Mod Storyboard

[Lemernis]

Here is the mod storyboard:

 

 

Yoshi Asks to Temporarily Leave the Party

 

Yoshi requests to temporarily drop from party in Brynnlaw. He says the reason is that he spotted two powerful mages who would kill him and the party if they saw him; Yoshi's presence therefore endangers the entire party, so he has to hide out.

 

Yoshi does in fact spot two old enemies, and they are fearsome and would undoubtedly kill him. But stating this as the (only) reason is deceptive. It is not Yoshi's main reason for leaving the party. By this point Yoshi realizes full well that Irenicus will likely kill him once he has served Irenicus' purpose. Also, Yoshi feels genuine loyalty by now toward the PC. So Yoshi's greatest reason for temporarily dropping from the party is a last ditch effort to try to get Irenicus' Geas dispelled, and to eventually try to help the PC kill Irenicus. Yoshi holes up in the Vulgar Monkey and enters a constant prayer vigil.

 

When: This conversation should fire just after Sime directs PC to seek out Sanik at the Vulgar Monkey, following Saemon's ambush. Yoshi is moved to the Vulgar Monkey.

 

notes: use BG2 Tweaks "Improved Kick-out Dialogues" script so that Yoshi can stay put.

 

 

Yoshi Rejoins the Party

 

Yoshi is waiting at the Vulgar Monkey when the party returns with Imoen from Spellhold. Yoshi is happy and relieved to rejoin. He succeeded in getting Irenicus' geas dispelled, although he will not disclose this until later.

 

notes:

 

- buttplug variable to be added before party reenters the Vulgar Monkey (Icen has added it from the outset)

- Yoshi dialogue fires when Yoshi is neutral

- at some point maybe add this conversation: Pirate Bill in the Vulgar Monkey offers passage home for any one NPC that the party needs to boot by virtue of Yoshi rejoining; if PC accepts gold is deducted. Player then may manually remove the party member; Pirate Bill dialogue would fire right after Yoshi's, before manually readding Yoshi to the party.

 

 

Yoshi's Confession

 

Yoshi makes a confession to the PC that he spied on the party for Irenicus' and tells how he got the Geas dispelled. A high priest of Ilmater lifted the Geas. It is a lengthy tale, which directs attention away from his earlier claim that he was hiding from two mages. Yoshi thereby creates the impression that his bit about the two mages he said he was evading in Brynnlaw was simply a fabrication to avoid telling the PC that he was Irenicus' spy.

 

The PC is chagrinned. There are a variety of roleplaying responses, including both a non-judgmental and pissed but grudging acceptance that Yoshi had little choice; booting Yoshi from the party; and turning hostile on him.

 

When: This conversation should take place after Imoen and Yoshi have rejoined, but before the mage duo encounter. Trigger for this encounter is when any party member hits level 13? Use static trigger?

 

 

Mage Duo Encounter

 

A surprise (hopefully). The two mages that Yoshi spotted in Brynnlaw do in fact exist, and they stroll up and confront the party. (Har player, gotcha.) They make a brief reference to Yoshi having killed one of their comrades. They demand that the PC turn Yoshi over to them to avoid a fight. These two mages are extremely difficult to defeat--possibly on the order of the Demogorgon fight. The battle can be avoided by turning Yoshi over to them.

 

When: Trigger for this encounter is when any party member hits level 14. Use static trigger instead?

 

notes: One of the enemy mages drops a cool katana, the other a nifty enchanted ring.

 

 

Yoshi Tells the Tale of Collecting the Bounty on Kesalo

 

Some time after the battle with the two mages, the PC and Yoshi talk more about why the mage duo was after him. The two mages had a third comrade in the past. They were in fact were once a trio who hired out together to pirate ships. Yoshi had sailed with them on a pirate ship. The pirate mage trio had formed a very stong bond from working together. They are sympathetic characters, charismatic mercenaries. Yoshi capitaized on a situation the presented itself to seek a bounty on one of their members, the youngest and most reckless of them, Kesalo. It wasn't necessary for Yoshi to do this--Yoshi was motivated by greed.

 

This dovetails into Yoshi's other character flaws that he has presented so far. I.e., Yoshi has demonstrated a pattern of deception. Yoshi's struggle with issues of character, integrity, honor, loyalty, and conscience are raised. This creates some fertile ground for a variety of roleplaying responses by the PC (i.e., a chance to further define the type of person the PC is.) And also for NPC interjections. The player will have the option to forgo this conversation, if desired. For those who enjoy roleplaying, and discussing such issues as whether there can be 'honor among thieves', etc., hopefully we can deliver some engaging dialogue here. Nothing ponderously deep. But at least some interesting food for thought.

