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Author Topic: Anybody know Starcraft?  (Read 4570 times)

BoxCrayonTales

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« Reply #15 on: January 10, 2020, 06:06:35 PM »
Quote from: Antiquation!;1118709
Unfortunately you're probably right. You know, it makes me wonder if those die-hard Blizzard fanatics maybe just enjoy these big, sprawling morasses of crapola that Blizzard calls 'lore'? Warcraft is a goddamned travesty; I remember trying to read one of the novels (can't remember the title) and I couldn't even finish it due to all the recursive nonsense, I even enjoyed the Terminator novelizations more than that pile of endless self-referential trash. I miss when it was still just a cute little RTS with cartoony looking orcs, I could never get into WoW (and from what I understand, it's added even more nonsense "lore" to the Warcraft universe?).

I'm unsure of how Overwatch characters are as popular as they are, it's like a form of idol worship for some people and as you noted, they're cardboard cutout stereotypes with little backstory.


I try working on fanfics every so often that take the lore in wildly different (and hopefully better) directions from canon. It's thankless work because I'm no experience in writing, Starcraft lore has such an anemic fandom to begin with and most remaining fans aren't interesting in seeing stories like that. The most popular starcraft fanfic trend is self-inserts where a teenage boy controls the zerg on a generic fantasy genre planet and doesn't act like an evil monster. It's frustrating.

Sometimes I try to work on an original setting that recycles the ideas I liked about Starcraft. It would probably work better as an RPG campaign setting, I think. I don't have the expertise to make my own RTS, sadly.

There's an unofficial StarCraft tabletop RPG made by a "Leovaunt" who works really hard to make it into a functional campaign setting. While the work is admirable, it cannot overcome the sheer silliness of the canon story. https://www.stellarrealmsgames.com/starcraft

Do you think anybody in the scifi RPG scene would be interested in my ideas for a less silly StarCraft AU? I can share my major points of divergence if you want to know.

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« Reply #16 on: January 10, 2020, 07:17:44 PM »
Quote from: Antiquation!;1118594
Cool it with the war stories, grandpa. ;)


A little bit of coffee came out of my nose with this one.  Thank you for the great laugh!


I think I liked the Kerrigan storyline because it was simple and lazy.  Did people really play StarCraft for its story anyways?  Did anyone care that we ran around collecting coins as a plumber to save a princess from a dragon?  Fun is fun, no matter how crappy the story is.  Life's too short, sometimes you just have to enjoy the ride.  

On a semi-side notè anyone else ever quote Vasquez while playing the space-marines
Vasquez: Look man! I only need to know one thing – where they are.
« Last Edit: January 10, 2020, 07:24:21 PM by wolfhillrpg »

BoxCrayonTales

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« Reply #17 on: January 10, 2020, 09:51:32 PM »
Quote from: wolfhillrpg;1118745
I think I liked the Kerrigan storyline because it was simple and lazy.  Did people really play StarCraft for its story anyways?  Did anyone care that we ran around collecting coins as a plumber to save a princess from a dragon?  Fun is fun, no matter how crappy the story is.  Life's too short, sometimes you just have to enjoy the ride.  


That's not the problem, no. I had numerous arguments in the past with people who refused to acknowledge that Blizzard always tells bad stories. I'm the sort of person who refuses to settle for garbage, so telling me that you love eating garbage and I should be honored to be force fed garbage... I think you get the point.

Starcraft fandom is basically what Star Wars fandom would look like if the majority of Star Wars fans gave up on Star Wars in disgust, leaving a vocal minority of lunatics who treat the scripts of all nine movies as gospel and worship the directors as infallible gods.

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« Reply #18 on: January 11, 2020, 01:18:40 AM »
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1117482
I played this franchise off and on over the last two decades. My thoughts may be summed as follows: great gameplay, great artwork, abysmal storytelling.

Any other fans here?


Was a fan of the original StarCraft, didn't like StarCraft II much. The games that I really did like that were similar were Imperium Galactica, and Masters of Orion, which included trade and diplomacy mixed in with tactical combat actions. I also really liked the Warhammer 40k, the original, where you had these squads of Space marines under your command, and had some tactical objective to accomplish in order to complete a scenario or campaign, a planet or ship invasion. Also liked Playing Outpost, and Outpost II: Divided Destiny. It helped immensely that these sci-fi games had a soundtrack made by Tangerine Dream.
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« Reply #19 on: January 11, 2020, 11:34:22 AM »
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1118737
I try working on fanfics every so often that take the lore in wildly different (and hopefully better) directions from canon. It's thankless work because I'm no experience in writing, Starcraft lore has such an anemic fandom to begin with and most remaining fans aren't interesting in seeing stories like that. The most popular starcraft fanfic trend is self-inserts where a teenage boy controls the zerg on a generic fantasy genre planet and doesn't act like an evil monster. It's frustrating.

