((I will post this and wait till Geb returns))

She recognizes him immediately. The only difference now is he is undead. It is Justice Afolayan, the same S.O.B. that had used her soul numerous times, talked her into submitting and allowing the merchant to suck out as much blood as he ordered. He called her Ammo. Her heart feels like it is fluttering as fast as a humming bird's wings. Ayetingspla makes use of some dodge truck remains to hide from him. Her tongue is ready for vengeful limming.

((It is ok, I think it is a good call to just hold off so that you and the rest of us can focus on Christmas.))

((Sounds good))

((So, as you might have noticed, I've still been too busy to relaunch the game, and I'm not sure when things will die down enough to pick this up. I would THINK no later than Friday, January 4th, though I'm not sure. This weekend should actually be relatively free, but Monday is New Years Eve, and Wed/Thur will be picking things back up at work and such, so... maybe this weekend with some day-breaks...? We'll see.))

((I think I can safely say that my availability should be after 2 in the afternoon, exept for the 9th and the 23rd it would be closer to 3:30. Latest time at night 10pm))

((I have a family event out of state this weekend, but after that, I should be relatively clear to resume))

((I should be able to pick this back up on Monday. Does that work for you guys as well, Al and Voodoo?))

Works.

((A special note for this week only!

For every unique person who makes a post as a good guy, bad guy, or spectator to help a Limner, I will donate five dollars ($5) on your behalf to the SDA Awesome Games Done Quick 2013 Charity Marathon raising money for the Prevent Cancer Foundation.

Also, for every dollar up to five dollars, I will give the following in-game incentives (I'll be going by the honor code here for you just telling me) :

Good guys: You'll have an equal amount of 'credits' to spend for items you'd normally get at the Merchant shop without actually dealing with the Merchant and can be spent at any time.

Bad guys: Your next damaging attack will be an additional amount equal to the donation.

Spectators: Your next 'vote' for a Limner will be an additional amount equal to the donation.

Even if you have no interest in this game or the content of the marathon, please donate for the cause however you can and spread the word!))

((I apologize for having to do this - I have to push back the continuation of the main game until Wednesday. However, should you wish, you can use this time to play this mini-game I've just made up.))

Minigame: Down Hope Slope[/b]

The Gifted survivors have until the start of the boss fight (Wednesday) to race against each other down the ski slope. For a standard action, each post made equals one "point" down the ski slope. Gifted survivors may use their abilities in addition to the standard action described earlier to remove obstructions made by Cursed.

The Cursed bad guys may make a post which targets all the Gifted to impend their movement. Each post made equals one "point" that obstructs the Gifted, and the Gifted survivor must clear the obstruction before continuing down the slope.

A player cannot post twice or more times in a row.

The winning Gifted will earn the Fighting Fate reward, which is a one-time item which automatically ignores one attack that would result in the character's death.

((This minigame will only take effect if all Gifted participate)).

Amy cursjawhats with a plip.
"Wheeeeee!" We WEEEEEEE"

((So.....what's the news with this?))

((The news with this is I suck right now at being available -- a bad side effect of this game not really meant to be played with 1 'player' as all the bad guys. For now, that minigame is in effect until either I'm available or I can think of a solution to this predicament I'm satisfied with, which I'll try to do one or the other soon. Again, apologies for all this.))

((No problem.....I get to finish reading the Wheel of Time!))

Having neither success in devising workarounds to my availability or to the game design itself, I'm afraid I'm going to have to end this game prematurely. I give my heaping gratitude towards Al Ciao, Darth Alran, Voodoo, Garlon Greeves, and Phoenix for participating in my game. It was both very enjoyable and insightful into this draft of my game.

With that said, I still have things to post in this thread! I'll be posting a sort of "commentary" on the thoughts and stuff that went behind the game overall and by its parts. I will also be covering the 'chapters' that we didn't get to playing as far as what the plan was for those. I will, of course, answer any questions and the like you all may have had as well.

The first thing I'll post is a request for my players: I'd like your feedback on my game. You don't have to respond to each question with an answer of its own, or even answer all the questions if you can't. Just provide what you can, either in this thread or through your preferred outlet (PM, e-mail, etc.) I only ask that, if you do intend to fill any of this out, do so before reading the commentary afterwards.

General questions:
1) What things (narrative, gameplay, etc.) did you like most about the game and why?

2) What things raised the most questions and confusion for you during the game and why?

3) What things would you like to see added, changed, or removed from the game, and why?

4) What would you say was the "essential experience" of the game? Ex. the essential experience of chess could be experiencing the mindset of a tactical medieval commander in war, and the essential experience of Tetris could be solving the issue of space and time management.

5) Were you curious about any part of the game? Did you find anything surprising in a good or bad way? This can be a mundane surprise such as "I was surprised when Al spawned a robot" and not necessarily M. Night Shamalan plot-twists.


Narrative questions:
1) Did the backstory help your understanding of the game's mood and what you'd expect from the gameplay? Do you think there was too much/too little in any part of it? Did the backstory interest you?

2) Did you feel there was too much or too little narrative during the game itself? Did you feel the narrative that was there enhanced your engagement with it?

3) Were you attached to your character? Did the character class descriptions aid and make sense for character creation?


Gameplay questions:
1) Did the rules make sense to you? Do you think there were too many or too few rules for any one aspect? Did trying to follow the rules ever pull you out of the gaming experience?

