Community College Hero 3: All Things End (Call-Out for a Co-Writer: Post #1269)

[thestrangemonkey]

@Kasami_Gi I sincerely sympathize with Dick Rycliff. He is not only a member of the press, who is supposed to pressure you and the school on the issues, but is a citizen of a Speck that is upside down.

Imagine you are living your common, suburban midwestern life, when suddenly a school for superheroes opens? Your city has now changed and is at the vanguard of superheroes overnight, with the third specialized school ever in the entire country.

That’s surprising to say the least. You could even be hopeful and awed at the beginning. But then the problems start.

The villains also came to Speck, including the Wyvern and the foremost group of villains who destroyed St. Louis. That’s an assault on your mind right there. Anyone would be angry at that. Fuming. But it didn’t end there.

Imagine the dread when you realize that Grade 9+ villains are potentially stalking your city, and you don’t have a Megacat and a Salazar to protect you. Your chances of survival depend on a bunch of college kids, who are barely Grade 3. Some who are completely incompetent, while others are undisciplined and addicted.

A previously unremarkable city is now under attack. You want to go eat a burger? Restaurant is bombed. You want to pray? Church is bombed. You want to go outside? Everyone hunkers down at home because the Wyvern declared the night of the Purge. That friendly officer you know, eating the donut and smoking the cigarette? Your city is now overwhelmed with state troops and you even spot some feds every now and then.

If anything, he has every right to be angry. He is not exactly the paragon of chivalry and fairness, but he does have a point. He misrepresents the truth, but the truth is still there. Lurking under his hostility. People believe him because he voices their concerns. Things they see everyday. Chaos, fear, incompetence.

It falls on Speck to make their case to the city, not Rycliff. On that front, they failed miserably.

[Eric_Moser]

Things are getting a bit…odd.

And I won’t be on the forums much in the next few weeks to monitor things. It might be a good time to hit “pause” on the thread for a bit.

I’ll reopen when I have more CCH news, okay?

[Eric_Moser]

Due to some personal/family issues, I’ve given little time to writing this fall. I’ll let you fine folks know when this project gets back on track.

My hope is that I can carve out some writing time for myself in the coming months and get a decent chunk done while I hunker down this winter.

[Eric_Moser]

CCH Part 2.5 is in the midst of beta testing and will be submitted to Hosted Games by the end of September, which is my way of saying, that as of October, I plan to fling myself back into Part 3 with reckless abandon! Well, maybe not so reckless, but like energetically and passionately.

HOW YOU CAN HELP ME RIGHT NOW

If you’ve read the Demo, please answer the poll question after reading through my thought process below. Please be brutally honest.

As you know, early in Issue 9, the MC shows off their powers/suit/nano-tech to their friends and then everyone asks them about how they got their new abilities. As the game is written right now, the player can only choose to: 1) give a short, mysterious summary or 2) a longer, more involved story.

So the question is, is this adequate, or do you think I need to actually write out each of the three journeys and let the player play through their journey?

Cons to doing this:

• It’s going to be a LOT of writing, easily 10-15k words minimum for each journey, so probably close to 30k-40k total words.

• Success will have to be guaranteed. I mean, you can’t be allowed to fail, because it’s already happened. So that removes much (not all) of the narrative tension. I probably couldn’t recreate, via a save, all of your stats pre-equipment, but I could basically just let you answer a couple of questions and let the player ‘create’ your stats, whether you’re a Detective, Soldier, etc. Those stats will change immediately after the flashback to reflect your post-boost stats, but they could be used during the flashback. Failed stat checks could be embarrassing/humbling, but even failures would still push you toward the prize.

• It would be a LOT of narrative time without your Speck friends. I realize how much I rely on the banter to create scenes. Would it be boring playing for 15-25 minutes with just your MC and maybe a side character or two?

Pros:

• You actually get to “experience” the final pay-off. I realize now that this is a pretty damn huge consideration.

• Maybe a scene set away from Speck, away from Savior, away from Prestige, would be a welcome change of pace?

• Getting this material might make folks feel more positively about the replayability factor and think something like, “Oh I wonder what the Dr. Stench scene is like? I’ll play that route next time.”

So what do you think?

