RPG writing and me

Teraurge relies a lot on text for content so making a post about it seemed natural. The demo content is going to be mostly written by me, but includes a lot of writing and testing help from Alordab on FA.

I'm not very good at writing, but I really like the idea of writing. Blinded by Saturday cartoon logic that only motivation matters and participation medals are worth something, I decided to write stuff for my game. The fact English isn't my first language sure doesn't help. Writing something to be published just causes stinging anxiety for me (Guess why updates on the game are so rare).

Now that the mandatory self deprecation to defuse expectations is over, I should actually tell something about me and writing rpg stuff.

Empty tavern corner

Me

I come from background of playing old western crpgs (Fallout 1-2, Arcanum and the Gothic series to name a few) so choice, consequence and player stats reflected in the dialogue is big thing for me. First rpg I ever played was Legends of Valour and since then my brain has been running a sub-process of designing rpgs.

RPG writing in Teraurge

As I've tried to write rpg stuff for few years I've come up few maxims for Teraurge regarding tone and style.

World is the straight man
Teraurge is a porn game. Porn games usually fudge the game world to support the theme of sex by making everything revolve around it and usually leads to parodies. Teraurge takes itself seriously as a fantasy world but the writing gives the player ability to guide things towards the porn.

Separating motivation from action
Rpg writing often assumes if player character does something he also thinks about it in a certain way, usually reflected in a quip coupled with the choice. I try to give choices that are disconnected from player motivation and give separate moment to give reasons for it (if at all).

Success is always an option
Bad guy slapping the protagonist unconscious in a cutscene is one the most infuriating things in rpgs, while the opposite of messing the flow of the story by beating the expectations is one of the most satisfying things in rpgs. I want to give the player a way to victory (even how unlikely or hard it is). This is pretty writing intensive and derails stuff easily.

These are the three important things I want to concentrate in my Teraurge writing. I've written more about style and tone in the writer documentation which will be released with the game.

Character sketch #269

Stuff happening right now

I'm doing a 22 picture + 2 somethingelse Christmas calendar on my Furaffinity page. My writing fingers are also making crunching noise, I don't think I'll be rid of it until Dec 24th.

State of Teraurge

Hi there!

If you somehow found this blog you probably searched "Meandraco" or "Teraurge" on google. If you did search one of those, you are probably trying desperately to find xenophilia content, if that's the case, I'm happy to say you are in the right place.

I'm Meandraco, welcome to blog about Teraurge and it is an rpg game about adventure and xenophilia.

I set up this blog to make formal and informal posts about the game and it's status. I'm not a sociable person and English is not my native language so I've been very apprehensive making text stuff on the internet in the fear people would point at it and laugh.

I thought about setting my website for the game but having a website seems irrelevant, a lot of work and expensive compared to just using file sharing sites and a blog. Internet stuff that just floats around seems to be the most successful.

How this works
I post a blog post and you leave comments underneath. If you ask a question in the comments I will try collect it and answer it in the next blog post. If it's something very small and specific I will try answer to it in the comments.

State of the game

Writing: At the moment I'm writing the major quest and character stuff for the demo* release. This is the biggest hurdle for the demo at the moment. I'm pretty slow writer and I don't have experience or confidence to call myself a good writer.

Art: I think I've gotten all the environment and character art done, but some action sketch** panels are still unfinished. I've been doodling character and environment concept sketches on my free time and the pile has really piled on. Just (unused) character concept pieces number now in the 270 - 320 these will be made publicly accessible when the demo releases.

I will try to include some game art in every post so there's something look at. Here's the first one:

Environment art example

Code: I keep finding small stuff I need to change or add to UI but The code is done and I'm doing mostly visual effects or other polish stuff.

* The demo is not actually separate entity from the actual game but literally 0.1 version of the game that is planned to be extended upwards with additions. All the stuff in the demo is self contained so there isn't any annoying crap like unfinished quests or features.

** Action sketches are pictures that depict an action or scene that cannot be shown in the normal view, like a small detail in the environment or a sex scene. If you've played Pillars of Eternity you probably have a good idea what I'm talking about.

QA Section

Q: When is Teraurge coming out?
A: TBA

Q: Why the name Teraurge?
A: Teratophilia (attraction to monsters) + urge (a strong desire or impulse). Xenourge would have been more accurate but it sounded too scifi.


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