2) Did the rules seem fair? Do you feel that you were rewarded enough when your actions were successful and punished fairly when you made mistakes? If not, why?

3) Did the rules seem to make the game balanced? Did you feel the game was ever too easy or too hard? Did you feel that the challenge increased in a way that was not too boring or frustrating?

4) Did the game feel that someone sufficiently skilled could make the game not fun, or that too much of the game was left up to chance?

5) Were the goals and obstacles of the game clear? When you took an action, was the feedback (relatively) immediate and unambiguous?


"Outside" the game questions:
1) Is this a game you feel is fun to play with others? Is it the sort of game you feels helps forge or strengthen friendships?

2) Did the game encourage you to think in a way you normally wouldn't in regards to solving problems, potential (if improbable) life scenarios,, or even minor, likely unrelated things?

3) Is this a game you'd like to see more of, and if so, in what direction?


Also, any additional feedback, questions, comments, whatever that you may have in addition would be much appreciated.

Commentary

Initial ideas and name

When coming up with Terminal Testament, my initial goals were rather simple:

1) Create my final forum game for the Massassi Temple as a grand culmination of my previous forum games - a last chance to get forum activity going the way the early forum games did.

2) Develop my indulgence for a late 70's/early 80's-inspired post-apocalyptic world inspired by The Stand, The Terminator, Dawn of the Dead, John Carpeenter's The Thing, and the like.

To get a general idea what my potential players (other forum members) may want in such a setting, I started a thread about it, and while I already had a fairly strong idea about the sort of setting it'd be, feedback in that thread did influence me to play up the machines as a bigger part of the gameplay and narrative. From there, I started with the idea that it'd be similar to my other forum games (a focus on turn-based cooperative/counter-operative gameplay) and began developing a backstory to further focus the structure of the game (which I'll expand upon in the next part).

As for the name, I finally decided on it after it fulfilled my goals for the game:

Terminal gives both a sense of ominous finality (death) and of technology (a terminal)

Testament evoked a sense of the biblical while still being open to more of a traditional fantasy/story.

Together, the name was also meant to be similar in tone and intent to Final Fantasy, which was also named because the developer, Squaresoft, thought it would be their last published game.

It's a name that I've grown to like a lot, and like the Final Fantasy series, is something I could see potentially continuing in a series that, while not the same story or even exact gameplay, share the same style in narrative and game mechanics.

Up next, the backstory!

Commentary

Backstory

Initially, I went into working up the backstory with the premise that it would vaguely follow the end of days in the book of Revelation in the Christian Testament of the Bible with the intent that the events could be interpreted as the literal "God is bringing an end to the earth" sort of deal while also leaving it open to it having no divine aspect. Aside from that, I mostly worked with capitalizing on the Mayan 2012 doomsday stories as well as wanting a logical reason for the world to have "ended" in the 80's to reasonably achieve the style I wanted.

Apart from that, I can't quite remember how it all unfolded, so I'll just proceed by timeline date:

The Prophecy
The date and the 'prophecy' itself is a reference to 'the mark of the Beast' in the book of Revelations (666) as 6/6/66 and that the Beast would appear in 6 years, 6 months, and 6 days, which is shortly before the next event in the timeline. Pandora, CO is, in fact, a real place, and as with Cortez, was selected for its name and its location near the Devil's Highway (again for its name), NORAD, and the general landscape.

The event obviously paralleled the boss fight in Pandora, which I may touch more about in further commentary. Oddly enough, the note about the "missing persons" report is a bit misleading, as it's a detail I never had an intended followup with. It was included because, in Revelations, that's when the Rapture occurs, though since I wanted everything to have a non-divine reason as well, the best explanation there is "there's often a lot of missing people regardless". Otherwise, the event simply sets up the pattern of dates, particularly the Mayan Calender fun. It's also what worked out to be the earliest date where the game world's history significantly diverges from our own, allowing players to have potentially lived prior to the first event while also making it more common for player characters to have been born within the events of the game world.

The First Seal
As stated before, this 'recorded' event happens shortly after the date the prophecy made. The implication was that, as in a similar fashion to The Stand or The Andromeda Strain, the U.S. government has discovered and attempted to contain some viral agent only to have it soon escape out into the nearby town of Cortez. The viral agent is, in fact, the 'origin' of The Great Beast that more or less triggers the rest of the events. While I left it open as to whether the viral agent had been 'created' (and 'discovered' in that manner) or if it was entirely extraterrestrial in origin (found within a space rock that crashed or the like), I did intend for the viral agent to be self-aware and intelligent, or at least acted close enough to be mistaken for such. The description of the symptoms is also meant to set up for later with the appearance of the undead, specifically the "hellish" variety.

Cortez, CO, also a real town, was selected for similar reasons to Pandora, with the idea that, like the Spanish conquistador, a disease was to follow. The event, as with all the seals, is meant to loosely match the seven seals in the book of Revelations.

The Second Seal
Pretty straight forward to the start of war. Working backwards with the date pattern, I presumed that the Soviet War in Afghanistan started early and gave enough justification for the U.S. to start WWIII over. At this point, either the "Great Beast" either is able to have gained enough power to start becoming what the players would face at the end of the game or it simply opts to stay less hidden.

A note about the photos: most all are just random images I searched for on Google, and I'll note if I think there's something special about it. All the images were photoshopped to be sepia-tone with 2 or 3 filters I can't quite remember anymore - a style that matches closely with the images in The End: Lost Souls Edition which influenced this game a great deal (and, in some part, could be adapted to play with that system, though I think it's different enough).

