Goonhub
12-06-2015, 11:41 PM
Recently, on the Destiny server SgtBriar and I were given temporary moderator status and worked with Fresh Lemon (and later SpyGuy) to keep watch of people's RP and come up with fun events for the round. We bounced some ideas around, and eventually, we decided that we would have what basically amounted to a traditional changeling round, but with an RP edge and a twist on the escape shuttle. It was an extremely enjoyable experience and our two changelings did very well, acting as believably aliens-as-humans.
Traitors are currently the only real antagonist type on Destiny, but I think that round was proof that quite a few other antagonist types could conceivably work on Destiny if given a few tweaks and RP guidelines.
Changeling
The round above worked for multiple reasons. For one, the participants actually played...well, an alien. As a changeling, you aren't a human but are rather an alien acting as a human. Consequently, there should be some kind of tics that can serve as warning bells to the crew, be they in the form of odd verbal tics, wearing odd things, a distinct lack of knowledge of human culture, and so on and so forth. Not only that, but the changeling's objectives need to be less about "murder [x] duders" and more about subtle sabotage and fucking up the station without just killing everyone. With Destiny's focus on RP, getting particular departments depopulated can severely stunt the station's ability to fight back against antagonists.
The original changeling round gave the two changers objectives that revolved around sabotaging the station but keeping the majority of the crew alive for experimentation. The idea is that the changelings basically fuck the ship up to the point that the crew can be easily abducted by the changeling "mothership", which might be a bit beyond reasonable expectations coding-wise, but makes a lot more sense thematically.
Here's my idea. Each changeling is tasked with eliminating one or more core components to the station (the engine, the comms dishes, the solars, the AI, etc.) Their second objective would be something along the lines of "Make sure [x] crew members remain on board the ship for extraction." See, once the aforementioned components have been disabled, a Centcom announcement rolls in about the systems of the Destiny ship malfunctioning, and sensors detecting the presence of alien activity on the vessel. From here, the shuttle is auto-called and the crew must hold out until the ship arrives, while the changelings ensure that the least number of people possible are able to escape. It's a tentative suggestion and there's definitely room for improvement, but it incorporates all of the things that make changeling rounds fun and engaging: Suspense, tension, paranoia, and the sense of lingering dread.
Wizards
Rather notorious for being exclusively focused towards rampaging, I have a simple suggestion to make wizards more focused towards RP and more interesting as an antagonist type: Bring back the corruption mechanic. The ship is small enough that it very well might work without lagging everything up to hell and back, and the loadout of the wizards could be completely overhauled in order to better mesh with the corruption mechanic, i.e. they might cast from a mana system that slowly builds, the regen rate dependent on how much corruption they've got going on. The Destiny-Wizard's loadout should probably also have a more subtle focus, like creature-summoning and confusion-inducing effects. RPing a wizard has every likelihood to be fun and entertaining, it's just a matter of being able to do it and not have to worry about getting your brains blown out on sight mid-sentence.
Nuke Ops
This is another game mode wildly different from the present incarnation, the nuke ops on destiny should be much more stealth-oriented and less a game of beat up the nuke and blow things up and more a game of infiltration and holding down the fort. Essentially, the job of the nuke ops comes in three steps: Get the disk from the Captain, get the nuclear charge from a syndicate-only location, use the nuke disk to detonate the nuke and blow up the station. The nuke has a countdown that is activated merely by smacking it with the disk. However, the catch is, if the disk toggles the countdown for the nuke: putting it in while the countdown is going stops it. So, in essence, the game revolves around a tug-o-war for the nuke disk, with the syndies attempting to swipe the disk and activate the nuke on station while the crew tries to also get the disk and stop the nuke from exploding.
I'll get back to vampires when it isn't almost midnight, but yeah those are my initial thoughts on the matter! Feel free to leave any ideas or concerns regarding these suggestions below.
Traitors are currently the only real antagonist type on Destiny, but I think that round was proof that quite a few other antagonist types could conceivably work on Destiny if given a few tweaks and RP guidelines.
Changeling
The round above worked for multiple reasons. For one, the participants actually played...well, an alien. As a changeling, you aren't a human but are rather an alien acting as a human. Consequently, there should be some kind of tics that can serve as warning bells to the crew, be they in the form of odd verbal tics, wearing odd things, a distinct lack of knowledge of human culture, and so on and so forth. Not only that, but the changeling's objectives need to be less about "murder [x] duders" and more about subtle sabotage and fucking up the station without just killing everyone. With Destiny's focus on RP, getting particular departments depopulated can severely stunt the station's ability to fight back against antagonists.
The original changeling round gave the two changers objectives that revolved around sabotaging the station but keeping the majority of the crew alive for experimentation. The idea is that the changelings basically fuck the ship up to the point that the crew can be easily abducted by the changeling "mothership", which might be a bit beyond reasonable expectations coding-wise, but makes a lot more sense thematically.
Here's my idea. Each changeling is tasked with eliminating one or more core components to the station (the engine, the comms dishes, the solars, the AI, etc.) Their second objective would be something along the lines of "Make sure [x] crew members remain on board the ship for extraction." See, once the aforementioned components have been disabled, a Centcom announcement rolls in about the systems of the Destiny ship malfunctioning, and sensors detecting the presence of alien activity on the vessel. From here, the shuttle is auto-called and the crew must hold out until the ship arrives, while the changelings ensure that the least number of people possible are able to escape. It's a tentative suggestion and there's definitely room for improvement, but it incorporates all of the things that make changeling rounds fun and engaging: Suspense, tension, paranoia, and the sense of lingering dread.
Wizards
Rather notorious for being exclusively focused towards rampaging, I have a simple suggestion to make wizards more focused towards RP and more interesting as an antagonist type: Bring back the corruption mechanic. The ship is small enough that it very well might work without lagging everything up to hell and back, and the loadout of the wizards could be completely overhauled in order to better mesh with the corruption mechanic, i.e. they might cast from a mana system that slowly builds, the regen rate dependent on how much corruption they've got going on. The Destiny-Wizard's loadout should probably also have a more subtle focus, like creature-summoning and confusion-inducing effects. RPing a wizard has every likelihood to be fun and entertaining, it's just a matter of being able to do it and not have to worry about getting your brains blown out on sight mid-sentence.
Nuke Ops
This is another game mode wildly different from the present incarnation, the nuke ops on destiny should be much more stealth-oriented and less a game of beat up the nuke and blow things up and more a game of infiltration and holding down the fort. Essentially, the job of the nuke ops comes in three steps: Get the disk from the Captain, get the nuclear charge from a syndicate-only location, use the nuke disk to detonate the nuke and blow up the station. The nuke has a countdown that is activated merely by smacking it with the disk. However, the catch is, if the disk toggles the countdown for the nuke: putting it in while the countdown is going stops it. So, in essence, the game revolves around a tug-o-war for the nuke disk, with the syndies attempting to swipe the disk and activate the nuke on station while the crew tries to also get the disk and stop the nuke from exploding.
I'll get back to vampires when it isn't almost midnight, but yeah those are my initial thoughts on the matter! Feel free to leave any ideas or concerns regarding these suggestions below.