Epic System for creating historic events

I suggest a new mechanic, the Epic System

Idea:

create a history of your “kingdom” and tales of your heroes

Mechanic:

Every action awards epic points to the figure executing the action

The amount of epic points reflect the epicness of the action, e.g.
killing a goblin gives little points, killing a giant gives lots more,
dealing damage to a giant give points equal to the damage done, crafting
a special item gives epic points equal to the value of the item and so
on

Outcome:

Chronology of the kingdom - a list of the most epic event per year that happened in your kingdom/town

Heroes sagas - if a hero accumulates a certain amount of epic points he gets his own book telling his epic tales

Monster Tales - if a monster lives long enough and killes lots of your people it will get its own book

Fellowship tales - if a group of heroes solves a quest together they should get a book for the whole quest/group

You would then have tales of your kingdom that could be shared/posted
for all to entertain. For the Chronology it would be nice to have a
screenshot per year of your town to see how it developed over time. For
the other tales a screenshot of the heroes, items, monsters and/or
actions added to the books (and/or as cover) would be wonderful.

The greatest problem would be the grouping I think, to decide which actions will be grouped together and in what timeframe.

6 Likes

This is an idea I would enjoy immensely, especially with my love for lore/RPG however I am afraid it will not come to conception because Team Radiant probably doesn’t have time/want to deal with making a second core system. Which essentially would be needed to bring this to fruition. But I still hope it will happen :smiley:

2 Likes

If the questing system is well-built, fellowship and monster tales should be a thing. But if not, or we just want better, I hate to steal @SteveAdamo 's catchphrase, but:

Mods.

3 Likes

Perhaps the Hearthlings could tell stories of their heroes about the fireside.

The Burlyhands family sat about their hearth, bellies warm and full of berries and squirrel jerky.
Silas Burlyhands decided to break the silence.
"Do you kids want to hear the story of Gem Framer, your great, great grandfather?"
The suggestion was met with great excitement from the smaller Hearthlings.
“Well, long ago, Gem Framer was a footman. Quite a skilled one, too, protecting the very beginnings of this settlement from the evil Goblins.”
“One day, as he walked his usual path, around the turnip fields and through the town square, he saw a great horror.”
“What was it, Daddy?” the youngest one squealed.
“It was the Sheep of Infinite Despair!”
“For two days and two nights the brave Hearthling battled the malicious beast. The ground shook!”
“Did he win? Did he?” The older ones smiled at the enthusiasm of the youngest.
“Yes, he did, little one, but at great cost. He saved the town, this very town we live in today, but he could not stay. Even today, when the earth shakes and the sky booms, Gem Framer and the Sheep of Infinite Despair battle… and you know he is keeping you safe.”

2 Likes

You think we could mod this in? Had no look at the modSDK yet.

You might wanna take a look at this one. Not entirely sure if this is what you were going for though, it just sprang up in my mind after reading this thread.

1 Like

[quote=“TobiWahn_Kenobi, post:1, topic:9292, full:true”]Every action awards epic points to the figure executing the action

The amount of epic points reflect the epicness of the action, e.g. killing a goblin gives little points, killing a giant gives lots more, dealing damage to a giant give points equal to the damage done, crafting a special item gives epic points equal to the value of the item and so on[/quote]
You just reinvented the experience points system :stuck_out_tongue: .

Rather, what I think you want to get this to work is something like what Dwarf Fortress has WRT notable actions. For example, killing a goblin isn’t notable. Fending off a goblin raid IS notable however - so that gets recorded. Making a bed isn’t notable, but making an artefact-quality one is. In DF terms, suppose Alice makes an artefact sword. Bob then makes a carving of Alice’s sword… but makes an artefact-quality carving of it one day. Catherine then makes a statue of David wielding Alice’s sword as he goes on a tantrum-fuelled killing spree and murders the king… and so on.

Add in a text-based “colony history” to accompany this, and hey presto.

3 Likes

Sounds almost exactly like what I want. I just want those events to be grouped by something like Sagas or the like. And as said put in books one can publish online or print or whatever. Also I liked the idea of the sagas being told ingame around the campfire.
And I do hope radiant changes the population mechanic to include genealogies and children so that sagas could include names like Bjorn, son of Udin or Sarah, daughter of …

However, if you go on too long in a game, each story will be prefaced by the first chapter of the Biblical book of Matthew. That probably should be limited to only tracing back a few generations…

1 Like

Cinematic moments are on the official road-map for SH. So the books could include “drawings” of the subject by using a sort of wire-frame cinematic shot with a hand drawn effect over a background that looks like old paper.

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This is a good way to handle illustrating things, and could probably be combined with the text-based things to give a more full set of history.