The Third Seal
Apart from what's already been stated, I just wanted to establish how mutants and the militant variety came about. The implication is that, even if the "Cortez Strain"/Great Beast isn't self-aware and doing this on purpose, has mutated to spread beyond just humans.

The Fourth Seal
As with the Third Seal, it's meant to establish the undead and hint at further development of the Strain/Beast. Given what I set up for the First Seal, I presume the undead are only those who have been infected and not the previous dead, though my intent was just that the Strain had managed to 'infect' the corpses and either mutated or allowed them to animate. With the Cultists having died before the outbreak, the intent may have to have taken precedence, though it could be argued that the cultists are a special case. The note that "modern civilizations" are no more at this point is mostly to further justify the style as within the 70's/80's motif.

The Recognized Gifted
The year has little significance other than to place it in where I felt was a logical moment (after the 'fall of modern civilizations' and before anything else) and the date was meant to replace the Day of the Dead which isn't on October 30th, so I'm not sure why I have that down as the date... the event is basically to establish that "The Gifted" are a presence now, likely as a result of the same Strain that caused the Cursed to come about and the like. If any of the other things are 'planned' by the Beast, though, the Gifted is meant to be left questionable as to whether they were 'planned' or not. Otherwise, the event is just some world building for character development.

The Fifth Seal
As with the other seals, this one pushes forth a major game part -- the machines. MARTYRS is more or less Skynet from the Terminator series, though unlike that series, MARTYRS is not really self-aware, or rather, it is and has a very infantile understanding of things. I initially wanted to use images of some of the earlier CRAY supercomputers because they look very stylized, and opted not to as I had difficulty evoking the imagery I wanted.

The Battle of Dark Forces
This is the last event I actually detailed out, as I had difficulty coming up with details that satisfied me. October 9th was when Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight was released. 40 days is typically biblical for "a long time" and I seem to recall thinking there was some significance to 40 days prior to October 9th, though I can't recall what now. It is otherwise an event meant to provide possible background for characters, set up the events to come as well as for the final confrontation between the player characters and the Beast, which I'll explain in a future commentary.

The Sixth Seal
I'm going to have to confess -- a large reason for this is simply so I could have the moon broken. There's an episode of American Dad where the biblical apocalypse is occurring and the imagery used in it, including its embraced cheesiness of the apocalypse sub-genre I've stylized the game after, is pretty spot-on for what I had in mind, including the broken moon (sadly, I can't find a video of the part online) -- the episode is also where I found out about the band The Sword.

As for in-game, the event is meant to imply that the Beast (somewhat recklessly) activated the Dark Forces orbital laser which had been aimed at the moon (and according to what I could look up, the moon would have been almost straight up that night). The laser also triggers the reason the Beast is "calling" (to be explained in a future commentary)

The Year 2000
A nod mostly to the Y2K bug and to the general apocalypse themes as a whole, to place a check against the machines which otherwise would have likely succeeded relatively soon. This may be the point where machines (including MARTYRS) may be considered to develop "awareness" of a sort, though if they do, it's shaky at best.

The Seventh Seal Delayed Once and The Seventh Seal Delayed A Second Time
Due to what the Beast attempted to do with the orbital laser in 1999, an incident occurred which set the "seventh seal" into motion (to be detailed in a future commentary). Suffice to say, Gifted survivors have encountered the Beast during this time, and the "seal" remained contained enough, and it could be argued that these delays were "fated" to happen. The "silences" in the game world are simply the effects of seal attempting to be unleashed.

The Veterans of the Apocalypse Convene
The date is selected because it is both 40 days prior to December 21st and because it happens to fall on the American Veterans Day. It is otherwise just to mark the time for the beginning of the game, the Gifted survivors being the "veterans" in this case.

Commentary

Classes - Gifted and Cursed

While the backstory effort was started first, a lot of the backstory was developed in parallel with the 'classes' for the player characters. For the most part, I attempted to pick the forum games that had the most success (Katzenjammer for the Dreamer, Snowball Skirmish for the Charger, etc.) and worked from there. I figured 6 or 7 to pick from for the Gifted would be a good number of options.

As suggested, within the narrative of the game, the Gifted are likely unintended side-effects of the Strain, and for clarification, the Beast only has so much control over either.

Dreamer
For those who don't recognize, the two images are of are Jackie Brown and Burt Renoylds.

I wanted there to be at least one 'support' class, and Katzenjammer's rules seemed to lend itself most to that. I had some difficulty tweaking the rules in a way that would work, thinking they might turn out to be more types to inhibit the bad guys instead of helping the good guys, and it resulted in the "pet" system that is common in RPGs. Some of the Dreamer's importance might be downplayed now that the rules would allow for more "cross-class buffing" from the other classes, and it's hard to say how useful they'd be if there were a lot of good guy players covering all the other classes.

Judging from how the Dreamer was played, I think I made it pretty well.

Limner
I suspected that this class would be difficult to play on this forum, given the lack of people, though as the rules stand, they have the potential to be an overpowered class (checked only by bad guys being sure to target the limner). It's certainly a class that appeals to a very select group of people, and was meant to be an outlet to let 'spectators' get involved in a small fashion. Despite my knowledge that it would probably not play well here, I threw the class in as I felt it belonged and would be fun if successful.

The photo of the guy is the "criminal" from The Breakfast Club, and the girl to my knowledge is just a random person wearing a jean jacket (because jean jackets!)

