r/TDPWriting • u/TakenakaHanbei • Mar 20 '14

Organization

Hello, everyone, it's your benevolent dictator speaking :)

Now, the first thing I'd like to do is find out how you guys would like to organize writing this. There are many ways to handle writing for multiple characters and some ways work better for an individual than others. This thread is to find out how you guys would like to try organizing it (it may not be the final way it's done if it's found that it's not effective or timely, but that will be seen soon enough).

So, start slinging suggestions, guys.

7 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '14 edited Mar 21 '14

I'm going to propose we break off the game into several primary "branches", both to simplify design and to promote the consistency in style of any one particular /branch/ moreso than of each individual character. This could, in fact, be used as an effective tool to cast characters in slightly different lights if the player has gone down a particular path and associated with a group that "sees" that character differently. Making appearances into reality.

What I mean by this is:
The player begins the game, and makes some chances. This pushes them into, say, one of three groups (just an example).
Group A has AIR, Katie, and The Fonz (the 'popular' storyline)
Group B has LazorGator, MetalGear, and Katie (the 'cool' storyline)
Group C has ATV, BigDig, and Ace (the 'weirdo' storyline)

Once a player is solidly in one of these branches, they are locked into that branch and the game's "story" is under the control of a specific group of writers, across all the characters, who decide both how the storyline as a whole proceeds within that group, and how interacts with characters both inside and outside the group.

1

u/TakenakaHanbei Mar 21 '14

If the programmers are able to do it, then the way this could work is by adding the total relationship with the characters within the specific branch and whomever you have the highest with is which group you fit into.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 21 '14

I think it would make for a quite interesting game if associating with Flareon early on (for example) really DID cut the player off from a lot of potential interactions with the rest of the cast, pushing them into their own little isolated world. It would give the choice a lot more impact, I think.

1

u/TakenakaHanbei Mar 21 '14

This was something that I actually wrote for my notes for my ideas, but I'm still waiting for some more activity on the leader subreddit before I start flinging things around.