Inspired by zamin's manga editor quest "don't miss your deadline", this is my first quest that I have been planning for quite a while. In this quest you will take role of a young and ambitious artist who decided to use his natural talents to become a professional mangaka. Manage your time, your wealth and your skill to survive a difficult life of a modern world artist and watch as your hard work brings you profit and fame... or stress and rising bills as you can't seem to succeed. Failure or fame? Only time will tell what awaits you.
Maybe anime really was a mistake? (Mangaka Quest)
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Character creation part 1: Choosing the year.
- Location
- Poland
"Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality."
~John Dewey
Well, it's really happening.
Like… seriously it is… it's a bizarre feeling. It's one thing to think about who you wish to be when you grow up, it's another to actually decide what your career is… but those two, even if they claim the same thing, are completely alien to the feeling of you actually doing.
You wanted to be a mangaka, you decided to become a mangaka and now… you are actually becoming a mangaka… at least you are attempting to.
It's weird to think "am i really here?" and "am I really doing it?". Part of you honestly feels as if it would be better if you were still in the theoretical part rather than the practical part. Back to the days where you just imagined what the future would be like.
But the future is now.
You look at the desk calendar.
It's 21st of March and the world is slowly shifting from a winter to another spring as the natural world returns to life. Cherries will soon start blooming, causing tourism to boom in almost every corner of the country as the people overseas come in hordes to admire the fleeting beauty of the most iconic tree within this nation.
That being said you don't expect to personally see tons of tourists or cherry blossoms this year… or any other year really.
Tottori prefecture, the one you come from, is not really what comes to mind when the rest of the world imagines Japan. You don't have beautiful ancient Shinto temples left and right standing in the middle of forests of cherry blossoms, and you don't have impossibly tall jungles of concrete and neon which make nights much more bright and more importantly much more active than days.
No, you live in a tiny village in the middle of the mountains. A small rural settlement called Wakasa. Just a couple thousand people living here, a singular Shinto shrine and an economy based mostly around lumber and farming, with your specialization being daikon radishes. Wakasa embodies Japan's, supposedly, most valued virtue: it's as humble as you can get.
Peace, quiet, honest labor in the fields or in the forest and single floor houses as far as your eyes can see, Wakasa is not a place one would imagine a professional mangaka to be in and that is partially correct.
…Mostly correct.
…Actually it's 100% correct…
Because you are far from being a professional mangaka. In fact you are far from being any mangaka. You are just a beginner, a rookie, a dreamer.
Living in a small village in the middle of mountains, you decided to become an artist, to give the world a part of yourself and hopefully immortalize yourself with your work. Or at the very least, create something that people, however few of them, will enjoy, maybe for years, maybe for decades or maybe just for weeks.
Speaking of decades, you look at your desk calendar once more, one last look at the present to cement into your mind the fact that today is a big day.
And today is the 21st of March…
[ ] 1980: Age of Legends and Myths.
Anime and manga industry is starting to become much more mainstream in Japan but the industry is still early in development. Lupin III was critically acclaimed and finished a decade ago but you feel like this is not the last you hear of that franchise. Gundam got animated last year and holy heck did it blow up. All things considered it would appear that from now on the manga and anime industry is only gonna get bigger and bigger.
>Omnis Novi: Because the industry is so young there aren't that many tropes or themes that are considered redundant. If anything many tropes that would be later considered done to death are yet to be invented. That is both a good and a bad thing depending how you look at it. Being original is definitely great when it comes to any form of entertainment industry but being a pioneer also means you won't be able to study that much if at all when it comes to understanding different genres or themes. Then again, being a pioneer of a genre can also mean you will have an extreme impact on the industry of the manga as a whole… assuming your work will be well received.
>Bubble economy: It's the 80s man! Times of hedonism and times of wealth beyond measure! WOOO! PARTY! The wealth and prosperity of Japan will never end and we will be an economic superpower till the end of times! Don't worry about the future and just go and become a billionaire! Japan is now a country of opportunities and dreams, this means any source of cash is more profitable and all of the products are easy to afford. This includes both the cash you get from a publisher and cash from part time jobs you may need to take.
>Pre-digitalization era: Internet doesn't even exist yet. For three more years the idea of a massive network connecting everyone on the planet and revolutionizing any kind of industry sounds like a fever dream or a sci-fi novel idea. Piracy doesn't exist yet and thus you don't need to worry about it for at least a couple of years. At the same time however this means the potential popularity of your work is gonna be massively lowered as your only way to get popular is directly tied to the publisher with fans having little impact on the grand scheme of things. This also means that unless your publisher has a deal overseas (which is very unlikely), you are not gonna get popular outside of Japan.
[ ] 1990: The classic Age.
Anime and manga industry has been around long enough for people to actually see it as a legitimate industry. The success of anime adaptations is undeniable in the homeland and it slowly becomes more and more mainstream in the west too, with westerners, especially Americans, becoming more and more interested in this unique form of entertainment. More titles are appearing and some titles from the last decade are going strong and are already seen as true works of art.
>Early trends: While not as early as last decade, there is still a fair bit of room for novelty in the industry. Some more classic tropes are established and followed going against them can be a coinflip. People may want something new but at the same time it's a bit too early to call any of the tropes cliché or done to death. This means that while new ideas are a gamble, following trends means you can get a nice boost of popularity from people with a niche. Also now you have a decent amount of work from the past to use as a study material.
>The lost decade: A dreaded time in Japan's economic history. Nobody was prepared for the bubble of prosperity to burst. The 90s in Japan were the complete opposite of what was happening just a decade ago. Poverty, prices of products skyrocketing, unemployment going through the roof… you have less than 2 years of prosperity to enjoy before the big bubble bursts and the world goes to shit. If you can't secure a decent side job or a publishing deal by then, it will only get harder and harder. If you do end up securing some safe future before that…well expect the sudden shift in the economy to make it easy to lose that sweet sweet safety. Not to mention getting payment cut down is not a possibility, it's a certainty. Consider knowing that shit is about to go down to be a single perk to make the crash less unfair.
>The Internet is just a trend: The internet has been around for a few years now and many people are still skeptical about it, considering it being less impactful on the world than a fax. Companies are skeptical about using it and dismissive about potential danger of piracy. That being said, the internet, if utilized, can give you a nice boost to popularity… if at the cost of potentially losing a lot of yen because there is little to combat piracy right now.
[ ] 2000: Age of renaissance.
The anime and manga industry is now much more than just a local trend and it's now an international branch of the entertainment industry. Asia, Europe, and the Americas are all interested in the piece of Japanese culture that is manga and anime. While in some corners of the world it's still considered a foreign novelty in other places it's something that is just as popular as local entertainment, though mostly when it comes to shows aimed for kids and teens.
>It's getting stale: It's becoming a bit hard to come up with original groundbreaking ideas as there have been a lot of different titles published over the last two decades. Most genres have at least several titles to represent them and same goes for target demographics. From sport, to horror, to comedy, there has been a fair bit of representation everywhere. Now it's also easy to mistake a bellowed trope with an oversaturated one. Following the lead of others in the past can either bring you a lot of potential fans of the niche while also potentially reducing your popularity as even more potential fans will dismiss your work as another generic [insert name of the genre here] that doesn't really have anything new to offer. Crowd is getting harder to please.
>New dawn is coming: Ok so the age of economic low has been going on for… 8 years now. Some say that it will never get better, others say that it's gonna get better any day now. There has been many fake dawns in the past and that made a lot of people lose hope in the economy. Truth to be told it's gonna be like that for two more years. This will be a very rough time to start your adventure in the world of entertainment but if you can endure these two years, things will get better. A far cry to the prosperity of the 80s but the new dawn will make the madness and despair of the lost decade fade away.
>The Internet is quite neat: The Internet has been around for a while and the potential of it is undeniable, even if people can only use a fraction of its power. Official websites for publishing companies are more common and fan forums dedicated to sharing their favorite sources of entertainment are slowly becoming more and more popular. The Internet will be a very decent boost to your popularity and while pirates are getting more and more clever, people at least now know they should combat this new form of theft. Anti piracy measures are employed by publishing companies and laws against piracy, while not yet refined, are made in order to protect… big names in the business that don't like losing money and reputation. But don't worry, with enough luck a small starving artist can potentially benefit from these rules as well.
[ ] 2010 The golden age.
The Anime and Manga industry is strong and powerful in nearly the entire world. The famous "big three" are the strongest titles in the industry and have achieved levels of fame and popularity that inspire all people, especially those that wish to become mangakas themselves. There are so many great titles known all around the world it would take days to list all of them that appeared over the course of the last three decades. It seems that fame is just around the corner if you work hard enough.
>My favorite flavor, familiar but with a few sprinkles of originality: Nearly every concept at this point has been done and done to death at this point, but it seems the audience accepted that not everything needs to reinvent the wheel to be fun, you just need to put some fun spin into it. It's hard to please the audience that wants something that is both familiar so they can hope it will be at least as good as other stuff they enjoy but also different enough to be something worth checking out. Not easy, but not impossible either.
>A stable world: 80s were crazy, 90s and 2000s were depressing, but now we have some form of stability when it comes to the economy. Not everyone is a millionaire but not everyone is a hobo either. Perhaps the gray middle ground is what you need to be happy and not overly stressed.
>Digitalization going strong: Some say the internet is now a very valid source of exposure and income and some other madmen claim that it's about to become the major source of exposure and income soon. While the potential and the freedom of the internet is still yet to be fully grasped, many publishers have made official websites by now, which allow them to become even more popular. Uh-oh… maybe too popular. Websites hosting anime episodes and manga chapters are common, even if they tend to be flooded with viruses and be as slow as a turtle with leprosy, but to many viewers this is one of the only ways to actually enjoy the media, given how many countries simply don't have official release within their borders, not to mention they lack official translations too. Piracy is a commonplace and frankly it's impossible to hammer down every little leak related to any series with any popularity, but something very threatening to your career can still be combated with the right publisher. Some say you should pay close attention to your online presence, even in different countries, but most say you shouldn't worry too much about it.
