What Bit Of Fan Fic/Edit/Theory Made a Thing Better or even GREAT For You?

I used and really enjoyed this fan edit of the Averoigne quest section of the classic module, Castle Amber.

It makes it so the time travel potion is actually used rather than just being a McGuffin, and it simultaneously makes it so that the PCs are deliberately traveling to when each artifact/quest object was last seen, rather than coincidentally stumbling into each momentous event (from a CAS story) as it happens, in each location within Averoigne.


Oh wow. This is very close to how I handle it. I have been hoping to run this again for the first time in decades, but haven't gotten the chance. I want to run it as a campaign (or a post-retirement campaign for characters from one or more completed campaigns), thus allowing for them to be "stranded" in Averoigne for a long time (several levels).
 

log in or register to remove this ad

Oh wow. This is very close to how I handle it. I have been hoping to run this again for the first time in decades, but haven't gotten the chance. I want to run it as a campaign (or a post-retirement campaign for characters from one or more completed campaigns), thus allowing for them to be "stranded" in Averoigne for a long time (several levels).
We stretched it out for quite a while, yeah. Most of a year of play; I also added more "meat" to the Averoigne section using the Goodman OAR for Castle Amber.
 

A Knights of the Old Republic 2 theory that cascaded into another:
The Sith assassins are like miniature versions of Meetra (the Exile) and Nihilus, non Force Sensitives that had what small connection to the Force ripped away from them when the Mass Shadow Generator wrecked Malachor V. This makes sense of how strangely inhuman they seem, and their ability to track Jedi despite not displaying any explicit Force powers. This also gives them more parallels to the shadows in Planescape Torment. Finally, it puts Atris’s line that “These Sith come from you” into sharper relief. And while we’re on the subject, let’s that talk about that line….

Malachor V is the real villain of KotOR 2, and the Sith Triumvirate are its unwitting agents. Looking at the party, Nihilus has a major impact on Visas and is the Exile’s vision of what could happen to them, but doesn’t really intersect with the rest of the party. Sion is their initial threat, relates to Kriea, and gets a fixation on the Exile, but he’s ultimately not much of a personal enemy to the party. Traya is their initial threat exception to this trend, as she messes with everyone, but is still ultimately tied much more to the Exile than anyone else. However, many party members have some kind of link to Malachor V, to the point when it’s time to go there, it’s the planet that freaks them out rather than the Sith on it.

Thematically the game revolves around wounds, how they spread, and how they’re healed. Lightside options are about healing, especially in regards to how the Exile relates to the party members, where the player heals the people and places they come in contact with and cause them to become agents of further healing. Darkside options are about ripping the wound further, making those people and places agents of further harm. Malachor V is presented as the ultimate wound, in the very fabric of the Force itself, and if you look closely at the Triumvirate each is an agent in some way of spreading that harm.

Darth Nihilus is the most obvious, throughout the game he’s presented as a walking force of destruction more than a person. He sucks out the Force wherever he goes, feeding on it but ever hungry. If his origin is on the destruction of Malachor V, which I think is the most implied, then he’s ultimately a force for spreading the wound.

Darth Sion might be the loosest thread in this theory, as there’s fewer things you can point at to say that he’s serving the planet. However, he does always comes back to it despite there not being a sense that he strictly needs to, even if that means submitting to Traya, a fate he sees as so dismal he’d kill the Exile to spare them from it. As someone addicted to the suffering he must endure to stay alive, he can’t seem to quit the place that represents the ultimate suffering.

And for Darth Traya, a.k.a. Kriea, as the winner of the Triumvirate’s leadership struggle, she seems like she’d be the big bad of the story, but I think something doesn’t add up. Her stated goal is the death of the Force, but she’s not completely consistent with it. Kriea’s not exactly disappointed that the Exile stopped her, and in the following conversation she seems less hostile to the Force than she was before. This could mean that saying she was trying to destroy the Force was just a cover she used to force the Exile to fight her, but I have an alternate theory. When Kriea describes what it’s like to feel the Force to the Handmaiden, her account sounds wistful and nostalgic, not exactly hostile. I don’t think she necessarily wants to hate the Force, thinking of this speech in light of the ending makes me think Kriea’s relationship with the Force is more like a disappointed former friend than a bitter archenemy.

