#so I just start making characters and then whups I have a whole squad of them

[silverchronicler]

It's unfortunate that I have a hard time writing fanfic (I'm very character driven and I have a hard time writing Other Peoples' Characters), because I think a lot about how much I want to like figure out how I think tenno culture works/should work. They're all just like, teenagers of different ages who have been thrust into this world slowly remembering years of warrior training and all trying to come into themselves in a new era and it's so fascinating to think about to me.

And to think about like, how there might be different ways that individuals experience some quests- not everyone can kill the worm queen, so what are some other ways that they might awaken their tenno powers? Who causes trouble and who acts mature for their age, and what kind of friction exists there? How much do the npcs know about the metallic warriors and how do they react when they find out there's kids inside when one of them acts like a kid? What does being an adult mean in this new society where you're so disconnected from the same kind of responsibility that others have? How do the Tenno relate to each other? What do they do in their free time?

Sometimes I swear I just want to steal npc quotes from the wikis and just write slice of life stories about a group of unwieldy children in their magic robot ninja suits and pondering how the quests would go with a squad instead of solo. I love thinking about sci fi and fantasy world building and the origin system has so many unanswered questions I want to play with.

#warframe #tenno #operator #just. thinking about. Them #thinking about kids in suits petting their dogs and sending each other messages and learning to deal with their own mortality #and troubled histories #I just make characters that's what I do #so I just start making characters and then whups I have a whole squad of them

[toonpunk-game]

Toonpunk Now On Sale! What’s Next?

And here at long last we reach the endgoal of the thing. After 4 years of development and 3 months of post-production, Toonpunk is finally on store shelves! Well...digital store shelves, anyway. The paperwork is signed, sealed, and delivered, and all the backer copies have been delivered, and anyone who wants one can go ahead and get themselves a PDF version of the game right here, right now. You can play it at this very moment, but more than that! The print version underwent certification and is currently being prepared for distribution, and in mere days--days, I say--you will be able to hold it in your hands, and use it to wallop your friends right over their stupid heads!

It’s been such a strange and tumultuous journey. This book cost me 8 different friendships, just over a thousand dollars, and every weekend of my life since 2013--but good god damn was it worth it. I keep expecting to wake up and find that this was nothing but an exceedingly elaborate dream--but until such a time as that comes to pass, I have a more pressing and immediately actionable concern: I gotta figure out what to do with myself. As much as I enjoyed making Toonpunk, right now it’s still got a very limited audience--and not enough interest to justify committing to an expansion yet. I figure that, since I’m already into this game development thing, I’ll do another!

But which one?

Over the years I have regularly abused a variety of mind-altering substances, which has lead to me prototyping a number of games and concepts. Some of these I decided I liked, some of them I decided I didn’t, and I’d like to tell you about three of the former category right now, if it please you. The three games which I am most interested in working on at this moment are:

Rain. An asymmetrical card-collection board game. One player is “the storm”, a supernaturally-powered rainstorm which is flooding a small town in subrural America. The other players are “the drowners”, the only people in town who seem to realize what is going on. The board is a series of interlocking puzzle pieces showing tiles and roads, and the two opposing sides take turns building it. After the board has been built, the drowners have to move around the town, collecting cards and reaching certain buildings to use them. The storm begins flooding the town by placing rain tokens on buildings and roads. If a building or road is completely flooded, it becomes unusable by the players, meaning that the players are working on a strict time limit. 

The twist that ties it all together is this: the Storm can be one of 7 different kinds of storm, each with its own victory condition. The players have to puzzle out the identity of the Storm, and figure out how to kill it or escape it by completing specific objectives. For example, one kind of Storm puts a homicidal maniac on the field every time it floods a building, and its ultimate objective is to murder the players--the players can only defeat it by murdering all of its vessels using weapon cards. Another kind of storm has the central objective of flooding several buildings in a specific order, allowing the players to predict its strategy and counterplay it.

Reindeer: The Merriment. Much as Toonpunk is a riff on cyberpunk games, Reindeer would be a riff on...well, just look at the title and you get the idea. In this game, you play as someone who died; and instead of really dying, you signed on for a tour as one of Santa’s reindeer. Your job is to bitter teach old men, nervous young children, and cynical teenagers the true meaning of Christmas, by using a wide selection of magical powers. The catch? You also also have to contend with a rogues gallery of bad actors--including Satan, Loki, Nyarlothotep, the fourth reich, and a cabal of old-timey big game hunters. So, not only do you have to spread Christmas cheer, you have to whup some serious ass. Just think of it like “It’s a Wonderful Life” if the Angel was also John Wick. 

This game is a card-collection deck-building RPG rhythm game type...thing, where you collect cards and assemble them along a musical staff to fight your enemies. Certain cards stay on the field over time and yield an effect every 4 turns, and certain cards when played in tandem activate special effects; so the strategy of the game is in predicting your enemy’s strategy and playing around them like a CCG, but there’s also a DnD-style tactical map which affects the strengths and range of certain cards. It’s a little weird, but I had a lot of fun writing it.

Toonpunk: Standoff. It’s a rules-lite wargame that fits into fewer than 10 pages and can be played in about 10 minutes. You and your opponent each control a small squad of between 4 and 8 guys, and the entirety of the game takes place in a prolonged Mexican standoff. The ultimate goal of the game is to maneuver your guys into a favorable position so that once the lead starts flying everything will work out in your favor. You move your guys around, you flip over objects, you point guns at each other, and after 6 turns have elapsed everyone shoots everyone else. However, it’s not quite so simple as that.

Standoff was heavily inspired by the Key and Peele sketch of the same name. In addition to ordering their goons around, players have to contend with a trap-and-countertrap meta-level of gameplay: they reveal the presence of a hitherto unforeseen sniper outside the building, or a hidden bomb inside somebody’s trousers, or have two enemy characters rip off their masks to reveal they were actually each other the whole time. Things very rapidly go from “tense mexican standoff” to “comedy of errors and backstabbing” as players try to out-bullshit one another.

Anyway. That brings us to the end. I don’t know which one of these I’ll end up developing next; but rest assured it will probably be one of those. Watch this space for news on these, in addition to your regularly-scheduled Toonpunk News. End of speech.

#cyberpunk #horror #christmas #cartoon #key and peele