Like OofS said, the intro is incredibly long, but I think a bigger problem is that it doesn't give the player any control between this event triggering and actually leaving the Masquerade, especially since Steele explicitly walks through several rooms during that sequence. A better way to do it would be to deposit Steele onto a map of the Masquerade after docking with it, give the player some freedom to explore the ship and only having the conversation with Ian and the masked man once the player moves into the relevant tile, much like how Kiro's first encounter is done.
Of course there isn't any control over anything yet because it is way too early to do it. I'm still writing the main thing. There will be options to interact with everything, however, i'm not focusing on the distractions as much as i am getting what i wanna say on paper first and then going back and adding the other touches like messing with the plants, examining the masks in display cases or trying to break into the other half of the ship to discover what secrets the NPC is hiding. But I just haven't gotten to it yet, give me time.
I'm reluctant to make tiles because
i haven't read up on how that works and that requires some forethought on my part to consider. We're talking about several tiles worth not just four, there are three levels in the main body of the ship in a ring (or in this case: a square) that i'm not looking to write detailed tiles for. How it is written so far is how i want to make things go because it serves it's purpose just fine for now. I may want to do tiles, at some point in time, but that idea I really have to think about strongly about first before making that kind of commitment.
I think the paragraph regarding the stuff in the ship's kitchen could lead to a case of fridge logic. As-is, it's fine if it's just Steele on the ship (albeit portraying them as a bit lazy and/or slobbish, which some players (e.g. me) would disagree with), but the more crew members Steele's ship has, the less likely I think it is that the kitchen would be poorly stocked. Particularly if Yammi is one of those crew members, since she always has something cooking and can serve up food at any time.
You're missing the point of
why there even was a fridge or a kitchen on the player's ship, it was a
plot device to get the PC to set things on auto-pilot in order to grab something to eat to setup the encounter. If you were the pilot, you would never, EVER leave your seat in the middle of full throttle, flying through space to grab something to eat until you knew you were safe in some place that you could "park". Setting things on auto-pilot is something you would do if you were confident that you're relatively safe enough to do a short thing instead of waiting in your pilot seat all day until reaching your destination.
I'm not taking into account of EVERY. SINGLE. CREW. MEMBER. I just won't do it, putting the scene in was just something I thought would make sense given we don't read about any sort of kitchen in ANY scene within the game and be nice to include it. It's sparse because I can't assume
too much about a player's choice in eating habits and have a little something for everyone, I could have written a whole scene on just them eating while observing the nebula they were passing through by a window but decided against it. As for your thoughts on the impression: that's
not how i saw it. You're a busy individual on a quest to find probes to reclaim your inheritance and constantly moving around the universe, grabbing groceries is not something you do when you can just eat-out at the many locations with restaurants. You take what you need and be done with it while on the move,
usually you do have a huge stockpile for long trips and have everything you need. But I've written an Activity for you to have a meal with the NPC to compensate for the lack of food.
I've written this encounter for those of us who play alone and have no crew first, every other detail will come second. I've only played the game to completion just a month ago and haven't discovered ALL the available crew members yet, nor have i figured out who has what job. I'm trying my best not to make too many assumptions and going the
bare bones approach.
The paragraph about Steele readying their weapons is unnecessarily detailed and makes assumptions about their weapons that aren't necessarily true:
Here's the actual scene in question:
Grabbing your [PC.ranged] from the gunlocker, you disengage the locking mount and remove the battery, a few clips and a few combustion rounds, stuffing them into your pockets and various pouches. You walk over to your weapon display and arming yourself with your [PC.melee], a hand gliding over your [PC.melee] and lifting it and with a flourish you stow your weapon away and tight the belt holding it in place. You’re going to need it if things go sideways inside this ship, [If Pc has Clothes: {popping the collar of your [PC.Uppergarment] and a stride of your shoes making contact with the hull of your ship, walking toward the airlock cabin. / Else: You strut your stuff towards the airlock cabin.}
Steele's ranged weapon is some kind of gun with a magazine of bullets that requires cocking before being fired'. Steele can wield a much wider variety of ranged weapons than this, including various bows, a ship-grade fire extinguisher and a Captain America-style shield. Even among guns, many of them don't use bullets, instead using lasers, plasma bolts, arcs of electricity, corrosive substances, lust-inducing psionic beams or other, more exotic projectiles.