• Even with the issues you cite, Eric, I 100% think you need to let us play through our actual journey to getting powers. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it needs to be there.
• No, I think the summaries are fine, but it would help flesh things out if you provided some flashbacks maybe throughout the rest of Part 3

[MeltingPenguins]

I’d go for the long thing. And I’d say you’re skilled enough a writer to tie the flashback’s course together well in the end even IF the players fails along the way.

[Rinnegato]

Can’t you do a way in beetween to compromise?
Edit: you really have to do it as flashback? Just food for thougths

If not I choose long: better than having plot holes because time skip

[Eric_Moser]

I do think it’s better served as a flashback. Keeping the first scene as it is establishes a lot in a short period of time: 1) that you have abilities, 2) that the setting will be Prestige, and 3) to expect a more militaristic approach to things. I think those are important elements to establish right away.

I wouldn’t want any player starting the game thinking, “I hope I get powers, if I fail I’ve wasted 8 hours of reading and that will suck!” I want to assure the player that they will get their powers and that there will be a LOT of shit hitting the fan (and some fun!) from that point to the bitter end.

[blupe]

I tried to go easy on you by voting for the summary. Partially this was due to my figuring the game would be out sooner with the summaries, of course, but I really don’t recall being disappointed with things as they were.

I think flashbacks could work if they somehow gradually revealed important information to the character which changes the current situation. I’ve seen that work in movies resulting in plot twists. I don’t know how well that transfers to interactive fiction, though.

[Eric_Moser]

Oh please don’t go easy on me, vote the way you really feel. Total honesty is super helpful when I ask a question like this.

I fully expect the majority to say “include those scenes!” and I’m very much leaning toward doing exactly that. I have some material that I had tossed (but saved) that I can incorporate so I won’t exactly be starting from scratch. I had started writing Part 3 with including the “journey” scenes but I felt they fell flat, were sort of boring, etc. With the help of my patrons and the forum, I’m pretty sure I can punch up the material I have and add more stuff.

[blupe]

To be honest, impatience to get the game was my deciding factor, plus I was thinking that interactive flashbacks might be an interesting way to do plot twists-- where suddenly an earlier incident makes sense in light of what was discovered while recalling what you had done earlier (which might be even MORE work.)

I need to do another play through and see what may have changed since my last one.

[PKAtomsk]

I have to be 100% honest, I was really excited to see how I could possibly break into a prison after all of my gear got destroyed, (possibly bully Wombat into making me new stuff?) and was pretty disappointed when it just said “It happened, moving on”

[hustlertwo]

We’ve seen some sequels to stories, especially superhero stories, where in an effort to hurry up and get to the story they ultimately left readers feeling a bit rushed and railroaded by the setup for the ‘new normal’ and how that involved jettisoning elements that had been trumpeted as a big deal previously.
I’m not calling anyone out publicly but you guys likely know some of the stories that suffered that blowback, popular ones whose followups underperformed significantly by comparison. They had noble intentions of not wasting people’s time, but folks have their headcanon and do NOT like it being casually discarded. If they’ve been waiting one or, in this case, two and a half games to see a certain thing happen, they’ll get metal-thrashing mad if it’s handwaved in favor of other things that they deem to be not as important.

So, long story short, I think if you skip over the specifics, 3/4 of people will really be fine, but that 1/4 will be capital letters Not Fine. Like, that will negatively color how they experience the rest of the story. I know spread has to be murderous this far into a series, but I don’t think this is the place to try and cut back on it.

[Eric_Moser]

The spread is real, yes, but you make excellent points, ones I can’t ignore. And right now its about 80/20 in favor of including the scenes. I rarely get that sort of clarity here, usually it’s like 48/52 or 25/24/28/22.

[Nguyen_Nhu_Hoang]

I voted for the long one. But after reading the poll again I find myself confused on the way that you would implement the long version via flashbacks, my guess is that since the journey itself is a flashback the flashback itself would be in latter issues or something like that, or you could just flashback it all the way when the MC tells the story to his friends, that being said this is just my thoughts on it and you the author don’t need to reply to this if you don’t want to.

[Eric_Moser]

If I wrote the long scenes, then yes they would start when everyone asks the MC what happened. So *page_break Two weeks ago…

Cut to long ass journey scene, which would written/experienced in present tense, just like all other scenes are.

Then…

Return to the present, where the game lets you decide how much to tell everyone.

[Rustem_Khafizov]

The flashback approach seems perfectly fine, and it would be hypocritical of me to be against it as I am planning to do something like this in a potential future project.