Sometimes I try to work on an original setting that recycles the ideas I liked about Starcraft. It would probably work better as an RPG campaign setting, I think. I don't have the expertise to make my own RTS, sadly.

There's an unofficial StarCraft tabletop RPG made by a "Leovaunt" who works really hard to make it into a functional campaign setting. While the work is admirable, it cannot overcome the sheer silliness of the canon story. https://www.stellarrealmsgames.com/starcraft

Do you think anybody in the scifi RPG scene would be interested in my ideas for a less silly StarCraft AU? I can share my major points of divergence if you want to know.
I would be curious to hear about your major points of divergence. My wife writes a lot of fan fiction (though mainly for the DC universe) so I might point her to this; I'm not certain how familiar she is with SC though to be honest. I agree with you in that I think it would make for a good campaign setting for sure, although I think it would need the Star Wars treatment where whoever picked up the license would need to interpret and fabricate quite a bit more of the setting whole-cloth to provide breathing room.
Quote from: wolfhillrpg;1118745
A little bit of coffee came out of my nose with this one.  Thank you for the great laugh!


I think I liked the Kerrigan storyline because it was simple and lazy.  Did people really play StarCraft for its story anyways?  Did anyone care that we ran around collecting coins as a plumber to save a princess from a dragon?  Fun is fun, no matter how crappy the story is.  Life's too short, sometimes you just have to enjoy the ride.  

On a semi-side notè anyone else ever quote Vasquez while playing the space-marines
Vasquez: Look man! I only need to know one thing – where they are.
You know, if talking about the game as a whole I think that's a solid point. Most of the people I knew personally who played SC *didn't* care about the story; most of the discussion revolved around tactics for online multiplayer and such. Your opinion of the story is certainly valid, and it appears we both agree it was simple and lazy! :p I mean, SC is not exactly a deep RP experience or anything; one could argue the plot is mainly window dressing. However, when specifically talking about the story I definitely think it had some serious missteps that decreased my investment in it. The gameplay of course was fairly tight as well as accessible for its time, which to your point I think is the primary reason the game endured.

Personally, I always found myself purposely misquoting Zeratul... "I do this for Hire!" :D

Quote from: GameDaddy;1118764
Was a fan of the original StarCraft, didn't like StarCraft II much. The games that I really did like that were similar were Imperium Galactica, and Masters of Orion, which included trade and diplomacy mixed in with tactical combat actions. I also really liked the Warhammer 40k, the original, where you had these squads of Space marines under your command, and had some tactical objective to accomplish in order to complete a scenario or campaign, a planet or ship invasion. Also liked Playing Outpost, and Outpost II: Divided Destiny. It helped immensely that these sci-fi games had a soundtrack made by Tangerine Dream.
Masters of Orion was quite good, yes. Sorry to say I don't remember playing any of the others you mention. Although speaking of 40k, did you ever play any of the original Space Hulk videogames? I enjoyed those a lot. Warhammer Fantasy also had a really fun RTS where you needed to purchase, outfit and design your units ahead of time (or purchase the temporary assistance of whatever mercenaries were available), though I can't recall the name off the top of my head; the fact that you used actual troop formations as well as positioning/regiment facings mattering greatly was quite a revelation to me at the time. It appeared to me that they had put in quite a bit of effort in mimicking the tabletop wargame mechanics including morale and such... of course, in real-time I found tactics much more difficult to plan out and time effectively!

Regarding soundtracks, I think you're absolutely right about their effectiveness in creating an enthralling experience. The first example I always go to is the Halo OST by Martin O'Donnell, an absolutely fantastic, swelling score which has more or less merged with the identity of the Halo universe itself. It is as John Williams is to Star Wars. With real time strategy, I usually look to Red Alert / Command and Conquer as prime examples of memorable soundtracks.
« Last Edit: January 11, 2020, 12:28:52 PM by Antiquation! »

BoxCrayonTales

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« Reply #20 on: January 11, 2020, 02:27:13 PM »
Quote from: Antiquation!;1118798
I would be curious to hear about your major points of divergence. My wife writes a lot of fan fiction (though mainly for the DC universe) so I might point her to this; I'm not certain how familiar she is with SC though to be honest. I agree with you in that I think it would make for a good campaign setting for sure, although I think it would need the Star Wars treatment where whoever picked up the license would need to interpret and fabricate quite a bit more of the setting whole-cloth to provide breathing room.

