In which Academia Nut uses his creative writing skills to work out some shit in a public place.
Inner Dialogue
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Session 1
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Session 1
Hyperfocus: Guys! Guys! I just had a great idea!
Diligence: We're still working on the last three great ideas you've had!
Background Music: Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali-Ababwa!
Diligence: Who is that?!
Cosmos: That's just whatever song randomly gets stuck in our head at the moment.
BGM: I like the girls with their nails done long, I like the girls with their nails done long dun duh dun dun duh dud duh
Cosmos: That's not how you would-
Diligence: Focus! Not the point!
Hyperfocus: That's me!
Cosmos: No, you're hyperfocus, AKA the Disco Elysium name we've assigned to our ADHD tendencies.
Diligence: We've never played Disco Elysium!
Improv: Eh, good enough.
Cosmos: I will note that since we're probably going to start abbreviating our names like BGM-
BGM: …nails done long…
C: -that would make Hyperfocus into HF, AKA hydrofluoric acid, AKA a corrosive that painlessly rots away flesh before abruptly killing you due to horrific destablization of internal homeostasis.
HF: Bitchin'!
D: And that would make me the dick in this relationship.
C: As I am creative as well as scientific and precise, yes.
D: You and HF are how we keep getting into these situations, you know? We have chores and errands and we need to be applying for jobs, and we still need to watch Eps 23 and 24 of Witch From Mercury. Hell, just on the creative side we still have One Angry Mother and the three other projects we've spun off since HF killed our desire to keep going there…
C: I think it might be fo-
D: NOT THE POINT!
Improv: 3 works well enough.
BGM: …nails done Prince Ali…
HF: Come on, we've wanted to do a "Look inside our mind and creative process" thing for ages!
Scuttling Charges: Is this self-care, or self-destruction, self-humiliation?
C: Scuttling Charges, that's a good one for our self-destructive and self-loathing impulses, very pleased there…
D: Must you stop to be so self-congratulatory?
C: Only because you feel so compelled to be so thorough.
HF: Actually, is that him or me?
C: You do align sometimes.
Medic: This can also be an actual method of journaling, a way to get all the intrusive-
BGM: nails done long
Medic: - thoughts in a manner that will let us and others better understand them.
SC: Ooh, yeah, we really want to call this Academia Nut's Heartbreaker to drive home how self-destructive we can be, because we know how much we suck for starting things and then dropping them just as they get interesting.
Thermoregulation: It's too hot, we should take a nap.
BGM: you'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best, I've been gone for a month and need home for a rest
M: Look, we're a very private person, and if we want to get better we need to externalize thoughts so that we can understand them and get help on them from others. We kind of need some external executive function to really function.
TR: We're hungry, we should eat.
SC: Fuck it, yeah, why not?
HF: Oooh, sweets!
D: Let's circle back to what Medic is saying.
HF: What about my idea?!
Nostalgia: Remember our heyday of writing, when we could pump out a thousand words in two hours and post an update before we went to bed? Good times.
D: Look guys, I think this is a good idea on a fundamental level, but let's not let this consume us.
HF: You're no fun.
SC: You'll probably forget this by tomorrow.
HF: And you and Diligence will probably blow things up before we truly get going.
D: I just want things done right!
Improv: So we never get going, we just sit around dreaming up worlds and then never getting it down.
SC: We suck.
M: Stop it! We have problems, sure, but we need to take the things we are good at and leverage them against those problems. We have resilience, and we need to use it and the tools we already have to build new and better habits and patterns to move towards being the kind of person we want to be.
D: Hear-hear.
C: This is "action", as was described in Atomic Habits.
SC: Is it action or motion? Are we just spinning our wheels with this?
D: We're talking about it with our partner, this is only going to become motion instead of action if we don't take the next steps and use this as a way of expressing ourselves to others and soliciting help.
I: This is fun, this is funny.
TR: Mmmm… social engagement gives good chemicals.
HF: Oh yeah, let's post this and get lots of heart reacts and sympathetic feelings and text conversations with strangers. That's the good stuff.
Nostalgia: Good times back in the day, good times.
D: Guys, bring it back here.
HF: I'm always focused. Oh, right! The idea that started all of this!
D: I think this process has gone beyond that and is now a form of self-therapy.
SC: Or self-mocking.
I: Why not both?
C: What's the line in Spanish from that commercial.
BGM: nails done long
D: Focus!
Zen: Breathe in, breathe out. Let the thoughts pass like petals floating on a stream.
N and BGM: petals falling from the vine
TR: sniff… Iroh… Mako…
Zen: Breathe in, breathe out.
D: Right, bring it all back. Hyperfocus, you're not going to let this go are you?
HF: No, because he is sitting on my back.
Entrepreneur: Look, if we leverage this right, we could make enough money that we wouldn't need to keep looking for an engineering job and could express ourselves creatively from home.
Black Bloc: Stop falling into the capitalist trap of trying to turn hobbies into side hustles!
D: We should probably move on to job applications.
E: If we can turn our creative energies into a Patreon…
SC: We won't, we don't have the focus to actually maintain a consistent output that could let us do something like that.
E: But if we got external assistance…
M: Stop trying to turn self-care into money!
BB: Yeah, what he - actually, I think Medic has a feminine voice.
Nostalgia: I keep thinking of the Team Fortress Medic.
BGM: tf2 theme plays
C: Hmmm… yeah, Medic being female feels right.
BB: But isn't assigning a female voice to a caretaking role a manifestation of patriarchal gender roles? Also, dad was an actual medic, and yet…
TR: Dad's dead, am sad.
BGM: always look on the bright side of life…
N: Hehehehehe, Monty Python…
D: Back on task!
Z: Breathe in, breathe out.
Fury: Sometimes we get so fucking angry that we just need to scream, and you little shit with your attempts at calm just make me angrier.
Z: Breathe in, breathe out.
D: Focus! Where were we?
M: Does it truly matter? This is a stream of consciousness, a method of expressing inner thoughts that we haven't been able to truly do before.
HF: It's also incredibly fun!
I: And funny!
E: If we monetize this, we can do it all day and make ourselves and our partner happy.
Testosterone: Happy partner means TITTIES! SEX! WOOO!
BB: Sexist pig.
Social Anxiety: She would hate that, we can't bring that up to her.
C: Hey Testosterone, can we change you over to Hormones? That way your abbreviation will be 'H', which also stands for 'horny' and 'hentai'.
Testosterone Hormones: Wooo! Horny! Ass and titties!
BGM: ass and titties, ass ass ass and titties
C: Also, we should probably think about changing Thermoregulation over to Homeostasis or something like that since it was originally just an intrusive thought about how the heat makes us sluggish and-
D: This digression has gone on long enough! Where are we going again?
M: We have a jumble of thoughts and desires that we don't express properly.
HF: Are we ever going to get to my idea?
Hyperfocus: Guys! Guys! I just had a great idea!
Diligence: We're still working on the last three great ideas you've had!
Background Music: Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali-Ababwa!
Diligence: Who is that?!
Cosmos: That's just whatever song randomly gets stuck in our head at the moment.
BGM: I like the girls with their nails done long, I like the girls with their nails done long dun duh dun dun duh dud duh
Cosmos: That's not how you would-
Diligence: Focus! Not the point!
Hyperfocus: That's me!
Cosmos: No, you're hyperfocus, AKA the Disco Elysium name we've assigned to our ADHD tendencies.
Diligence: We've never played Disco Elysium!
Improv: Eh, good enough.
Cosmos: I will note that since we're probably going to start abbreviating our names like BGM-
BGM: …nails done long…
C: -that would make Hyperfocus into HF, AKA hydrofluoric acid, AKA a corrosive that painlessly rots away flesh before abruptly killing you due to horrific destablization of internal homeostasis.
HF: Bitchin'!
D: And that would make me the dick in this relationship.
C: As I am creative as well as scientific and precise, yes.
D: You and HF are how we keep getting into these situations, you know? We have chores and errands and we need to be applying for jobs, and we still need to watch Eps 23 and 24 of Witch From Mercury. Hell, just on the creative side we still have One Angry Mother and the three other projects we've spun off since HF killed our desire to keep going there…
C: I think it might be fo-
D: NOT THE POINT!
Improv: 3 works well enough.
BGM: …nails done Prince Ali…
HF: Come on, we've wanted to do a "Look inside our mind and creative process" thing for ages!
Scuttling Charges: Is this self-care, or self-destruction, self-humiliation?
C: Scuttling Charges, that's a good one for our self-destructive and self-loathing impulses, very pleased there…
D: Must you stop to be so self-congratulatory?
C: Only because you feel so compelled to be so thorough.
HF: Actually, is that him or me?
C: You do align sometimes.
Medic: This can also be an actual method of journaling, a way to get all the intrusive-
BGM: nails done long
Medic: - thoughts in a manner that will let us and others better understand them.
SC: Ooh, yeah, we really want to call this Academia Nut's Heartbreaker to drive home how self-destructive we can be, because we know how much we suck for starting things and then dropping them just as they get interesting.
Thermoregulation: It's too hot, we should take a nap.
