Villainous Non-Entity General
I had an idea this morning which got me thinking.
The “Non-Entity General” is one of those weird tropes that I imagine most people don’t consider. I mean, I didn’t. I always thought it was weird when I was actually given a character to play in a strategy game.
And it took me a while to get used to “Hero” units.
Since I’ve been playing a ton of new and classic strategy games for the PC, I had this weird thought about the dungeon as a base, with the dungeon’s villain as a base commander of sorts. Hardly original, of course.
I mean, Dungeon Keeper is based on the premise.
What made this approach in thinking different was imagining the dungeon’s villain training units to send against the Player Characters. How often can a villain train units? What’s the resource cost? How powerful a unit can be produced?
Specifically, I have a powerful drow matron who’s holed up at the bottom of a corrupted temple to a God of Magic and Knowledge.
It’s basically a setup for Master of Magic.
In this case, the PCs represent a barbarian faction or wandering monsters, and the drow matron is the Player-wizard. What kind of unit does a squad of 6-12 dark elves represent? Are they a significant investment? How often should they be sent against the party? What cheap fodder is available to wear down the PCs?
Here’s a better question: what’s the villain’s intelligence like in the dungeon? She’ll essentially be playing a defensive game — she has an evil plan and only needs to stall the PCs long enough to complete her objective.
In that case, I should consider next how her scout parties will work, and where they’ll be. How do they report in? How effectively can she scry on the heroes to keep track of where they are?
As much as I wish I could make greater use of traps, I’ve honestly avoided them more than ever because my thinking is they pose a greater ongoing threat to the dungeon’s INHABITANTS than to invaders (the PCs in this case).
I suppose I should be more lenient and allow the inherent weirdness of D&D to fill in some of these gaps, but I have a logical mind and my thinking tends to be fairly linear, so I want to answer these questions.
Incidentally, I have contrived circumstances that will allow the villain to do things like train new units to send against the PCs, because time is one of those things that should always be on the villain’s side (never the players’).
Sinister!
It also didn’t help that early “hero” units were not well implemented; they usually meant a unit that you stuck in a corner and didn’t do anything with because you’d lose the scenario if they died. Ah, Age of Empires 2!
RTS games were notoriously bad about heroes. They were super-annoying in Warcraft 2 and Starcraft. C&C was a little better, I think, with “Tanyas” and uh, “Crazy Ivan?” Being able to mass-produce heroes was cool.
WC3 made things a _little_ better by being able to rez heroes at a rez station, but it didn’t change how stupid it was for them to be required for missions and yet capable of dying. Generally, you could rez only the disposable ones.
I still prefer the quasi-disposable ones you get in Master of Magic. You want to nurture those suckers and give them awesome magic items that you find or enchant yourself. And you can make artifacts! SCORE
Tanya was at least capable enough that when you sent her into a fray, she’d hold her own against anything but heavy weaponry, tanks and multiple dogs. Plus, missions with her were usually specially laid out and didn’t fit the normal build + swarm mission template. In fact, it’s impressive how well she was implemented compared to contemporary “hero” characters in RTS games. I’m looking at you, Joan of Arc!
But yeah, there’s definitely a difference between “Here is a hero at your disposal” and “You are represented on the battlefield by this hero; don’t die.”
On the other hand, you have a truly amazing and possible unique example of a 1st person RTS with the old Battlezone remake, in which you not only were walking/flying around on the battlefield and fighting, you were pointing to locations and saying “Hey, base, set up shop there” and “Hey, base, build me these units and send them here”.
(also, I’m kind of amazed Tanya doesn’t come up more in “women in video games” discussions. She was a total badass!)
Which reminds me about a discussion we had a zillion years ago about manufacturing artifacts. I was so glad to find at least ONE video game example where you could enchant your own!
Even a CORNER case can be used to analyze and maybe even create a precedent. Trying to ask, “has anyone ever done X?” and getting the answer of “no” can be depressing. Master of Magic is a trailblazer!
Woo! (Well, kinda.)
Aw, man, I’d forgotten that part! MoM was so cool. It really deserved better.
I think Tanya deserves a special mention in Gamergate arguments because she was a major character in the story and also an awesome unit to command on the battlefield. She was certainly more memorable than most of the idiot dudes who showed up at various other points.
The only other characters I remember were . . . Yuri? And uh, Einstein? And didn’t George Takei and/or Tim Curry play characters at some point? I know C&C had some pretty outlandish casting at some point, I might be conflating franchises though.
I knew some dudes who had serious crushes on Tanya though. More than those with crushes on Samus, at that.
It didn’t hurt that Tanya had a pretty attractive actress playing her in the cutscenes. I don’t really remember any of the other C&C characters, except for Stalin and the Boris & Natasha couple.
As far as MoM is concerned, I’ve decided to expand and revise the upper levels of my magic system to incorporate certain “global” enchantments and effects. It gave me a context in which to interpret some of the really “Big Magic” that appears in fiction and games. Like Magic: the Gathering.
It’s exciting. I wish I had something more concrete to share though.
Given the setup, I would think that Drow would be considered expensive and not something to waste, slave/mercenary troops on the other hand can be expended with little care.
Traps should be used to channel the enemy (the PC) into routes controlled by the defense. Things such as magical glyphs can be set to ignore Drow and so lessen “friendly fire” incidents. Other traps can be marked in ways that are semi-obvious to the defenders, but not (initially at least) to the attackers.
These are all very good points which I will need to consider carefully. The magical traps ignoring drow is maybe the BEST point, since I had forgotten about them completely. My players will be in for some nasty surprises.
Mercenaries may take some hits if they don’t follow orders to avoid locations specifically warded to prevent entry. But that just means fewer mercenaries to consider on the monthly expense reports.