Zoe

I have defied all expectations and continued to do a thing

Episode 2 of Demo Disk:

So I never really post here (doesn't jive with how my brain be, is all) but this is where all the video game-y people I follow are so I figure it's the place for it

Years back, when I was actually trying to build a Twitch following, I would do a thing each Saturday of playing demos, prototypes, jam games, weird stuff off itch.io, whatever. The idea being to experience video games before they're Video Games.

I enjoyed doing it! Played some pretty cool stuff! Small Saga, Coffee Talk, Dicey Dungeons, Patrick's Parabox, Lucah Born of a Dream...

And then I stopped doing Demo Disk and lost track of upcoming games and I feel like these are related

So I've shamelessly riffed on Iron Pineapple's Steam Dumpster Diving (the format's so similar to the Demo Disk podcast I did anyway) (I did a podcast of Demo Disk! It was audio-only! That was a very silly idea) and made a video playing stuff from Steam Next Fest that's way down the popularity list

I pulled like 100 demos during Next Fest so even with a bunch going down over time I can keep making these for a bit if people care

Maybe I'll do it long enough to get decent at production again, I haven't produced a video properly in like 6 years, hot damn, that audio's grimy

I'm still on my postin'

So yeah in terms of having "that RPG party feel" you need a certain amount for it to feel full enough, but too many is hard to write. 4-6 feels like a good window. Especially when it was still gonna be a game, I don't wanna try to balance more characters than that. I'm also the type that, if you give me 6 characters and can only level 3 at a time, I'm gonna level three and then go back and level the other three and just be very insufferable about the whole thing

Speaking of insufferable:

FF games love their baddie scientist trope, as well as the trope where anyone about my age is the geezer of the party. So, let's muck about! A proper older guy, who's less Cid of FF12 and more Cid of FF6 (down to the questionable fashion sense, but at least he's not dressed like a banana). A scientist involved in causing the problems but has big regrets about it all.

And welcome to the reason it was a little tricky to find someone to illustrate the cast. Toby is a vian, a bird guy, a "well obviously a fantasy world is gonna have non-human sapient species and are you just gonna do orcs and elves and such again?". Look I'm a furry I can't help myself. (The setting has two other not-normal human species: sahagins, i.e. fishy kind of people, and gnolls, i.e. wolfy kind of people.) The illustration for him was actually a good insight for me, realizing he looks too much like Falco Lombardi so I've had to rewrite his appearance a little.

So what are the problems? Well, after getting to Tobias's office, the group gets to meet Sylvester, his summon (a green tiger-y thing). This is a fantasy setting, it's got familiars and summons, and Tobias will "um actually" you about those being different things. Familiars are all out and about, doing little things for people and what have you. They're like robots made of magic. Summons... aren't, and the differences and their implications fuel a fair bit of the later plot. Making a summon is dangerous for the summoner, to say the least, if not done well. But hey, he's a professional.

He's also a bit of a twerp. A goofball. Every other character was getting too serious, I had to do something to balance the group out, and I had a couple professors across undergrad and grad school who were perfectly competent but a bit playful personality-wise. So hey it works! I hope. I'm not exactly a goofy person so writing that kind of personality is tricky for me. Plus there's concerns about tonal whiplash and whatnot. This is where you get to "ah, are you a good writer or not?" and eep

And I certainly do not want to be too lighthearted with someone whose context in the story is basically to critique the kinds of techies which just make shit and don't think about the impact of what they do until it's far too late and that's not really funny kinda stuff innit

(Hey, good fantasy/sci-fi has plenty of social commentary about it, and write what you know and all that)

Anyway that's the cast I dunno what I'll keep postin' about from here but I'll figure it out

Keep on postin', baby

Even with it shifting from a game idea to a novel (because I know how to make a novel, but I am vastly not qualified to make a video game), I've retained the perspective that the protagonist group is an RPG party, with several of the things that should mean: namely, a variety in skillsets, personalities, and perspectives. The fun of a party-based RPG comes from the characters contrasting and bouncing off each other. But as I've said, I don't want to stretch the audience's suspension of disbelief too much, with characters that don't make sense individually or as a group meeting each other. And so we get folks like Alejandro.

Basically I tried to write Gay James Bond (who... kinda hates his job). Because... why not? They're cowards, they won't do it. I'mma do it. But, like, fantasy so rogue's tools and not guns or Aston Martins but y'know besides that

And it's an easy angle for two kinds of distinction from the others in the cast: one, someone who's not a trained soldier (even if he is a Trained Violent Man), and two, someone who knows more of what's going on and can wear the confidence and arrogance to match. He also lets me do the classic trope of "ah yes, we once were enemies, but that was due to deception, and now we can be allies!", which you have surely heard of under a far shorter name, that there was padding

Big one, though, is that he's posh. Guy's a Bond character, he's a government spook, of course he is. And that's... tricky for me. This wasn't how I initially did it, but with the rewrite I'm now writing the story as third-person limited, with the perspective character shifting from time to time. It's great for sustaining mysteries and getting in people's heads, but I'm also trying to write exposition kind of in the character's voice. Kell's parts are my standard writing style, Sheila's are more terse and concrete, and so Alejandro's would be more florid and eloquent, and did you know that's heckin' hard to do? (Aside: his outfit's prevalent purple color is a "purple prose" gag that I do not expect anyone would get)

But hey, I can do it. I play games with flowery, eloquent scripts that I can riff off of. Sure they can also be described as "comically melodramatic," but hell, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe Alejandro should be melodramatic. My habits for characterization lean towards the everyday realistic; even in a fantasy setting, there's a modern casualness to my tone that I like and would rather keep. Imagine if you're just hanging with your friends and freakin' Balthier pops in, talking and acting how he does. Or like... any Dark Souls character. It's good contrast! Even if it's a little harder to write him.

And of course, the three function as a "fighter, mage, thief" power trio. (Tropes Are Tools, baby) There are angles where each of the three is the odd one out, and so you can keep bouncing between those to develop their relationships. I honestly considered stopping the party size right there, and if this was going to just be a story about the journey then it probably would end there. But I can't do things at a reasonable scope, and so things just kept going and going and oh boy did I need a fourth character. Besides, there are some big RPG tropes that I haven't mucked about with yet!