I know of one hot dog vender and he is in one of the parks. I want to get missions from him (he being under cover and all.
I also want to get a free hot dog emote where I can eat a red hot in the park. After all, if you don't buy something people will get suspicious.
For villains, I want a guy in a trench coat that sells hot watches. you can also get a temporary watch costume piece that lasts for an hour.
another villain contact could be Bunny, a dancer at the Kit Kat night club. you meet her back stage. all she wants is a cut of the take. BUT you also get a temporary costume piece, a lipstick kiss on your cheek...only available when you complete the mission (and she gets her cut), it too lasts an hour.
What other NPCs would you like to give out missions?
[img]https://s15.postimg.cc/z9bk1znkb/Black_Falcon_Sig_in_Progess.jpg[/img]
A dog, a cat, a television, a radio... Really, anything could be suggested as a Contact. I remember the series of missions from the Radio contact in CoV, so that may not work. Looking back on things, I kind of wish I had spent more time in the Rogue Isles. I spent a whole bunch of time in the City that I knew it back to front, but I couldn't have told you who some of the great Contacts were in CoV... except Vincent Ross. Now that was awesome stuff. But I digress. Point being, I think more objects should be Contacts in the sense that you follow clues to unfold the story. I don't think it should be over-done, but I don't think it should be people as often as it is.
I want a nosy little shut-in widow who constantly keeps her eyes on everything from her window. After we answer a call from her or otherwise aid her, she will continue to give us intelligence about the nefarious gang who have a HQ in the alley below her apartment. After her mission arc is complete, she will periodically leave baked goods for us on her window ledge by the fire escape. We can stop by and get a fun little temporary bonus if we eat them.
I would like to be able to cultivate contacts by giving them gifts and doing them favors not related to missions, such as hooking them up with the flower girl around the corner or any other silly thing the authors can think of. In my head, I am picturing the way we can cultivate NPC contacts in Dragon's Nest.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
A Tree. A trash can with a Transient on the bench next to it. They say 'Thank you' any time you make a deposit.
Be Well!
Fireheart
I liked Radio missions because sometimes when you're farming you need to be able to pick up a mission on the spot.
As for contacts, I like some of your ideas. I would like to see a contact on the rooftop for those heroes that can fly, sj, climb, etc. Naturally there could be another contact that provides similar missions on the ground but there's something about soaring into the sky away from prying eyes to meet that secret contact hiding under a water tower on a tall building or in a fire escape.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
An agent (no, not a secret one)...who handles publicity & such for a well-known character, and who can call or text you when there's something that needs your attention.
A drive thru at a bank ... with a pneumatic tube connecting to the teller inside the bank building (not one of the ATM lanes).
As someone who has "stood in line" between cars for drive thru windows at more than a few bank branches (and yes, it does feel a little weird), it would be rather interesting to receive your mission briefing from a [i]bank teller[/i] who sends you the details of your mission via a paper note sent to you through the pneumatic tube.
All things considered, this would probably work better as a Villain contact than as a Hero one, but still ...
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
You ride the subway (fast travel). This can trigger a random event, or you may be riding the subway after being told (or hinted) to do so at a certain point in various story arcs.
The game displays a message or cutscene showing that something unusual has happened during the trip:
-lights go out briefly while train is in motion which allows you to see something in the tunnel, perhaps message for help, a glowing rune gateway, cloaked figures with weapons, etc
-train suddenly arrives at wrong destination as if your planned stop was skipped
-station is empty upon arrival, surroundings are charged with static
-creepy noises toward front of the car, when you look back, you find that you are now sitting at the extreme back end of the train
-other passengers turn to face you and all say the same thing before returning to normal
-etc.
You then find a note on the seat next to you / a flickering advertisement that shows your name / phone rings in empty booth / cryptic intercom announcement / something else odd; this directs you either to a place where the real contact is waiting, or gives you enough info to accept/reject a mission on the spot.
...could be especially good for mystery and horror-themed stories, and target player characters who have previously shown interest in detective work, stealth, or other clue-based gameplay. The techniques could also be used by a Lord Nemesis type of villain who is manipulating citizens and city machinery, both to introduce missions and even just to tease with atmosphere when players are too low-level.
Yeah that will work better as part of a story. I cant imagine trying to fast travel to meet up with some people and I get thrown off into this long cutscene.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
A minor supervillain who performs petty crimes and stays off everyone’s radar, but tries to get an advantage by squealing on all his rivals to various superheroes. A super-stool pigeon.
I had a character idea that was pretty much this. Though in my idea they'd be pretty useless as a criminal too. But this is a character I'd want play.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
So ... basically "joke" characters that despite everything you have to take "seriously" due to the sheer "ankle biter" factor?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I want a tinfoil-hat wearing conspiracy nut who is always almost but not quite right.
Think early [url=http://ps238.nodwick.com/comic/05042007/]Cecil Holmes[/url].