BGM: you'll have to excuse me, I'm not at my best, I've been gone for a month and need home for a rest
M: Look, we're a very private person, and if we want to get better we need to externalize thoughts so that we can understand them and get help on them from others. We kind of need some external executive function to really function.
TR: We're hungry, we should eat.
SC: Fuck it, yeah, why not?
HF: Oooh, sweets!
D: Let's circle back to what Medic is saying.
HF: What about my idea?!
Nostalgia: Remember our heyday of writing, when we could pump out a thousand words in two hours and post an update before we went to bed? Good times.
D: Look guys, I think this is a good idea on a fundamental level, but let's not let this consume us.
HF: You're no fun.
SC: You'll probably forget this by tomorrow.
HF: And you and Diligence will probably blow things up before we truly get going.
D: I just want things done right!
Improv: So we never get going, we just sit around dreaming up worlds and then never getting it down.
SC: We suck.
M: Stop it! We have problems, sure, but we need to take the things we are good at and leverage them against those problems. We have resilience, and we need to use it and the tools we already have to build new and better habits and patterns to move towards being the kind of person we want to be.
D: Hear-hear.
C: This is "action", as was described in Atomic Habits.
SC: Is it action or motion? Are we just spinning our wheels with this?
D: We're talking about it with our partner, this is only going to become motion instead of action if we don't take the next steps and use this as a way of expressing ourselves to others and soliciting help.
I: This is fun, this is funny.
TR: Mmmm… social engagement gives good chemicals.
HF: Oh yeah, let's post this and get lots of heart reacts and sympathetic feelings and text conversations with strangers. That's the good stuff.
Nostalgia: Good times back in the day, good times.
D: Guys, bring it back here.
HF: I'm always focused. Oh, right! The idea that started all of this!
D: I think this process has gone beyond that and is now a form of self-therapy.
SC: Or self-mocking.
I: Why not both?
C: What's the line in Spanish from that commercial.
BGM: nails done long
D: Focus!
Zen: Breathe in, breathe out. Let the thoughts pass like petals floating on a stream.
N and BGM: petals falling from the vine
TR: sniff… Iroh… Mako…
Zen: Breathe in, breathe out.
D: Right, bring it all back. Hyperfocus, you're not going to let this go are you?
HF: No, because he is sitting on my back.
Entrepreneur: Look, if we leverage this right, we could make enough money that we wouldn't need to keep looking for an engineering job and could express ourselves creatively from home.
Black Bloc: Stop falling into the capitalist trap of trying to turn hobbies into side hustles!
D: We should probably move on to job applications.
E: If we can turn our creative energies into a Patreon…
SC: We won't, we don't have the focus to actually maintain a consistent output that could let us do something like that.
E: But if we got external assistance…
M: Stop trying to turn self-care into money!
BB: Yeah, what he - actually, I think Medic has a feminine voice.
Nostalgia: I keep thinking of the Team Fortress Medic.
BGM: tf2 theme plays
C: Hmmm… yeah, Medic being female feels right.
BB: But isn't assigning a female voice to a caretaking role a manifestation of patriarchal gender roles? Also, dad was an actual medic, and yet…
TR: Dad's dead, am sad.
BGM: always look on the bright side of life…
N: Hehehehehe, Monty Python…
D: Back on task!
Z: Breathe in, breathe out.
Fury: Sometimes we get so fucking angry that we just need to scream, and you little shit with your attempts at calm just make me angrier.
Z: Breathe in, breathe out.
D: Focus! Where were we?
M: Does it truly matter? This is a stream of consciousness, a method of expressing inner thoughts that we haven't been able to truly do before.
HF: It's also incredibly fun!
I: And funny!
E: If we monetize this, we can do it all day and make ourselves and our partner happy.
Testosterone: Happy partner means TITTIES! SEX! WOOO!
BB: Sexist pig.
Social Anxiety: She would hate that, we can't bring that up to her.
C: Hey Testosterone, can we change you over to Hormones? That way your abbreviation will be 'H', which also stands for 'horny' and 'hentai'.
BGM: ass and titties, ass ass ass and titties
C: Also, we should probably think about changing Thermoregulation over to Homeostasis or something like that since it was originally just an intrusive thought about how the heat makes us sluggish and-
D: This digression has gone on long enough! Where are we going again?
M: We have a jumble of thoughts and desires that we don't express properly.
HF: Are we ever going to get to my idea?
Session 2
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Session 2
Diligence: Let us reconvene.
Medic: Agreed.
Hyperfocus: Are we going to talk about my ideas now?
Scuttling Charges: You're already wandering away from what you had yesterday.
HF: Okay maybe. But only because you and Diligence keep shooting down all my ideas!
SC: Because they are half formed and awkward and full of hype without actual substance.
HF: So work on them!
D: He has a point.
SC: He and Cosmos spend all their energy working out 'worldbuilding' and 'mechanics' that they never stop to think how anything would work, and by the time they get there they've expended all their energy and no longer have any interest in doing anything with their creations.
D: Also fair.
M: So we write down ideas and organize them, maybe reach out for help. We're very passive and that gets us into trouble, so we need to be more active. This is a form of taking a more active interest in self-reflection and ways to ask for help.
D: Okay. Hyperfocus, Cosmos; get to work.
HF: Whee!
Cosmos: This is always a pleasure.
SC: So's jerking off.
Hormones: Can there be sex in it?
C: Maybe, if we can figure out how to get the characters together in a satisfying manner.
Black Bloc: And we can frame it in an appropriately feminist light.
SC: So, to answer your question, no.
HF: But we'll try!
H: Yay!
D: Hyperfocus, could you get us back on track?
SC: Now there's a rare sentence.
HF: Right, right! So, after marinating in games and Royal Road stories, I propose we do a hybrid base-building/RPG idea, with the elevator pitch of Thea 2 meets Fallout… with maybe some Mount and Blade in there… and more fantasy elements is always fun. And it should have an elaborate crafting system, and-!
D: Okay, too many ideas at once, we get the high concept. What should we do with this idea?
C: Well, we've long kicked around the idea of Fallout + M&B as an excellent marriage of those mechanics and aesthetics, but the actual implementation has always been beyond us. However, the turn-based mechanics of Thea would lend far better to implementing as a quest or something we could possibly script-kiddie into being an actual game.
SC: Fucking quests, we've disappointed so many people.
M: Well that's why we're engaging in this dialogue, to sort these ideas out and come up with plans instead of just leaping into a project and hoping that this time we won't burn out.
Improv: Hey man, if you would just let me cook!
SC: You don't cook and that's the problem!
I: Hey! Hyperfocus and Cosmos suck up all the energy while you shoot down 90% of what they come up with. Meanwhile, Diligence also wrestles with Hyperfocus because we aren't doing more immediately important things like writing cover letters to jobs that will never look at them! Then, when there is no energy because we neither wrote nor did important adult things, Social Anxiety starts to panic that "It's been too long" and then Fury comes in and torches all emotional investment in a project because it's all been tainted with bitterness and self-loathing. And now unoccupied, Hyperfocus and Cosmos start dreaming up something new!
M: There's a reason I insist on framing this in a self-care manner, it helps Diligence actually do this. Too many ideas stay locked in our head to rot.
Background Music: yes the time knife, we've all seen their nails done long
D: That was our headspace version of a tumbleweed gag, wasn't it?
I: Yeah, pretty much.
M: So, we have a problem and we basically know what it is, it is just that standard self-reflection techniques get us caught up in the idea of doing it properly, whereas this stream-of-thought dialogue format allows the leveraging of creative writing techniques to better express our emotional state.
D: Okay, but where do we go with this?
Entrepreneur: We should post it online for the purposes of building interest and engagement for building an actual game!
Social Anxiety: That sounds terrifying!
SC: That sounds like a level of complexity that will only end in tears.
E: Okay, well, we could circle around to reformatting Hyperfocus' idea into a dungeoncore story that we could publish on RR for Patreon bucks and a Kindle deal.
D: You're getting so far ahead of yourself it's almost funny.
H: Can we add sex scenes?
E: I dunno how that would impact engagement metrics…
D: Rein it in here people!
C: Okay, let's break down the appeal here so we can isolate the elements we actually find interesting and then start working the problem of what we actually want.
HF: Number go up!
C: The thrill of creation!
E: Money!
H: Boobs! Weird fetishes that we still can't admit to others that we're into!
I: The social validation that all creators crave when they put their work out for public display.
M: A method of expressing emotional needs in a healthy manner.
BB: A subtle expression of anti-capitalist ideals that helps shape culture towards a brighter future without being one of those socialists.
SC: Sure have a whole lot of wants that don't necessarily align.
D: Yes, let's… focus.
BGM: …oh, my daddy taught me well, there's devils in heaven and some angels in hell…
D: Right. Okay, let's step away from some of those fundamentals for a moment, especially since to some extent those are needs rather than wants.
C: … why are you all looking at me?
I: Because I'm the more emotional, 'good enough' one, while you're the analyst that can break things down and then put them back together again into a coherent whole.
D: Get to work bucko.
Nostalgia: Bucko… buckaroo… Chuck Tingle. No desire to engage with his work beyond the surface level of the memes, but we must salute. Also, now that I am thinking about gay things, a certain song has some serious lesbian energy as far as we are concerned.
