Games Infiltration - A Choose Your Own Adventure Story

[Mojoman]

Chapter 1: Just Another Day on the Job.

Agent's Code Name: Mayhem
Mission Date: May 25th, 1998
Mission Objective: Infiltrate Nod Research Centre, extract any essential data, disable research centre.

Background: It is the middle of the First Tiberium War. Nod is now working out in the open. Several poorer nations have put their backing behind Nod. The media has begun to turn against GDI, the town of Białystok has turned into a firestorm of accusations against GDI for crimes against humanity.

With Nod feeling confident, they've begun to make mistakes. Recently, intelligence officers have uncovered a Nod research centre about 25 miles outside of Salzburg, Austria, near the town of Traschwandt. There have been reports of people and livestock disappearing from Traschwandt, but the local officials have been suspiciously quiet on this matter. A Tiberium field appeared about two months ago and has been spreading at a higher rate than usual.

Choice:

Mayhem is currently on a stealth plane preparing to land near the research centre. How should he do it?

1. Nod has set up a small base near the research centre, on the side of the Tiberium field opposite of Traschwandt. The base is lightly defended and consists of an Airfield, a Hand of Nod, and a power plant.

2. Land in the Tiberium Field. Mayhem's field suit can protect him for a short time from Tiberium exposure. Aerial intelligence has not verified any threats, but movement has been seen in the field.

3. Land at Traschwandt. There is no official Nod presence in the town. However, the villagers are on edge and the local officials have turned a blind eye to the disappearances of persons and livestock.

Inventory: Tiberium field suit
.50 cal silenced sniper rifle (6 bullets)
C4 charges (2)
Mossberg 500 shotgun (12 shells)

 

Note:  I've changed updates to weekly over twice weekly. After this week, updates will be in separate posts.

If you feel you need more information, I'll give it at my discretion.

INTEREST THREAD STARTS HERE
Hey guys,

I'm gauging interest for a choose your own adventure style game here on the forums.

What is it?

A choose your own adventure game is a story-driven game where the players (That's you!) get to choose how the story progresses.

A simple example: You are walking down a road and come to a fork in the path.
Option A- You turn right
Option B- You turn left

Once one of these options is chosen, the story continues with various consequences (positive and / or negative) based on this choice.

How would this work?

Using the forums poll feature, your friendly neighbourhood GM (That's me!) would present options once a week for the community to vote on. The poll would close the day before the next poll opens and the story will continue with the option chosen.

Who is it for?

This game would be drop in / drop out for anyone. Player input can be minimal, with just voting for the day and then leaving, or can be more involved, with discussions of what would be the best course of action and trying to persuade others.

When would it start?

If there's interest, this can start within a month. It can also run concurrently with a mafia game as it doesn't demand the same level of interaction.

What would be the setting?

It is the middle of Tib-War 1. The character is a GDI commando, codenamed 'Mayhem', infiltrating a Nod research centre at the edge of a Tiberium field. Intelligence is sketchy, but it seems there are ongoing experiments with Tiberium exposure to animals and plants. There are also intelligence reports that people have been disappearing from the nearby town. Mayhem's objective within the research centre is to see what Nod is up to and stop them.


So let me know in the poll up above if you'd be interested in this type of game and any feedback if you've played similar games in the past.

Edited November 13, 2021 by Mojoman
Chapter 1 Start

[ChopBam]

Yes. Also, we used to do these on the old bhp forums. :D

[Mojoman]

17 hours ago, ChopBam said:

Yes. Also, we used to do these on the old bhp forums. :D

I actually don't remember that. Maybe it was before my time there.

[OrangeP47]

Oh, I'd do this.  Jeod told me the other day nothing was happening here but that may have been the day before this was posted

[FRAYDO]

I'm interested to see how the story progresses. Will be looking forward to this!

[ddgdg]

YES

 

[Mojoman]

I'll be starting the story next week! I'll start the first poll next Friday and then it will be ever Tuesday / Friday after that until the game is complete.

Tune in next week for our exciting introduction!

[Mojoman]

First post is up, I'll be making separate posts for the following weeks. I've decided to close the poll of Wednesdays and update on Thursdays. If the pace of the game warrants it, I can go up to twice a week.

