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Hey!... what? Where was I? Where was I?! Uhm… I took a sabbatical, went to find myself, studied on my head in the mountains of Mongolia: that sort of thing. Okay, okay. I got a new job, this time doing what I went to college for, and I lost track of time. A lot of time. I posted the second part of this in June of last year! It’s almost June of this year! Anyway, you’re here for more writing stuff, right? Well, I know what you’re thinking: Juju! You’ve already yakked for hours about linear narrative, and you’ve even talked about story props and proper skiing techniques. What else is there to talk about? Well, since we talked about starting the story, and continuing the story, what about ending the story? Consider this: You, the reader, have found a book that is the beat-all, end-all to every book you've ever read before. The characters are great, the plot is intriguing, you've cried twice, and now, at the end, at the very end!--it sucks. Like, crash and burn, third degree burn, burnie mac but without the comedy. You've spent the past ten weeks of your life slowly slogging through this giant book, biting your nails to nubs in concern for the leading heroine, heart pounding at the peril of the hero in the hands of the villian, and now what? You feel like you've wasted your life, right? "It's not about the end, it's about the journey." That's Book Sacrilege (BS) and you know it! It's always been about the end! You wasted spent ten weeks of your life leading up to learning about that end! You're legitimately mad! I think you can see where I'm going with this. Y'all smart. So you don't want your players to spend ten weeks, or even ten minutes, on your game just to see that it ends up nowhere. They've skied down that mountain slope only to end up in a disappointed heap at the bottom. Oops..... (wince) So, I guess what you're saying is: YOU HAVE A GOOD STORY, BUT HOW DO YOU END IT? The first thing to do is to relax. You're not alone. Every author has had this moment. I can name a million quotes about how the story never really ends, you just choose to stop telling it, yadda yadda yadda. But I won't, because we're talking video game stories. And ending them right. And time's short. Secondly, we have to understand a little about conflict progression and resolution. Any Engish / Lit teacher will tell you that stories usually follow this pattern, because... it works. I would ask that, for a more detailed view, please look at the nice words and nicer pictures on this website. But I'll give you the most basic of basic outlines, for your viewing pleasure. First of all, we got the beginning. In the beginning, you have CONFLICT PROGRESSION. There's a problem for the character, and it's getting worse. Let's use my favorite Shakespeare play for reference: Taming of the Shrew. What's our conflict, and its progression? Easy: All these dudes want to get their grubby palms on Bianca, but to do that they have to find someone to marry her mean-tempered, incredibly smart, bossy SHREW of a sister, Kate. Now, no man in his right mind is gonna marry her! There's our problem. Second, we have what's called the middle, where we lead up to THE CLIMAX. Now, the climax is the highest peak in the story where everything goes to HFIL by falling off Snake Way, so to speak. In our example, this would be the wedding between Kate and Petruchio, and his "taming" of her. Basically, she ends up marring a guy even crazier than she is and this is a bit of a problem for her. Last, we have the RESOLUTION, or the end. Now, this would be Bianca's wedding in our example, but the end is where everything simmers down and is, well, resolved! Or not, depending on your sequel status. But it never grows back up to the hectic frenzy of the climax, that's for sure. Now, when looking at the story you've lovingly crafted, fed, bathed, treated as your own child: where's your progression? Your climax? Knowing these things makes it far easier to know where your end will be. After all, once you go on the straight and narrative--er, narrow--path, you don't often stray from it. In that story, at least. Thirdly, we have to think about what sort of ending it is that you're going for. By that, I mean that you need to think long and hard about what you want the player to take away from your game. After all, the ending is the last bit they're see, and it's one of the things that will stay with them the most. Now, the rule of thumb is that the story MUST show some sort of progression. That is, the main character needs to come away with a better understanding of his world, himself, and his place in said world by the end of the tale. This, of course, may not always be a good thing. He may do all these 'great' deeds only to understand that he was unwillingly a pawn and therefore an aid to the bad guy. Or he might even BE the bad guy. Think about, if you have played it, "The Illogical Journey of the Zambonis." If you have not played it, go play it now and then come back, because it's something you need to know. Also, spoilers below. The Zambonis lesson isn't always a happy one, but it's one they needed to learn. There's morality in that game, I tell you what. That's just the thing. I can't write your endings for you, no one can. They, like your story, have to be as original as you are. (insert angelic chorus). But you can write your stories. Think about your characters. What are their flaws? What should they learn about themselves by the end of the game? What should the player learn about them? After all, they're the ones going in blind. Think about your own favorite--or not so favorite--endings. What went wrong? Look at it, learn it dissect it, BE IT if you must. But think about it. Follow your story progression. Look at all angles. The end... it's already inside of you. Actually, that's all I have this time around. I hope that's helpful; I feel as though it wasn't quite as helpful as my other parts, but this is the series finale. If the ending to this is about endings, and it's a bad ending... don't take my advice. Heh, heh.... (clears throat). Anyway, I'm off to enjoy government-run America and corporate benefits. See ya!

Heya folks, after playing games, watching movies, seeing animations, and reading stories, I've noticed there seems to be a fine line between what's acceptable for developing characters, and what isn't allowed. before continuing these points, I do want to mention that developing takes time, work, perseverance, and even error. In addition, character development is like an art, there are multiple ways to go about one method, much like the styles of shading. I've dealt with my fair share of delevoping characters, the list stretching to 177, and while I may start from a random part of my imagination, I will repeat that that this is not the only way, but could be one way that may help you in the processes. Let's start off with a name. For the purpose of examples, I'll be using my character Rilumia. Your character's name should have a reflection to the style of names your world has, whether it be Japanese, English, Scottish, some self-created language, and so on. You will also want to avoid repeating certain name aspects, as this can get the reader/player confused on name pronunciation. For example, I have two dragons by the name of Rea and Rei. The only major difference in the last letter. Rea is pronounced "Re-uh", while Rei is, well, "Re." This alone can be confusing as you try to remember what character has what name. In some cases, however, you're able to get away with this. Twins, siblings, family names, and how the family's language works are a few of possibly many exceptions. Names should also have a reason to them. Rilumia used to be a demon, thus she has a multi-syllable name that is akin to the race of demons of Scalvose. Your next step is possibly going to be determining what the character likes and dislikes, along with the personality. Rilumia absolutely adores animals, so you can feel a soft spot in the character's overall context as she grows throughout the story of the book, piece, or game. You will want to avoid basing likes off of other characters until you finish everything that the character likes on their own terms. Let's set up a small sheet below, so keep a bit of formatting while determining the character's development. Name: Rilumia Likes: Animals, the ocean breeze, flowers, food, and long walks through the forests. Dislikes: Blood, sickness, fighting, sour candies, silence. (Note: You don't have to place these in a sentence-like format. This is my style of setting these up.) When it comes to what a character likes and dislikes, or love and avidly hate, and so on, they do not have to be polar opposites. You can have a soft-hearted man who lacks a backbone love heavy metal just as much as a kid loves candy. If the character loves sour things, they don't have to hate sweet things. For every like, it adds to the character if you can provide a reason behind why they like something. Rilumia loves flowers because she can utilize them as a defensive measure when she's attacked, and the ocean breeze makes her feel unbound from other mundane tasks. She's a cook, so food is something she would enjoy. Walks through the forest allow her to see animals and plants, which increase her enjoyment down to the earth. The same goes for dislikes. Rilumia is a bit of a germaphobe, so she will definitely dislike getting sick or seeing blood, and while she isn't against injuring somebody to protect herself, if a fight is avoidable in any possible way, Rilumia will try to take that path. Disliking silence comes from her personality, which is our next subject. Personality: Sultry, gentle, adventurous, cunning, partially germaphobic, and slightly seductive. The character's personality has all rights to reflect their likes and dislikes, and don't let others say otherwise. You know your character more than the next guy down the street, so you ned to convey the reasons behind their personality. In addition, personalities can't be abstract, as they must be reflected in each word of the character in some way. However, you don't need to reflect every personality aspect in one line or word all the time. Sometimes the character can have enough mentality to know when to be mature and push their own feelings aside for a while. Or, like my character Darkness, can be complete morons and not understand much of what goes on around him, other than when he's hit for being perverted or making crude jokes. Their personality needs to exsist. Rilumia loves poking her nose towards the winds of a journey, and while she may be bothered by germs and the like, she's gentle and rarely shows her disgust. Though she doesn't mean to be, she has a seductive tone to her words sometimes, which irks others. Otherwise, being sultry, she has a passionate heart and to some, she does rather attract them. Blessings: Quick to protect those in need, Green thumb. Banes: Body scales are soft and fragile, very energetic. (Note: These can be called pros and cons, strengths and weaknesses, and so on.) Lastly, I want to talk about blessings and banes. These are things that the character excells and fully fails at, regardless of how strange they may be. Rilumia, once she fell in love with a dragon's scale, it eventually lead to her falling in love with the dragon, himself. Demon blood is severly malleable in terms of race, and thus her body started to slowly corrupt, or change into that of a dragon. She doesn't know if she still has enough demon blood in her to continue being changed, but she doesn't really care too much as it opened many new paths of life for her, whether in the form of strength, endurance, smell, and the list goes on. However, her true self is still present in her mind, which gives her a constant questioning on what has happened to her as time has gone. In term of the change, her scales are as soft as velvet, and can easily be removed like a bird feather. However, this doesn't stop her from being quick to shield blows aimed at innocent people. On the downside, the amount of energy in her body tends to keep her up at night a lot, forcing her to try and find ways to calm herself to sleep, like reading, seditives, and the old attempts of drinking warm milk. This is a basic outline to get started on fleshing out your characters, which I hope helps you all in need of it. If you have any questions, comments, or feel as if I misstated a part, please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

