Scout Archive
Thread: NEW CONCEPT Campfire Stories
Guys,
Being scouts, we spend a lot of time camping. This can be boring. Since time immemorial, Scouts and pioneers have used the time spent around the campfire to tell stories - about places they've seen, hunts they've gone on, experiences they've had. In the spirit of the Scouts that have gone before us, I want this thread to be used to tell the stories of some of the Scout related experiences you've had out there in the wilderness. I'll start with one that I had last night with a groupof members from the Tarkin Memorial Brigade.
B
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Why I Love Scouting
by Brisc Rubal, Imperial Master Scout
While I was hunting with a friend on Dathomir last night, I was given a tip and a waypoint.
"Here, you really need to go to Yavin 4," he told me. Soon, my email was chirping with a new message and a waypoint. I opened it and downloaded it to my datapad.
"I've been to Yavin 4 before - what's this place?" I asked. He told me - it was a faction area for Imperials. Nothing majorly exciting, as they are on every world. But this one was special.
It was 8000 meters from the nearest shuttle port.
8000 meters. In the wilds of Yavin 4. Crystal snakes. Big flying bat thingies. Mamilons. The wildest section of a wild world.
Needless to say, I immediately decided to go.
I decided to take a crew out with me, as I wanted everyone in the Brigade to get some good faction XP, in anticipation of my wedding this Saturday. So I rounded up a group of the usual suspects. They included Havelock (the Smuggler and our PA leader), Rheejan (the Bounty Hunter, CH with his Rancor baby we call "Fluffy"), Ot'Nopi (our Doctor), me (Master Scout extraordinaire), Jacookie (our Pistoleer and heaviest hitter) and round out the group was my bride-to-be, Daria (the Pistoleer/Tailor/Entertainer/Super Hot Twi'lek).
I didn't tell them much- just that we were going to Yavin 4 to go to a battlefield for faction. I waited to drop the bomb on them until we got there. I knew they would be antsy, but they trust me, so it would be okay.
We all assembled, cloned and prepared to start the journey. We met in a camp outside the outpost on Yavin 4 and I filled them in on the details.
"You're NUTS!" was the most common response. This was followed up by "**edit** **edit**ing Brisc, dragging our **edit**ing damns out here to get **edit**ing killed!" I was surprised they let me off this easy.
After the surprise wore off, they began to realize something: this was going to be fun.
Soon, we had healed up, and we headed out. We all knew this was going to be tough. The trek was through some of the denser jungle on Yavin 4 and as soon as we had gone 100 meters our radars filled with red.
"Uh oh." I said. "Everyone follow me." I started barking orders in my Squad Leader tone.
"Single file! All scouts get your Maskscent up! If we pull a red, shout and everyone stop and converge. Stay tight together, and don't get lost," I told them. "Follow me, and keep an eye on your radar".
Slowly, but surely, we began to pick our way through the brush as quickly as we could. I took point, scouting ahead, sprinting out ahead of the group to find a path through the reds, and pausing to wait for everyone to catch up. In between, I snuck kisses from Daria - to the loud groaning and puking of the rest of the party.
15 minutes went by. We were barely a quarter of the way through. 30 minutes went by and we were about a 1/3 of the way there. I kept a close watch on the group and their distances from me in the bar. SoonI noticed a problem.
"Where's Ot'Nopi?" I asked as we paused to regroup. My group bar had her 137 meters away from us - much farther out than the safe 35-60 I expected. "Hey Ot! You okay?" we shouted at her. No response. Fearing the worse, we tried to go back, but the way was barred by a group of Red crystal snakes. Even in our group of tough players, they conned red to us. "We're going to have to cut through guys - she's a doctor. She's not going to last two minutes out there on her own." Jacookie said. So I dropped a camp for us to base out of, and we got out our Probots. Lipton for me, Pepsi for Jacookie (he once had a cat named Pepsi), and old Buckethead for Daria. We kept Fluffy the Rancor in check, as he would only cause trouble. With the camp up, I couldn't fight or we'd lose it, so I prepared to take Ot'Nopis place healing. I'm not a combat medic, but I can do the job when I have to. Jay started to pull. The bots went on the offensive, and soon we were cutting our way through to rescue Ot'Nopi.
Then Havelock goes down. I bring him back up quickly. Luckily the crystal snakes don't death blow, or we'd have been in serious trouble. Soon Daria is down too. I get to my fiancees side and get her back in the game. Finally, we're through.
We make it to Ot'Nopi - and she's link dead. She drops off the screen as soon as we reach her.
One down. And she's our Doctor. Ouch.
