Elven Academy

Recently I’ve spent perhaps 50 hours watching game design Youtube videos. Geek and Sundry has some very old videos on game writing and campaign design, but you have to scroll back at least 5 to 6 years in their enormous pile of archives to find them. Have fun with that!

As with the previous installments of this series of blog posts, I saved my own handwritten notes from these videos, extracting only that which can be useful for making a CRPG, and not for running a tabletop game.  I’ve also included a bit at the end from the D&D and Beyond channel, so that’s another one to check out.

The following sections are design notes from Matthew Mercer, Voice Actor and DM for Geek And Sundry’s Critical Role.

Bare Bones Adventure Design

1. Determine what characters the players like to play: good, evil, premade heroes, simple level ones, etc.
2. Determine what style of adventure the players like: i.e. pure dungeon crawling, diplomacy.
3. Now need a plot hook that fits the player’s tastes. Grab players early with a strong inciting incident, plus a mystery.
4. Who or what is the big antagonist. Interesting, dangerous. What is their motivation. Is there time pressure?
5. Fill in the middle with challenges, obstacles. Key NPC’s, lackeys, mentors who might donate helpful items, along with interesting locations where they might be find. Social encounters with good and evil factions.
6. Refine the ideas with specific scenarios that let each party member shine and be a hero. Add some interesting and juicy loot. Prepare some strong descriptive paragraphs for key NPC’s and locations.

Building RPG Encounters

First of all, what terrain or region are you in? Monsters are usually categorized by where they are found.
When creating a map, try for creative terrain, something a little different. Furniture can be used for blockades. Are there features in the terrain that offer movement blocks during a battle? Find some way to make the battlefield more interesting than just a slugfest of HP back and forth.

Intelligent creatures might we willing to resolve with diplomacy. Intelligent creatures will often try to flee at low HP.

Not all battles should be won. Some should be foreshadowing, or getting to know the villain.

NPC Creation

First decision: are they major or minor?
Minor: need name, sex, job, faction or political affiliations, guilds, allies or enemies they might have.
Major: include ideals, desires, fears, their current disposition towards the players, their skills, equipment. If you do character voices, note the voice you used.

A good villain is very important. Acts by their own beliefs, may see others as villains of their own heroic story. See The Book of Vile Darkness, which has excellent treatment of villains.

Social Non-combat Encounters

Lots of ideas to incorporate social combat your games. Balls, council meetings, diplomatic missions, spy games, interrogations, investigations. Infiltration. Contest of skill or a gauntlet to prove oneself.

What is the overall goal of the social encounter? Helps to be clear on this with yourself and the players.
Make sure the NPC enemies are fleshed out with motives, things they want, or want to hide. Are they willing to sell information? What are they weak to? Strong against? Factions? Must players choose a side?

Raise the stakes. Always try to raise the stakes.

Finding a hidden spy is cool. Stolen objects work well. Information used against the party.

Always have a plan in case a fight breaks out in a specific social encounter.

Rule of Cool.

(Final notes by Matthew Mercer.)

Willing suspension of disbelief to allow something cool to happen. Establish how realistic and strict the setting and campaign is going to be. Allow something crazy every now and then for the sake of fun, even if the rules probably wouldn’t allow it. Reward creativity, while keeping hands on the reins. The story is supposed to be heroic. A game is supposed to be fun.

Design Notes From Satine Phoenix.

Satine Phoenix is another GM from Geek and Sundry, but again you have to dig very deep into their archives to find these old videos.  Here are some notes about writing from a few of them.

(The main takeaway for me here is obstruction. I’m terrible and lazy at creating constant obstructions and frustrations. I have very poor ability to increase tension and see the long game, and need to improve. I actually did purchase and start reading the book recommended by Satine below.)

There are different styles/types of storytelling/GMs.
Obstructing – constantly setting challenges to overcome.
Narrative – focused on going through the storyline and hitting plot points.
Experiental – finding the great moments, making the most of them.
Uplifting – constantly for the players, making them happy and fulfilling their fantasies.

Story Structure.  Read and study Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, by Robert McKee. Use the “Harmon Circle Theory” by Dan Harmon, which is similar to Campbell’s journey of the hero. You -> Need -> Go -> Search -> Find -> Take -> Return – > Change.

Satine notes the “finding phase” is a good place to subvert expectations with something unexpected. Asking all sorts of ‘why’ is a good technique to get deeper into the game world.

<h3>The Neverending Story – (How to find ideas for new plots, arcs.)</h3>

Bring it back. Go back to early modules and look for loose ends, bring back NPC’s and their unfinished stories.

Develop your world further. Look for gaps in your game world knowledge, not just geographical but also sociopolitical. Building this knowledge will naturally lead to ideas.

Ask your players where they want to go or explore.

D&D And Beyond

(The final notes here are from D&D Beyond – Chris Perkins on Writing Dungeons and Dragons Adventures for a large audience.)

Basic adventure needs a good goal, a setting, and villains with their own goals. You can usually get away with being weak on one of the latter, but not the first one. Simplest and oldest motivation is greed. There is a big treasure. Go to get rich.

In many cases, this isn’t good enough, not appealing enough for either the characters or the players. So you want to make the goal more appealing to more people. So make the gold stolen from the church, for example. Or the gold is intended to fund a dastardly deed that needs to be stopped. Perhaps some characters in the party will have this motivation, others might go along to help.

The only thing that is really bad when over-used is giving players no control or agency. It can be OK once or twice, but not too often. Also, railroading with only one way forward is undesirable.

On Making Villains Unique. Two ways to make a great villain, according to feedback from publishers. Put a unique spin on an old, trite trope (or monster). Or give us a kick-ass map for a location.

