To Kill a Dragon [Comedy, Fantasy]

[Seiia]

Hello, lovely people. You are looking beautiful today. Did you do something different with your hair? Because you look fabulous, you adorable little peacock you. Do you mind if I take a moment of your time to talk about a game that my good friend Mephala and I are making for NaNoRenO this year? Fantastic.

To Kill a Dragon is a VN about four adventurers who work together in order to slay a dragon. Unfortunately, three of those four adventurers are complete dumbasses. Naturally, stuff doesn't go as planned.

The game is a comedy filled with tropes and cliches for good measure. It takes place in a fantasy setting (I mean, there's a dragon) with over the top characters and outrageous situations. As the main character, you will choose from a number of options as to how to go about slaying the dragon, most of which will result in complete ridiculousness and failure, forcing the adventurers to return to drawing board. If one of the adventurers die (with an exception, but we'll get to that, you gorgeous teacup pig), you start over from the beginning.


Characters
All concept images are not completely indicative of what the actual sprites may look like.


GREY - Main character.
An apathetic guy who doesn't really do anything. He gets all the credit for what others around him accomplish and is a legend for things he didn't even remotely do. He's the most sane and really couldn't care less about what everyone else does, but they all gravitate to him. Uses a sword.

Image coming soon.
KIERAN
The token evil character. He is extremely demented, sadistic, and rather evil. He enjoys to see and be the cause of the suffering of others. When given an assignment, he always goes overboard. He is convinced that he is the nicest person out of everyone. Uses a polearm.

Image coming soon.
GEORGE
The knight in shining armor. He is the typical blonde bishounen character. He is constantly attempting to do the right thing, but is naive, gullible, and simply dumb. He is melodramatic, a screw-up, and a huge klutz. He frequently messes up common idioms. Uses a sword and shield.


FALINE
The generic "badass" busty babe with cat ears. She wears skimpy armor and tries to kick ass, yet fails; she has nine lives. She's almost entirely made of anime girl cliches. She is vapid, impulsive, and easily provoked. She has absolutely no talent besides being cute -- even her spells backfire. Uses magic.


Coding: Mephala
Art: Seiia
Writing: Mephala & Seiia

[9-of-Hearts]

I cannot wait to see Kieran because of reasons~~~ Good luck with this project!

[Aines445]

Hello, lovely people. You are looking beautiful today. Did you do something different with your hair? Because you look fabulous, you adorable little peacock you. Do you mind if I take a moment of your time to talk about a game that my good friend Mephala and I are making for NaNoRenO this year? Fantastic.

Most awesome introduction ever XD.


This game sounds like fun! I love comedy and fantasy and the characters sound like fun too! The art is good too and I also really want to know how the other characters are gonna look like, so Good luck! ^-^

[Razz]

Hello, lovely people. You are looking beautiful today. Did you do something different with your hair? Because you look fabulous, you adorable little peacock you. Do you mind if I take a moment of your time to talk about a game that my good friend Mephala and I are making for NaNoRenO this year? Fantastic.

Most awesome introduction ever XD.

Agreed!

This looks awesome, hope you have some D&D style injokes haha

[Seiia]

Thank all of you for your responses. Did you know that each and every one of you is a fairy princess on the inside? I do, because you're all magical. Oh yeah.

I'll probably be done with Kieran soon, and George later today. Kieran is personally my favorite, and Mephala's, too, I believe. Anyway, I'll keep this post updated as often as possible. I may even have the GUI design done today or tomorrow. Who knows? I'm spontaneous.

[Mephala]

I like the title logo Seiia, though the secret and ill hidden grammar/punctuation nazi in me wants to see T and K capitalised.

Very nice first post. I didn't expect you to be buttering up fans already. Well done.

This looks awesome, hope you have some D&D style injokes haha

Something like this? No promises.

Code: Select all

####################
#
# Use Magic Device!
#
####################

Tropes: DnD Use Magic Device, leveling up, skill point hoarding.

