Fairy Tale Fails (Nanowrimo)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Fairy Tale Fails is my current Nanowrimo project. As such it likely won’t see the light of day. I have the cold, I’m feverish, and this is somehow writing a story. I do not expect it to make the slightest bit of sense. I went to type in Fairy Tale Follies as my title but ended up with fails instead, hence the name. I may just go with Fairy Fails I’m not certain. It doesn’t matter though.

I’m aiming for 2,000 words a day.

I may not read, or post on forums, answer mails, or messages, or

Day 1: (1850 Words) You are a fairytale Prince/ss. Like Sleeping Beauty, your parents throw a party to announce your birth. Depending on who they do and don’t invite to the party, picks your Fairy Godparent. I might use goodparent or goodfairy instead, either way they’re interfering, meddle in your life and may be as much of a help as a hindrance. There’s two, one’s a traditionalist who I’m using the placeholder name of Dahlia Darling for. The rebel fairy is Thistle Thorns.

The Fairies will decide your Blessing and Curse. Blessings are Grace, Charm, Magic, Clever. Curses are Clumsy, Shy, Unlucky and Unwise/Foolish/Naive, not sure of the last, I’ll probably go with Foolish since fairytales do have a tradition of foolish folk still managing to stumble their way onto a happy ending. Adding in Rebel/Traditionalist these are also your opposed stats. You may take a blessing and no curse, or a curse and no blessing if you want.

Challenge number one for me is to ensure that curses are every bit as much fun as blessings are.

There is a coming of age trial wherein you overcome a few challenges, pick a gemstone that will colour coordinate your whole wardrobe with your hair and eye colour and select your name.

Then you must acquire your noble steed. Each noble steed has a separate quest. Your steeds currently are Fast Horse, Grumpy Horse,. Unicorn, Ugly Horse, Pretty Horse, Plain Horse, Donkey. These might change later and may end up just being cosmetic.

The donkey doesn’t really count since he’s just a Prince who was an ass to a fairy.and you need to fix (or not as the case may be).

If I cheat and add all the words above to my word count then I’ve written over 2,000 words today and hit my target. Yay!

Please don’t get at all excited by this project though. I do not expect to finish it. If I can actually do a week of 2,000 words a day though I’ll be happy.

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Sounds cool add romance and I’m there

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Romance is a given. :slight_smile: It is about Fairy Tales after all. Whether or not any of the romantic options are desirable is another matter though. It may end up being an anti-romance game, wherein people you rescue fall madly in love with you and you need to spend the game avoiding them and trying not to marry them and avoid the curse of true love’s first kiss. Or you can just go with it too if you’d rather. I’m still undecided, when I get to writing the first vignette out we’ll see.

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Lol that sound really funny

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I’m interested in the story

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This sounds awesome! I almost wrote a fairy tale COG once, but yours sounds much more interesting.

The rebel/conformist bit reminds me a lot of this kids show. I can’t remember what its called… I know it has a doll line? Anyways, its about a High School that’s full of the kids of fairy tale cast members, and some of them want a fairy tale life and some don’t.

Do you only get one curse and one blessing? I’m assuming that Beauty is just going to be a given, seeing as we’re magical fairy princess’s

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Sounds really interesting can’t wait to play it

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I’m not sure yet. How many curses and blessings will depend on how the writing goes and what makes for the most interesting game. I suspect it’ll be one of each, with the option to take no blessings or no curses acting as a blessing/curse itself. I’m already dropping magic as an option since it doesn’t fit with the stories.

Anyway! I’m not allowing myself to write anything more in this thread until I have another 2,000 words written.

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Sounds awesome! Would love to try it!

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Curses, you got a cold? Bless you then, Fairy! :grin:

Oh, can you feel the pun? :stuck_out_tongue:

Sounds interesting, hope you wrap it up successfully.

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This sounds awesome! I always wanted to play a fariy tale themed game!
Will it be possible to be friends with a dragon instead of having to kill it?

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Heh :slight_smile:

@Fox_vixen I have four games that have dragons in them in my WIP list. This isn’t one of them, unfortunately. I’m sticking to wicked witches and evil wizards, cruel stepmothers, ugly sisters, and other fairy tale tropes. In my delirious state I can’t think of any fairy tales with dragons in them. Well none of those I like.

Anyway I’m poking at 2 vignettes. One based on Cinderella and one on 12 Dancing Princesses. If this fever clears I’ll try and bash out one of them.

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Aww I really wanted to befriend a dragon and call him toothless but it’s your game and the idea is still really cool
hope you feel better soon :smile:

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I’m running a fever and utterly delirious so there’s only 200 words written. There were other words but they didn’t make sense at all. Still there’s an hour left maybe I can mash at the keyboard and write some more

Okay 1000 words now. They don’t make any sort of sense they’re just rambling notes but they’re there.

20 minutes to go. I can likely bulk that out a bit with the vignette outline.

1500 now and it’s now the 3rd.

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I worked on the 12 Dancing Princesses Vignette today. I just did an outline of it, jotting down some weird, rambling ideas.

The King claims that every night his daughters return home with their shoes in ribbons and that he’s mightily concerned for both their safety and whereabouts during the nights. He fears abduction, demons, and far worse.

The 12 Princesses share a bedroom, which I see as being circular, and at the very top of a tower. For their own safety they’re not allowed to leave, unguarded. Yet, the King is allowing anyone who claims to be a Prince to enter that tower, unsupervised and spend three nights with his daughters in order to uncover the mystery of what’s happening to them. Solve the mystery, win a Princess. Fail to solve the mystery and the only reward is death. The King’s been murdering a lot of ‘Princes’.

As a Prince/ss you find yourself in the Kingdom, investigating. First discovery is that other than a single night the Princesses are not actually returning with their shoes in ribbons. Instead it’s the same pair being dragged out every morning by the King who demands explanations.

Unlike the original fairytale the Princesses aren’t disobedient silly girls sneaking off to party. They’re far more concerned with things such as law, an education, and rebellion than they are with dancing. Which isn’t to say they don’t enjoy dancing, which they do but there’s other matters that need their attention.

Looks like this single vignette is already way too complex. But well that’s the reason behind me writing in a vignette structure. They will be self-contained. They’ll also have endings.

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1900 words so far today.

The Twelve Dancing Princesses vignette is not romance based. Not even if you’re playing a character attracted to women. Romance is feeling contrary to the themes. I’m looking to see if there’s the possibility to introduce a few slower burning romances into the storyline, or even just a hint of hope as opposed to being shot down completely. I think it’s more playing on themes of friendship, family, and duty. As well as how it’s wrong to offer any one of your daughters as a prize in a contest to solve a riddle that could be easily fixed by just having a proper conversation with them as opposed to treating them like interchangeable dolls…

Which isn’t to say that marrying one of them won’t be a choice.

It’s also not counterbalanced by any male options. There’s one male character you can marry but that’s the opposite of romantic. Actually, there may be a second I’m musing on.

There’s also not going to be a gender switch in this case, I don’t think the story works with Dancing Princes. I do think it works with either a Prince or Princess investigating though.