 

When: Trigger for this conversation is when any party member hits level 15? Static trigger?

 

 

Yoshi Added to Party for ToB

 

Yoshi respawns right at the start of ToB via a copy of his .cre file

 

notes: If I understand correctly, as it now stand Yoshi spawns in at level 15. We should probably include instructions to use the CLUA Console to level him up if he lost any levels here.

 

 

ToB Quest

 

A short, humorous quest for ToB that offers a nice counterpoint the the weightier moral discussions. Something lighthearted and whimsical. We haven't decided on anything yet.

 

 

Epilogue

 

Yoshi gets an epilogue at the end of ToB.

[Icendoan]

Basically, as of now, he can be brought into ToB without the Fate Spirit. The fate spirit still has unchanged dialogue.

 

Icen

[Lemernis]

Is there any risk that if a player has certain (non-BGT) mods installed, that level 13, 14, and 15 could be reached even before leaving Athkatla for Spellhold? My guess is no, but just checking. Because that would have some conversations and the mage duo encounter firing before the party even arrives in Brynnlaw.

 

There's multiple stongholds... some of the NPC mods have quests that add XP... Not sure what else could conceivably get a player to levels 13-15...

 

For a BGT-compatible version I think we'll almost have to use static triggers. Because already in my current BGT game in BG1 chapter 5, still completing DSotSC, I have some party members at level 9. I haven't even gone to BG city yet, and still have the Grey Clan, Tales quests, and chapters 5, 6, and 7 ahead of me. Plus BGT allows for adding mega-mods such as Check the Bodies and Shadows Over Soubar that are filled with quests, right?

 

So if we do end up using static triggers, what would they be?

 

Yoshi's Confession - Sahuagin City? Underdark?

 

Mage Duo Encounter - Underdark? Return to Athkatla/Bodhi?

 

Yoshi Tells the Tale of Collecting the Bounty on Kesalo - Underdark? Return to Athkatla/Bodhi? Sundanesselar?

 

And specifically when for each?

[gertjanvh]

Like the ideas so far but I do have a remark. The mages you'll eventually fight or hand over Yoshi to, can you not implement a diplomatic solution for this encounter? Let's face it, everyone who will download this mod will do so mainly because they want to save Yoshimo from his untimely death, therefor it is unlikely they would simply hand him over again after the first sign of resistance, if for no other reason that they had to go through a moral dillema wheter to take him back or not.

I don't like like the idea that a good-aligned player has to battle some overly powerfull mages to safe him. Yes, you could argue that you do give the player a choice, but what good-aligned (or loyal for that matter) PC would consider giving him up like that?

Would you consider giving the player to option to bribe or accept a quest from those mages instead of having to fight them?

[Lemernis]

Well, from a roleplaying perspective if the PC feels Yoshi has earned the right to protection from these bad dudes, then as we have it now there is no choice but to do battle. It's a do-or-die decision.

 

Icen and I have talked about the difficulty of the fight, and it does worry me somewhat that it could end up being so difficult that some parties can't win it! We both wanted to offer players a really tough battle. And if it does turn out to be a battle on the order of Kangaxx or Demogorgon, one possible solution is to offer a 'lite' version of the battle during installation that's a bit easier to win.

 

The idea of Torosan and Demorthas offering a quest to spare Yoshi's life is tempting. Although strictly from a story vantage I don't see Torosan and Demorthas showing any mercy to Yoshi. At least in the backstory's present form. I've put a lot of thought into the type of people the mage duo are. The bonds those pirate mages (originally three of them) formed from fighting together, and their fierce loyalty to one another, are important elements to this subplot. And what Yoshi did to their friend, Kesalo, is essentially unforgivable. That material gets used in later dialogues. It's really hard to see them letting Yoshi off the hook for what he did.

 

I think we need to see first how much difficulty players actually have with the battle. Maybe it won't be quite as tough as I'm saying.

 

But if it is, there is still something to be said for posing a difficult roleplaying choice for the PC/player. In the final analysis, Yoshi took Kesalo's life for no better motive than greed (whatever else Yoshi may try to rationalize to himself). Is it fair to say that, Yoshi, knowing the risks full well, in carrying out his plot to collect a bounty on Kesalo forfeited his own life? From the PC's vantage, has Yoshi been sufficiently loyal to the PC to warrant facing a very strong chance of death in order to protect him? What bonds actually tie The PC's party togerther? Are they truly any stronger or more noble than the ties the mage trio had, and which have driven them to seek revenge? Etc. All of that gets processed by the party later, but it's the sort of material I wanted to explore.