[ ] 2020 The modern age.
Anime and manga are a well established branch of the entertainment industry all around the world. No longer seen as just a product intended for teens and young adults, many people admit the medium invented by your country can be seen as mature and versatile, not to mention profitable. Being a mangaka is just the same as being a novel writer or a movie producer when it comes to prestige and the entire world is ready and eager to partake in a meal you will cook. That being said, the competition is quite high too.
>Nihil novi: It would appear everything has been done, and the audience knows this. Interestingly enough there are certain groups of people that tend to stick to the same trend and consume it over and over despite every other manga from the genre being nearly identical. This means that there is a potential to utilize it, with some over overdone genres and concepts being so popular that you will get some consumers regardless of originality. Putting your own spin is a great way of making yourself stand out of others, but to be honest many people already put so much new spin on the old tropes it feels like those new spins are clichés on their own.
>Age of sickness: Covid 19. The biggest plague that the modern age has seen makes the world panic and the economy stand still. Last year Covid was a concern but right now the global quarantine is in full swing. People are working on the vaccine and the virus itself is not apocalyptic levels of deadly, with it being dangerous for a small percentage of people and the vulnerable folks. That being said, hardly anyone wants to test their luck and see if they just happen to be in the minority that will get really messed up by the virus. Living in a small isolated village has its benefits as managing the population is much easier, but quarantine also means that the majority of jobs here are put on hold as physical employers try to figure out some safety regulations and get the right equipment to avoid spreading the plague. You can't really get side jobs that involve physical labor or working in large groups of people, instead you should look for something you can do from your office, just like working on your manga.
>Digital age: The Internet is now, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest source of information and entertainment. It surpassed the press, it surpassed the television, it surpassed the cinema. Because of that nearly every publisher has their own websites to promote their work and to host online chapters of their works. There is also a plethora of services used to host animes and bigger mangas. Everyone also has social media to share their thoughts and also promote themselves and some publishers actually control and moderate things their artists put on the internet, while others give them a bit more freedom, for better or worse.
~John Dewey
Well, it's really happening.
Like… seriously it is… it's a bizarre feeling. It's one thing to think about who you wish to be when you grow up, it's another to actually decide what your career is… but those two, even if they claim the same thing, are completely alien to the feeling of you actually doing.
You wanted to be a mangaka, you decided to become a mangaka and now… you are actually becoming a mangaka… at least you are attempting to.
It's weird to think "am i really here?" and "am I really doing it?". Part of you honestly feels as if it would be better if you were still in the theoretical part rather than the practical part. Back to the days where you just imagined what the future would be like.
But the future is now.
You look at the desk calendar.
It's 21st of March and the world is slowly shifting from a winter to another spring as the natural world returns to life. Cherries will soon start blooming, causing tourism to boom in almost every corner of the country as the people overseas come in hordes to admire the fleeting beauty of the most iconic tree within this nation.
That being said you don't expect to personally see tons of tourists or cherry blossoms this year… or any other year really.
Tottori prefecture, the one you come from, is not really what comes to mind when the rest of the world imagines Japan. You don't have beautiful ancient Shinto temples left and right standing in the middle of forests of cherry blossoms, and you don't have impossibly tall jungles of concrete and neon which make nights much more bright and more importantly much more active than days.
No, you live in a tiny village in the middle of the mountains. A small rural settlement called Wakasa. Just a couple thousand people living here, a singular Shinto shrine and an economy based mostly around lumber and farming, with your specialization being daikon radishes. Wakasa embodies Japan's, supposedly, most valued virtue: it's as humble as you can get.
Peace, quiet, honest labor in the fields or in the forest and single floor houses as far as your eyes can see, Wakasa is not a place one would imagine a professional mangaka to be in and that is partially correct.
…Mostly correct.
…Actually it's 100% correct…
Because you are far from being a professional mangaka. In fact you are far from being any mangaka. You are just a beginner, a rookie, a dreamer.
Living in a small village in the middle of mountains, you decided to become an artist, to give the world a part of yourself and hopefully immortalize yourself with your work. Or at the very least, create something that people, however few of them, will enjoy, maybe for years, maybe for decades or maybe just for weeks.
Speaking of decades, you look at your desk calendar once more, one last look at the present to cement into your mind the fact that today is a big day.
And today is the 21st of March…
[ ] 1980: Age of Legends and Myths.
Anime and manga industry is starting to become much more mainstream in Japan but the industry is still early in development. Lupin III was critically acclaimed and finished a decade ago but you feel like this is not the last you hear of that franchise. Gundam got animated last year and holy heck did it blow up. All things considered it would appear that from now on the manga and anime industry is only gonna get bigger and bigger.
>Omnis Novi: Because the industry is so young there aren't that many tropes or themes that are considered redundant. If anything many tropes that would be later considered done to death are yet to be invented. That is both a good and a bad thing depending how you look at it. Being original is definitely great when it comes to any form of entertainment industry but being a pioneer also means you won't be able to study that much if at all when it comes to understanding different genres or themes. Then again, being a pioneer of a genre can also mean you will have an extreme impact on the industry of the manga as a whole… assuming your work will be well received.
>Bubble economy: It's the 80s man! Times of hedonism and times of wealth beyond measure! WOOO! PARTY! The wealth and prosperity of Japan will never end and we will be an economic superpower till the end of times! Don't worry about the future and just go and become a billionaire! Japan is now a country of opportunities and dreams, this means any source of cash is more profitable and all of the products are easy to afford. This includes both the cash you get from a publisher and cash from part time jobs you may need to take.
>Pre-digitalization era: Internet doesn't even exist yet. For three more years the idea of a massive network connecting everyone on the planet and revolutionizing any kind of industry sounds like a fever dream or a sci-fi novel idea. Piracy doesn't exist yet and thus you don't need to worry about it for at least a couple of years. At the same time however this means the potential popularity of your work is gonna be massively lowered as your only way to get popular is directly tied to the publisher with fans having little impact on the grand scheme of things. This also means that unless your publisher has a deal overseas (which is very unlikely), you are not gonna get popular outside of Japan.
[ ] 1990: The classic Age.
Anime and manga industry has been around long enough for people to actually see it as a legitimate industry. The success of anime adaptations is undeniable in the homeland and it slowly becomes more and more mainstream in the west too, with westerners, especially Americans, becoming more and more interested in this unique form of entertainment. More titles are appearing and some titles from the last decade are going strong and are already seen as true works of art.
>Early trends: While not as early as last decade, there is still a fair bit of room for novelty in the industry. Some more classic tropes are established and followed going against them can be a coinflip. People may want something new but at the same time it's a bit too early to call any of the tropes cliché or done to death. This means that while new ideas are a gamble, following trends means you can get a nice boost of popularity from people with a niche. Also now you have a decent amount of work from the past to use as a study material.
>The lost decade: A dreaded time in Japan's economic history. Nobody was prepared for the bubble of prosperity to burst. The 90s in Japan were the complete opposite of what was happening just a decade ago. Poverty, prices of products skyrocketing, unemployment going through the roof… you have less than 2 years of prosperity to enjoy before the big bubble bursts and the world goes to shit. If you can't secure a decent side job or a publishing deal by then, it will only get harder and harder. If you do end up securing some safe future before that…well expect the sudden shift in the economy to make it easy to lose that sweet sweet safety. Not to mention getting payment cut down is not a possibility, it's a certainty. Consider knowing that shit is about to go down to be a single perk to make the crash less unfair.
>The Internet is just a trend: The internet has been around for a few years now and many people are still skeptical about it, considering it being less impactful on the world than a fax. Companies are skeptical about using it and dismissive about potential danger of piracy. That being said, the internet, if utilized, can give you a nice boost to popularity… if at the cost of potentially losing a lot of yen because there is little to combat piracy right now.
[ ] 2000: Age of renaissance.
The anime and manga industry is now much more than just a local trend and it's now an international branch of the entertainment industry. Asia, Europe, and the Americas are all interested in the piece of Japanese culture that is manga and anime. While in some corners of the world it's still considered a foreign novelty in other places it's something that is just as popular as local entertainment, though mostly when it comes to shows aimed for kids and teens.
>It's getting stale: It's becoming a bit hard to come up with original groundbreaking ideas as there have been a lot of different titles published over the last two decades. Most genres have at least several titles to represent them and same goes for target demographics. From sport, to horror, to comedy, there has been a fair bit of representation everywhere. Now it's also easy to mistake a bellowed trope with an oversaturated one. Following the lead of others in the past can either bring you a lot of potential fans of the niche while also potentially reducing your popularity as even more potential fans will dismiss your work as another generic [insert name of the genre here] that doesn't really have anything new to offer. Crowd is getting harder to please.
>New dawn is coming: Ok so the age of economic low has been going on for… 8 years now. Some say that it will never get better, others say that it's gonna get better any day now. There has been many fake dawns in the past and that made a lot of people lose hope in the economy. Truth to be told it's gonna be like that for two more years. This will be a very rough time to start your adventure in the world of entertainment but if you can endure these two years, things will get better. A far cry to the prosperity of the 80s but the new dawn will make the madness and despair of the lost decade fade away.
>The Internet is quite neat: The Internet has been around for a while and the potential of it is undeniable, even if people can only use a fraction of its power. Official websites for publishing companies are more common and fan forums dedicated to sharing their favorite sources of entertainment are slowly becoming more and more popular. The Internet will be a very decent boost to your popularity and while pirates are getting more and more clever, people at least now know they should combat this new form of theft. Anti piracy measures are employed by publishing companies and laws against piracy, while not yet refined, are made in order to protect… big names in the business that don't like losing money and reputation. But don't worry, with enough luck a small starving artist can potentially benefit from these rules as well.
[ ] 2010 The golden age.
