That’s a tough one. After a certain PME I participated in circa 2018, which was when I got the hang of eventing (I’d been just the mapper for most of it), I find that most of the chapters I’ve made afterwards had a clear motivation/inspiration that I wanted to put in practice.
FE8 FFA
FE8 FFA is mostly a spur of the moment romhack, but I have to highlight the Arena and Battle Royale modes for being more complex. In general though, I like that it’s a romhack where the possibilities of the Fourth Allegiance patch are explored, something I’ve seen very few romhacks use unfortunately.
RE8
RE8 is a 1-chapter hack so it’s a given, but the short version of it: It’s a long escape chapter in which you can and should talk to NPCs along the way to get them to try to escape as well. It has sections where it may be possible to proceed slowly, but there are NPCs that are likely to die if you don’t hurry and you’re likely needing their help later. Other sections spawn waves for a couple of turns, where you often have to fall back a bit because it’s hard to stand your ground without running risks, but you may have to consider risks also due to the NPCs because they might not fall back like you wanted. It has a multi-phase boss. It has a gimmick for one playable unit, he’s weaker but every kill he gets spawns an NPC zombie that follows him around. It has a cryptic recruitment condition for one of the NPCs. Then once you get to the final stretch, all waves re-activate simultaneously, so there’s chaos from all directions but ahead is the only way to go, and even though you will probably lose units you will lose less than if you don’t advance.
Sengoku Oda
Sengoku Oda has multiple chapters, though in comparison they’re longer than average. Each of them has at least one thing I wanted to implement, and I’ll think about which one is my favorite as I summarize them:
-Prologue: You are trying to kill more bandits and visiting more vilalges than the NPC army. You have the option of forming a truce with the NPC army, otherwise you can fight each other as you compete.
-Chapter 1: There are two castles, but you only need to seize the far one. Depending on how many defenders of the near castle you spared, they might defect and help you in capturing the far castle. It has an event battle in which the leader of the enemy clan (who was an important gameplay aspect in the prologue) is unexpectedly killed. Depending on the truce in the prologue, one of your units might undeploy themselves. The (new) boss and a mandatory NPC are effective against each other, so you have to consider whether you can use him to speed up the boss kill or if it’s too risky to let him attack.
-Chapter 2: You use the momentum of the enemy leader’s assassination to try to eliminate them once and for all. Depending on the truce in the prologue, one of the prologue NPCs might be recruitable. The enemy clan is known for physical units, but you notice there are magical units mixed in this time which makes your commander uneasy, and if you kill 3/4 of them he expects the enemy formed an alliance with another clan. Depending on whether he realized this, when powerful reinforcements arrive, either you or them will receive buffs making the rest of the chapter easier/harder. The chapter then turns from seize to escape.
-Chapter 2x: Depending on whether a certain unit died in chapter 2 (which is virtually guaranteed if you expected reinforcements, very unlikely otherwise), you get access to this chapter. The chapter revolves around two factions of the enemy clan fighting each other, and you’re just there to try and profit from it. You can get droppable items, 100 exp from each visited village, and recruitable bosses, so you want to beat the NPCs to all of that. The two prepromotes cannot be deployed. Units you deploy in this chapter will be unable to participate in chapter 3. You can retreat whenever you want.
-Chapter 3: A seize throne chapter, where you’re perfoming a joint attack, and once again you get rewards if you beat the NPCs to it. The castle has several tiers and is surrounded by moats, which slow you down and reduce your avoid. You can stand on switches to lower bridges so that you don’t have to cross the moats anymore. You can cause some of the defenders to turn into NPCs, but you have to consider whether you’d rather have extra help (including lowering bridges from the inside) or keep them as enemies to get droppables.
-Chapter 4: A “capture the forts” chapter, where you compete with the enemy to hold the majority of forts for a certain amount of turns. There are “shallows” terrain in the map, which cost as much as forests normally, but rain (which alternates every 2 turns) change their costs to that of rivers, which most units can’t cross, so you have to plan ahead to not get yourself cut off and to try and get enemies cut off. Different enemy/allied reinforcement groups appear depending on the amount of held forts at any given turn. In the middle of the chapter, neutral NPCs appear and in the following turn you have the option to offer items/gold/a specific unit to get them to assist you and flank the enemy, otherwise they’ll leave. Once either team wins the first phase, the enemy boss leaves and it becomes a rout chapter. However if you manage to defeat the boss still in the first phase, you immediately win the chapter.
-Chapter 5: A rescue competition (inspired by FE10 part 2 prologue). You win if, when the turn limit is reached, the hostage is not being held by an enemy unit. The chapter can fail early if the enemy escapes with the hostage or if the hostage is killed. At the start of the chapter, you can pay bandits to assist you, otherwise you also have to prevent them from killing the hostage. 3/4 of your deployed units start hidden, and will stun enemies for that turn when they approach, revealing themselves.
-Chapter 6: A defend chapter with 5 possible endings. Your army starts split, half of them inside the fort and half of them outside unable to move. An insider must break through the enemy formation to “request reinforcements” which will allow the outsiders to begin moving. The insider commander can issue orders to NPCs. After some turns pass, the enemy begins deploying a siege ladder, opening another way they can enter. Determinant conditions for the endings: NPC defenders were routed, the insider commander was defeated, the enemy commander was defeated, the enemy seized the throne.
With all of that said, I’d say my favorite is chapter 4. It has more mechanics than the others, all of which were fun both to implement and play through, and player actions/decisions are even more determinant than in others and can lead to very different playthroughs. Story-wise (and historically) this was a turning point, which is reflected in this being a longer chapter with a more climatic vibe than even the following two chapters.
Fire Dark
And I might as well spoil that I’m going to post another one soon, after some finishing touches. I don’t like doing this but better than editing my post later.
It’s once again a longer chapter, inspired by a certain N64 FPS game that I played a lot in my childhood. It has multiple objectives, how many you need to complete (and how many you can fail) depending on the difficulty. It has an elevator in the middle, which lets you travel quickly between each floor but only 4 units can be in it at once, which is just half of your party. Some things can trigger an alarm, which is essentially some waves of reinforcements, but there is also a mechanic to temporarily disable the alarm for a few turns once, so if you time it right you can avoid it. One objective revolves around making an NPC reach the other side of the map on another floor, but there are stages to this: the first time you talk to him, he will try to run towards an enemy and get himself rescued by them. The second time you talk to him, he will stop his rescuing antics (he’ll keep doing it after you kill his rescuer otherwise) and start moving towards his goal. From that point on, you can talk to him repeatedly to get him to hurry (each Talk increasing his movement by 1).
So all in all I’m not much of a writer, even though I tried in Sengoku Oda, and gameplay is where the ideas pop up more often.
