Desperate FedEx Quests

Contrary to our good friend Orion's "esibition of freaks" [sic] summation, I've found Ted's Desperate Housewives mod to be extremely well written. So well written, in fact, that it grotesquely brings out the deficiencies in the original Hommlet FedEx quests. Let the truth be known at last: the building janitor wrote the Hommlet quests.

Here's the standard Hommlet formula:

Salutation: "Well hello there, late-night intruder."
Introduction: "I'm Asshead, the town pizza maker, in case you're interested."
Hook: "Let's skip any further formalities. I'm feeling blue, because the price of anchovies has gone up. Care to get involved in my idiotic dilemma?

The routine rarely, and I mean rarely, deviates from that listed above. It's so bad that I cringe at the thought of going through it again. Yet it is my duty, as a playtester. There must be some solution, some way to make it less painful.

<Fixes gaze upon Ted>

Ted shined (no pun intended) in his DH dialogue. Could the FexEx quests shine even half as brightly? Could you re-write the dialogues to at least make them sound as though they are being spoken by real, living persons . . . make them "desperate," so to speak? Add "pathethic tries to add humor;" give us "the most stupid things that I've read in my almost 30 years of life;" do "mix your bullshit with the fixes that every player may appreciate!" :X

I realize that there are audio files associated with some of the dialogue, but those could be left alone, I suppose.

Absent this, could we simply eliminate the dialogue and go with some sort of general overview upon entering any building, culminating in a "Do you want to get involved in Rikk Linkin's problems?" type question?

Anything to spare me the agony of having to read friggin' Percy and Fillikin's ridiculous lines one more time would be appreciated more than you know. :blink:

Please, man!!! :anger: If not for me, then do it for Orion!!!

 

I'd do a lot for Orion, but none of it nice... nah, i bear no grudges, I wish he would get involved with KotB: I'm about as likely to sit and calculate accurate Skills for a bunch of NPCs who will never use them as Orion is to convert Frank to an NPC follower. He'd enjoy making proper skills I think.

But fix the original quests?

Calmert: "well sir, I have only just met ye but I will air the dirty laundry of St Cuthbert's church to ye and tell u the recent convert Cavanaugh doesn't pay his dues. Its standard practise for us priests to betray the behaviour of hard-earned recent converts to total strangers, so would u mind collecting the money for me? Since I don't know you at all, I can only assume you are trustworthy in financial matters".

U'll forgive me if I don't sully my hands on this stuff...

Edit: Now you mention it, I was tempted to fiddle something today... maybe I will. I have been making a list of ongoing issues with certain dialogues, so maybe I will spice them up. :gotmyatte

 

Exactly.

And Ted, I'd take your improv Calmert dialogue any day over the existing stuff. :thumbsup:

 

It'd save time and frustration all right.

I mainly wanna hack Ophelia's stuff, there is a lot of little bugs: I found if u just say hi then leave immediately, when u talk to her again u r on the Jenelda quest whether u like it or not (and whether u have the slightest clue what it is or not).

That being said, Ophelia has one of the best dialogues in the game, erm, dialogue-wise. She sounds realistic - "that little bitch? The way she's going, I'll own her ass for a long time!" - she makes you jump through a 200gp hoop before telling u anything (rather than just trusting a total stranger off the street) and even says, "well I could tell you about my problems, but that'd just bore you". And the PC gets a wide variety of replies, from "I'd like bestiality now" to "I seem to have come the wrong way..."

What I think would help is if some more alignment-specific replies were added in general, to improve role-playing.