The Anime and Manga industry is strong and powerful in nearly the entire world. The famous "big three" are the strongest titles in the industry and have achieved levels of fame and popularity that inspire all people, especially those that wish to become mangakas themselves. There are so many great titles known all around the world it would take days to list all of them that appeared over the course of the last three decades. It seems that fame is just around the corner if you work hard enough.
>My favorite flavor, familiar but with a few sprinkles of originality: Nearly every concept at this point has been done and done to death at this point, but it seems the audience accepted that not everything needs to reinvent the wheel to be fun, you just need to put some fun spin into it. It's hard to please the audience that wants something that is both familiar so they can hope it will be at least as good as other stuff they enjoy but also different enough to be something worth checking out. Not easy, but not impossible either.
>A stable world: 80s were crazy, 90s and 2000s were depressing, but now we have some form of stability when it comes to the economy. Not everyone is a millionaire but not everyone is a hobo either. Perhaps the gray middle ground is what you need to be happy and not overly stressed.
>Digitalization going strong: Some say the internet is now a very valid source of exposure and income and some other madmen claim that it's about to become the major source of exposure and income soon. While the potential and the freedom of the internet is still yet to be fully grasped, many publishers have made official websites by now, which allow them to become even more popular. Uh-oh… maybe too popular. Websites hosting anime episodes and manga chapters are common, even if they tend to be flooded with viruses and be as slow as a turtle with leprosy, but to many viewers this is one of the only ways to actually enjoy the media, given how many countries simply don't have official release within their borders, not to mention they lack official translations too. Piracy is a commonplace and frankly it's impossible to hammer down every little leak related to any series with any popularity, but something very threatening to your career can still be combated with the right publisher. Some say you should pay close attention to your online presence, even in different countries, but most say you shouldn't worry too much about it.
[ ] 2020 The modern age.
Anime and manga are a well established branch of the entertainment industry all around the world. No longer seen as just a product intended for teens and young adults, many people admit the medium invented by your country can be seen as mature and versatile, not to mention profitable. Being a mangaka is just the same as being a novel writer or a movie producer when it comes to prestige and the entire world is ready and eager to partake in a meal you will cook. That being said, the competition is quite high too.
>Nihil novi: It would appear everything has been done, and the audience knows this. Interestingly enough there are certain groups of people that tend to stick to the same trend and consume it over and over despite every other manga from the genre being nearly identical. This means that there is a potential to utilize it, with some over overdone genres and concepts being so popular that you will get some consumers regardless of originality. Putting your own spin is a great way of making yourself stand out of others, but to be honest many people already put so much new spin on the old tropes it feels like those new spins are clichés on their own.
>Age of sickness: Covid 19. The biggest plague that the modern age has seen makes the world panic and the economy stand still. Last year Covid was a concern but right now the global quarantine is in full swing. People are working on the vaccine and the virus itself is not apocalyptic levels of deadly, with it being dangerous for a small percentage of people and the vulnerable folks. That being said, hardly anyone wants to test their luck and see if they just happen to be in the minority that will get really messed up by the virus. Living in a small isolated village has its benefits as managing the population is much easier, but quarantine also means that the majority of jobs here are put on hold as physical employers try to figure out some safety regulations and get the right equipment to avoid spreading the plague. You can't really get side jobs that involve physical labor or working in large groups of people, instead you should look for something you can do from your office, just like working on your manga.
>Digital age: The Internet is now, without a shadow of a doubt, the greatest source of information and entertainment. It surpassed the press, it surpassed the television, it surpassed the cinema. Because of that nearly every publisher has their own websites to promote their work and to host online chapters of their works. There is also a plethora of services used to host animes and bigger mangas. Everyone also has social media to share their thoughts and also promote themselves and some publishers actually control and moderate things their artists put on the internet, while others give them a bit more freedom, for better or worse.
Mechanics.
- Location
- Poland
This post right here is reserved for explaining mechanics of the quest. It will be updated as the mechanics are introduced in the quest proper.
DA STATS
Your character have two sets of stats, one that is strictly tied to you creating manga, the mangaka stats and one that is tied to your character means of interacting with the world, the personal stats.
DA ACTIONS
Each turn is represented by a week of IC time. Each turn you have a total of four actions to spend on different activities, such as working on your manga, spending time with others, doing some side jobs to earn extra cash or other similar situations. Every turn you can also take as many extra actions above the 4 action limit but doing so will give you STRESS. By default each overtime increases stress by 2.
DA STATS
Your character have two sets of stats, one that is strictly tied to you creating manga, the mangaka stats and one that is tied to your character means of interacting with the world, the personal stats.
Mangaka stats
6 artistic stats are used to describe your level of expertise over different aspects of manga creation:
Character design
Background art
Dynamic art
Dialogues
Story writing
Character writing
Your stats by default start at level 1. Your stats increase over time as you work on your manga though you can also increase them faster by spending time and potentially also resources to train. Each level in a mangaka stat gives you a +10 bonus for your manga creation rolls.
6 artistic stats are used to describe your level of expertise over different aspects of manga creation:
Character design
Background art
Dynamic art
Dialogues
Story writing
Character writing
Your stats by default start at level 1. Your stats increase over time as you work on your manga though you can also increase them faster by spending time and potentially also resources to train. Each level in a mangaka stat gives you a +10 bonus for your manga creation rolls.
Personal stats are used when you interact with the world outside of your manga. The three personal stats are:
Research: Depicts how good you are at finding information. Research is tested when you try to gather information about other people as well as information about the subjects you write about. Every time you write a chapter where a plot point is a subject related to academic topics in some way, be it biology, physics, engineering, you will roll research to see how well you yourself understand the subject. Low rolls will result in you writing rather ridiculously wrong things, such as thinking the optical nerve is located in the person's neck, while high rolls may result in your masterfully and cleverly integrating the subject to the chapter, impressing the more intellectual audience. Higher research also boosts your study rate of mangas.
Resolve: Depicts a combination of your physical and mental fortitude. Resolve symbolizes your commitment, and is rolled when your faith or body is put to a test, such as when you are dealing with some toxic work environment or fans. Your maximum stress as well as the amount of actions you can take per turn is also decided by your resolve. Overall this stat is more important in its passive form than it is in its active form.
Charm: Depicts how good you are with people. Charm is used when trying to convince people who are undecided. It is also an important element of performance on the stage or during interviews. Higher charm will also cause your affinity with other people to increase faster and decrease slower.
Research: Depicts how good you are at finding information. Research is tested when you try to gather information about other people as well as information about the subjects you write about. Every time you write a chapter where a plot point is a subject related to academic topics in some way, be it biology, physics, engineering, you will roll research to see how well you yourself understand the subject. Low rolls will result in you writing rather ridiculously wrong things, such as thinking the optical nerve is located in the person's neck, while high rolls may result in your masterfully and cleverly integrating the subject to the chapter, impressing the more intellectual audience. Higher research also boosts your study rate of mangas.
Resolve: Depicts a combination of your physical and mental fortitude. Resolve symbolizes your commitment, and is rolled when your faith or body is put to a test, such as when you are dealing with some toxic work environment or fans. Your maximum stress as well as the amount of actions you can take per turn is also decided by your resolve. Overall this stat is more important in its passive form than it is in its active form.
Charm: Depicts how good you are with people. Charm is used when trying to convince people who are undecided. It is also an important element of performance on the stage or during interviews. Higher charm will also cause your affinity with other people to increase faster and decrease slower.
DA ACTIONS
Each turn is represented by a week of IC time. Each turn you have a total of four actions to spend on different activities, such as working on your manga, spending time with others, doing some side jobs to earn extra cash or other similar situations. Every turn you can also take as many extra actions above the 4 action limit but doing so will give you STRESS. By default each overtime increases stress by 2.
Creation rolls: Every week you can (and should because this is a quest about making mangas) take an action called "work on the next chapter". You can spend as many actions as you want on it. When you work on the manga chapter you roll the dice and add whatever bonuses your skill level or lifestyle for the week or other modifiers may provide for each of the 6 stats. By default you roll 1d10, but with each extra action you spend on this option you roll an extra d10, so spending 3 actions means you will roll 3d10 and then add bonuses.
Stress: Stress represents how much mental exhaustion your character accumulated over time. By default your character's stress cap is 10 plus your character's resolve. When you reach your stress cap, your character's mind will become overloaded with stress. The stress will reset to 0 but your character will gain a random permanent debuff that will affect the entire quest. Your character by default can only suffer a total of 4 mental overloads throughout the entire quest. 5th overload will result in a game over.
Studying: One of the actions you can take each turn is "study" where you study a specific manga. Each action spent on studying will increase the study progress by the number equal to your research stat. Each manga has a certain amount of progress necessary to fully understand what made or didn't make it click. Successfully studying a manga will grant you permanent unique bonuses, in addition to also increasing your expertise progression with themes and genres.
Extertise: The more you study and work on different genres and themes, the better you understand them. The more you understand them, the higher your level of expertise. Each level of expertise in a genre will grant a manga written in that genre a passive +5 to all its stats. Each level of expertise in a theme grants a passive +10 to all stats in the chapter following that theme.
Extertise: The more you study and work on different genres and themes, the better you understand them. The more you understand them, the higher your level of expertise. Each level of expertise in a genre will grant a manga written in that genre a passive +5 to all its stats. Each level of expertise in a theme grants a passive +10 to all stats in the chapter following that theme.
Genre: Each manga has a genre. When you come up with a new manga idea it needs to have at least one genre that defines its story and style as a whole.
Theme: Each chapter has a theme, which describes the general tone of the chapter. Unlike genres, themes can, and should, change over the course of the story instead of being the same from start to finish. Changing too fast may be seen as manga's narrative being chaotic, while not changing at all will be seen as manga being dull and chapters not standing out at all. Each chapter needs to have at least one theme. Arcs generally share one or more themes for their duration before the next arc offers a slightly or greatly different theme.