We decide to pack up the camp and keep going. Luckily, we break through the woods and out onto a wide plain where the reds aren't bunch up so tight. I keep an eye on the radar, and find a river.
"Guys, we're going swimming," I yelled, knowing that the likelihood was that we'd have an easy trek through the rest of the way on the water, where no reds should spawn in our way. We could follow the river until we were three quarters of the way out. Which we did.
Once we hit the shore, we had our second casualty of the trip: Daria. By this time is was 1:30 AM eastern time, and she had to work in the morning. Being a night owl myself, I could handle the lack of sleep, but she needed to head out. So we were down to just the four of us. Have, me, Jay and Rheej.
We slowly but surely picked our way through the rest of the forest. Luckily we were able to keep from getting attacked and we were greeted by an amazing and welcome site: A large Imperial outpost, complete with two companies of storm troopers, a roving AT-ST and led by a Colonel.
"Call on us if you need assistance," one of the Stormtroopers told us.
"We don't need you guys," I responded. "We're the best."
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This is what Scouting is all about guys. Being out in the woods, exploring, leading groups of people on hunts, for fun. I often get caught up in all of the technical aspects of things that this trek through the woods really reminded me what was great about being a scout.
Now who's got the next story?
B
Greetings DeltaX, I dont mean to hijack your thread here but the concept of what you started here brought out some feeling/thoughts ive been having lately about SWG. I feel there is no immersion into the game. Towns are cold and lifeless for the most part, yeah there's people running around, most just pass on by continue about their agenda's. Cantina's can sometimes become lively, only in most populated town tho. Why does it feel this way? Well I think some of what you did here brings to light something. How do you find things to do in game other then the shoot critter with gun, get another mission, repeat over and over again? Well you can speak with NPC's, or get lucky and find some data pad that might point you in some direction. But NPC's in game are boring, lifeless and theres so many of them, who can tell which you have spoken to or not. Another option is explore, some people like this (I enjoy scouting each planet to find stuff) but some/most do not. Some classes who dont have the speed capabilities of Scout/Ranger would find it tough and almost impossible to explore heavily. Last option is to head on out to the internet fan sites and find list of where dungeon/caves are, where the Tusken fort is or even where to find Jabba's palace. Why must anyone have to read a fan site to know where fun and different stuff to do in game is located? Well because those of us who do explore/scout have no way to tell other people in game other then a few friends we mail waypoints to or post it on a fan site.
So now how it relates to this thread. I know this would probably be new tech and programming, not be easy to get in game quickly. But its a feature that I believe all would put to good use and would begin to add some life into the game for many people. There is these things called datapads that we find, most are broken, some already contain some info on quests. Why couldnt the dev's give a crafter the ability to make empty ones. Maybe there could be a few different types, like a personal pad that allows anybody to store in game notes but they would be only one able to use it. Second type could be a published type pad. These would be sellable to others, where one could tell stories of adventures or a correspondents like yourself could post that wonderful novice scout information you wrote so new players could find that information in game and not out on a fansite. Another type i was thinking about applies to Scouts/Rangers, it could be called a Exploration Datapad, these to would be sellable. On these we could attach waypoints, write useful information about the dungeon, quest or point of interest we have located allowing anyone who cares to purchase one of these off the bazzar or whatever to do new and different things in game. There's so many different uses we could gain from this in game feature. I dont know about all of you but I have scraps of paper all around my desktop while playing with information written down because I have no way in game to keep it. I also keep theweb open in background so if I cant locate something I just jump out and look it up. Talk about non-immersion 
I want to go to bazzar or a library and pick up a datapad with a story written by DeltaX telling of some adventure he's gone on. Maybe it will lead me out that way to just see what he's written about.
Sorry again for hijacking this thread and thank you for doing such a wonderful job as Scout correspondent and also for those very well written pieces on becoming a scout. Like I said, those should be in game, readable by any and all who are interested in scouting. Not just out here on the web.
Gunga,
Thanks for your very constructive post. I will ask the developers about this stuff, but let me give you the answer I would supply if I were a dev:
This is a role playing game. Since day one of the first pen and paper role playing game, the immersion didn't come from figuring out how many hit points you had, or going to the shop to by the 2D20 that you'd need, or in painting the little mechs or characters. It came from the players - from the Game Master or Dungeon Master or whoever, crafting a story that all of the people who were playing enjoyed and got into. If the players weren't into it, or the game master wasn't good, the game sucked. If the game master was great and the stories good, it became immersive. 
