Westgate: Behind the Scenes, Part 2

Well, I can now reveal that my wife and I went to Las Vegas for her birthday this past weekend. It was a first time for both of us, and we had a blast. We're not big gamblers, so the only cash we lost was on the entertainment and meals. I bought us tickets to see Cirque du Soleil: KA at the MGM Grand on her actual birthday, and it was an amazing show. Other than that, it was just experiencing the city, which is rather unique in my experiences.

And then I got to update my US graph below to now include Nevada. Moving on...

Mysteries of Westgate
So last time I told the story of how Charissa came into existence. Now I'll give my take on the character and describe what I was trying to accomplish with her. Note that there are MoW spoilers below.

One of the things I try to do with most of the major characters I write is to make them three dimensional and lifelike to the extent that can be done in a game. Note, I said major characters, which describes only a very few, but Charissa definitely fell within this group.

Many people who play MoW and spend little time talking to Charissa will probably view her as opinionated, caustic, judgemental, and rigid in her thinking, and she would no doubt be proud to know she projects that image, but the crux of her character is that she is profoundly unsure of herself. In fact, she is in the throes of a deep internal philosophical crisis. It's what I now call a "Charissa moment." I recently had one, and I bet most people have one at some point in their life.

Essentially, this occurs when two "truths," often formulated during the simplistic idealism of youth, become no longer compatible in a single world. For Charissa, these two truths are that (1) her parents are innocent of the crime they are accused of (aiding in the kidnapping of Falucca Ardabrent) and (2) justice is an absolute principle. When her parents were arrested, she inately believed that they were innocent. When they were then found guilty, she began to search for answers, eventually arriving at the Tyrran church that promised justice would triumph. She has tried to merge these into a single universe, but over time, these two competing principles have proven unable to coexist, and no matter how long she searches, she cannot find a way to force them to. Fundamentally, if justice is universally true, then how do her innocent parents sit behind bars?

This, then, is the core of her restlessness. She believes that if she can find the pirate captain, Pharros Sneed, he will have the explanation as to how everything can be made right. He is the one who can prove her parents' innocence and allow justice to prevail. That is her sole mission, and anything else she engages in either is a means towards that end or serves as a proxy for it. (In other words, by destroying other evil-doers, she vicariously destroys her own.)

Charissa has, of course, reacted to this profound self-doubt by giving off an air of supreme confidence. She is determined to allow no one else to see her weakness. That is why, contrary to what one might expect, she lambasts Mantides and goes easy on Rinara. In Mantides, she sees a reflection of herself, and she handles that reflection the same as she does everything else she doesn't like: by bludgeoning it to a pulp. Though Rinara's world view is one she can never agree with, the certainty with which Rinara holds it is calming to her. As she says during one of the companion exchanges, "she'd rather be around with someone who knows what they believe - even if it is wrong - than one who is wavering in their belief."

This also explains one of the most controversial aspects of the character: namely during the Tyrran Enclave quest, why does a lawful good character abandon the slaves to their fate simply for vengeance? That's not lawful good! It's more like evil!

First, one must understand the Tyrran mindset is one that stresses justice first, so I never believed the choice here is all that clear-cut for a Tyrran. That being said, I would still think saving the slaves first is the more preferable choice. However, and this is key, Charissa is not a perfect example of her religion. Regardless of whatever principles the religion espouses, in this instance, the shock of at last finding Falucca overrides any thought of right and wrong. Here is a woman who can prove her parents' innocence, and she will apprehend her regardless of the consequences. I guess I could agree with giving her an alignment shift in the evil and chaotic directions, but I wouldn't agree that temporarily allowing one's passions to overcome one's mind is a reason to change alignments entirely. This is perhaps Charissa's most human moment in my opinion. The world is full of imperfect people who imperfectly live according to the values of their religion, even when they legitimately hold those values dear.

I have over time become wary of what is often termed "navel-gazing" characters, so there is no point that Charissa ever actually spells any of this out. Rather, one would need to talk with her often, look for subtle clues, and use their own human intuition to glean any of it. For those who simply want to get to the adventure and forget talking to the companions, they'll never get more than a surface-layer view of any of them, and that means the image Charissa projects will be the only one they see (just like real human relationships). But those who spend time with her should pick up several clues, such as the one mentioned above with Mantides and Rinara, that should reveal there is more to the character than just the bombastic, self-righteous priestess.