Judging from how the Limner was played, the class could definitely use an ability that isn't so dependent on spectator participation.

Runner
I'm still not certain if the Runner (and Machines) are overpowered in this game or not. I'm still rather attached to the class concept, though (its behavior being modeled after speedrunners for video games), and if I had to take a stab, I'd say that I'd have to place /some/ sort of extra restriction on this class to keep them from 'flooding' the game.

The girl is, once again, someone random wearing 'period' fashion I thought was fitting, and the guy is Marty McFly from Back to the Future -- that vest capturing the fashion of the 80s as well.

Chargers
I felt there needed to be a 'fighter' or 'barbarian' type, which is how this class came about with the forum game I based it off of. However, the original game jsut went up in increments of one, and with the other classes, I knew that would be far too weak, so I tweaked the damage scaling, which after gameplay, seems still a bit too limiting. However, the idea of the battery gloves suggested by Garlon plus giving the charger some extra option (so they're not doing the same thing over and over) I think would help.

The two in the image are the characters Sarah Conner from The Terminator and Chehov from Star Trek.

Slingers
As with most all the classes that just had one ability, I feel I should have provided a second so that players didn't feel like they were doing the same thing over and over and had 'options' to work with. From how it was played, though, it seemed OK, though it's hard to be sure how balanced this is in comparison to the other Gifted.

The two in the images are Shaft and a random girl.

Weavers
There was some issue trying to make the Weavers and the Chargers different enough and remain balanced. I think this would also be better helped if they were given a second ability. With nobody having played this class, I'm not sure how balanced they are, though I suspect they'd be fine.

The two in the images are a young Steve Jobs and, you guessed it, a random girl. It wasn't easy thinking up iconic female characters that would fit in this world.

The Mutated
I think I recognized off the bat that, out of the three, these would be the easiest to fight, which is why I made them the focus of the first chapter. They're also the last of the three Cursed I came up with, feeling the need to add sort of rock-paper-scissors balance to the Cursed makeup. A friend early in the process suggested the enemies should be able to fight among each other, and it was an aspect I remembered liking in the game Doom, and it was somewhat necessary while giving the 'pet' for the Dreamer. Since it's the only game that wouldn't be explicitly referenced, the militant versions of the mutants would be based on Dead Thread: Night of the Living Thread II -- games that I initially felt would go to the Undead for obvious reasons but decided against it when coming up with what I felt was more fitting.

The Undead
Despite the forum game it's based on coming out shortly before this one, I did not create Consume! for the purpose of 'filling in' for the game-basing I had been doing -- it just happened to work out that way. As with all the Cursed, I'm still not certain if I made them too powerful or not, as it was hard to objectively playtest the Cursed as I was the one who played all of them. Ideally, while the setting is grim, the Gifted players should still feel relatively powerful and never feel like a small number of any of them is too overwhelming, which could still be the case if 'normal' players jumped in as Cursed. More than likely, I'd have to limit a proportion between the sides (so that there's not 2 Gifted fighting 20 Cursed, for example).

The Machines
Despite the limitations I already placed on them, I think the Machines may still be too overpowered since they have the good chance for a skilled player to whack 9 hitpoints off in 30 minutes (20 if they're ghostly). It could be fine in that players would learn to target a robot quickly, but like the Runners, it's hard to say. I am still attached to having mixed things up a bit, though, and giving the Cursed someone like the Runner.

Commentary

The Merchant and Shop

For those who didn't already know (which should be nobody), the image of the Merchant is myself, with a little photoshop to fill out the facial hair and darken the eye area.

For the most part, the Merchant was more or less a knock-off of the one from Resident Evil 4 and was meant to be equally sketchy and left more or less wondering what his intentions were. I will come out here and say that, as part of the Beast's "abilities", the Beast's health would be directly equal to the amount of "profit" that the Merchant received from the player characters, the idea being that the 'spoils' grabbed -- tech, random body parts, etc. would help 'build' the Beast -- and that's largely why the Merchant is based on the Cold War Capitalism game. However, it's not to say that the Merchant directly worked with the Beast, or at least willingly. It's a detail I never really wanted to spell out, and was made difficult when all sorts of questions were shot at him. While I could have kept him as the unanswering type, I felt it'd have cheapened the experience, so I did my best with things like suddenly discovering he had no eyes (not planned at all). In the end, he was developing more personality than I expected.

In any case, it's why I tried not to make the Merchant carry "required" things (with health, there was a non-Merchant alternative), but only shiny things for the battle-weary good guy player.

As for the shop items, here are the ones that didn't get showcased (pulled straight from my notes) :

Runner – Battlespud (a more powerful explosive, potentially with a 'timer' of its own)

Weaver – Tug of War (useful once, can add more than 2 stringers to an attack and requires equal or greater number of bad guys to counter)

I had a lot of fun coming up with the Exsoulsive and the other items, and I think Garlon had a great idea with the battery gloves for the Charger.

Also, while part of me dislikes the "doesn't work on bosses" stipulation so many video games have, I may have to institute it for this game, since it'd be real easy with a lot of the items it's very easy to exploit against the bosses.

Commentary

Stage 1: Where the Strain Began To Spread

Before I dive into the individual chapters, here's a map of approximately the journey the player characters would have taken:


As for the chapter itself, as with all the chapters, I made up the name and opening description on the spot (not that it didn't take a while at the time, mind you). The name of this chapter, as you might have guessed, is a play on both the history that happened there and the 'strain' the player characters are meant to feel at that time.