BGM: nails done long
C: Alright, alright! So, we really enjoy Number Go Up.
HF: Yes!
E: Oh yeah.
C: So both base-building/4X games and RPG mechanics provide that sense of continual forward progress that we can find lacking in our everyday life, what with feeling stuck and unproductive and upset about not doing anything.
Thermoregulation: Video games give the good chemicals.
C: That they do!
M: Too much in-fact.
SC: It's why we had to uninstall Thea 2, because it was ruining our life.
D: Hey, I can't help but notice that we aren't exactly keeping our plural nouns or person-case straight and-
I: Doesn't matter, keep moving.
D: Right, right. Cosmos…
C: Okay, so something like Thea helps satisfy that need on multiple levels, since it has multiple ways to progress forward: gaining experience, getting party members with better and more interesting classes, getting better equipment, harvesting and refining resources to build better equipment and buildings…
HF: God, just one more turn…
Min-Max: Hmmm… what if we were to reinstall and start up a Mokosh run to-
SC & D: NO!
C: Right, right. So we want that, but we also want the perfect experience. We want a deeper and more intricate crafting system so that the effort we put into things produces what we feel are appropriately unique effects for our efforts. We want the mechanics present to be closer to our vision of how things "should" work or what is most engaging. But we don't have nearly enough coding ability to actually make a game.
E: If we could wrangle up some collaborators…
SC: Don't be the 'Idea Guy', the Idea Guy is a lazy douche who tries to foist the effort of making his vision come true onto others.
C: So a story then, but sometimes we get stuck and need help figuring out which of the awesome choices we've come up with we should use. Hence quests.
SC: But the players are often foolish and do dumb things.
E: LitRPGs-
SC: Suck.
HF: Doesn't stop us from reading them!
E: - demonstrate that a 'single player quest' is an entirely valid format.
SC: But that still doesn't help us when Improv gets hung up.
HF: You know Cosmos, I feel like we brainstormed up a bunch of mechanics the other day, and we seem to be straying aimlessly away from bouncing ideas between each other while Scuttling Charge prunes the worst of them.
M: Well, this whole thing is evolving.
H: I say we go back to the horny dragon-lady or horny oni-lady concepts we dreamed up and haven't done anything with. Cosmos, you even had the worldbuilding you wanted, and punchsplosions are awesome!
I: Yes, but we couldn't decide upon an emotionally satisfying starting point.
M: I think I can just come out and say that part of this whole exercise is just a plea for someone to become a beta-reader/editor/prosthetic executive function, should we actually post it publicly. Otherwise it is an internal sorting… but we still need to talk about it with our partner on some level.
Social Anxiety: We're so bad, we're so selfish, we don't deserve help.
Fury: We're worthless.
M: Alright, the two of you need to shut-up!
I: Oh hey, I think we've defined my role as the 'straight-from-the-heart' one now, so that's my cue to start.
N: Homer Simpson: "That's my cue to exit." Wait, was that Homer, and then there is the Leonard Nimoy line from the monorail episode, and then the Sailor Moon meme and-
I: Diligence!
D: Yeah, yeah, I don't need to finish the bit.
I: Right. So, addressing the black and bitter resentments and fears, you are what keeps getting us in here. You burn out our motivation and passion and leave behind resentment and panic, and if we are to get past that we need to build new habits, and one big ol' fucking thing we need to learn to do is to reach out for help since we can't do things alone.
N: Hey, remember that the only fic we ever finished had a beta reader by the end?
SC: I would rather not remember Thousand Shinji, thank you ver-
I: Scuttling Charge, you're an important member of the team because you help assess and kill bad ideas-
Random Klansman: Hey guys, I just suddenly remembered a line from a Chris Rock show in the 90s and I'm going to intrusively-
D & SC & BB: ON FIRE, NOW!
RK: AAAAAAAAAH!
Plasma Cannons: Because we thought of fire, I am now randomly here. Mmmmm… plasma cannons….
C: Oh man, I just remembered some of the ways of how we were going to fix how unfun modern Fallout's plasma weaponry is in One Angry Mother. Or the nonlinear optics for the laser cannon design we were just about to write before we burned out.
M: You know, someone to help would have been real useful for that.
SA: But we don't deserve…
D: No, you are unproductive, unlike Scuttling Charge. However, I should have a word with you Improv now that I am thinking about it.
I: Me?
D: Yes, you. You damn near have a fetish for 'delight and surprise' of readers, to the point where you won't explain what you are doing and then lose the plot!
I: Shit.
HF & PC: plasma cannons
BGM: nails done long
SC: Can we hit shuffle on that gag?
D: It's kind of stuck in our head because of the gag, hence why it keeps popping up.
SC: It's starting to get old.
D: I'll exercise some restraint on always including every random thought that passes through- oops, more fire to Klansman.
RK: AAAAAAAAH!
D: Okay, so this is a call for help. A help for what?
HF & PC: Plasma cannons!
C: Ooooh, we could go back to that coaxial laser-maser lightning gun design for a mech setting…
E: We could leverage contacts like Moid or sketch!
BB: Leave them alone you ghoul.
D: Time! Time! Medic…
M: What we really want is to talk to people. We want to be heard, and as much as there is an element of Hyperfocus around ideas of "I'm not understood" or "If we just do this one thing"-
HF: Not fair if you don't follow through!
M: We should share this with someone. And probably let Hyperfocus take over for a bit in answering questions. Just a bit though.
D: I'll make sure to set a timer…
I: Just do it live and be a legend!
Diligence: Let us reconvene.
Medic: Agreed.
Hyperfocus: Are we going to talk about my ideas now?
Scuttling Charges: You're already wandering away from what you had yesterday.
HF: Okay maybe. But only because you and Diligence keep shooting down all my ideas!
SC: Because they are half formed and awkward and full of hype without actual substance.
HF: So work on them!
D: He has a point.
SC: He and Cosmos spend all their energy working out 'worldbuilding' and 'mechanics' that they never stop to think how anything would work, and by the time they get there they've expended all their energy and no longer have any interest in doing anything with their creations.
D: Also fair.
M: So we write down ideas and organize them, maybe reach out for help. We're very passive and that gets us into trouble, so we need to be more active. This is a form of taking a more active interest in self-reflection and ways to ask for help.
D: Okay. Hyperfocus, Cosmos; get to work.
HF: Whee!
Cosmos: This is always a pleasure.
SC: So's jerking off.
Hormones: Can there be sex in it?
C: Maybe, if we can figure out how to get the characters together in a satisfying manner.
Black Bloc: And we can frame it in an appropriately feminist light.
SC: So, to answer your question, no.
HF: But we'll try!
H: Yay!
D: Hyperfocus, could you get us back on track?
SC: Now there's a rare sentence.
HF: Right, right! So, after marinating in games and Royal Road stories, I propose we do a hybrid base-building/RPG idea, with the elevator pitch of Thea 2 meets Fallout… with maybe some Mount and Blade in there… and more fantasy elements is always fun. And it should have an elaborate crafting system, and-!
D: Okay, too many ideas at once, we get the high concept. What should we do with this idea?
C: Well, we've long kicked around the idea of Fallout + M&B as an excellent marriage of those mechanics and aesthetics, but the actual implementation has always been beyond us. However, the turn-based mechanics of Thea would lend far better to implementing as a quest or something we could possibly script-kiddie into being an actual game.
SC: Fucking quests, we've disappointed so many people.
M: Well that's why we're engaging in this dialogue, to sort these ideas out and come up with plans instead of just leaping into a project and hoping that this time we won't burn out.
Improv: Hey man, if you would just let me cook!
SC: You don't cook and that's the problem!
I: Hey! Hyperfocus and Cosmos suck up all the energy while you shoot down 90% of what they come up with. Meanwhile, Diligence also wrestles with Hyperfocus because we aren't doing more immediately important things like writing cover letters to jobs that will never look at them! Then, when there is no energy because we neither wrote nor did important adult things, Social Anxiety starts to panic that "It's been too long" and then Fury comes in and torches all emotional investment in a project because it's all been tainted with bitterness and self-loathing. And now unoccupied, Hyperfocus and Cosmos start dreaming up something new!
M: There's a reason I insist on framing this in a self-care manner, it helps Diligence actually do this. Too many ideas stay locked in our head to rot.
Background Music: yes the time knife, we've all seen their nails done long
D: That was our headspace version of a tumbleweed gag, wasn't it?
I: Yeah, pretty much.
M: So, we have a problem and we basically know what it is, it is just that standard self-reflection techniques get us caught up in the idea of doing it properly, whereas this stream-of-thought dialogue format allows the leveraging of creative writing techniques to better express our emotional state.
D: Okay, but where do we go with this?
Entrepreneur: We should post it online for the purposes of building interest and engagement for building an actual game!
Social Anxiety: That sounds terrifying!
SC: That sounds like a level of complexity that will only end in tears.
E: Okay, well, we could circle around to reformatting Hyperfocus' idea into a dungeoncore story that we could publish on RR for Patreon bucks and a Kindle deal.
D: You're getting so far ahead of yourself it's almost funny.
