Introduction
As you’re sailing the War Seas, your sheer incompetence has made it so your crew having a near-death experience is a regular occurrence, though it’s not like you don’t have your triumph once in a while. After realizing how low the morale of your crew is, as most of the time they open their mouth it seems to be just for an audible complaint, you dock near a tavern. You have plenty to do on this island anyway, so you’ll be away for quite a while.
You meet back with your crew, with a player listening to the dialog among them.
They ask if all they tell is true, and you confirm it is. Though the level gap between the two of you is immense, they can’t help but be impressed or even excited to take on some of those feats themselves. It really isn’t anything new to you, but comments like this are nice.
As an extra comment they added that your crew was worried about you actually returning.
As you set sail for new adventures, your crew seems in a better mood.
The Idea
Generally, to make your crew feel more alive and individual.
And to also regularly give them breaks considering how near-death
experiences at sea without stop will result in your crew being dissatisfied.
I would attach gameplay changes to upsetting your crew, but nah.
That’s dumb and it drags the player down for no reason.
“Thats the intent, it’s to make the crew feel like a crew.”
Table of Contents
Taverns & Crew Breaks
“It also encourages player to treat their crew like… crew?
and give them breaks and such.”
In each major town there will be a tavern, if you docked your ship within proximity of a tavern depending on how long you’ve been away from your ship and crew a variety of different things happen.
Stage 0. 0-10 minutes.
Stage 0 will have your crew stay present on your ship until they despawn naturally.
This stage will remain until you’ve been away for 10 minutes.
They won’t have much fluff dialogue or anything while you’re away, just waiting on you.
This is usually enough to bring negative morale back to just very low morale.
(Elaboration on morale later.)
Stage 1. 10-20 minutes.
Stage 1 is when your crew appears in the nearby tavern if there is one, they won’t
talk to anyone just yet but they’ll be sitting comfortably and having a drink.
This is usually enough to bring negative morale back to just low morale.
Stage 2. 20 minutes-1 hour.
Stage 2 is when players can actually talk to your crew, they’ll talk about your various feats.
I’ll elaborate more on how they know what to talk about later.
This is enough to bring negative morale to neutral morale.
Stage 3. 1 hour+
Stage 3 is when your crew starts showing concern for your increasingly long absence.
Inbetween the usual dialogue they’ll express concern and worry about their captain.
No change in morale.
When you return from a regular absence, your crew will be delighted to return back to sea.
When you return from an increasingly long absence, they’ll be relieved you’re alright before
asking to set sail.
If you board your ship without going into the tavern first, a ship bell will ring and then they’ll
appear. This doesn’t slow down how quickly they get back on the ship, it’s just an extra neat detail.
Cycling through topics.
How the “topics” system would work.
You have 10 topics assigned to your save file, ranked from the most important to least.
All topics are categorized so for example if you sink a Pirate Sailboat and Fortified Assassin Ketch
it’ll replace it in the list.
I won’t elaborate much further but categories could be naval combat, fishing, etc.
The list is cleared each time after a crew break, when they get to talk about it in a tavern.
Otherwise it’ll just stay how it is.
Morale & Shanties
“The punishment for bad sailing is being forced to listen to the cries of those damned by your poor performance.”
High Morale
Regular breaks, high proficiency ( being good at combat on sea or land. ) and not dying in the presence of your crew will generally yield high morale.
Your crew will generally be more enthusiastic.
Shanties
Various sea shanties will be sung when your crew has high morale.
These shanties can be just general sea shanties, town-specific ( when your entire crew and/or
all your deckhands are from the same town or originate from the same town. ), clan-specific ( can be made up by the clan leader ) and specific to the Assassin’s Syndicate and Grand Navy.
These will generally be taking place during long periods of just nothing happening.
Battlecries
When entering ship combat or boarding, your crew will utter a battle cry before engaging or
charging to the other ship in the case of boarding.
These will more be based off personality than origin. Personality will be elaborated on later.
Neutral Morale
This is for more general stuff, this still takes place during high morale.
Your crew will be less enthusiastic if you are at neutral morale.
Banter & Fluff Dialogue
During idle periods of sailing; when nothing’s going on, some members of your crew will attempt to initiate some kind of idle banter or spout some random fluff dialogue.
EXAMPLES from my other post ( Fluff only, I’m not good at writing banter… I think. ) :
“Do we even have food onboard?”
“If I had to keep track of how many times this ship bumped into something, I would’ve already lost track.”
“Is anyone keeping track of the amount of kills (name) is racking up?”
“Man, I could go for a drink right now.”
Rumours
Sometimes your crew will talk about rumours they heard of their origin town, relating to secrets.
EXAMPLES from my other post :
“Y’know, I’ve always thought one of the more eastmost spires in the jaws was… just a bit conspicuous.”
“Just a rumour, but apparently someone found a huge skeletal structure somewhere in the Frostmill tundra.”
Low Morale
As your proficiency wavers, so will the crew’s confidence in you.
Some will be fearful, some will scold you and some will criticise you.
This is based off their personality.
Any hint of enthusiasm in their dialogue has faded, all that remains is doubt.
Negative Morale
You’ve proven to be incompetent and your crew is suffering for it.
Nobody criticises you anymore, they just don’t want to be here anymore.
All you can hear is the screams and crying from your crew.
They don’t want to be here anymore.
Your crew has PTSD from how bad you are at the game, that’s about what the lines should be. Regardless of personality.
Personality & Origins
“Seems fine imo, all of their dialogues are basically the same currently, despite being different from each other, making it seem like they’re the same person that I both recruited and parted ways.” -Breaded_Butter
Deckhands now have an origin town and personality assigned to them as well, personality will affect their dialogue.
Disclaimer : The town you recruit a deckhand from isn’t always their origin town. If they’re a traveller from elsewhere, there should be a slight dialogue hint in their recruitment.
Personality
Personality determines the tone of your crew in their lines, unless they feel like a unified force or they’re broken.
And with crew I’m referring to deckhands.
The various crews you get in the game aren’t really gonna have a distinct personality that carries over.
Potential Examples of Personalities : Brave, Skeptical, Savage, Honorable, Patriotic, etc.
Patriotic would also tie into origins.
Origins
Each recruited deckhand has an origin town, they’ll know rumours specific to that town and be
aware of its culture and traditions at sea.
This of course applies to crews too, as they’re obviously from a single town.
I don’t know how that would apply to the Sailors from Sailor’s Lodge though, as they seem
quite diverse in origin.
Credits
@anon904914 , for going into further discussion in the original post this post was based off of.
( original post : Stupid Ideas Volume 3. Regarding Deckhands)
Some self-commentary I thought about.
"These seem like suggestions relating to dynamic NPCs.."
What? No! People can’t attack your crew while on break and neither can they attack them.
Also… they’re stationary for the most part. Though you could argue that the “them going to the tavern” thing means they’re dynamic, it uh… doesn’t.
"The introduction makes it unclear what you're actually trying to talk about."
I admit, I might have written a bit too much. Like, I didn’t include deckhand personality or sea shanties in the introduction but you probably got the main gist, it’s supposed to make your crew… feel alive?
does writers block apply to suggestions
because honestly writing this is a bit mentally draining
the reason the personality and origins feel a bit rushed is i’ve been writing this for about 2 hours now, doing a complete revision from my last one as it didn’t seem clear.
if there’s anything, it’s probably in my other post if i forgot to mention
i also didn’t put anything as effort, quality and reasonability because i’d be pretty biased
and i want to avoid bias