While I think all my music selections generally capture some mood aspect of the overall setting of the game, I think I didn't do as well picking the right ones for the right moments. For an opening to the chapter, for instance, La Joyeuse Apocalypse was probably too "mellow" and better suited for moments such as perhaps shopping with the Merchant or right after Chapter 2 but before 3... moments that don't really warrant it.

As stated before, each of the 'stops' in the game generally had a Cursed theme, and with this one, it was mutants (though as the starting chapter, I also threw in some undead and a machine). In hindsight, had there been plenty of players to play as bad guys, it may have been difficult to establish any sort of pacing or consistency - every stop could have turned up to be nothing but machines, which would have been OK, since I think the environments typically highlighted by the bosses would have encouraged a particular type to be played.

The mutant commander was meant to have some dialogue as with the other bosses in the game to push a theme I'll explain in the commentary about the Beast. However, I didn't opt to include it in part because I couldn't really think of what he'd say and in part because I felt the other bosses would have likely covered what I would have wanted to tackle in their dialogue. I therefore kept him as the "practice boss." The music for the boss, while not as unfitting as the start, is just a touch too much Western, when it should have had slight more military tones to it.

You can see the general path taken by the player characters below.

Commentary

Stage 2: The Path of Distress

I think I did a better job with the music-picking here, though it's not quite as matching with the 70's/80's as I'd hope.

Having you guys play this did make me realize that, as with other parts of my game, it could have stood to be a smidge more complex. Sadly, I was still scratching my head for ideas, which is partly why I hoped you guys would play the skiing mini-game so I could gauge how well that worked. As for the Cursed calling your name, I had only meant it to imply that there was a random mutant or undead that, in its former life, remembered one of you, and just threw it in to be creepy. In hindsight, I realize it came off more as a Chekov's gun, and it worked well enough later to adapt and say that they were being controlled by the Beast.

Here's a general map of this chapter. The "end" mark is sort of a stab because, while a tunnel entrance is the perfect way to have ended that chase, there's really no tunnels to be had between Cortez and Pandora. It's easy enough to imagine that, in this alternate world, there was some huge landslide and a tunnel needed to be built, or who knows.

Commentary

Stage 3: Left Ajar with False Hope

The name is a play on the event that happened just before (not quite closing the door all the way) as well as the town name (Pandora is likely to have handled a jar, not a box, and it's debatable whether real hope or false hope was left - for this game, false is more fitting). Funny enough,I think this music would have been better suited for the first chapter, though it's OK here too. With fighting mostly undead, though, something 'scarier' may have been appropriate. Also, on a side-note, I called the chapters 'stages' in part to suggest more of a game tone, though 'stages' are typically what victims of a disease go through as well. If this is the sort of game to start a series, though, chapters may be more fitting, I'm not sure.

I had actually intended to throw a random mutant or two during gameplay as well as a robot at the end, but I got caught up in the craziness and thought it might be better to have left it as it was. I also debated having it become dark a touch before the boss fight, though again, I opted not to do so.

As for the boss fight itself, I mostly tried to give them ironic names based on virtues that, in themselves, sound like names of people you may have heard hippies or the like named.I was pleasantly surprised to find Voodoo working her character's backstory with one of the bad guys, and it made me realize that I could have looked more into rewarding roleplaying in this game. Admittedly, I didn't envision any of the cultists every traveling beyond Pandora before, and it seems sensible enough. I won't ever be sure now whether the cultists were too hard by virtue of number or not, though I'd like to think their health was low enough to be a fair increment in difficulty.

I'm not sure if I was going to give the Cultists any more dialogue, and if I did, it'd likely have been more blatantly fundamentalist in tone, saying how the Beast is God and such. However, at this point, I was wondering if I should drop the theme I had in mind.

If you were curious what my general plan of attack with them was going to be, I was going to have the runner on 'point', the slinger use the limner to attack (since the limner would be mostly useless), the weaver and the charger team up, and the dreamer taking 'guard' to fill in as needed. As the players assuming that was the plan, I'd likely have tried going for the dreamer and runner first, then the slinger, charger, weaver, and finally limner.

As luck would have it, and as you'll see on the map, there happened to be a cemetery just where I could use one. I'm also going to post a couple pictures found via Google Maps, the first actually being Telluride and the second being more Pandora proper, where I'd imagine the cultist house could be found.

Commentary

Stage 4: Second Race

Sadly, no fun titles up this point, and I'm open to suggestions if you got any.

This is the music I would have picked out for this chapter, which I think captures the 80's pretty well, though I may have had your characters be in a random corvette just to fit the music more:


As stated before, I had hoped after seeing how the first one went to try some tweaks here, though I was still uncertain which tweaks exactly I'd try out. I also would have been a lot more aggressive from the start since it was apparent that, once you guys started, you got your groove on quite well. In any case, I don't think this chapter would have been terribly different from the second - just there to change the pace up a bit.

As you can see by the map, it'd consist mostly of Initial D-style consecutive hairpin turns. (I'd totally like that show more if they were driving away from scrambling undead)

Commentary

Stage 5: Secret Government Facility

Again, no cool name, sadness. The music for the start of the stage would have been as follows:


The opening description would have been something more or less about after the travel on the road, the survivors head towards a NORAD-style entrance and maybe a courtyard area (helipads or some such), which is guarded mostly by the machines, before getting their way inside. The inside would be mostly huge lobbies and walking by banks of computers, with the hum and flicker of the lights and circuits stirring, where they would mostly encounter the ghostly variety of machines. At some point at least once during the chapter, as with chapter 3, the survivors would get the opportunity to shop with the merchant again.