H: Can we add sex scenes?
E: I dunno how that would impact engagement metrics…
D: Rein it in here people!
C: Okay, let's break down the appeal here so we can isolate the elements we actually find interesting and then start working the problem of what we actually want.
HF: Number go up!
C: The thrill of creation!
E: Money!
H: Boobs! Weird fetishes that we still can't admit to others that we're into!
I: The social validation that all creators crave when they put their work out for public display.
M: A method of expressing emotional needs in a healthy manner.
BB: A subtle expression of anti-capitalist ideals that helps shape culture towards a brighter future without being one of those socialists.
SC: Sure have a whole lot of wants that don't necessarily align.
D: Yes, let's… focus.
BGM: …oh, my daddy taught me well, there's devils in heaven and some angels in hell…
D: Right. Okay, let's step away from some of those fundamentals for a moment, especially since to some extent those are needs rather than wants.
C: … why are you all looking at me?
I: Because I'm the more emotional, 'good enough' one, while you're the analyst that can break things down and then put them back together again into a coherent whole.
D: Get to work bucko.
Nostalgia: Bucko… buckaroo… Chuck Tingle. No desire to engage with his work beyond the surface level of the memes, but we must salute. Also, now that I am thinking about gay things, a certain song has some serious lesbian energy as far as we are concerned.
BGM: nails done long
C: Alright, alright! So, we really enjoy Number Go Up.
HF: Yes!
E: Oh yeah.
C: So both base-building/4X games and RPG mechanics provide that sense of continual forward progress that we can find lacking in our everyday life, what with feeling stuck and unproductive and upset about not doing anything.
Thermoregulation: Video games give the good chemicals.
C: That they do!
M: Too much in-fact.
SC: It's why we had to uninstall Thea 2, because it was ruining our life.
D: Hey, I can't help but notice that we aren't exactly keeping our plural nouns or person-case straight and-
I: Doesn't matter, keep moving.
D: Right, right. Cosmos…
C: Okay, so something like Thea helps satisfy that need on multiple levels, since it has multiple ways to progress forward: gaining experience, getting party members with better and more interesting classes, getting better equipment, harvesting and refining resources to build better equipment and buildings…
HF: God, just one more turn…
Min-Max: Hmmm… what if we were to reinstall and start up a Mokosh run to-
SC & D: NO!
C: Right, right. So we want that, but we also want the perfect experience. We want a deeper and more intricate crafting system so that the effort we put into things produces what we feel are appropriately unique effects for our efforts. We want the mechanics present to be closer to our vision of how things "should" work or what is most engaging. But we don't have nearly enough coding ability to actually make a game.
E: If we could wrangle up some collaborators…
SC: Don't be the 'Idea Guy', the Idea Guy is a lazy douche who tries to foist the effort of making his vision come true onto others.
C: So a story then, but sometimes we get stuck and need help figuring out which of the awesome choices we've come up with we should use. Hence quests.
SC: But the players are often foolish and do dumb things.
E: LitRPGs-
SC: Suck.
HF: Doesn't stop us from reading them!
E: - demonstrate that a 'single player quest' is an entirely valid format.
SC: But that still doesn't help us when Improv gets hung up.
HF: You know Cosmos, I feel like we brainstormed up a bunch of mechanics the other day, and we seem to be straying aimlessly away from bouncing ideas between each other while Scuttling Charge prunes the worst of them.
M: Well, this whole thing is evolving.
H: I say we go back to the horny dragon-lady or horny oni-lady concepts we dreamed up and haven't done anything with. Cosmos, you even had the worldbuilding you wanted, and punchsplosions are awesome!
I: Yes, but we couldn't decide upon an emotionally satisfying starting point.
M: I think I can just come out and say that part of this whole exercise is just a plea for someone to become a beta-reader/editor/prosthetic executive function, should we actually post it publicly. Otherwise it is an internal sorting… but we still need to talk about it with our partner on some level.
Social Anxiety: We're so bad, we're so selfish, we don't deserve help.
Fury: We're worthless.
M: Alright, the two of you need to shut-up!
I: Oh hey, I think we've defined my role as the 'straight-from-the-heart' one now, so that's my cue to start.
N: Homer Simpson: "That's my cue to exit." Wait, was that Homer, and then there is the Leonard Nimoy line from the monorail episode, and then the Sailor Moon meme and-
I: Diligence!
D: Yeah, yeah, I don't need to finish the bit.
I: Right. So, addressing the black and bitter resentments and fears, you are what keeps getting us in here. You burn out our motivation and passion and leave behind resentment and panic, and if we are to get past that we need to build new habits, and one big ol' fucking thing we need to learn to do is to reach out for help since we can't do things alone.
N: Hey, remember that the only fic we ever finished had a beta reader by the end?
SC: I would rather not remember Thousand Shinji, thank you ver-
I: Scuttling Charge, you're an important member of the team because you help assess and kill bad ideas-
Random Klansman: Hey guys, I just suddenly remembered a line from a Chris Rock show in the 90s and I'm going to intrusively-
D & SC & BB: ON FIRE, NOW!
RK: AAAAAAAAAH!
Plasma Cannons: Because we thought of fire, I am now randomly here. Mmmmm… plasma cannons….
C: Oh man, I just remembered some of the ways of how we were going to fix how unfun modern Fallout's plasma weaponry is in One Angry Mother. Or the nonlinear optics for the laser cannon design we were just about to write before we burned out.
M: You know, someone to help would have been real useful for that.
SA: But we don't deserve…
D: No, you are unproductive, unlike Scuttling Charge. However, I should have a word with you Improv now that I am thinking about it.
I: Me?
D: Yes, you. You damn near have a fetish for 'delight and surprise' of readers, to the point where you won't explain what you are doing and then lose the plot!
I: Shit.
HF & PC: plasma cannons
BGM: nails done long
SC: Can we hit shuffle on that gag?
D: It's kind of stuck in our head because of the gag, hence why it keeps popping up.
SC: It's starting to get old.
D: I'll exercise some restraint on always including every random thought that passes through- oops, more fire to Klansman.
RK: AAAAAAAAH!
D: Okay, so this is a call for help. A help for what?
HF & PC: Plasma cannons!
C: Ooooh, we could go back to that coaxial laser-maser lightning gun design for a mech setting…
E: We could leverage contacts like Moid or sketch!
BB: Leave them alone you ghoul.
D: Time! Time! Medic…
M: What we really want is to talk to people. We want to be heard, and as much as there is an element of Hyperfocus around ideas of "I'm not understood" or "If we just do this one thing"-
HF: Not fair if you don't follow through!
M: We should share this with someone. And probably let Hyperfocus take over for a bit in answering questions. Just a bit though.
D: I'll make sure to set a timer…
I: Just do it live and be a legend!
Session 3
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Session 3
Hyperfocus: I can't help but notice we didn't post anything yet.
Scuttling Charge: We decided it was a bad idea to do it impulsively and spend all of our time in the evening F5ing and flipping between Discord channels.
Improv: You know, you seem different than at the start.
Diligence: We've slowly settled on an idea of Scuttling Charge being more of a gadfly whose job it is to shoot down bad ideas and put pressure on other ideas to better refine them, rather than just a general voice of 'No'. Most of his truly negative qualities have moved over to Fury.
Medic: This is a stream-of-consciousness thing anyway, so our personalities are fluid as the situation demands.
Background Music: i'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world
D: Some are more one note than others.
SC: I should point out that it's Diligence who feels that the random asides are structurally important to include as part of the bit.
D: If it's stream-of-conscious it should be true.
SC: I'm also the one who cuts out the worst cringe between the raw and edited editions because we don't have that much ability to suppress Social Anxiety entirely.
HF: If we want it to be true to form we should just post and then start answering questions in-character like we intended!
Cosmos: Can I say that what we really want is an excuse to just get engagement for random worldbuilding to satiate Hyperfocus and myself?
D: It's why we waited so that we wouldn't be posting this right before going to bed.
SC: And yet we are doing this now instead of working on more important things first.
Fury: I fucking despise applying for jobs and I will make us physically sick trying to confront it.
HF: Hey look, a distraction!
BGM: *plaintive whistling of engel*
Hormones: Huh, what? Oh! Oh, if we do a Thea thing we should definitely incorporate a bond mechanic between characters and weird interspecies pregnancy stuff!
Social Anxiety: We can't post that!
Min Maxer: Hey guys, can we reinstall Thea 2 again?
F: Let's blow up all of our relationships by being awkward and untrustworthy, that way people will treat us like the dirt we are.
M: How's about Zen and I lance you like a particularly angry boil?
Zen: Breathe in, breathe out.
HF: I'm definitely helping Fury hold things hostage by insisting we post, which we should!
Thermoregulation: You're literally giving us a stomach ache with this argument!
BGM: …ride with Allah…
D: That's not how the song goes.
I: We all know it doesn't matter.
F: Fuuuuuuucking keyboard won't stop freezing and doubling up and dropping letters!
TR: Now I'm hungry.
Z: Take a deep breath and release the tension in the chest. This will all pass.
MM: Hey, who wants to revive that Scion 2E project with Rachel from Animorphs as a Scion of Itzpapalotl?