Part of the reason, in my opinion, that these games (I've played DAoC as well as SWG) leave so much out in the written documentation is that they want the individual players to teach each other. I know that I can log out, or ALT TAB and visit Warcry or Allakazaham and get everything I need to know about the game - but I can also just ask around - which forces me to interact with the other players, and in a more meaningful way than "Dude, what gun is that?" (which I hear at LEAST 5 times a night - It's a T-21, here's the waypoint, 159-410, 8.9, sliced, 85k, Caella - I should have a macro for it).
For example, the story I wrote above all started because I was out hunting with Leezard and he gave me that waypoint to the place on Yavin 4. Had he not done that, I would never have gone there, or taken my friends out. The idea to go out there was mine - the story I wrote is almost completely accurate as to the events that occurred. Does it read like go to mission terminal, get mission, kill gnort, harvest, go back and do it again? No - because we decided we didn't want it to that night.
Your idea of librarys and stuff are great - I don't know the feasability, but I think it would be cool to have. One of the things I loved about Morrowind was all of the books that they had - the level of immersion was amazing. SWG can be the same way.
One other thing - the game has only been out for a month. If your car's engine is acting up, you don't start worrying about the color of the cup holder. Give the Devs some time to switch modes from Technical to Creative. They can't be progamming my stories in until they fix the guild controls, right?
My last suggestion is to make a few very close friends in the game. They will make your experience 1000% times more fulfilling. Only one of the people I play with constantly is a real life friend. The rest, including my ingame bride-to-be are people that I've met since the first day. I couldn't have done everything, or had nearly as much fun as I am having without them.
Overall, my suggestion to you is that until more content gets added, make your own immersion. All it takes is a little creativity, and the willingness to interact with your fellow players.
B
Gram's Strangest Day
Many days ago, I was out hunting animals for their pelts when I decided I'd setup camp to rest my weary bones. I pulled out my insta-improved camp kit, pulled the little string labeled "Pull Here," and viola!:a couple tents, cots and several chairs.The street lamps were a little much, but overall Ithought the Improved camp was...well,an improvement over the previous camps.
With all the chairs, I didn't feel right about sitting on the ground, so Ishambled over to the nearest seat and tried to sit down. I say "tried" becauseI was having an awful time attempting to sit down. Iwas beginning to wonder if it was even worth it, especially with the automatic ejection systemsmost of these chairs seem to have, when it finally let me sit down on it.
All of a sudden, the ground starts writhing and tossing meabout. I thoughtthe world was ending ina gigantic earthquake.When I finally opened my eyes, my camp was gone.Instead, to my great surprise, I found myself staring at a gigantic set of hairy Fat Albert lips. I stumbled backwards in alarm and realized I was facing a Feral Bantha. Nasty creatures. I decided it was time to run.
After escaping the scene, I decided to get my bearings. After a few moments of careful calculation, and intense study of the stars, I determined that I was now some 3000 meters from my camp location! Those **edit** ejection chairs! Well, there was nothing left to do except make my way back home. It should havebeen easy, I am a scout after.
On my way, I almost immediately happen upona large cave intrance.So naturallyI had to check it out. Unfortunately it was inhabited only by dust and air. Oh, and several magseal containers, all of which were impenetrable to my grubby little hands. After several minutes of wandering around the twisting tunnels bored out of my wits, I decided it was time to leave.
After some more travel, I happened across a large set of ruins. Intrigued, I immediately began looking for an entrance. I quickly discovered that there was no way into or onto the delapitated buildings, yet there was in fact another person on them. I was about to leave when this individual started yelling for help. After some conversation I discovered that he had indeed found a way into the ruins, but couldn't find a way out. I offered to blast him to pieces and let him clone back in safety, but overall he found the prospect of dying rather unpleasant. So, with a wave of my hand and a wish for good luck, I began my journey once again.
I traveled for a long time; over dunes, through valleys and around lairs. The sun was high, the sand was hot, and all I had to drink was some Jawa Beer (nasty stuff). At one point, I could detect no life as far as the eye could see. Finally, I see what appears to be to people on the horizon. As I approach, it appears that there are to Bothan Diplomats. WTH? I ask them if they are here to negotiate a peace treaty with the local beetle population, but they didn't respond. One of them offered me some work...delivering a vase to a relative I believe. At this point I realise that I must be delirious from the heat. Laughing at the apparitions I head out for town once again.
After what seemed like an eternity, I spy a glint of metal in the distance. At last I had found my way to beautiful Mos Eisley. My shoes were tattered. There was sand in more places than I care to mention. Yet, I am home once again. The moral of the story? Becareful where you place your bum.