Feel free to give any feedback.

[OrangeP47]

I was half expecting Shade to be the one to vote to land IN the Tiberium, but it's FRAYDO, well done.

[Jeod]

22 hours ago, Mojoman said:

Feel free to give any feedback.

Roles. Decide who key players are by who consistently votes in the first three polls. Give them all abilities they can choose to use to affect the strength of the overall decision by the team, but they need not tell anyone publicly. For example perhaps FRAYDO has some extra bio-suits Mayhem can use, so if he'd opted to use his ability then landing in the tib field wouldn't have seemed as bad an option.

tl;dr: Everyone is on the same team, but have individual abilities they can use (or not use) to affect the significance of the decisions the team makes.

[Shade939]

17 hours ago, Jeod said:

Roles. Decide who key players are by who consistently votes in the first three polls. Give them all abilities they can choose to use to affect the strength of the overall decision by the team, but they need not tell anyone publicly. For example perhaps FRAYDO has some extra bio-suits Mayhem can use, so if he'd opted to use his ability then landing in the tib field wouldn't have seemed as bad an option.

tl;dr: Everyone is on the same team, but have individual abilities they can use (or not use) to affect the significance of the decisions the team makes.

That'd work out better in a more in depth setup, that was more of a traditional RPG style games with multiple characters being used in the same party.

[OrangeP47]

12 minutes ago, Shade939 said:

That'd work out better in a more in depth setup, that was more of a traditional RPG style games with multiple characters being used in the same party.

It could work, I mean the thing about this game is really, it's completely freeform.  And, in terms of player calculus, it's more akin to a classic tabletop in that it's the players against the gm, which basically means the rules are what you make them.  When we regularly played D&D, the rules were there to facilitate the fun, not to constrain the players.  Who cares if summoning a blue whale in an underground cavern is technically against the rules, it was one of our most memorable misteps.

[Shade939]

Now, the fun question is what do you expect to happen if you enter into Town?

[OrangeP47]

41 minutes ago, Shade939 said:

Now, the fun question is what do you expect to happen if you enter into Town?

Any of these options could have a downside, but personally I'm hoping we can enlist some local support from the townsfolk. If things go bad, well, we can probably handle the townsfolk better than we can dropping into the middle of a Nod Base, even a small one.  Granted, as a commando, we can probably handle a lot of things, but there's no need to make things overly difficult.

[Shade939]

1 hour ago, OrangeP47 said:

Any of these options could have a downside, but personally I'm hoping we can enlist some local support from the townsfolk. If things go bad, well, we can probably handle the townsfolk better than we can dropping into the middle of a Nod Base, even a small one.  Granted, as a commando, we can probably handle a lot of things, but there's no need to make things overly difficult.

And if a single villager alerts Nod that a heavily armed individual just walked into Town asking about the Research Center?

Or any Nod personal that are visiting the closest population center see us?

And what support do you think they could give? Does one of them have a key card from their janitorial job at the research center that they're allowed to take home?

On top of which, I'll point out that it's still seven miles to the Research Center. So we probably need to find a vehicle to use, unless the plan is taking an hour or more to get there on foot. So we are actually betting on the locals supporting us and not betraying us, otherwise it'd be better to go somewhere else and minimize the risk.

[OrangeP47]

1 hour ago, Shade939 said:

And if a single villager alerts Nod that a heavily armed individual just walked into Town asking about the Research Center?

Or any Nod personal that are visiting the closest population center see us?

And what support do you think they could give? Does one of them have a key card from their janitorial job at the research center that they're allowed to take home?

On top of which, I'll point out that it's still seven miles to the Research Center. So we probably need to find a vehicle to use, unless the plan is taking an hour or more to get there on foot. So we are actually betting on the locals supporting us and not betraying us, otherwise it'd be better to go somewhere else and minimize the risk.

Does it sound like Nod and the locals get along?

[Shade939]

Just now, OrangeP47 said:

Does it sound like Nod and the locals get along?

Obviously yes, the GM kind of directly stated they did.