Conclusion.

I enjoyed watching these videos by Geek and Sundry, et. al. on game design. It appears they aren’t doing things like this anymore. What else is there to say, at some point. I liked Matt’s style of smooth delivery a little more than Satine’s videos, but on re-reviewing here, I have to admit that Satine really packed good information into her videos.

So I would of course recommend watching both. They are really hard to find, though, which is why there aren’t any specific links here to specific videos. Going into those massive archives was a test of patience.  Good luck and having fun designing!

A few years ago, I did an exhaustive review of all of Alexander Freed’s old blog posts, and I wrote a summary digest of all of the useful points that might be applicable to a CRPG. In the past few months, I’ve watched many if not most of Matthew Colville’s videos on Youtube, and turned this into the same educative exercise.

Matthew Colville is a former writer for Pandemic Studios, and lead writer for Turtle Rock Studios at this time. A lot of his youtube videos are for tabletop group gaming, i.e. D&D.

I hope these notes might be useful to someone without 50 hours of time to spend watching videos, but I would highly recommend watching Matthew on Youtube. He’s a great voice for RPG design, especially when applied to the D&D rules.

So here are my hand-typed notes of things I found useful, for future assistance in my own project. My handwritten notes are specifically selected therefore for solo CRPG design. I’ve helpfully collated these notes from different videos under group headings, as well.

General Tips:

Join game design communities on your favorite social media platforms.

Consider the type of campaign/game you want to make. What is the fantasy you want to capture for your players. Then you can design accordingly. Examples:

Heroic Fantasy – you are a hero from first level. I.e. Boromir, Legolas, etc.. You don’t care about greed, gold, and magic items so much. For example, 4E D&D.

Pulp Fantasy – you can be greedy, just seeking gold, magic items, fame or glory. Back in the day, D&D was much more pulp fantasy. For example, Village of Hommlet.

Bring lore to the players, because they will be too lazy to go to the lore. Maybe lore is needed to progress in the story. So a sage is needed to instruct the players, but he wants a favor first.

Players will usually choose a fun but hard way more than an easy but boring way to solve puzzles.

You develop taste in what’s good long before you develop the ability to actually create good things.

About Rewards:

Is your game really about rewards? Or more about exploration, storytelling, character growth, the social experience, etc.. It depends on your player preferences. For example:

Power gamers want to min max to become as powerful as possible.

Murder Hobos like the kill everything, doesn’t like puzzles.

The Specialists want to have fun playing a very specific character. It’s fantasy fulfillment.

The Actors love roleplaying and attention.

Casual Gamer/Storyteller just want to go along for a cinematic ride, as a passive audience member. Don’t try to force this gamer to be more than they are.

Mad Scientist (Matt’s personal addition to the tropes) wants to fuck around, be crazy, and see how far they can disrupt things. Usually young players.

So all of these types enjoy different rewards from playing.

Note the behaviour a game rewards is the behaviour a game encourages. I.e. if you want the player to go into the forest, put the rewards there.

Try clear goals and explicit rewards, i.e. like the quest text in WoW. For example, the temple is sending you on a quest, and you know your reward will be a Holy Avenger sword.

Making A Good Villain:

Show what evil the villain can do, or is doing. Kill off a beloved character. Have the villain make an early appearance, where he beats and humiliates the party. Find ways for the party to witness the villain doing evil things.

Villains can possess someone and speak through their mouths. They can appear in a mirror, or in the character’s dream. It is fun to have some heated exchanges with the villain before the final showdown, to increase the emotional investment.

How to make an NPC memorable, regardless of whether evil or good? Need to focus on motivation and perspective. For example: fear, pride, self-interest. Self-awareness on the part of NPC’s can be very impactful and lifegiving for the effort.

You can use the NPC not just to reveal the world, but also to reveal a different perspective on the heroes, strengthening their characters, which are a lot more important than the NPC.

About Murder and Monsters:

We need monsters so players can feel good about killing them. A monster per se is self-evident that it needs to be killed. What about intelligent monsters? The solution to complex ethics and morality is in factions. One tribe of goblins, the ‘Blood Skull Tribe’, might be clearly evil and needs to be killed, while the ‘Purple Mushroom Tribe’ might be peaceful and doesn’t deserve murder. So think in terms of factions more than races.

Types of combat encounters. 4 types. Patrols, scouts, guards, boss fights. Patrol is more like a puzzle to solve by finding and/or observing the pattern. A failure to avoid should not result in automatic doom or alert of the whole complex. Instead, increase the tension with increased scrutiny and alertness. Scouts range far and wide, mixed unit, not a regular pattern. Scouts are more likely to spot the PC’s first. Guards are like a stationary patrol. A puzzle to solve. Again, alerting the guards increases the danger and deadliness of an encounter, but is not necessarily fatal.

About Factions and Diplomacy:

Most things start to make sense when you see the world as factions struggling for power over land, resources, or each other. Unfortunately this fact creates a degeneration of ethics and more aggression, due to the power faction usually winning a conflict with a more peaceful faction. (Red Queen Hypothesis).

To form a foundation of campaign politics, start with a central tension. To hone down, consider the motivations and ideologies of all factions. What do they want? What do they believe in? What skills and resources are they using to achieve their goals?

An example of a great central tension with different ideologies is Professor Xavier vs. Magneto. What side benefits from disruption, and which from the status quo? Are there grey areas? How will your players fit into these factions? Consider the American Civil War, or the Roman Empire.

About General Campaign Writing:

You made your world and campaign for yourself, not for your players. If you re-read your stuff and you don’t laugh out loud, then maybe it isn’t good enough.

