That One NPC

If you ever need assistance with plotting and other writing stuff, I'd be more than happy to help, especially considering how much you've helped me!

If you take the default names of the RTP characters, they spell out something.
Well...except for RM2000... (ABCDEFGH)
That's why. It's a meta game of sorts.

I miss the 2k era roster. Don Miguel and friends. ^.^

LOL @ Elmer.

I love that name. Old country kinda name.

Elroy is another name I like for characters.

Neato! Look at all the fishies! And a mermaid too! Though looks like the fishing area might be a bit over populated to me? Maybe some kinda of fish should be rarer to show up? I donno, balancing is hard.

Yeah that was a mass sprite test more than anything. Not even all the fish are present here.

All fish types using the default, coastal background.

With his fishing game, the idea is definitely to have a higher degree of clutter so that you can't just grab the fish you want with the bait that works, every time, only worrying about line breaks. Instead you want to balance bait diets so that in order to catch a mermaid, you need an Elder Leaf, or Jelly Belly treat. However, lingering too low will cause lobsters and crab to consume the bait, just as other fish will eat it during the pursuit of the mermaid.

This creates a dynamic of patients in waiting out fish positions, as well as mastering the power meter, and control over your active bait line.

@Kayzee

Other examples from my tinkered system are chests and relics (mainly for games with appraisal/identifying systems that can later turn a generic "relic" item into a random item, so as to avoid disrupting the fishing session via common event processing) only react to the "Salvage Hook" bait type. This bait has 50 weight so it plummets to the bottom quickly. But it's not just there to nab chests and relics, it can also accidentally pull up clams and lobsters.

Chum is used to attract sharks mainly, but other predatorial, meat eating fish like the bloodtail and razorfin, or even eels will consume chum bait.

Each bait type has a number of fish of varying values and sizes that will take it, meaning you have to prioritize bait types with desired targets and strategize around your tackle box and the playing field.

There are 16 catchable species, and 12 bait types, 4 rock types including a mermaid one for mermaid ponds, and 3 chest types. So a lot can be done to flesh out this fantastic minigame that also doubles as a potential utility distraction.

I've been playing a lot of Romancing SaGa 3 lately myself. :3

So basically Shadow of Mordor's "Nemesis System".

Ummm. Yes?

This actually came from a game world idea I shared over the weekend. A world based on the premise of a JRPG (heavily leaning into it), classifying beings by role with Heroes at one end, Bosses at the other, and monsters & NPCs everywhere in between.

But I had the idea that if something happens to fatally wound a hero, it ascends on antagonist side. So an NPC would become a monster, a monster a boss. a Boss. . .A Final Boss. O.O

Sounds neat!

Well you said yourself, time travel "is so romantic, so adventurous, wonderous, mysterious". Obviously there is something about it you like even if it is nonsensical in any serious sense. Believe me I know exactly what you are talking about, but sometimes you just need to let a story be a story and tell you how something works and try and follow it as best as you can. I mean bad troupes and gimmicks may exist, but you can still have good stories written using them.

Also, you seem awfully convinced about the "one timeline" thing. I am not so sure myself, but I also don't think it really matters.

There's something about it we all like. My poison isn't so much the person from a boring, mundane present returns to a beloved historic era to mingle among the subjects of their scholastic obsession, but more the mysterious figure returns to present from future. I love a good bootstrap paradox. Ugh. I just peed a lil typing it out.

And in terms of multiple timelines, I admit that when it comes the nature of our "universe" we know virtually nothing. Negative nothing. Most likely never will. We know nothing about what our universe is. Where it exists, how it exists, etc. So in that regard, there may be some sort of multiple timeline thing going on in multiple universes. However. to suggest that our universe is capable of producing multiple timelines depending on variations in occurrences and major catalyst events, suggests that time is more than a side effect of the relationship between mass and space, or what we know as gravity. Being in a stronger curvature makes time appear to move slower. Key word appear. It's all relative to the observer. A planet with 10X gravity with the exact same axis and orbit as Earth, would experience a calendar year at the exact same pace. Theoretically it wouldn't "feel" or "seem" any longer.

Time was a way for humans to measure increments of motion around the sun. There is no force to create timelines, because there really is no timeline at all. There's just the universe, the energy and mass within. Energy, matter, motion.

Peed a lil? That's a interesting reaction...

The whole multiple timeline thing has more to do with quantum wave functions and how they collapse or more like how they don't (like described in this video) but really it hardly could be thought of as "timelines", just multible "nows". The past and future still aren't meaningfully real. Though it could also be that quantum wave functions act as a pilot wave (as described in this video) which cuts out all the multible reality stuff, so yeah.

Here is a thought: What if time travel was not possible, but it was possible to travel to a 'now' that just happened to resemble what the past might have been. I can imagine a story where someone tries to time travel but they realize at the end they can't actually, they just hop to a different universe that resembles the past or future.

(is immediately brought back to the Save the Dragon from the Princess quest in DragonFable lolz)

I had an idea for a quest like that before, a comical twist on the timeless classic.

It began with the heroes entering a town, and hearing rumors of the young princess having gone missing. When they speak to the King they find that a cryptic letter arrived begging for help, explaining that they are in the cave. Everyone assumes the dragon must have the princess captive, but when the heroes arrive, they find that the dragon actually wrote the letter, begging the King to take his daughter back. The entire time she has been redecorating his cave, playing dress up and having tea parties, ruling the roost, as it were. She's a very, very powerful magic user due to her mother's blood, and therefor maintains the upper hand. The heroes would have to somehow help her understand that her new "friend" is suffering because of her bossy, authoritarian ways and extended stay.

I really, really liked that quest idea, and thought about  ways of doing a boss battle with her where the player has to get more creative and come up with a work-around for actually hurting her. I also thought about maybe in the end her somehow getting a dragon egg she brings home.

Sometime let me tell the story of a humble bard who became renowned though out the land as the Dragon Layer...

Personally I have no idea how a VX Ace MMO is supposed to work without hella security issues, but whatever.