Experimental Approach to Dialogue

In the new and improved Hickory Branch, most if not all PC dialogue will be switched to a new, simple yet more intrinsically D&D approach. Instead of having lines assigned for you that you choose from for your character to say, you will be able to choose between the dialogue skills for each dialogue - diplomacy, bluff, intimidate, and gather info. (Sense Motive is passive.) So in each dialogue, no matter what the NPC says, you will be able to respond with:

Code:

{Be diplomatic.}
{Be misleading.}
{Be intimidating.}
{Gather information.}

Each line will feature the accompanying skill icon, but there will be no minimum requirement for the choice to appear, unlike is normally the case for ToEE. The reason for this is, in my view, the fact that you are not good at something shouldn't keep you from trying. Plus, the old way was a virtual guarantee that you would succeed, so there was really little player involvement in the process - you'd just click and read. This way you won't know if you'll succeed for sure, and you'll hopefully be more involved in deciding what to do and say because of it.

Another advantage IMO is that choosing from a pre-determined set of lines is hokey. How many times in ToEE have you thought "I'd never say that."? And yet you have no alternatives.

This will also mitigate the need to provide a voice for the player, as the player should provide his or her own voice, and having non-specific responses will allow you to fill in those gaps. If your speaker is an evil a-hole, he or she can be that way while being misleading however you imagine, and likewise Mr. and Mrs. virtue.

Now the rub: there will actually be little of this fleshed out in Hickory Branch, because to make every response dynamic will require a lot of scripting and further NPC dialogue. So basically it won't much matter what you say (it doesn't in the current version anyway), but the template for future refinment will be in place. Hopefully it will be an improvement.

 

That's a good point, Ben, but what really is the point of a guaranteed system? It seems to me it's just a click-through process.

I think that's an inherent weakness with ToEE the CRPG. While combat and related systems (character creation, etc.) are robust, dialogue is just lame. I assume that it's much more dynamic in PnP.

To be clear, I'm not planning to shift any vanilla dialogue to this system, just NC-related stuff, and maybe nothing more than HB. It gets wearisome to try to supply the voice for players, especially with the knowledge that it's pretty limiting. ("Your guy/gal is an a-hole/superhero - were you aware of that?!" )