Theme: Each chapter has a theme, which describes the general tone of the chapter. Unlike genres, themes can, and should, change over the course of the story instead of being the same from start to finish. Changing too fast may be seen as manga's narrative being chaotic, while not changing at all will be seen as manga being dull and chapters not standing out at all. Each chapter needs to have at least one theme. Arcs generally share one or more themes for their duration before the next arc offers a slightly or greatly different theme.
Personal stats are rolled differently than manga creation rolls. The personality stat bonus is not added to the roll, rather it determinates how many six sided dices you roll for the check. Because your charm is 2, you will roll two dices. The DC of personal rolls determinates the minimum value that at least one of the dices need to roll to succeed. For example, if the DC is 2+, it means you need to roll 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 on any of the dice to succeed. If the DC is 5+ you need to roll 5 or 6. As you can see, the difference between charm 1 and charm 2 is quite significant when it comes to success chance. The minimum DC of a check is 2+, the maximum is !6!
Once the theme and the genre of the chapter or manga as a whole is decided, there comes time for inspiration. During the inspiration the quest shifts from regular voting system to a raffle system. This means that ultimately the choice will be left to chance even though popularity may affect it.
Everybody interested in sharing their idea for a chapter or manga as a whole, will write down their title and synopsis of it. Others may share their own idea or vote on the already mentioned idea. Once the voting is closed, all of the ideas are thrown into a figurative hat, and we will then pull out a single option via a random roll. Duplicates of the same option are gonna be also added to this hat, increasing the likelihood of the option's victory while at the same time still giving a slim chance of victory to less popular options, thus encouraging people to share their original ideas even if other options got some more votes and there is no chance of them catching up.
Popular ideas merely have a higher chance of winning rather than being a guaranteed win.
Everybody interested in sharing their idea for a chapter or manga as a whole, will write down their title and synopsis of it. Others may share their own idea or vote on the already mentioned idea. Once the voting is closed, all of the ideas are thrown into a figurative hat, and we will then pull out a single option via a random roll. Duplicates of the same option are gonna be also added to this hat, increasing the likelihood of the option's victory while at the same time still giving a slim chance of victory to less popular options, thus encouraging people to share their original ideas even if other options got some more votes and there is no chance of them catching up.
Popular ideas merely have a higher chance of winning rather than being a guaranteed win.
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Character Sheet
- Location
- Poland
Reserved for the character sheet.
Name: Takagi Rin.
Sex: F
Age: 23, born in 1977
Personality: Crafter.
Your talent comes from experience as you started improving yourself earlier than most people. This hard work made you more resistant to stress and capable of working more diligently than most, often brute forcing your way out of tough spots with sheer resilience. However, due to you gaining your experience through the teachings of others instead of learning on your own, you are not so good at finding things out on your own, being used to advice and answers being handed to you by more experienced folks.
Charm: 2
Research: 1
Resolve: 3
Artist Popularity: 0
Some of your friends may think you are cool... but that's about it when it comes to popularity.
Mangaka stats: ???
Wait, where the hell are my notes?
Contacts: ???
Now my phone is gone too?!
Name: Takagi Rin.
Sex: F
Age: 23, born in 1977
Personality: Crafter.
Your talent comes from experience as you started improving yourself earlier than most people. This hard work made you more resistant to stress and capable of working more diligently than most, often brute forcing your way out of tough spots with sheer resilience. However, due to you gaining your experience through the teachings of others instead of learning on your own, you are not so good at finding things out on your own, being used to advice and answers being handed to you by more experienced folks.
Charm: 2
Research: 1
Resolve: 3
Adventure: Level 1
Travel: Level 1
European folklore: Level 1
European folklore: Level 1
Artist Popularity: 0
Some of your friends may think you are cool... but that's about it when it comes to popularity.
Mangaka stats: ???
Wait, where the hell are my notes?
Contacts: ???
Now my phone is gone too?!
Artistic childhood [Positive Background trait]: Gain +1 to Background Art. This trait also impacts the way other people see you.
Field researcher (character design)[Positive trait]: Overtime used to perform "Look for inspiration in the field (character design)" causes stress to increase by 1 instead of 2.
Inhuman humans [Unstable Negative trait]: Whenever you work on your manga, one of the dices you roll for character design rolls is rolled twice and the lower number is used. This negative trait can be removed if you successfully complete a manga study while focusing on the character design. This trait can be also mutated into a beneficial trait if you find a way to embrace your talent to drawing hideous or uncanny creatures.
Actions speak further [Evolving Positive trait level 1] For every 10 you get on the total for character writing, you add 1 point to both storytelling and dialogue total.
Know your crowd [Positive trait]: All personal stat tests related to understanding someone's biases have their difficulties reduced by one
Field researcher (character design)[Positive trait]: Overtime used to perform "Look for inspiration in the field (character design)" causes stress to increase by 1 instead of 2.
Inhuman humans [Unstable Negative trait]: Whenever you work on your manga, one of the dices you roll for character design rolls is rolled twice and the lower number is used. This negative trait can be removed if you successfully complete a manga study while focusing on the character design. This trait can be also mutated into a beneficial trait if you find a way to embrace your talent to drawing hideous or uncanny creatures.
Actions speak further [Evolving Positive trait level 1] For every 10 you get on the total for character writing, you add 1 point to both storytelling and dialogue total.
Know your crowd [Positive trait]: All personal stat tests related to understanding someone's biases have their difficulties reduced by one
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Character creation part 2: A promise at the end of the world.
- Location
- Poland
Winning vote:
[X] 2000: Age of renaissance.
You take a look at the calendar and once again remind yourself that today is the day your adventure as a mangaka will finally start. 21st of March 2000. Just four months ago panic and anxiety washed over the entire world, as the dreaded y2k was coming. So many people were terrified, thinking the world is gonna come to an end in just few weeks, or that it will be so crippled we will never recover from it fully. Thankfully thanks to the hard work of countless people we didn't see a digital apocalypse and many people even wonder if y2k was even a real threat. While today you are still kicking and enjoying life, at least as much as the current economic situation allows you to, back in December... you were terrified. The Japanese government approached the situation very cautiously even if that made you even more worried that the end is coming, with the prime minister urging people to not spend the new year the traditional way but rather to stockpile on surprise and act as if an earthquake was coming.
But from this dread, came something good. Realizing how fleeting the human life is an how easily all of it can end in just a snap... you realized that you can't just sit on your ass and slowly decay in your monotonous lifestyle, you have to actually chase your dreams today cause you never know when you will be denied tomorrow. It wasn't just you who had this revelation, as both of your parents and your uncle reached the same conclusion. On the day of December 31st, you all spend your time together as a family, trying to enjoy potentially the last day of the world as you knew it. You learned a lot about your family then, and they learned about you too, as you all opened up in your potentially last moments together.
You learned about how your father and his brother always wanted to open up a BBQ restaurant called "Carnivore's Paradise" since they were teens, even figuring out how they would stylize it after the exotic pubs from the USA and what their menu would include.
Your mother always wanted to learn how to code and even laughed about how soon the skill may be either incredibly useless or useful depending just how bad Y2K will be.
This is where you told them your dream is to become a mangaka, which didn't surprised them in the slightest. Overall the potentially last night of the modern world was spent much more pleasantly in your household than others as you started laughing and discussing your dreams to each other, so much so you didn't even realized how close you were to midnight before your dad looked at the clock.
Guess what, you were 2 minutes away from the apocalypse. Not wanting the last potential moments to be gloomy your uncle poured everyone a shot of sake and said words that will likely forever be stuck with your family.
"If we have a future, we better make sure to use it the best as we can."
And each of you promised each other that if the world is gonna be alright, then you will all try to chase your dreams as best as you can.
Almost four months later, you all still remembered that promise.
Your dad and uncle are in some late stages of doing paperwork to get their restaurant made. Your mom is already quite competent when it comes to computing, and you spent the three months getting your personal office done and getting the necessary equipment to start your mangaka adventure.
Of course, this dream didn't came up just four months ago, or a year ago, or five.
Your dream to become a mangaka started a decade and a half ago, when you were just a kid and whose passion awakened. Ever since then you tried to pursue making amateur manga as a hobby but after surviving the apocalypse, you finally started approaching it seriously.
Its funny, to remember the dreadful night of 31.12.1999 as one of the happier memories, though the day you awaken your passion for the manga will always be your most cherished memory.
You ponder over it, venturing back to the simpler times of 1985 when you were just 8 year old and your passion for manga truly begun. Back when you weren't an adult concerned about bills, job or politics of the world, back when you were just a little...
[ ] Boy
[ ] Girl
Young, ambitious, full of energy, you were just a kid, blissfully ignorant to the hardships and horrors of adulthood. Living a comfortable life as a kid with your mom, dad and uncle. Life was simple and it seemed it couldn't get better... but then it did.
When one day, you would discover the beauty of manga, it was when…
[ ] You signed up for extra art classes in school.
>Gain a perk: Artistic childhood (Gain +1 to a single Mangaka stat of your choice: Background art / Character Design / Dynamic Art )
>Personality archetype: Crafter (Research: 1, Resolve 3, Charm 2)
[ ] Your best friend wanted to show you and other kids something they got for their birthday.
>Gain three contacts with very high affinity and Childhood Friend trait (Extremely loyal and will always try to help, if they get into trouble and you choose to not help, or are unable to provide any help, you will gain stress)
>Personality archetype: Socialite (Research: 2, Resolve 1, Charm 3)
[ ] Your local bookstore got a new section added that you decided to check out. Needless to say, you were sucked right in by a particular title.
>Pick one genre and one theme, you have studied each enough to gain Level 1 Expertise.
>Personality archetype: Bookworm (Research 3, Resolve 2, Charm 1)
[X] 2000: Age of renaissance.