His missions would basically be bait and switch, where you're asked to check out something suspicious that would confirm his paradigm and instead stumble onto a vastly different threat.
He might tell you how he saw a UFO land in the neighbourhood and how aliens are trying to conquer the world. Then you find out it really was a [Enemy Group] aircraft that lifted it's cloak a little too early; which leaves you with a hidden, not to mention unsuspecting, base to [s]loot[/s]clean out in the name of justice... or whatever.
I'd put him somewhere at low-mid level range, maybe give the player a glimpse at a max level enemy group.
How about he contacts us again once we're max level asking for a favour regarding a gang taking over his block... after an instance or two and some running around we'd learn that the gang is mostly just a cover up for [Enemy Group] activity. And then eventually arc over to the planned raids. Ancient alien cities IIRC.
Nothing you [i]need[/i] to do to 'unlock' them; just a little extra story line if you're interested.
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HUdf89hI8]Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
[/url]
I like the hot dog vendor, but why does he have to be undercover? Why cant he, or the guy running the news stand, have two to three missions. Could be any of the I have a pulse of the neighborhood type people. The girl selling tickets at the movie theater waves you down, as you run by. She saw a group of "bad guys" run into the park across the street, with weapons. You hop the fence and stumble into a gang war between two groups. They do not even have to be required type missions. If you are in the level range of 8 - 12, you have a percent chance to have it happen.
Why not a random chance of a call from your guy at city hall. The reporter that has been giving you a hard time and slandering your name, has gone missing. Was he kidnapped? Was he working for group A, and got caught in a cross fire when group B attacked? Is he at the hospital, because one of his kids kidneys failed, and there is no way to get the organ for transplant here in time do to a riot? Or the ambulance that was bringing it got hijacked?
Just random people, who might have a mission or two, or a small arch of five to seven missions. Maybe only one in five characters get them, could add a lot of flavor to the game and keep people energized.
My stool pigeon isn’t meant to be funny. He’s trying the best he can to use guile and cunning because he’s not powerful enough to directly compete against his rivals and has the heroes do his heavy lifting for him.
I don’t think that has to be funny at all, I think it makes an odd philosophical dilemma about a crime fighter who reluctantly aids a criminal for the greater good. Real life law enforcement has the same dilemma with criminal informants.
Don’t give him a silly name or attitude or powerset. None of that would be necessary.
I’m picturing the evil cockatoo from rio2
Lol
"A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space." ~ Thomas Carlyle
A device with a recording of you mission, that will self destruct 5 seconds after delivering your mission briefing to you.
[youtube]MA2KmJMKFrQ[/youtube]
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
A secret contact hiding in the sewer. You collect your mission from the storm drain where you just see peering eyes a la IT but less creepy. In fact not creepy at all, its just a paranoid contact.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Does it ask for pizzas?
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
-_-
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Cowabunga!
I would like to have The Librarian as a contact for exotic adventures. This could be a neatly-dressed lady with glasses and her hair in a bun, or it could be the auburn-haired banana-wrangler of Ankh Morpork. A Librarian might Know where to look for trouble and who to send to trouble-shoot it.
Be Well!
Fireheart
That could be a good way to get to an "exotic" location for a mission.You meet the librarian who takes you to a restricted section of the library. He or she pulls a book out of a bookcase and the whole thing swings open to reveal a secret dungeon. In the dungeon lies a portal that will take you to your mission in a prehistoric jungle full of dinosaurs! The whole dungeon behind a bookcase is not original but I still love it.
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
Counter-proposal.
Have the [i]Card Catalog[/i] at the Library be a contact.
After all, in this day and age, NO ONE goes looking for information printed on cardstock anymore ... they just reach for the nearest computer terminal. Which brings up the question ... what could possibly be hidden in the hard copy card catalog that isn't also recorded online?
Sort of a variation on the Mission Impossible tape recorder, but one which is even more mundane (and therefore easy to overlook).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
The problem here is how would you "encourage" a given millennial player to even know that could be "a thing" to consider. ;)
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Simple.
You give them a "lead" that points them to the right thing to look up in the card catalog. Could be anything from a fortune cookie paper chit to an urban legend/rumor or a wacktastic numerological discovery out of the daily crossword puzzle. All kinds of wildly unlikely ways of putting the PC "in the know" could be used.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
By definition I am a millennial and I know what that is!
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[color=#FF0000]Graphic Designer[/color]
No you don't... you're just saying that to sound cool. Next you be trying to tell us you know what microfiche is. ;)
You sound like the latest version of Spider-man where he's always trying to tell Tony Stark about these "ancient movies" he's seen that were made in the 1980s...
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
LOL we still have those at work though nobody uses them anymore. Gotta love the government!
I remember searching microfiche archives at the library for school reports. I wish we had Google back then.
I like the idea of a card catalog. Have the player introduced to it by someone saying that you should check his friend Dewey at the library. When you go in there and ask for the contact, a librarian directs you to a cabinet full of tiny drawers.