General Description: The party stumbles (George accident) upon a powerful magic item that will [instert powerful effect here]. All assumed Faline, our lovely mage could use it. She could not. Casting spells and using magickal items are two distinctly different skills. She eventually reveals that she has a small stock of skill points she has hoarded. To the dismay of the party, she intends to dump the points into a Fishing skill. She likes to eat fish but is too clumsy and impatient to catch them. She can blast fish out of the water but that makes it less tasty. She has been saving the points for quite some time and refuses to "waste it" just to use magic devices.
The best outcome will involve convincing Kieran to fish, he is, admittedly pretty good with his spears. Faline learns to use the device and we gain +1 to secret weapon. Kieran empties the river of fishes.

g "What do you mean you cannot use this? Its perfect! We should go slay the dragon now with this!"
f "I... I uhh... Don't have any points in Use Magic Device."
k "What? Why?"
f "Well, yes. But I specialise in spells. Not magic devices."
"Yet her spells always backfires."
k "I thought mages were skilled in all manner of magics."
f "Hey, look, I don't complain that you can't summon skeletons as the evil guy in our party ok? So lay off me." >8(
k "For the last time, I am the only [i]good[/i] and [i]sane[/i] person here."
g "Let us not fight amongst ourselves. Maybe we can find another way to use it some how... Perhaps it has hidden instructions."
"Three pairs of eyes watches in silence as George approaches to device"
menu:
    "Stop George. For the love of God STOP GEORGE!":
        jump stop
    "Allow George to handle the device, surely no harm can come of this.":
        jump badIdea
    "Start running.":
        jump run

#Random lines
f "Of course it is important that I eat fish! I can't just eat Mysterious Wall Chickens all day like the rest of you."

f "Oh! Baby fishies! My favourites, you're the best Kieran"
k "I thought they would make good appetizers."
f "No, don't ruin them by cooking it! Pop it in and enjoy its squirming!"
k "It is... strangely good."

g "I will help too."
k "Do not come near me. You'll scare the fish."
g "Come on, I'm adorable, the fish at home loves me."
k "No. Go do something else."
g "Such as?"
k "Start the camp fire or something."
show k surprise
extend "Actually please do not do that. Go take a nap. That seems most suitable given your skills."

I always liked the idea of Use Magic Device and thought the name could be a bit of fun to throw around inappropriately.

[SundownKid]

This is just asking for a "YOU DIED" before each respawn, Dark Souls-style.

[Mephala]

This is just asking for a "YOU DIED" before each respawn, Dark Souls-style.

I was actually considering a big "YOU DEFEATED" or maybe even a "YOU SO BEST" at the end/true end. Not sure if Seiia has played Dark Souls.

While I'm here, I'll just say that I'm always happy to read ideas and suggestions if there is a particular trope you really like. No promises, I don't want this to escalate into something bigger than our little two man team can handle.

[SundownKid]

This is a good place to grab some ideas... you should definitely have them collect 4 legendary items and then have them stolen at the last minute (maybe by a betrayal by the party's evil guy who has rejoined the dark side). The main character's village should be burned down, the hero has to have amnesia, and they should find a mysterious ancient girl whose pendant is the key to defeating the dragon. *coughlaputacough*

[Mephala]

This is a good place to grab some ideas... you should definitely have them collect 4 legendary items and then have them stolen at the last minute (maybe by a betrayal by the party's evil guy who has rejoined the dark side). The main character's village should be burned down, the hero has to have amnesia, and they should find a mysterious ancient girl whose pendant is the key to defeating the dragon. *coughlaputacough*

Some of these are really good, I'm not sure many of them will be of great use though. I was also mostly looking for more personal inputs rather than a long list of tropes and cliches. There are so many to choose from afterall.

Dungeon Design 301
All "puzzles" in RPG dungeons can be sorted into one of the following types:

finding some small item and sticking it into a slot;
pushing blocks (rocks, statues) onto switches;
pulling switches or levers to open and close doors;
learning the correct order/position of a group of objects;
entering a certain combination of doors;
something involving a clock or elevator;
something that is unsolvable because a vital clue in the dialogue was mistranslated out of Japanese.

[gekiganwing]

There's a surprisingly long history of comedies that riff on fantasy RPGs. The Slayers novels started in 1989, and since then there's been Gokudo, Elf Princess Rane, Rune Solder Louie, and probably a few others that I've forgotten.

