Interest Check Thread

Okay, I’m interested in this. I have never played a game where I am a ghost. Well, except for The Grim and I

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I like big casts, and i don’t feel like eight additional characters is even that much :stuck_out_tongue: The big thing is to make sure they all stand out as distinct, so there’s a memory hook for the reader to keep track of who’s who.

Hi! :smile: Dragon transforming main character sounds really nifty :grin:

This is a pretty little thing, but I was noticing… your listed ROs are really tall :sweat_smile: Do people in your setting just have a really high average height? Otherwise you might want to consider a bit more of a spread; the shortest character is 5’5", which is still above average for a woman, and all the men are over six feet tall :astonished:

Or possibly even “consciousness,” depending on what Trevers means :thinking: “conscience” would be like a guide in your mind telling you what’s right, while “consciousness” would be the state of being conscious, or a conscious entity :thinking:

Ghost main character sounds fun too! :ghost: The listed characters sound like a fun mix of personalities. Are they all gender-flippers (aside from Murphy)?

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I totally agree, and that’s why I’ve thought about removing a few people. I have two characters who are “mean girl” characters, and one character that’s pretty similar to the protagonist, so that already lets me knock out two if I feel the need to. However, that’s also a new dynamic to explore, since the mean girls could team up and the protagonist could drive away the similar-protagonist by being rude.

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Describing characters instead of just showing them in-story isn’t a strength of mine, so I’m glad they still sound fun!

For genders, I actually haven’t fully decided yet! There’s one or two that I saw as having specific genders, but there’s not a lot of ROS (so far anyway shhh) so I don’t want the player to be locked out of any routes. Maybe the player should just be able to choose their genders when they meet them? There, that’s my tentative decision lol.

So “yes, probably” is the short answer :stuck_out_tongue:

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The game sounds very interesting and something I would enjoy.
I’m not expecting a combat system but will we have some paranormal powers

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Naturally! I’m still narrowing the options down, but there’ll definitely be a few different abilities in play. Some will have more to do with the physical world, some will be about interacting with/possibly manipulating other people’s minds and spirits, some might be more about channeling electricity or other natural forces, etc. Can’t wait to see what future me settles on lol.

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Well, one thing, when I say “distinct,” I don’t mean they need to be completely different—there can be shared basic archetypes—just that there needs to be some sort of characterization hook so you’ll remember who it is. So there can be two “mean girls” if they still seem distinct enough in some other way; maybe one has a prominent interest in something, maybe one has a distinct mannerism of some sort, maybe a particular style, or a goal that one of them is pursuing… there are still a lot of ways to distinguish them. And there could be interesting dynamics with teaming up, up rivalling, or being able to influence their interactions with each other (maybe you can try to drive them against each other). All up to what you think works, of course :slight_smile:

Fair enough :stuck_out_tongue: the lack of pronouns had me wondering. I think as long as you don’t make it so there’s a bunch more options for one gender than the other, you should be fine either way, though I certainly don’t mind swaps.

They all sound pretty endearing so I’ll just have to see what they’re like in action before having any favorites :hugs:
(I can say, as someone with cynophobia, albeit not deathly scared levels, I will be relating a lot with than :sweat_smile:)

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:slight_smile:, thank you for the kind words, and there are reasons why the majority of the ROs are tall (it’s where they’re from originally), while Ayleth isn’t native to Ioria. (Think of Iorians like Nords from Skyrim, they’re all tall battle hardy people, while Ayleth is like a Breton.)

I hope this makes sense, though don’t worry there are a lot of characters that the MC will meet on the short end of the height spectrum.

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All those heights seemed perfectly average to me. :sweat_smile: Just goes to show how much of a difference your own experience can make on how you interpret something.

And @magdalith, that sounds like great fun! Do we get to mess with people’s minds or do we have to be a nice ghost? :smile:

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The guys are 6’6", 6’2", 6’4", 6’3", and even one of the women is 6’. By comparison, the average height in places like Scandinavia and the Netherlands (the tallest places in the world) in modern times for men is only about 6’. And in Medieval times, the average heights would have been much smaller, due to poor health and diet.

I mean, if @Eleana wants to make them basically a race of giants, then that’s fine. It’s a fantasy race in a story about dragons. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: (Fantasy stories do seem to have a habit of making human characters unnaturally tall… :thinking: Not a complaint, really; just an observation.) But those kinds of heights are very much not average anywhere in the real world.

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actually in some Sudanese tribes these are the average height, just because it’s not normal for us doesn’t mean it’s not normal somewhere else :relaxed:

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Checking, it looks like the Dinka people only have an average of ~6’, too. :thinking: (And, of course, none of the “tallest peoples in the world” lists I saw mentioned them. :roll_eyes:)

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:smiley:, thank you for being understanding. The original plan had Iorians that were shorter but, for some reason, I started writing them taller so I just kept it.

I also had more ROs than 7 at first (some were fairly short). However I felt that the number of ROs was too much and I didn’t want to overcomplicate my story. I want my story to be the best I can make it. (The reason I cut out the shorter ROs is because I already had the ROs that are listed completed, back story and everything. So I decided to cut out the undeveloped characters.) However, if you guys would like to see shorter characters I would be more than happy to bring 2 ROs that I cut.