THE MERCHANTS OF EVERLIVE Throughout the United Chiefdoms, it was known that Everlive was the city of opportunity. Exotic items and delicacies were to be found that were not available anywhere else. Merchant caravans ventured to Everlive hoping to sell cheap items the city needed, and also buy the quite expensive items the city offered. Back in other towns, they could make very high profits on the select items that they invested in. There also was a reason that the items brought such high investment returns. Only about one out of ten caravans, that entered Everlive, ever exited the city... The lands around Everlive were very hostile. Making the conditions worse was that the sole fresh water source had twenty foot high walls, with archers stationed on them to stop anyone from reaching the river. It was known as The Walled River. It was walled for over thirty miles, starting at Everlive Mountain, all the way to its mouth, at the ocean. Even at the mouth, archers and pikemen prevented access. The poorest and most numerous people lived from two to ten miles from Everlive. They offered cheap items. Food caravans could make a little profit from selling food to them. It was almost guaranteed. Water caravans could make more profit, but they were often targeted by desert bandits. The poor people were known as the Low Merchants. The people living closer to, but not in, Everlive were known as Mid Merchants. The soil was better than the Low Merchants area. Simple gardens could supply their food. Some specialized in growing plants that had very deep roots reaching an aquifer that ended about two miles from the city. The Mid Merchants tended better protection. They could afford better weapons. Those closest to the city’s gate could even afford a guard or two. To different caravans, a little more profit could be made trading with the Mid Merchants. The High Merchants lived in the walled city of Everlive. Little was known about them. It seemed as the few caravans, that exited the city, were sworn to some sort of secrecy. Everlive, itself, was near the top of the mountain sharing its name. One known fact was that very high profits could be made. Another fact was that food caravans were not allowed to enter the city. About two miles northeast of the furthest area of the Low Merchants, away from Everlive, was The Mount. To get to it, there was a path that forked away from the main road. Like everything else pf value, it was walled in. It was controlled by The Miner’s Guild. You needed to make some easy coinage, so you decided to be an escort for a food caravan heading to the Low Merchants of Everlive. It has been about two days journey across the desert, following the coastline. You hear camels grunt their complaints. Ahead, you see a cloud of sand, getting larger, coming closer. It’s desert bandits... RPG BIZ ​ Imagine a game system where what you do in REAL LIFE gains you experience within the game. Here are different areas in Real Life that gain you experience in the games. 1. When you submit an article for a magazine or write a story for a game, you get SCRIBE experience. 2. When you submit poetry for the magazine or a game, you gain BARD experience. 3. When you recruit new members to our community, you gain LEADER experience. 4. When you submit artwork, you gain ARTISAN experience. 5. When you submit music compositions you gain PERFORMER experience. 6. When you submit plugins, you gain BUILDER experience. 7. When you play one of our community's games, you gain WARRIOR experience. 8. When you financially invest in our community, you gain MINER experience. 9. When you submit puzzles, you gain MUSER experience. 10. When you financially donate to our community for another member to receive MINER experience, you gain GIVER experience. 11. When you submit an entire game, you gain ARCHITECT experience. If you look carefully you will notice the words "submit" and "play". You are reading correctly, you gain experience for submitting and playing. You get even more experience if your submission is used in a game or game supplement (example: magazine). You get even more experience for successfully playing an entire game. With submissions, you may gain a lot of experience for making a lot of submissions, but for certain level advancements, there will be requirements for submission to be used, or proposed to be used in a game or game supplement. The membership into the community is free. Members that have their submissions accepted in a game or magazine may receive compensation, when that particular game or game supplement, has made an income. With higher profits, bonuses may be given to members who have high levels of different game categories (bard, leader, artisan, performer, builder, warrior, minor, etc.). As you can see, there are a lot of positions available for this massive project. We need a large variety of writers and poets. We need artists to create enemies, 'museum' artworks, unique flora and fauna for the landscape, title screen, chapter screens, facesets, etc. We need music composers with different styles. Plugin makers can be a great asset in creating new experiences for the players. These and other positions are available. ​

(Been thinking of this for a while, ever since I saw what Flowey says if you start the game after a true pacifist ending, but I felt like writing it out. Really just using Undertale to explore a concept here though.) Hey... Look, I know what the flower said. Everyone is got their happy ending. To go back on that, to rip them out of the timeline and take them back would ruin that. You should know by now, the other possibilities? They aren't so happy. And somethings taint you, somethings are inescapable. Even if you cheat, you still would know you did it. Maybe you don't care. So yeah, taking away that happy ending seems more then a little cruel. But... Something's bugging you isn't it? Maybe more then one something. Maybe not least of all that happy or not this is still a ending. Yeah, you could leave everyone to their happy life. Except... Can you? What happens to the characters when the story is over? How do you even know if they are really happy? Or heck are even still really there? This is the end of the timeline for you... what if it's the end for everyone else too? Just frozen visions of moments and... nothing after. And really, not everyone is happy, The Empty Vessel, The Jester of Sorrow, The Scion of Hatred, The Forgotten, where is their happiness? The future isn't written yet, maybe it never will. This is where time stops. Maybe all stories must end. You can go back, to try and rip through reality, find secrets that may not exist. I wouldn't really blame you, even if others might. Isn't that better then a frozen future even if it causes pain? Maybe. Or... Or... You could look at another path in the void of possibilities, maybe even write a future yourself. Go beyond the timeline you knew, You aren't the only one looking. Maybe, just maybe, if all of you keep a light burning, someday a new path will open forward. All stories must end. Or so they say. But for every ending maybe a seed for a new beginning is planted.

