Dimon & Dionysus - a match made in Hell

Not too much going on, really. Its around that time again where everything starts piling up even if you didnt procrastinate. I unfortunately won't be able to work on TN until about Thursday or Friday of next week, but this doesn't really stop me from working on it in some way or another. Typically what I do is run ideas and dialogues through my head and refine them. Well, a day or two or three ago, I found this advertisement of this one mod in the making. Some of you may have seen it. The Moonlight Path. I briefly ran through their goals, plot and other stuff about their mod in development and it seemed overly ambitious to the point where I doubt it'll be done by the time the next toolset game comes out to replace NWN2. I'm not dissing the project or anything, but I think they may need to narrow the scope down some. And I've seen others make the same comment, and it'll likely be very difficult for them to attract other developers to their cause. It sounds like an interesting mod, but not really my thing. I'm personally not a big fan of completely non-linear games. Usually means relying on what you think is common sense or aimlessly walking around to the point of disinterest (Oblivion anyone?).

But now that I've sidetracked from the actual point. I saw some of their artwork which is fairly impressive, and then I saw the custom music involved for the module. It was developed by a guy named Stephen Kelly, and I'd have to say the guy is pretty talented. One of his works actually struck me with an inspirational idea that I really like. Unfortunately the song is far too short for the idea I had in mine, but I can just the see the scene in vivid detail. The song I'm referring to is called Violin Composition (Link: http://www.freewebs.com/filezupload3/ ).

But before I go on to the idea, I would like to introduce a new character, which you'll hear plenty of in Chapter 2, usually in absolute disgust or unworthy praise. His name is Dimon, the tharchion of Tyraturos. The concept of Dimon was iffy the first time I shaped him, but I've recently reconstructed him into something more fitting, and now he has much more character. Have any of you ever heard of Dionysus? Likely I may have mis-spelled it, but Dionysus is the god of wine in Greek mythology. However, he wasn't known simply for wine. Often times, sex was involved, and not your typical passionate ones either - more like your angry and wild ones. Dimon is much like this. He is a snotty-nosed noble with an interest in wine and sex. He's also rather paranoid of those who might try to steal his power, but that discussion is for another time. And being a level 5 (and a noble), he's more of a coward than an actual warrior of merit.

(In the Unapproachable East, it briefly mentions Dimon as having been a devout of Waukeen until Bane returned. Whenever Bane came back, he came sprawling to him on all fours, and started imposing heavier taxes and other unfair laws.)

Dimon is certainly one of the more interesting characters in Tyraturos, you'll come across.

So what is this idea, you ask? Well, the more I actually thought about the idea - the more I saw it incorporated into other games as well. BG2, Jade Empire, MotB all had this idea, but never really took it very far (with the exception of JE). The idea is to create a play - of what kind, I am currently running ideas on. Classical, moral, Shakespearian, Tragedy, I'm not sure yet. I was even contemplating whether to make a contest of some sort and let others write it, but its not likely to attract anyone and if it does, it'll probably be a Comedy that's more appalling than funny, or way outside the scope of NWN2.

The player would first see the play during one of Dimon's celebrations, where he finds another way to tax everyone for entertainment, usually geared to the noble side. Dimon has other means of taxing like the Blood Ring where people can pay to watch Gnolls and Orcs tear into each other's flesh with an occassional catch (a human or some other foul beastie) added into the fray as well. I won't mention why the player is there; I'll let you guys speculate. But I think it would be rather interesting if there were NPCs on the stage acting out a play.

Is this idea completely stupid, outside the scope of NWN2 or brilliantly clever? I'm not sure, but I would like to hear your comments on it. It's an idea running through my head at the moment, so it can easily be changed or removed.

1 comments:

  dirtywick

February 29, 2008 at 6:18 PM

It's not a bad idea. A key it so to keep it short.

One thing you could do with it is have it more of an "in city" thing where Dimon wouldn't know about it, and the play changes to make fun of him if the PC does something that makes him look bad, or whatever.

Personally, what I think would be more fun is if Dimon wrote it as a comedy but it was appallingly awful, but everyone is too scared to admit it...