It's a little difficult to find pure comedy games, unless you focus on indie and freeware projects. Half Minute Hero is a humorous commercial game, but a player can ignore the intentionally ridiculous premise and characters and just focus on gameplay. There's a few other games that come to mind, but I keep thinking that they slowly go from amusing to serious.

...Anyway, I will look forward to see how you present To Kill a Dragon. I want to see if you will create a story that's just amusing, whether it's a deconstructive comedy, or somewhere in the middle.

[Mephala]

There's a surprisingly long history of comedies that riff on fantasy RPGs. The Slayers novels started in 1989, and since then there's been Gokudo, Elf Princess Rane, Rune Solder Louie, and probably a few others that I've forgotten.

It's a little difficult to find pure comedy games, unless you focus on indie and freeware projects. Half Minute Hero is a humorous commercial game, but a player can ignore the intentionally ridiculous premise and characters and just focus on gameplay. There's a few other games that come to mind, but I keep thinking that they slowly go from amusing to serious.

...Anyway, I will look forward to see how you present To Kill a Dragon. I want to see if you will create a story that's just amusing, whether it's a deconstructive comedy, or somewhere in the middle.

Well, the idea was to have something simple that we can all relate to and are familiar with. We wanted some light hearted fun and twists but not so much that it becomes anything too serious.

In retrospect, the idea sounds harder than I anticipated, I would imagine trying to write humour would be difficult. I can't cook up jokes on demand the way some others can and I suspect Seiia cannot either. So far Seiia and I just write what comes to us naturally and add in ideas we think would be funny or just a bit of fun. We both like to tease, so you can expect a reasonable amount of that. I suspect we will end up just trying to make the final product something we both like and enjoyed making, anything beyond that will just be a bonus. Still, I hope we do not disappoint.

[KittyKatStar]

something that is unsolvable because a vital clue in the dialogue was mistranslated out of Japanese.

*shakes fist* Darn those puzzles ;_; Or when the clue *is* there but the wording is so off, it just confuses you even more. XD

I look forward to it - I love seeing something familiar/tropy being tackled and deconstructed in a fun manner. (Still waiting for one to be shown in some beautiful full-fledged RPG where characters will actually ask WHY their party members are eating bread found in a chest in a dungeon/temple no one visited in thousands of years...)

Characters seem fun as well. ^^

[Mephala]

UPDATE
Hi everyone.

I never expected to write one of these in my life, but it seems here I am. In any case, here we go.

We have decided to pull out of NaNoRenO 2013. We are terribly sorry to disappoint everyone. We have several reasons for this which I won't bore any of you with as they are simply unforeseen and inescapable nuances that life sometimes tosses your way such as loss of loved ones and pets running amok destroying PC parts. Deciding to let this go wasn't particularly easy, for about a week we have fumbled with the idea however each time we have decided that even if we failed to complete To Kill a Dragon, it would still be a worthwhile experience and a fun thing to do. Today however, things have changed. While it would indeed still be a worthwhile experience to try for NaNoRenO, we are no longer certain that trying for NaNoRenO is a realistic goal and the last thing we want is to go into this project without enjoying ourselves. While it may be possible to keep going, our attention is simply not in the project right now and we are uncertain when we can give it the attention we want to. When we set out to make this game, we wanted it to be small, light hearted and fun. We wanted it to be good. We were happy to cut some corners if time and resources demanded us to but at the end of the day we still wanted a good finish. This isn't something we can currently achieve.

I have asked the Admins to move To Kill a Dragon from NaNoRenO into WIP general, I'm not sure if we will complete this. I suspect we will if we can. In fact, I believe I promised Seiia I'd see it through if she decides to keep going with it. On the other hand, we may end up taking our ideas, our work done and restarting it on something else. I'm not really sure. I suspect, we'll be back and we'll tackle this again with mean, hungry and savage VN-making spirits eventually.

I think this covers everything I wanted to say. I feel like I just dropped a baby off a cliff or something >_> and I'm reminding myself of Chris Taylor's video update a little. Some times doing the right thing and doing what you want just aren't the same. Those times kind of suck.