make your boss better through advertising
By
AngryRedHerring,
Posted on: 2009-04-23 10:00 in Mission Architect
Mentioning the big bad guy is one thing, but if it's overdone it's worst than not mentioning it at all. If I were to play an arc done with your examples, I'd consider Mr Big to be a Mary Sue and leave before the third mission.
I agree you can over do it. If every minion and every person mentions him - it would be bad. That's why I don't agree with Gogol. Every detail can't be important. You need to have enough details to feel normal - and then you can add in "important" details like mentioning the boss's name.
For instance I might have 6 hostages to rescue - one of them would mention the boss.
But going through missions I find that they don't get mentioned at all.
Just for the record, the literary technique is called Chekhov's gun, from Anton Chekhov.
I agree with both variations on the quote, but I think the developers had it so down pat that it really only should be used at this point for tricking people. What if we spent four missions hearing about how great Mistah B was, then got to the fifth mission, and Mistah B was only the second-in-command to his daddio, Mistah Big Stuff?
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Just for the record, the literary technique is called Chekhov's gun, from Anton Chekhov.
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Thank's, I get those two confused.
I decided in one arc to have the AV appear in the first mission and the last mission. That way the 2nd time feels like a rematch and you also find out what you're up against very early on.
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there is a quote from Gogol "if there is a gun hanging on the wall in act 1 it should go off in act 3". I disagree with the statement - but the wholeheartedly believe the reverse. If a gun goes off in act 3 - it should be shown in Act 1.
This applies to many details in mission arcs - but especially to bosses. If you create an AV at the end of your arc and the first time I've heard of him is when I see him at the end or in the nav, I won't care much about him.
If the arc is to defeat Mr. Big - make sure he is a "presence" throughout the arc.
Have the intro text to other missions mention that Mr. Big is behind it.
Have bosses in other missions say "Mr. Big wants you stopped" or "Once I defeat you, I will be powerful enough to take on Mr. Big".
Have minions say "We'd better pull this off or Mr. Big will rip our arms off."
Have rescued people say "They were taking me to Mr. Big, he might burn me with his flames"
By the time a player reaches Mr. Big they should have heard his name a dozen times, know that he is really tough and scary - and have some clue as to what his powers are.
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Although I almost agree with your post, it depends if the antagonist in the arc is pretty straight forward. If the arc in itself is based on a mystery, keeping subtle hints works best.
If you've ever done the Lady Grey TF, you'll know what I mean.
NCSOFT may take away our servers and beloved dev team, but they can't break our spirit and community. with all your power, NCSOFT, your victory will be bitter-sweet. I, personally will be there to laugh at you when you face-plant into the ground.
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If you create an AV at the end of your arc and the first time I've heard of him is when I see him at the end or in the nav, I won't care much about him.
If the arc is to defeat Mr. Big - make sure he is a "presence" throughout the arc.
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I cordially invite you to try my arcs, but particularly Check... and Mate.
One of my main goals was to create a personal animosity between the player and the villain; a poisonous relationship that grows and builds to the final confrontation. One of the more frequent (positive) comments I get is that players liked the way the villain had a tangible presence throughout the arc, even though it isn't face-to-face until the final confrontation.
Given your position on this dynamic, I'd be very interested in your opinion. 
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Check all doors. Focus on what absolutely *has* to be done. Save those Break Free drops.
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Good points on storytelling. I wholeheartedly agree.
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I ran a mission recently where a boss was really hyped up, but then spawned as a lieutenant. I practically one-shotted the poor schmuck. Making the boss seem scary can backfire.
Personally, I don't think anyone's gun is the right approach to final boss fights. Foreshadowing is fine, but having surprises can be fine sometimes too. To me, the important thing is emotion. I want the player to actively dislike the boss, to be really mad at them and be happy to get a chance to fight them.
Maybe the boss could taunt the player during the fight. Maybe, earlier in the mission, the contact could pass along a taunt from the boss. Maybe the end boss could appear earlier as a hostage and then mock the player while escaping. Maybe the boss could be described as doing something really mean, especially to a character that the player likes. There are lots of possibilities, but all can be tricky to pull off.
Other emotions could work too, of course, but are probably even harder to write for.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
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there is a quote from Gogol "if there is a gun hanging on the wall in act 1 it should go off in act 3".
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I agree you can over do it. If every minion and every person mentions him - it would be bad. That's why I don't agree with Gogol.
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FYI, the quote isn't actually from Gogol (although he may have quoted the reference himself). There's some variations of the quote, but all of them originate from Anton Chekhov and was "One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it."
The concept, that anything introduced into the story should be used later or else it shouldn't have been focused on in the first place, is now commonly referred to as "Chekhov's Gun".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov's_gun
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Originally Posted by eltonio
This is over the top mental slavery.
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there is a quote from Gogol "if there is a gun hanging on the wall in act 1 it should go off in act 3". I disagree with the statement - but the wholeheartedly believe the reverse. If a gun goes off in act 3 - it should be shown in Act 1.
This applies to many details in mission arcs - but especially to bosses. If you create an AV at the end of your arc and the first time I've heard of him is when I see him at the end or in the nav, I won't care much about him.
If the arc is to defeat Mr. Big - make sure he is a "presence" throughout the arc.
Have the intro text to other missions mention that Mr. Big is behind it.
Have bosses in other missions say "Mr. Big wants you stopped" or "Once I defeat you, I will be powerful enough to take on Mr. Big".
Have minions say "We'd better pull this off or Mr. Big will rip our arms off."
