Story Idea: The Leper King

[operative x]

This isn't really for any mod, more of a full game or possibly movie idea that I’ve had floating around in my head.

A Knight contracts leprosy from sleeping with a young unknowingly infected girl. He is then outcasted by his family, friends, and society. After awakening from being knocked out and dropped off at a leper colony the character and player have no idea what happened to him before his arrival (the background info won't be told to the player). The player then wakes up and soon learns how things are controlled around the colony; if you want to survive the wrath of the bandits, then you have to give. Bandits annually raid them for food, jewelry and other valuable possessions. The first introduction with the Bandit Leader leads to the player trying to defend a family from getting their food from being taken away but instead becomes an embarrassing failure. Because he has just arrived, he has little strength and easily shoved to the ground and forced to wear a vase as a crown then coined as being the "King of the Lepers". After the character talks with a Priest (who eventually becomes one of your greatest allies) to discover what little information he has, he is told that all he’s heard is that you were once a great Knight. The character then immediately gets flashbacks of his father teaching him how to sword fight at a young age, after this brief interactive tutorial, the Priest reveals he was once a Crusading Knight in his youth and retrieves his old sword and helmet (but not the chainmail or armor because it’s too dangerous for his skin) the player becomes ready for combat. In the aftermath of a brief introductory fight with the Leader, he shows that this type of thievery and abuse won't be accepted. Now embraced by the lepers he must choose what to do next. This is a branching part in the game where the player chooses what he wishes to do, either defend the lepers and defeat the bandits once and for all or leave them defenseless and fight his way back in the barren landscapes to his home city to discover his past.

This is kind of how I envisioned him to look like. (copy/pasting skills ftw!)
http://img289.imageshack.us/my.php?image=druidrobe0dz.jpg

 

[Crispy]

Sounds quite good, especially the in-game tutorial bit. Afterall, all games are simply about teaching players something (primarily how to play them) and testing them in the process.

Anyway, expand this story because although the way he contracts leprosy is a bit odd and presents a few loopholes in the story (for instance how do you fight if you risk your arm falling off halfway through the game?!), but in general it sounds OK. You could do this Mod in very small steps as well, first working on the tutorial section, then the bit leading up until the choice, then make two different episodes depending on the choices made. If you concentrated on doing it in little steps it would progress quite quickly.

 

[operative x]

I was taking a shot in the dark with him getting the leprosy from a young girl, but I assumed lepers are exiled into colonies because it was contagious? I'm not sure, but if it doesn't work I’ll probably work around it. From my understanding leprosy is a skin disease that only affects the nerves, thus removing all feeling in your skin. Then amputations occur when you don't realize you have a huge cut on your leg that has been untreated for quite sometime and now is severely infected. As long as you keep your skin protected with lots of thick clothing and keep all cuts clean, you should be fine.

 

[crackhead]

im not sure the player beeing a leper would work too well as what happens as he gets really ill and bits of his body start falling off but its a good idea.

 

[Crispy]

Ah, you're right about the clothing, and they are usually 'quarantined' to colonies. The part I was a bit unsure of, mainly because it's a weird way to start a game, is the love interest.

The fact that lepers always have to cover up makes for a great game character. By having such an enigmatic figure you put the player right in the action. The only problem with this is that it's not completely open as far as the love interest is concerned. It means that girls (and homosexual males) cannot play out a personal fantasy as readily as a heterosexual male. Now this is being very picky as far as Mods are concerned, but wouldn't it be nice if games in general made some effort to get away from catering to solely young males?

Half-Life went some way in bringing a true representation of a racial spectrum (to a certain extent) in Eli and Alyx (who I would say looks to have mixed race). In the Unreal Tournament 2007 E3 footage we also saw a fire fight between a robot and a black guy (skin tone, braided hair). We shouldn't forget how much The Sims and previous sim-style games have gone towards this more realistic and encompassing view of society.

Continuing the topic further we see one of the reasons Half-Life is such a successful product. Gordon Freeman is a scientist who, when faced with a do-or-die situation, has the balls and the ability to save his planet. Typically FPS heroes have been trained soldiers of war (Doom, Quake, Unreal, Wolfenstein) but in Half-Life we have intelligence overcoming brute force (the Aliens, the soldiers sent to stop Freeman), a theme that continues into Half-Life II with the resistance and the return of non-brawn characters such as the scientists and Alyx.

I don't mean to have gone too far off-topic but I'm just trying to illustrate the impact a character (especially one you control) has on the player's immersion and enjoyment of the game. Come to think of it, it's fairly irrelevant to talk about the gender of your character. The Mod is to be called the Leper King and implies a male main character. But maybe what I've said might be useful when it comes to thinking about other characters. But I'm not saying you should just go overboard and try to cater for everyone needs. Games invariably don't show the whole of society but more often a slice of it, it's important to keep it relevant to the storyline. But, for instance, you could have a leper character who has lost some limbs through carelessness (or perhaps some brigands callously removed his protective clothing for some reason). You'd probably be the first Mod ever to have a disabled character.

---

P.S. If you do ever make a video media release for this, I defy to find a track more suitable (albeit in name only) than Leper Messiah by Metallica.

 

[operative x]

Well the idea with the young girl, which I should have mentioned previously, was that this girl was a very young prostitute and by sleeping with her and being unfaithful to his wife, (and I should have mentioned that he was a very bad, always unfaithful to his wife, and just generally a horrible person) he in a way, whether you look at it as a punishment by god or just a result to his previous life style, gets a second chance by awakening completely clueless to his previous life. Now by the character being clueless to what previously happened to him keeps the player in sync with the character, after being given a small amount of information about him being a corrupt Knight the player chooses what he wishes to do. Redeem himself by helping the lepers or go back and find out just what in the hell happened to him. So the only reason for the girl was to create a situation where he ****s up bigtime, and gets a second chance to either continue to be a selfish person or finally help others. Oh and the Priest helps him clean/bandage his wounds. But the player can also clean his wounds himself too, sort of like MGS3 style.

 

[Crispy]

Sounds good. It'd be cool if during the first part of the game everyone you talked to ran away in fear. You might think it's because you're a leper, but soon you'd find out (from a key character) a bit about your past. It would be even better if you had to do a good deed to help this character in order for him to stick around and reveal your past.

 

[crackhead]

a nice mix of puzzle solving and action would make this an excellent mod id certainly be interested in helping with it.