Campaign Idea: The Song of Pentecost

Hey all,

A couple years ago I originally got into the idea of a huge campaign based on a D&D game that I ran, but it never came to fruition because I realized that I couldn't do what I thought I could... yet. Recently I started up WC3 again and some custom maps have really inspired me to try and take a crack at making one again. I'm going to tone it down and try something a bit simpler this time.

This new campaign is based on a book called The Song of Pentecost by W.J.Corbett, which is about a group of animals of various sorts going on a very serious adventure, much like Watership Down or The Secret of Nimh. A human city has spilled over into the countryside where they live and this has forced them to find a new home.

Here's a screenshot of the first map.


This first map is much like a prelude, learning about the first character and his plight. Nothing major, just a flat surface for now. I just wanted to see if I could make the Oily Green Pool look oily and green and test a snake model out and see how it worked. (The creator of the snake model is Domokun at hiveworkshop.com) I might use a different model later, but for now it's a garter snake.

So then, what do I need? Well, first of all, to be honest I am unsure if anyone would take this idea seriously. Regardless, I'm definitely going to try. There is very little of this style of campaign, but I have seen it done a couple times. In particular I am fond of The Spider Queen campaign, which was phenomenal in it's execution of introducing us to an animal hero. It had to eat other small animals to grow while avoiding being instantly killed by an ogres' foot... that whole little prelude map was one of the most dynamic scenarios I've ever seen to this day and it really stuck with me.

Second of all, I need ideas for quests and things to do in each scenario, otherwise it'd be like making a cinematic movie. What kinds of single player scenarios do people like and not like? What do I do about the "wordy" dialogue of the story?

Thank you very much for listening! If you know of any other maps or campaigns that are about animal heroes, please let me know!


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If the story is wordy, just try to summarise it as much as possible.

The Founding of Durotar cmapaign actually has some very nice mini quests and scenarios.

Possible Quests.
- A mini AOS
- A "boss arena" like the founding of durotar portal to outland.

Your terrain is not bad for a playable map. Looking for some cool tips/ideas?

Check out "This Wreckage" by Rao Dao Zao. (I'm sure he won't mind)

Your swamp doesn't look oily enough.

Stick some barrels in there, and add some black tinted doodads.

I'm suprisingly interesting in this.

Yes, I myself am a bit wordy. I will try to keep the story cinematics at a comfortable level. I'm learning a lot about how to present a complicated story from "Dwarf Campaign".

That sounds really familiar. I'll keep your suggestions in mind. Thank you!

Thank you, I like variety and being artsy.

I'm pretty sure the book was referring to algae, not sludge, because the animals are well aware of what pollution is. I did tint the water a dark teal, and then the vine terrain made a neat algae and lichen.

I had no idea I was putting you in my campaign!
But seriously, I am very pleased to hear. I hope that a horde of mice will be just as interesting as a horde of orcs.


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And now that I know a few people are interested, here's some more ideas.

I think I would like to change the scale. Have the animals be the same relative size as a humanoid hero, but make the environment a tad larger. Not as large as the Sim Ant or Ant Colony maps, but definitely an animal's perspective. I will try my best to scale things consistently.

These are the heroes so far:
---Snake of Oily Green Pool is a shifty creature with sleep and hide abilities.
---Pentecost Mouse is the leader of a group of mice and helps the expedition with morale boosts. He's actually the brains of the operation and usually handles any talking.
---Frog is a rude liar and I don't think he should be a "hero", because he's actually not coming with you willingly. I can't even think of anything he could perform to make him useful, but I'll try and think of something... stupid lazy Frog. lol
---Little Brother is a muskrat if I remember, but there's a great beaver model I found, so I'll probably make him a beaver instead. He didn't do a lot other than make conversation, but I think I'll make him a named healer type since he hated violence.
---Fox of Furrowfield is around later in the book, but I think he should be introduced sooner, because you just didn't get to learn much about him and that, sadly, made him almost pointless. I haven't seen a fox unit, however, and this is frankly very surprising. A wolf unit is too bulky, but perhaps the dog?

Mice and rats are the main infantry and builders. There are no rats in the book, but I'm putting them in anyway.

There's no magic in the book either, but the cranky elders who complain a lot could be like shamans. The beavers, as mentioned, would be healer types. I apologize, but due to my lack of experience, spells will be standard for right now. I am not making too much custom stuff until I learn some basics.

Gold and Lumber could be changed to something a bit more suitable, possibly leaves and twigs? I haven't decided yet if food should be gathered also... but since there's a large variety of animals who all eat different things, I'm not sure how I would go about that. We might just stick with houses, since the book had Great Aunts who were weaver mice that were very good at building nests (and anything else you might need!)



