The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - An affair of the heart (WIP) (Ch 6.2 31 dec 2025)

Shelock Holmes (Books) is pretty dark if you know where to look.

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@Erized :heart: :heart: :heart: Oh wow, thank you!!! And I’m so glad to hear you like the ROs so far :blush: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
The next two ROs change up the adherence to etiquette a little—H being more correct than any character in the game so far (will use proper titles and etiquette rules and such), and A being less bound by them, in their behavior, at least :smile:

@anon67111821 Watson would be the first to admit to being flawed (which, annoyingly is what a perfect person would say). But they do have issues, problems, and flaws. But Watson works quite hard to not inflict them on others.

Ultimately—and this sort of goes agains the very common writing advice to have NPC have goals outside of the MC—Watson’s weakness and goal is Sherlock. What I mean I probably should not say yet…

More minor weaknesses is food, being too kind and empathetic, relation to money and status/image, rats, bad liar, clingy (physically and emotionally). The kind of person to say ā€œwe have to get toghetherā€ because they want to be nice—but they kind of don’t want too, and actually won’t call to get together…

I would say Watson’s attention on Sherlock is currently not obsessive (Though you might be able to RP as such)—but Watson surely feels like they are if they are pushed in certain directions.

Also, one thing that is hinted at in chapter two is the effect the war and following sickness had on Watson—that is something they struggle with.

:joy: :flushed:

Will definetely happen :+1: I just have this personal preference where if the MC is struggling the ROs are there and comforting. To add some balance. But once the MC starts feeling better the RO angst can be turned up on high :kissing:

There are some references to this already, and will definetely be a thing in the game :+1: :+1:

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I’m more than okay with this! (Also very curious)

I’ve heard that writing IF advice a LOT, but I don’t entirely agree. Obviously characters have to be more than ā€œI only exist in a vacuum to interact with MCā€. But I don’t see it as a positive thing when characters, especially ROs, could have MC completely out of their lives and have no changes whatsoever.

Fiction, especially interactive fiction shouldn’t try to be real life. Do I want characters to gravitate towards MC and have the protagonist greatly impact their lives? Yep.

I believe player agency is the basis of IF, and feeling like a bystander looking in, where every character could go on without you perfectly fine… not fun. Maybe a bit self-indulgent from me, but hey, I’m allowed to have main character syndrome when I control the main character :stuck_out_tongue:

Even so, all of your characters seem round and ā€œrealisticā€ so far, with their own pasts and issues unrelated to Sherlock too. Great balance :100::two_hearts:

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:smirk: :smirk: :smirk:

I think it’s just a piece of general writing advice, so as not to write every character as flat cardboard only to serve the plot or protagonist + conflicting goal motivation can be interesting. And I totally agree that in an IF, where we play the MC, it would probably be incredibly boring not to be the centre of attention or believe that the MC doesn’t matter at all in the grand scheme of things. I would say Sherlock is very firmly the centre of the world in my game, haha, even if that might make them a little bit mary sue. It would be weird if playing and inhabiting Sherlock Holmes wasn’t at least a bit wish fulfilment/power fantasy, right? :laughing:

Honestly, I sometimes worry that people will think it’s too much of that, with all the ROs swarming the MC and showing a lot of interest and exciting things just falling into the MCs lap… But from the IFs I have read, and that I’ve enjoyed, it’s usually quite a lot of ā€œmain character syndromeā€, as you put it :sweat_smile:

:smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :heart: :heart:

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I already love the level of customizations our Sherlock can have here. It reminds me of the all the different iterations the characters have in popular media, from RDJ’s chaotic cross-dressing badass, Benedict’s sardonic and arrogant version to Henry Cavill’s charismatic Stud Sherlock. Really looking forward to reading your full work.

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:smiling_face_with_three_hearts:
I really wanted people to be able to play their favourite (or own version) of Sherlock, as there are so many variations in books/shows/movies etc, so I’m delighted to hear that! :blush: :+1:

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Quick question about the hair color choices: what’s the difference between raven and jet-black? I always thought they were synonymous.