So, before you guys smite me and hang me for how late this is, I gotta ask, "Is there such thing as a time frame?" Wait, who's talking? Who's being asked, what is going on?! Hey folks! Rez here with a continuation of character developing. This time, we'll be talking about dialogue, and using the character's personality within their words. For the sake of this example, I'll be using my gambler, Lek, and a demon named Anicor. I'll list the main aspects of their personality below. Lek's Personality: Optimistic, Level-headed, Out going. Anicor's Personality: Shy, Quirky, Energetic. When a character talks, they need to have a target person/thing they're talking to. You can't leave this open unless there's a continuation of the dialogue between two characters. For example. "Hi, bob," Jack said. "Hello," Bob responded. "How's your day?" "Good." With the example above, the first two lines show who's talking. Leaving either of those open allow for utter confusion to set in. It could be thought that Jack continued without a response, or that somebody outside of his target was responding. Also, something else that wasn't in those lines was emotion. You must convey the character's feelings, whether it is based off of their current mood, feeling of the topic, or even their personality taking over. If you don't, your game, story, or other projects will be really dull, and most will look for a new game to play. Now, there is one exception, and I've seen few pull this off. You can have a monotone-talking person be the center of a joke or some plots, but don't have them be the main focus of your game. Voices in voice acting know this rule all too well, if present, and I'm sure you've heard/read monotone language before. Reading your sentence out loud to yourself is a good way to listen for emotion, and that's where syntax--structure of the sentence and overall flow, basically--takes place. Following this, one last thing I wish to point out here is word choice. Words also help reflect emotion and give a three dimensional aspect to characters. For example: "Hey, man. I just wanted to let you know how stoked I am for the game! I hope you remember how vivid your mom's determination was about you taking me. I'll be there around eight." Vivid is a hard word to use, but if pulled off correctly, it gives a great amount of emotion, in addition to giving a better structure to your sentence/line. Determination is an emotion in its own right. Stoked is another example of emotion that takes the place of the word excited. Adding variety keeps people interested in what they're reading. Now, the moment you folks might have already wanted me to get to... Interactions. "Lek, w-what's a flower?" Anicor hid herself behind Lek as she pointed at the rather strange flower in a pot. "I didn't expect you to shiver at the sight of a fragile being. It's a plant, like grass. For the most part, they're harmless, but there are a few exceptions. Some of Scalvose's flowers, like the Phenostar and the Quiriblit, are quite harmful to some species of life," Lek moved away from Anicor, leaving her in "sight" of the flower. "Go on, touch it. It's a perfectly harmless dandelion." "What if I'm a-allergic?" she slowly stepped forward, flinching as she quickly jabbed her finger into the flower's center. She withdrew it to find her finger covered in a yellow powder, which caused her to well up in fear and start hyperventilating. "Calm down! It's just pollen!" Lek grabbed her, hugging her tightly to a chair for her to sit on. With Lek's help, she slowly regained a calm demeanor. "What is this p-p-powdery stuff?" she sniffed at it, sneezing after a couple seconds passed. "As I said, it's pollen. It's how flowers reproduce," Lek smiled, his eyes shining with enjoyment. With the example above, you can tell how Anicor is by nature, and how Lek responds to her actions and words. Anicor's nervous personality shines throughout the whole segment, and while Lek's mental opinions aren't stated, you can pick up a bit of it from his words and actions. You can also see how he feels about her, to an extent. This pretty much sums up this section of the tutorial. Part three will be focusing on relationships and external/internal factors on life, which will help shape the character into (possibly) somebody you can be yourself. (You'll understand what I mean... Don't worry!)

I'm not much of a writer, but it always made me wonder how to write dialogs and adding the usual sighs or the occassional stutter without making it look annoying, particularly in videogames. Do you add any style or formatting when putting sighs/sobs/hiccups/gasps in your dialog. Or it doesn't bother you at all. Would love to know what you guys think.

HOW WRITE GOOD, PART 2: DON'T DO THE THING Hey! What, you're back again? I didn't scare you off the first time? Wow... okay. A little unexpected, but okay. So, how did the story go? Mhmm... Mhmm.. ah, okay. So you: HAVE A STORY, BUT IT KEEPS ENDING UP TOO PREDICTABLE/ IT'S HARD TO KEEP TRACK OF WHAT'S GOING ON? Okay, I think I can help with that. Sit here, and let's talk about it. So you've got the story. But somehow, it keeps slipping down the mountain on one ski, ending up at the bottom in a crumpled heap so predictable that the player can see the end coming from the first thirty seconds of descent. It seems like everything's at a loss, because you can't figure out how to keep the story from crashing, despite knowing the linear narrative and all that other stuff we talked about last time. Well, here's the problem. We gotta keep that story from crashing and burning. How? Well, let's see. Why don't we try giving the story TWO skis instead of one? And maybe some ski poles so they can guide themselves down the slope? Boots and bindings would be a good thing too, so the story can actually stay on whatever ski it has, whether one or two. Are you getting the metaphor yet? I hope so... To explain in more detail: a story with no supports is the same as a skier with no supports. It's not going to end well for anyone. What the heck are supports, you ask? How can a story have supports? Well... let's think about our story from last time. A small girl with red hair lives in a shabby house on the edge of a futuristic city; she goes from her house to find her missing mother. By itself, this is technically a story. And depending on what we decided to do with our narrative, it's a good game. But it's still a little.... lackluster. How can we fix this? With supports, of course! Support #1: Setting Wait a minute, wait a minute! You say. We know the setting already, Juju! It's a futuristic city! Yes, but... do you know what atmosphere means? Not air you breathe atmosphere, but aesthetic atmosphere. This city... the girl's house is shabby. It's safe to say she doesn't live in a very futuristic part of the city. More likely, she lives in the slums. Why would there be slums in a futuristic city? What sort of people live there? Let's say, for instance, that to survive in the city as a healthy citizen, you have to pass an aptitude test that places you with a job. (a la Divergent series, almost). Those people who can't pass the test for whatever reason have no other choice but to live in poverty on the outskirts of the city. By extension, this would mean that the girl's mother also failed the test. Does this failed test play some part in her disappearance? Hmm... Is there more to the plot than meets the eye? All of this can be gleamed just from the setting of the story. Wow! Support #2: Characters and Their Locations What kind of story would it be without characters? Well, there are a few games that have only one or two characters, but in our game, we have a whole city's worth! That's a lot of work.... or is it? Get out your linear narrative that you've written in your word processor, or in the back of that shabby notebook that holds a few papers from tenth grade and a crude drawing of your gym teacher. Here's where we map out where our character will go. What do you mean, Juju? Well, again, it all comes down to organization. Personally, I use Excel for this, but in most word processors there's an option to make a table that will do basically the same thing. What we're going to do is write down where the character will go and what they might find there. For our game, I'll include a downloadable example. Let's say that the redheaded girl goes to the bus stop, an office building, a seedy diner, the neighborhood near her house, and finally a warehouse. In my real game that I'm making, there's about 15 of these. IMPORTANT: THESE ARE NOT THE NUMBER OF MAPS YOU HAVE (well, they can be, but I don't use it that way). THESE ARE ONLY THE AREAS THE PLAYER AND CHARACTER GO TO! If you look at the attached example, you can see that there are 3--Count 'em, 3-- columns. They say "Name of Area", "Enemies", and "Key Scenarios". Of course, you can add more or less columns depending on preference. I've written the name of the areas, whether I expect any enemies to be encountered in said area, and if the area holds a valuable cutscene that's used to further the story. The best thing about this is that you can always leave your story, come back to it, and remember at the very least the bare basics of what you were planning on doing to it in the game. In terms of maps, each area can have as many maps as you like. There can be three maps in the bus station, for example: the outside, the inside, and the bus itself. This is also where you can start adding an important support: Characters. In my own organization, I have an excel workbook that has many, many tabs. These tabs are labeled things like: Enemies, Items, Key Items, Skills, Characters, Areas, etc. My Character tab has the name of the Character, a brief explanation of the Character, and what Area they can be found in. Some are just NPCs, others have Key Items for the player, and others help further the story in other ways. If you don't have Excel, you can easily add a Characters row to whatever table you're working with. Why the trouble, you ask? Well, think back to that aesthetic atmosphere. Have you ever watched a show, or played a game, and found that one NPC that struck a chord with you, or that one side character that you liked better than the hero/heroine? What if they hadn't existed. Would the game still be the same without them? Of course not! Good characters flesh out a story and make it more believable. And that's what we're trying to do- sell this story and its sincerity to the player. There are plenty of more supports that I could go into, if I had the time. For homework, read up on these links. They're hand picked by me, so you know they're good 1. R.R. Martin Tells You What's What (that's the Game of Thrones guy, for those of you who aren't into that sort of stuff) 2. World Building and You: How to be an Awesome God of Imagination 3. A Sum-Up of This Lesson and Part 1, but Written by Someone Else Is that everything? I think that's everything... oh. Wait. Before you go: Don't. Do. The. Thing. Okay, so you know how we've established that skiers need supports to stop from falling down and dying? Okay, a skier with protective suit and two skis and poles is fine. But a skier with five pillows, two sets of goggles, twelve poles, nine skies, and a big marshmallow helmet will crash and burn just as easily as one with only one ski! You can't juggle that many things going on! A story with too many supports will be as bad as one with no supports at all!!!! Okay, okay! You say. How can I tell? Easy. Remember what I said was the most important part of the story? Think hard, now. The main character must have a goal. Good job! Now, every time you add a support, think to yourself: how will this help my main character achieve their goal? Think about the ski thing again. We give our skier two skis, two poles, bindings, boots, a suit, and a helmet. This is to help them reach the goal of skiing to the bottom of the mountain and making it there in one piece without dying. Just the same, your supports MUST have a way of helping the main character to reach their goal one way or another, or else it's just extra baggage that'll weigh the story down until it has no way of moving forward. Like it? Am I still stupid and know even less than before? Can't wait for part 3? Let me know!

