Topic: Rhy'Din Adventures: Shine (OOC thread)

Neo Eternity

Date: 2013-02-19 11:43 EST
If this needs to be in the OOC chatter thread, go ahead and move it there. Thanks to Fiona O'Neill and Miranda Branson's players for inviting me to post this story here! :D

Hi, guys! You probably know me from things. Things like dueling. And maybe a little bit of RPing. I retired a while back and sent my main, this guy you see over to the left of this post, to Bristle Crios to hide in a bubble and recuperate with those he considers dear, who he trusts to keep him hidden there. Meanwhile, the other two Seraphim Knights went other paths. Jin Eternity went off to Olympus with his girlfriend May, and who knows how that's going. Kersh Caliber went off to another fairly big city to be a detective. He is currently one of the city's top sleuths. Compensation, adequate.

For this story, I wanted to try something new that I think will be fun for both me and the readers. I recently started reading MS Paint Adventures. I've finished Jailbreak and Problem Sleuth, and am current with Homestuck. I really love the format, and I love how the interactivity guided Jailbreak and Problem Sleuth. MS Paint Adventures is a webcomic presented in an adventure game format. You take the role of one of the "game"'s characters, and the links that progress the story are presented in the form of commands that are given to the charcter you're controlling. The character reacts to the command, sometimes accepting it, sometimes rejecting it, and the story progresses this way.

Andrew Hussie, the creator of MSPA, originally used completely open suggestions to accept his commands. In Jailbreak, the first command received was followed without exception. I don't know if he had more discretion in Problem Sleuth, but the story was still mostly driven by the readers in that one. In Homestuck, Andrew has most of the control of the story, no longer using the suggestion box for anything but simple little extra details.

I'm not as creative and clever as Hussie, so I'm not confident enough to freely take commands in every situation. But what I can do is offer options up at the end of posts, and use polls to decide what option to take. Since this forum software only allows one poll per topic, the polls will be hosted externally. They will last two days after the update is posted, at which point the option with the most votes will be the one taken. In the case of a tie, I'll extend the poll for one more day, after which if the tie's still not broken, I'll break it myself with some sort of randomization.

If I do decide to freely take commands at any point, submit them in this topic. In cases where I freely accept commands, I'll try to execute as many of them as I can. I'm pretty sure that's how Problem Sleuth ran.

I will create character accounts for each character that you will take control of through the course of the adventure, starting with our adorable main character. She started out as a cute custom in Soul Calibur V, but now she gets to star in a story! Hooray for her! I'll try to get an avatar and portrait made for her by tomorrow.

Arthour

Date: 2013-02-20 08:16 EST
Since no one else has yet, because their busy I guess, I'll jump the gun and say this;

::Waves:: Hello Neo! It's great to have you with us! :) Your idea sounds very intresring to me and I look forward to seeing how it goes for you :) I've also seen you posting on RoH recently. Given what?s going on with Rakeesh, I may well be contacting you ICly soon!

So in short, good luck!

Ellie Luisante

Date: 2013-02-21 19:38 EST
The first vote didn't go particularly great, and I should have predicted you'd all choose the silliest option possible. :P

Hopefully this vote will go better, and this one's actually difficult. No silly cop-outs this time; sorry!

Ellie Luisante

Date: 2013-03-03 18:49 EST
Okay, so. I'd like to do a bit of a check-in. Fill you guys in on a few things that are going on with the story. The updates are longer than I originally envisioned them being, but this allows the story to keep pace and prevents me from burdening you with useless choices.

And speaking of choices, it may not seem like it so far, but the choices you've made have had a big impact on the story. So I figured I might as well go ahead and tell you how the choices have influenced the story thus far.

> Freshen up first. - 0 > Just go immediately. - 1 > Wear the scarf. Be the rider. - 5 (WINNER!)

Because you guys picked to waste your freaking time, there was actually a pretty big reward for it: Thunder. If you had picked one of the other two options, we actually never would have known that Ellie has a horse! Ellie and Serge would have had to find some other way to transport Jasper to the Watch station, and Serge would have had to find another way to pursue Jasper.

