February 2024's Writer Support Thread

[love4tae]

@Eiwynn

Fresh baked corn bread and gathered honey from the local hives.

[Anna_B]

@Niki_Christopherson

I’m trying to figure out what the theme of Phoenix Rising is… and I have NO IDEA.

I would just like to add, I don’t you need to have a theme. I feel this for books, art, tv, anything really. You don’t NEED to be deep or have a message. If you do, that’s great. But it isn’t a requirement. Only one of my projects has a theme, and it’s pretty overshadowed by my surprisingly gruesome mysteries. That made art appreciation a slog…

[apple]

Why can’t I put a multireplace in a multireplace . My struggles… they are real…

[izzily]

mood

at least learning about using expressions within multireplace has eased some of my formatting woes, but sometimes it would just be so convenient.

[apple]

I’m using multi replace to track the player’s name order (name/surname or surname/name) but in implementing that I’ve run into a spot where I used multireplace to track if another character knew the players name. So now I need to get it to check both, ideally without adding a bunch of *ifs. I think I might just have to bite the bullet though and use em.

Does ChoiceScript have the ability to add strings together? If it did I could use that as a workaround, but as far as I can see that’s not an option.

[LiliArch]

@apple

Does ChoiceScript have the ability to add strings together?

From the official guide:

• Concatenation: You can join text together like this: *set murder "red"&"rum"…

So, yes.

[apple]

THANK YOU. I thought I might have just been doing it wrong, seems like I was.

[Lan]

@Niki_Christopherson

I wish I could find a really good program that’s easy to use to design flowcharts. TAT And Free. It’s gotta be free.

I spent a lot of time in January looking for the same thing and ended up settling on Mermaid.

It’s text-based and takes a little bit of time to learn the syntax, but it’s pretty much everything I wanted in a flowchart tool: free, works on all OSes, and doesn’t require manually positioning arrows or nodes.

The documentation can be overwhelming at first, but you can make a solid flow chart with just the basics.

Example

flowchart LR
    foyer{Foyer} .->|#Search foyer for ghosts| ghost_clue(Discover clue about ghosts<br>if Perception > 10)
    ghost_clue .-> foyer
    foyer <--> living_room{Living Room}
    living_room <--> kitchen{Kitchen}
    living_room <--> bedroom{Bedroom}

Alternatively, you could try draw.io, yEd, or some of the suggestions in this thread.

In the past I’ve used TiddlyMap, but I’ve been trying to move away from TiddlyWiki. Unfortunately, IMO no other piece of software is nearly as good at organizing story notes, nor has a fraction of its power. And I have tried just about everything (self-hosted MediaWiki, Wiki On a Stick, Notion, Obsidian, Scrivener…)

Fun(?) fact: Twine Sugarcube is derived from an old version of TiddlyWiki and inherited a lot of TiddlyWiki’s syntax.

[Sailingshells]

This is really useful, thanks for sharing. I think I’ll use this when I finish my game to map out the sequel’s possible start points/consequences.

[HarrisPS]

@Niki_Christopherson

Hooooly shit, you just literally outlined EXACTLY why I don’t want to write Polyamory into Phoenix Rising (properly anyway, there’ll always be a polyamory element if you romance anyone but the emperor/empress as a concubine). It’s so complicated. Like, IRL, it’s not so hard, just frickin communicate, but in game there are so many variables to take into account! I’m sorry you’re having so much mess. XD

Aha, the polyamory is the easy part - it’s all the little incompatibilities where characters don’t want to be in a V poly with the PC and certain other characters If they were all happy sharing or even romancing each other, it would be easier, haha! But it wouldn’t feel true to the characters and I realised that it just wouldn’t feel like they were friends with each other either if they weren’t at least talking to each other about it.

@ViIsBae is right that there is a lot of juicy drama to be had from these things, and I am pleased to say that today I’ve managed to get into my stride. I’ve written a few sweet, sad, awkward, and jealous conversations about the PC’s romantic life (I’m writing the most jealous one right now). What is nice is that once I’ve got those out of the way, I can move onto the next chapter in which there are going to be more “what are we to each other” type chats, and it’s good not to have those smushed in with the “who else are you seeing” chats because they need room to breathe!

@Niki_Christopherson

(Also, your cover is AMAZING.)

It is so beautiful I’m so so happy with it!

On themes:
When I get to the paragraph-concept stage of making a CoG game I usually finish the paragraph with a question or a summary of the game’s focus. Honor Bound’s is “How far will you go for ambition, duty, and your country?” but as I’ve been writing and have been exploring more about the setting’s intense hustle culture, more specificity has come up around themes of self-sacrifice, work/life balance, community, regret, and responsibility via the characters and their preoccupations. That specificity has been fairly organic, but even before I started outlining, I spent quite a long time thinking about and pinning down design pillars for the game which helps me refocus if I’m drifting off-track or off-mood, and also helps me keep my scope in some sort of control.

[RockmanX]

@Eiwynn

First the character sketch:

Character Name –

• Role in Story:
• Occupation:
• Physical Description:
• Personality:
• Habits/Mannerisms:
• Background:
• Internal Conflicts:
• External Conflicts:
• Notes:

And next the setting sketch (again the formatting did not transfer over well):

Name of Setting –

• Role in Story:
• Related Characters:
• Season:
• Unique Features:
• Description:
• Sights:
• Sounds:
• Smells:
• Notes:

Thanks for the character chart Eiwynn! I just love it when fellow producers share their character charts for me to take a long hard look at.

