A Twist of Fate - Announcement

[XLambda]

Tales of Maj'Eyal: A Twist of Fate

Hello, fellow ToME folks! Happy new year! May I have your attention for a moment?

Now that the second campaign has been announced by DarkGod, I think it's time to make the plural 'Tales of Maj'Eyal' really true. For a long time, we've really had only one tale of Maj'Eyal, the Age of Ascendancy campaign. But ToME's name promises a plethora of different adventures, and I would like to see that become reality. To that end, I have worked out a concept for a community-developed campaign I like to call A Twist of Fate.

In A Twist of Fate, you encounter the mysterious Keepers of Reality on a mission to save all of time and space from a dangerous anomaly. To track down the source of this temporal cataclysm, you embark on a journey through the ages: From the distant past ruled by cruel empires all the way to the far future when the sun Shandral grows to devour its planets.

In the main campaign of ToME, Age of Ascendancy, we've encountered the idea of farportals, allowing travel to distant continents and even other planets. Now let's keep our focus on one specific region of the world and look at it in different periods of time. This opens some really cool opportunities for story-telling. For example, why not drop the player in the middle of the Spellhunt, with irate Ziguranth hunting them down? Or in the Age of Allure, during the time of the mighty and cruel Halfling Empires? Or in a future where all races we know have long ago died and only strange, inhuman creatures shamble below a bloated, dying sun?

Now, we all know that if you really want to get something done, most of the time you have to do it yourself. Hence, I will be serving as lead coder and project manager for the time being. I'm really not into the whole 'benevolent dictator' thing, but from my experience you need someone to get things started and keep them moving forward.

But I can't do this alone. I need your help. Here's what you can do:

• Contribute ideas for dungeons and enemies. While I have lots of ideas, I doubt that they will suffice to fill an entire campaign. Moreover, knowing how many fine folks are hanging out in the tome chat day and night, I strongly suspect that some of your ideas will be much better than mine!
• Help with art. We will be able to reuse the vast majority of artwork from Age of Ascendancy, but we will require at least a few new sprites for unique enemies and bosses. If you are an artist and would like to help with that, you would be more than welcome.
• Assist with coding matters. While I think of myself as a competent programmer, I have less experience with the ToME code than I would like. If you know your way around the tome code and want to help out, please keep an eye on this thread or let me know that I can shoot you a question if I fail to work things out on my own.
• Join the dev team. Right now it's just me, and I'm only human (probably Cornac). My time and energy is limited. If you want to help more directly by working on the campaign, you would be very welcome.

Please, if you like this campaign idea and think you can help with any of the above, post here in this thread and let me know. Also, feel free to brainstorm things right here in this thread if you have any ideas or concepts you would like to see.

Thank you all for your attention!

[nsrr]

I really like the idea, and having more Tales would always be awesome. The lore in ToME is great, and getting to play though some of the scenarios throughout Eyal's history would be great.

A couple of immediate thoughts/suggestions: As the theme is Twist of Fate and the player would be bouncing around through time, it would be a cool idea to have multiple "Chapters", each containing a couple of quests and a couple of mandatory dungeons with maybe an optional dungeon, and then have the player be able to choose the order in which to complete the chapters. The final chapter would only be available after completing the others and could possibly have variations based on the order you complete the prior chapters.
The Grand Keeper of Reality could tell you that his agents have tracked the anomalies to certain points in Maj'Eyal's timeline and he needs you to investigate, yada yada, you get a list of quest to choose from. Taking a quest would open a portal to that time period and disable the option of taking another quest until that is complete.
In practice this would both distinguish A Twist of Fate from the Age of Ascendancy by making it non-linear and allow players to see most of these cool events without having to necessarily clear every chapter in one run.

Some events off the top of my head I would love to see the player dropped into:
The moment the Spellblaze was initiated.
The age of Pyre and the final fight against Garkul and the orcs.
The Naloren capital during the Cataclysm.
The Conclave during the Age of Allure.
The fall of the Southern Kingdom (would be cool even though it's outside of Maj'Eyal).
Kor-Pul during the Age of Dusk.
As far as the future... anything's a possibility, but a dystopian wasteland a la Fallout and Road Warrior would leave wide the door for many pop culture references.

I'm more than willing to lend a hand in any way I can. I have a bit of experience with the ToME code now, but I'm still an amateur coder. If there's anything you think I might be able to help with, drop me a line. I'll post any more ideas/suggestions as I have them.