Have rescued people say "They were taking me to Mr. Big, he might burn me with his flames"
By the time a player reaches Mr. Big they should have heard his name a dozen times, know that he is really tough and scary - and have some clue as to what his powers are.
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Although I almost agree with your post, it depends if the antagonist in the arc is pretty straight forward. If the arc in itself is based on a mystery, keeping subtle hints works best.
If you've ever done the Lady Grey TF, you'll know what I mean.
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true - but the same rule in general applies to a mystery. To be fair the villain has to have already appeared.
If you get to the end of the mystery and you've never heard of the villain at the end it wasn't a fair mystery. The villain has to have been mentioned or appeared.
The standard (and this applies to the Mentalist, almost every Agatha Christie, etc) is that the villain is the one who is not a suspect and has been semi-helpful to the hero.
I have to agree, even if your villain is not visible, his presence has to be seen. One of the best tabletop RPGs I was ever in had a villain whose appearance, at the end, was the mystery of the plot. So we couldn't have seen him, it would ruin the surprise. We knew his name before we even set foot in the dungeon, however, and got the definate feeling his eyes were on us at all time. (They were...)
Where you have the bad guy that you thought was the main bad guy turn out to just be the flunky for the real bad guy, that's just a plot twist. One I've used myself, actually. But the main thing is, even if you have got the wrong idea of who the bad guy is, there IS a bad guy, and you're thinking about him, and anticipating having to deal with him. That builds suspense.
As for Mary Sues, well, I don't think any of us should be claiming to be above that sort of thing. "Why behold thou the Mary Sue in thy brother's fic, but consider not the Mary Sue in thine own fic?"
I toggled this as a favorite topic. 
I'm struggling to get my first arc done. While I love the MA, it has had me bashing my head against the keyboard frequently, and I've developed a nervous left eye twitch using it. Really. 
I am trying to build some sense that things are happening sort of "behind the scenes". My little gimmick is that the Sky Raiders reverse-engineer an imprisoned super hero's armor to start making their own armor. So I kinda wanna plant a hint on who's behind the attempts to "clone" that armor.
Right now it's the Captain Castillo AV, but I dunno, maybe there's some "mad scientist" character mob type more appropriate. So I was thinking a brief early appearance by this character (Castillo or whomever), in mission 1 or 2, a very light sprinkling of dialogue referring to him for a couple missions, and then a slam bang finale to put him way once and for all at the end might be fun.
Anyway, the thread's helping me ponder that idea more and how I can make it work.
One of my bosses will be recognizable by the time you get to him. President Evil has robot dopplegangers he can talk through do his dirty work. They're much weaker then him but you'll basicly have seen him several times before you fight the real deal.
I'm my opinion, if you're going to have a "Big Bad" in your arc, the story should naturally lead to him. I think a major problem with some of the arcs I've played is that they have "lets top this" feel to them where the author seems to want to keep eclipsing his own creations. Mission one has a Big Bad, then you find out that Mission two has an Even Bigger Bad, and then Mission three is laughing about the silly punks claiming to be bosses because here's the Actual Big Bad. Of course, mission four basically belittles that Big Bad, because it has the Real Big Bad.
Its ok to have escalating difficulty, in fact that's a good technique for keeping players interested. But you don't want to undermine yourself. You don't want to oversell your boss fights, but you don't want to trivialize them as a set of Matryoshka dolls either. The Big Bad can have a lieutenant you have to fight first, but it should (normally) be obvious he is the appetizer to the main course.
You can surprise players by giving them a Big Boss and then showing him to be a front for an even bigger boss. But you have to do that carefully, and you can't do it often.
This is assuming the player is even reading your story, which some are and some aren't.
The way I addressed this in my Secret Weapons arc is I created a boss that the player had to fight to get information on the big bad, then fight a Lt of the big bad while investigating him, and then actually send the player to confront the big bad. At all times the player knows they are heading somewhere, and very early on they know who they are ultimately after.
The arc I'm working on now takes a completely different approach to this issue. In that arc, I introduce three different "bads" but the story eventually gets to a point where you really only fight one of them. The other two become secondary by process of elimination. So again the player already knows where its all going to go basically, just not specifically.
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All that is planned fails. All that is born dies.
All that is built crumbles. This will always be true.
But memories remain, And that is beautiful.
My only arc does have a little case of "behold, my TRUE form!" where there's an EB version in the middle of the arc with "natural" powers, and a "powered" version in the 5th mission (with the aftermath of his transformation in the 4th, of course)
By the way. Happy birthday, Arcanaville!
All that is planned fails. All that is born dies.
All that is built crumbles. This will always be true.
But memories remain, And that is beautiful.
there is a quote from Gogol "if there is a gun hanging on the wall in act 1 it should go off in act 3". I disagree with the statement - but the wholeheartedly believe the reverse. If a gun goes off in act 3 - it should be shown in Act 1.
This applies to many details in mission arcs - but especially to bosses. If you create an AV at the end of your arc and the first time I've heard of him is when I see him at the end or in the nav, I won't care much about him.
If the arc is to defeat Mr. Big - make sure he is a "presence" throughout the arc.
Have the intro text to other missions mention that Mr. Big is behind it.
Have bosses in other missions say "Mr. Big wants you stopped" or "Once I defeat you, I will be powerful enough to take on Mr. Big".
Have minions say "We'd better pull this off or Mr. Big will rip our arms off."
Have rescued people say "They were taking me to Mr. Big, he might burn me with his flames"
By the time a player reaches Mr. Big they should have heard his name a dozen times, know that he is really tough and scary - and have some clue as to what his powers are.