2016/12/05

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.


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