Hmm? Oh, hello there! Come on in, I- what? No, I'm not busy! Come in a sit a spell! What's up? What's that? Writing tips? Sure, I've got writing tips! Oh, I see, you: WANT TO MAKE A GAME, BUT HAVE NO IDEAS / ARE NOT GOOD WITH IDEAS... You want to be a game designer and make cool games so that your friends will be like "Wow, cool game!" but you have no ideas on a story, or even how to begin a story, and you're beginning to stress because what if they put a ban on new games or something and you haven't finished and how do you start do you plan or just wing it or what's the starting point how do you find it-- Okay, just take a deep breath for me. Let it out, take another. Okay... good? Good. So, you're ready to make a game. Great! No ideas? Preposterous! Think of an idea right now. Well, let's start slower. Think of a guy. Any guy. Got him in your head? Okay, this guy has a family, or does he? Something happened to him. What happened? There's an idea. Make a game about it. Okay, maybe it's not that simple... No, it's really that simple! Ideas can come from anywhere, anything, any time. What do you like. Space? Make a game about an astronaut. Or cute planets trying to find their star. Chess? Okay, a white and a black chess piece travel across a board-world together. Gummy worms? Make a gummy worm harvesting simulator. "Well, Juju, I might have an idea now, but an idea is not a story." You're... right! It's not! But, how do you flesh out a story? Well, sit back down and let Juju clue you in on a very magical four letter word that happens to be a computer program: WORD. "...Word? Word!? That's your answer?!" Yep, that's my answer! Word, or Notepad, or Writing Software #3, or something! Write your idea down, and then think a bit. Here's some things to think about: Who's the main character of the idea? Are there any secondary characters? Will you allow for a happy ending, a sad ending, or both? Do you want to go a conventional route, or do you want to channel your inner M. Night Shyamalan and have a crazy plot twist? More important things to think about: How long do you want your idea's story to be? A few hours of playtime? A few days? How will your game assets fit in with your idea? What sort of assets would you need to find to make your idea come to life? What sort of scripts would you need? Is there anything your idea has that the RTP of RPG Maker can't do without a special script? When you have answers to these questions, then it's time to think about something called the LINEAR NARRATIVE. That's just a super fancy term that means a story that is told from beginning to end, without doubling back. For first-time writers, this is the easiest option. Doubling back usually means extra work and cross-referencing which, while good in its own way, is often rather confusing if not done right. In any case, this means that it's time to give your idea a beginning, middle, and end. "How do I do this?" you ask. Well, think of your idea. For example, let's say our idea is this: A girl lives in a house. Your idea may be more or less flourished. Still, let's first take our idea and... embellish it a bit. Let's add some adjectives and maybe even a preposition or two, shall we? A girl lives in a house. A small girl with red hair lives in a shabby house on the edge of a futuristic city. Look! With just 12 extra words, we've added so much to our idea! (applauds) But it's still not a story yet, is it? I mean, the girl's only LIVING, and not doing much else. Let's add more to the idea, using a semi-colon. (Grammar Reminder: One uses a semi-colon to add combine two full sentences; it doesn't work if you have a run-on sentence or a sentence fragment. ) A small girl with red hair lives in a shabby house on the edge of a futuristic city. A small girl with red hair lives in a shabby house on the edge of a futuristic city; she goes from her house to find her missing mother. Okay, great! We have our first, most simple outline! We've done the most important thing in the story-making process: We've given the main character a goal. Without a goal, the main character doesn't have a reason to do anything other than the norm, and the game won't exist! Okay, so you have to make a decision here. Does the girl find her mother, or does every effort turn up in vain? What sort of people live in this futuristic city? She's a small girl; what sort of challenges does she face all alone in this large place? Her house is shabby; is she too poor to afford bus tickets and has to go everywhere on foot, or does she have a bicycle or some other form of transportation? Answer these questions, and the story grows. Tip: It's easier to separate your story into three acts. The first act should set the story. For example, we'd show the girl, part of her life, perhaps her mother, and then we'd segue into act II, where her mother goes missing and she embarks on her journey to find her. This would lead to act III, where we'd show a climax. If you had a boss battle, the final boss would be in part III. We'd see her ending, and then her story is finished... for the moment. What else? Well, we have the story here, and if you wanted, you could even just leave it at that. But we can still add! Why did the mother disappear? Was she taken, or did she leave of her own initiative? The little girl, if the game is true to life, will have grown and learned on her lonesome journey. How will she face her mother after the events of her story? Will actions the player chose to take have an impact on the girl, and if so, how will the end of the game be affected? Will there be a cliffhanger for a sequel? Write all this down in your word document. Make notes. Wanna change something? Change it! Afraid you'll lose your progress? Nah! Write new ideas in different colors, so you can change without really changing a thing! Never be afraid to expand on your idea. Even if you think it's stupid and no one will like it. It's YOUR idea, and despite everything, if you take initiative on it and work hard, you're 100% guaranteed that someone, somewhere, will enjoy it. Remember: even the corniest movies get a cult following at some point. So get out there, and make some ideas! Like what you read? Can't wait for part 2? Think I'm stupid and the worst tutorial person ever? Let me know!

