Three!  Spheres!  Cataclysm!

Sharktober 2024 - 17: Electric Shark

Struggled with #15 so decided to skip it for now. This idea appeared in my mind fully formed and took three minutes to draw.

The Granite Knight

Academics Skill: Wise Sports Skill: Tough and Strong as Anybody Favorite Foods: Tea, Rice, Noodle Soup Blood Type: O+ Animal: Ox Age: 18 An Interesting Fact About You: You have a secret love of romance novels. No one can ever know. Character Description ❀ You are a cursed knight who lives alone in a hut. You’re kind of young to be living by yourself, but you have such a look to you of extreme competence that no one dares to say anything. You’ve got the mien of someone much older than you are. That’s sort of your thing. You are competent and dependable and stoic. When Old Mrs. McGurt, with her weak eyes and bad hip, needs help getting to the doctor’s office, you’re there. When Farmer Tanaka needs an extra hand tilling the fields, you’re there. You don’t complain. Maybe you should? Maybe it would be good for you not to keep everything locked inside your stony exterior? ❀ That wasn’t a metaphor. Your skin is literally made of stone. Somewhere in your dramatic and sad backstory as the squire of an itinerant knight, you were struck by a terrible Outside curse. Your skin is thick and grey and hard, your face is marked like the side of a mountain. You’re self-conscious about it and that makes you mad. It’s hard being a teenager, and nobody understands. ❀ You’re going to tag along on your friends’ adventure because someone needs to protect them - from the dangers of the Outside and from themselves. They don’t know what it’s like out there. It’s your job to make sure they don’t find out. Sidebar: Shake it Up! For an atypical Granite Knight experience, pick 0-3 of the following: ❀ Instead of the young woman Oboliu Waite, you can be Dace Lillimut, a young man ❀ Instead of the squire to an itinerant knight, you used to be a superhero’s kid sidekick. ❀ Maybe you’re not 18, you’re actually thousands of years old. Wow. ❀ Your Curse isn’t stone-skin, it’s.... ✶ … a burning flame in your head that never goes out. ✶ … a transformative disease parasite that lets you grow tentacles. ✶ … lycanthropy. ✶ … a genius IQ that separates you from mortals.

Sidebar: Playing Dace Lillimut You’re a bit less stoic than Oboliu. Smiling comes easier to you and you’ve even been known, every once in a while, to laugh. Also, you are, most likely, a werewolf.

Luke Skywalker in Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine

Today I was posting on a thread in RPG.net about using Canon Characters and Franchise Settings when, quite unexpectedly, I wrote this lengthy explanation of how Luke Skywalker would work as a Chuubo Main Character if Star Wars were a GMD-style campaign rather than a movie series.

I'm actually pretty happy with it, so I'm gonna put it here so I don't lose it.

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Let's imagine Star Wars wasn't a movie but a game like Chuubo.  You'd get a character playbook that says:

"Your name is Luke Skywalker, you're an orphan farm boy with a grand destiny to become a Jedi Knight!  OR you could be:

Lulu Skywalker, an orphan farm GIRL with a grand destiny to become a Jedi Knight!

Lu'twach Skeewakka, an orphan wookie with a grand destiny to become a Jedi Knight!

Luke Amida, an orphan farm boy with a grand destiny to become an Ace Rebel Pilot!

Luke Skrontmeer, an orphan farm boy with a grand destiny that he's not sure of!

You'd get a list of generic but customizable starting Quests -- A Basic Quest that relates to being a farm boy out of your element; a Side Quest about befriending some droids, a Storyline Quest about being drawn off the farm and discovering a Wise Mentor.

You'd also get a generic Quest Set for someone on your Knightly path.  A very VERY quick Knight Arc Luke Quest set would be...

The Legendary Deeds of Luke Skywalker...

