Afar: Mad World - Dark Fantasy (WIP) (HALLOWEEN UPDATE! 31 - October - 2019)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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It’s finally here! Wohoo! It’s 2 AM in the morning and I haven’t slept because of this, but hopefully it’s all worth it.

Afar: Mad World introduces you to the ever-deadly continent of the mad, mad world, Trebantaboo. It takes the approach of dark fantasy with vast amounts of lore and numerous interesting characters to meet, and kill. The game runs on a dice system which can be turned off according to personal preferences.

This is the public version of the game which will only include up to two chapters. However, the game is currently a work in progress, and there is only one chapter available for demo. A lot of the features in the game may or may not be working as the game is still in it’s very early stage.

Updates vary between once every two weeks to once a month. (Or maybe once every two months if I’m having trouble being bogged down by other work).

Playtest link :arrow_down:

Afar: Mad World - (15-August-2019)

-= STORY OUTLINE =-

| Current Word count = 45,000+ (Including codes)

There are many continents with flourishing civilisation in the world of Rhapsody, but none are as vicious and as mysterious as the mad last world of Trebantaboo. A microcontinent somewhere in the realm thought to be an imaginary world of nightmare fairy tales, fantasy myths and legendary horrors, a world filled with horrors from the dark abyss below and magical monstrosities from the skies above and maleficent creatures that would give the monster under your bed nightmares.

What if the stories, myths, and legends were true? What if your dreams and nightmares were real? You’re on the voyage of a lifetime, and you’re about to find out the answers to all those questions. You’ve embarked upon an expedition to find this lost world and explore it.

From an army of leather wearing slavers to an entire city run by children, this lost world has many factions for you to make alliances, or to fight against. From a church that collects dead bodies for fertilisers to an underground cult that collects garbage, there are many weird and obscure legends withing the religions there.

It’s a chaotic world that won’t stop spinning. Just hold on, and survive the ride.

-= STORY OUTLINE =-

You may play as male, female, trans, or non-binary.

This game uses a system of luck and dices. In this game, your experience will solely depend on your luck, your real life luck. Your skills will help the odds, but you are still at the mercy of the game. This option may be disabled by turning off the randomisation in the settings at the start of the game.

You may play as four different classes:
Mercenary, Rogue, Scholar, Ranger

Each with their own different backgrounds and reason for going to Trebantaboo. You may also pick your own occupations which varies depending on the classes you choose.

You will have vast control of your character customisation from clothing to armour, weaponry, gender, name, hair style, body style, skill sets, and many more.

Romance will also be part of the game, but as of currently, there are no options for it. Some romance options have different sexuality which will require you to be a certain gender to romance.

This game uses the MISC Engine V2.02 Lite, an upgraded and simplified version of the system from my previous game, Breach: The Archangel Job

Have fun!

NOTE: Please avoid writing spoilers. :sweat_smile: If you do would like to write about spoilers, please use this syntax to hide it: [spoiler]This text will be blurred[/spoiler]

I also have a Patreon where I post most of the exclusive contents and where my patrons can receive early updates.

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Every time I see “d20” I immediately think of the tabaxi monk build where you can run 600mph in a single turn. I have wanted for nothing since. In comparison, the human-only race options here feel… bland.

Writing is very engaging, even if some humour falls flat (dementia jokes just aren’t funny once you live with people who have it).

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It’s always exciting to see something from you

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Thank you for another reason for me to read loved reading breach

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great another of your stories for be to go insane waiting for it to be done

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Yesss this is like Breach but with less guns and somehow even more madness

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  1. I appreciate the usage of names from Critical Role’s The Mighty Nein

  2. Also I’m really intrigued by the lore of this world, it’s very interesting.

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Maaaaad woooorrrrlllddd.

Get it? Like the song? I’ll just stand in the corner…

I actually quite like this here story. Zaney, wacky, and all around fun. Almost feels like a trip from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with all its randomness. Luckily that was exactly
what I was hoping for!
Ahem, and Lady Pissoff? Nice.

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I lovin what I’ve gotten through so far, but I don’t know if you care about grammar so yeah just in case

[spoiler]

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I think here you ment to put …he wasn’t the first to… [/spoiler]

[spoiler]

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And that was supposed to be least [/spoiler]

Sorry if you don’t care about that sorta thing.

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these are my word for dear king how is dick in my eyes he can go fuck him self

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Obligatory post

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South Sea (Or South, at least) should be capitalized

Full playthrough later tonight

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When it was time to abandon ship after the kraken showed up, I tried to check my stats, and got a game ending bug.

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Brief thoughts:

Really not a fan of the cliche of using a quote from a character in your own world as the opener. If you do it, it has to knock me right out of my tugboat. Otherwise it’s self-saluting in a way that has not yet been earned.

Also not a fan of a whole page of exposition lumped at the beginning. I’d rather discover these things naturally at my own pace rather than have eight paragraphs of exposition thrust upon me. It’s overwhelming. Especially because these details have a very obvious way in — there’s a captain hauling his whole crew to see the wondrous sights you’ve described! Wouldn’t it be a hundred times more natural for you to start with the captain desperately trying to convince his crew to keep going by describing all of the cool things they’ll get to see when they find it? It would be an interesting character moment where the protagonist themselves can weigh in and establish their own personality at the same time: since it’s all rather fantastical, why are you giving this lunatic the time of day while he’s ranting about fantastical creatures in a faraway island? It would be exceptionally more compelling and memorable.