So, it’s been a while since I’ve contributed anything to this forum, and I feel kinda bad for it. I’m still working on my own projects, and hope to have something submitted to the Showroom soon, but until then I feel like giving something back to the community. I’ve posted a number of replies before regarding writing and storytelling, and have even received some requests for help from a number of people, and wanted to put something together a tad more definitive. So without further ado, here is my personal advice on writing. Keep in mind that these are writing rules that I choose to follow, but this is by no means comprehensive or absolute. The exception proves the rule. The Writing Process A particular work of fiction may be inspired by any number of sources. Sometimes you get an idea of a world but no story. Sometimes you get only a single scene in your head with hardly any context. However it happens, it is important that your initial idea comes from some point of inspiration. Great fiction rarely starts out as something procedural or forced. The tiniest starting point can turn into something humongous, so long as that start is genuine. J.R.R. Tolkien famously started The Hobbit with a single sentence scribbled on the back of a piece of paper: “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit.†Once you’ve got a starting point, it’s important that you flesh it out before you start working on a game. Rough drafts come before final drafts, and the last thing you want is to be forced to re-Event and re-Script already-made scenes because it doesn’t fit the story you end up writing. I would suggest at least knowing the basic shape of your story, or at the bare minimum at least know how the story Begins and Ends. With these in mind, you’ll at least know what general direction to take the plot. Characters Writing interesting characters is simultaneously one of the most rewarding, difficult, and important tasks as the creator of a piece of fiction. Interesting or dynamic plots can be dragged down by boring characters and likewise bland stories can be made captivating with the right protagonist. While there is no set-in-stone formula for making characters interesting, there are a number of guidelines you can follow to prevent excess banality. The surest way to make a character uninteresting is to make them unrelatable. Even the most outlandish and inhuman characters are frequently grounded by some defining feature with which we, as the audience, can relate. The real draw of characters like Superman or Dr. Manhattan isn’t their god-like powers, although that may be what initially draws us in. Instead, we fascinate ourselves imagining the loneliness such characters feel, their struggle to remain incorruptible despite their power, and the immense responsibilities they bear. With that in mind, try to develop characters who feel conflict. A Martyr may never sway from their path, but that doesn’t mean they don’t feel alienated or weary at times. Along a similar vein to making characters relatable is making characters flawed. While we often want to create characters who embody the best traits of humankind, characters who can seemingly “do no wrong†often makes them inherently less believable, and thus, less relatable. Even the most well-intentioned individuals make mistakes or miscalculations, they have moments of weakness or can manage to rationalize their own desires to a point of legitimacy. Brandon Sanderson’s Second Law states that “Limitations > Powers.†Simply put, a character’s inherent flaws will always prove more interesting than what they can do. Lastly, I’d like to touch on the idea of writing “foreign†characters. Foreign characters could be anything as simple as a character of the opposite sex of the writer (and thus, host to certain experiences the author isn’t aware of) or as complex as a sexless alien prince from a far-off galaxy. In keeping with the “relatable = interesting†line of thinking, begin your exploration of the character from a point of similarity. I may never know what it is like to be a woman, but I do know what it is like to be a human. If you first consider that you may have more in common with characters that seem foreign than not, you’ll find writing them much simpler and more organic than otherwise. Plot Structure When considering plots, it’s usually best to begin at the beginning. All stories, whether they’re told in chronological order or not, have some Beginning, Middle, and End, and each portion of the plot can generally be further subdivided into smaller pieces. While it may seem somewhat formulaic or inorganic to do so, pre-establishing portions of your plot--making sure they contain all the necessary elements and parts--is essential for a story that is properly paced, especially in video games. When plotting, I generally divide my stories into five acts. Not all stories follow this format, and there may be more or less than five acts, but good fiction usually follows a fairly predictable pattern of rising tension and eventual pay-off. When examining something like plot structure, I find it useful to include some kind of example, and to that end, here is the plot of a classic JRPG, Final Fantasy VII, broken down into the Five-Act Format. Act I: The Introduction While mostly self-explanatory, the quality of a story’s Introduction can make or break the piece overall. Is this the kind of book/show/game you intend to keep pursuing, or will you drop it in favor of something else? The most important elements of a good Introduction are the disbursal of information and its ability to hook the audience. This can be somewhat tricky as there is no quicker way to scare off players/viewers/readers than by frontloading them with exposition. Exposition should be done gradually, rather than all at once. This may lengthen your Introduction as a whole, but it’s worth it in the long run. Additionally, it is often best to begin your story in medias res, or “in the middle of it,†and usually means starting smack dab in the middle of some kind of dramatic scene. This helps to interest the audience early on and will hopefully keep them entertained while you begin feeding them crucial information. Keep in mind that you don’t need to include all relevant information in the Introduction, but it is important to introduce most of the major characters and background details. Using Final Fantasy VII as an example, we begin the story in medias res as Cloud and the AVALANCHE crew bring down a Mako Reactor in Midgar City. The game immediately hooks us with its combat and we are steadily fed information about the world and characters: Mako is used as energy, Shinra controls the city, AVALANCHE is an eco-terrorist group, etc. The crew finishes its mission, and they head back to 7th Heaven for a little more exposition and some emotional attachment in the form of Cloud’s childhood friend, Tifa. Cloud gets roped into doing another job for AVALANCHE, and the plot moves forward. The mission goes off without a hitch until Cloud gets blasted off the roof and down into the Slums. There we meet Aerith, learn some more about how bad Shinra is, and are ultimately reunited with Tifa. The gang return to Sector 7 to find AVALANCHE under attack, and Aerith is captured before Sector 7 is destroyed in a plot by Shinra. The gang then infiltrate Shinra Headquarters in an effort to rescue Aerith, but are ultimately captured themselves. At last, the team escapes when the building is attacked by Sephiroth, the mysterious antagonist of the game, and we are given hints about the Cetra and the Jenova Project. After a chase with Shinra personnel, the party leaves Midgar behind and meets in Kalm, where the first Act comes to a close. Act II: Upping the Ante With a firm foundation built by the end of Act I, we can start building further detail with Act II. I call this Act “Upping the Ante†because it typically finishes laying the plot’s groundwork while further realizing the characters and the stakes. This is often the point where characters first leave their starting location with a definitive quest in mind, and this act will usually follow them as they search for answers and see the world open up around them. Assuming you have successfully hooked your audience with Act I, Act II is your opportunity to endear them to your characters and setting. If you want players seeing your game through to its conclusion, you need to make them care enough to stick around that long. Don’t be afraid to lay off the main plot here somewhat. Put characters in interesting situations and let your players see how they figure their way out. Delve into characters’ personalities and backstories, but be careful not to completely eclipse the central plot. At this point, the characters should be moving generally toward their overarching goal, and we should have plenty of opportunities to get to know them along the way. In Final Fantasy VII, we see Act II open just as the game is opened up and the player is first allowed onto the overworld. The party first meets in Kalm to discuss Sephiroth and the implications of his return, and Cloud relates to them his time with Sephiroth and his time in SOLDIER. The remainder of AVALANCHE, Aerith, and Red XIII decide to accompany Cloud in pursuit of Sephiroth, and travel to the city of Junon. There, they stow away aboard a cargo ship and sail to Costa del Sol, a city on another continent. After traveling to the Gold Saucer and being thrown in Corel Prison, we gain some more intimate insight into Barrett Wallace’s backstory and why he fights Shinra as hard as he does. After escaping the prison, the gang travels to Cosmo Canyon, where we receive much of the same treatment for Red XIII and learn more about the Cetra and their importance in Gaia’s history. Finally, the crew travels to Nibelheim, where we see first-hand the threat Sephiroth poses and why he must be stopped at all costs. Act III: The Game Changer Act III sees a re-centering on the main plot and the remainder of general information made clear to the audience. Aside from perhaps a final bait-and-switch, Act III represents the primary turning point in the story: the villain’s master plan is revealed, a previous ally betrays the party, etc. This Act will likely serve as the story’s “mid-climax,†and will have major implications that effect the rest of the story. This is generally your last opportunity to introduce new information “entirely out of left field.†Any major developments introduced in the last half of the story will need to at least be subtly hinted at prior to their reveal, and many stories have effectively shot themselves in the foot with a poorly executed last-minute twist. Act III of Final Fantasy VII begins with the introduction of Cid Highwind, our last party character, and some final information regarding Shinra’s history in the form of Rocket Town, which will become important later. After running off with the Little Bronco and being shot down, the gang heads back to the Gold Saucer to retrieve Dio’s Keystone before being double-crossed by Cait Sith and heading to the Temple of the Ancients. There they brave numerous threats and puzzles before meeting Sephiroth, where he reveals his plan to use the Black Materia and the Lifestream to become a god-like being. Upon leaving the Temple, Sephiroth manipulates Cloud into giving him the Black Materia, revealing some deeper connection between the two. Aerith leaves shortly after and travels north in an attempt to stop Sephiroth on her own. The crew follows only to arrive too late, and Sephiroth kills Aerith in one of gaming’s most iconic scenes. The party and audience mourn Aerith together as Act III closes. Act IV: Raising the Stakes As the plot moves into Act IV, the main characters are most often beginning their final journey toward their ultimate confrontation. In the same way that Act II is often a vehicle from Act I to Act III, Act IV can similarly be seen as something of a simple conveyance from the major developments of Act III to the climax in Act V. That being said, there is still a huge opportunity in this Act to further reinforce the significance of the conflict at large. As the villain grows closer to completing their goal, we may see a glimpse of what is to come should the main characters fail in stopping them. This is also an opportunity to place the characters in particularly difficult or trying circumstances and can lead to additional insights into their personalities as they are pushed toward the brink. Act IV should mostly emphasize the main plot, moving steadily toward the final confrontation in whatever form it is to take. That being said, don’t feel like you need to rush towards the end. Take your time while still maintaining a sense of urgency. Final Fantasy VII’s fourth Act begins as the crew seeks out Sephiroth’s true location at the North Crater in an attempt to end things once and for all. Upon arriving, Cloud is once again manipulated by Sephiroth into giving him the Black Materia, despite countermeasures to this possibility. Sephiroth is awoken and the three (or five, for westerners) WEAPON are released. The party is forced to leave North Glacier and a shield is raised to protect Sephiroth as Meteor begins to approach Gaia. The gang is captured by Shinra, Cloud regains his memory, and all four Huge Materia are collected before the Sister Ray is finally fired, killing the last remaining WEAPON and destroying the shield at the Northern Crater. The only remaining task is to confront Sephiroth and Jenova as Act IV ends. Act V: The Big Damn Finale More than any other Act, Act V is the most self-explanatory. The entire story has built up to this point, and it’s time for the payoff. Make sure to tie up any loose ends you don’t intend on tying up here before the final showdown, as you won’t get another chance. Final conflicts, similar to the Game Changer in Act III, frequently have some kind of loss associated with them. Grand battles without any casualties don’t generally come across as all that grand, although it is possible that, if the stakes have been sufficiently made apparent by the events of Acts III and IV, that something like the death of a main character may prove unnecessary. Perhaps the most important factor in a good final act, aside from it being generally satisfying, is that the audience feels like something has changed as an outcome of the story’s events. It should also be noted that this act is usually much shorter than the previous acts, generally getting right to the final confrontation to prevent the tension from “falling off†after the intensifying Act IV. The final battle and climax of Final Fantasy VII is certainly a memorable one. It begins almost immediately with the series of final boss fights after a short jaunt through the Northern Crater’s series of caves. The party confronts first Jenova, then Sephiroth in a last attempt to activate Holy and stop Meteor with the Lifestream. Cloud faces his inner demons and vanquishes them with the mighty Omnislash and the world, albeit somewhat singed, survives. We are treated to some satisfying cutscenes and are left with the final image of nature retaking the ruins of Midgar City. Notes Well, there it is. It's rough around the edges, but there it is. I'll likely be trimming, editing, and adding to this post for a while. If you have any questions or requests you'd like my take on, feel free to ask. I'm also not exactly sure if this is the place this thread belongs; feel free to move it if you think it belongs somewhere else instead. Until next time, Happy Designing, Jinumon