You take a look at the calendar and once again remind yourself that today is the day your adventure as a mangaka will finally start. 21st of March 2000. Just four months ago panic and anxiety washed over the entire world, as the dreaded y2k was coming. So many people were terrified, thinking the world is gonna come to an end in just few weeks, or that it will be so crippled we will never recover from it fully. Thankfully thanks to the hard work of countless people we didn't see a digital apocalypse and many people even wonder if y2k was even a real threat. While today you are still kicking and enjoying life, at least as much as the current economic situation allows you to, back in December... you were terrified. The Japanese government approached the situation very cautiously even if that made you even more worried that the end is coming, with the prime minister urging people to not spend the new year the traditional way but rather to stockpile on surprise and act as if an earthquake was coming.
But from this dread, came something good. Realizing how fleeting the human life is an how easily all of it can end in just a snap... you realized that you can't just sit on your ass and slowly decay in your monotonous lifestyle, you have to actually chase your dreams today cause you never know when you will be denied tomorrow. It wasn't just you who had this revelation, as both of your parents and your uncle reached the same conclusion. On the day of December 31st, you all spend your time together as a family, trying to enjoy potentially the last day of the world as you knew it. You learned a lot about your family then, and they learned about you too, as you all opened up in your potentially last moments together.
You learned about how your father and his brother always wanted to open up a BBQ restaurant called "Carnivore's Paradise" since they were teens, even figuring out how they would stylize it after the exotic pubs from the USA and what their menu would include.
Your mother always wanted to learn how to code and even laughed about how soon the skill may be either incredibly useless or useful depending just how bad Y2K will be.
This is where you told them your dream is to become a mangaka, which didn't surprised them in the slightest. Overall the potentially last night of the modern world was spent much more pleasantly in your household than others as you started laughing and discussing your dreams to each other, so much so you didn't even realized how close you were to midnight before your dad looked at the clock.
Guess what, you were 2 minutes away from the apocalypse. Not wanting the last potential moments to be gloomy your uncle poured everyone a shot of sake and said words that will likely forever be stuck with your family.
"If we have a future, we better make sure to use it the best as we can."
And each of you promised each other that if the world is gonna be alright, then you will all try to chase your dreams as best as you can.
Almost four months later, you all still remembered that promise.
Your dad and uncle are in some late stages of doing paperwork to get their restaurant made. Your mom is already quite competent when it comes to computing, and you spent the three months getting your personal office done and getting the necessary equipment to start your mangaka adventure.
Of course, this dream didn't came up just four months ago, or a year ago, or five.
Your dream to become a mangaka started a decade and a half ago, when you were just a kid and whose passion awakened. Ever since then you tried to pursue making amateur manga as a hobby but after surviving the apocalypse, you finally started approaching it seriously.
Its funny, to remember the dreadful night of 31.12.1999 as one of the happier memories, though the day you awaken your passion for the manga will always be your most cherished memory.
You ponder over it, venturing back to the simpler times of 1985 when you were just 8 year old and your passion for manga truly begun. Back when you weren't an adult concerned about bills, job or politics of the world, back when you were just a little...
[ ] Boy
[ ] Girl
Young, ambitious, full of energy, you were just a kid, blissfully ignorant to the hardships and horrors of adulthood. Living a comfortable life as a kid with your mom, dad and uncle. Life was simple and it seemed it couldn't get better... but then it did.
When one day, you would discover the beauty of manga, it was when…
[ ] You signed up for extra art classes in school.
>Gain a perk: Artistic childhood (Gain +1 to a single Mangaka stat of your choice: Background art / Character Design / Dynamic Art )
>Personality archetype: Crafter (Research: 1, Resolve 3, Charm 2)
[ ] Your best friend wanted to show you and other kids something they got for their birthday.
>Gain three contacts with very high affinity and Childhood Friend trait (Extremely loyal and will always try to help, if they get into trouble and you choose to not help, or are unable to provide any help, you will gain stress)
>Personality archetype: Socialite (Research: 2, Resolve 1, Charm 3)
[ ] Your local bookstore got a new section added that you decided to check out. Needless to say, you were sucked right in by a particular title.
>Pick one genre and one theme, you have studied each enough to gain Level 1 Expertise.
>Personality archetype: Bookworm (Research 3, Resolve 2, Charm 1)
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Character creation part 3: Finishing touches.
- Location
- Poland
You didn't really experience the true hedonism and prosperity of the 80s for you were but a child as the most prosperous era of Japan's economy was in full swing. To you 80s were just simple times of innocent and games and Wakasa, being a smaller mountain village, didn't really compared to the endless jungles of neon and concrete where cash flowed like rivers. Still, the prosperity of the bubble economy was felt all throughout the nation, in lesser or greater extend. When it came to choosing your extra-curricular activities you were given a quite great amount of options, and you spent a while trying to figure out which one would you like best, ultimately deciding art classes may just be something you will enjoy.
And you sure did enjoyed it greatly, your teacher, Mr. Hinohara was a person of great experience, passion and approach to the subject. Despite being on an elderly side, he was able to encourage the kids to be creative, follow his advice that were both very insightful and explained in a very understanding manner. It is said that you don't understand something if you can't explain it well to somebody else, if this is true than Mr. Hinohara was a master of art for as the time went on, everybody in the class was getting more and more skilled at drawing.
Hinohara's greatest advices that you still use to this day are his teachings about:
[ ] Drawing people (Gain +1 character design)
[ ] Drawing landscapes (Gain +1 background art)
[ ] Drawing objects in motion (Gain +1 dynamic art)
But after a few months after signing up for the art school, you and other students began learning about the wonderful and (figuratively) colorful world of mangas. Mr. Hinohara would show you different manga panels and use them as references. Using less and more popular examples he would teach you how to replicate some less obvious tricks that mangakas have employed. Needless to say, just as he infected most of the class with passion for art, plenty of the students became infected with his passion for manga, which likely was his goal, for as he claims he has a great lot of respect towards the medium and considered it, even back then in the 80s, a great element of Japanese culture.
One day however, after all of you got a bit better at the craft, he announced a small friendly competition among the interested students. An amateur mangaka contest where participants would have a week to create a simple one shot manga, which would later be shown to the members of the literature class who would then vote on who they believe to be the winner.
Due to this being just a fun game to help children practice rather than an actual contest that would cause stress or hostility among the participants, Mr. Hinohara decided there will be no price for winning it, but still encouraged everyone who sign up to give it their best shot.
The rules were simple, the one-shot would need to be anywhere between 2 and 5 pages, it cannot be vulgar or profane (you were all 9 years old afterall) and you have to make it yourself, without help of your parents or others. According to Mr. Hinohara, there were two goals in this exercise, to teach the kids about how hard is the profession of a mangaka and how rewarding and exciting is the feeling of somebody enjoying your craft.
Needless to say, you signed up. You raised your hand when Mr. Hinohara asked who is interested, along with seven more students.
And so Mr. Hinohara wrote down your first name, and then the family into the list of participants:
[ ] (Write in the character name)
And you sure did enjoyed it greatly, your teacher, Mr. Hinohara was a person of great experience, passion and approach to the subject. Despite being on an elderly side, he was able to encourage the kids to be creative, follow his advice that were both very insightful and explained in a very understanding manner. It is said that you don't understand something if you can't explain it well to somebody else, if this is true than Mr. Hinohara was a master of art for as the time went on, everybody in the class was getting more and more skilled at drawing.
Hinohara's greatest advices that you still use to this day are his teachings about:
[ ] Drawing people (Gain +1 character design)
[ ] Drawing landscapes (Gain +1 background art)
[ ] Drawing objects in motion (Gain +1 dynamic art)
But after a few months after signing up for the art school, you and other students began learning about the wonderful and (figuratively) colorful world of mangas. Mr. Hinohara would show you different manga panels and use them as references. Using less and more popular examples he would teach you how to replicate some less obvious tricks that mangakas have employed. Needless to say, just as he infected most of the class with passion for art, plenty of the students became infected with his passion for manga, which likely was his goal, for as he claims he has a great lot of respect towards the medium and considered it, even back then in the 80s, a great element of Japanese culture.
One day however, after all of you got a bit better at the craft, he announced a small friendly competition among the interested students. An amateur mangaka contest where participants would have a week to create a simple one shot manga, which would later be shown to the members of the literature class who would then vote on who they believe to be the winner.
Due to this being just a fun game to help children practice rather than an actual contest that would cause stress or hostility among the participants, Mr. Hinohara decided there will be no price for winning it, but still encouraged everyone who sign up to give it their best shot.
The rules were simple, the one-shot would need to be anywhere between 2 and 5 pages, it cannot be vulgar or profane (you were all 9 years old afterall) and you have to make it yourself, without help of your parents or others. According to Mr. Hinohara, there were two goals in this exercise, to teach the kids about how hard is the profession of a mangaka and how rewarding and exciting is the feeling of somebody enjoying your craft.
Needless to say, you signed up. You raised your hand when Mr. Hinohara asked who is interested, along with seven more students.
And so Mr. Hinohara wrote down your first name, and then the family into the list of participants:
[ ] (Write in the character name)
Manga creation tutorial: Plan for the week 0
- Location
- Poland
You signed up and took the task as seriously as an 8 year old girl can. Meaning that you would work hard on your manga until you get bored or distracted by something fun. Still, amidst the time you spent doing your normal homework, playing and doing some small chores every now and then, you had a handful of time throughout this week that you could had spent on working on your manga... or you could do different things that could boost your chances or winning or quality of your manga. All in all, back then you had a much more busy schedule that you couldn't control, thus meaning you couldn't as comfortably dedicate yourself to the craft back then as you do today.
You carefully consider your plan for the week before you start working on your contest entry.
[x] Plan: Cheater cheater
>Work on a new one-shot [1 action]
>Spend some time with the jury [1 action]
>Bribe your way into victory [1 action]
After you figure out how to spend your actions for the week, our next vote is going to be about choosing the genre and theme, and then we will have the lottery to see whose idea is turned into a story.
You carefully consider your plan for the week before you start working on your contest entry.