[XLambda]

A couple of immediate thoughts/suggestions: As the theme is Twist of Fate and the player would be bouncing around through time, it would be a cool idea to have multiple "Chapters", each containing a couple of quests and a couple of mandatory dungeons with maybe an optional dungeon, and then have the player be able to choose the order in which to complete the chapters. The final chapter would only be available after completing the others and could possibly have variations based on the order you complete the prior chapters.
The Grand Keeper of Reality could tell you that his agents have tracked the anomalies to certain points in Maj'Eyal's timeline and he needs you to investigate, yada yada, you get a list of quest to choose from. Taking a quest would open a portal to that time period and disable the option of taking another quest until that is complete.
In practice this would both distinguish A Twist of Fate from the Age of Ascendancy by making it non-linear and allow players to see most of these cool events without having to necessarily clear every chapter in one run.

Oh, I really like this idea. Of course, the vast majority of dungeons would require some heavy scaling in order to make this feasible, and I'm not sure how well the level scaling actually works. Most of the zones in Age of Ascendancy have rather limited scaling. But the idea definitely has a lot of merit, and I think it would be feasible.

Some events off the top of my head I would love to see the player dropped into:
The moment the Spellblaze was initiated.
The age of Pyre and the final fight against Garkul and the orcs.
The Naloren capital during the Cataclysm.
The Conclave during the Age of Allure.
The fall of the Southern Kingdom (would be cool even though it's outside of Maj'Eyal).
Kor-Pul during the Age of Dusk.
As far as the future... anything's a possibility, but a dystopian wasteland a la Fallout and Road Warrior would leave wide the door for many pop culture references.

Thanks a lot, I'll note these for later. There are certainly quite a few things I want to show, and it will be a lot of fun to open these little windows into Maj'Eyal's history.

I'm more than willing to lend a hand in any way I can. I have a bit of experience with the ToME code now, but I'm still an amateur coder. If there's anything you think I might be able to help with, drop me a line. I'll post any more ideas/suggestions as I have them.

Sure, I'll let you know if anything comes up. Also, if some more people want to help out, I might just go ahead and put the whole code and design documents in a public repository, for folks to look at and contribute to.

[darkgod]

Sounds fun

[Ravenholme]

If Time Travel is the central theme of the campaign, then potentially the player character could actually come from any of the eras that will be visited. Which means that we could actually hammer out a Naloren race for it too, just give them a different starter dungeon where they end up out of time during some events before their side of the continent slipped into the sea (Potentially you could even set their starter dungeon during that cataclysm)

[XLambda]

If Time Travel is the central theme of the campaign, then potentially the player character could actually come from any of the eras that will be visited. Which means that we could actually hammer out a Naloren race for it too, just give them a different starter dungeon where they end up out of time during some events before their side of the continent slipped into the sea (Potentially you could even set their starter dungeon during that cataclysm)

The player's 'origin story' right now is that they're basically a temporal fossil - their timeline was wiped out by the foreshocks of the great catastrophe. They just wake up one day to find their home town ruined as if it had been abandoned or destroyed a very long time ago. Trying to find out what happened, they explore some nearby area and stumble upon, among other things, someone who leads them to Point Zero. I think that works very well both as an explanation of why the character gets dragged into the whole catastrophe thing as well as why they want to help stop it.

The story actually doesn't specify the point in time from which the player comes. So, it could be anything. Sure, why not a Nalore? If someone wants to stat them or code them, I'd love to add them as a playable race.

[therandomfox]

Just making a temporary reply, trying to figure out a timeline and sorting out text files of all the TOME lore to get a decent idea of how to place suggestions correctly.

The more my suggestions are on line, the better

A sillier idea
An ancient civilization of poosh, Where do these poosh come from?
The den o' random foxes
The devastating decease known as 'The pirate'
Just the potential hidden behind these "Events" That can be elaborated on <3

[nsrr]

The story actually doesn't specify the point in time from which the player comes. So, it could be anything. Sure, why not a Nalore? If someone wants to stat them or code them, I'd love to add them as a playable race.

Coincidentally, I first started diving into the code and working on add ons because I wanted to make an add on that added the Nalore as a playable race. I didn't know what I was doing enough to make it my first add on, but I think I have learned everything that I wanted to implement for them. I actually started sketching it out last night and have three of their racial talents figured out. My take has them as a seperate tribe from those who went on to become the Naga. They started their own under sea society and have lived by using breathing enchantments and have been brought out of seclusion by a disturbance in the Seas. I still plan to make them as a stand alone add on, but making another version that had slightly different abilities (my take has some things that revolve around them living underwater) should not be much of a problem once mine is complete. I'd be happy to submit what I have after I get it finished up.