Questions:

Do people prefer a very large map with a lot to do at once, or a bunch of smaller maps with goals spread out?

Would any of these ideas be very complicated coding/triggering? I will try to do it myself, but I may need help finding codes for certain things.

Would people be put off by the fact that most critter models do not have attack animations? Would it be possible to find someone to animate them?

Should Snake have an inventory as per a normal hero?

I'm unsure how many doodads is too many. Is there a general estimate per map size?

Any other suggestions or ideas are certainly welcome!


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Large map.

No complicated coding.

Model makers, are available I am sure. If you want I could talk to some I know.

Snake Inventory = True

LOTS, LOTS and more LOTS.

I don't mind, but I suspect a very large map would be easier for you to make.

Not really, but good cinematics can take a while. I'll be more than willing to help with any tricky coding you'll need.

It would drive me crazy. I'm sure there are lots of modelers you could ask who would add animations.

Yes.

As many as you need to make it look good. 1000's of doodads are no problem.


By the ways, I haven't actually read The Song of Pentecost.

I am finding that a large map might be best. I gotta say, I am really really glad I can readjust the map size at any time. I can work on a patch of the map and then enlarge it and work on another patch.

If it comes down to it, I would appreciate that very much, but lets see if I can get through building a map first. I wouldn't want to burden anyone with projects that may or may not get used in the end.

I am surprised to hear that Snake should indeed have a full inventory, but true, it's probably better to be fair between the Heroes rather than realistic.

I am also surprised to hear that I should use as many doodads as I wish. I was told several years ago by some other mappers that small file size is a must if you want anyone to download your map... but now that I think about it, they must have been referring to multi-player stuff.

Thank you very much for the offer! When I figure out what I'm doing event-wise, I will let you know if I need any help. Hmm, for example, how difficult would it be to have a series of creatures appear (burrow up) on a timed sequence when another creature gets close to them?

That's okay, I just happened to see it at a used bookshop and picked it up out of curiosity, thinking it might be an animal saga like Watership Down and Secret of Nimh and found that I was correct. I can't believe I'd never heard of it before this, honestly. I'm always on the look out for these second-hand gems. It's far from a perfect book, it goes on a few tangents at times, and there's a few characters that were a tad pointless near the end, but overall it was a fun read and extremely witty.

I refer to this campaign as being a representation of the book, and I am not one to disrespect an author, so will be keeping the story as close as possible to the original. I will, of course, be expanding upon it as there needs to be a lot more events than what originally happened in the book for this to be made into a player-driven campaign. My husband has looked over the chapter summaries in which I've laid out the ideas so far and he thinks I have a lot of interesting things set up for the characters to do.

This is in no way an official project yet though. I'm still learning how to do most things. My motivation comes from other's feedback though, so I sincerely thank you for that!


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You need to keep filesize under 4mb to play on battle.net, and possibly if you're catering to dialup users. But having lots of doodads has almost no effect on filesize anyway.

Easy peasy, depending on how good you want it to look. You'd probably just have to create a big dust cloud and a unit in the middle of it instead of actually having them unburrow. That's an unfortunate limit with the models.
Just a quick mockup of how the trigger would look, presuming you're using GUI.

You could just make it cast un-burrow? Rather simple. . .

Ah, k, then what is the generally accepted size limit on single player campaigns?

I do notice my editor lags a bit when there's a lot of stuff on the map, whether it's units or doodads. My husband's computer has 2 gig RAM and 2 mhz processor and my computer is only slightly less powerful than his, but I don't experience any lag when using his editor, so go fig.

I'm just using the basic editor for now. If that's what you mean, then yes. Thank you for the code suggestion.

Is it just me, or did region displays get smaller and flatter? I remember them as big cubes several years ago. Then again, I could be thinking of something completely different. lol

That's the general idea, yeah, but I want the different models of burrow and unburrow to react differently to an approaching creature... if that's possible.


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For singleplayer, there is no limit on filesize. Go nuts.

Well, for mine I did 26.0Mb for ~7 hours of gameplay, so if you're going to really beef up the filesize, make sure it's worth the download.

I was more wondering if there was a general consensus in the community for what a decent single player campaign should or shouldn't be.

Oh, This Wreckage! That's that map that was recommended to me earlier, for some possible dynamic event ideas. But it's a sequel to When the Freedom Slips Away? Okay, then I'll get around to playing them both soon here. I'm currently in the middle of something else at the moment.


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You could, but not all units have animations for burrow. Which means they wouldn't be hidden when you approach them.