ACTIVITIES
Available actions: 3
Wealth: 1 (represented by toys, candy and allowance)
Current stress: 0
Available actions: 3
Wealth: 1 (represented by toys, candy and allowance)
Current stress: 0
- [] Work on a new one-shot: Work on your manga for the contest. You must spend at least one action on this activity. The more actions you dedicate to it, the higher quality it will be, increasing the number of dice you roll for each of the stats. Though there is no telling if the literature class will like it... unless...
- [] Spend some time with the jury: You have a general idea of who the members of the literature class are, and you could spend some time with some of them at the start of the week. Appearing like innocent invitation to play, you could potentially figure out what the most class members like and then make a manga about it. Then again you will need to rely on your CHARM to both get the information and to get a reliable information. If you mess up, you may learn about stuff that only some of the kids like. You can spend up to one action on this, this action will ask for a charm check with a hidden DC.
- [] Bribe your way into victory: You may just be 8 years old, but entertainment industry is all about giving the right people "little gifts" here and there to boost your success chance. A box of candies for one girl, a pouch of new marbles for some boy, and before you know it plenty of kids will vote on you regardless how much they liked your manga. If anything, learning at such a young age that greasing palms is the way to go is a sign that you are a natural when it comes to the manga industry. Then again, if Mr. Hinohara learns about it, you are pretty sure you will get into a boat load of trouble. You can spend up to one action on this, this action will cost 1 wealth.
- [] Look for inspiration in the field: Instead of just sitting in your room you can potentially ask your parents to walk with you around Wakasa or to take you to library or other places where you can search for some inspiration. Goin to different locations throughout the week allows you to improve your writing or drawing as you will take notes or doodle along the way. You can spend as many actions as you want on this activity. For every action you spend, choose a single mangaka stat, when you create manga this turn, chosen stat(s) will be treated as one higher. You can choose the same stat more than once.
For this vote, use a plan format that looks like the example below:[x] Plan: Cheater cheater
>Work on a new one-shot [1 action]
>Spend some time with the jury [1 action]
>Bribe your way into victory [1 action]
After you figure out how to spend your actions for the week, our next vote is going to be about choosing the genre and theme, and then we will have the lottery to see whose idea is turned into a story.
Manga creation tutorial: Week 0 activities report.
- Location
- Poland
WEEK 0
ACTIVITY REPORT
ACTIVITY REPORT
[x] Look for inspiration in the field:
[x] Character design
Being an eight year old kid you don't have an extremely good grasp over the anatomy or on how the facial expression works and Wakasa is a very small rural village without any art galleries or statues or other things to get inspiration from. But there is one thing there is no shortage of that you can use: people. Throughout the week, whenever your family goes to a store or for a walk around the village you carry around a small notebook to doodle down general appearance of people that catch your interest. You do draw thuggish looking men that you think look scary. You draw sweet looking old baker who reminds you of your grandpa and makes you feel safe. You draw down fancy looking banker whose face just screams "no nonsense when you talk with me". As you draw down all these different people you are left with... a fair amount of caricatures that look nothing like the people who you tried to draw. Then again, you are only 8 years old. Still, this "people safari" proven to be quite helpful as you have a collection of different body types and facial features that invoke different emotions in you.
+1 TO CHARACTER DESIGN (lasts 1 turn)
Ever since then, you made a habit of remembering or doodling down people or statues or any designs that you came across. Even in the part of your life when you weren't assured you will become a professional mangaka, you made this into a hobby. As a result, even today, you find the process to be not as tiresome or stressful as other activities.
PERK GAINED: Field researcher (character design): Overtime used to perform "Look for inspiration in the field (character design)" causes stress to increase by 1 instead of 2.
[x] Spend some time with the jury
You know that the main factor that decides the popularity of art is not its quality: but the demand on it. You know that you will have better chances at winning by writing stuff people like, rather than by just throwing your ideas into the dark and hope people will like it just cause you spent more time on them.
While its hard to socialize with the boys since at the age of 8 boys and girls are not really keen on playing together, company of girls is more than enough, especially since the slight majority of the students in literature club happen to be girls like you. A tea party here, some nawatobi there, sprinkle in some classic ken-ken-pa for good measure, and before you know it, the girls of the literature club saw you as one of their own.
And best part is that they never realized that you are one of the participants of the manga contest coming soon. They never got your name. You felt like an evil genius as you infiltrated the literature class society, feeling like you could had been a soviet spy in your previous life (at the time you had no clue what that term meant, you just heard it a lot when somebody was listening to the news on the radio or on tv).
Given that they are members of the literature club, it was childishly easy to discuss stuff they like when it comes to the stories, but you had no idea that by asking such an innocent question, you weren't just shoving a stick into an anthill... you were putting a grenade inside a hornet's nest. It seemed that the literature club was the club of extremes, and everyone was assured that the stuff they like is the best, and those who had other preferences were idiots. You realized that its better to swap between smaller groups of girls or even ask some that were playing alone about their preferences because otherwise a pretty verbal (for 8 year olds) debate would ensue. It was much more exhausting than you expected it to be and it took quite some time, but in the end you ended up getting a fair bit of intel that you believe would help a lot.
When it comes to genres, you gathered some rather interesting information you never would had figured out on your own. Apparently the literary class teacher, Mr Fussa, is not a conventional literary teacher. Instead of teaching children about only classical Japanese literature, Mr. Fussa's classes tackled books from overseas, titles that they would likely never read on their own or even hear about. Apparently Fussa's love for literature from the west comes from both Europe and west of Asia. Because of that a fair bit of students now share his love for fantasy stories, and students had plenty of fun analyzing bits of a book called "Hobbit" (whatever that means) written by some British author. The bits were translated to Japanese by mr Fussa himself and according to the kids the colorful and bizarrely foreign world of the book is what hooked in many of them.
That being said, not everyone agreed with it. Some girls claimed that the best genre that most of the class enjoy are the comedy tales, ones that focus on bizarre and ridiculous tales of characters that cleverly and in a funny way outsmart very scary threats. Comedy of errors also won the hearts of many kids... allegedly.
A few girls claimed to have insight into what the boy side of the class is interested in... but you couldn't help but to think this was a dubious source at best.
According to this source the boys really liked the tales of pirates and their adventures on the coats of British empire or the early united states. Fighting not only the corrupt governors and slave traders, bringing freedom and prosperity to the oppressed, but also going on daring fights against fearsome beasts.
Other girls however claim the tales of ancient warriors and greek or roman heroes and gods is what all the boys are the most into. The high stakes battles against demons and bizarre beasts of the ancient greece mythos... apparently some kid once even did a tier list of Greek gods and monsters and there was a great debate over whether Achilles or Heracles would win a duel.
However, no matter how many opinions you got and how much they differed, they had one thing in common: they all agreed that tragic stories are the worst. Not because they leave kids heartbroken, but because it makes them feel like they are unfinished. A story just has to have a happy ending, at least when you are 8 years old.
In short, it would appear some genres, particularly fantasy, comedy, action, adventure, and some themes, greek mythos, european folklore, pirates, monsters, fighting, travels, all have some form of popularity among the class... if you trust your sources. DRAMA is not a genre anybody seems to like and tragedy is a universally hated theme.
This whole experience would leave a strong impression on you, showing to you how hard it is to understand someone's bias and likes. Ever since that day you tried to improve a bit the art of understanding someone's tastes.
PERK GAINED: Know your crowd: All personal stat tests related to understanding someone's biases have their difficulties reduced by one (2+ becomes automatic success, normally impossible checks now succeed at the roll of 6)
[x] Work on a new one-shot
You are pretty sure that other folks dedicated their entire week on sitting inside their rooms and working on their mangas, and you can't say that you blame them. Still, you know that you didn't waste your time since the information you got may end up being crucial to you making a good manga. Plus, its not like you are loosing anything from not winning.
Now, time to decide what that manga is gonna be about... you very likely should think of something that will be at least somewhat in line with the intel you got. That being said, you know next to nothing about European folklore or greek mythos... if you try to write about these, you will have to do some research which may make your manga be received better if you do well... or it will be received much worse if you completely mess it up.
[ ] Genre: (Write in: up to two genres)
[ ] Theme: (Write in: up to two themes)
Once again, this is a plan vote. Don't put in your synopsis or titles just yet, for now we are just deciding the genres and themes. This will be handled on the lottery following this vote.
In case you wish to come up with your own themes and genres, the available genres are all literary genres, while themes are quite more specific, like topics from game dev tycoon. There is no list of themes set in stone, in order to encourage creativity and ideas of others.
Last edited:
Manga creation tutorial: Week 0 inspiration.
- Location
- Poland
European folklore sounds fun and exotic even if you knew next to nothing about it. There's plenty of weird creatures in the weird land of the west, and even things that are seemingly shared between your cultures are just... weird. For example dragons are not seen as sources of wisdom or divine messengers like in your tales but rather as either dangerous feral beasts or wicked tyrannical rulers. A weird world for sure, this Europe, but it's likely the reason why literature club seemed to like the stories from the self proclaimed "old world" so much.
Besides, its not like you were writing an essay about European folklore, you were writing a story based on it, so surely you don't need to be an expert in the field, the legends of the strange lands of the west were just gonna be there as an aesthetic.
The theme of travel was something much simpler, after all, this allowed you to show off some of your skills at drawing background art and gave you quite a bit of freedom to figure out the plot. Was it gonna be an epic quest to slay a dragon, or an oni (Europeans do have onis, right?) or maybe a tale of a simple merchant that got caught in some big adventure?
Possibilities were almost limitless, especially given you wanted to make it into an adventure comedy story. Who doesn't like a story with some breath taking quest and hilarious jokes? Surely the literature club would love it... at least you hoped they would.
As you finally decided what sort of story you wanna tell, you started pondering over the plot... and then... it came to you!
A sudden surge on the dead sea, a spark in the void, a flash in the dark... INSPIRATION!
INSPIRATION LOTTERY:
Title of the one-shot:
[x]- Write in.
