Campaign Creations

OMG I JUST GOT A REALLY GOOD IDEA (imo). This will address some of the stuff that Pronogo brought up:

I generally agree with Krazy in his philosophy to stay away from canon characters, but more for personal reasons in that I don't often like to involve characters that I can't call my own in case things get a little too out of character for them.

However, my idea is that the Kimeran Pirates stumble upon the ship and end up capturing the guy that finds the psychic (I will refer to him as the resident until we come up with a name) and the psychic once they go through an ordeal on the ship (the one that Krazy suggested with finding a power suit and oxygen supply sounded pretty good). So this would mean that they get the suit and the Kimerans corner them in the armory (or wherever they find the suit and oxygen). Then, as they are leaving the ship, the pirates are confronted by Infested Stukov and Kaloth's forces (I was thinking an ashworld map so there would be no trees = no oxygen. I'll pick out a few and we can decide in a poll or something). So this would establish the zerg force as Infested Stukov's New Swarm. The pirates would narrowly escape (most likely with a "bring the squad to the pirate base for extraction" kind of objective). It would turn out that the pirates had some Umojan scientists (or something like that) held captive on their ship (aka the Kimera) and the Umojans would come to rescue them, the resident, and the psychic. The Dominion would come into play in one form or another, but the motives are listed below:

Kimeran Pirates: capture the psychic and sell him to the highest bidder (since that is what they do with valuable "stock")
New Swarm: capture the psychic to use him in mutate-like experiments (basically to create an intelligent infested terran with powerful psychic abilities)
Dominion: always willing to have more talented psychics on their hands
Umojans: something along the lines of research him to find out what makes him special (from the powers that Krazy was initially talking about) and incorperate that property in any way they can to their own psychics/military

This would set the timeline part-way into the Infested Stukov mini-arc (after "Deception" but before "Mercenaries II" and "Resurrection IV")

I'll try to think of any ways to incorperate the protoss into it. Zeratul, Kerrigan, and Duran (imo) will certainly not make an appearence in this campaign. Zeratul I am absolutely positive will not be in it because Twilight reveals what he did during the entirety of the four years between SC: BW and SC2.

Spoiler

He went on a bit of a soul-searching road trip through a variety of Warp Gates and no one was able to find him

All I have for the protoss so far is that they would want to use him to be able to see the past of xel'naga-visited planets so that they might be able to learn more about them. The Shelak tribe is designated the "guardians of xel'naga relics" by the Hierarchy, so maybe they would want to capture him? Idk. This is the section I'm still on the fence the most about. 

If it did come to a "who gets the psychic" in the end, it couldn't be the protoss, though (at least with the idea I just listed) because they would then know everything they needed to about the xel'naga and there would be no mystery in SC2 (planning for the futurue here  ). The Pirates probably also wouldn't get him because then he could end up anywhere from there and I think adding too many more factions would oversaturate this story as it is. That would leave the New Swarm, Umoja (which I am leaning towards), and the Dominion.

Thoughts? Ideas? I'm totally chill if people don't like this idea. It just sort of came to me while reading the later posts here and thought I would throw it out to see how people react to it.

Sorry for double posting, but here is my list of ashworld planets and links to their known details (courtesy of the wiki):

NOTE: I will not be including planets from StarCraft: Insurrection or StarCraft: Retribution because those campaigns are the scum of custom content and should never have been authorized by Blizzard. That is all.

Abaddon: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Abaddon

Alpha Draconis: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Alpha_Draconis

Ashrigo: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Ashrigo

Char (I don't think we should use this planet): http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Char

Nemaka (this planet isn't officially ashworld, but it has no air and is now devoid of life): http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Nemaka

New Folsom: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/New_Folsom

New Trinidad: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/New_Trinidad

Old Faithful: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Old_Faithful

Red Stone: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Red_Stone

Wotan II: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Wotan_II

Zerus (very very far from the Koprulu Sector): http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Zerus

That's all. Of course, we could always make up a planet, but I tend to like to stay away from that as well. Whatever the community wants, though, I'm fine with.

I don't think it should be a concern if the planet is controlled by the Dominion or not because Mengsk would have probably been focusing on rebuilding Korhal anyway. If it is controlled by the KMC, however, that might be a conflict (I think I only saw one of those from the list above).