Black Bloc: Still unsure about the idea of making a blonde white girl be part of an Indigenous pantheon, even if there were some interesting ideas about cross-cultural dialogue, belonging, and decolonization in that project.
D: Back on task here people.
SC: What even is the task at this point?
HF: To let me and Cosmos run wild for the entertainment of our adoring audience.
SA: We've alienated so many people by being a flake…
Entrepreneur: So we need to rebuild our fanbase so that we can start soliciting money again.
SA: We're such a greedy, horrible person!
SC: You always underestimate the logistics of all this shit, Entrepreneur.
D: Okay, you know what, BGM drop us a beat and let's let Hyperfocus and Cosmos cook for a bit and see what happens.
BGM: explain me the reason why i'm so much in pain
HF: Thea + Fallout!
C: Both are post-apocalyptic, so we just take the cosmic seed from Thea 2 and GECK from Fallout 2 and combine them into the magic MacGuffin that allows one to build a community in the wastes. Call it a deployable water purifier or the like, so you can spend a few turns wandering the map before settling down in a location you like. Make the gathering of clean food and water a key survival element that will encourage settling down in a relatively short time.
MM: Should we rip off Humankind too, since that sounds somewhat similar there.
C: Well Thea 1 & 2 clearly have 4X and Civ inspirations, so that seems reasonable since Humankind is also a hex-based 4X game.
BGM: from the depths of hell in silence, cast their spells explosive violence!
HF: We totally need witches in this!
H: Hot witches! We should totally have magical exposure in pregnancy be a mechanic and-
SA: Noooo! Don't admit that!
SC: Setting aside the appropriateness of Hormones' horniness, we should probably figure out a fucking core gameplay loop before we start adding other ideas!
C: Go out, beat down enemies, gather resources, convert resources into more power for the next expedition.
HF: So like, we're gonna have an in-depth crafting mechanic, right? Like, if you want to make a sword you should totally be able to refine a specific alloy for it, set in runes and enchantments, and attach charms and the like to the pommel, with each getting their own crafting system.
MM: Oh! Oh, and like, if we lift systems from Thea you should totally lift the challenge mechanics into crafting projects of sufficient complexity, and-
SC: Too far, too deep! The complexity is rising too fast and you're just going to go into this with a mess of broken systems and concepts.
D: Agreed. Pare it back.
C: If we were to do something, we would want to define an initial core system to build outward from. Something like the character sheets from Thea is as good a place as any to start.
MM: Let's swap it over to something like the Power, Finesse, and Resistance vs. Physical, Mental, and Social/Spiritual 3x3 grid from Scion. Thea already has the awkward Wits stat to the side of its standard six main stats.
HF: Min Maxer, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
MM: That we should totally stat out a character in Scion 2E for this project? Hell yeah!
HF: Bitchin'!
SC: Stopping this right here because as fun as that is, it's also a pointless waste of time.
HF & MM: Awwwwwww…
D: This is turning into a lot of wheel spinning now.
C: Part of it is that Thermoregulation has decided that now is a great time for a headache.
TR: Sleepy time now.
D: Okay, let's wrap this session up and come back to it. We have the germ of an idea now, so let's continue to let it cook, but do it in the open.
M: Agreed. We need more voices than just us.
HF: Hey guys, now that you're all talking about going public I'm already losing interest in continuing this train of thought because the emotional need is being satisfied.
D: God damn it all…
I: Doesn't matter, just do it and see what happens. Maybe the interest of others will reactivate whatever is going on, maybe we'll be able to figure out something better.
M: Hopefully at least we can talk with other neurodivergent people about their own struggles and gain some external insight.
Hyperfocus: I can't help but notice we didn't post anything yet.
Scuttling Charge: We decided it was a bad idea to do it impulsively and spend all of our time in the evening F5ing and flipping between Discord channels.
Improv: You know, you seem different than at the start.
Diligence: We've slowly settled on an idea of Scuttling Charge being more of a gadfly whose job it is to shoot down bad ideas and put pressure on other ideas to better refine them, rather than just a general voice of 'No'. Most of his truly negative qualities have moved over to Fury.
Medic: This is a stream-of-consciousness thing anyway, so our personalities are fluid as the situation demands.
Background Music: i'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world
D: Some are more one note than others.
SC: I should point out that it's Diligence who feels that the random asides are structurally important to include as part of the bit.
D: If it's stream-of-conscious it should be true.
SC: I'm also the one who cuts out the worst cringe between the raw and edited editions because we don't have that much ability to suppress Social Anxiety entirely.
HF: If we want it to be true to form we should just post and then start answering questions in-character like we intended!
Cosmos: Can I say that what we really want is an excuse to just get engagement for random worldbuilding to satiate Hyperfocus and myself?
D: It's why we waited so that we wouldn't be posting this right before going to bed.
SC: And yet we are doing this now instead of working on more important things first.
Fury: I fucking despise applying for jobs and I will make us physically sick trying to confront it.
HF: Hey look, a distraction!
BGM: *plaintive whistling of engel*
Hormones: Huh, what? Oh! Oh, if we do a Thea thing we should definitely incorporate a bond mechanic between characters and weird interspecies pregnancy stuff!
Social Anxiety: We can't post that!
Min Maxer: Hey guys, can we reinstall Thea 2 again?
F: Let's blow up all of our relationships by being awkward and untrustworthy, that way people will treat us like the dirt we are.
M: How's about Zen and I lance you like a particularly angry boil?
Zen: Breathe in, breathe out.
HF: I'm definitely helping Fury hold things hostage by insisting we post, which we should!
Thermoregulation: You're literally giving us a stomach ache with this argument!
BGM: …ride with Allah…
D: That's not how the song goes.
I: We all know it doesn't matter.
F: Fuuuuuuucking keyboard won't stop freezing and doubling up and dropping letters!
TR: Now I'm hungry.
Z: Take a deep breath and release the tension in the chest. This will all pass.
MM: Hey, who wants to revive that Scion 2E project with Rachel from Animorphs as a Scion of Itzpapalotl?
Black Bloc: Still unsure about the idea of making a blonde white girl be part of an Indigenous pantheon, even if there were some interesting ideas about cross-cultural dialogue, belonging, and decolonization in that project.
D: Back on task here people.
SC: What even is the task at this point?
HF: To let me and Cosmos run wild for the entertainment of our adoring audience.
SA: We've alienated so many people by being a flake…
Entrepreneur: So we need to rebuild our fanbase so that we can start soliciting money again.
SA: We're such a greedy, horrible person!
SC: You always underestimate the logistics of all this shit, Entrepreneur.
D: Okay, you know what, BGM drop us a beat and let's let Hyperfocus and Cosmos cook for a bit and see what happens.
BGM: explain me the reason why i'm so much in pain
HF: Thea + Fallout!
C: Both are post-apocalyptic, so we just take the cosmic seed from Thea 2 and GECK from Fallout 2 and combine them into the magic MacGuffin that allows one to build a community in the wastes. Call it a deployable water purifier or the like, so you can spend a few turns wandering the map before settling down in a location you like. Make the gathering of clean food and water a key survival element that will encourage settling down in a relatively short time.
MM: Should we rip off Humankind too, since that sounds somewhat similar there.
C: Well Thea 1 & 2 clearly have 4X and Civ inspirations, so that seems reasonable since Humankind is also a hex-based 4X game.
BGM: from the depths of hell in silence, cast their spells explosive violence!
HF: We totally need witches in this!
H: Hot witches! We should totally have magical exposure in pregnancy be a mechanic and-
SA: Noooo! Don't admit that!
SC: Setting aside the appropriateness of Hormones' horniness, we should probably figure out a fucking core gameplay loop before we start adding other ideas!
C: Go out, beat down enemies, gather resources, convert resources into more power for the next expedition.
HF: So like, we're gonna have an in-depth crafting mechanic, right? Like, if you want to make a sword you should totally be able to refine a specific alloy for it, set in runes and enchantments, and attach charms and the like to the pommel, with each getting their own crafting system.
MM: Oh! Oh, and like, if we lift systems from Thea you should totally lift the challenge mechanics into crafting projects of sufficient complexity, and-
SC: Too far, too deep! The complexity is rising too fast and you're just going to go into this with a mess of broken systems and concepts.
D: Agreed. Pare it back.
C: If we were to do something, we would want to define an initial core system to build outward from. Something like the character sheets from Thea is as good a place as any to start.
MM: Let's swap it over to something like the Power, Finesse, and Resistance vs. Physical, Mental, and Social/Spiritual 3x3 grid from Scion. Thea already has the awkward Wits stat to the side of its standard six main stats.
HF: Min Maxer, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
MM: That we should totally stat out a character in Scion 2E for this project? Hell yeah!
HF: Bitchin'!
SC: Stopping this right here because as fun as that is, it's also a pointless waste of time.
HF & MM: Awwwwwww…
D: This is turning into a lot of wheel spinning now.
C: Part of it is that Thermoregulation has decided that now is a great time for a headache.
TR: Sleepy time now.
D: Okay, let's wrap this session up and come back to it. We have the germ of an idea now, so let's continue to let it cook, but do it in the open.
