For the past year, we've been working on a DLC chapter for our lesbian road trip RPG Get in the Car, Loser! (Steam and Itch) called The Fate of Another World. Originally, this chapter started life as a bullet point in a pitch document from 2018 showing that we could extend GITCL if we wanted to, and I wasn't sure what to put in there, so "alternate universe where everything is bad" felt like an easy thing to work with, even though I didn't have any concrete ideas for what you could actually do there.
The big bombshell at the core of it, of course, is the appearance of Emily Harmless. Originally just intended to be an explanation for the cool "I WON'T FALTER IN THE FACE OF EVIL" background that shows up as part of the Sword of Fate animation, Emily's small story ended up being more important to the story of the game because I felt like it resonated well, a little bit of real world heroism in a game that's otherwise about bombastic violence. Her death is the big inciting incident that makes the party realize what happens if you don't fight evil preemptively.
I'm pretty sure Emily was one of the first things I designed for this DLC, it was fun to do a more serious-faced character in contrast to the rowdy main cast! Her main concept of "modern fantasy librarian" was a little tough, but it was tougher still to combine it with the post-apocalyptic look. The scholar's cap & the ID card were there pretty early on, but the rest of her costume changed a fair bit. I wanted to give her some sort of tattered cloak, and that evolved to be the scholar’s gown and mantle. She also had overalls early on, but the minimalist off-white dress was a more interesting shape with the gown. The other main element was the hero stuff. My idea for this was that she went around doing all the proper sidequests to get all the proper equipment, while Grace just went straight to the point. So her sword of fate has a fancy sheath (maybe my favourite part of her design, especially the angelic eye pattern), she has Agi's old pauldron, and I thought a shield of fate would be a fun idea. Like "wait there was a shield too?" Grace probably just had no idea it existed. And then there's the scuffed chucks, cuz what else is she gonna be wearing.
