ghost
commented
13 years ago before befalling amnesia, he was apart of a radical underground organization...
let me relate to this one, as I understand it is a proposition to change all story we have now (chapter 2, starting with "The hero, Cornelius King, is a double agent. Community of the Faithful [...] placed him into the pro technical underground). Are you sure you cannot integrate your ideas into what is already here instead of overwrite 100% of current story? All that already work on project wouldn't be too quick to accept dramatic changes while in progress.
I understand, that those can also be good ideas that can "generate" a good game, but keep in mind we all need to create one game, and with very limited resources changes are hard, additions is what keeps us going! :)
After saying that, I'd like to encourage you to integrate as much as you can with existing documentation.
willurd
partymetroid
The world that A Whiff of Steam takes place in has a lot of potential to be very rich. Therefore, I propose that the player's goal shifts eventually at least to helping this world... especially after regaining his memories:
The reason for these goals would be that, before befalling amnesia, he was apart of a radical underground organization dedicated to empowering and enlightening the common, non-magic-using folk by researching and creating the infrastructure for energy/material sources that can be acquired without magic.
This association with a larger entity, in this case the people-empowering organization, would give the player a goal that he can care a lot about. It would also allow for party members with similar interests rather than simple personal gain.
EDIT: The Love Club IRC channel brought it to my attention that I failed to describe the hostility that is taking place in the world of A Whiff of Steam: the magician-ruled government oppresses the people from developing technologies because of God complexes/their wanting to keep a monopoly on usage of technology. The technologies used as of the time of game's story are based around the conjuring abilities of magic: i.e. fire magic is used within the combustion chamber of guns to fire the bullet instead of gun powder.
EDIT: Also, there is a rebel group trying to overthrow the government with force by developing weapon technologies that don't require magic, e.g. gun powder.
Maybe the player at first acts as a mercenary at the beginning of the game, but regains his memories and reacquires his original intent to help empower the people through technologies that would give the people better quality of life rather than tools to destroy the main infrastructure...?
Or maybe he realizes that his original intent was to give technology that would improve quality of life for the people and also realizes that more force is needed?
I don't know. We can go a long way with this. :)
The current design of the game sets the player on a quest merely to retrieve his memories. He comes across party members whose goals are not common to the player's unless their relationship are to be "symbiotic": i.e. if he would scratch the party member's back, she'd scratch his.