Oh I'm just giving Redlynne a hard time. It would be interesting to have various "retro" references to things like that.
CoH player from April 25, 2004 to November 30, 2012
[IMG=400x225]https://i.imgur.com/NHUthWM.jpeg[/IMG]
Of course, the Librarian might point you towards the card-catalog, in your quest for knowledge. Or perhaps you'd have to look it up on Microfilm? I used to know my way around the drawer of cards, and I've run a film-reader, long before these resources were digitized.
Be Well!
Fireheart
“422-1/8th? Where the heck is 422-1/8th?”
Crud...am I old? I still have some records on both Microfiche and Microfilm...Don't ask why...
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I'd like to have an NPC contact that is similar to Jarlaxle...if anyone is familiar with him. Basically, he is the ultimate opportunist, a mercenary band to the highest bidder not above turning on someone who paid him because someone else paid him more to do it. But in CoT, it would be a shady organization just as willing to help out good as it is evil, it all comes down to how benefits the organization. He can give heroes and villans alike either truthful or false leads/information.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
So ... you want to put a mercenary Not Honorable NPC on the path of being an Unreliable Narrator?
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
Why not? Even bad guys do good things if it benefits them. Why not have a mercenary band where some quest/mission lines we are meant to win and some are meant to lose? By lose I mean you are not able to fulfill you objective. For example, you think you got a good lead on the leader of a gang but once you get to the end of the mission you find out it was bad intel and that the gang boss paid off that contact. I don't think CoT should have 100% reliable contacts. Now, really this only affects those that follow the story and RP because those that don't will likely not read the text anyway and they got their xp and rewards from doing the quests/mission that they wanted in the first place.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
RADIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
[B]Revenge is motivation enough. At least it's honest...[/B]
Roleplayer; Esteemed Villain
[img]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/5.jpg[/img]
"Wise man say forgiveness is divine but never pay full price for late pizza!"
Of course!!
I would be honestly disappointed if we didn't have the ol' radio as a contact. Or something similar, like the love child of [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj8bAd9fQ18]The Warriors[/url], [url=https://youtu.be/EMPB4RBbCXw?t=96]Jet Set Radio[/url], and [url=https://youtu.be/7bXJ_obaiYQ]Minority Report[/url].
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
It could be that the underpriest at the local Cathedral is a good contact. Go for Confession, get a mission, return to 'confess' your success. Perhaps the waitress at your favorite greasy spoon has an order-ticket for You! She's ordering a bloody beating with a side of beer-bottle for the biker in the corner and extra pepper-spray...
Be Well!
Fireheart
Vendor at a newspaper stand.
Plot twist: something along the lines of Frank the Pug
[youtube]xRcUcxtaX-Q[/youtube]
A rat. Like a giant NYC rat. It's mutated and hyper intelligent for a rat, it sees things, man. And willing to rat out people.
Or a talking dog. Everyone loves dogs.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
A dark elf pirate? Sure, why not.
The Cat Lady: On the surface she seems like a nice old lady, but in reality she is a Baba Yaga style hag, a creature from a dark shadow where the feywild and hell overlap. Her gimmick is that she has a large assortment of familiars in the form of cats that are always watching and spying on random people, she then sells this information, sometimes for coin, but sometimes for the buyers blood, toe nails and dead skin to villains.
not my video just one I lke ===> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-SdIN0hsM
[CENTER][URL=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm][IMG]http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/24.jpg[/IMG][/URL][/CENTER]
And she sells the information of uppity, foolish villains to young heroes because they're usually polite and good about handing in her Revenge in a timely manner. Plus, they're happy to save 'Muffin' from the evil tree he likes to climb.
Perhaps the Old Cat Lady is only an unworldly seeress, happy to trade favors with young hopefuls.
Be Well!
Fireheart
A deity of unknown origin, forgotten, and nearly completely faded that is bound, what is left of the deity, to an old building built atop an old temple of that deity. Perhaps it's a tome you interact, or just a voice, or a statue.
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
The chicken legs supporting her apartment building are a dead giveaway though.
A g-g-g-g-ghost!
Could give missions for you to find out how they died, then to either bring those responsible for justice or exact the ghost's Vengeance and kill those mofos.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
Plot twist: At the end of the last mission you realize you killed good people and the ghost was a serial killer :(
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.
You may want to take another look at the publicly revealed information about [url=https://cityoftitans.com/content/bureau-paranormal-investigations-and-tracking]PIT[/url].
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
[url=https://ibb.co/jE6MFd][img]https://preview.ibb.co/eq2vad/oglaf_heel_clean.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_HUdf89hI8]Send out your signal, call in your hero
I kidnapped his lady, now his power's are zero.
[/url]
Ah, Oglaf. Good times.
"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."
You are quite obviously a spy sir.
Hi. I'm Hope.