M: Agreed. We need more voices than just us.
HF: Hey guys, now that you're all talking about going public I'm already losing interest in continuing this train of thought because the emotional need is being satisfied.
D: God damn it all…
I: Doesn't matter, just do it and see what happens. Maybe the interest of others will reactivate whatever is going on, maybe we'll be able to figure out something better.
M: Hopefully at least we can talk with other neurodivergent people about their own struggles and gain some external insight.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
I have a huge google word document full of really cool scenes that I would love to make stories around, but I just can't get anything to connect. Also suck at dialogue.
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Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
This gives me the good chemicals.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Nostalgia: I once started a story because I had a scene in my head involving a guy riding a T. rex crashing into a line of Roman legionaries.
Improv: Not even going to check how many Google docs and Word docs I have of started ideas that got abandoned before going anywhere.
Diligence: I don't think its fully possible at this point, everything is in too many places.
Hormones: Every time we come up with something sexy that Cosmos thinks would work, Social Anxiety makes us chicken out from even writing the smut in private.
Hyperfocus: F5 F5 F5 F5... come on, someone has got to post something we can engage with obsessively. Oh wait, there we go.
Thermoregulation: Have the good chemicals and take a nap.
Diligence: Guys, we have other stuff to do.
Fury: Still hate applying to jobs, will make you sick for trying.
Diligence: We should take a walk then.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
I cheated on job application. My job is a bribe to my partner to get her phd since her sponsor owns the company I work at. I anxiously await the day she finishes and we have to start considering moving… and actual job applications in the area.
Aabcehmu
Confusion as a Natural State of Being
- Location
- Aurora, CO
- Pronouns
- Any/All
I don't have a job myself anymore (and lack the diligence to obtain one through anything other than nepotism) but if I did and it didn't involve changes to various other aspects of my current living situation then I would happily contribute to an Academia Nut patreon!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Entrepreneur: Yeeeeeeesssss, marketing data!
Black Bloc: While its good to enjoy other people enjoying our work, stop making it all about money!
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Oh man I super super feel the hatred of job applications. I've sorta resigned myself to a job that stresses me the fuck out because no matter how mad I get, job applications are worse.
I also commiserate with "starting stories and never finishing. Behold a list of my WIPs, of which maybe two or three have been finished in any sense of the word:
I also commiserate with "starting stories and never finishing. Behold a list of my WIPs, of which maybe two or three have been finished in any sense of the word:
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- Location
- Queensland, Australia
I both wish I had your courage AN (and the other responders) and also wish I had that work ethic. Because at least you manage to write up the Google Docs. I have so many ideas for stories in my head that suffer Crippling Fear, Anxiety and Distractions Appearing Now whenever I think of writing them or even just an omake.
Well that or I actually write up the quest post, run through character creation and only then realize that I never created the mechanics for a very mechanics heavy quest format as it comes time to use said mechanics. That's always good for the Self-Motivation, right?
Occasional twitches and intermittent gasping means enthusiastic agreement, yes?
Well that or I actually write up the quest post, run through character creation and only then realize that I never created the mechanics for a very mechanics heavy quest format as it comes time to use said mechanics. That's always good for the Self-Motivation, right?
Occasional twitches and intermittent gasping means enthusiastic agreement, yes?
Session 4
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Session 4
Social Anxiety: So few people replied! They hate us!
Entrepreneur: We have damaged our brand by being a complete flake.
Scuttling Charge: This whole thing wasn't a good idea.
Medic: No, the point isn't to get all the engagement, the point is to work on something easy so that we can write every day.
SC: We didn't write yesterday.
M: So write today. Even a single line is something.
Thermoregulation: Headaches, therefore nap time.
Diligence: Going to try to get a bit more. Cosmos, Hyperfocus, what have you been cooking?
Cosmos: Hyperfocus is currently lost, but at your prompting I have been exploring a few ideas. Bits and pieces really, but nothing has gelled beyond an elevator pitch… and even the high level concept of Thea 2: The Shattering meets Fallout with a sprinkling of Mount & Blade is losing its appeal as the logistical scope becomes apparent. With Hyperfocus absent we're struggling to find even a starting point to latch onto to start chewing.
SC: Told you this whole thing was a bad idea.
M: Well now people can see the struggle going on. Perhaps we have burned too many bridges to get any help for whatever particular project this turns into, but on the other hand if we can help someone else come to terms with their own problems then this will have absolutely been worth it.
Black Bloc: Helping others is always worth it.
Plasma Cannons: plasma cannons
Improv: There there buddy, if we do some sci-fi here then we can absolutely put in some plasma cannons, just for you.
PC: !
D: You think you can work with that at all Cosmos?
C: Are we talking "basically lightning bolts" plasma cannons, or "blobs of blue and/or green light that melt things" plasma cannons.
PC: Space Marine plasma cannons.
C: Balls of light it is!
M: See! This is progress! We can even write a bit, go to bed, and pick it back up the next within the same "session" and it will still serve its purpose.
Hyperfocus: Guys! Guys, I've got it! A post-apocalyptic story presented as if it were a base-builder game! We can leverage the abstractions to satiate our Number Go Up desires without having to feel weird and gross by using game mechanics outside of a game environment. It can also scratch the itch of maybe one day making it a reality.
PC: What about plasma cannons?
C: Mid to late game weapons of extreme power.
PC: But then we'll never get to them 🙁
SC: He's got us there.
C: If it's a base-builder then the base can have plasma cannons guarding the very heart of the base that you start from, but they are both fixed in place and have a limited number of ammunition. The 'tutorial' should allow you to showcase them, but they should be a weapon of last resort for most of a run.
Min Maxer: Oooh! You should totally be able to do a risky tech rush strategy wherein with the right builds and research you can remove them from their mounts by late-early game, allowing a select number of units to hit far above the power curve, at the expense of warping your tech advancement and leaving your base unusually vulnerable.
PC: Plasma cannons!
Hormones: Can there be topless babes?
Improv: I feel that a sort of Fallout vibe is already gelling here, in which case scantily clad bomber nose art and pin-up girls feels appropriate. We'll put a pin in actual nudity for now.
H: Nice!
HF: We need to start this now.
D: How's about maybe we hold off a bit and start laying out some ideas, maybe go out to our anime thing tonight, and get some feedback from other people? Maybe create some Google Docs to share with interested parties, bounce some ideas around, and all that good prep stuff that we never do.
HF: But, but, but, but cool things! Write now!
PC: Plasma cannons!
M: I'm going to agree with Diligence that we should hold off for a few hours at least.
Social Anxiety: So few people replied! They hate us!
Entrepreneur: We have damaged our brand by being a complete flake.
Scuttling Charge: This whole thing wasn't a good idea.
Medic: No, the point isn't to get all the engagement, the point is to work on something easy so that we can write every day.
SC: We didn't write yesterday.
M: So write today. Even a single line is something.
Thermoregulation: Headaches, therefore nap time.
Diligence: Going to try to get a bit more. Cosmos, Hyperfocus, what have you been cooking?
Cosmos: Hyperfocus is currently lost, but at your prompting I have been exploring a few ideas. Bits and pieces really, but nothing has gelled beyond an elevator pitch… and even the high level concept of Thea 2: The Shattering meets Fallout with a sprinkling of Mount & Blade is losing its appeal as the logistical scope becomes apparent. With Hyperfocus absent we're struggling to find even a starting point to latch onto to start chewing.
SC: Told you this whole thing was a bad idea.
M: Well now people can see the struggle going on. Perhaps we have burned too many bridges to get any help for whatever particular project this turns into, but on the other hand if we can help someone else come to terms with their own problems then this will have absolutely been worth it.
Black Bloc: Helping others is always worth it.
Plasma Cannons: plasma cannons
Improv: There there buddy, if we do some sci-fi here then we can absolutely put in some plasma cannons, just for you.
PC: !
D: You think you can work with that at all Cosmos?
C: Are we talking "basically lightning bolts" plasma cannons, or "blobs of blue and/or green light that melt things" plasma cannons.
PC: Space Marine plasma cannons.
C: Balls of light it is!
M: See! This is progress! We can even write a bit, go to bed, and pick it back up the next within the same "session" and it will still serve its purpose.
Hyperfocus: Guys! Guys, I've got it! A post-apocalyptic story presented as if it were a base-builder game! We can leverage the abstractions to satiate our Number Go Up desires without having to feel weird and gross by using game mechanics outside of a game environment. It can also scratch the itch of maybe one day making it a reality.
PC: What about plasma cannons?
C: Mid to late game weapons of extreme power.
PC: But then we'll never get to them 🙁
SC: He's got us there.
C: If it's a base-builder then the base can have plasma cannons guarding the very heart of the base that you start from, but they are both fixed in place and have a limited number of ammunition. The 'tutorial' should allow you to showcase them, but they should be a weapon of last resort for most of a run.
Min Maxer: Oooh! You should totally be able to do a risky tech rush strategy wherein with the right builds and research you can remove them from their mounts by late-early game, allowing a select number of units to hit far above the power curve, at the expense of warping your tech advancement and leaving your base unusually vulnerable.
PC: Plasma cannons!