As an aside, Charissa's quest, the Tyrran Enclave, explores many themes. The obvious one is the fate of Charissa's parents and the beginning of her final resolution of her "Charissa moment." But there's something else for Charissa there. As her two key principles begin to come together, a third one gets added: compassion (or mercy). No matter which way she deals with Sneed, she has begun a process, which she articulates immediately after leaving the Tyrran shrine, in which she begins to think about the roles mercy and compassion have in her religion. The player isn't meant to be able to guide her along to think exactly as they do; Charissa's already too experienced and independent an adventurer to be led around by the nose. But she has begun a process of introspection that will lead to greater wisdom (important for a priestess).

There are other themes as well: love, fate, redemption, justice, and questions of the greater good. The first two are explored in the story of Falucca and Sneed, the third and fourth in Sneed's subsequent life, and the final one in how the player chooses to deal with the slaves and Falucca. Sneed's ultimate fate is not meant to be an easy choice for the player. (Obviously, Charissa is the one who makes that choice, but the player gets to advocate one way or the other.) As a pirate captain, it can be assumed that Sneed engaged in all kinds of theft, rape, pillaging, and murder, even if he is innocent of Falucca's abduction. However, he changed his ways several years ago and has since acted for the benefit of mankind. Does any future good he might do outweigh his past crimes? Is there any good to be done in punishing a man who has a clear track record of having mended his ways? Does that even matter since his past crimes have thus far gone unpunished?

As for the question of the greater good, many people probably view that as saving the slaves. It's certainly the more immediate good, but if Falucca escapes to set up shop elsewhere, there may be hundreds or even thousands of people who are sold into a lifetime of slavery as a result. So which is worse: killing ten people or enslaving thousands? Of course, there are other considerations such as the definite knowledge that the ten will die versus the hypothetical scenario that thousands will be sold into slavery, but that only adds a further dimension to the dilemma. One of the things I really wanted for this quest was to present choices that weren't easy or obvious. Hopefully, I succeeded.

Next time, I'll give some incite on the origins and intents regarding the other three sidequests I designed.

Westgate: Behind the Scenes, Part 1

Maimed God Update
Progress has been slow. I was sent on another business trip to Alaska last week, which meant zero progress was made. At the end of this week, I'll be taking my wife somewhere for her birthday. It's a surprise, and she sometimes reads this blog, so I'll have to reveal exactly where later on. Then it looks like I might have another business trip after that.

But yesterday I did manage to thoroughly test one of the areas I hadn't tested all that much yet, so I think it's pretty good for now. In addition, I finished writing a new dialog for a new "flavor NPC." Essentially, after working to add content to Act II, I thought some of the areas in Act III were bare in comparison. So more content got added.

Anyway, I have some more targeted testing this week, and then I think I'm going to do one more complete pass-through of Act III and then it's on to campaign-level testing.

Mysteries of Westgate
Since progress on TMGS is slow and I can't post screenies of Act III anyway without spoiling the hell out of the adventure, I'm going to turn to a subject I've been patiently waiting to write about: some behind-the-scenes of the Westgate development. Note that this is not going to delve into the whole "why was it delayed" saga. I almost definitely don't know everything, and what I do know is secret. However, I will reveal how I became involved and what my thoughts were as the project came together: essentially a Developer's Diary but after-the-fact. Right now, I envision this being a four-part series, but this could change if I think up more interesting content.

The Beginning, or How I Became Involved
It was January, 2007, and I had just handed in my resignation for my previous real-world job. During the time I was cleaning out my desk and ticking down my final days, I had little to do, and so on a whim, I logged into my hotmail account and - a very rare event - I checked my trash bin to see if any legitimate messages had been caught by the spam filter. Yes, I was very bored.

Well, in between all the advertisements for penis enlargements and new methods to make my girl happy, I saw a note from Alazander. Thinking back, it was odd that it got flagged as spam, as we had exchanged a couple e-mails previously in regards to some comments he made about "Saleron's Gambit," but there it was. Fortunately, it was only a couple days old at that point, so I could still answer in a reasonably-timely manner. Opening the messgae, I was surprised to learn that he was now involved in Ossian (like everyone, I had played DoD), and there were some openings coming up. They needed a scripter, but they also might need a new developer, and would I be interested? After a few e-mails, I had a phone interview with Alan Miranda, who mentioned that, though he hadn't played the SG series, he had noticed that SG V was rated right under DoD on the new modules charts (#1 and #2 - yes, I remember). By the end of the conversation, I was in. It was only left to decide in what capacity.

