#canvasrambles

a nesting adaption of redwall, which is redwall, mossflower, and original material that's a meta-narrative on the nature of mythology and storytelling.

framed as a senior monk teaching a young mouse about the story of redwall, which embraces the early installment weirdness (the horse, the animals that don't exist afterwards, portugal) as well as the confusion scaling and the ambiguous religion of this abbey (christian? but reincarnation is a thing?) as just... being part of how stories mutate and change over time.

and the redwall portion includes (a probably deeply abridged) retelling mossflower in a manner that makes it very obvious the details of that story have grown even more jumbled and mythologized by being old when matthias was the hero, and is even more ambiguous by the nature of being a story within a story to contextualize redwall (the novel) to the mouse in the framing story. what's true and what's fantasy will never have a satisfying answer, because it doesn't need to have one.

you ever think about moving pictures?

because i rarely do.

but it does a lot of heavy lifting in building the ankh-morpork and unseen university we know and love from most of the series.

this 'outside force introduces status quo challenging technology that evaporates and is never spoken of again' book:

introduced gaspode the wonder dog

gave detritus more character than his brief appearance in guards! guards!

introduced detritus's rarely spoken of wife, ruby

introduced the usual unseen university staff members

introduced ponder stibbons, and the start of his uncontested rise to power with him taking history's easiest accreditation exam

introduces mustrum ridcully

moving pictures set in place what unseen university is, and yet i never see anyone talk about it.

i've only read the book once myself, years and years ago when i decided to make my way through the whole series.

which amounts to, in my mind, a jrpg with real world clock and time locked mechanics, and an amount of randomization and multiplayer functionality.

the obvious features would be season/month locked dungeons. however, i think those would be best as bonus dungeons, while actual plot advancement material should be something like ‘return tomorrow’ or ‘after at least x hours’.

like, the actual plot commitment time should be maybe two weeks real world time, give or take leveling and player faffing.

the villager count will also be much more abbreviated than in animal crossing. some amount of random villagers would be nice, but it needs to be restricted enough that indepth writing can be done with them. plus a few key npcs (the tom nooks and able sisters and mayor and so forth) that can be relied on to be instrumental in every town instance.

in summary: i want a jrpg with the sense of community inherent to animal crossing, a real world clock, and fun adventurers and looting/gathering and crafting.

hopefully others can interpret this vision?

What video game do you most regret not finishing?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

well, randomly generated april fools gimmick with an on-canvas-style-guide item, that's probably a long list.

most of my unfinished games are either ones i'm satisfied enough without finishing (most of the harvest moons, particularly tedious jrpgs) or ones i fully intend to finish (the remaining rune factorys, the final fantasy games i've earmarked).

i guess it would be nice to get through harvest moon/story of seasons: a wonderful life. going to be honest, i'm not a big fan of the ten-days long seasons or the farming mechanics, but it does have a definite end and i do enjoy the ambiance, so it should be on brand for me to have completed it.

perhaps, even more, rune factory frontier. the runeys are unmanageable, and i keep getting stuck at a point in the lava dungeon where you need a silver hammer to get past some rocks. i'm holding out hope it gets a remake that eases the experience a smidge.

also, i have a plenty of visual novels on my backlog. they require the perfect alignment of mood, time, and interest to get through. like, i really should play clannad but... the character portraits are distractingly bad. people got ears on their necks. and then i have a few that i'm going to rudely categorize as 'artsy indie shovelware' that might be good, but i think i can tell the ones that love the visual novel format and are sincere in their story, and the ones that came up with an idea and didn't want to figure out complicated game systems.

trying to get a savage worlds campaign started. set in a small, tight knit community ala rune factory. my intent is to have plenty of consistent npc work that, ideally, the players are slotted into as equals. to this end, i've also asked them to invent an npc they'd be interested in interacting with.

i do have a two or three session plot planned, but it's a mystery so i can't share plot details, just try and enforce setting and tone.

also, no one else plays rune factory, so there's been some struggle to communicate what tone that implies.

good news: i got two players to make time for character creation. (i'm trying to get at least one more player, but that's been tough going)

however: one player has decided on a precocious 12-year-old (which i can work with, but changes the tone), and the other wanted to both match that age while also holding a significant social and quasi-political position (i managed to talk him up to 14-years old, but he was clearly unhappy about it).

which, can we agree, fundamentally affects how the townspeople will treat the proposed party? they are going to need to struggle to be taken seriously.

(okay, so obviously i can just treat them as full members of the community, but that feels like it just ignores the choice)

now the 12-year old is an aspiring private investigator sort, which positions him to actively involve himself in whatever happens out of curiosity. pretty sure the player is thinking riz from dimension 20, and i have cecil from rune factory 5 to add variety. player made one bold choice, but we've done improv together and he's good at cooperating[1]. the npc he provided is a good-humored town guard the child likes to bother with questions.

meanwhile, the other player has given me a laundry list of plot hooks and nothing about his character's personality and motivations. he wants to be in charge of 'fire based rituals', his family are subtly wealthy land owners, and his npc is a habitual horse thief child he thought up when he was going to play an adult. plus, he wants to do something with an undead hand that seeks out treasure, which i know he's very excited about, but i literally don't have a place to implement it, nor do i know what media this 'hand of glory' is from.

the actual player character doesn't have a name[2], and i'm not sure he filled out a character sheet. which is pretty consistent for the player. he's always been more invested in vague concepts than his characters, but it makes it hard to plan.

anyways, needed to vent somewhere. now i need to put in the actual work.

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[1] specifically, he's internalized my hatred/struggle with complicated fantasy names and uses normal names in my games.

color/colour: cornflower blue, followed by goldenrod. however, given the chance, i usually self represent with browns (either sepia or chocolate) because i quite like brown shades and few other people use it.

childhood book: going cheat slightly and say the redwall series, which i jumped about until i switched to bingeing the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books, then discworld. despite the impression i give, i'm not well read (i mostly read manga and graphic novels), i'm just good at extrapolating from others analysis. never read a school assigned book or a cliff notes, still got a's on the essays from listening in class. however, brian jacques wrote a compelling world, and his experience comes from storytelling to blind children instead of linguistics academia, so he knew how to hold attention.

favorite bored place: i browse stores and the library. i have a materialistic streak, gets my legs moving as i daydream, and gets me out of the house. america struggles with third places, but even if they didn't, i yearn to be anonymous in public and get squirrelly when starbucks and bookstore employees start to remember me.

insomnia cure: rain sounds and boring podcast to keep my brain from getting to active. failing that, i imagine the process of moving my bed to a train or spaceship or boat, then world build transportation that's powered by sleeping people. it's mental busywork with no function end product.