Hormones: Can there be topless babes?
Improv: I feel that a sort of Fallout vibe is already gelling here, in which case scantily clad bomber nose art and pin-up girls feels appropriate. We'll put a pin in actual nudity for now.
H: Nice!
HF: We need to start this now.
D: How's about maybe we hold off a bit and start laying out some ideas, maybe go out to our anime thing tonight, and get some feedback from other people? Maybe create some Google Docs to share with interested parties, bounce some ideas around, and all that good prep stuff that we never do.
HF: But, but, but, but cool things! Write now!
PC: Plasma cannons!
M: I'm going to agree with Diligence that we should hold off for a few hours at least.
Aabcehmu
Confusion as a Natural State of Being
- Location
- Aurora, CO
- Pronouns
- Any/All
I'd be interested in helping with worldbuilding, playtesting, and number-crunching, if/when you get to the point of being comfortable with including other people in the process? This game sounds interesting me and also I think you are cool and would feel validated by being able to offer any kind of tangible help. Also having outside people could help create a feeling of commitment, if that would be helpful for maintaining stamina?
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
I wish I could get back into things, but 9-5 really doesn't agree with me and I've been quite burnt out as the responsible homemaking partner as well. It's the best I can do to listen to music in the car and conceptualize my own ideas to the right tracks, and read passively most of the time. My creative energy is all spent at work…
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Honestly, if we're talking about a Fallout vibe Post-Apocalypse story? Sorry to touch on the horror zone, but I can absolutely see that part of the minion mechanic being that the core of your base is a cloning facility. And wouldn't you know it, whoever loaded up the genebanks heavily biased it towards attractive females. Yes, yes, we're touching on all those 'harem power fantasy' stories hence why I mentioned touching on the 'horror zone' but...
Can any of you really say that the Vaultech 'Scientists' and 'Engineers' didn't create one of their Vaults following a set up like this? Likely with random genetic mutations added in to test how useful 'adapted humans' would be in the post-apocalypse. With some of those random mutations actually random by the time the 'Vault' is unsealed due to entropy taking it's toll on the cloning systems, rather than just whichever wacky notion had grabbed the programmers that day.
"Let's see what happens if we give them four arms! Oh, how about we make two of those arms praying mantis ones so they've got natural weapons? And as we're adding in insect genes, how about we mix in some cricket DNA so they've got super-leaping capability to get in close with the enemies..."
Gives you a good explanation for why you could have multiple branches of 'mooks' as well. Early game trash tier is literally the garbage results of the cloning systems messing up when you try to produce workers to repair the base's systems. So you have absolutely no concern about them all dying killing off intruders who come here hunting down the 'Broodmother' for the local monster plague (that have well established breeding populations surrounding you who don't recognise you are their creator by this point) as you are going to churn out a few dozen just to get one clone who isn't more likely to further break systems when told to repair them...
Most clones could still be 'base humans' as well when the mutation factors don't kick in so it's not forcing you down that tech path. Tt also offers interesting possibilities for DLC in the future because you can add in more types of clones as 'Genebanks' get recovered. Hell, maybe a full on expansion where your workers manage to open up the cybernetics facility attached to your complex rather than accidentally causing the unstable rock to collapse and crush it all as you open up the wrecked regions of the base...
'Looks up'
Oh goddamnit, did I just write up an entirely new idea which is going to be stuck drifting around in the noggin' trying to actually become something material?
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DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I'll be honest, even if you do drop a project, I am always down for what you come up with. You built up a lot of credit with me from your other projects, so I trust that even if something does not finish, what's there will be pretty damn good. I have sv set up to send me an alert when you make a new thread and I have never once regretted that
Session 5
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Session 5
Thermoregulation: pain
Medic: You are well named today friend. We got far too hot today, although fortunately we stayed hydrated.
Hormones: Too… tired… to be… horny…
M: Well, even if we only write a few lines here and then come back to it a day later, it still remains a valuable exercise.
Diligence: Alright, chores are done for the day, including the laundry, and we only got… Improv, what's a good word for something between mild and significant?
Improv: Moderately?
D: And we only got moderately distracted. If only that distraction had been a bit more productive.
Hyperfocus: Writing is haaaaaaaaaard guys. Why can't our ideas just jump out and be implemented into a computer game that we can then sink hundreds of hours into?
Cosmos: The fact that 'being told what to do' induces resistance, including when you are telling yourself, never ceases to be an irritating aspect of ADHD.
HF: Ugh… this is boring! Can't we stop this weird journaling exercise and… I dunno. Gonna default to Thermoregulation here.
TR: Sleep.
HF: Sleep sounds good.
D: The sun hasn't even set, and we're past the part of the year where that doesn't mean anything!
C: Hey, Hyperfocus, game mechanics?
HF: Wha-?! Shiny!
C: There will be three health bars for most character types: health, fatigue, and sanity. Health is based on the physical characteristics of a character, fatigue on the mental characteristics, and sanity the social characteristics.
HF: Ooh ooh! Keep going!
Scuttling Charge: Hey, why is fatigue based on the mental stats.
C: It's so that each stat type is represented adequately. In this current envisioning, fatigue represents the ability to push through mental barriers, and thus when it is depleted then additional health and sanity damage can result from actually pushing your body too hard or having your mental boundaries solid against frightening or disturbing events.
Black Bloc: While I appreciate that 'sanity' is basically an industry term of art for RPG type mechanics, I am intrigued by the fact that you are tying it to social stats rather than mental ones.
C: The idea is that a lot of mental illnesses are rooted in social contexts - including social isolation - so the health bar should also be rooted in social characteristics. It's not perfect, but none of these things ever are.
M: Stepping back for a moment, it is intriguing how this externalized dialogue does help tremendously with executive functioning, within a certain narrow scope in any case. We are essentially hijacking our own ADHD's tendency to get stuck on enjoyable things and directing it towards creating an external executive function, only internally.
I: It's like somehow using your own broken bones as a splint for other broken bones.
SC: Ewww… that is both gross and makes no sense.
I: Metaphor and simile don't necessarily need to make sense if they can convey an idea or mood.
D: I don't think that's really what Medic meant.
C: In any case, by tumbling mechanics over and over while doing chores, I feel like we are building towards something.
SC: This is all going to come crashing down, just like it always does.
I: I think we've got a decent bridge developing. We've got something brewing along the lines of a novelty build Let's Play, only for a game that doesn't exist.
SC: We've tried that before, I think we let it die on the second update.
Social Anxiety: People are going to remember that and not like it!
Nostalgia: Hey, going back to old ideas does work sometimes. Remember all the fun we had with Paths of Civilization II last year?
SC: I remember it dying at the end of the first part.
D: Do you remember why we found we couldn't continue?
SC: …
I: It was because our dad was dying at that time, and that sucked all the will to continue out of us. Especially since I cooked up the idea of the new environment the player culture had migrated to being given a grand showcase by a young man taking his old father up a mountain one last time to see the spectacular sights. That turned out to be too hard to write.
SC: Maybe… maybe we shouldn't have… yeah, no, going to scuttle my own idea there.
M: And then, when the schedule slipped and we didn't want to announce why it had slipped so dramatically, well then Social Anxiety kicked in double hard.
D: Hey guys, we should make a design… actually, while I do think we should make a design document for our current ideas, I can already see Hyperfocus throwing a tantrum over it.
HF: No planning! Only write!
D: Okay, then let's…
HF: No writing! Only think.
D: That's a form of planning…
HF: I want to turn meaningless numbers and relationships over and over in our head, going over the same scene a dozen times to get it perfect, only to forget about when it comes time to actually write it down.
Min Maxer: I must create an intricate, interlocking set of strategies for something that does not exist so as to be able to manifest a delightfully broken build, while also obtaining great pleasure from basking in the implied narrative of the person who would be created by such a combination of mechanical effects.
N: Hey, remember the D&D 3.5E Warlock/Binder/Hellfire Channeller build we dreamed up like a decade ago?
MM: The Nanoha build? Good times. Goooooood times. Also, I hear that Baldur's Gate 3 is out now.
D: Still addicted to video games, still got to say no there.
TR and HF: We will release all the dopamine if you…
D and SC: No.
HF: Ugh… no fun.
D: We are going to start bringing our various bits and bobs forward to the people who have reached out to us though. Having someone external to sort through our ideas and provide feedback will help.
Thermoregulation: pain
Medic: You are well named today friend. We got far too hot today, although fortunately we stayed hydrated.
Hormones: Too… tired… to be… horny…
M: Well, even if we only write a few lines here and then come back to it a day later, it still remains a valuable exercise.
Diligence: Alright, chores are done for the day, including the laundry, and we only got… Improv, what's a good word for something between mild and significant?
Improv: Moderately?
D: And we only got moderately distracted. If only that distraction had been a bit more productive.
Hyperfocus: Writing is haaaaaaaaaard guys. Why can't our ideas just jump out and be implemented into a computer game that we can then sink hundreds of hours into?
Cosmos: The fact that 'being told what to do' induces resistance, including when you are telling yourself, never ceases to be an irritating aspect of ADHD.
