Frayed Knights: Death and Arianna's Interview
Ouch! You've just had your hitpoints smacked down to zero. What do you do now?

In most RPGs, that means its time to reload the game, or for the surviving party members to dig around for gold pieces under the couch for a resurrection. Or a potion of Phoenix Down. Or something.

In Frayed Knights, the Fat Lady doesn't sing unless the entire party goes down. A character who has been dropped down to zero hit points is considered "incapacitated," and is no longer capable of being healed via magic. They can't fight, can't cast spells, and can't even use magic items. Nor can they take further damage. But they are weakened and injured beyond the capacity to contribute to the party. However, they can still participate in conversations and perform other less strenuous activities.

From a design perspective, this is a cheap shortcut to sidestep issues of resurrection, or dealing with storyline issues when one of the key party members is dead. This isn't unlike the dodge the later Final Fantasy games took.

Now, when the entire party gets taken down, that's another story. Something very special happens. Exactly what is still TBD. We've had chats about making the "death menu" a little different - making death something a little cooler and different than other RPGs. Well, other RPGs not named Planescape. There's still no guarantee on that one - nor any guarantee that there'll be extra jokes thrown into various dialogs that only take place if one of the members of the conversation is currently resting on Death's Doormat. But that's certainly a goal.

How does a character recover from such dire circumstances? Well, a night's stay at an Inn will do the trick, as will certain "Drama Star" effects. Very expensive higher-level spells will also be available.

Progress Report
Due to crunch mode at the day job, work on Frayed Knights has been a little more limited than usual. But I'm still trying to get at least an hour's worth of development done each night. It's slow, but I'm still making progress.

Aside from dealing with incapacitated characters this week, I've also worked on getting the spell lists fixed. Benjamin was using Chloe's spell list all this time, and I was ignoring the bug. Now healing spells can actually be cast, which makes combat a bit more interesting. Since I implemented semi-random encounters a week or two ago, I've actually had to worry about dealing with two combats in a row. Without healing, at least one of my party members would be incapacitated by the end of the second battle if it was against a sizable force.

I improved the mouse-over-object handling, using actual ray-tests against the collision volumes now. It's not perfect, but it works. I also display the name of whatever the mouse is hovering over below the view port, so you can tell what you are about to click.

One thing I'd missed during the development of the "first five minutes" stage was the dialogs that are supposed to fire off the first time you encounter pus golems or brittlebone skeletons (or other new monster types). I agonized over the "best way" to handle these sorts of special-case events (which are also needed for handling the tutorial). After noodling on it for way too long and never being satisfied with the best way to design this system, and I just jumped in and did it. And it worked on the first try. While 'seat of the pants programming' receives a well-deserved bad reputation, the truth is that sometimes it is just best to jump in and rapidly create a prototype via 'seat of the pants programming,' and learn from the experience. When and if you need to, you can go back and expand on it and refactor as needed.

But in retrospect, I'm amused at how easy it was to implement with my existing system versus how much of a pain I expected it to be.

And finally, I added some cheat codes for testing, and fixed bugs where I found them. Well, okay --- I fixed SOME bugs. There are a lot right now.

Interview With Arianna
Concluding this series of interviews with the main characters of the Frayed Knights, we have the leader of the team - Arianna, the warrior.

Q: So, tell us who you are and a little bit about yourself.
A: I am Arianna Tenderleaf, and I lead a group of adventurers.

Q: So what brought you to where you are now?
A: Dirk told me this interview would be good publicity for our team.

Q: No, I mean, what brought you to this life of adventuring?
A: Oh! Well, I grew up in an elven village, but as I am half human, I matured much faster than the others of my age. So I left home and joined the military for a while. While in the military, I met a lot of other folk who were planning on becoming adventurers following their military service, and I did the same.

Q: So there wasn't enough adventure in the military?
A: The military experience consisted of extreme boredom and tedious physical labor punctuated by moments of mortal danger. But they make up for it with poor pay and horrible food.

Q: Okay, so when did you start the adventuring career?
A: A little over five years ago. We had a very successful band of treasure-hunters. We were well on our way to earning small fortunes. Oh, and we saved several villages from invasion by small evil humanoid monsters! Those were wonderful times.

Q: But you aren't with them now. What happened?
A: Well, it started going bad when our rogue, Black Leaf, was morted ... er, killed... by a poison trap. All of us were demoralized by that, but our cleric, Elfstar, took it especially hard, and went a little crazy. She joined some strange book-burning cult and renouncing adventuring altogether. After that, the rest of us went our separate ways. I tried retirement for a while.

Q: And it didn't suit you?
A: I ran out of money. And I'd lost my edge, and didn't like how that felt. So I found Chloe and Dirk several months ago, along with a priest named Ferdinand.

Q: What happened to Ferdinand?
A: We had a falling out over differences in the team's direction.

Q: Does this have anything to do with him needing to get his hand magically re-attached about four months ago?
A: He had been warned.

Q: Okay. So, tell me about the newest member of your team, Benjamin.
A: We rescued him from hobgoblins about three months ago, and he's been with us ever since. He was never an adventurer before - he was sort of an ivory-tower sort.

Q: Oh, he was an academic? Was he a professor at a college?
A: More of a student of the world.

Q: What was his specialization?
A: Medicinal herbs.

Q: I'm sure that can be an invaluable skill to your team, as you are exposed to injury and illness on a constant basis.
A: Uh.... right. Benjamin is ... a healer. Yes.

Q: How about Chloe?
A: Chloe has the makings of an ace sorceress. She specializes in magics of mass destruction.

Q: I can imagine that comes in very handy, as well.
A: Life is very exciting with Chloe around.

Q: And how about Dirk. Would you describe him as the "backbone" of the team?
A: Dirk is... er, the what?

Q: The "Backbone" of the team? That is how he described himself.
A: He's... a great asset to the team. He's our eyes and ears - a very talented rogue.

Q: But not the backbone?
A: Did I mention "mouth?"

Q: Okay. Well, thank you Arianna, for your time. I do hope for continued success for you and the rest of the Frayed Knights!
A: WHAT DID YOU CALL US? WHERE DID YOU HEAR THAT?

Q: Oh, I said... oh, well, thank you! And goodbye!


(Vaguely) related silliness:
* Cartographic Incompetence and Dirk's Interview
* Interview with Chloe
* Ben Speaks, and Combat Tweaks
* What Makes a Great RPG: Story

Oh, Look! A Forum Thread About... Death 'n Arianna 'n Stuff!

Labels: Frayed Knights, Roleplaying Games

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