Instead there are “no complaints” which frankly isn’t very interesting and doesn’t give us much of a chance to naturally explore the setting and our own character.

Plus, regardless of my choice of class, I would like to choose for myself why I have decided to come along on the ship. It may not be related to my class at all. Maybe I’m only the lookout because of my sharp eyes, masking my desire to mutiny and take over from an incompetent captain. Maybe I’m escaping a terrible crime that I worry will follow me even so far from civilisation. Maybe I have my own particular brand of white whale somewhere out there.

I suppose that’s my central issue with the opening: heavy exposition, missed opportunities for interesting conflict, and unnatural incorporation of player choices that do not trust me with the agency to decide my own motivation and background.

These critiques come only because I very much enjoy your style of writing and I want to experience the things that make you excited to write — I just don’t want to have to wait for the formalities to finish when I know you have the skill to make those formalities more compelling.

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Will we be able to get any better weapons and armour i would love some full plate armour for my Mercenary.

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This is another great story from you. I really love breach

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Thank you all for the reply! :smile:

This is only the first ever public draft and as always I will use your responses to further revise and edit the game to make it better. Every bit of criticism helps, and though I sometimes forget to implement the changes, I always appreciate all kinds of comment.

Having multiple other races is actually one of the original plans of the game. However, we opted for a much simpler approach of making everything human only because I wanted Ben to be able to finish this on-time and I couldn’t find time to write up all the extra bit of lore and racial conflicts between the races.

That being said, we both left room in the game so that if we choose to do so, we’re able to add in the option of extra races should the demands be met.

Oof, yeah, sorry. Some of the jokes are carry-overs from my previous game. I will be going through the game and looking around for what works and what doesn’t.

It was very exciting to write something completely different! Though I hope this one won’t take as long as Breach did…

Don’t forget Vox Machina :wink:

Writing the actual lore for the game will not be easy. Eventhough I have many years of playing through the original game in D&D, I never actually made a concrete lore of the game and all the notes for the original Trebantaboo is with my original DM whom I am having trouble contacting with.

That song was actually stick in my head throughout the first few days of writing :laughing:

Thank you! It’s going to be hard trying to find the perfect balance for the weirdness which is the main theme of this game. I’m relying mostly on user feedback, comments, and criticism to gauge whether a joke has gone too far or something is just too weird.

Yes, I care about grammar. Though there are other priorities, grammar is something I am definitely looking to fix.

Also, Fixed.

Glad to have you here! … Even though I still can’t understand a single sentence.

Fixed.

I can’t seem to recreate this error. What was the error dialogue the game gave you?

This is the type of comments I appreciate the most, one that tears the game down and shows me it’s flaws and at the same time suggests possible improvements. Thank you very much for this! I’ll be going through all of the posts and write down what I think needs to be worked on, which is basically every flaw that everyone’s pointed out so far.

Though it will take some time, I prefer to fix all that I can and fully bake the game before I submit anything.

Full Reply

Hmm, very well then. I’ll find an alternative that would work better, if not, then I might as well scrap it… Unless you’re referring to the first word of the game after you enter the first chapter.

Ah, yes, sorry about that. In a way, this was both for the readers, and for me to keep track of what I want to convey in the game and what I wish to write down to show to the viewers. It was meant to be a short and sweet introduction which sort of bloated into a huge exposition bomb. I do still need to work on it and spread out all that information throughout the chapter instead of piling it up at the start.

There is a spoiler reason as to why half the crew had no complaints venturing into this dangerous, unknown, possibly nonexistent world, but you have a great point and suggestion. I’ll try my best to write it down. I’ll also have to do some work on the free time events on the ship where the MC can possibly learn more stuff about Trebantaboo from a lore book given by the first mate.

The classes and background story are tied because of how the players in the tabletop sessions created their character and background which links it directly to their class. The other reason is because the other passengers on the ship (which some will essential become a follower for the MC) have their own backstory set to their classes.

This will take some time and a bit of rewriting between me and Ben, but hopefully, I should be able to separate the class and the background to give more freedom of choice for the readers.

Thank you very much for your help and support! I know I’m still new at this whole fantasy writing thing and I know I still have much to learn, though I am eager to fix any flaws I’ve made and I’m eager to know what I can do to be better.

It is very much so exciting for me to be able to make the stores inside my head a reality, and I am very much so happy to know that people are reading the game, and to know that people are enjoying it makes all the headaches worth it.

Yes, you will be able to either buy new gear, or kill people and grab their gear. The game consists of most weapons you’d find in a medieval setting, plus a few firearms.

Thank you! It’s a far cry from Breach in terms of genre, but I hope I’m able to live up to the standards of the previous game.

EDIT: Sorry for the long ass post. When I say that I read every post, I mean it. A good developer should listens to their players.

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So will you be able to go solo in the game.

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Compliment: No matter what anyone else will say, you’re always gorgeous.

:laughing::joy::rofl:

How many random compliments did you code in?

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That’s part of the plan, yes.

… six.

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Pretty good game so far, I’m interested on were this goes :+1:t3:

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