If they aren’t engaging with the lore, you’ve failed to present it dramatically. Maps are very helpful to engage players, but difficult to produce. The bottom line is to insert lore in the context of dramatic scenes. Example given was the Kessel Run.

Sociology studies are really helpful. What is the culture about? What are its values? Try an exercise to focus your essential lore down to only one page.

Starting in a tavern. It’s traditional, but it’s also a helpful example of how to start a campaign. The tavern a helpful microcosm of your game setting. It allows a player to get to know their character through interacting with standard tavern NPCs and tropes.

The DM can quickly and easily introduce faction tensions in the setting, preferably with a fight. Maybe the locals are hating on a greedy lord. Maybe there are miners with dreams of riches, or competing miners. Focus preferably on the central tension at this point rather than minor side quests.

You could also reveal how these townsfolk feel about adventures. Maybe they assume the adventurers are troublemakers, meddlers, etc.. Maybe there is a turf issue, the local rogues or wizards are threatened by a newcomer.

You could highlight racial tensions if they are relevant, as well as factions. So it’s a slow burn, but there is no starting goal, no immediate motivation, just talking amongst each other.

‘Adventure Hook’ – the receipt of the main quest, the discovery of the thread that the DM expects the party to follow.

About Scenario/Adventure Writing:

Avoid Pass/Fail Scenarios! Instead use heightened stakes. If a player fails a roll, need to improvise to compensate, creating heightened drama. Fail a stealth check, guard comes to investigate, or calls a friend. He doesn’t automatically catch and defeat the rogue, game is over.

Pass or die binary outcomes are not dramatic. It is OK to fail a lot and still make it through, by overcoming setbacks and inventing new ways to win. D&D is a cinematic adventure. Another alternative to a fail or die is progress at a cost, such as losing something valuable. ‘Failing forward.’

An example of increasing tension is getting spotted by a patrol. You don’t want the entire complex to be suddenly alerted. You want to prolong the tension as long as possible without going nuclear.

Railroading, Agency, and Choice. Matt’s general rule working on big games – tell player what to do, but not how. There is a difference between herding players to the prepared content, and railroading them towards an outcome that you really want to happen, which is an attack on player agency.

Skill challenges – introduced in D&D 4th Ed. Great opportunity to simulate a movie-like montage sequence or chase scene. Goal is to stimulate the players to examine their skills to creatively find a way through the sequence.

Conclusion:

That’s it for my notes from Matthew Colville’s videos, but there is a huge amount more on Youtube. (As I said, I watched dozens of hours of his content.) If you like what you see here, then check him out, especially if you are interested in the D&D flavor of game.

Thank you to whomsoever purchased a few of my books.

Please note that the first book is Down Where The Blue Violet Beauties Bloom. The book Inside The Dark Heart Of The Garden is actually book three. I need to fix my link or something, because my Smashwords profile page lists the books in the reverse order, based on when they were uploaded. They should be read in the opposite order, from bottom to top.

I was assuming people were buying “Dark Heart” because it is the most sexy-looking and has incubi, but it could also be the misleading order the books are listed. I don’t know, but it needs to be fixed.

So, about the game project. I’ve completed another full playthrough of current content, and I fixed a lot of typos and bugs. Some of those bugs only showed up when played in Spanish, or with a male character, or in Darkgame mode for example. This is a big challenge of QA for the game.

So I decided to go ahead and upload those fixes.

I was pleased that gear seemed to be working well, without noticeable glitches. A total gear handling overhaul was considered, and it’s something that might happen in the future.

I noticed that Chapter A results in some fairly high character stats. I am considering reducing stat gains after the player reaches the second Chapter B, nudging the somewhat experienced player, with some gear to select from, to start considering their gear loadout for adventures. Or I’ll need to tweak the stat gains a bit from the beginning.

The only actual content added here is a new library book: Elven Dating: Using the Modern Arts of Psychology For Success. That should be found in the in-game library under a new Psychology category.

I am still working on Outdoor Adventure C3: Return to the Town of Terror. I considered pushing for a Halloween release, but I’ve been focused on oil painting instead, while writing down my game dev ideas for when I have time.

General patch notes:

Created a formal story and character arc tracker spreadsheet, because the different stories and timelines are getting a bit complicated.

Added mouseover tooltips to the six gear slots in the character sheets. You can now see the stat breakdowns on individual pieces of gear. Ease of managing items and gearing still could use a lot of improvement.

Added C and M hotkeys for opening character sheet and map. Space bar chooses first dialogue option.

A1: Revised and reduced wordy paragraphs yet again. Added missing translations. Fixed a missing graphic.
A2: Minor typo corrections, bits of added dialog, clarifications.
A3: fixed a wand issue for female Dandelion, fixed a game-breaking conversation bug.
A4: Cut and added more paragraph breaks to wordy paragraphs. Developed character goals and motivations for Connor and Jeanie.
A5: Spanish translation corrections.
A6: Spanish translation corrections.
A7: Minor edits and typo corrections.

C1: Spent hours fixing a dizzying array of Spanish translation failures, including text variables mislabeled and therefore missing, paragraph reductions, and paragraph breaks added, which were never previously done.
C2: Translation editing and proofreading, fixed missing translations. More paragraph breaks, reduced cringiness of over-enthusiastic dialog.

D1: Spanish editing and proofreading. Fixes to egregious game-breaking bugs at the final recap conversation. Fixed broken save progress at end. This could still be polished more, including adding health bars for the monsters.

D2: fixed some typos in generated combat text. Fixed spelling of ‘liege’, and the translation to ‘señor’. Fixed broken save code. Fixed display errors of combat spell icons in Spanish first language modes.