Hopefully this will be okay. Thank you for bringing this to my attention and I hope you have a nice day. :smiley:

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Tall people are the best but can also be the worst enemy you’ve ever encountered, take this from a short person.

I personally adore tall ROs cue piggyback rides headcanons :eyes:

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@MadMinnie Oh, if you want to go around messing with people’s heads, you’ll for sure be able to lol. The goal is for you and these people to end up needing each other, but that doesn’t mean you have to be happy about it. You can be nice, of course, but you can also be manipulative and mean if you want, or just mess with people for the lols.

Besides, MC’s death wasn’t exactly peaceful or natural – regardless of the MC’s personality pre-death, not giving the option to be a more mean/angry spirit wouldn’t really seem fair, you know? :slight_smile:

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I’m not talking average statistics, I’m talking about average as in personal, lived experiences.

The girls are 5’5”, 5’7”, 5’10” and 6’. The guys are 6’2”, 6’3”, 6’4” and 6’6”.

I’m a woman and I’m around 6’2", I’m considered tall in my country but not to the point that anyone living here stops and stares because it’s so unusual. I did have some Chinese tourists taking pictures of me and my friends like we were circus animals though… that was fun.

I see plenty of women in my day to day life who are around my height, some shorter, and yes, some taller too. Especially in younger generations. For men it’s a similar deal. My current class in college has the shortest girl standing at 5’6"-5’7" while the shortest guy is 5’9". And he complains about feeling short.

So no, those heights didn’t strike me as unusual because I’m surrounded by people of similar heights every day. I’ll admit 6’6" is pretty tall, but still not to the point that it’s ridiculously rare.

I do wonder how necessary this bit of your post really was though. I mean I wouldn’t have said what I initially said if it wasn’t true for me, so you could guess that I at least know people around those heights. Was it really necessary to refer to them (and me) as basically freaks of nature giants who have an unnatural height? Trust me, opinions may vary of course, but I don’t know anyone who would find such remarks any more flattering than short people find the word midget.

I doubt you were intentionally trying to imply that, so no hard feelings if that’s the case, but it’s not a nice thing to be told.

I apologize for going off topic.

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Fair enough :stuck_out_tongue: I mainly wanted to check in case it was unintentional. When creating your own ethnicities, you certainly can set the averages wherever you want, and the group is small enough it doesn’t have to be perfectly representative, either. It would be interesting to see this by contrast with other groups in your world, too!

I’d note it is still a fairly high gap between average male and female height in your examples, but again, we wouldn’t exactly expect a perfect bell curve from such a small number of people anyway :stuck_out_tongue:

I was mainly bringing it up because it does seem like fantasy often exaggerates heights to a point where I guess I feel almost left out? :sweat_smile: I just feel like I would be so tiny :astonished: while I’m used to being, well, if it’s a group of both men and women, kind of in the middle. But if this is specifically a group that’s supposed to be on the tall side, I don’t mind, as long as that’s noted.

(People do also often report their height just slightly taller than it is—I remember reading an article about statistical tendencies for this on dating profiles—so I also wonder if this skews perceptions of what the averages really are.)

I guess I could make it a bit of a complaint :sweat_smile: not about this example, as I was saying above, because having it so Iorians are a tall group of people is totally valid, but when it comes to a bunch of stories in aggregate, it can feel like tallness is shown as more desirable, like being short or even average doesn’t even belong :confused:

It also doesn’t help when there’s so many media portrayals where short characters are portrayed as inherently laughable, like in Shrek where the message seems to be “you’re okay no matter what you look like unless you’re short in which case HA HA HA” or the more recent adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, in which Mr. Collins seems to be so objectionable because he’s short, rather than because of being such an unctuous person with an odious personality as seen in the miniseries adaptation :worried:

This is a bit of a tangent, but really, where are all the smaller sized dashing princes and rough-hewn warriors?

Were those lists just by country? :sweat_smile: That would miss a lot of variation.

I was trying to find the average height of the Maasai, but different sites disagree with each other and I can’t find anything reliable :confused: wikipedia claims 6’3" but that’s tagged with “citation needed,” and I saw 6’ elsewhere :confused:

I have to say, that’s reading his comment in an uncharitable light :worried: It’s in reference to averages, not saying that there’s anything odd about any individuals having those heights, and certainly not calling people freaks. He is just corroborating what I brought up about how it’s not the statistical average—which is different from personal averages, because random samples are never going to be perfectly representative (unless you know poll-level numbers of people, I guess). And saying that fantasy does let you choose averages yourself, one of the perks of worldbuilding, with the note about dragons being a standard way of expressing the freedom of fantasy, with a “:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:” noting some whimsy.

And it is worth saying that fantasy stories have a habit of depicting unrealistically high average heights; that’s why I had that whole spiel earlier. And saying that it’s fine to portray this group that way was an important part of the post too.

I guess you were seeing it as talking about “people around those heights” but it’s all about “the average height,” so I really don’t think you’re talking about the same things at all :worried:

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Just a general question for now:

Title of the story is The Curse of Rose Red.

What does that make you think of?

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Some sort of Cursed rose which is red.

Or is Rose Red a place? If you’re asking for—never mind…

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something to do with snow white??

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