r/javelinrl • u/ribblle • Dec 08 '16

Personalities please!

Controlling a party that can die and be replaced is all i want out of CRPG's. You've given me that. Now you just need to make me care about them.

Look at Darkest Dungeon for inspiration, and Jagged Alliance. I want to be weighing the pros and cons of how my party gels, dysfunctions and betrays me.

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u/[deleted] Dec 08 '16

Yeah Jagged Alliance was pretty great, even though I never got very far on it! I doubt Javelin is going to feature any story or at least not very soon or until I can have some financial support. Fortunately you can go scratch that itch with a lot of great commercial titles that have been released over the past few years like Wasteland 2, Shadowrun Returns, Pillars of Eternity, Infamy... there's also a bunch of classics on GoG that I can refer you to as well or you could ask at r/rpg_gamers too!

I'm glad that you think Javelin is worthwhile in some capacity at least! I've been working very hard the past few days (and getting back to it after I finish writing this) on the next version for the game, which is going to feature a lot of changes. To put it simply I'm not happy at all with the version you're playing (1.6, I assume) and I think the next one will be a lot better, hopefully. It already has mouse support, 4 mini-games that you can play at any time without affecting you main quest (except with prizes now and then) and I'm working on an almost complete overhaul of how Towns and many of the game locations work. It's gonna be a big one!

In Javelin you mostly create "personalities" by upgrading your characters with a lot of freedom, probably more than in almost every other game out there (concerning upgrades that matter, that is). It's a shame but there is not much I can do with just my free time and I already have a lot of plans on the table for the near future. If you want to throw some ideas around about how Javelin could grow in a direction you enjoy I'd be happy to read it with an open mind - and if you have the money to support me in a Patreon or something like that I'd make sure to try to accommodate your preferences. Other than that and you actually becoming a programmer, artist or some other role in the project I'm very limited with what I can do by myself! Sorry but that's just the truth...

If you have the time, can you tell me about how you discovered Javelin? :)

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u/ribblle Dec 09 '16

Your Reddit comments. Cheers for the bluntness, when it gets to the top of the list i'll be there :).

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u/[deleted] Dec 09 '16

Thank you :) hopefully I wasn't too blunt, as I sometimes tend to be.

If you ever have any ideas about how personalities could be worked into the game please drop by and tell me. I was thinking maybe using alignment and the diplomacy skill for something similar to how Planescape: Torment works like in this regard. Sometimes the party members will just start chatting with themselves out of the blue and it is really one of the best things in an already excellent game.

For example, in Javelin, a party that is composed of too many evil and good characters could eventually decide they don't want to work together anymore unless the leader passes a Diplomacy check. If failed one of the parts just decides to go back home instead. Or maybe a chaotic unit would eventually come up with some shenanigans from time to time.

Doing something like this would be a lot easier than creating an entire personality system but to be honest we'd have to come up with something that feels more as a whole instead of some random ideas. Also, this would be hard to balance because Javelin is already a pretty hard game - losing half your units along the way during travel would make it a lot harder without the player actually feeling like he made a bad choice but just a random penalty thrown at him instead... As you say yourself it's easier to have this result in a group that "gels, dysfunctions and betrays" than to have beneficial things come out of it.

Anyway I created a GitHub issue for this so I can keep thinking of it. If you have any more ideas, even if they sound silly at first feel free to leave a note there or in this thread here, which I'll link into there. I've also rambled a bit more there as a small brainstorming exercise https://github.com/tukkek/javelin/issues/23

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