Of course, I would have done either the scripter or the designer jobs, but I mentioned I'd rather be a designer. As it turns out, one of their designers ended up leaving the team later that week, and I was slotted into his place. Honestly, I don't remember who that was, but I do remember he was someone pretty well known in the NWN community at the time, and he had developed some mods on his own that I had heard of. Thanks to him whoever he was...

The Birth of Charissa Maernos
So within days, I was in heavy planning. The storyline for Westgate had been finished for a while, and most of the sidequests were planned as well, but very little content had actually been done in the toolset. I was probably only one to two weeks behind in actual toolset time. Anyway, I needed to quickly come up with a companion and several sidequests, get them approved, and start writing.

I already knew that two of the companions were a fighter named Mantides and a rogue named Rinara, so I thought up a character concept for a wizard, but when I spoke with Luke, there was silence on the other end of the phone, at which point he said that because of the heavy undead content in the story, they'd rather have a divine healer.

As an aside, prior to my involvement, the third companion was going to be a female bard named, I believe, Eudice. Because bards have access to healing spells, this was agreed to even though bards are not technically divine casters. I got the impression, however, that bard was not the preferred class for the third companion (strictly my impression here), and they didn't need to worry with me. At the time, I didn't much care for bards, although my feelings on the class have modified recently for the better. What it did do was pin down the gender of the companion. As Eudice was female, a female voice actress had already been hired, so that placed an additional restraint on my companion.

So it was now back to the drawing board. Keep in mind that this was all pre-MotB, so there was no Favored Soul or Spirit Shaman, so the list of divine casters (minus bards) was Cleric, Druid, Paladin, and Ranger. Rangers aren't much in terms of spell-casting. Neither are paladins, and this would have trampled on Mantides' back-story anyway, so that left Cleric and Druid, and I just decided that Cleric worked better in a city-based adventure. Honestly, this didn't thrill me, as I was then writing a novel centered around a female cleric, but I set to work doing what I could.

It was around this time that I decided I didn't have the patience to write a novel and so changed TMGS to be a NWN2 module instead. However, I liked the protagonist I had envisioned, Sheridan Steele, and so I took most of her mannerisms and ported them over to the new companion. In TMGS, the novel, Sheridan was a tall, blonde, Amazonian, tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners enforcer who had trained with an elite cadre of paladins in her home town of Neverwinter. There, she had learned to use both a tower shield and a warhammer. In the only battle scene I had written to that point, I had envisioned one of her favorite battle tactics as essentially bull-rushing opponents with her tower shield, pinning them up against walls, and using her weight to bash them into submission. She was also left-handed (unfortunately unable to be duplicated in NWN), and this made her tough to handle, as her blows came from the opposite direction that most adversaries expected. In demeanor, Sheridan was unyielding and merciless... at least to begin with. This created the basis for tension with her companion, Tancred, who was deeply distrustful of the Tyrran church.

So those who have played Westgate can see how Sheridan became Charissa, but only externally. I was determined that I would not give Ossian that character in case I wanted to come back to her in the future, and so I resolved that the new character would have a different name and a different backstory. When I release my character creation guide for TMGS, one of my hints will be to not make the character from Waterdeep because the story doesn't work if the character already has contacts in that city. I already knew this, of course, and so I deliberately chose Waterdeep as the home of my new character, as this would force me to think beyond the character I had already created.

So I downloaded the Waterdeep source book from the Ossian server and began to just read. I'm not sure I can really outline how all the ideas began to come together from there, but the pirate theme from Westgate's lore combined with the Waterdhavian nobility to coalesce into a new backstory that featured both aspects as well as slave-trading. Looking through the businesses of all the noble houses of Waterdeep, I saw that the Maernos family had once specialized in slave-trading, though it is now illegal in Waterdeep I believe. From there the name and backstory just worked itself out.

Because I was already working on TMGS in a couple forms, I didn't want Charissa to be a Tyrran. Originally, she was a Lathanderite, but this was vetoed by Alazander because of the heavy inclusion of the Lathanderite church in MoW. On my own, I tried to work Charissa into the churches of Ilmater and several others before reluctantly coming to the conclusion that, because her backstory dealt with the theme of justice or lack thereof, Tyr made the most sense. Thus, in a sense, when Charissa mentions to the player that she tried several different churches before settling on Tyr, it's the truth.

So by mid-February of 2007, Charissa had been born in her final form. Next time, I'll give my interpretation of the character. Despite her apparent one dimensional nature, she is actually the most complex character I've written to date, though some in TMGS will best her. But all that's for another post.