[HousePet]

Could have them as a Naloren from a timeline where the Cataclysm doesn't happen.
Then by saving Eyal they end up dooming themselves.

[astreoth]

as awesome as this idea is getting the lore right will be a nightmare so here's my two cents on the topic.

if you wanna keep strictly to cannon no going before the spellblaze, the only reason chronomancy works at all is because the spellblaze blew the space-time continuum wide open and eyals god of time is too busy being dead to fix it.
interesting part of this is that point zero is where you end up when you try to go before the spellblaze could put this in as how the player or some npc's reaches point zero, like some shalore archmage suddenly appearing in the middle of town screaming "STOP YOU KNOW NOT WHAT YOU DO" while the nearby chronomancers silently sigh not another one as the unlucky bastard in the welcoming committee groans to his feet already dreading the task of calming down the now visibly freaking out archmage.

as far as time based enemies to fight we actually have quite a selection.

time and space elementals: more a symptom of time shenanigans than anything should still see a lot of them

rouge chronomancers: no ones above corruption and between archmages, shadowblades, and zemmekys past self enough bits and pieces its possible some ambitious mage could develop their own branch of chronomancy for nefarious purposes.

time spiders: yeah ardunghol and the chronomancer optional start dungeon are full of time spiders and their up to something.

temporal horrors:tried attacking point zero once so probably some kind of plan.

rhalore: nothing chronomantic about them but their leader is a nut job who wants to finish what the spellblaze started and break open reality entirely.
and considering theirs timelines where he takes control of elvala wouldn't be too surprising if he managed to succeed in creating a second spellblaze in one, creating a temporal shockwave and letting in whatever's behind blight.

and for quest ideas we got all kinds of alt timeline and temporal shenanigan stuff to go through.
garkul wins timeline, gerlyk returns timeline, amakathel revives timeline, demons win timeline, lotta stuff here.

[nsrr]

as awesome as this idea is getting the lore right will be a nightmare so here's my two cents on the topic.

if you wanna keep strictly to cannon no going before the spellblaze, the only reason chronomancy works at all is because the spellblaze blew the space-time continuum wide open and eyals god of time is too busy being dead to fix it.

As long as space-time is broken, how could it matter when it broke? That would be like saying Marty could never have traveled back in time and got his parents together, when clearly he did or he would not be alive to do it. Sure, it's a paradox, but that's what happens when you mess with timelines.

[HousePet]

Sacetime isn't broken before the Spellblaze. So no time travel to or from then.

[darkgod]

Yes Spellblaze ripped about the time threads and since eyal's god of time is dead nobody could put them back together. This is "Point Zero" for time travellers on Eyal.
Interresting fact is that this is local to Eyal, chronomancy can not exist on other planets for example (unless the Spellblaze rippled there too or some other event allowed it)

[XLambda]

Yes Spellblaze ripped about the time threads and since eyal's god of time is dead nobody could put them back together. This is "Point Zero" for time travellers on Eyal.
Interresting fact is that this is local to Eyal, chronomancy can not exist on other planets for example (unless the Spellblaze rippled there too or some other event allowed it)

Alright, so this means there is no way at all to travel to any point of time before the Spellblaze? Hm. Still, that would leave quite a few interesting points in time to explore. I think we can work with that.

[nsrr]

I guess it just depends on how closely you want to stick to the lore. Most of what we know about Eyals history occurs after the Spellblaze anyhow... but how cool would it be to be dropped into the middle of the Godhunt?
If you wanted to go before, just write in an explanation. Zemekys has found that Eyal is a spacetime Nexus and that while the Spellblaze completed the ripping of the fabric that resulted in Point Zero and Chronomancy, the initial tear was made when the Sher Tul arrived in Eyal, eons before the Spellblaze. After carefully studying a recently discovered Sher Tul relic he has been able to create link to that tear, allowing you to travel to the time of the Sher Tul. Or something to that effect.
Like I said though, it's all up to the folks developing the campaign and how closely they want to follow the lore.
I'm not trying to start any sort of argument over the existing lore, I'd just really love to see some Pre-Blaze Eyal, especially the Godhunt.