Yep. The SC world building is extremely shallow and the writers add to and rewrite it on the fly without regard for consistency. It tries to be military scifi fiction but immediately fails because it ignores the basic realities of things like logistics, economics, politics, geography, astronomy, etc. I won't bore you with the details.

Background
Anyway, to provide a bit of background: SC is constantly rewritten during development and between installments. SC1's development alone may be divided into several periods:
  • The earliest known pitch was "space vampires." While this was quickly discarded, it did reappear years later in SC2 through the vampiric powers displayed by the character Alarak.
    • We know little about how SC1's concept developed. What we do know is that the first protoss unit to be conceived was the dragoon and the protoss were initially conceived as a wholly robotic race. This changed and they then were conceived as looking similar to hydralisks except without mouths and clearly more civilized.
  • The SC1 alpha had a unique appearance. It was based on the WC2 engine. The art style seemed to be very close to Warhammer 40,000 at the time: the protoss, terrans, and zerg seemed pretty closely modeled after the eldar, space marines, and tyranids. The Blizzard website at the time explained that the terrans and protoss were decaying galactic empires locked in a cold war with occasional skirmishes, then the zerg invaded out of nowhere. The playable terran faction was called the Confederacy and controlled the Koprulu sector on the border between the terran and protoss empires that would presumably be the theater of the game. The Protoss were basically generic space elves with a fancy galactic empire who fancied themselves defenders of Order from Chaos (capitalized on the original website) in a pretty obvious Michael Moorcock reference.
  • The SC1 beta underwent dramatic art changes that would form the final product. The backstory received mild changes: the Confederacy was changed to lost colonies isolated from Earth on the border of protoss space.
    • The SC1 manual goes into further detail on the details teased by the website at the time. The Confederacy and Protoss Empire remained pretty consistent throughout their appearances so far so little of the backstory revealed here was surprising, but now the zerg received a detailed backstory where the website had only depicted them from the POV of the terrans. Unlike the tyranids, they have personalities to make them more interesting to write about similar to the Gravemind from Halo released around the same time. Their motive is basically to consume the strongest species in the galaxy to achieve perfection; undeniably villainous, but understandable and refreshingly alien. The zerg invaded Koprulu to consume the terrans because plot device: the terrans had capabilities that would make great weapons against the protoss empire, who the zerg were otherwise unable to stand against.
    • The battle.net strategy compendium for SC1/BW mostly explained the game mechanics and only a tiny bit of lore. Said lore remained consistent with the beta and manual.
  • The SC1 gold release is where the problems start. The promo website, compendium, and manual teased a pretty interesting picture of an interstellar war for the fate of Koprulu with many different political actors involved. The game script discarded all those interesting plot hooks in favor of shoehorning a bunch of weird events that looked cool but made little sense if analyzed critically. All the cool world building teased prior? It was all shredded because the writer clearly had no idea what to do with it and didn't seem to think there would ever be a sequel.
    • This was followed by the BW expansion pack. It introduced Earth in a blatant retcon to the previous lore that Koprulu was isolated (although to be fair the isolation was itself a decision made later in development and didn't seem all that important to the setting so I can excuse it; a few years ago it was even weirdly retconned that Earth sent a fleet to Koprulu before the alien invasion to stop rebellions or something, a retcon that I find to be one of the few instances of an okay/good retcon). Although this could have been done well, the story bent over backwards to make crazy bug girl the ruler of the sector, so the Earth fleet got shanked.
    • Pretty much everything afterward is style devoid of substance, with SC2's story being a complete mess (you can read a review here). With two key exceptions. Firstly, Blizzard contracted a bunch of freelancers to write licensed short stories and novels to cultivate interest in the story. These licensed fiction were generally of much higher quality than the games' scripts. Sadly, the events of the licensed fiction are invariably ignored by the writers of the games' scripts. Secondly, there were some interesting ideas in SC2 whenever they tried to write about vaguely realistic politics or military research, but unfortunately this was overshadowed by the stupid stuff.
My pitch
My basic idea for a campaign setting is to recycle all the good ideas while discarding the bad ones. Rather than focusing on the romance of space cowboy and his bug waifu that ruined the setting, I'd focus on the political and military situations involving the Terran nations, the Protoss tribes, and the Zerg broods.

