A story from a story

The title implies a bit of 'nesting', and you suppose correctly here. One thing that does bother me some about City of Heroes, is that once you've gone through their storylines, stepping through them again loses some of the sense of wonder and anticipation that accompanied the first time. The game loses a touch of it's mystique, and the game tends to repeat itself.

One way I've found to help myself with the sense of wonder is to look at the story arcs and try to modify them to fit a derivation of the story as is. For me this means mentally tweaking the clues and the information of the contacts, or finding a potential new connection between villain groups. Thus the story idea in the previous post, which in part was motivated by some in-game role-playing between StarWyng and Red Pulsarion. A good story as such branches readily, but you can always see the core, or trunk if you will, story supporting the branches.

Ideas for stories come from all over. In the above example, Red was slowly building to an explosion, and in the player's mind, Red was going to be transported to the rikti homeworld to detonate and cause as much damage as possible. StarWyng was appalled, and argued against the idea. Masonry, who in this discussion played a great Iago to StarWyng's Othello, suggested she go there and see the enemy truly for what they were.

To everyone's surprise Star did that, and came back with a nemesis stealth robot that had been acting as a block leader (think SS in the 1930's-40's, the Khmer Rouge in the 1970's-80's-90s' in Cambodia under Pol Pot, or Stalinist Russia ). A firefight ensued and Star noticed that the "leader" was steaming. A closer look revealed the truth of the matter, and she took the machine as evidence of what she found. Now Rusty Gears and Equilibria ("Kit" to her friends) are scrambling to develop a radiation suit to protect Red. SapphireKnight is starting to plan on running down something that is bothering him about the group that oversees Red's activities, the FBSA (Federal Bureau of Super-powered Affairs). The story has started growing on its own.

The upshot of everything is that you can breathe new life into the storylines with just a tweak of your own imagination and a willingness to look beyond exactly what is written. And the best part is if you have friends willing to go on the ride with you and share their imaginations. Thanks, guys.