Yes, I looked through the ENTIRE list of known planets (and moons, but found no ash ones) on the wiki. And no, I have no life. 

thebrowncloud wrote: Yes, I looked through the ENTIRE list of known planets (and moons, but found no ash ones) on the wiki. And no, I have no life. 

worry not, young grasshopper. Anyone visiting a board dedicated to a 10+ year old game more than twice a day is guilty of having no life. That's what binds us all.

BadManners! wrote:

thebrowncloud wrote: Yes, I looked through the ENTIRE list of known planets (and moons, but found no ash ones) on the wiki. And no, I have no life. 

worry not, young grasshopper. Anyone visiting a board dedicated to a 10+ year old game more than twice a day is guilty of having no life. That's what binds us all.

Hehe, I'm willing to bet that said visitors aren't logging on to this site with their DSi while using wifi at port in Rhode Island  as well as going to the wiki and copying down the URLs for every ash planet they find by hand and then recopying them onto the forums with aforementioned DSi. Damn Nintendo and their lack of a copy and paste function!  But what better choice do I have? I'm on a boat! 

EDIT: btw, hows S:TC going? need any testers?

thebrowncloud wrote:

BadManners! wrote:

thebrowncloud wrote: Yes, I looked through the ENTIRE list of known planets (and moons, but found no ash ones) on the wiki. And no, I have no life. 

worry not, young grasshopper. Anyone visiting a board dedicated to a 10+ year old game more than twice a day is guilty of having no life. That's what binds us all.

Hehe, I'm willing to bet that said visitors aren't logging on to this site with their DSi while using wifi at port in Rhode Island  as well as going to the wiki and copying down the URLs for every ash planet they find by hand and then recopying them onto the forums with aforementioned DSi. Damn Nintendo and their lack of a copy and paste function!  But what better choice do I have? I'm on a boat! 

Fair enough. So most of us have a tiny bit more of a life than you. Tiny bit.

thebrowncloud wrote: EDIT: btw, hows S:TC going? need any testers?

It's going ok, yeah. I might need you for testing and maybe some reference pretty soon. Also, I'll PM you shortly about something else.

Okay guys,

Excellent stuff we got cooking here. We're going to need someone to catalog all of the things we're pouring into the mix. The following will be where items are going to fall:

Story:

Character Related Items: (includes everyone's input)
A. Name
i. Attributes (physical, psychological, cognitive, concerns, anything that describes the character's person)
ii. Skills (special or unique stuff which the character posses)
iii. Job (may include faction affiliation)
iv. plot related (or events pertaining soley to the character)
v. storytelling related (or how a certain aspect of the character is revealed. e.g. Sees past in-proximity to carcass.)
vi. misc

Plot Related Items: (includes everyone's input)
a list of suggested events.

Any method to indicate multiple disagreeing suggestions over a single item that hasn't come to a resolution will do.

It would be best if we keep things as tight as possible? There's still a lot of stuff to figure out. And we haven't gone that far yet.

I would recommend a process to help focus creative juices, yet it will be more of a help when we reach the deadlock.

So, any feedback on my idea for a Zerg character?

Oh, and we could do a Twilight tileset since there are no trees there. Also; Ice or Desert.

Krazy wrote:

thebrowncloud wrote: Abaddon: http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Abaddon

I say we go with Abaddon for 2 reasons:

1 - Since Ghost was never released, Abaddon has no pre-established defining features so we'd pretty much have free reign without having to worry about continuity.

2 - I always really liked the name.

I like this planet a lot, too. The only problem I foresee with it (which is minor to nonexistent) is that there are some remaining UED forces on it. Their current status or whether or not they are able to supply themselves with transport to rescue this ship is debatable. However, involving the UED at least in the early missions while they are still on the planet could prove beneficial to our story.

Oh, and "resident" was supposed to mean the guy who found the psychic, but I forgot you already were calling him George Foremen, hehe. We'll keep it the way u have, Krazy. so psychic = resident (for now) and guy who finds him = George Foremen.

Pronogo wrote: So, any feedback on my idea for a Zerg character?

Oh, and we could do a Twilight tileset since there are no trees there. Also; Ice or Desert.

Sorry, I forgot about that. I like the idea of having a renegade zerg faction involved, but the character you suggested has 2 problems:

1. Since this is really soon after "Deception" (which is the mission where the Kimeran Pirates discover the first mutate, Morik) and the Confederate lab that was studying mutate technology, I don't think they would have made another one by now.

However, I could see them having made one earlier than Morik that was too aggressive for their standards, so they archived her (so we could use the infested kerrigan sprite) and Infested Stukov stole her in the confusion when the lab was exploding.

