(Planes: Book 1) Supernatural WIP, Minor Update: March 19, 2018

Hey, hello, hi. My name’s Leem (not a typo) and I’ve been playing CoG and Hosted Games titles for a few years now and I’ve grown to really love this particular medium of story telling. I lurk around the forums A LOT but I’ve never posted anything before today.

See, I’ve been working on a series of books for a while now, Planes, and while I had originally hoped to get it ready in time to submit to the contest, reality kept interfering and my writing partner wasn’t able to help with this one. But, while I won’t be entering it into the contest, I still really want to write this book.

The basic lore is as follows:

The world we see in front of us exists in planes, unofficially dubbed Planes of Existence or Planes of Vision by its many and diverse inhabitants.

Planes follow a few simple rules:

ONE: Inhabitants of one plane can not see or interact with those in another plane.

TWO: The only exception to the rule are those inhabiting the Plane of the Divine (angels and heavenly creatures) who can see all, and those living in the Plane of the Mundane (humans) who can be seen by all but can not see others.

The only way a human is able to glimpse into another plane is for either the creature is very powerful and wants to be seen, or to be granted the gift of sight by a person living in that plane (the gift is restricted to the plane of the gift giver, unless they are divine). And finally, if they are a hybrid; a half human, half other.

These half humans used to band together at one time as heroes, knights, and vigilantes and call themselves Seekers and Monster Hunters.

Seekers would hunt down demons and cross-planes outlaws and make sure humans were safe. But at one point, the monsters they hunted started to fight back, all but wiping out the heroic Seekers. This event caused the rest of the Seekers and half humans to go into hiding, leaving history and the people they saved to forget all about them.

Most of the new half human that pop up now are either taught to keep their lineage a secret, get killed while trying to play hero or are labeled as mentally ill for insisting that they see demons and fairies.

Now, it is pretty much universally agreed upon by most of these remaining half humans that being too nosey and curious about what goes on in planes other than your own will eventually be the death of you.

Plot of this book:

The story revolves around a half human MC living with their Grandmother in a flower shop and their human best friend.

The MC was taught by their Grandmother to not go out of their way to meddle with other planes ever since they were placed in her care, but when MC’s best friend gets killed in front of the MC, the MC tries to hunt down their killer (a reaper in a broken mask) and bring them back to life.

Now, there is no known record of a dead person coming back to life, but if any one knows if such a thing is possible, it’s a reaper.

Other features:
  • Other than the main plot, I’m planning a few cases that you can solve on your path to become a Seeker. Gathering clues can also help get you closer to figuring out who exactly is behind all what’s going on in Estervale.

  • A decent chunk of the game is going to be detective work, gathering clues and making conclusions based on them. Your investigation stat is going to be very important since it show you how close you are to solving your cases and getting certain “good” endings.

  • Romances are still a work in progress since I am not a romance writer at all (I’m barely a writer smh) but I still want to include them since they’re one of my favorite part of CoGs. Planned ROs so far are:

    • Blake, your best friend.
    • Jess, another Seeker in training
    • Spencer, whose family owns a magic supply shop.
    • And Charlie, whose still a bit of a WIP.
  • I’m also hoping to give the players as much control and customization options as possible in the game, and to try and make the game as non linear and give the player as much freedon to do what they want without having to strictly follow the main plot of the game. When I finally get a hang of ChoiceScript, that is.

I started posting the Prologue on DashingDon (here) for a friend to help me test, but if you guys want to try it out too go ahead! Keep in mind that the prologue is nowhere near done but I’m working on this book a little bit every day to have something good to show for it eventually.

That’s all I have to say right now, I’d love to hear what you guys think of this! Thank you for taking the time to read this!

Update log:
  • August 9, 2017: Original demo posted!
  • August 12, 2017: Reworked beginning.
  • November 19, 2017: Updates to the stats, potion system and story.
  • March 19, 2018: Minor updates to code and a bit of edits to the writing.
90 Likes

Im interested. Cant wait to see demo :smile:

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It’s sounds good can we become a reaper appea in life and death as it is

I almost don’t care what you write after this; I’m already interested. You’ve spent time playing CoG; you know how they work and what you like. You’ve invested a lot of time into the story already, and know where it’s going. I can enjoy lots of genres; I’m often surprised by what I like. More important than the originality of your plot is your focus and determination as an author. You’ve got a story in your head itching to get out? Go for it! Maybe an interactive game is the medium its destined for. Even if it’s not, everything you write gives you experience as an author, and you’ll be learning how to write in choicescript, too!

2 Likes

Wow, it’s like I’m hearing my story repeated back to me. I was thinking that “mystery” is a genre that I don’t see in here very often. Almost to the point that I wanted to develop something along the lines of Sherlock Holmes or Auguste Dupin. I look forward to seeing how you go about presenting the mystery and how one goes about sollving them.

Good luck!

It sounds interesting enough, I’ll bite. It also sounds like something I’d try out once it comes out.

The only burning question I have at the moment is what’s stopping the MC from being hunted down by monsters once they start their task of finding out who the reaper is, as I seriously doubt if they’re going to find this entity they’ll do it undetected.