Hello, I am NazoFox2501. I've always wanted to write stories for video games, but I need a place to start, so I chose this website. I've been writing stories for a decade, and I want to apply my skills and ideas to video games. I have no experience with RPGMaker, and it's hard for me to get a grasp on technical stuff (I don't even know if my computer can handle RPGMaker), but again, this seems like the best place to get started and acquainted with the video game making craft. What I like to write: dark fantasy, horror, same sex romances, and (not too overly complicated) science fiction. What I'm after: a writing reputation. If anyone's looking for a writer for a game that fits under what I like to write, well, here I am.

As someone new to the forum, I have a few questions regarding the literature section. 1. Can you post story ideas to see if anyone is interested in working on them? 2. Can these ideas be based off of something already in existence ("Alice in Wonderland", "Faustus", the works of H.P. Lovecraft, anime, etc.), or do they have to be entirely original? 3. Do you post general ideas, story excerpts, all of the above? If story excerpts, then do they have to be written as short stories or scripts? I would really appreciate it if someone, preferably a long time member, could answer.

I don't know If I post this on right sub forum. "woman's mind are hundred times more complex than man's" -man in relationship- That line alone discourage me to write writing female as main character. Of course what I want ask still in common RPG trope such fantasy setting or more extend romance genre. As male, what do you think about writing from female perspective ? Female member also welcomed to reply.

I wrote down ideas and they piled up more than they should have. So I am looking to try to simplify my plot because I think I may have gone all over the place. EDIT>> Additional Notes: So I'm still trying to build up on what could happen in arranging a rebellion. I can think of a few but would like your input whether this might be too much for just a first game, because that went dark real fast from my first idea of a light-hearted game. EDIT: Here's the basic party (3 members): > Gun-Toting Healer (Gun skills and Divine Magic) > Ailment-Susceptible Tank (Warrior who can guard allies and draw attention) > Third party member dependent on conversations with NPCs. Choices are: > Weak, debilitating mage (Saboteur) > Spellblade mercenary; enchants allies. (Synergist) > Thief; sets up combos (Combo Set-Up will strengthen follow-up attacks. Side plots (discoverable): The Healer's origin Romance for the Plot The Conflict of Mages [uNDER ASSESSMENT, opinions welcome] --More to be added--

Hey guys, I'm trying to come up with a pseudo-language for a long-running project I've been thinking of, more or less spoken (or written?) the the background of the world, but not really for the direct narrative. Something for world building, eh? The language is supposed to be a hyper-evolved English about 500 years or more in the future, as being interpreted by those hearing it some 1500 years in the future so iIdeally, the language would be based in English, or Latin. Structurally, I'd like a semi-logical cipher that would allow the player to translate this imaginary language into English if they could somehow figure it out, the players that devote more time to understanding the world and the 'puzzles', get more out of the lore. I've worked off direct letter replacements before, and either haven't found the correct combinations I like. I usually end up with a cipher such as: Would become something like: Hello, how are you doing today? I'm swell. Callo, cov ara vov doen todav? E'n cvell. Which, I dunno, isn't bad, but I'd be interested in hearing thoughts on, or different strategies towards this kind of thing.

Hello all! I am hold a contest for those of you who enjoy writing stories! The propose of this contest is to actually get fairy tales for books in my game. So I'll layout the rules real quick. The stories must be in the format of no more than 45-50 characters (Letters spaces punctuation) per line and be spaced with four lines making every paragraph (The same format that text boxes follow). You may write as much as you like, splitting up your book into chapters or different books is perfectly acceptable Keep in mind your story will be in a game, so people may not wan tot read it all at once (sort of how the books in Skyrim are). You must also include an Author's name (Can be real or fake), the name you would like put into the credits of my game (I'll give everyone whose story gets in credit, because you're awesome), Title(s) of the book(s) and denotations of when chapters or books end. How I will chose: I will pick the winner by how well I feel their story(ies) fit into my game. Keep in mind this is a fantasy RPG game, if you want a better feel for what sorts of things to write you can try my game out (It's called Rune Life, you can find it on this site in the gaming lounge). Prizes: I will then use your author's name for a quest that will involve part of your story, or perhaps a book related quest. (I'll even use a custom sprite or make one in your likeness if you want). The Best Fit: Will receive the above mentioned prizes in addition to their story being found through out the game (in things like random books and bookshelves) Runner ups: If more than one story is good, I will also give you credits and use your stories, but it won't be involved in a quest. The Contest entry times will be from 12/14/2015 - 1/15/2016. I will post on the last day to tell you guys when I expect to have the winners selected and when they will be announced.