On 10/14/2021 at 7:46 PM, Mojoman said:

There have been reports of people and livestock disappearing from Traschwandt, but the local officials have been suspiciously quiet on this matter.

[Mojoman]

Also let me know how much you'd like me to be involved in the discussion. While I have general ideas for each of the choices, it's not like I have everything planned out down to the last detail.

I'll say with the starting few choices, nothing would be a direct fail state. All 3 of the options are viable, but as you've discussed there could be some downsides that would make it harder to reach the Research Centre depending on the choice you make.

[Shade939]

11 hours ago, Mojoman said:

Also let me know how much you'd like me to be involved in the discussion. While I have general ideas for each of the choices, it's not like I have everything planned out down to the last detail.

I'll say with the starting few choices, nothing would be a direct fail state. All 3 of the options are viable, but as you've discussed there could be some downsides that would make it harder to reach the Research Centre depending on the choice you make.

How much information you want to give is up to you. And you will need to clarify some points for a variety of reasons.

Although part of the fun is in failing and the risk involved in it and guessing at what could happen.

You should also get a better idea of how involved you'd need to be as the game progresses.

[OrangeP47]

19 hours ago, Shade939 said:

Obviously yes, the GM kind of directly stated they did.

See, I read that as Nod is terrorizing the townfolk and they're more likely to be friendly to us.

[OrangeP47]

12 hours ago, Mojoman said:

Also let me know how much you'd like me to be involved in the discussion. While I have general ideas for each of the choices, it's not like I have everything planned out down to the last detail.

I'll say with the starting few choices, nothing would be a direct fail state. All 3 of the options are viable, but as you've discussed there could be some downsides that would make it harder to reach the Research Centre depending on the choice you make.

In the end, this is just Shade and me bickering because Shade's gone totally off the rails on economics in PMs.

[Threve]

Land in the Tib Field. 

The locals know the land and the people and will out you very quickly, revealing you to Nod and making the fact you landed there irrelvant if not worse off. It's also super far away.

Landing at Nod base is a better option, but you're going to come into contact probably and have no ammo to waste along with nothing to deal with vehicles. "Lightly Guarded" may mean 1 Light Tank which you can't deal with or a Buggy that'll just hunt you down.

The tib field means you'll take contact but on your own terms. You'll just run out the tib field as fast as possible and if you have to deal with the tib life forms then so be it. At least no one is around. You're also the closest to the objective.

[Shade939]

Right, now I feel like I have a reason to elaborate on what benefits I think the Nod base has if we can sneak into it.

1. Information, if anywhere other than the research center has information about the area and whatever experiments are going on it should be kept here.

2. Supplies, the Nod base probably has some spare weapons if not military grade vehicles lying around and who knows what else we could grab.

3. Sabotage, one of the easier ways to get past any security in the Research Center would be if we set off a remote explosive at the power plant to provide a distraction to get inside the base. And this should be the main source of reinforcements to the Research Center if we're detected.

Of course, that's assuming we can stealthily move around the base, and most of it's guards are busy somewhere else.

[Threve]

58 minutes ago, Shade939 said:

Right, now I feel like I have a reason to elaborate on what benefits I think the Nod base has if we can sneak into it.

1. Information, if anywhere other than the research center has information about the area and whatever experiments are going on it should be kept here.

2. Supplies, the Nod base probably has some spare weapons if not military grade vehicles lying around and who knows what else we could grab.

3. Sabotage, one of the easier ways to get past any security in the Research Center would be if we set off a remote explosive at the power plant to provide a distraction to get inside the base. And this should be the main source of reinforcements to the Research Center if we're detected.

Of course, that's assuming we can stealthily move around the base, and most of it's guards are busy somewhere else.

We have no Anti Vehicle weapons. If we see a tank of any kind our only hope is to run. Our .50 Barret Sniper rifle might be able to take down a Buggy. But then we're SOL on shooting infantry from long range.

We're really relying on not encountering an armored vehicle.

Also @ Mojoman  is this Tiberian Dawn units/rules or Renegade Units/Rules (I.E. Stealth Black Hand infantry units)?