Synopsis of the one-shot:
[x]- Write in, keep in mind genres (adventure, comedy) and themes (travel and european folklore)
Instead of voting, everyone who wants will write their own ideas. It is encouraged to not make the ideas as wild as you can, not worrying about the ideas of others. At the end of the lottery we are going to put all the ideas together and randomly select the winner. The earlier mentioned research roll will happen after the lottery is concluded, as part of the manga creation rolls.
Besides, its not like you were writing an essay about European folklore, you were writing a story based on it, so surely you don't need to be an expert in the field, the legends of the strange lands of the west were just gonna be there as an aesthetic.
The theme of travel was something much simpler, after all, this allowed you to show off some of your skills at drawing background art and gave you quite a bit of freedom to figure out the plot. Was it gonna be an epic quest to slay a dragon, or an oni (Europeans do have onis, right?) or maybe a tale of a simple merchant that got caught in some big adventure?
Possibilities were almost limitless, especially given you wanted to make it into an adventure comedy story. Who doesn't like a story with some breath taking quest and hilarious jokes? Surely the literature club would love it... at least you hoped they would.
As you finally decided what sort of story you wanna tell, you started pondering over the plot... and then... it came to you!
A sudden surge on the dead sea, a spark in the void, a flash in the dark... INSPIRATION!
INSPIRATION LOTTERY:
Title of the one-shot:
[x]- Write in.
Synopsis of the one-shot:
[x]- Write in, keep in mind genres (adventure, comedy) and themes (travel and european folklore)
Instead of voting, everyone who wants will write their own ideas. It is encouraged to not make the ideas as wild as you can, not worrying about the ideas of others. At the end of the lottery we are going to put all the ideas together and randomly select the winner. The earlier mentioned research roll will happen after the lottery is concluded, as part of the manga creation rolls.
Manga creation tutorial: Week 0 creation rolls!
- Location
- Poland
Maybe you were just hungry and were in a mood for a melon, or maybe it was some subconscious desire for a pet suddenly surfacing, but whatever primal urge was responsible for your dedication it sure made you sold out on your idea.
A tale about a farmer who wanted to increase his crops and as such went to the local witch to grant him something that will help. The farmer follows the instructions by pouring a special potion on his favorite crop, a melon vine, only to find out that the following day his crops are devastated save for a single melon that grown red and big. At first he believes that witch played a cruel trick on him (which apparently is common in European tales, witches being mean for no real reason to the people in need). Only then, in a surprising twist, his melon appears to become animated, becoming able to walk around, bark and play around like some weird melon dog.
Farmer is not sold out on the cuteness on his new potassium rich canine companion, and decides to travel back to witch to fix the problems created by her obviously faulty potion. Along the way however, the farmer meets numerous threats, ones that, to the surprise of the farmer, are defeated by his new spherical companion. Melon ends up knocking out a robber who pretended to be a knight in order to rob the farmer, saved farmer from drowning in a river after he tripped down the hill.
But after that, they encounter a scary oni that just finished eating a random traveling noble. The oni would calm the farmer by saying that his hunger for people is now sated, but he thirsts for something juicy to eat after such a hearty meal. Oni offers farmer a coffer of gold and gems the noble had on him, in exchange for the melon. Farmer then thought about it and pretended to accept, only to then use the coffer to knock out Oni out cold and then threw him into a river while still knocked out, sadly also loosing the riches of the coffer as well as they scattered and fell into the river.
After that, the two finally arrive to the witch who greets them with a smile on her face and a bag of ice on her head. The farmer simply said that he wanted to thank her for giving him such an unexpected companion, and wanted to ask if she knows how to take care of such a weird pet, to which she grants them a manual for melon dogs (which is apparently a far more common thing than farmer though). As the farmer and melon walk away the witch notes how he learned his lesson about companion being the greatest bounty one may ever have, while also noting with a painful grimace that she learned her own lesson: expect people to whack you hard if you threaten their dog even if it's not for real.
Of course, this all required you to utilize all of the five of the allowed pages, but still, you felt like you struck gold with this one, and you worked hard on your manga.
With the story for the oneshot figured out and planned, you sat down and began pouring your idea into words and drawings.
Now, it's time to see how well you can turn it into a thing!
[Now, I ask for somebody to roll me a d10 6 times. These will represent how well your character handled the aspects of writing manga, whoever does it first is the roll we will be using.]
A tale about a farmer who wanted to increase his crops and as such went to the local witch to grant him something that will help. The farmer follows the instructions by pouring a special potion on his favorite crop, a melon vine, only to find out that the following day his crops are devastated save for a single melon that grown red and big. At first he believes that witch played a cruel trick on him (which apparently is common in European tales, witches being mean for no real reason to the people in need). Only then, in a surprising twist, his melon appears to become animated, becoming able to walk around, bark and play around like some weird melon dog.
Farmer is not sold out on the cuteness on his new potassium rich canine companion, and decides to travel back to witch to fix the problems created by her obviously faulty potion. Along the way however, the farmer meets numerous threats, ones that, to the surprise of the farmer, are defeated by his new spherical companion. Melon ends up knocking out a robber who pretended to be a knight in order to rob the farmer, saved farmer from drowning in a river after he tripped down the hill.
But after that, they encounter a scary oni that just finished eating a random traveling noble. The oni would calm the farmer by saying that his hunger for people is now sated, but he thirsts for something juicy to eat after such a hearty meal. Oni offers farmer a coffer of gold and gems the noble had on him, in exchange for the melon. Farmer then thought about it and pretended to accept, only to then use the coffer to knock out Oni out cold and then threw him into a river while still knocked out, sadly also loosing the riches of the coffer as well as they scattered and fell into the river.
After that, the two finally arrive to the witch who greets them with a smile on her face and a bag of ice on her head. The farmer simply said that he wanted to thank her for giving him such an unexpected companion, and wanted to ask if she knows how to take care of such a weird pet, to which she grants them a manual for melon dogs (which is apparently a far more common thing than farmer though). As the farmer and melon walk away the witch notes how he learned his lesson about companion being the greatest bounty one may ever have, while also noting with a painful grimace that she learned her own lesson: expect people to whack you hard if you threaten their dog even if it's not for real.
Of course, this all required you to utilize all of the five of the allowed pages, but still, you felt like you struck gold with this one, and you worked hard on your manga.
With the story for the oneshot figured out and planned, you sat down and began pouring your idea into words and drawings.
Now, it's time to see how well you can turn it into a thing!
[Now, I ask for somebody to roll me a d10 6 times. These will represent how well your character handled the aspects of writing manga, whoever does it first is the roll we will be using.]
Manga creation tutorial: You reap the melons you sew!
- Location
- Poland
You poured down your heart, soul, mind, sweat, and also some spit into the hard work you did for the project, and you certainly could certainly feel the trials and the tribulations that would follow in this career.
Firstly was the character design...
[Rolled 1, temporary bonus from field research increases character design by 1, granting +10 to the roll, offering a grand total of 11]
You certainly feel like going around the village to see what people looked like helped a lot, because when it came to drawing figures and faces, your pencil certainly didn't cooperate. It took a couple of retries and also a lot of tantrums until you finally came with satisfying simple designs that look presentable enough. You thank the heavens for earlies making that choice to study how people look like because it was clear that character design would become your BANE. But thanks to your notes, you managed to make your characters appear actually really good looking... for an 8 year old artist that is. As you were working on your manga, nearly every night had a recurring nightmare of your classmates finding your first drafts and ridiculing you about it. But today... you have recurring nightmares of big publishers finding your early character design drafts and ridiculing you on public TV. Overall, in the end hag looked hideous as a hag should be, melon dog looked... spherical and farmer looked human enough. The bandit pretending to be a knight looked more like a walking heap of metal though and the oni looked ridiculous, but you are fairly sure you did not offend any onis with that oneshot.
Gained negative trait:
Inhuman humans: When you first attempted to draw it became apparent that you can't quite understand how to make character look... well... good. Thankfully this can be mitigated by you doing some field research or just putting more effort into your work, but the fact is, you are not gonna see your designs appear on posters anytime soon.
Effect: Whenever you work on your manga, one of the dices you roll for character design rolls is rolled twice and the lower number is used. This negative trait can be removed if you successfully complete a manga study while focusing on the character design. This trait can be also mutated into a beneficial trait if you find a way to embrace your talent to drawing hideous or uncanny creatures.
Next there was background art...
[Rolled 5, added 10 for Background Art skill of 1, offering a grand total of 15]
While character design looked mighty fine thanks to your notes, the background art looked much better and it was purely because of your pure talent. You decided to fully capitalize on the fact that farmer and melon dog will be traveling through multiple locations, and you managed to make each convey a certain theme. The witch hut looked scary, the garden looked like a battlefield after melon dog awaken and made the inferior crops face its wrath and the woods through which farmer traveled looked gloomy.
After that there was time dynamic art...
[Rolled 9, no bonuses and no penalties, grand total of 9]
It wasn't an action oneshot but there was a scene where farmer nearly drowned, where melon dog knocked out the pretender knight and where farmer just knocked the light out of the oni. All things considered the few scenes where you wanted to convey some movement or impact worker quite well and clearly.
With the drawing done, there was no time for writing, starting off with dialogues.
[Rolled 7, no bonuses no penalties, grand total of 7]
You were by no means the second coming of... whoever literature club was learning about but you were confident that jokes you written and the dialogues you wrote down were understandable and seemed natural...ish... Jokes weren't gonna make anybody above the age of 10 burst out laughing out loud, but there were decent, you think.
Then there was story writing
[Rolled 2, no bonuses, no penalties, grand total of 2]
You were ambitious but you also had a page limit. This proved to be a very problematic aspect. You remember Mr. Hinohara often saying how a page limit is usually the greatest enemy of mangakas, due to how sometimes it's impossible to convey all that you wish to tell in a couple of panels. You tried to make panels smaller to have more room for explanation what is going on, until you needed a magnifying glass to draw, you tried making speech bubbles as big as entire panels until you realized that at this point you are writing a novel and not drawing a manga. Ultimately sacrifices needed to be made and you needed to cut out some pits and scenes to fit into the limit, which resulted in a rather confusing narrative. It was definitely the most poorly executed aspect of your oneshot.