In hindsight, I likely should have clarified that the NORAD scientists didn't actually build MARTYRS in NORAD, since as you likely pieced together, the area on the map isn't quite close enough to NORAD. I'm still not sure if the boss fight for chapter 5 or the final fight would take place under Broken Peak (selected for its cool name and aesthetics)

In the map, you can see the general path likely taken, and the dotted path turns into a loop to indicate the general sprawling underground complex the facility is supposed to be.

Commentary

Stage 5: Secret Government Facility (boss)

This gets a separate post because the boss fight would have its own music, like so:


The boss, to the surprise of nobody by this point, would have been the supercomputer itself, MARTYRS. Here are the general abilities and such it would have had:

MARTYRS - approx. 60 HP (I'd have to see how much the Beast would have by this point and judge based off the collective 42 that the Cultists had and the 13 the Mutant Commander had before).

Abilities:
It would have had the standard abilities a ghostly machine had.

It could only be interrupted if the interruptions answered its previous question, which would incessantly be "Why?"

Ultimate attack based on Math Madness - as a 'background process' the supercomputer would go through its uninterruptible special attack, which would damage all player characters by a variable number. The first posts it would take to add the last digits of the Gifted players post counts (ex. "4" then "+5" then "+2"), then its next post would divide by the number of players, then its final two posts would multiple then subtract by an increasing number (ex. the first time it used this attack, it would be x0/-0 -- a freebie of sorts -- then it would do x1/-1, then x2/-2, then x3/-3 and so on). This attack would have been considered a "charge" type similar to a charger's attack.

Essentially, this fight would require the player characters to interrupt and counter/block at the right times (Voodoo would have likely been a good canidate for interrupting its normal attacks while Al/Garlon wailed on it, then Al could counter the x1 or x2 phase, or if needed, Garlon could have used the time killer as a one-save). Depending on how it went, I might have tried to throw a few standard ghostly machines as well if it looked like your group was dominating.

At the end of the fight, MARTYRS would sputter something ominous about the Beast. It may have also had dialogue that would be the antithesis of the cultists, spewing "God is dead" style quotes. Again, I had debated whether I was going to explore that theme or not, as I hadn't really hammered down the theme to my satisfaction and if it really belonged in a game like this.

Of course, before going into the final chapter to confront the Beast, the players would have one last chance to stock up with the Merchant.

Commentary

Stage 6: The Great Beast

And here's what you all really wanted to know about! I'll try to provide as much information as I had in mind.

Before anything else, I will say that the Great Beast had an ability based off of Committee Conspiracy, which is basically that the Beast has other abilities based off of rumors that the Merchant bought off the players, or that are otherwise facts about it that the GM (me) decided on before that were guessed correclty. So I'll address some of those now:

From Lucky: "There are those who say that the Beast wears the guise of a man, hooded and cloaked, selling wares in exchange for little bits of one's soul, and that his mark is the dollar sign."

While it's uncertain if the Merchant is a direct manifestation of the Beast, the profits and rumors the Merchant receives do help it grow, so I felt this was close enough to accept as a fact you guessed right.

From Lucky: "Despite the Beast's monstrous ugliness, its reflection is even more disturbing - in its reflection it appears as a heartbreakingly beautiful creature, with a lost, mournful, confused expression on its face, and vacant, despairing eyes."

From Lucky: "Seems to me that the Beast, despite being a militant demon bent on war and strife, is a coward as well, for I have dreamt often at night, that he lives indoors, hiding away from the sun in darkness. Whether this be an old government compound, dank caverns, or ruins of an ancient civilization, I do not know."

You guessed both correctly enough and gave me some colorful description to work with. Upon entering the area where the Great Beast lives, where it's suddenly silent as well as dark, enclosed (with signs of the ceiling being repaired in some fashion), and war-torn from previous encounters, the survivors can only make out in the dark the silhouette of a pitifully-beautiful, if giant, human figure, and upon later hindsight, slightly different in things such as gender depending on the person's preference. There is also the Dark Forces orbital laser in sight and, coming out of it, what seems to be pure, unlimited energy ready to burst forth. The figure pleads with you that, if you don't use your collective power to suppress the energy, that it will explode very soon and wipe out everything.

At this point, the players are made clear that, without a doubt, the figure is telling them the truth regarding the impending doom of the energy - it's the "seventh seal". There are presented with 3 apparent options:

1) Do as the figure says and take the time to "patch" with the special abilities. Patching would take probably 40 HP worth to do (though I probably wouldn't have provided the number during the game).
2) Attack the figure immediately.
3) Do nothing.

During this time, depending on what the players decided and how long they decide, the figure may have continued with dialogue reflecting on what the Cultists and MARTYRS said, leaving the survivors to emphasis the importance of survival. If the players opt for #3, the figure will initially start to plead and the players will have the least amount of time to patch if they change their minds before it's too late. If they opt for #2, the figure will initially seem wounded (both physically and emotionally) and question why they did that, giving them one more chance to go for option #1. If they opt for #1 right away, the player character will definitely have the time to patch, after which the silence will drop.

