The Day After Ever After: A Cinderella Story (First draft entirely complete as of 7/10/22, latest update 8/7/22! Word count is 207,342 including commands. Releasing 11/3/22!)

Yes to both! Just be careful not to antagonize your spouse too early, or they may bump you off first.

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How very Saprano of you. Just saying.

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Holy shit, this game is going to be a funnier, sweeter version of Affairs of the Court.

I really, really adore the book so far! I think I get along reasonably well with the Prince (we might go the distance) and the King, but itā€™s harder to strike a balance between pleasing the nobles and the people. I think some moments with the Prince were awfully sweet! The Prince snoring was one, as was the Prince attempting to dress himself to impress his wife. Itā€™ll be very difficult to do a playthrough where Iā€™m being mean to him, even if I play as a revolutionary who froths at the mouth for change. Hmmm.

Canā€™t wait to read more!

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Thanks! Iā€™m hoping sweet and funny is a good description for it, at least when youā€™re not jailing dissidents and training up a private army for your own nefarious ends.

Hopefully a new update soon, will likely add another 5-7k words for a total hovering just shy of 20. This chapter will see you filling in for the king (who took ill during your balcony chat) and meeting with some supplicants. This will also be the introduction of a couple of potential romantic interests, if youā€™re willing to put your spouse to the side.

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Do you have a targeted ratio of play-through word count/actual word count? Perhaps 10%, more, less?

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I always hope to keep it around 20-30% since that was what the wiki had mentioned as a sweet spot. So far I am on the low end of that but this section might help some. Maybe.

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Okay, you guys tell me if this is too much, because I am not really a person where that phrase actually has any meaning. Should it be possible to commission the building of a rudimentary mech, or am I just going down the same paths of over-absurdity that buried Nuclear Powered Toaster?

Apparently you cannot add polls to existing posts, so a new one has been done below.

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Itā€™s a tale as old as time: should a Cinderella story allow you to build and possibly even pilot a steampunk Gundam of sorts?
  • Yes, mech it up already!
  • No, I think this is one toke over the line, Hustler mā€™boy
  • Pie!

0 voters

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Mechs in historical times are a common theme and if done in a sublime and feather-lite touch can be taken seriously.

The mechs in A Study of Steampunk felt like they fit the Victorian Age with Dr Watson and Jack the Ripperā€¦

Over-absurdity needs to be stoked and fanned in order to reach the levels you are worried about.

This is my take on the fine line between world building something believable and world-building to achieve an effect on the reader.

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I am also attracted to machines other than robots. Steam-powered planes, tanks, battleships, and steam computers like the ā€œAnalytical Engine.ā€

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I found myself chuckling at many of the choices. This was such a delight to read!

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Iā€™ve never been a fan of mechs, but especially in this genre Iā€™d prefer them not to be in the story at all. Just my personal feelings ofc c:

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I happened to know that there is a novel about steampunk reactors and nuclear weapons called ā€œQueen Victoriaā€™s Bombā€ and that there is a similar scenario in the tabletop role-playing game system ā€œgurps disasters meltdown and falloutā€. Would it be an interesting attempt to build something like that in this game as well? Or will it cross the line?

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Honestly, at this point the voters have spoken. I will never listen to yā€™all for everything, because Iā€™m a stubborn old fart. But I was already borderline on whether this was too disingenuous for a game centered on court intrigue and such, and it appears it is. It was only a spur of the moment impulse addition idea connected to a storyline that I still intend to do without it.

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Itā€™s a bit disappointing that no such thing is added, but Iā€™m still looking forward to the game.

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By the way, what do you think of the idea of dealing with such ā€œmodernā€ political and scientific themes in a sequel or another game?

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I will still work with them in this one to some extent. Minor spoilers for the upcoming update:

One of the three supplicants you see in the audience chamber will be a duke and his adjutant. They come to you with an option on how to train a squad of new recruits. You can make them common foot soldiers, heavy cavalry, or try the relatively untested new weapon known as the arquebus, a musket forerunner. I was just pondering an option to throw even more money at the military adjutant in order to also commission the mech being made, in a nod to a similar scene from Toaster. But it will still play out similarly even without the mech, the prospect of taking a risk to embrace the future or not.

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Thats so exciting!!! I like the idea of ā€œCinderellaā€ being not so sweet like we were told she was in the movie

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What kind of political mechanism and system does this game have? For example, are there parliaments, judicial courts, universal suffrage, and constitutional monarchies?

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King Roderick is not a despot, but he is a micromanager who mistrusts everyone who works for him (which is pretty much everyone, of course). A segment at the tail end of this new chapter coming soon will have you addressing this and starting down the path of adding a little more power for the people if you choose. That segment is already written; itā€™s only the Dukeā€™s segment that is left to do. I actually slept through the night last night, which is fun but also means Iā€™m a little behind schedule.

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