"...you disengage the locking mount and remove the battery, a few clips and a few combustion rounds, stuffing them into your pockets and various pouches."
This was to describe the variety of ammo types, combustion rounds (bullets), battery (laser), clips (misc). I thought it was a nice little detail from the standard: Grab [PC.range] & [PC.melee] format we're occasionally seeing all the time. I wanted to try something different and so i did, it doesn't look like it worked, so I guess i'll just stick to the regular format then.
Steele's melee weapon can be flourished'. This doesn't make sense for the heaviest melee weapons like the Saurmorian Hammer, or for more punchy-style weapons like the Predator Talons or Custom Shock Gear.
See previous answer.
Steele always has both a melee and a ranged weapon equipped at all times'. Steele can unequip either or both of their weapons at any time; while this may not be optimal, it can be made to work through certain playstyles.
I'm aware but again this suggestion is a bit too early for me to consider thinking about. This sort of thing is something you'll have to save for last when I do Editing which I've stated before that i do afterwards. I won't start editing until i have MAJORITY of the things written in, otherwise: writer's block.
Because of how varied Steele's weapons can be, when it comes to describing what they do with them, less is more; a simple "Readying your{pc is unarmed: "self" /else: " [pc.weapon]"}" should suffice.
The same paragraph also assumes that Steele's upper undergarment has a collar (which it probably doesn't considering that upper undergarments are usually bras or t-shirts) and that by wearing clothes, Steele is necessarily wearing shoes. What sort of shoes would be worn by a Steele whose lower body is that of a naga/lamia or a gooey, amorphous blob? I don't think even mentioning Steele's clothes is necessary or helpful here; just saying that they head towards the airlock is fine.
I figured as much, it was wishful thinking that i could add something a little more detailed to really spice it up a bit; break the mold! But that seems to be too much to ask for considering how too many variables makes that wishful thinking fly right out of the airlock!
... I'll just remove the whole block, rewrite it the standard formatted one sentence and be done with it. Unless you do something really stupid to earn yourself a Bad Ending, you're mostly not going to need then until exhausting all of your Talk options and triggering the pirate encounter.
The paragraph after that seems to be mostly irrelevant to the story being told. First, it says that Steele is unsettled by going through an airlock, which is something they should be used to by now and wouldn't find unsettling. Second, everything after that except for the last sentence feels more like a tangent to the story than anything that adds to it. I'm not convinced the paragraph needs to be there at all; any concerns Steele may have about boarding a potentially hazardous ship can be addressed when they're readying their weapons and going to the airlock.
That's because i haven't specified when the PC might be able to encounter this ship. You can encounter this ship in space as early as M'henga! This is a space encounter as opposed to a planet side one. If you're an early starter on the encounter and just left Tavros Station, this will be one of the first few encounters where they've probably had a few run-ins with pirates or mercenaries. If you're encountering this ship for the first time around Dhaal of course you're going to be used to it, but that unsettling feeling is always going to be there because: you're boarding a creepy ship, in the middle of remote space with no data on the nearest spaceport, you're the only ship on radar in a system you've never been to before,
there is no safety net here: you encounter something bad out here it is game over. Which there will be 2 Bad Endings added to this, this is my way of saying "HEY!! Watch your ass! Possible Game Over!" to which i will have <><> to make that very clear at the end of that entry - i just haven't done so yet.
In conclusion, there's a LOT of assumptions being made here when not everything I've written is etched in stone yet and i'm still writing it. I ask that you wait patiently to see what i have in mind before jumping to conclusions and drawing parallels that aren't there. None of this is bad, don't misunderstand me, the weapons and clothing is something i didn't consider and changed it. The "tile" mapping idea was something i didn't consider until now and i do appreciate the suggestion because that does sound like it would be much easier to do. BUT, and this is a very big but (might wanna give it a slap, lol):
I don't know how to write tiles. What are the requirements? Are they something for every encounter or are they something that I have to do? Does the Staff do them or a Coder? What if they don't like the idea and want me to write a simple scene descriptions. These are questions that will drive me crazy and make me lose focus on what's really important:
getting it done first, worry about it later. If i knew how they work, read up on a guide to doing them or how to format my encounter for that then i would do them. Too early to do, but not too early to consider while the iron is hot and i should really consider doing to make things easier. I just simply don't know how to do that yet: still learning.