The site went down this morning, and apparently there was a corrupted file. I’ve re-uploaded the core JS/HTML files, and this seems to have fixed the issue. If strange issues continue, then I will have to investigate the possibility that the site is being hacked.

For now I will assume the hosting and server performance is sketchy. I also uploaded the new class portraits that were missing.

I am currently plodding along on outdoor adventure C3: Return to the Town of Terror. In this adventure, you return to Queen’s Bay with Alex, and possibly Jeanie or Nimwee. You can test your spells against sea zombies that rise from the sea during a full moon, and earn bounties for each one you find and kill.

Town of Terror is meant to be a full-size late-night town adventure, with drinking, gambling, whoring, pirates and an evil plot from a well-known nemesis in the game. It’s also your chance to get to know and romance Alex if you so desire, or a succubus if that is your persuasion.

It will once again be my best module. I am also very intent on making it by far the largest adventure module. Since the main companion is Alex, a character who is very conflicted between the dark side and trying to be a whiter wizard, a major theme in the module is ethical choices.

So module C3 is a good exercise on this design topic. It will also offer the most opportunities of any module (so far) to be ethically neutral and hedonistic.

I’m still doing a lot of oil painting, but I’m sort of close to reaching my annual painting goal, so hopefully I will have time to focus more on Elven Academy in the near future. I thought that adding a completion/achievement panel would be inspiring to me (to fill it in with content), but perhaps the development perspective (in terms of overall progress) has actually been demoralizing.

This patch mainly adds B2: The Queen’s Gambit. It also adds a completion panel to the game, so you can quickly see what you’ve completed with your current character. It adds other interface improvements, like character class images, ability to press -enter- to advance the dialogues, and create your character by assigning points (i.e. a third option).

There are also lots of bug fixes and proofreading. This was three weeks of free-time work since I returned to the game, although B2 was substantially finished earlier this year. B2 is about as large as B1, plus offers a substantial branching path if you are more neutral/darkside inclined.  I’d like to improve this branch, since it’s really the first of its kind.

I’m feeling a little burned out already, but I’ve been working hard because I want to start a new module. My options are B3: a diplomacy module, C3: a pirate outdoor adventure, or D3: another dungeon. This patch introduces Outdoor Adventures to the adventure selection, as well as to the new tracker panel.

I’ll playtest on the server this weekend to look for any missing assets or other issues. Thanks for visiting.

Patch Notes:

A third character creation option is now available in module A1. You may now choose assign your own points, or randomize, or play through the full module.

Ora now asks a few organic questions about you in order to determine your character class, instead of awkwardly asking you to pick from an overwhelming list.

The six character classes now have tarot cards assigned to them, which now appear in the character sheet.

You can now press -enter- to auto-choose the first option in any dialog.

Botany Hike with Jeanie and Bird Walk with Connor now count as the first two “Outdoor Adventures” for tracking on the completion panel. Any more dedicated future romance content will be in the form of “Interludes”, and not tracked for completion or character progress.

New module cover art for Botany and Bird modules. Edited modules to correct file paths, write to savecode, which was broken, etc.

Dialog speaker mood text will now flash a highlight when their mood changes. (Will not be active yet in older modules due to referencing a newer version of the mood update function.)

Savecode manual load should now be fixed; there was an error in regular expression check.

On the other hand, the savecode was re-structured however to do the new completion panel, so old save codes will need to start a new game. Unless you want to manually edit your current save code to have 29 alphanumeric in segment 15, and an additional segment 16. Game support docs show how to hack your save code. “NAA100-FFFHFG-FFFFFH-AAAAAA-0-0-00190A0000000-AAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAAAAAA-AAAAAA-AAAAAA-AAAAAA-5222222222222222-00000000000000000000000000000-000000000“;

A completion/achieve panel for story modules and dungeons is added to the interface. This replaces the in-game console record panel, which was kind of useless. The prior save roll etc. output to this panel is now in the browser console.

Some translations fixed in the gift shop. On review, I found the gift shop needs upgrades, but isn’t hopelessly bad. I backed off of developing a new all-purpose shop panel on the main interface for now.

Fixed a few errors and links in game rules.
Fixed settings panel height.
Fixed issue with quest/review panel button.

A1: proofread Spanish.
A2: fixed discrepancy in Chary’s dorm room location
A3: proofread Spanish translation, more cuts on long paragraphs, fixed progress counter?
A4: fixed a conversation bug
A5: proofread Spanish. That translation was frankly terrible. Fixed a few other issues.
A6: proofread Spanish. Added night sounds to the Moon Tower parlor. Fixed broken Morrigan portraits.
A7: fixed typos.

B2: The Queen’s Gambit (El Gambito de la Reina) is now live on the server. It is playable to the end, but it is currently being playtested, and still needs translations of most dialogues.

C1: Fixed typos, made edits to bring Botany Hike up to current code and styling standards, fixed music, added new bird music. Improved lesbian conversations.

C2: This was just a clown fiesta. Sorry about that. Fixed many egregious typos and bugs, fixed title, tried to fix some terrible dialogue, made edits to bring Bird Walk up to current code and styling standards, fixed music, added new bird music. Improved gay dialogue a bit. Apparently this module was rushed and never tested.

I’ve taken a few months off to work on paintings, but I’m ready to return to game developing. The first step is to find out where I’m at, then sort through pages and pages of existing notes, ideas, lists of bugs, and to-do documents.

The main sticking point seems to be the overall plot for Book B. The first chapter of Book B is on the live server. The second chapter is 75% completed.

I feel the second book needs to focus on the player character’s development, especially in relation to heritage. Spoiler: it has an unsurprising derivation, i.e. OH – you’re actually the child of the all-powerful XYZ.

