Ok, yeah, sure thing.
[rant=what the whole thing was about]Basically, I thought about helping a character join a crew of the most (in)famous crew of pirates, who happened to dock at his little town and who are in the tavern right now. The PC I was writing was fleshing out to be an orphan (parents taken by the plague, so in this timeline the plague was very much a recent thing), eighteen years old, who was taken in by a cartographer to be his apprentice. The cartographer was, in the eyes of the PC, not a good man. Hardly original, I know. The idea is that the PC had nothing to keep him in the town he’d always lived, and had become enamoured with the idea of travelling. He has picked up the skills to be a navigator (possibly helped along by actual navigators he’d met and who took a shine to him), so that apart from his obvious skills in cartography he’d aslo be able to navigate celestially, with the proper instruments.
Of course, why would the pirate crew - who, Guybrush-Threepwood fashion, he’d thought of as THE way to achieve his goal - taken him in?
If we agree that every survivor of the plague has a mutation, and they may be all sorts, and it may be useful or useless, extra heads or extra pinkies, then I figured his mutation would be priceless for a navigator - but scientifically hard to swallow… I was thinking he’d be sentisitve to magnetism. I was thinking that he would be a human compass - that he would know exactly where he was on the globe in relation to every other spot simply because he could feel how close/far he was to either magnetic pole. This would not account for e/w directions, but that’d be where the rest of his training would kick in.
Plus, I would imagine he could affect small metallic items magnetically. ATTRACT or REPEL.
Anyway, it’s just a thought. The idea was that he’d go into the tavern…
…the tavern being guarded by a bouncer the PM wishes to avoid; I was going for the brother/cousin of a girl the PC had made out with, whose mutation had made him particularly useful as a bouncer (this is the new world order, your mutations dictate what you do for a living) - extra eyes, maybe, or extra muscles, I dunno. To get into the tavern he’d go around the back, where some chickens are kept. I was thinking a timing puzzle where every few turns the tavern’s lowliest worker would go out and check on the chickens, but he’d only go out if no one was there. The PC would hide, the guy would leave the door open - and while it was open, the PC would be able to ATTRACT the bolt/latch, so that when the door was open it wouldn’t close again on its own. And take that chance to introduce the PC’s mutation.
…and once in the tavern, locate the pirate captain (by convincing the bartender; maybe there’s a guy playing the cup game and taking all his patrons’ money, which is less money for them to spend on drinks; and maybe the player can introduce some metallic in the ball he’s using to then find out where it is, and expose the cup-gamer for cheating, driving him away and earning the information from the bartender) and try to convince him that he’s the navigator they want.
I envisioned the pirate captain as a rather stereotypical fearsome sight, with no obvious mutations (which would add to his mistique). He’d be accompanied by his first mate, a just-as-stereotypical afro-caribbean woman with an extra few arms and a penchant for knives and their various handlding, including the throwing thereof. I toyed with the idea of getting his attention, hadn’t given much thought to that as a puzzle yet. Maybe the first mate would be the first obstacle. Anyway, once the PC had shown his abilities, he’d be told the pirates already HAVE a navigator, and he’s in the cartographer’s right now, stocking up and gathering necessary information.
The PC would have to go out of the tavern, which I imagined as the PC dropping a ram’s skull on top of the bouncer.
Hmmm? Oh, I should explain that better, shouldn’t I? The PC wouldn’t easily be able to leave the way he came in, through the kitchen. There’d be a second floor, and through that he could reach a pole where a ram’s skull is tied - tied just above the bouncer. The skull is the tavern’s name - The Ram’s Skull (the original owner was illiterate, and so were most of the clientelle anyway). Untie the skull, knock the bouncer unconscious, come and go as you please.
This is where I stopped (in my head), but I had the idea that, contrary to the player’s expectations, the old navigator wouldn’t be much of an obstacle, he could be the first friendly face so far. He could even persuade the captain to take on the boy as his apprentice. Anyway, then they would leave and the game would end.[/rant]
This doesn’t make for a potentially interesting game, I know. It’s like something out of IntroComp. But I figured it was a starting point to get the ball rolling.
The following transcript is the very little I actually programmed wrote. The writing tone surprised me; I hadn’t meant it to be quite that cynical. I guess the PC I’d thought of was more embittered than I’d thought; I’m not sure this is a tone that’s appropriate to this whole idea, and that’s also why I didn’t stick much with it.
[rant=What little I wrote]This is it. This is your chance.
Eleven years an orphan. Eleven years a cartographer’s apprentice. And nothing to
look forward to but a lifetime of scrolls and parchments, dusty paper, smelly
ink. Latitudes and longitudes criss-crossing vivid illustrations of land and
vegetation and rivers and Here There Be Dragons. Astrolabes and stars, in your
spare time. But the stars are too far away, and the illustrations are just that,
and you ache - ache! - to cross those rivers and see those dragons.
Well, no more. If all goes well (and the blasted plague left you with a secret
weapon) you’ll be leaving this God-forgotten island, navigator to Captain
Rootbeard!
That’s if you can get into the sodding tavern, of course.
Mutant Pirates 1 Draft
An Interactive Fiction by Peter Piers
Release 1 / Serial number 150904 / Inform 7 build 6L38 (I6/v6.33 lib 6/12N) SD
Outside The Ram’s Skull
You were far too young to remember the Ram’s Skull before the plague came, but
by all accounts it wasn’t much better. The patrons have some extra limbs now, or
a scaly handshake, and the contents of the spitoon can be an alchemical disaster
- but the spitoons weren’t safe even back then, nor would you want to trust
anyone inside with a handshake.
On the outside, it looks fairly run-down. Its crowd is not the sort to bother
much about appearances. Or stability. It’s noisy and it reeks. And you have to
get in, somehow.
The door is to the north, right underneath the actual skull, but you’d have to
get past Biff. Then again, nothing prevents you from going northwest, around the
back of the place.
x me
Seventeen years of age, eleven of which were spent learning cartography from
your master and celestial navigation from any navigator who’d talk to you
(usually after you’d shown them your special trick).
You’re dimly aware of some six years before that. A mother, a father, hot food,
a comfortable bed. Some good, some bad. It’s not important any more.
l
Outside The Ram’s Skull
The Ram’s Skull looks, smells and sounds like a run-down, ill-kept tavern for
sailors of all descriptions, and the less you describe them the better.
The door is to the north, right underneath the actual skull, but you’d have to
get past Biff. Then again, nothing prevents you from going northwest, around the
back of the place.
x skull
You remember passing it by with your parents, very quickly so you wouldn’t have
to look, and afterwards with your master, very slowly so you’d have no choice.
In your nightmares its eyes would be crawling with maggots, and it would chase
you wherever you went.
You’ve seen worse things since then. Much to your master’s chagrin, all you see
now is a stupid old piece of bone, tied askew to a wooden pole because whoever
first owned the tavern couldn’t even write.
x skull
A stupid old thing, tied askew to a wooden pole because whoever first owned the
tavern couldn’t even write.
n
You can’t, not with Biff standing right there. And you can’t seem to sneak past
him, either. However you’re going it, it’s not by the front door.
i
You have nothing to your name. So you have nothing to lose.
[/rant]
Use this and abuse this or discard it as you will! I was hoping to provide a small game rather than a lengthy explanation, but hey.