Customize Character History (Hooks/Aspects)

[Rexx]

I really like the random generation of backstory and the hooks they provide characters but I noticed they don't change at all if you replace the backstory with a custom one or modify what was generated.

It would be cool if there was an option to modify the Hooks or Aspects for a character to better suit the background or concept you are going for. I've been playing around with this in Dev Mode and I'm not 100% sure if they changes I've made are taken to effect. The UI doesn't update at all with those changes and while the randomly generated aspects are gone from the character they still appear under Hooks, even if I add new ones.

It's just a thought for if I want to make a more accurate version of my friends, iconic characters, myself, or a parent/child character. Aside from that I've been really enjoying all the game has to offer and am interested in messing around with the modkit when I have some free time.

[Worldwalker Games]

Yeah, we don't support that right now but it's a popular request so we'll most likely make it happen.

[Rexx]

Sounds good! I'm glad to hear

[quantum0d0]

Plus one for this . . . and all character personality features. I think it's what stands out about this game more than anything else. ALL of it is awesome, but the individual character stories and social interactions with each other . . . I think that's sort of the heart of 'Lord of the Rings' and the whole fantasy genre. I could go on, and often do, but yes - thumbs up for this suggestion.

[davea]

FWIW, personality (loner, leader, etc) can be adjusted any time. Some people like this and some don't. Hooks are more rare and some of them lead to valuable, unique quests, but it might be OK for people to swap them a little.

[Meanwhile]

Originally posted by davea:

FWIW, personality (loner, leader, etc) can be adjusted any time. Some people like this and some don't. Hooks are more rare and some of them lead to valuable, unique quests, but it might be OK for people to swap them a little.

Is there a guide for this somewhere? I assume it requires cheat mode.

For basic personality aspects (including sexual orientation), it seems an odd design decision to force randomness on everyone in the game proper, but then hand everyone the keys and say, "just kidding, you can change it if you want to." People who want to control these things are going to do what it takes to adjust their characters.

Wouldn't it be better just to have these editable in-game, right at character creation? Even without using cheat mode, I'm sure there are plenty of people who reroll until they get the personality traits they desire. Why put the player through all that?

[davea]

Do you mean adjusting personality values like loner? There are buttons right in the UI for this, which you can use (or decline to use) any time. In the character sheet, click "stats", and click "show" under personality. The arrows let you raise or lower the personality values. If you have developer/cheat mode active, there are more buttons to allow more precise changes.

Many people want to change these values as soon as the character is created, which you can do. Some people want to change these later in the game, for RP reasons, for example to increase their leadership stat after they have done something leader-like, or to increase their loner stat if a friend gets killed.

Some people are bothered by the presence of these buttons and I guess the best we can say is, "don't use them if it bothers you." If there are enough people who are bothered by it, maybe there could be a game setting so these buttons are available only right after a character is created.

[Meanwhile]

Ugh, yes, I found those buttons soon after writing my post. Because *of course* they aren't under Customize where literally every other editable characteristic is located. So there's a suggestion -- put all the parts you can customize under Customize. And it's still annoying that sexual orientation is not editable.

But everything I said goes for hooks and themes as well. If someone wants to make a specific character a wolfman, there's no reason to make them jump through extra hoops outside the game to make that happen. People who like it random can leave it alone, as you said.

[davea]

I agree that sexual orientation should be visible and editable.

If you would like your character to have the wolf theme, you can use developer/cheat mode to add that easily. You don't need to go through hoops outside the game, unless you consider activating this mode to be a "hoop". To activate this mode, just create an empty file with the name steamapps\common\Wildermyth/devmode.txt. Then when you start the game, you will find many additional buttons. One new button is under aspects, where you can add any theme part you like.

[Trekopep]

Hm, putting personality stats in the customize tab as well makes sense (or at least, mentioning there that you can edit them via the stats tab). Sexual orientation/gender customization should be in for the next patch in a few weeks. It's been on our list, it just took a while for us to get around to it.

Hooks and themes, we're more tentative on. The main reason we're okay with all the other customizations is they don't affect actual gameplay too much, it mostly just impacts what heroes say or how they act. Allowing players to give their heroes themes right off the bat would remove the fun of trying to find those transformations via in-game events, and (even if they were "unlockable" or something) would also allow you to basically make whatever kind of party build you wanted easily, which would remove the usual challenge that the randomization in the game brings. You can already kind of do that by having legacy heroes with themes, but it's more effort, and being able to keep the theme is sort of a reward for putting in that effort.

Hooks are a little more reasonable, but again, it directly impacts which hook quests you get. It'd allow you to kind of cheese the game, and would probably end up with players coming up with a group of three hooks that are "best" and that you should always choose, which we really don't want.

[davea]

Let's consider themes separately from hooks for a moment. For themes, I agree with the current behavior: without using developer/cheat mode, the user cannot add themes, but when using developer/cheat mode, it is easy to add themes. As long as I am willing to "admit" I am cheating, I can easily try some theme even if it is hard to achieve in real play.

For hooks, it is not possible to add hooks either with or without developer/cheat mode. It is not that important to me, but "it would be nice" to be able to add hooks in developer/cheat mode. If you added that, I am sure we would also like a way to trigger the related hook quest immediately, otherwise we would never be guaranteed to see the effect of the hook.

[Trekopep]

Hooks are actually just aspects (they all start with "hook_"), so you can add them in dev mode via the aspects tab. Then, to trigger the hook quest, you can just cheat one of that hero's relationships to be really high, and enable Pick Events to pick the right hook quest when it happens. (That's how we test hook quests in development)

[davea]

OK, I didn't realize it was possible to force the hook quests already. Thanks!

[douglasaustin88]

Yeah, I'll just echo what Trekopep says in regards to hooks, particularly. We left out hook-customization because we believed it would lead to bad-feeling optimization, and a sense of being required to take specific hooks to build the perfect Tank/Assassin/etc., or in order to "compete" with the rest of the community for Most Powerful Character.

Ultimately, maybe we should just make it possible, since it can be a nice story tool, if you're trying to create a specific character, and misuse (or repurposing, to put it more fairly) of that tool in order to min-max characters is something the player elects to do, and only affects them. We might be cutting off our nose to spite our face. I'm sure we'll revisit this decision, and I'd think it's likely that customizing hooks will be possible some time in the future.

[Syrris]

If you can do it via the dev console then it's not out of reach, just kind of hidden from the player.

Here's an idea: allow a 'theme game' start in which the player CAN customize everything (hooks, themes, etc) by the rules - but if you do this, the characters don't go into legacy at the end. It's explicitly standalone. (To clarify, characters recruited during the run don't end up in legacy either.)

[Stele]

I'm just finding out that I have multiple legacy heroes that have the Loyal hook as their 3rd unresolved hook, and since they have had children, they cannot ever complete it.

Likewise, one character has Integrity remaining but they have a transformation that conflicts with skeletal already, so stuck with 2 hooks forever.

I guess I'll have to figure out how to use dev mode or they'll be stuck with 2/3 forever...

Assuming the wiki (https://wildermyth.com/wiki/Hook) is right of course.