[Shade939]

1 hour ago, Threve said:

We have no Anti Vehicle weapons. If we see a tank of any kind our only hope is to run. Our .50 Barret Sniper rifle might be able to take down a Buggy. But then we're SOL on shooting infantry from long range.

We're really relying on not encountering an armored vehicle.

Also @ Mojoman  is this Tiberian Dawn units/rules or Renegade Units/Rules (I.E. Stealth Black Hand infantry units)?

I would argue that our chances of running into a manned armored vehicle are actually the lowest at the Nod base which is basically a barracks with a landing strip nearby it seems. One of the last things I'd expect it's crew to be doing is sitting inside a vehicle parked right outside the barracks instead of patrolling the surrounding area such as near the village and Tiberium Field or defending the Research Center instead.

Although, I'd still probably want to capture it and use it to get to the Nod base instead of walking if it is present.

And if there is an armored vehicle defending the research center, then if we can visit the base without alerting everyone else, it would still represent our best opportunity to set up or find a way to counter the vehicle. Either figuring out information about it in order to try and avoid it, finding a weapon at the base to deal with it, or setting up explosives so we could try blowing up the base as a distraction later on.

[Threve]

52 minutes ago, Shade939 said:

I would argue that our chances of running into a manned armored vehicle are actually the lowest at the Nod base which is basically a barracks with a landing strip nearby it seems. One of the last things I'd expect it's crew to be doing is sitting inside a vehicle parked right outside the barracks instead of patrolling the surrounding area such as near the village and Tiberium Field or defending the Research Center instead.

Although, I'd still probably want to capture it and use it to get to the Nod base instead of walking if it is present.

And if there is an armored vehicle defending the research center, then if we can visit the base without alerting everyone else, it would still represent our best opportunity to set up or find a way to counter the vehicle. Either figuring out information about it in order to try and avoid it, finding a weapon at the base to deal with it, or setting up explosives so we could try blowing up the base as a distraction later on.

Well if it's Tib Dawn rules (i.e. no Stealth Black Hand Infantry/Proxie Mines) then to the Nod base it is. We can scout or see what we're dealing with when we're nearby using the .50 Cal Sniper Rifle scope and then decide whether we can hi-jack a vehicle, take out the Power Plant first or find more intel/supplies then. 

[ChopBam]

I was thinking the further away we start from the objective, the more prepared we'll be for the objective in the end. Why not a mystery side quest in Traschwandt, where we can gain things in preparation for the main quest? I'm sure we can stop at the Nod base along the way to the research center.

[Shade939]

32 minutes ago, ChopBam said:

I was thinking the further away we start from the objective, the more prepared we'll be for the objective in the end. Why not a mystery side quest in Traschwandt, where we can gain things in preparation for the main quest? I'm sure we can stop at the Nod base along the way to the research center.

Increased risk that isn't offset by the increased reward mainly.

The villagers might be hostile to us for all we know, and they certainly haven't contacted GDI  asking for help for whatever reason before now.

[Threve]

3 hours ago, Shade939 said:

Increased risk that isn't offset by the increased reward mainly.

The villagers might be hostile to us for all we know, and they certainly haven't contacted GDI  asking for help for whatever reason before now.

Yeah. It seems like the general public isn't too happy about GDI at the moment. And if it's a small village any outsider will be quickly noticed.

[Mojoman]

@ Threve

We're in the middle of Tib War 1, I'll use my head canon and say that yes, stealth tanks and infantry are being deployed, but in limited numbers depending on the value of what is being defended or attacked. Given that GDI doesn't know exactly what's in this research centre, it and the nearby base may or may not be high enough value to be defended by them, but Mayhem has run into a few stealth soldiers before, so he's not entirely inexperienced with them.

I can't wait until you go to the Nod base and just find an engineer reaching the mine limit on every entrance.

"With Nod feeling confident, they've begun to make mistakes. Recently, intelligence officers have uncovered a Nod research centre..." infer from this what you will regarding the likelihood of mines, traps, defensive emplacements, and even how experienced the soldiers may or may not be in each area.

If there are any mines or traps they also won't result in instant death to Mayhem. Eg: I give you a choice of going right or left, you go left and there's a bunch of mines and you die. That won't happen for instance.