Should they have done #2 and continue to attack, or should they wait long enough for #3, the figure steps forward close enough to reveal itself to be something far more fitting of its name -- a "legion" of melded together cybernetic parts (undead, machine, militant), its body appears overall more insectoid, with a second pair of arms unfolding and its head appearing more like a virus with its many eyes. I would have also attempted to justify some of Voodoo's rumor in the description, with certain things that could only be described as those made-up words.

Cue music:


Great Beast - HP = profit earned from the Merchant based on the Cold War Capitalism game (at the point you all were at, it was 40, so my guess is it would have likely been been over 100)

From Amy: "I dreamed once that I saw black clouds rolling across the sky that began to make red snow that left blisters and burns on on the flesh. And then this guy in a tacky suit stands in front of a cartoon map saying "and here and here you will have a chance of pestilence showers, back to you Tammy"" and "some say it has ghans bonkly and rubth/some say it has ghans weft and spurkang/some say it has a shurnikel like a dynamosaurus mex/Wurrr!/some say it has shurnikels nums avagadro to the tinee wer shlax by torik!/and yyip yyip snuts!/Whippp Whipp!"

As stated before, I'd have attempted to use the made-up words to describe it. As for the pestilence showers, it's unlikely I could have worked that in, so you may have gotten a freebie out of that one.

From Kyle: "The beast lives within the weak, whether they be bereft of intelligence, character, or body. Those that lack sufficient wisdom will believe the lies told by the beast in their hearts; if one does not possess a strong moral center, the beast further distorts their desires to fulfill his ends; the individual that does not care for his body to a sufficient degree will find the beast accelerating his decline with disease. For these reasons, my village was ever vigilant in stressing that we all took care to strengthen every aspect of our being. It also ensured that we could recognize the beast in our fellows and help prevent their decline. The key is to look into the eyes....those with specks of yellow have been influenced by the beast."

There was a whole slew of them in this one, all stuff I had to try and adapt. The last was already proven true before, and would be a descriptor for when the Beast has control.

For the "weak-willed", for each number of times a player's character died, the Beast would have an equal number of rounds at the start of the fight to keep that player's current character from attacking (including before it reveals itself as the Beast).

For the "weak of morality", for each number of times a player acted poorly to a fellow player, the Beast would have an equal additional number of rounds to control that character. A bit of a subjective call, I admit, and I'd have mostly used it to eventually punish more selfish players, though if I felt mean, I'd see how many times a player chose to look out for themselves instead of their teammate when they were getting attacked.

For the "weak of body", for each point of damage a player has, the Beast rolls a d6 that many times when making an attack to them. If it rolls a 1 on any of them, it does an additional point of damage. Not much, but I felt anymore would be too much, with the exception of the following:

When a player character dies, the Beast can then control it as if it were a (hellish) undead. Not really much, but just that little something fun.

In addition to the abilities listed above, it also has in its own fashion the special attacks of the previous bosses, it cannot be interrupted unless at least 2 of the 3 special boss interrupt tactics are used in succession (ex. one player boosts its ego while another answers its question), has no standard attack, and is treated as a mutant, an undead, and a machine at once (meaning it takes more damage from the Dreamer's spawn and the Beast does more damage to the spawn). Militant mutants, hellish undead, and ghostly machines may help it at any point, though if I was the only Cursed playing, it's unlikely I'd be able to throw much of those out.

And, unless you did #1, there'd be a time limit. Ideally, it was going to be "before the end of the 21st literally" but in this case, it was probably going to be "the fight had to finish in a real-life day" or something.

My final posts will describe the possible endings.

Commentary

The Postponement Ending

The player characters have defeated the Beast and managed to patch up the seal. Hooray!



However, as in 2002 and 2009, there's this overwhelming sense that fate has not been changed, but merely postponed. Unlike the survivors who went before you in 2002 and 2009, though, these characters have lived. They can pass on the truth and train those as needed to do what is needed -- patch the seal again and subdue the Beast when it reforms. The next time would be in about 7 years...

This ending is meant to capture the sense of the old Atari games and the general Cold War mentality of the 70's and 80's, which said the end of humanity was inevitable and pressing. For the gamer, it means they'd go into "New Game +" and could theoretically keep playing over and over to see how many times they could press on, though the health of the Cursed would probably scale to continue providing a challenge.

Commentary

The Fated Ending

Whether by choice or by not having enough time, the seal is not patched and explodes into what's essentially an explosion that annihilates the Earth. Humanity, the Beast, and all the Cursed are destroyed.

This would be the equivalent (if done on purpose) of saying "I'm saying I've completed the game" either once through, or if playing via a reply, however many times.

Thematically, whether the player has concluded the events are of divine cause or not, it's meant to leave questions of how one handles death - embracing it or fighting it. Again, it's something I'm not sure I would have really brought up - I may have just left it as they are, and if feeling particularly sell-out-y, have either ending suggest more hope of an 'afterlife' (that a way to destroy/etc. the seal and the Beast can be found or that humanity was abducted and taken to repopulate on other worlds).

There's also the "ending" where the seal is patched but the survivors are killed by the Beast, in which case the ending would be the same as what happened in 2002 and 2009.

And that, everybody, is Terminal Testament. Please reply with any questions, comments, criticisms, and such that you have. Thank you for playing my game!

I don't know how our little team was going to take on seven super-powered psychos.

You mean the 6 Cultists? It'd have required mostly focusing on one at a time, though 7 HP may have been too high for them. It is true that it's more difficult with less good guys, and depending on how it played out, may require only 3 at a time to have come out or something.