Is there any way to put a twist or surprise on this trope?

I suppose I could research existing stories that featured superpowered children (Baldur’s Gate comes to mind) and see how other writers handled the situation. (I have a terrible memory for stories and plots.)

I see a few people are actually checking out the game lately, so thanks. It’s a big motivation. If you have any suggestions or ideas to add, please do so on this post.

Here is my current to-do list after distilling down all of my old notes. I’m sure I’m missing some important things, and some very important things are currently listed as lower priority. I ended up resisting last year’s plans for a game download due to fear of piracy, basically. I don’t want to deal with that.

In fact, I’ve been thinking lately of a long-term plan of trying to sell my game or partner with someone who knows how to sell games and can manage distribution for me.

High Priority:

Finish module B2: The Queen’s Gambit (Yule Festival, it’s maybe 75% done).
Firm up entire plot for Book B.
Module B3: untitled Sea Voyage to the Unseelie Court, also develop assets in tandem for a pirating adventure module.
Do the diplomacy skills actually increase with use??
Romance T2 – after the first chapter is over.

Lower Priority:

***Writing/Concept/Story***

What about reversed tarot cards in the Tarot Training module?
Add quote to A2: “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato
Complete a few new library books possibly re: oil painting, Tonalism and French painting at the end of the 19th century, and/or Fin De Siecle, Belle Epoque, Victorian periods in England and France.
Work at the gift shop.
Enable option to drain companions vampirically to heal yourself.
Add a module choices (save code) review journal to your room. “I chose not to rescue the fairy.” “I slept with the Unseelie Fey.” Etc.
Need an official spell list with spell difficulties?
More weirdness in A1-A3

***Graphics And UI***

Chary still needs a crying face? (A7)
Still no Alex doll in drawer nail patch? (A7)
Do class portraits.
Gift shop items need item ports.
“Status” on character sheet could more clearly say “Base” to indicate bonus is additive.
Constantine’s Coat is missing an outfit graphic (44f and 44m)
Leonie needs upset mood portrait. (In A6 dialog 97 and elsewhere.)
Fretzel needs upset mood portrait (A6).
Panterah better sexport. (B1)
Show figures in the world more, like in an isometric game or comic book. Makes them seem real.
Chary profile party port hair fix?
A7 panterah port could be painted better, and have succubus styling?
A7 could animate the little demon when chary goes down, loc 67

***Systems/Mechanics/Balance***

Re-examine save roll bonus for staff.
Re-examine starting stats, still too high after addition of classes
Companion roll is luck + a modifier on how good the companion is?
Doing attrib gains wrong? More gain for failing?
Examine use of Hell’s Court rep, change hell’s court rep to something else?

***Coding***

Gift shop items need checks to see if already owned.
Update companion (and all NPC) adjectives to include strengths and weaknesses.
Dreams of desire for a succubus or incubus, or other addiction mechanic to home module.
Room Chair is missing in many modules
Leonie’s hearts (only Leonie) don’t seem to be updating visually on the speaker panel??
Dump jQuery.
Fix dialogues to enable more attitude changes.
Give affect with pi society for d2.
A7 quests 1 and 2 aren’t completing?
D1 needs an endMod func and modFlags?

***Sound/Music***

Sound effects for sitting at vanity and opening closet, etc.
Gift shop and other shops need sound.
More fanfare for gaining a ‘level’?
Need a dungeon theme songs and sound effects for d1 and d2.
Coin sound. And a default path to look for a sound? if it’s missing or something?
Use the recently added choir music,. and also backup music and sound folder
Affordable violin background music throughout? Cheaper than learning the violin?

***Testing/QA***

Playtest all existing modules for equal support for the three class roleplay boxes
Playtest on Firefox, etc.

***Style Guide Percolators***

Use more comic book influence in the art style – dramatic lights and darks, creative third-person perspectives.
Always need more fairies and comedy.
Show the evil, not tell about it.
Have native Spanish speakers in the game with the languages reversed.
Develop more for situations needing specific skills and clothing/gear.
More fairy hijinks.
More fun.
Being a Serpent needs to mean rebelling more.
Being good means feeling good about your actions.
More evil clowns and evil dolls.
More fighting good people who are wrong.
More creative corruption.
Connor – more poem quotes.
Sexy time with the weirdest Fey?
Menstrual blood, virgin blood, alabaster, etc. Ritual components.
It’s a relief to be around normal humans sometimes – Jeanie.
Need more elf atmosphere, a tolkein promise.
Use CONST, recall ASI = automatic semicolon insertion.

Tonight I’ve uploaded a new update for Elven Academy. This includes completed, translated, and playtested versions of module B1: Down The Rabbit Hole, and D2: The Geomancer’s Deathtrap.

These two modules took me most of 2021 to create. They contain my best writing yet, especially Down The Rabbit Hole. In this first module of Book 2, you return for more deliveries as a rabbit in the Peacock Queen’s domain.

This time you actually get to play through several deliveries, meeting various guests of the Queen. My favorite is probably the pair of elves who call themselves “sages of the fifth grade” from Avalon, who actually test your wits using standard questions at the level of “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader.”

I’m also making better use of save flags now, so your choices in B1 may come back to haunt you a bit in chapter B2: The Queen’s Gambit, which I am currently working on. This is a holiday/Yule-themed module.

I’m starting to make better use of my character templates in B2 to provide a good array of choices for the character. I’m also working hard on this module to present more ethical/moral decisions. I hope to go back to earlier modules to add more ethical/moral decisions. This really isn’t as easy as it looks.