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I love what you have so far (like really. All your research and writing)

My Cherlock is going to be all logic and a little sarcastic. I like playing cold or manipulative or… I dont know. If you played Elex then my MC is like Alb

Watson for me is too sweet, but still interesting, so he is going to be my second playthrough

Lestrade is fun to tease. Like I am going to do it just to see his reaction. Poor man…

And cases! I really look forward to them

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ā€œAs a hair color, jet black is a variant of a hair dye for people with black hair. The jet black shade can also occur as a natural shade or color of hair. Jet black is characterized as having more intensity in color and containing blue and/or purple undertones. It also has a darker, more dramatic, and richer color compared to natural black.ā€

Maybe in the game, raven = ā€œnatural blackā€ :woman_shrugging:

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Like the person above me said, I assume jet-black hair refers to black hair with dark blue or purple undertones. Natural raven hair, like mine, tend to be much darker.

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@Titanwithwings When I was googling which hair colours to choose, I found that some people seemed to prefer one or the other / and that the interpretation of them seemed pretty subjective—so I went with both :sweat_smile: I also was unsure which one meant grey-ish black and which one meant blue/purple-black. But as it is planned right now, from a game perspective, both will mean very similar things. So you can pick the term you prefer :blush: :+1:

@xLime :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: Thank you so much!!! I’m not sure I know Elex, no, sry. But I would say such traits will be supported in the game, at least to a degree :smiling_face: :+1:
You’re not alone in that, everyone seems to enjoy torturing Lestrade :laughing:

@anon67111821 :smiling_face: yeah, I meant one of them to be very very dark, with more deep colour tones, in comparison to more grey-ish black or brown-black shades.

@bryanhayden555 :+1: :+1:

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I saw a picture of these kids and I thought about my MC, relationship with Lestrad… hehe

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This is absolutely perfect :laughing::sparkles:

Now I’m trying to think what it would take for Watson to jump into a Sherlock/Lestrade argument :thinking: maybe if threats of an actual duel happened? :sweat_smile:

It does remind me of something I’ve been thinking about. If the picture is sort of reversed—if MC was on the sidelines and the two others are ROs. Do you like when there is RO on RO or NPC on NPC content? Meaning the MC is sort of just on the sidelines listening in on such dialogue/interaction, and possible MC can only interject at the end of the dialogue—can that be fun/interesting? Or does the MC always need to be the centre of all interactions?

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Yes! This is interesting to me and it seems so… natural? I’m not sure if I explain it well :expressionless: The point is that I like situations in IF games that are like real life situations. Not always MC has to be the center of attention, the most important.
Maybe that’s why I always appreciate parts with POV change when MC disappears from the stage for a while.

I wish ROs had more complicated relationships with each other!

Back to Watson and Lestrade. If these two acted like my MC and Lestrade…
I imagine Sherlock would usually just ignore / watch them and sometimes make some ambiguous comment that would confuse them :grin: :smirk:

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Love that i can shape my own Sherlock. :smile:

I think npc or ro interacting with each other is quite interesting and the mc maybe can observe or join them whichever the player choose. I just hope I don’t have to become a matchmaker or some sh*t cuz my Sherlock is too possessive towards Watson. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Yes! I really like that too! :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: I would say I prefer that in (almost) all cases—even if the ā€œrealismā€ might be a bit less of a powertrip, or fun.

Thats sort of something I’ve been thinking about–how to show that more, and possible have some development between ROs (platonic/antagonist) same as with the MC/RO :0 I think it could be cool

:joy::joy::ok_hand:

:heart::heart::heart: I love to hear that you love that! :sparkling_heart:

What if it’s between your maid and your footman (who are not ROs)? :thinking::sweat_smile:

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Now that would be really cute! :two_hearts:

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Now that I can agree with :ok_hand::kissing_heart: 100% approved!

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I’m sorry for detailing this conversation but, I just recently played tears of Themis (ToT for short) and one of the side characters definitely gave me Lestrade vibes :

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Could we have more than one of the vices? I want to catch them all! To be a complete wreck.

Summary

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