So, this might be the most speculative part (if any of this was explicit it wouldn’t be a theory), but I think that Kriea is getting caught it the Malachor Force wound’s spiritual gravity. Her negativity through the Force is being fed beyond its original state to aid in the Force wound’s ultimate spreading of its infection. Seeing how far the Exile has come, and how they can bring in something new to the galaxy, gives her a moment of clarity, and she can finally be at peace.

So “these Sith come from you” doesn’t mean the Exile created each member of the Sith Triumvirate, there’s nothing that suggests that. But she created their source and motivations by using the Mass Shadow Generator on Malachor V, which turned it into the ultimate wound in the Force.
The initial theory about the assassins is not mine, though it caused me to think about all the other stuff.
 

Commander Shepard fighting Reaper indoctrination theory.
Indoctrination theory doesn't really enhance ME3 or the ME series for me, but some significant level of indoctrination is the only possible Watsonian (i.e. in-setting) explanation for a lot of strange things that happen in ME3, particularly those relating to Shepard's behaviour.

Unfortunately we know what the Doylist (and thus true) explanation is, which is that ME3 was rushed (24 months to make a game that, even in 2012, should have taken 3-4 years easily), and that Hudson and Walters simply imposed a bunch of stuff on the narrative (including the entire ending), stuff which only really fit with one version of Shepard (basically Spacer + War Hero + Pure Paragon) and even then, unavoidably implies Shepard is hallucinating pretty severely (something you aren't allowed to address or bring up either). A lot of that also seems to be simply because they didn't feel they had time to expand out scenes with options appropriate to the Shepards who didn't fit that. So we know the Indoctrination theory is either largely accidental, or, at most, an illusion created by stuff left in from an earlier draft where that was part of the actual story (wouldn't be the first time a game had bits and bobs left over from a previous version).

It's notable that "fighting indoctrination" was something a certain proportion of fans expected to be one of the themes of ME3 even long before it released too. So it wasn't surprising when people saw what they were expecting.

Theory-wise, one I like that's barely even a theory, more they went as far as they could to imply it without having the rights, which is that Sean Connery's character in The Rock straight-up is Connery Bond. It's something so obvious that we were talking about on the way back from seeing the movie in the 1990s.

Personally I also have pretty strong headcanon (and I think the movie kind of implies this) that in the Starship Troopers movie (not the book), the bugs did not, in fact, drop asteroids on Earth, that's just propaganda to further militarist expansionism/colonialism/genocide (whether the asteroids were a natural disaster, a false-flag op, or just never even happened is harder to answer).
 

Theory-wise, one I like that's barely even a theory, more they went as far as they could to imply it without having the rights, which is that Sean Connery's character in The Rock straight-up is Connery Bond. It's something so obvious that we were talking about on the way back from seeing the movie in the 1990s.
There are a few inconsistencies, in particular I believe Mason mentions being former SAS whereas Bond is former Royal Navy, but it's close enough.
Personally I also have pretty strong headcanon (and I think the movie kind of implies this) that in the Starship Troopers movie (not the book), the bugs did not, in fact, drop asteroids on Earth, that's just propaganda to further militarist expansionism/colonialism/genocide (whether the asteroids were a natural disaster, a false-flag op, or just never even happened is harder to answer).
Yeah,that's one I kind-of assumed to be the case when I saw the movie, and it would be entirely within the mindset of the military government in that setting to manufacture a war in order to maintain themselves as being essential to humanity.

While I wouldn't put it past the Bugs to have the capability to launch such an attack - they clearly demonstrate a greater capacity than humanity gives them credit for - I don't see them sending just one rock at a time over weeks or months. Their go-to option is swarm tactics, if they couldn't send an overwhelming number of rocks they wouldn't bother to send any.
 


There’s already a 20th century Blackadder—Blackadder Goes Forth!
Yes I did appreciate that detail when I wrote it:) but left it anyway as WW1 was pretty much the last hurrah and final collapse of the 19th Century empires and sensibilities.

It may not be strict chronology but sociologically the 20th Century developed in the wake of WW1
 

Remove ads

Top