A Question of Consciousness

[OnTheBounce]

No, this isn't some deep philosophical investigation into some subject like whether so-called "Free Will" is an illusion created by our consciousness or anything. Rather it's about someting interesting that happened during playtesting last night.

Situation: Several enemies in a single room have an unconscious prisoner. Once the lead baddie gives her little diatribe the enemies turn hostile toward the prisoner. However, unlike in the core campaign in which enemies invariably seemed to prefer bashing hostages/prisoners to the people trying to kill them I set the hostility toward the prisoner at a much lower level than toward the BoS. The result is that the enemies actually have some clue about target priority ("most dangerous first") and don't sit there trying to put holes in an unconscious man lying on the floor while several people w/pistols and SMGs are busy putting holes in them. In addition to being unconscious, the prisoner also has a concussion.

Once the prisoner has been freed, the BoS are supposed to doctor him up and he will then have his click speech changed in order for the mission to progress. The trigger to change his click speech is that the prisoner has 100% of his HP and less than 1 unconscious (using a Quantity Unit trigger).

Oddity/Bug: As I was clearing out the room w/my pack of pistol- and SMG-toting Femmes from Hell one enemy didn't have a shot at one of my underlings and so started to fill the poor prisoner full of holes...pumping him full of poison in the process. The enemy also scored a Knock-Out critical on the poor bastard and he shot up, turning from animation rotation 6 to 0 in the process, and them flopped down on his face again.

Fearing for the prisoner's life, I rushed my doctor into the room to administer some poison antidote and right about the time I had him cured of his poisoning, he stands up, still spouting random lines designed to make him look like he's lying on the floor w/a concussion, I might add.

Now, instead of having to use the Doctor skill to wake him up, I simply had to use First Aid. The prisoner then changed sides so that he could be escorted back to safety.

As I was marching him back I took a look at his character sheet and he was listed as being Concussed, but there were no stat penalties. So I marched my medic over and applied the Doctor skill to him and his concussion was cured. His stats also raised as though his base values had been his values when suffering from a concussion.

Basically what all of this long-winded shit is, is my way of saying that I've found out that just as you shouldn't start characters who are on/are going to be on PI 1 in the kneeling or prone positions, you should not start them w/any sort of injury, either.

Incidentally, in light of this bug I rescripted the level and changed the map a bit so that the prisoner now uses a set of waypoints to get to safety rather than the tried-but-less-than-true method of switching sides.

OTB

[Max-Violence]

Bummer.

[Forty-six & Two]

Thats a real anoying bug.... Takes out alot of detail to the way enemies and your own chars are placed.

[Flamescreen]

It's not that annoying, I guess if OTB wanted he could just put the prisoner in a cell and out of LOF, avoiding all this to happen. It is however limiting regarding possible story evolvement/realistic look and feel.

[OnTheBounce]

...I guess if OTB wanted he could just put the prisoner in a cell and out of LOF, avoiding all this to happen. It is however limiting regarding possible story evolvement/realistic look and feel.

Yes, but OTB doesn't want to put the prisoner out of LoF. The whole idea is to have the prisoner die if the PCs launch an abortive strike on the enemies holding him, but to have him survive if they go in and stick to it.

Basically, I'm trying for as many possible consequences as possible in my missions. There are four possible outcomes w/this prisoner depending on whether he lives or dies and...well, I wouldn't want to give anything away.

One thing I'm trying to avoid in my rescue objectives is the rather slipshod way these were handled in the core campaign. Take Quincy for example: the Beastlords will usually do their level best to kill the hostages while you're busy pouring fire into their midst. The hostages also tend to be in either extreme danger (e.g. at the generators) or in absolutely no danger (e.g. the mayor's daughter). I want that golden mean, as well as to have hostages do things other than simply serve as an objective. For instance they may need you to do something else for them (e.g. medical attention) or they may have information, or they may try to enlist you in attaining their own ends. (I know that's vague, but I'm not giving away any details.) The whole idea in In Our Own Image is that everywhere you go there are factions, and there are even factions within factions and sometimes even factions within the subfactions. I guess you could say that in this campaign, "Agendas are like assholes: everyone's got one...and most of 'em stink."

OTB

[Forty-six & Two]

It's not that annoying, I guess if OTB wanted he could just put the prisoner in a cell and out of LOF, avoiding all this to happen. It is however limiting regarding possible story evolvement/realistic look and feel.

Well it was more on the skill based version of the bug. The thing I find anoying is that I cant preplace NPCs and PCs in anything but standing position without giving them a healthy skill modifier which sometimes is quite unacceptable to me.