Koprulu sector is being fought over by the United Earth Directorate, the Confederacy, Umojan Protectorate, Kel-Morian Combine, Sons of Korhal, and various other groups. Pretty much your standard scifi fare. I like how the Confederacy is depicted as this weird cross of Southern heritage (they use a Confederate flag even!), space cowboys and cyberpunk dystopia. Really refreshing in the age of crazy leftism taking over the media landscape. (In the games the Confederacy was replaced by the Dominion, but they're pretty much identical except with all the political drama replaced by a generic evil emperor and the Southern heritage scrubbed away so I don't find them remotely interesting.) The Confederacy is a literal confederacy of hundreds of different colonies with their own colonial governments and militia, tho the federal government is authoritarian (par the course for scifi) and the de facto leaders are the "Old Families." The Old Families are basically the Houses from Game of Thrones ported to scifi, so they're perfect for political drama. The world building is so generic that you can just import whatever concepts you like from other humanocentric scifi settings like Battletech, Cyberpunk 2020, Serenity, or whatever.

Then you throw in the alien invasions. The zerg want to eat the terrans to acquire their useful transhuman traits, because that's the zerg's shtick. The protoss expedition to the sector, tipped off by the discovery of zerg deep space probes, wants to exterminate the zerg and after glassing terran colonies come into conflict with the terrans.

The protoss aren't universally genocidal, tho. There's a schism in the expedition where some protoss want to protect and even work alongside the terrans. Then there are protoss tribes who aren't part of the empire, whether because they never joined or were exiled. These include groups like nerazim, taldarim, ihanrii, and whatever else Blizzard retcons in the future. Basically the same thing you see with the oodles of elf varieties in fantasy games, except in space.

The zerg are an excuse to explore the players' "evil" impulses. Their whole shtick involves eating any species they find useful and creating biological weapons. If you liked mad scientists or the like in fantasy/scifi games, then you'll love these guys. Most of them are devoted to the Overmind, a Lovecraftian deity who talks to its children like the Old Testament God and promises they will become perfect by consuming the terrans and ultimately the protoss. Some of the zerg aren't affiliated with the Overmind, but those ones aren't interesting to me because they're either short-sighted talking animals or cyborg zombie slaves to terrans/protoss.

Basically, its Warhammer 40k lite. If you thought 40k was too depressing, convoluted or whatever, then I think this works as a cheerier simpler replacement. Honestly, the world building we have isn't actually all that much but damn would it work well in the hands of someone who actually cares to explore it. "No bad ideas, only bad execution" and all that.

Spinachcat

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« Reply #21 on: January 11, 2020, 10:39:01 PM »
I never thought SC (or WarCraft) was about storytelling. The games were about Army A vs. Army B, either multi-player or vs. the computer. The single-player story missions were mostly just training scenarios as you were dripped new units to play and fight against and by the end of the missions, you were "ready" to play the "real" game of multiplayer fights where nothing from the storyline mattered.

I don't really disagree with any of the critique of the SC storyline or characters, but I doubt much popular modern entertainment can stand up to any literary criticism. It's almost all disposable eye candy soap opera. I love 40k, but the absurdities of the convoluted canon can't be denied.

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« Reply #22 on: January 12, 2020, 01:09:17 AM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;1118737
I love 40k, but the absurdities of the convoluted canon can't be denied.

Shut your mouth, that's the best part of the setting!:p

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« Reply #23 on: January 12, 2020, 01:25:56 AM »
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1118827
Yep. The SC world building is extremely shallow and the writers add to and rewrite it on the fly without regard for consistency. It tries to be military scifi fiction but immediately fails because it ignores the basic realities of things like logistics, economics, politics, geography, astronomy, etc. I won't bore you with the details.
The summary of your changes is very nice, thanks! Those have the potential to make SC a much more viable setting for an RPG than it was and appears to provide much more space for adventure and intrigue over convoluted space battles.
« Last Edit: January 12, 2020, 10:33:19 AM by Antiquation! »

VisionStorm

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« Reply #24 on: January 12, 2020, 06:13:38 PM »
I haven't played SC in ages and barely even remember much of it, especially any part of the story, but as Spinachcat mentioned, I doubt anyone played them for the story (though, the world-building concepts themselves are nice). I used to play LAN multiplayer with friends of mine after work over a decade ago, and we'd mostly play RTS games, including WarCraft, Star Craft and Command & Conquer: Generals.

It's hard to say which troops I liked more, since I shifted so many times. I probably liked Zerg most at first, but eventually moved on to Protos, then Terrans. I remember wanting to play a tabletop RPG based on the setting back in the day, but never got around it.