2. Duran's motives and goals seem to revolve solely around protoss/zerg hybrids. Making him the creator would bring the player away from that fact and make Duran seem different than what he actually is.

Of course, all things are dependent on what idea we decide to go with for how this story will unfold. It's still early in the development process and there is plenty of time to get all the details ironned out. Since it seems we will be taking the development a little slower, I'll try to tone down my overly zealous behavior with this project to leave room for other people to breathe and share. 

Hey I haven't posted on here before (just found it) but I hope I can help!

Reading all the cool ideas I thought of my own.

If it does come to a "who gets the psychic", what if the psychic doesn't want to be in that faction? Maybe they want to be on their own!

Jim_Raynor wrote: Hey I haven't posted on here before (just found it) but I hope I can help!

Reading all the cool ideas I thought of my own.

If it does come to a "who gets the psychic", what if the psychic doesn't want to be in that faction? Maybe they want to be on their own!

I was thinking about that kind of recently, too. That could end up being a good way to go in the end. The other alternative to having no one get him is that he would die (perhaps from overexperimentation or something).

A thought for a new character actually came to me last night while I was trying (and failing) to fall asleep. While resident and George are on the Kimeran ship, what if they were also holding a protoss prisoner? When the Umojans come and commandeer the ship or whatever we decide to have them do, they take the protoss as well to learn more about their potential enemies. Somewhere along the line, resident and George would rescue the protoss and...... somebody continue from here. I don't know what to do with this.

Several ideas went through my head for the protoss' profession as well and I haven't been able to decide which I like the most. so far, my top two picks are a dark templar or a regular protoss citizen that may be able to fight with more "crude" weapons (guns or, depending on his profession, a melee weapon that he is able to make himself out of raw materials). I thought of him sort of like a character from DTS Twilight. This character was named Vartanil and he was a member of the Furinax tribe as a wood carver. Idk, just thoughts.

We need some talking Zerg, and the humorous terran soldier who is always in the story.

Rocco wrote: We need some talking Zerg, and the humorous terran soldier who is always in the story.

We could throw a zerg mercenary group in somehow. Their leaders were all zerg strains that could talk (at least telepathically). Maybe they work for someone else who wants to get their hands on resident?

Also, for the humorous guy idea, I could recycle one of my ideas from a while ago. A while back, Tim and I were working on making a StarCraft comic series based on the Kimeran Pirates, but it didn't work out (don't ask). In that storyline, we were going to include a character (whose name I don't recall) that was an extremely clumsy, drunk, rather out of shape middle-aged man with really pale skin. He was always drinking and, despite the Pirates' attempts to get rid of him (even ejecting him from their ship!), he would always show up out of nowhere. Although he was drunk and clumsy all the time, he would often carry a gun (along with his bottle of booze) and attempt to fight alongside the Pirates. Now, he was actually an exceptionally good shot, but the Pirates always thought that it was dumb luck or the influence of some unforeseen supernatural force that guided his bullets to the targets he intended to shoot at. I was actually inspired to create this character by the song "The Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope" by the Bloodhound Gang if anyone would care to listen to it and make their own judgement on the character or w/e. Just thought I'd throw it out there.

The "talking Zerg" was supposed to be Rortrasz/Zydrail.

I don't really like the idea of using an Infested Kerrigan sprite because my concept of him was either as a Torrasque or a Devouring One sprite.

Before I realized we were working with a set timeline, I figured the Confederacy would be a fine choice. As for Duran, I was thinking of the fact that he'd need guards for Hybrids.

Pronogo wrote: The "talking Zerg" was supposed to be Rortrasz/Zydrail.

I don't really like the idea of using an Infested Kerrigan sprite because my concept of him was either as a Torrasque or a Devouring One sprite.

Hmmmm..... unique, yet not too out there.... I like it. I would definitely say that the Confederates should be his creators, though, and that he should be in the New Swarm. What I thought you were getting at originally was that he was a mutate cause you said a terran/zerg hybrid and not simply an infested terran. But I'm not sure he/she/it should be part terran, just an intelligent zerg that the Confederates were trying to create and control so they could command their own broods. That's what they tried to do with their experiments on Kerrigan (for anyone who hasn't read Uprising), so it would fit well. Thoughts?

Well, I'm glad you like it.

Whatever you do with him in regards to Hybrid/mutant status, I'd be glad to comment.