As a reminder, my roleplay templates are Charming Good Mage/Bard, Neutral Ranger/Druid, and Cunning/Jaded Sorc/Necromancer. I know, I should have been doing this a long time ago. Each of these templates has a set of favored attributes that are used for saving rolls for respective choices as well.

On a personal note, I’m also still working diligently on oil painting, and also very depressed during the holidays. I feel I’m therefore doing acceptably well to not neglect my elf-ness in real life. I just received in the mail the book Middle English Romances, a Norton Critical Edition. I’m hoping to do some literature reading/research over the holiday days as well. This is the sort of thing Connor (in the game) is supposed to love and be a student of, so I need to research this genre so I can write him better.

I’ve abandoned playing video games lately due to finger pain, as well as my attempts to learn the violin.

Here are the full patch notes for this game update. I playtested the update just a bit on the live server and filled in some missing graphics files. There seems to be some server caching issues now on the JS files that I had to tweak, but hoping they will be cleared up tomorrow.

Patch Notes General:

Uploaded finished/updated versions of B1: Down The Rabbit Hole, and D2: The Geomancer’s Deathtrap. They still probably need more playtesting, especially in Spanish. But they should be playable to the end. D2 is a more difficult dungeon involving a number of combats, and might be quite a challenge for a weak new witch or wizard.

It appears the Spanish text still has a lot of typos and incorrect grammar throughout the game modules due to the fact that I test in English for speed and expediency. I spent some time reading through the Spanish translations and making corrections.

Restored health cost to casting spells, and enabled checks to disallow a spellcast that will zero your health pool.

Added a skip button to the intermezzo/aside/scene timeskip splash page. Skipping past skips … who has time to sit through time passage in 2021.

A1: Spanish playthrough, fixed so many embarrassing grammar errors and typos. Improved attribute telegraphing, improved dark side dialogue.

A2: Spanish playthrough, more cuts to bloated paragraphs, improved dark side dialogue.
The Divination spells are now based on Fortune attribute for Divination school, not Enchantment.
Added some poetry for Connor.
Added some roleplay coded options.
Added sound to Baralto’s Garden
Fix bug enabling becoming Connor’s girlfriend/boyfriend.

A3: Glumskayah is back to being a she-devil instead of prior change to a succubus. She will take a lower profile in Book 2 and be replaced by a succubus. Needs to attend trial for her executions of army incubi, which is seen as possibly overreaching her power by the patriarchal Hell’s Court. Her mission on the island was to set everything up, deal with all legal issues, and eliminate any opposition. With that mission accomplished, she will allow someone else to be the face of Hell’s Court.
Added some poetry for Connor.
Added references to a buried treasure on the island.

A5: Fixed various Glumskayah graphics to show an antique backpiece that silhouettes her head.

A7: Added ambient sounds to Glumskayah’s dungeon, added some module save flags. The fact that I can’t find much in this module to save as a flag for later reveals some weakness.
Added some options to flirt, to be kind, and to be rebellious.
Added some choices and fixed bugs to companion affection gains (and losses.)
Generally more work to make the module more fun and less passive.
Explained why Glumskayah trips when chasing you out of her dungeon.
Bug fixes.

B1: Additional options, Spanish edits, new music, new quest.
Fixed filepath bug preventing module completion and exit.
Fixed a few dialog inconsistencies.

D1: fixed several issues with death checking while taking damage, updated death screen.
D2: Completed the module. This is the largest and best module yet. Translated (2.5 days of work in itself.) Added new scenarios, completed the story satisfactorily. Playtested.

Notes – October 2021

In recent months I’ve been very focused on oil painting, but I’ve made time to also work on Elven Academy. I’ve done a lot of work, mainly on the second big dungeon (D2), and the first episode of Book Two. The new content isn’t finished or uploaded yet.

I’m going to have more vacation days during the upcoming holidays, however, so I wanted to review what I’ve done in recent month, and see where I’m at. Hopefully I can finish off these big projects.

But I’ve also had some health issues that put me in the hospital (again), and I could just drop dead at any time. So we’ll see what happens.

Last summer I researched a few other old similar games (besides Tunnels and Trolls) and how they play. I.e. Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf, and some Steve Jackson stuff on Steam.

Lone Wolf was the most basic of the three, with almost no graphics, but I found it to be the most engaging. The cool thing with Lone Wolf is that many of the books are free thanks to the wishes of Joe Dever, the main author. Free is a good way to get me to play. You can find them here https://www.projectaon.org/en/Main/Home

Lone Wolf allows me to skip combats by just declaring myself the winner.

A big part of Elven Academy was to create a classic game like T&T or Wizardry, but eliminate the main feature of those old games that I don’t enjoy at all, which is the combat dice rolling slogs. In fact, I never actually roll combats in Tunnels and Trolls modules. I just declare myself the winner and move on, for various reasons that you would understand if you have played T&T solo modules. I.e. you can either beat the monster, or you can’t. There isn’t much strategy.

I’ve done a lot of experimentation with a combat “system” for Elven Academy, a system that allows for just enough combat strategy and duration to make things interesting, while reducing the boring overage of rolling dice and attrition for multiple rounds. At the moment, my combats last maybe 3 to 6 rounds.

In my current dungeon project, “Geomancer’s Deathtrap”, the monsters are vulnerable to a certain type of damage. So you can gear up appropriately for the dungeon if you want. This is an important part of the gameplay in my game, and a big reason to collect different pieces of gear.

I’ve always wanted the combat in my game to be something like ‘Punch Out!’ or ‘Dragon’s Lair’, but your choice of action is more premeditated, more chess and probability calculation than game stick reflex.

I’ve considered hinting at enemy’s weakness in diplomacy in the NPC descrip words in the dialog overlay.