I think it’s a nice plot, any plot that has something to do with being, or at least interact, with supernaturals is an a-okay for me. Plus, I’m curious on how these different races would turn out interact together after the Seekers went into hiding. Would there be hostility, still? Would there be some sort of acceptance? Also, I smell star crossed lovers which I dig laughs maniacally :smirk_cat:

Saw this was about different planes of reality and was expecting more shoggoths tbh.

Had expected a typical, angels and demons plot and I still kind of do but the seeing the other supernatural creatures seems pretty cool.

Hopefully you’ll get a hang of the romance bit tho since that’s the one of the things I look forward to the most in these games besides the customization.

All in all, this sounds very linear which can be good in the cases where more thought and care is put into the story than, say, one where there are a gazillion hastily made options and scenes that take forever to write and are covered in typos and grammatical errors.

Regardless, I’ll still play it because romance.

Oooh, I love reading descriptions of well-built universe! :hugs:

At first, the thing that pops up on my mind when read ‘planes’ is :airplane:
:laughing:

BTW, if not spoilery, how many planes existed on this world?
I assume it’s not 3 planes divine-human-underworld, ey?

Well, you can’t become a full reaper per se, but I’m toying with the idea of giving the player choice over which specific divine being they’re mixed with. Reapers count as divine in this story so you might possibly be able to choose to be a half reaper instead of being fixed as a half angel.

Oh, you’ll definitely start raising some questions when you start investigating. You’ll have stats the show you how obvious you’re being while playing, you’ll always have the choice to either make a mess or keep it quiet The most important one will be the “Discreet” stat, which shows how close the Reaper with the broken mask is to hearing about your exploits. If that bar reaches 100%, you may not find the Reaper. But they might just find you first :smiley:

5 Likes

Ahhhh, I’m glad you liked it! I was afraid that people would find the description too long winded and just leave the forum lol.

And yes, actual planes is what usually comes to mind when I pitch the story to people. The title isn’t fixed yet, but this is what I’m going with until I find a better alternative.

And about the other planes, those 3 are the “main” ones, yes. There’s also the “Plane of the dead” specifically for souls and spirits to roam around in while awaiting judgement or collection by an angel. Other than that, all records and official documentation of other planes has been lost ages ago, and not enough seekers meet regularly enough to create a proper distinction between which creatures inhabit which plane. And most creatures from other planes can’t understand any human language, so it’s hard to ask them about what they see. (and tbh if you meet a fairy or an imp, the first thing that comes to mind might not be asking it such questions)

So how many planes exactly there are is up to speculation. Maybe there’s only like 10? Maybe hundreds? Maybe some planes hold one creature (Cthulhu) only and others hold most of them? Who knows! Certainly not MC and their avoid-seekers-and-planes-at-all-costs Grandmother!

2 Likes

So, the entire plot would revolve around saving a dead boyfriend… :thinking: You have my attention.

Eh, I don’t think this is a good idea. If one stat is more important than all of the others, it means there’s no reason to choose them, and you’ll end up favouring one playstyle over all others, which isn’t good in a choice game. There should always be multiple ways of solving any problem.

So… there’s a dead boyfriend, but also multiple other potential boyfriends? How would that work? Do we have to give up our quest if we find someone better? :confused: It might be better in this case to make the deceased only available as a friend (or potentially a cousin or half-sibling?). Or am I misinterpreting, and the only available option would be the dead boyfriend (once saved)?

3 Likes

About the investigation stat, it’s important, but there are multiple ways to raise it. Your other stats and skills determine how well you perform actions (like if you have a high “magic” skill but a low physical skill and choose to resolve a conflict physically, you might lose and thus not raise the investigation stat) And it’s more of a progress stat, to show how many clues you’ve collected and such. It shouldn’t really limit your play style.

And the romance thing, the person you witnessed murdered is (depending on your choice) either your best friend or boyfriend/girlfriend/date mate. The other romances are people you meet on the quest, potential clients and such. As for the dead SO, they might possibly accompany you on your quest, to give input and such.

Hope that answers your questions!

2 Likes

Okay, so it’s less a stat, and more a “how well you’re doing” indicator. Fair enough.

So, they can be saved, then? But you could also choose to romance someone else instead? I don’t know, I still feel like it’d make more sense to have them start as only a friend, and let us begin a romance once we’ve saved them… :thinking:

4 Likes

I agree, that just sounds like a better story to me. But you could easily have the option for both. I’d just rather not decide it’s a friend at the beginning of the story and completely lose the chance for a romance later. (@ParrotWatcher This bugged me a little with Sammy in Totem Force– as I got to know the character better, I wished I’d left the romance possibility open at the beginning. But it did give me motivation to play again…)

3 Likes

Hmm, well I hadn’t really considered making them a romance option if you chose to be just friends at the beginning, but I’ll consider it. But keep in mind they’re a ghost for like 90% of the game, so any form of physical affection is gonna be a problem.

As for the “saving” part, that’d be too much of a spoiler to comment on :stuck_out_tongue:

And just what difference does that make when you’re in love? :kissing_heart::ghost:

:unamused:

I should warn you that I can be very obsessive when it comes to dead boyfriends. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

1 Like

…He really means this, too.

5 Likes

Very interesting, I can’t wait to see the demo!

This sound very interesting, can’t wait for the demo!