[gertjanvh]

From the way you two have developed this story it seems you have given substantial thought as to why the player has to fight them (or why the two mages cannot spare him, depending on your point of view), but the difficulty still concerns me. I for one am primarily playing this game as a roleplaying experience, and the idea of beeing forced to reload the game several times just to survive an important battle seems a turnoff. And ctrl-y'ing to keep the experience going forward isn't really an option too. Giving the option to decrease the difficulty of this encounter during install seems a sensible compromise between the tactical players and the pure roleplaying bunch of us. It certainly is a better option then to compromise the story to give you a non-violent option if you can't rationalise it.

[Lemernis]

Thanks for your input on that. I agree that it will be a problem if a substantial percentage of players are detered from using the mod because they don't care for uber difficult battles!

[strayshift]

A possible alternative solution...

 

Irenicus makes deals - what IF Irenicus cut a deal with the mages and somehow 'switched' the power the geas has over Yoshimo onto these other mages in return for some service or other.

These mages could then permenantly kill Yoshimo quite easily UNLESS... There could then be a quest to restore the missing member of the trio (who may have been imprisoned not killed...) and what could follow could be a 'prison-break' type adventure in the Drow City, Underdark, Spellhold or Athkatla in order to prevent the mages slaying Yoshimo.

Just a suggestion

Look forward to this

G

[gertjanvh]

Might work, but it could also remind people of the Jaheira's curse quest, only at a much higher pace. I don't know if they'd essentially want to do the same quest twice.

[Lemernis]

We can give some more thought to something along these lines, i.e., not having the two mages outright kill Yoshi and offer a quest of some sort. At this stage a major rewrite feels kinda daunting, though. Something like that would have to be a clearly superior idea to warrant that. You know what I mean? Eg, like, whoa, that's so good how can we not go with that?

 

We started out just wanting to offer players a way to keep Yoshimo for the whole saga, since it had been proven that it is doable. It was only going to be a bare bones mini-mod. The subplot to keep Yoshi out of the party inside Spellhold provided an easy, elegant way to skip Irenicus' and Yoshi's dialogues and scripting re: the Geas. That's genesis of the subplot of the mage duo seeking revenge on Yoshi. Then we figured, alright, what the heck, since we have mages after him why not let's also give them a fun (and very challenging) battle with a nice little loot drop. After cooking up the mage trio backstory it became apparent that it offered some potentially rich roleplaying material/dialogue re: issues of honor and betrayal from our subplot. But at this stage my gut is I don't want to get to far afield from what we had originally planned, else I feel like there's a risk this mod won't ever get finished!

[Icendoan]

Hah! I have an awful lot happening now, and even my MMO addictions have been stopped for now, so I can't do anything until at least Thursday, and then I will try to understand the errors and get it all working, with all bugfixes in it for more testing.

 

Icen

[magrat]

I'll be interested in this mod when it's ready -- keeping Yoshimo around is something I'd quite like to do, so I'll be interested to see how it's done. I'm debating how much of the other posts to read, because I'm not sure if I want to be spoilor-ed too much, or to have a surprise during the first play through

 

Good luck!

[Icendoan]

Thanks, and it is just squashing install bugs until we can resume testing.

 

Icen

[Guest Dirty Uncle Bertie]

He says the reason is that he spotted two powerful mages who would kill him and the party if they saw him

But if you offer a "lite" version of the mage battle, this part won't make sense. Is there really no way of including some sort of diplomatic solution? Couldn't the mages insist the party perform some dangerous task for them as payment? And maybe even after this task has been performed, the mages could tell Yoshimo that all this has done is buy him some time, and that they'll look to return for him one day (they don't actually have to do so during the course of the game, but the threat of this would mean they wouldn't have to unrealistically forgive him).

 

Perhaps if we have a brainstorming session we could come up with some neat ideas that aren't too time-consuming to implement. It's worth a go, and you'll never know what the outcome will be.

 

From a technical point of view, if i use the Level One NPCs mod to alter Yoshi, this mod still function okay? I only really want to alter his proficiencies slightly, nothing more.

[Icendoan]

There is already a sort of diplomatic solution, but it is more of an easter egg than a normal way through. These mages aren't even present in the game yet, so you have nothing to fear from them until I get them scripted properly.

 

Icen