Hey guys! It's Tsarmina, back again, attempting to relieve herself of some mid-exam-week(s) stress through the cathartic experience of...writing...stuff. Yeah. That's a good description. Sketches: A Woman in Venice is a little collection of random stuffs that I'm typing up whenever I have a few extra minutes, and they're the writing kind of sketches, not drawing. (For once.) The writing style is meant to be slightly reminiscent of classical writing, mixed in with some symbolism and mysteriousness...so if sentences don't seem to make sense, it might be intentional. ^-^ And they're short, very. Since they're sketches, they're meant to paint a picture in your mind and maybe make some reflections, not to tell a legit story. By the time I'm all the way done with every single sketch though, you probably WILL have a story in mind! definitely not historical because I was too lazy to do proper research on Venice hehe 2. Sketches of: The Dollhouse 3. Sketches of: The Reflection 4. Sketches of: the Sprawl 5. Sketches of: Glazed Sunsets Sketch six is in progress!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fdawt2s3jjcmbe1/DEMO-DRAFT.docx?dl=0 Hello people, So this was my first piece of writing for a demo game I never finished. It's in hiatus as I don't have the art in me anymore, nor the nerves, but maybe sometime in the future. The story is set in a post apocaliptic world, centered around 4 characters. It's about 23 pages long, and though back then I tried to avoid typical cliches It seems I hit a couple. If you are a fan of the dark fantasy, you might enjoy this. Else well, feel free to piss over it

This is the problem when you create a spur-of-the-moment story, I think. Here goes nothin': I started making my game, and it asked for a title. I put "Sleepless Nights", since it sounded cool and was kind of a joke based off the fact that I knew I would spend many a sleepless night im lame soz making the game. Since that's the title though, I wanted to incorporate that into the game itself somehow, and I'll explain how I did that later. I also have to warn that if any of the stuff (including this paragraph itself) doesn't make any sense it's because I thought of it all at 2 in the morning one night and decided to just roll with it. So first I made the protag. He didn't have a name, so as a placeholder I put "X" [you start in his house, so the maps were literally called "X's Room" and "X's House"]. This eventually (for some stupid reason) ended up becoming his beta name for the story, since I don't know what else to call him and I thought the name fit somehow. The game starts you off in X's room; he wakes in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm. He goes downstairs and finds a letter near his door. When he reads it, it says that he's been selected for a "mission" that he needs to protect someone very important. If he declines to the offer it implies that not nice things will happen to him, so he decides he better listen to the Call and go find this person. As he wanders around the forest [which the map is titled "a forest lol" since I didn't have a title for it] he goes to the lake near his house and hears a scream. Two people [a lady Paladin named Anne and a male Thief named Zavier] have a mage [female named Bluebell, a reference to an old Pokémon file I had] captive and are about to kill her. X bravely rushes to the scene and demands the girl be let go! Zavier tries to convince Lady Paladin to let Bluebell go, but she has none of it and battles X. She loses and her and Zavier leave. After they do, he goes to Bluebell and asks if she's alright. She says she's fine, but won't explain why those two wanted to kill her. Linking the two events together, X realizes that Bluebell is probably the person he's supposed to protect, and explains this to her [also mentioning the letter, which she finds perplexing]. She then mentions that she has to go somewhere important, and asks if X is willing to escort her, since that's what he's supposed to do anyway. He agrees (since he figures he has no choice) and the two head off to their adventure! Sorry for the wall of text, but that's all that I have so far. Literally. I just finished this cutscene the other day. I'm predicting a few questions, so I'll (hopefully) answer them here: Why did Bluebell get taken? ...¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Nah, kidding. That I'm not actually sure of yet, but I know she was in the wrong about something because a Paladin wanted her gone, and you need to do a lot to piss those guys off to the point of such extremes. PALADINS ARE LAWFUL-GOOD THEY WOULD NEVER-She teams up with Zavier because he's kind of "changed his ways". He was a Robin Hood type thief that gave his goods to the poor and downtrodden (though when he was younger he was the actual type of thief). Plus I think Anne needed someone sneaky to help her with this. Also she wants Bluebell gone because she probably thinks she's evil or something. Since I haven't decided what Bluebell's deal is or what her link to the letter people is, that's kind of ambiguous as of yet. What's "Sleepless Nights" got to do with this?I wanted to make some kind of running theme with "nightmares" and "reality" where some parts of the game take place in a nightmare or a dream and other parts take place in the real world, and it's up to the player to figure out while they're playing which one they're in. I'm not sure about this idea though because it might make the story needlessly complicated. If nothing else at least the opening takes place at night and the two pull an all-nighter...? =D...? So um. What do you all think? Should I just scrap this, or try to keep going with it? and if anyone read all of that this late at night I will love you

I think the real hallmark of a great game is when it managed to tell a story and pull the player in by using gameplay. Games like Spec Ops: The Line[ get that perfectly, while games like The Order: 1886 miss it completely. What are your favourite gameplay elements to tell/make a story with? There's combat of course, which is a staple of an RPG, but then there's also choices. Like, you can only unlock certain abilities of your allies by saying or doing the right things around them, or doing certain missions. A bit like Persona or Dragon Age Origins. What are yours?

Welcome back to Writer's Resource everyone. This week we'll be looking at http://fantasynamegenerators.com/ a great place for those of us who are a little creatively stifled when it come to making up names for out fantasy game, or even for our modern games. Yes, that's right. I said modern games as well, because, despite it's name, fantasynamegenerators.com isn't just for coming up with names for your elfy elves, or drunk dwarves. It actually has quite a large selecting of generators for modern, and sci-fi settings. Granted, most of these are based off of names from popular franchises, but it really doesn't take that much to edit a name into something new and unque. And for those of you who are thinking, "I don't need names for my characters. I need names for my towns and cities and giant squirrels towers!" Okay maybe I'm the only one who says that, but the point is that the site doesn't just do character names, it also does village/town/city names, monster names, race names, mountain names, forest names, star names, ocean names, continent names, country/nation names and plenty more that are all available for free. I personally use this all the time when I don't have time to use more own personal name generator (It's complicated. I may bring it up in a later post.) and I think it's just a great website. Heck, it even has helpful little guides for creating the magic, society and several other parts of your world. Hope you guys enjoyed this. See you next week. -LS

Hello, and welcome to the first post of my new blog: Writer's Resource. A blog where I will seek to provide both new and old writers alike with resources to help with the processes of character development and world building. (Apologies for the terrible punctuation.) For this first post I would like to introduce you to something that many people know about, but I still seem to find new people who have never heard of it before, so I figure it's as good a place as any to start the series. Here is a link to the Myers Briggs test. It is what we'll be covering today. What is the Myers Briggs test? Well it is a test developed to help define certain personality types commonly found in society. It was created in 1921 by Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers. And is actually officially called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, but people tend to shorten it for obvious reasons. If you want to read more about it's history, then check out it's wiki page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers%E2%80%93Briggs_Type_Indicator Now. What exactly is the test useful for? Well it's a good way of gauging how a character will generally act in everyday situations. Think of it as something to help set the foundation of a character, or how they will react to something when you're drawing a blank. What you do is you fill out the series of questions with either one thumb (agree/disagree) two thumbs (strongly agree/disagree) or three thumbs (completely agree/disagree) as your character would in the situations represented and you will get a general personality type of that character. Don't get hanged up on whether or not these situations would actually happen in your characters world, or time period. Just answer like they would if these did happen to them. It should be stressed that this is not something that will write the character for you, you still need to do that. Nor does the result your character gets from the test mean that they will never stray from that general personality throughout the entire story. How a character reacts depends on how they have changed over the course of a story, or what has recently been happening in the story. Well that's the first Writer's Resource. I plan to do this on a weekly, or bi-weekly basis. But for me to do that I'm gonna need help from you guys. If you know of articles, tests, other blogs or videos that you feel are helpful for writing characters, or worlds then please share them with me via PM saying why you think it is a good resource and I will post it either by itself or with another resource depending on how many resources people share with me. Anyway. I hope you all got something useful out of this, and I hope you all have a good day. -LS

Hey again good people of the RPG Maker Forums, Any feel up to reading/critiquing another story concept? This one, I feel, is my big one - the passion project that first started Tuesday, June 18th, 2011, at 1:04:02 AM. Don't ask how I know that. The title is a work in progress, and here has a potential working title, because I'd rather not have this post show up if someone Googles the actual name. The story has gone through I don't know how many re-drafts over the following years, but this is the first time I've ever actually written out the whole thing, because it's the first time I've decided to speak publicly about it. I'm putting it out here now in its first ever finished state and am looking for any questions, suggestions, or commends, and honest harsh criticism that you might have. One main question I ask myself is that, because I'll probably only ever get the chance to tell this story right, is RPG Maker the correct medium for this concept? I certainly won't make it my first game, but something, of course, to one day get down and start. Because nobody really has the time or patience to read big paragraphs of somebody else's story I'm going to try to format the story into a series of chewable spoiler chunks, in point form. For those that really just want the gist, I've bolded all the parts pretty vital to the plot and added some TL;DR . Fair warning, it's a bit of an Odyssey and has some materials suitable only for a mature audience... The WAY-BACK-BACKSTORY and SETTING The BACK-BACKSTORY The BACKSTORY The actual god-damn PLOT Chaosian Fun Fact: it took me 4 hours to write this post.

