weapons, some may return injured (lightly or maybe critically) or be carried back dead.  The people in your camp may want to go on some expeditions, and doing so improves morale, where as not doing so lowers morale, and vice versa sometimes they do not want to go check out the green glowing meteorite that fell just over the hill, and sending someone will be a morale hit.  things like this can be really bad or really good... and some of the events if left un-investigated will have worse results.  the whole outcome would be given in an after action report, with possible follow-up expedition options.

What the player will see is the notice that a reason for an expedition has came up, will you send someone (or more than one on some missions)?  who? are they ready (make sure they have the equipment, plus a prepared meal for each day it is expected to take, or force them to forage (less chance to survive), or 2 raw food for each day of the mission (something in food cost, you get the point) then launch expedition... the player sees them head for the edge of the map.  once the reasonable time has lapsed, either the members return, or some word is heard (gibbet cage, possibly booby trapped), retaliation from pirates or raiders, perhaps a trader will have word of them, or maybe a cycle or two later they will return, as they got delayed or injured.  Some of these missions the player can decline, others the camp survivors will not give a choice.

Should be fairly easy to script, as most of it will be "Dice rolls" with a case selection of possible outcomes depending on the scenario, would like the skills of the members sent to have an effect on relevant "dice-Rolls", also certain attributes of members sent might cause them to chicken out and return early.  Also weapons can count toward dice-rolls if needed in the expedition.

[mumblemumble]

Raiders coming out and ordering you to hand over a specific party member to them, because there's a grudge on them. Using the FTL like choice making, and could choose between handing him over, trying to sell him, or keeping him and defending off the raiders. Perhaps a reward for killing off the persons hunters, like a trading discount.

[Hawkido]

Dealing with expeditions idea... explaining this a tad more how it could be implemented.

Hawkido, that idea is so far from cheap I can't even begin to describe it. Cheap is "a gun that lights targets on fire".

*Original entry removed*
Yeah sorry... I accidentally posted that in the Cheap ideas board... I moved it to story teller events.
But I think the idea could create an pseudo-extension to the imaginary border of your crash/colony site.
And would require any more art effects or sound effects.  just a scripted event with a basic case selection scenario.

Colony runs low on food, the longer the colony remains at a low food status the greater the chance that some of your settlers will make a request to explore outside the map and look for food. Once your party is selected they depart.  The game then selects a challenge from a list of weighted possible challenges, determine what the over come score should be, and what skills and equipment should be used to modify the expedition "Roll".  The Expedition makes their roll and adds the modifier.  then the outcome is determined, and how much time it would take for this to happen.  after that amount of time has passed the player gets a report, or possibly none at all as the member is MIA, and may never turn up. If the member turns up any spoils are then dropped where the member re-enter the map at and must be collected by the townsfolk.  these can be made more complex later on... but the basic framework would add a lot to the sense that you are on a whole world... not just a patch of ground.

Detailed example:
Colony Starving: Food quest as goal of expedition.
For starters we will implement that only one colonist can go on the expedition, so select and equip that colonist, then launch expedition.
the computer selects from a list of possible challenges:
Finds a field of raspberries... roll values: <100 Fierce Bears maul your expedition -80% max health if you have a gun -40% max health, but you kill the bear for food +120 food if your expedition survived the initial attack, takes 48 hours if he/she survives.
<300 Most of the berries are unripe +30 food. Takes 36 hours for the trip.
<500 The berries are deliciously ripe, everyone will be happy +100 food +20 morale for 2 days. Takes 24 hours for the trip.
<700 there are a few berries but also a mineral deposit +20 food +50 metal takes 48 hours.
<800 the berries are gone but there is a rotten bear corpse and a dead body with a gun (you get the gun (random roll for gun)) takes 18 hours.

The stats of the character in this scenario that may modify the roll could be "guns" skill, health, any trait that makes the character afraid of or better with animals, being better or worse at combat traits, the quality of weapon...

The expedition member then rolls and adds or subtracts his modifier then gets the result tier.

No not cheap... not asking for this in the Alpha and probably not early in the beta, but at some point there will be a limit to the type of events that can come up in an instant fashion on-screen.  and you the player have to tend the camp, so you can't be everywhere.