BoxCrayonTales

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« Reply #25 on: January 12, 2020, 06:19:42 PM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;1118858
I don't really disagree with any of the critique of the SC storyline or characters, but I doubt much popular modern entertainment can stand up to any literary criticism. It's almost all disposable eye candy soap opera.
Video game stories are generally mediocre, but there are standout examples. It generally depends on the genre tho. Adventure games, computer roleplaying games, visual novels and other genres that depend on storytelling have higher standards than video games in general.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1118858
I love 40k, but the absurdities of the convoluted canon can't be denied.
That's part of the appeal. Games Workshop even acknowledges it. Where fandumb comes in are the people who think the imperium is genuinely heroic. It doesn't help that they're basically the main character faction.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1118866
The summary of your changes is very nice, thanks! Those have the potential to make SC a much more viable setting for an RPG than it was and appears to provide much more space for adventure and intrigue over convoluted space battles.
Thank you guys for your understanding responses.

I really want to write my own Starcraft clone, but there are so many barriers to that. I don't have experience with writing or game design. I don't have funding even if I did. I like the aliens over the humans but that puts me in a minority it seems. My whole situation is frustrating.

I could try to write a campaign setting for Leovaunt's Starcraft RPG, but then only for an audience who otherwise wouldn't like Starcraft's lore in the first place.

Would that be worth it? Is there an audience?

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« Reply #26 on: January 13, 2020, 03:43:30 AM »
The 40k Imperium is genuinely heroic in the sense they are the only hope for humanity...and humans are a total mess. That's always been the best part of 40k RPGs is playing a hero trying to do something to save humanity inside a truly insane system that's the only thing holding back the nightmares of the universe, but also often makes things worse. That's much of the grim humor in the grim darkness.

StarCraft really didn't have any humor and took its soap opera rather seriously.

BoxCrayonTales

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« Reply #27 on: January 13, 2020, 07:18:42 AM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;1118944
The 40k Imperium is genuinely heroic in the sense they are the only hope for humanity...and humans are a total mess. That's always been the best part of 40k RPGs is playing a hero trying to do something to save humanity inside a truly insane system that's the only thing holding back the nightmares of the universe, but also often makes things worse. That's much of the grim humor in the grim darkness.
I don't want this tangent to take over the thread, so I won't say much. I will say that the fandumb doesn't understand this. That's why it's fandumb.

For example, I read one fanfic where an inquisitor euthanized children because they witnessed a demonic possession and he lacked a means of erasing their memories. He didn't want to kill them, but he knew the consequences of not doing so were much worse. The fanfic got a lot of flak from 40k fans even tho the inquisitor's actions were believable in-universe.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1118944
StarCraft really didn't have any humor and took its soap opera rather seriously.
To its detriment. Now the story is radioactive.

Anyway, do you think there's an audience for the AU SC campaign setting I suggested? The one where the soap opera was excised?

BoxCrayonTales

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« Reply #28 on: January 13, 2020, 07:53:19 AM »
Quote from: Spinachcat;1118944
The 40k Imperium is genuinely heroic in the sense they are the only hope for humanity...and humans are a total mess. That's always been the best part of 40k RPGs is playing a hero trying to do something to save humanity inside a truly insane system that's the only thing holding back the nightmares of the universe, but also often makes things worse. That's much of the grim humor in the grim darkness.
I don't want this tangent to take over the thread, so I won't say much. I will say that the fandumb doesn't understand this. That's why it's fandumb.

For example, I read one fanfic where an inquisitor euthanized children because they witnessed a demonic possession and he lacked a means of erasing their memories. He didn't want to kill them, but he knew the consequences of not doing so were much worse. The fanfic got a lot of flak from 40k fans even tho the inquisitor's actions were believable in-universe.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1118944
StarCraft really didn't have any humor and took its soap opera rather seriously.
To its detriment. Now the story is radioactive.

Anyway, do you think there's an audience for the AU SC campaign setting I suggested? The one where the soap opera was excised?


[/HR]

I write StarCraft fanfiction if anyone's interested.

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« Reply #29 on: January 14, 2020, 04:36:12 AM »
Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1118954
For example, I read one fanfic where an inquisitor euthanized children because they witnessed a demonic possession and he lacked a means of erasing their memories. He didn't want to kill them, but he knew the consequences of not doing so were much worse. The fanfic got a lot of flak from 40k fans even tho the inquisitor's actions were believable in-universe.


That fanfic is 100% in line with 40k canon. From Rogue Trader (aka 40k 1e) we learn the Grey Knights "cleanse" whole regiments of Imperial Guard after a successful battle with Chaos. That's how messed up Chaos is. It's so infectious that if you heroically win a battle against them, you need to be brain wiped (at minimum) or killed outright and that's the price of victory.


Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;1118954
Anyway, do you think there's an audience for the AU SC campaign setting I suggested? The one where the soap opera was excised?


Yes, if done well. I agree there's world building potential underneath the soap opera.

But without control of the IP, I don't see how you would reach an audience of notable size.