Finally, there was character writing
[Rolled 10, no bonuses, no penalties, grand total of 10]
Strangely enough, while you struggled with narrative, you excelled at conveying personality through characters, as you found it surprisingly easy to make it clear what kind of people your characters are without bluntly stating it. You managed to make it so witch was hideous and scary and yet her dialogue and actions made it clear that she actually wants to help, even before the reveal it was all a test. Farmer didn't come across as a mean bastard who didn't like a cute melon dog, you made it clear that dude was just upset at witch for making him loose his crops and not upset at the weird animal that just didn't knew better. Even melon dog was more than just a silly cute mascot, as you managed to have this dog...plant... thingy have a clearly heroic and active spirit.
As you were writing you also realized the issue of farmer ending up with no food at all and decided to fix it by having the melon dog find and dig up a big truffle as they were going home (apparently it was some sort of weird potato that people in France and Itally could pay a lot money for) which the farmer declares to be worth a fortune. You end the story by making it clear he changed the profession from a farmer to a truffle gatherer/merchant.
Gained a new perk
Actions speak further (I): At young age realized that character actions can improve the storytelling a lot by showcasing growth and personality of others through what they do, as opposed to what they say or what the narration says. For every 10 you get on the total for character writing, you add 1 point to both storytelling and dialogue total.
With the contest happening the following day, you took one last look at your work and took a deep breath.
Chapter title: The Farmer and The Melon
Chapter number: Oneshot
Genres: Comedy & Adventure
(1st time combo, 2x experience)
Theme: European Folklore & Travels
Combo bonus: Adventure + Travels, excellent combo! [+4 to the popularity roll]
Combo bonus: Adventure + European folklore, great combo! [+3 to popularity roll]
Combo bonus: Comedy + Travels, decent combo [+1 to popularity roll]
Chapter stats:
Stat threshold: 0 (amateurs and kids)
Special effect: For kids, by kids: For every 5 points in the stat, the chapter gains popularity point instead of 10 above the threshold
Character design: 11 vs Threshold 0, +2 to popularity roll
Background art: 15 vs Threshold 0, +3 to popularity roll
Dynamic art: 9 vs Threshold 0, +1 popularity roll
Dialogues: 8 vs Threshold of 0, +1 popularity roll
Story writing, 3 vs Threshold of 0, no popularity bonus
Character writing, 10 vs Threshold of 0, +2 popularity roll
Final result: +17 to the popularity roll (the trends and biases not yet included)
Pre release reviews and feedback:
"It's lovely, I am sure you will win!" ~Mom
"I love it, but just so we are clear, we can't really afford a dog in the house, ok sweetie?" ~Dad
"Its nice kid but uh... I feel like stuff is happening a bit too fast... maybe? Also have you seen that delivery man? He was supposed to bring to me and dad a big grill today but I think he got lost and ended up in a different village... again... oh yeah, but comic is good." ~Uncle
And with that, your first ever oneshot was produced. The following day was the day of the final judgement, and your heart raced at 11 pm when you took one last look at the manga you made and tried to decide what to do next.
[ ] Pass out and fall asleep.
[ ] Pass out and fall asleep.
[ ] Pass out and fall asleep.
Firstly was the character design...
[Rolled 1, temporary bonus from field research increases character design by 1, granting +10 to the roll, offering a grand total of 11]
You certainly feel like going around the village to see what people looked like helped a lot, because when it came to drawing figures and faces, your pencil certainly didn't cooperate. It took a couple of retries and also a lot of tantrums until you finally came with satisfying simple designs that look presentable enough. You thank the heavens for earlies making that choice to study how people look like because it was clear that character design would become your BANE. But thanks to your notes, you managed to make your characters appear actually really good looking... for an 8 year old artist that is. As you were working on your manga, nearly every night had a recurring nightmare of your classmates finding your first drafts and ridiculing you about it. But today... you have recurring nightmares of big publishers finding your early character design drafts and ridiculing you on public TV. Overall, in the end hag looked hideous as a hag should be, melon dog looked... spherical and farmer looked human enough. The bandit pretending to be a knight looked more like a walking heap of metal though and the oni looked ridiculous, but you are fairly sure you did not offend any onis with that oneshot.
Gained negative trait:
Inhuman humans: When you first attempted to draw it became apparent that you can't quite understand how to make character look... well... good. Thankfully this can be mitigated by you doing some field research or just putting more effort into your work, but the fact is, you are not gonna see your designs appear on posters anytime soon.
Effect: Whenever you work on your manga, one of the dices you roll for character design rolls is rolled twice and the lower number is used. This negative trait can be removed if you successfully complete a manga study while focusing on the character design. This trait can be also mutated into a beneficial trait if you find a way to embrace your talent to drawing hideous or uncanny creatures.
Next there was background art...
[Rolled 5, added 10 for Background Art skill of 1, offering a grand total of 15]
While character design looked mighty fine thanks to your notes, the background art looked much better and it was purely because of your pure talent. You decided to fully capitalize on the fact that farmer and melon dog will be traveling through multiple locations, and you managed to make each convey a certain theme. The witch hut looked scary, the garden looked like a battlefield after melon dog awaken and made the inferior crops face its wrath and the woods through which farmer traveled looked gloomy.
After that there was time dynamic art...
[Rolled 9, no bonuses and no penalties, grand total of 9]
It wasn't an action oneshot but there was a scene where farmer nearly drowned, where melon dog knocked out the pretender knight and where farmer just knocked the light out of the oni. All things considered the few scenes where you wanted to convey some movement or impact worker quite well and clearly.
With the drawing done, there was no time for writing, starting off with dialogues.
[Rolled 7, no bonuses no penalties, grand total of 7]
You were by no means the second coming of... whoever literature club was learning about but you were confident that jokes you written and the dialogues you wrote down were understandable and seemed natural...ish... Jokes weren't gonna make anybody above the age of 10 burst out laughing out loud, but there were decent, you think.
Then there was story writing
[Rolled 2, no bonuses, no penalties, grand total of 2]
You were ambitious but you also had a page limit. This proved to be a very problematic aspect. You remember Mr. Hinohara often saying how a page limit is usually the greatest enemy of mangakas, due to how sometimes it's impossible to convey all that you wish to tell in a couple of panels. You tried to make panels smaller to have more room for explanation what is going on, until you needed a magnifying glass to draw, you tried making speech bubbles as big as entire panels until you realized that at this point you are writing a novel and not drawing a manga. Ultimately sacrifices needed to be made and you needed to cut out some pits and scenes to fit into the limit, which resulted in a rather confusing narrative. It was definitely the most poorly executed aspect of your oneshot.
Finally, there was character writing
[Rolled 10, no bonuses, no penalties, grand total of 10]
Strangely enough, while you struggled with narrative, you excelled at conveying personality through characters, as you found it surprisingly easy to make it clear what kind of people your characters are without bluntly stating it. You managed to make it so witch was hideous and scary and yet her dialogue and actions made it clear that she actually wants to help, even before the reveal it was all a test. Farmer didn't come across as a mean bastard who didn't like a cute melon dog, you made it clear that dude was just upset at witch for making him loose his crops and not upset at the weird animal that just didn't knew better. Even melon dog was more than just a silly cute mascot, as you managed to have this dog...plant... thingy have a clearly heroic and active spirit.
As you were writing you also realized the issue of farmer ending up with no food at all and decided to fix it by having the melon dog find and dig up a big truffle as they were going home (apparently it was some sort of weird potato that people in France and Itally could pay a lot money for) which the farmer declares to be worth a fortune. You end the story by making it clear he changed the profession from a farmer to a truffle gatherer/merchant.
Gained a new perk
Actions speak further (I): At young age realized that character actions can improve the storytelling a lot by showcasing growth and personality of others through what they do, as opposed to what they say or what the narration says. For every 10 you get on the total for character writing, you add 1 point to both storytelling and dialogue total.
With the contest happening the following day, you took one last look at your work and took a deep breath.
Chapter title: The Farmer and The Melon
Chapter number: Oneshot
Genres: Comedy & Adventure
(1st time combo, 2x experience)
Theme: European Folklore & Travels
Combo bonus: Adventure + Travels, excellent combo! [+4 to the popularity roll]
Combo bonus: Adventure + European folklore, great combo! [+3 to popularity roll]
Combo bonus: Comedy + Travels, decent combo [+1 to popularity roll]
Chapter stats:
Stat threshold: 0 (amateurs and kids)
Special effect: For kids, by kids: For every 5 points in the stat, the chapter gains popularity point instead of 10 above the threshold
Character design: 11 vs Threshold 0, +2 to popularity roll
Background art: 15 vs Threshold 0, +3 to popularity roll
Dynamic art: 9 vs Threshold 0, +1 popularity roll
Dialogues: 8 vs Threshold of 0, +1 popularity roll
Story writing, 3 vs Threshold of 0, no popularity bonus
Character writing, 10 vs Threshold of 0, +2 popularity roll
Final result: +17 to the popularity roll (the trends and biases not yet included)
Pre release reviews and feedback:
"It's lovely, I am sure you will win!" ~Mom
"I love it, but just so we are clear, we can't really afford a dog in the house, ok sweetie?" ~Dad
"Its nice kid but uh... I feel like stuff is happening a bit too fast... maybe? Also have you seen that delivery man? He was supposed to bring to me and dad a big grill today but I think he got lost and ended up in a different village... again... oh yeah, but comic is good." ~Uncle
And with that, your first ever oneshot was produced. The following day was the day of the final judgement, and your heart raced at 11 pm when you took one last look at the manga you made and tried to decide what to do next.
[ ] Pass out and fall asleep.
[ ] Pass out and fall asleep.
[ ] Pass out and fall asleep.