HF: Ugh… this is boring! Can't we stop this weird journaling exercise and… I dunno. Gonna default to Thermoregulation here.
TR: Sleep.
HF: Sleep sounds good.
D: The sun hasn't even set, and we're past the part of the year where that doesn't mean anything!
C: Hey, Hyperfocus, game mechanics?
HF: Wha-?! Shiny!
C: There will be three health bars for most character types: health, fatigue, and sanity. Health is based on the physical characteristics of a character, fatigue on the mental characteristics, and sanity the social characteristics.
HF: Ooh ooh! Keep going!
Scuttling Charge: Hey, why is fatigue based on the mental stats.
C: It's so that each stat type is represented adequately. In this current envisioning, fatigue represents the ability to push through mental barriers, and thus when it is depleted then additional health and sanity damage can result from actually pushing your body too hard or having your mental boundaries solid against frightening or disturbing events.
Black Bloc: While I appreciate that 'sanity' is basically an industry term of art for RPG type mechanics, I am intrigued by the fact that you are tying it to social stats rather than mental ones.
C: The idea is that a lot of mental illnesses are rooted in social contexts - including social isolation - so the health bar should also be rooted in social characteristics. It's not perfect, but none of these things ever are.
M: Stepping back for a moment, it is intriguing how this externalized dialogue does help tremendously with executive functioning, within a certain narrow scope in any case. We are essentially hijacking our own ADHD's tendency to get stuck on enjoyable things and directing it towards creating an external executive function, only internally.
I: It's like somehow using your own broken bones as a splint for other broken bones.
SC: Ewww… that is both gross and makes no sense.
I: Metaphor and simile don't necessarily need to make sense if they can convey an idea or mood.
D: I don't think that's really what Medic meant.
C: In any case, by tumbling mechanics over and over while doing chores, I feel like we are building towards something.
SC: This is all going to come crashing down, just like it always does.
I: I think we've got a decent bridge developing. We've got something brewing along the lines of a novelty build Let's Play, only for a game that doesn't exist.
SC: We've tried that before, I think we let it die on the second update.
Social Anxiety: People are going to remember that and not like it!
Nostalgia: Hey, going back to old ideas does work sometimes. Remember all the fun we had with Paths of Civilization II last year?
SC: I remember it dying at the end of the first part.
D: Do you remember why we found we couldn't continue?
SC: …
I: It was because our dad was dying at that time, and that sucked all the will to continue out of us. Especially since I cooked up the idea of the new environment the player culture had migrated to being given a grand showcase by a young man taking his old father up a mountain one last time to see the spectacular sights. That turned out to be too hard to write.
SC: Maybe… maybe we shouldn't have… yeah, no, going to scuttle my own idea there.
M: And then, when the schedule slipped and we didn't want to announce why it had slipped so dramatically, well then Social Anxiety kicked in double hard.
D: Hey guys, we should make a design… actually, while I do think we should make a design document for our current ideas, I can already see Hyperfocus throwing a tantrum over it.
HF: No planning! Only write!
D: Okay, then let's…
HF: No writing! Only think.
D: That's a form of planning…
HF: I want to turn meaningless numbers and relationships over and over in our head, going over the same scene a dozen times to get it perfect, only to forget about when it comes time to actually write it down.
Min Maxer: I must create an intricate, interlocking set of strategies for something that does not exist so as to be able to manifest a delightfully broken build, while also obtaining great pleasure from basking in the implied narrative of the person who would be created by such a combination of mechanical effects.
N: Hey, remember the D&D 3.5E Warlock/Binder/Hellfire Channeller build we dreamed up like a decade ago?
MM: The Nanoha build? Good times. Goooooood times. Also, I hear that Baldur's Gate 3 is out now.
D: Still addicted to video games, still got to say no there.
TR and HF: We will release all the dopamine if you…
D and SC: No.
HF: Ugh… no fun.
D: We are going to start bringing our various bits and bobs forward to the people who have reached out to us though. Having someone external to sort through our ideas and provide feedback will help.
Aabcehmu
Confusion as a Natural State of Being
- Location
- Aurora, CO
- Pronouns
- Any/All
I liked the 'Let's Play Paths of Civilization' idea and I'm glad that it existed, even if it was short-lived. I also liked PoC II (and PoI).
For what it's worth, I like sanity being a social health bar, though I think that probably the mental health bar could probably be called something else? The only thing I've come up with at the moment is 'Focus', which might have the wrong connotation.
For what it's worth, I like sanity being a social health bar, though I think that probably the mental health bar could probably be called something else? The only thing I've come up with at the moment is 'Focus', which might have the wrong connotation.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Cosmos: Oh, we love this sort of thing. It couldn't hurt to-
Diligence: No! We're literally at work now!
Cosmos: It's always something with you. If we're anywhere but home it's always destinations and objectives-
Min-maxer: Minimize time outside, maximize games!
D: So glad that line of thought works on him…
C: And as soon as we get home you let the other one take over long enough to cook and clean-
Care Taker: It feels good to be needed! She works so hard, it's the least we can do.
C: Before promptly checking out for the evening, every evening, to let Min-maxer distract us from our thoughts until she gets our attention for some activity or it's bedtime!
D: Look, I know it's not ideal, but in a year or two when she's got her doctorate we'll move, get an at-home thing-
Entrepreneur: -and leverage the extra time figuring Unity out the rest of the way so we can hopefully make a few cult hits and coast on trickle income in middle age!
D: Why, of all mindsets, did I make a deal with him?
Social Mask: Uh, pretty sure this wasn't supposed to be a 20 minute bathroom break, guys.
D: Shit.
Social Mask: Good an excuse as any.
Diligence: No! We're literally at work now!
Cosmos: It's always something with you. If we're anywhere but home it's always destinations and objectives-
Min-maxer: Minimize time outside, maximize games!
D: So glad that line of thought works on him…
C: And as soon as we get home you let the other one take over long enough to cook and clean-
Care Taker: It feels good to be needed! She works so hard, it's the least we can do.
C: Before promptly checking out for the evening, every evening, to let Min-maxer distract us from our thoughts until she gets our attention for some activity or it's bedtime!
D: Look, I know it's not ideal, but in a year or two when she's got her doctorate we'll move, get an at-home thing-
Entrepreneur: -and leverage the extra time figuring Unity out the rest of the way so we can hopefully make a few cult hits and coast on trickle income in middle age!
D: Why, of all mindsets, did I make a deal with him?
Social Mask: Uh, pretty sure this wasn't supposed to be a 20 minute bathroom break, guys.
D: Shit.
Social Mask: Good an excuse as any.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Diligence: Actually Hyperfocus, Cosmos, and Min Maxer are at it at work or otherwise out of the house and aren't immediately occupied by another task.
fictionfan
Please sir, may I have some Meows?
- Location
- Tempe, AZ
Which you can invest proportions of in order to multi-task. And of course if you ever go over your attention bar for any reason you botch every task you are doing. And if you don't keep a good amount of attention free it's easy to go over when you are interrupted somehow.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
During char gen, a lot of people think that the "Hyperfocus" trait is just free points, but as it turns out needing enough attention to turn off your focus is a very big problem when your attention supply is strapped from the other penalties the trait gives.
Powerofmind
In Madness Fallen
- Location
- United States
Hahaha, it'd be nice. My work has been pure pain the last few months, and none of the jackasses are willing to commit any effort to help, regardless of how much their help would push me past the boring part. Been struggling just to avoid goofing off all day because I have zero oversight and a semi-open-ended research effort to pursue in a field I only have a very vague understanding of. I have, no less than a few times a month, written completely unrelated code to my project to avoid rewriting this neural network again. I have records stretching back at least eight hundred iteratively different versions. Those three gave up somewhere around the hundredth time I slapped a few hundred nodes on some layer or other.
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
"I focus on shooting everyone waving a gun in my direction."
"Great job, you successfully kill all the hostiles, helped by a band of Reapers busting in the door behind them that... rolls... you are too focused shooting to notice weren't the folks shooting you before."
"Well, I'm trying to make friends with the Reapers so I use the fact that the shooting has calmed down to stop shooting."
"That will be -5 Attention and, looking at your stats, three successes on (Attention Stat Here) which means roll 8D10s, counting 8s and above."
"I uh... I don't have five spare attention. But I did get 4 successes!"
"Oh. Uh, well actually because of the penalties going under your Attention limit gave, you only got one success. So you now need to roll, looking at your shooting stats... 12d10s and you want less than 4 successes, counting 8 and above. You are also rolling with all the bonuses that you applied last time that aren't one time per activation. Which I think..."
"Motherfucker, that I means I get four free successes at a minimum, roll half again as many dice, reroll every one and I get a success on six or above."
"Well fuck. That would have been bad without those benefits because that was two 10s to start with and then you've got what, three dice that are below six?"
"Two actually and it's five 10s because I managed to get 10s from rerolling the three 1s."
"... Good news! You may in fact be able to still make friends with the Reapers. You just need to score high on your 'hide the evidence' rolls to disguise just who wiped out the entire Reaper combat squad."
"You mean the rolls that rely on the intrigue skills and attributes I used as stat dumps?"
"Yeah. Those ones. You uh... You might be screwed buddy."
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