However, those other two options may have unlocked other tools that may have assisted in this manner. For example, since Ellie wasted a bunch of time riding her horse, she had to get to the Inn in a big hurry. But if she'd simply gone on foot, she'd have had to find another way to get through the zombie parade. She would have opted to blend in with them until they get closer to the inn, and may have found new allies in the zombies. Serge wouldn't have been able to ride a zombie since they're slow as hell, but they could have conspired for him to obtain a usable ride.

So this one choice you made at the very beginning of the story has had influences all the way to now, and will continue to influence the story. For example, the command was "Wear the scarf. Be the rider." Ellie is now in posession of a scarf that she wouldn't have had otherwise, and it will prove useful in the near future. She's still wearing it; that's not a thing that stopped happening. Jasper didn't take it away like he did her purse; he just slapped the collar on underneath it. And speaking of the purse...

> Try to break up the fight. - 0 > Hide on the couch and let Serge handle it. - 2 > Fight alongside Serge. - 2 (WINNER!)

Tiebreaker between Hide and Fight. I grabbed a nearby d12, and declared that odd would be hide, and even would be fight. I rolled it, and it came up 10.

It may seem like Serge was solo for much of that fight due to Ellie's retarded fetch modus, but if the die had come up to hide, she actually would have stayed safe behind the couch and not even bothered to try and get No Name. Serge would have had to find some way to deal with that finishing thrust himself.

That might seem like a trivial difference, and really, it is. The real point of this command is to determine what Jasper would know about our heroes. Because you chose for Ellie to fight alongside Serge, Jasper became aware that both Ellie and Serge could fight. And since it's unwise to let a captive have a weapon, Jasper took away Ellie's purse when he captured her. Any of the other two options would have resulted in her keeping her purse, and thus having all of her tools available to her in the coming scene! It's not necessarily bad that she doesn't have anything but her scarf though, and you'll see how soon enough.

As for the other two options, that actually influences whether or not Jasper knows that Serge can fight, and also whether or not Ellie actually gets to see Serge's powers for herself. If you had chosen to break up the fight, you actually would have succeeded in so doing because Inn staff would have intervened and forced Jasper to leave without there ever being a fight. Jasper knowing that Serge can fight actually has an influence on the scene that will take place if you choose to be Serge in the current vote. That also would have taken away the option to go to the Watch, and thus, meet Kersh.

> Go to the park and try to relax. - 1 > Go to the library and try to find info. - 2 > Go to the Watch with the jackass in tow. - 3 (WINNER!)

Let's go ahead and put something out there right now, in case it wasn't apparent. Ellie was going to get captured by Jasper no matter what. That was an integral part of the story, and it had to happen. The choices change the ways that it would happen, what we know about it, the way the characters interact, and even what characters are even in play!

As you may know, Kersh is one of my alts. I figured it might be cool to let one of my other characters have some involvement. This choice determined which character would have joined the story. If you'd gone to the park, you would have met Neo Eternity, whose attention would have been caught by a second "Do something adorable" command. (Remember what Ellie's wearing? ;P) If you'd gone to the library, you would have met Sai Kurou, whose attention would have been caught by some info that our heroes would have uncovered in their research. But since you went to the Watch, we've met Kersh Caliber, who is quite involved with our current antagonist.

And speaking of info, this command also determined what info we would have gotten about the story thus far. Kersh knows a lot about our current antagonist, Jasper. Either of the other two choices would have resulted in us still not even knowing his name, let alone that he came from the city of Skycrest to Rhy'Din for some reason. If we'd gone to the library, we would have learned more about Serge's powers, and some stuff serious enough to cause an omnipowerful being like Sai to get involved. But if we'd gone to the park....we actually would have learned nothing! However, we would have Neo, and that's pretty serious business; it may actually have resulted in the reunion of the Seraphim Knights as part of this story.

One last thing that this choice influenced is the fourth character on our cute little character select screen. We have a guy with the chumhandle of vigorousOx on the character select screen, who had pestered Ellie earlier. He actually would have pestered Ellie just the same if we'd gone to the park, but if we'd gone to the library, we'd have someone different, who will have to be revealed later.

So, that's how the choices have been molding the story so far. I know it was a long read, but I hope it's been interesting, and I hope it spurs more people to vote!

