Dungeons And Dragons Online: A Moment with Ken Troop - The History of HAM

I had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Ken Troop, Lead Designer of Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) at a recent press event held at the Dragon Bar in San Francisco. During the evening, I asked Ken what is the story with HAM. Ken gave out a small laugh and said it was an interesting story, and I would like to take the time with you and share it.

Ken started by saying it all began a little over a year ago. He was working on a proof of concept for how questing worked in DDO. Things were a bit tongue and cheek back then so he created a small quest to find a missing piggy. Taking an existing skeleton object from the Turbine Engine v2, he transformed this skeleton into a pig object. The quest giver said he was very distraught at the loss of his pig and asked the brave adventurers to search for it. I laughed a bit at this point at the fact of some brave warrior or cleric, heading down into the depths of a dungeon to battle evil foes in search of a pig. Ken continued on describing that after battling a few creatures and other obstacles, the brave party was able to retrieve the lost pig, most of the time. When the party was successful and returned the poor, scared piggy to its owner they were welcomed with him saying "Ahh.... bacon tonight!" He then proceeded to give each party member a slab of HAM for their hard work and valiant success.

Now, I mentioned that Ken said most of the time they were successful at retrieving the lost pig. Other than the obvious if the party failed due to being victims to the creatures and other traps and stuff in the dungeon, there was another problem. The other problem was a bit harder at first to figure out. In certain situations, Mrs. Piggy (no relationship to Kermit) would just disappear, poof into thin air. Well Ken, not one to give up on a problem, dug down and realized that the poor piggy went poof when a cleric would accidentally cast Turn Undead close to the pig (there were no undead in the dungeon). If you remember, early in the story Ken mentioned that the pig was based off a skeleton template. So fixing this issue the pig was no longer being turned, but the legacy had begun. Of course, the devs really enjoyed this to the point that DevilMouse added a handy little feature into the game. The emote /LFH or "Looking For Ham". Make sure when you are in game to give it a try.

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