Thank you for replying to the questionnaire, Garlon! Personally, I didn't think the story was anymore detailed than, say, Half-Life was. I'm considering trying to adapt this game in a non-forum medium (physical or virtual/video game), so we'll see how things translate if I go forward with that.

going to have to take m time on answering but first going to try to give some "definitions" of some of words

Bwaegis – Blankie (spoken like bwa key) and Aegis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aegis

Rrid - was the name of the axe

zik- was the name of the hatchet

slins - thin, slice

sweebs- weed, debris, snow

thwichapination- cant remember.. thwak chop, swish?

Expromaste – umm I think from expodite, haste, fast, forward?

Horbs- hurl/lobs

Minorcky – rock/mineral/hacker

snice - Snow/ice

ormcrates – make/create/form

ithey avel – icky/dirty/gravel

clexpoms – I think this came from exclaim and pronounce

tweebolicking the dictarny- licking the story credit card three times.

zwallibouts zik - best described as throwing a hatchet

and kauqs it Bwammm! - hits on target

Coscalpers- cosmotologist/scalper

thern – hehehe I shall keep it a mystery what a thern is.

Runfs rrid into the shovlner - uses her axe to attack the undead gardner

Amy H4ckzorizes and spleebs ridd roddly into the debugechs klag!(attack IT tech undead)

spleeb -sweep,split

roddly- solid like

debugechs- debug geek tech


ghans bonkly and rubth – I imagined wings bony smooth and rough at the same time.
ghans weft and spurkang – I imagined wings soft and sparkling like an angel of the light.


shurnikel like a dynamosaurus mex – head like a dragon
shurnikels with the number = (to a nonsense formula) Avogadro's number is a constant used in chemistry. Many heads
Yipp yipp snuts - dog like features


Some say it has bretux khlyis and murp – teeth cant remember meaning of khlyis and murp
Some say it has bretux abth and rynched -teeth can remember meaning for sure think sharp pointy and rotten


was thinking of a human like smile with teeth rotten like a shark (human like and or animal like)

Some say it has a chamqhul like venpizamoose asper – forked tongue

Some say it has chamqhulers num no nodda uns roostegg shivid by wee knatters! - many tongues


Roostegg. - rooster egg = nothing

And wwif wwif larts!
Phitt! Phitt! (she holds her nose and whafts away something smelly with her other hand)


It smells like really rotten wet farts one gets after eating fatty foods.

Some say it has snjibes rkusky and gibrit I cannot remember what I was describing here.
Some say it has snjibes tivat and smireg
Some say it has a eclawp like a vivsalsaulso wrapper Velociraptor claws
Wirrrr! (make another dynosaur pose with longer claws)

Some say it has eclawpers num difty hof vivyn gnask kak to gofinti difty point flhuern!
And ppus ppus zhits!
Popp Popp! (she pretends to sqeeze a large pimple on her forhead)

Some say it has gherps splvynn and flird – cloven dirty feet
Some say it has gherps rym and jieuh – Feet
Some say it has vjoefin like a snordvibby oat – Horns like a goat
Waaaaa! (she pretends to head butt like a ram)

Some say it has vjoefiklys numy zoom sine shlax oiky toky-ah to the nonstant! Many horns
and zzpap zzpap dwuts!
Buzz Buzz!( she mimicks throwing lighning bolts like javlins)- it shoots lightning



The dream with the dark cloud raining/snowing down red. And the map marking where they are. Based off a recent nightmare I had around that time. In the dream though the particles were something like a chemical or bio weapon attack.

Voodoo, that is unadulterated awesome!

What Al said.

1) What things (narrative, gameplay, etc.) did you like most about the game and why? I agree the chase was fun. Playing a limner was an outlet for my manic mind at the time. Liked that you had names for each cultist, gave you the sense of this is not just another mundane fight. I like the use of music. I liked that there was so much put into making a back story. liked that with the merchant that his wares were not just a limited inventory, that you could make requests for items.

2) What things raised the most questions and confusion for you during the game and why? I was having difficulty keeping track of how many advances the undead had. like 3? 2? 1?

2) Did you feel there was too much or too little narrative during the game itself? Did you feel the narrative that was there enhanced your engagement with it?
I think if the "starting point starting time" was further back there might be more of a chance to have even more narrative. we didn't get to the play part of the secret gov facility I was wondering where gameplay was going to include the back story with MARTYRS. The narrative of the merchant was great not really knowing his motives.

Thanks for the feedback, Voodoo!

3) Were you attached to your character? Did the character class descriptions aid and make sense for character creation? i did have some attachment. think because she was fueled with Mania.I not sure if i ever could had much jabber if it were not for my mood at that time. To play as limner had to put more thought and time posting a "non-understandable" description of an attack. The descriptions seems ample to me. I took note that the limner is based off the forum game Gnommernymn that helped with having a feel for what you were looking for there. took the the words "penchant for telling imaginative stories" to heart when there was a opportunity to do business with the merchant. on that battle with the cultists I was considerig for the sake of roleplay that Amy would act selfishly and foolishly to get some sort of revenge and take the risk that it might have got all three characters killed.

idea?er twist to the cultist fight if there if there were more gifted characters than cultists. perhaps the cultists use items that anyone has made a special request for. like the power gloves, ex-soulsive.

If I were to have played on the bad guys side, i think I would play as a machine.