Before I go, I'd like to give you guys a little teaser: Very soon, we will have a segment where I will freely accept commands! So look forward to having more direct control over our heroine's actions! :D

Neo Eternity

Date: 2013-03-18 18:07 EST
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed playing with her.

To any who missed it and have no idea what Nap's talking about, Ellie came into live chat to have some duels. I played her as identically to the format of the story as possible. The timeline for her existence in the live chat is after she has escaped from Jasper. I mean, come now. We all know that's going to happen, we just don't know how yet. ;)

I will continue to bring Ellie and other characters introduced in Shine into the chat from time to time. I enjoy playing in adventure mode. That is to say, in second person, while interjecting commands from both myself and other players in the chat received through in-chat PM. That's right, you can tell her what to do! Here's an example:

Cupcakes" There are cupcakes here"! That's a perfect way to take the edge off of that nervousness! You look around for the cupcakes, and upon finding them, smile and skip over to them. You grab one and take a bite. Um num num. Yummy!

She is guaranteed to react to every command she receives, but is not guaranteed to actually obey them. And if she's dueling, any command that tells her what move to do is actually censored when it hits her. So don't send commands like that.

This was kind of a test run for the free-form command session that's coming up. King and Napoleon were great testers for this, so I want to thank them.

—- —- —-

Now, as for the progress of the actual story, I'll tell you what?s been up with that. The past week has been very busy; I've not had a lot of opportunity to write, and what I am writing is quite big. I closed the vote when Serge and VO were tied at 2, so I'm actually writing for both of them. (Why doesn't anyone love Kersh' :P)

I am considering Ellie's capture post to be the end of Act 1 of the adventure. The next update, the opening to Act 2, is going to be huge, consisting of multiple posts. There won't be any choices between them, but they will proceed directly to a free-form command session where you will help Ellie escape from the clutches of the evil earthen slaver, Jasper Stone! I'll explain more on how that works when we get to it.

—- —- —-

Remember how Ellie's a Soul Calibur V custom character" Here's some clips to tide you over until the update, and to give you a better sense of how our heroine looks, sounds, and fights. (The commands are links.)

> Ellie: Fight the annoying Greek lady. (This is the outfit Ellie is currently wearing in the story, minus the scarf.)

> Ellie: Fight the Azure Knight.

> Ellie: Fight the Italian assassin.

> Ellie: Get dolled up and fight the Japanese nunchaku wielder.

Ellie Luisante

Date: 2013-03-19 19:15 EST
> _

Alright, that means it's finally time for the part that I've been looking forward to the most: the free-form command segment!

Here's how this works. Whenever you see that command prompt above, that means we are in a free-form command segment. Instead of voting on a given number of choices for the next action, you will be throwing ideas at the screen, coming up with your own ways to advance the story (or waste time).

Every command is guaranteed to be reacted to, but not guaranteed to be obeyed. Whenever possible, I will arrange the execution of commands so that they can all be done. So if the first command sent is the one that advances the plot, I'll do all the ones after it first.

Everyone can send up to three commands for each update. You don't have to send three, but you can't send four, and five is right out. Please don't use alt names to circumvent this limit. Since RoH has a convenient profile cloning tool (when you click Register), I'd like everyone to submit their commands in the OOC thread for this story there: This is so we can keep it all in the same place, but I will still accept commands here. Commands coming from here will have (from RDI) postfixed to them.

I'm not going to hold myself to any sort of timeframe for this, since I have no idea how this is going to go. If it goes well, I'll try to do more sections like this, but if it doesn't, I'll stick to the polls after this.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask! Have fun! :D

Kersh Caliber

Date: 2013-03-24 17:10 EST
So that was the first real "boss fight" of the story. Like Problem Sleuth did, I'm letting the video game influences become more visible in more use of the "mechanics" of the "game".

Did you guys enjoy reading that update? I know I may be laying on the game influences a bit thick, so if you're not a fan, I can dial it down for future updates.

Ellie Luisante

Date: 2013-04-13 00:18 EST
Hey guys, I'm sorry it took so long to post the update. Craaaazy week.