I will add to that base template: Strengths, Weaknesses (character-wise), Likes, Dislikes, a quote from the character, and for my case, Special Weapons and Weaknesses (combat-wise). The Maverick character profiles that I posted on my own thread some time ago already had some of these, along with a brief description.

@HannahPS

When I get to the paragraph-concept stage of making a CoG game I usually finish the paragraph with a question or a summary of the game’s focus. Honor Bound’s is “How far will you go for ambition, duty, and your country?” but as I’ve been writing and have been exploring more about the setting’s intense hustle culture, more specificity has come up around themes of self-sacrifice, work/life balance, community, regret, and responsibility via the characters and their preoccupations.

For me, it’s something similar, except that it always ends off with a slogan. I went with “The challenge will always be there!”

I have some issues and things to discuss with both Eiwynn and Hannah- I’ll give you both a PM when things cool down enough. Also, I have more stuff to vent, and updates to give, but that’ll be in another post.

[leiatalon]

I now have three other games I want to work on after this one. Woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep because I was trying to figure out how to do multi-POV snippets within a game between longer sections from the PC’s POV. Are there any games that do that well? I’m thinking short bits to show what other characters are thinking/experiencing, then cutting back to the PC.

[Samuel_H_Young]

@leiatalon The first chapter of The Mage’s Adventures is from a minor character’s POV instead of the MC’s. It’s there to explain how the story and The Magician’s Burden are connected by alternate timelines.

[leiatalon]

Thanks for the rec! I’ll have a look.

[ChanceOfFire]

@leiatalon

because I was trying to figure out how to do multi-POV snippets within a game between longer sections from the PC’s POV. Are there any games that do that well?

I played a WIP recently which told the story from three different POVs. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but the link is here.

Raishall (WIP)- Completed, public beta test open

[ectocompcover] On the longest night of the year, spirits that hunger for blood creep close to the veil that separates life from death. If you disturb them, there is only one way it can end. Hi everyone, Long time no update. I’ve finally got my act together to put up the work I’ve done on this. The game is complete. A demo is available below with the first path playable. The full game is currently in private beta. I may or may not make it a public beta at a later time, so please let me kno…

[HarrisPS]

I did enjoy it in the A Dance with Demons WIP because the disorientation and strangeness of another perspective felt part of the shape of the story.

A lot of people enjoy it, but I am not a big fan of cutaways to NPCs (as opposed to having multiple protagonists, which feels different) unless there’s a really strong narrative reason for it. I find it a bit jarring and prefer to keep immersed in my PC’s awareness and see how the NPCs are feeling via their actions in the current moment. I don’t really want to know exactly what an NPC is thinking/experiencing because it kind of spoils the excitement of finding that out in the game (plus it makes me impatient to get on with the game itself, heh).

If it’s a villain or a character my PC otherwise wouldn’t have awareness of, I’d rather wait until a dramatic point at which I can talk to them myself. If it’s a character I’m close with (a potential romance interest or something) I feel even more strongly that I’d rather find out about their inner world “in person”.

That said, I know that plenty of folks are bigger fans of it than I am, and they’ll be able to show off what works for them about it!

[Samuel_H_Young]

Another one that comes to mind is Wayhaven. I actually didn’t like how the story switched POVs from the MC and the villain here and there, as it took out all the suspense for me. But a lot of people clearly liked it

[LiliArch]

Dawn of Heroes (WIP) does that too. I like reading it half the time and get exhausted the other half.

[leiatalon]

@ChanceOfFire

I played a WIP recently which told the story from three different POVs. I’m not sure if that’s what you’re looking for, but the link is here

That’s not what I had in mind, but what a cool idea! I’ll have a look. Thanks for the link!

@HannahPS

I am not a big fan of cutaways to NPCs (as opposed to having multiple protagonists, which feels different) unless there’s a really strong narrative reason for it. I find it a bit jarring and prefer to keep immersed in my PC’s awareness and see how the NPCs are feeling via their actions in the current moment

@Samuel_H_Young

Another one that comes to mind is Wayhaven. I actually didn’t like how the story switched POVs from the MC and the villain here and there, as it took out all the suspense for me.

That makes sense. I suppose if it’s in a prologue or something for setup I might be able to pull it off. I barely got into Wayhaven and saw that there’s a cut scene at the beginning that isn’t from the PC’s POV, and that got me thinking. I’m so used to writing novels in multiple POVs that I thought it might be interesting to see if something like that could be done in a game, but I’m not sure it would land the same way.

I’m a long way off from working on a game that would try anything along these lines, so I have time to play others and see what’s been done and how I feel about it. I find it challenging to balance time devoted to my WIP (I spend nearly all my free time working on it) vs reading others’ work (which I mostly do when I need a mental break from my own WIP). But I do appreciate the recommendations I find here and elsewhere. There are so many amazing games to dive into!

[LiliArch]

In other news, I’m having a “this shoud be a VN” day. Super frustrating to not know what format I should be working in!

@leiatalon

so I have time to play others and see what’s been done and how I feel about it

I, the Forgotten One (published, HG), and Whiskey-Four (currently WIP) do that too, I just remembered (I think. It’s been a while since I played either). If you want more potential ones to look at.

(I’m personally playing with the idea of a multi-MC story. Which, now that I think of it, I’ve seen more than one project doing, although the names escape me right now.)