I’ve also worked a fair bit on organizing my Google spreadsheet tabs for style, game design, and code function references.

I’ve also decided not to do nudity – yet. It’s actually more interesting to do drawing with tease and sensual interest than overt nudity. My game is all about the throwback to the 1970s and 1980s. So I’m thinking Heavy Metal magazine and Frank Frazetta, etc. I would also like to continue to say there are a lot of romance encounters in my game, but no explicit nudity or sex.

General Updates:

The biggest update is to associate the core, basic 6 attributes with spell schools.

Agility is now Alacrity, and associated with fire spells.

Luck is now Fortune, and associated with water spells. This is an old association related to ship and sea voyages.

Alacrity, Perception (air spells), and Fortune have new character sheet graphics accordingly.

Charm and Cunning are associated with Light and Dark Enchantment.

The point of these attribute changes is to use more of the core 6 attributes, and allow them to influence various schools of magic. This move was born from trying to develop a better, more fun magic-user combat system for the game. This was caused by working on D2, the Geomancer’s Deathtrap, which has an unusually large number of combats.

Recall that the game world is a world of emotional energy underlying the physical world. From that perspective, it’s natural that your character’s personality traits would correspond to the ability to manifest that energy outside the emotional body, in the form of spells.

The side effect of this is that spells currently no longer drain your health, due to the way existing programming functions. I’m not sure how to deal with that yet.

Changed Times font on character sheet to Underwood to match the time skip font. Looks more like a game and less like a web page.

Expanded the sound source library a bit.

Simplified the Challenge Rolls to simply add two dice together, instead of multiplying by two and dividing by two. It seems to give the same algebraic result while making things even more simple for the player.

Module Updates:

A0: Fixed bug with gender swapping graphic in wardrobe?

A1: Editing pass on the Spanish translation. More edits to reduce wordiness. Added ambient sound. Fixed a bug with fairy mage selection.

A2: More editing, shorter paragraphs.

B1: Much more playtesting, ending completed, and another male romantic encounter added towards gender and straight/gay parity. More audio tracks, including nature sounds and people. Full Spanish translation (that was an entire week of work). Module is more or less completed.

D2: Much additional work, as mentioned. Odd encounters and multiple combats added. Multiple combat graphics for four combats. Created a coded combat system, and also a simple companion AI incorporated into the combat rounds. D2 now includes a gnomish gender reversal chair, if you want to change gender. There is also a battle chicken to fight. I’ve also started adding interesting encounters into the maze rooms, so the experience is a cross between a Wizardry dungeon and a Tunnels and Trolls module. I.e. you have encounters and situations in different rooms, but you are walking through a 3D maze.

In the past couple months, I’ve mostly made system improvements like classes and flags that record your choices. I’ve also nearly completed a full new module B1, “Down The Rabbit Hole.” This module sets the stage for the Chapter B storyline.

I wanted to finish B1 before uploading a new patch, but life is slamming me right now, and it might be a while.   As usual.  The classes added a lot to the game in terms of helping me develop for multiple character archetypes.

Mainly I wanted to post spring updates, and affirm that I’m still working hard on the game as time permits.

General:

Added save flags for various events in all story modules. Important NPC’s will now remember you and some of your choices in later modules.

Improved next-module signaling to player (which module is next) in the main hub (again.)

Changed isBoss character tag to use “self-affection” instead. This is handled the same way as affection from NPC’s. So you can lose or gain affection for yourself through actions. This is difficult because my interpretation of an action might be very different from the player, and it might be confusing as a system. So I’ll try to make the actions or dialogue options that affect this very clear. (I.e. very self-effacing or very egotistical choices to lose or gain a point.) A high score is interpreted by the game as a boss, an extrovert, a dominant. A low score is interpreted as a submissive, introverted character.

Created a quest map/outline to guide playthrough of the story chapters and game timeline. This is called “The Adventurer’s Guide”, and is linked at the top of the site blog.

Developed a Challenge Roll Helper. This tool allows you to calculate the percent chance of success for a Challenge Roll (CR) during your adventures. It also shows a rudimentary bell curve graph of the results. This was educational even for the developer. The difference between your attribute and the challenge rating is best seen as a percentage difference rather than an arithemetical difference.

Updated and expanded the CR section of the game rules. Translated the CRH tool into Spanish.

Corrected the current core CR algorithm. It was calculating slightly inaccurately due to a rounding issue. Adventurers will now suffer a bit more.

“Scholar” ability was changed to “Sage” ability, for a more wizardly connotation.

“Craftsman” ability was changed to “Science” ability, and then changed to “Engineer” ability, after briefly considering Artificer or Chemist as possibilities. This is meant to be a very useful dungeon skill.

The “Persuasion” diplomacy ability is adjusted to mean more of an agressive sensual persuasion, while other diplomacy abilities are different methods of persuasion. Empathy can be a gentle sensual persuasion.

The “Presence” diplomacy ability was changed to “Nobility.” This is a hint about where Chapter B is going.

Major and Minor courses of study were removed from the game. There is nowhere to display them on the character sheet, and they muddy up calculation of bonuses from gear.

Character classes were added to the game.

These are adventuring templates that encourage a player to roleplay a character. It also greatly increases the weight and engagement in character creation. It also creates structure of different character archetypes to aid in modules development.

I’m not sure I want to call them classes. Your class now appears at the top right of the character sheet, in place of the weak blurb about the lore of the current module. There are two classes with bonuses to Charm, two with Agility, and two with Cunning.

The ‘classes’ are as follows:

Fairy Wizard/Witch:  Charm, Luck, Romance, Empathy

A fairy wizard/witch has an intimate kinship with flowers and nature. Instead of fierce wildness like the druid, you are gentle and open to the magic and wonder of life. You know the source of all life is love.

