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

LINKS

Mailing List Sign-Up
Patreon
Twitter
Facebook

(Please read the paragraphs under the link so you know what kind of feedback could help me the most!) :slight_smile: (added 3/24/20)

https://dashingdon.com/play/ericmoser/cch3-all-things-end/mygame/

Things that are set in stone! :mountain_snow:

  • Iā€™m keeping the three power paths as they are.
  • Iā€™m keeping mechanics as they are. Iā€™m using fairmath for primary stats, relationships, yay, and ouch.
  • The Power option will use integers instead of faithmath (as itā€™s mostly going to go down). It will let the player try to avoid stat checks that might be difficult for their specific stat-set. Again, these mechanics are now pretty much identical to Zipā€™s, but a tad more involved.
  • Iā€™m keeping the mid-game goals/end-game goals as they are, although obviously people reading the Demo have only encountered 3 of them yet.

Elements I need help with! Some examples below!

  • Continuity Iā€™m making this my top element for now. With so much material in the previous installments, I need to be careful that I donā€™t write stuff in CCH3 thatā€™s inconsistent with previous material or that seems like a significant deviation. Yes, stuff like eye color counts, but Iā€™m worried about getting to the end and someone reads it and asks, ā€œWait, this doesnā€™t make sense because in Part 2ā€¦ā€

  • Is there a coding or continuity error ? Please bring it to my attention! I can only play the game so many times myself.

  • Can a scene be restructured to be more effective? Like when someone mentioned that Downfall would probably delay punishing the MC until AFTER the battle. That just makes sense, and so Iā€™m accepting that suggestion and making changes. And the people who suggested maybe reworking the first scene, having the MC tell the story first off, and THEN show off, well Iā€™m still thinking about that too. There are merits there! (although I do like currently having the ā€œfā€ word in the very first line) :slight_smile:

  • Pacing - Is there a nice mixture of fast scenes and slower scenes? Did you want more of something in a scene? Did you want less of something in a scene?

  • Choices - The most important aspects (for me) for choices are: A) Are they balanced? This means no choice is clearly better than the others. B) Do you understand the stakes? This means, if one option is meant to be tougher than the others, do you understand that from the prose and context? C) Goals - most choices are designed to further one of your goals. Do you understand which goal you are pursuing by picking the option you chose?

  • ā€œ Fun Factor ā€ Could a scene be more fun? More exciting? Sadder? Scarier? Whatever Iā€™m going for in that scene, could I have cranked it up even more? If so, feel free to suggest something specific. It doesnā€™t mean Iā€™l incorporate it, but if you say, ā€œHey if you would have written xyz, it would have really cranked up the tension here!ā€ see THAT is some potential actionable feedback!

  • And obviously typos and small grammar errors. Although I do my best to give you folks a fairly clean product, these do sneak through!

I hope this maybe clarifies what I would find helpful! Again, I say this because I donā€™t want anyone spending a lot of time with ā€œwish listsā€ that Iā€™ll have to essentially ignore. That doesnā€™t use anyoneā€™s time wisely at all, and we all only have so much time in the day.

DEVELOPMENT UPDATE: OCTOBER 2021: GOAL IS TO POST NEW CCH3 CONTENT IN DECEMBER

316 Likes

Sounds neat to me.

Personally I do hope the tactician path allows us (aka mc and friends) to play the dozenā€™s own powers against them

26 Likes

How about romancing a villain? None specifically but just any big or small time villain!

28 Likes

Contrarian Romance! Where is it?! :crazy_face:

21 Likes

Hmmā€¦the idea has a lot of potential for conflict, which is always a good thing, but I wonā€™t have any room to add any new characters. Itā€™s incredibly crowded as it is. Perhaps an idea for another project, though!

21 Likes

Iā€™m very satisfied with the list. It gives me an idea of what to expect without really showing to much.

4 Likes

Thereā€™s always the Manipulatorā€¦

And I must admit I hope thereā€™ll be a crowning moment of awesome bringing Origami and Hedy back. Poor Daniel though :,(

12 Likes

A Romance Path with The Manipulator is definitely on top of my CCH3 wishlist.

Oh, and I do hope you bring back Uni.

20 Likes

I understand completely. I mean there were a lot of characters that could be romanced in the books and then more that you canā€™t. Like the chevalier and many others. I like the direction though in all that itā€™s going even if I didnā€™t like little details which to me makes a story great.

4 Likes

You already mentioned my big one; a few more romance/friendship scenes. I mean, I loved the dinner parts with Tress/Dirty girl, but a few more would be nice.

Sort of along those lines, I think it could be amusing if someone is in a romance, and your mom meets them formally.

Also, if you are going the Dr. Stink path, I hope we can change that name. I mean, I could imagine Tress breaking up with the MC for that alone :wink:

25 Likes

Personally Iā€™d love to see the MC giving the Dozen a brutal beatdown if you choose to take the retribution path.

9 Likes

Instead of a romance, you could do something where the MC is concerned that they might be related to a villain. The stronger this possibility, based on evidence or research, etc., the more the MC goes into a reflective mood and wonders why they and the villain are so different, and where things went wrong. This could be a neat little philosophical vehicle used to explore the nature of ā€œevilā€ and its causes, with the potential to offer the villain a chance to (partially) redeem themselves by defending the MC in a critical time.

Either that, or the villain-relative ends up dying and the pain of loss felt in the MC causes their Zenith powers to manifest dangerously; temporarily without any control or limits. Under the right circumstances, the burst of energy could even open an unstable portal to the Zone. If you do it that way, then you could create some lore like Zenith powers exist because they are actually drawing from the other-dimensional energy of the Zone. And if thatā€™s the case, and the MC is drawing on Zone energy without limit, then they themselves become the biggest threat to the city. I wonder if this was a villain plot all alongā€¦?

@Eric_Moser, what do you think?

16 Likes

Yup same for me thats all I really want.

5 Likes

So, you are suggesting

  1. Out of nowhere relative
  2. Fridging said relative to give the mc powers
  3. Said powers go limitlessā€¦

Where have I hears this before? Time and time again?..

Okay, snark aside, but personally Iā€™d say that approach would do more harm than good to the story, as it is, honestly, one of the most overdone and clichĆ©d plottwisty climaxes in fiction.

23 Likes

Also the dad is already a villain relative.

27 Likes

I wanna fight megacat one on one and winā€¦somehow

16 Likes

Me too! I canā€™t stand that character haha

14 Likes

Maybe a more ā€˜Vigilanteā€™ path ? given the less than lawful good decision you can make in that knowledge is power

a bit more info on the ā€˜wider settingā€™ and situation ?

an updated ā€˜power levelā€™ list (one that maybe take our character into account) ? since they donā€™t really seems in line with what we saw of ā€˜the Dozenā€™ level villains IMO

thatā€™s pretty much all i can think of, most of the stuff i though could be improved in trial by fire were already done in knowledge is power, except maybe the ability to change your hero name once you get ā€˜upgradedā€™ ? i just find the idea to call my no-kill hero ā€˜WarCrimeā€™ once he get his ā€˜Dr Stenchā€™ thingy extremly funny

11 Likes

for the idea of a villain romance, i agree it has a lot of conflict potential but it has also a lot of humour potential if you romance some try hard innefectual villain, with all the heros basicaly seeing you as very weird for it but not actualy caring enough to hold it against you, i think it would be a funny situation

after all, romance isnā€™t always about drama

7 Likes

Sounds fascinating! Looking forward to seeing it!