Knight 1:  Greater Things (Where you find a Mentor and are exposed to a new problem)

Knight 2:  The Dark Side (Where you discover your flaw and stumble because of it)

Knight 3:  Losing Things (Where you lose a mentor/lose faith/lose a hand)

And then the two optional:

Knight 4:  Get Back on the Horse (Where you get back into the path of Destiny)

Knight 5:  Balance (Where you face an Unbalanced Rival (a Walker in Darkness; like you but failing in their Vice) and defeat/befriend/mitigate them by your own control of your Vice)

Finally, you'd get some glimpses as to how this Quest Set can be arranged into Arcs that can be built into a campaign:

The Balance Arcs

Arc 1:  Luke Skywalker, A New Hope (Where the Jedi Knight finds that he is the only hope to keep the Rebellion from collapsing to the Evil Empire)

Arc 2:  Luke Skywalker, Among the Clouds (Where the Jedi Knight is Betrayed and Learns a Secret About His Past)

Arc 3:  Luke Skywalker, A Very Personal War (Where the Jedi Knight Must Find a Way to Bring a Star-Spanning War to a Close)

Arc 4+5:  Luke Skywalker, the Extended Universe (Where Other Things Happen - because I don't know the EU and can't really figure another whole Luke-centric Knight Arc out of the original trilogy)

So, if you lived in a world where Star Wars didn't exist but the Chuubo Star Wars game did, you could (By combining the Jedi Knight with the Smuggler, the Machine Conscience, the Rebel Noble, and (heck, maybe) the Treacherous Prince) approximate the entire plot of Star Wars just by going through those Arcs...  but you could also end up somewhere else entirely!  You'd have a general road map to a type of story without ever actually revealing more than a few landmarks of the story underneath.

A quick doodle of... okay, it's Meenah from Homestuck, but it's, in this case, the image I'll be using for my character in an RPG who is also a fish-chick with a trident.  It's... complicated...  whatever.

Another cosplay rat doodle.

"An Unreliable Narrative" - A Prototype Welcome to Night Vale Quest Set for Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (Part 2)

Alright, so.  I should talk about what this Quest Set is “About” before I start making it, I think.

Since it’s the Cecil Quest Set, it’s going to be, primarily, about Strange Happenings and Emotional Reactions.  It’ll be about mildly dealing with the strange and terrible, being filled with apprehension or worry or passion, about facing off against the dark monsters around you, and about finding a new boyfriend, or finding out about your own weird past or finding that maybe, just maybe, you were wrong about someone… who was still a total jerk.  

Who else, other than Cecil might be on “An Unreliable Narrative” Arc?  Fox Mulder is probably on either the Bindings or Otherworldly version of this Arc.  Of the other characters of Night Vale, only Old Woman Josie seems to be on the the Cecil Arc*… probably a Shepherd or Mystic version of it.  I’m not sure who else off the top of my head.  

Anyways, quest by quest for the Cecil version of the set.

Storyteller 1:

This Quest is about simply dealing with strange happenstance.  Weird stuff is going on, but that doesn’t mean you need to get all bent out of shape about it!  Do what you’re doing.  Talk about the weird stuff.  You’ve got a job to do and you can’t let strange stuff get in the way.  Sounds like a Work-and-Study Quest to me.  Perhaps something like…

Stoic Witness

20 or 25 XP Quest

You’ve got a job to do.

The news won’t report itself.  The bagels won’t bake themselves.  There are strange things going on and you take note.  You watch them.  You talk about them.  But you don’t let them side track you.

After all.  People are counting on you.

✿ Stoic Witness (25 XP)

Major Goals

The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

You maintain your composure even as something world-changing and terrifying is happening just off screen.

You give up an opportunity for wealth, power, or happiness, because you have other duties to attend to.

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

Quest Flavor

1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP towards this quest when you:

✿ go about your work day as usual

✿ take pride in a job well done

✿ spend time admiring something simple (a flower, a cup of coffee, a stray cat)

✿ describe something strange you witnessed to another person

✿✿ give a monologue of seemingly nonsensical gibberish, ostensibly about the nature of reality, but with deep metaphorical relations to current events

✿✿ give a monologue of seemingly nonsensical gibberish, ostensibly about the nature of reality, but apropos of nothing

✿ pretend that what you’re doing is more important than it is

Or, the shorter version....