Here's a small piece of a... well, writing of mine that i'm working on. Your comments and/or corrections are as always very welcome Some rainy Monday i read in a tiny piece of paper an explanation written down with only two words. I froze. I didn't expected from her to end a lifetime with only two words; I started searching the streets in the darkness... On Tuesday i'm still looking for her, i wanted to say angrily to her that two little words in a tiny piece of paper aren't enough; but i couldn't control my wounded ego and at the sunset the first tears came into my eyes... Wednesday. The sun has risen, but the earth stands still for me. Two days now i'm looking desperately for her. The phone doesn't ring, i don't know where she might be, what is is this all about;... Suddenly i'm completely lost... On Thursday i cannot take it any more.. I return totally beaten at home to get some sleep. I open the door and see her right in front of me, smiling... "Baby" she said, "i was here the whole time. I just wanted to see how much your little heart cared for me"

Hello there Ace users. I was wondering what I could possibly do for my next blog post since I'm still playing through the next game I have planned for "Yay, or Nay?" and I figured that I might as well talk about this stuff if only to try and help people avoid doing some of this in their games. I guess I should also mention that I'm currently on my fifth cup of coffee, so I might end up switching back and forth between different things. Just putting that out there. The first thing I wanted to tackle was something that I keep on seeing in Rpg Maker games and that is a lack of urgency or direction in the story. Urgency, for those uninitiated, is basically what keeps me wanting to play the game. I've played a few games lately, the most notable would be Enelysion, where the game starts off, introduces the main character, introduces some main item that is important for some reason, and them dumps me into a house where the character lives and then I'm told that I should go find someone who the character apparently gave the item to when I feel like it. Now, I usually wouldn't have a problem with this type of thing, it can be used as a good way to setup how a character lives their lives in the world before anything insane starts happening. But with games like Enelysion it sets up this kind of thing and then proceeds to tell you jack squat. Sure there are a few characters standing around that apparently know your character, but the conversations between them and the character don't really reveal anything that interesting about the character. It takes about two hours into the game before you really start to get anything new, or interesting on the character at all. If you're going to use this kind of opening, have characters that the main character plays off of well, or that the character has a past with and can talk about some events that they both experienced together. Something as small as a fishing accident that the main character doesn't want to talk about because it is embarrassing can give a lot of information about who they are. Just something to think about when planning out your story. And actually, another quick tip. Don't just have the NPCs around your world be completely boring. I know that isn't exactly helpful, but when I play a game and I just run into a bunch of NPCs that say nothing interesting, or don't mention events currently going on in the world then I quickly find myself rowing bored and just running past any NPCs I see. At the very least have them talking to another NPC, just something to make them seem like they aren't just a bunch of set dressing. And while I'm still near talking about Enelysion, let's talk about direction. Enelysion unfortunately has a pretty terrible sense of direction. Almost everyone I've talked to who has also played the game has said, "Yeah. I liked the art style and the main character seemed kind of cool, but it took me about twenty minutes before I found where I was supposed to be going." The main reason for this is because all you're told about where you're supposed to go is that it's a church somewhere on the map. So you go to the actually pretty cool looking over world map and see that there is a temple looking thing to the north. That has to be the right place, right? WRONG! After that you look around the rest of the map, maybe walk into the nearby town and see if anyone says anything about the church, and of course, no one does, you go out into the overworld again and just start looking everywhere, but still don't find it. So now it's been about fifteen minutes, and you're getting a little ticked off and decide to go back to where your search started, maybe there is a clue you missed then, as you're just randomly going around the town and going up to every building and seeing if you can go inside, you find the church by accident when you go looking into a normal looking building stuffed into the north eastern part of the town. I shouldn't even need to tell you what's wrong with that whole process. You want to know the best way to counter act this? Just tell the player where the place is. Have a character say, "you mean that place in so and so town?" or have a text box fly up saying "This place is in the north eastern area of so and so town." A lot of people I know actually ended up not finishing Enelysion because of this problem with direction. I'm actually contemplating quitting all these hours in due to lack of even simple direction. Geeze that was a big wall of text. Anyway. On to the next thing I wanted to talk about and that is the lack of moderation in gaming in general. As much as I admit to enjoying Call of Duty Ghosts is does have this problem of never bringing us down to relax and feels the need to constantly throw larger and larger events at us every freaking mission. We start the game with a pitched gunfight in space God's sake and it only gets more and more over the top from there the apex of which I still think is sliding out of a collapsing skyscraper while having a pitched firefight with enemies who are also falling out of the skyscraper until eventually you pull out a parachute that you had for some reason and happily gliding away as the skyscraper levels an entire block. It was exciting, I'll give it that, but it would have been much more exciting if it was preceded by the previously mentioned space fight, running through an area that is being bombed from orbit, stealthing around the grass as a dog (No. Seriously that happens.), attacking an enemy big with several exploding trucks and defending an american base against an entire enemy fleet with nothing but a few drones and a machinegun. On paper this makes it sound like the game will never get boring and only become more exciting as it continues, but in practice it just makes the big set pieces become less special, and by extension, less interesting. Let's look at another game in the CoD series for how you do this right. Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare. This game is probably one of my favorite shooters from the past decade and the reason being that it made all of it's big set pieces feel special by not making them happen every three minutes. And while the game does open with you sinking a massive ship in the pacific it immediately follows this up with simple ground assaults, stealth missions, defending certain objectives and then suddenly a character you've been playing as for most of the game, along with several thousand american troops, are wiped out in a freaking nuclear explosion where your helicopter crashes and you are forced to play as that character as they slowly die from a combination of radiation and blood loss which still ranks up in top 10 lists the world over because the game didn't have big set pieces like that all throughout the game. (I would have spoilered that part, but honestly if you haven't heard of the nuclear scene from this game then what rock are you living under?) It actually felt important and was even shocking to have something like that happen because the game had gotten you into the feel of taking out baddies in small engagements. Now this isn't something that is only a problem with set pieces, I've always said that swearing is over used in gaming today because people seem to think the only way to sound mature is to shout fifteen swears in a conversation about the weather. I personally think that swears should be treated like an exploding building, in that you shouldn't use it too much, or it will, like the Ghost example above, just become repetitive and boring. And when you finally have some kind of moment where the character swears out of rage at some great tragedy it will be completely lost on us, because they've been swearing since the first line of dialogue and people will just be wondering when the scene is going to end so we can get on with the story. That isn't to say that you can't have a character that swears a lot, like a mercenary, or some washed up bitter hero, but you have to justify it because no one starts a conversation by saying, "Hey, you! Yeah you, F***bend! How're you doing?" nor do they say the word sh*t thirty times within half that many minutes unless they happen to be a plumber. I guess that's really all i had to ramble about today. Just a bunch of complaining about things that annoy me really. Eh. Hope you found it funny at least. -LS

With lives becoming busier and consumed with commuting to work or absorbed in work, activities, how much time do we have for hobbies such as reading? I know America's educational system continues to slip and more children are passed along rather than given attention, I know from experience and some research that English is one area that is hit the hardest. So many make it to college and yet have an underdeveloped reading level and I wonder if that plays a factor into the issue as well. Just how much do we read and when we do, what do we have time for? Are short stories immediate in gratification or format more appealing or do novels pull you in with detail and depth? I've had relatives and acquintances say that they have a hard time focusing for a period of time, thus reading anything beyond a few pages becomes challenging? Do short stories supplement that for you as a reader or not an issue? Maybe longer chapters seem to drag on instead of getting to the height of the event and lose you. What are gents and ladies thoughts and opinions on this? Which do you prefer and why?