✿ Stoic Witness(Simplified) (20 XP)

Major Goals

The HG can award you 5 XP towards this quest when:

You maintain your composure even as something world-changing and terrifying is happening just off screen.

You narrate the events of a phantasmagoric dream state as they occur.

You can earn each bonus once, for a total of up to 10 XP.

Quest Flavor

1/chapter, you can earn a bonus XP towards this quest when you:

✿ talk about what’s going on around you

✿✿ talk about what’s going on with your everyday life

✿ spend time admiring something simple (a flower, a cup of coffee, a stray cat)

✿ describe something strange you witnessed to another person

✿ find yourself surrounded by water, snow, or strange mute children

✿✿ talk about things you cannot possibly know

✿ worry that you might be missing out on something because of work

Annoyingly, I didn't realize Tumblr wouldn't keep my coloring.  Anyway....

One Quest down.  I’m going to take another break…  this was the first thing I did when I woke up!

* I thought, with its themes, some of the other Night Vale characters might fit… but really, Carlos is on a Scientific Adventure.  The Apache Tracker was on a Heartwarming, Heart-rending Coming-of-Age Story Arc.  Tamika Flynn is on a Secret History, and The Man in the Tan Jacket and The Faceless Old Woman Who Lives in Your House seem to be on Numinous Gardens Arcs.  Intern Dana is probably on a Heartwarming, Heart-rending Coming-of-Age Story, too.  

The Angel of Fortitude and Chibi-Sa'a Lingurth.

"An Unreliable Narrative" - A Prototype Welcome to Night Vale Quest Set for Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine (Part 1)

Okay, so I've been thinking about Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, and I've been thinking about Welcome to Night vale, and I've been thinking about how to combine Chuubo and Night Vale together. More specifically, I've been trying to think about Chuubo Quest Sets and just how tricky they are to make.

If you don't follow Welcome to Night Vale, it's one of the most popular podcasts ever, about(and I'll use the cliche description everyone uses from the first episode) "A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep": http://commonplacebooks.com/welcome-to-night-vale/

If you don't follow Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine, it's an unreleased Tabletop RPG written by Jenna Moran, designed, primarily, for playing Miyazaki-inspired games, but its same sense of normalcy among the strange definitely can fit:  http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1710667762/the-chuubos-marvelous-wish-granting-engine-rpg

As a fun exercise that no one will ever get any use out of, I thought I'd mess around a bit with making a Cecil Quest Set, which I am going to tentatively call the Unreliable Narrative Quest Set.

Alright, so let's break down a Cecil Arc. In my mind, the Cecil Arcs of Welcome to Night Vale typically traverse a certain path:

Reporting: Cecil dispassionately observes and reports even momentous events, as if they are completely external to him.

Editorializing: Some crisis or issue strikes Cecil/Night Vale causing him express fear or concern OR state opinions that clash with official opinions

Becoming the Story: Cecil is, personally, drawn into events, whether it be physically, emotionally, or merely by association.

Human Interest: Cecil has some sort of personal revelation, emotional catharsis, or transformative event

A Return to Normalcy: Cecil settles back in, the revelations of the past ignored or integrated.

Now, for various reasons, I'm pegging Cecil as being on a Storyteller Arc, generally. The most obvious is the nominal relationship, but the authorship abilities of the Storyteller Arc, and the slow burn character development of its Quest set both fit the character, in my mind. As, Ms Moran said, he's almost a background character-type, not a lot of actual growth along his path for most of the story, except, perhaps, in short bursts.

Basically, the Storyteller Arc is as follows...

Doing your thing, being cool

Continuing to do your thing even as things start getting messy

Facing things outside of your expertise

Go for the gold, the biggest prize

Fall back to earth, rebuffed by your earlier overreach

It's not exactly a map, but it's not too far off. The overall shape of the Arc feels similar.

I think I should go to bed now... But I'll come back to this, i think. Maybe. 

Well, maybe not.

Angel of Fortitude again

A quick doodle of Princess Hereford, of the Bear Fairies.  Don't ask,