Bardic Wizard/Witch: Charm, Aesthete, Romance, Persuasion

A bardic wizard/witch is often flamboyant, with a charming smile and wit. You love to travel. You incorporate music, arts, and all things beautiful and aesthetic into your magic.

Hedge Wizard/Witch: Agility, Perception, Ranger, Engineer, Mercantile

A hedge wizard/witch is an eclectic practicioner. You aren’t the best magician, but you have quickness and luck. You are also more skilled in wand-making, traps, gadgets, and potions.

Druidic Wizard/Witch: Agility, Toughness, Ranger, Intimidation

A druidic wizard/witch is at home with the animals, plants, and nature magic. You are a survivalist. You aren’t the best wizard,~witch, but your cat-like agility and bear-like toughness will get you out of many situations.

Fate Wizard/Witch: Cunning, Perception, Psychic, Deception

A fate wizard/witch sees into the weave behind all reality. You can perceive things unseen to most folk, whether those things are material, spiritual, or even evil. Your haunting visions will make you a non-conformist in polite Fey society.

High Wizard/Witch: Cunning, Toughness, Sage, Nobility

A high wizard/witch desires to be the best. They are often highly intelligent and immerse themselves in books and magical theory. They are often courtly wizards/witches of noble birth, but those tend to be cynical egotists.

Module A0:

Fixed access issue to the ‘social visit’ menu.

Made cuts to overlong paragraphs in conversation with Ora.

Updated interface for new classes, removed old lore snippets.

Module A1:

Added character classes/paths/templates to character creation, reduced Charm and Cunning points elsewhere in the module.

Module A2:

Made a substantial pass to update the module to current design standards, also refined paragraphs.
Added more humor. Fixed bugs. Reviewed romantic preferences coding, improved dialog for better roleplay.

Module A3:

Added missing quest completions and rewards.
Added save flags for interactions with Wererat, Glumskayah, Zoinks, and Knocks.

Module A4:

Uploaded two missing scene graphics on live.
More cuts to overlong paragraphs.
Added save flags for interactions with the Serpents, Jeanie, and Connor.

Module A5:

More edits, proofreading, and refining long paragraphs.
Attempts to remove passive dialogue.
Added forest music.
Added missing quest rewards and completions.

Module A6:

Minor edits.
Added save flags for declining to participate in the experiment, sleeping with Connor, sleeping with Maurette.
Increased strength of poison gas.

Module A7:

B1 was moved to be the ending module of Chapter A (creating A7).
Minor edits and proofreading.
Added player choices during stretches with no choices.
Cuts to long paragraphs.
Fixed missing animation.

Module B1:

New module is most completed and now playtesting.  It needs an ending and some fleshing out.  You return for one last time to serve as a rabbit for the Peacock Queen. This time you actually roleplay through making the deliveries. You also help Chary with a personal quest.  This module is possibly the best-written so far in terms of how I want gameplay to go.

I used to be fascinated by romance in fantasy RPG’s. I played through Baldur’s Gate 2 multiple times to experience the different romance arcs with Aerie, Jaheira, and Viconia. I’m happy that Baldur’s Gate 3 is continuing in that tradition.

I recruited Fall From Grace in Planescape: Torment just for her backstory and attractiveness. I completed romance stories in Skyrim and Dragon Age.

I was very disappointed when SWTOR pulled romance out of their game at launch. I was disappointed more recently that Planescape: Tides offered no romance arcs, especially since the lead writer was an erotica writer.

I was also disappointed that a real romance arc was not offered in Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, especially since The Witcher has such legendary writing in this regard.

Recently I’ve considered taking my game project in a more R-rated direction, so I researched the Book of Erotic Fantasy. It is a very old D&D supplement under the OGL v1.0a. Here are my notes and reactions from the reading. Another, more exhaustive treatment is found here.

Basically, most of this text just doesn’t merit a deep analysis from where I’m at, so let’s look mostly at the gems.

Review of the Book of Erotic Fantasy

The BoEF is broken into seven chapters: Love, Sex, and Roleplaying, Rules, Skills, and Feats, Base and Prestige Classes, Magic, Items, and Adventures and Organizations.

Most of the book consists of lists of spells, classes, creatures, and magical items for your adventure campaign. There is a list of 100 “Adventure Ideas”, but a lot of these ideas boil down to just “something happened”. The something is often: “it happened, good to know”, or “someone is raping and must be stopped.”

A few ideas were cute and doable, however, like the band of halflings that challenge the adventurers to a game of sexual endurance.

Humor was one of the main takeaways from this elder tome. Sex has always gone hand in hand with humor, and therein lies its most valuable asset, since we do play these games to have fun. So why isn’t sex more prominent in RPG’s? Here is my take on the problems.

• Sex and romance offer poor gameplay. (Roll dice to see whether you have an orgasm, etc. is just lame.)
• It doesn’t advance the main story.
• It often doesn’t develop character unless done very well.
• If used as a final reward to a story arc, it loses its ability to advance a story arc.

If we don’t boil sex down to just a reward, like banging the prince after you save him, then there are good reasons to have it: develop a character (NPC or PC), and advance a plot. Romantic titillation and roleplay in themselves are also valid, but not as powerful.

The BoEF touches on these issues in a few actually insightful paragraphs sprinkled into the text. Plot, character, and humor. I was disappointed in the “adventure ideas”, so I wrote some of my own, broken down into the categories where sex can actually be best used. Here are my starter lists that I brainstormed in an hour.

Ideas to develop a non-player character. The NPC:

• Reveals something about the racial sexual customs in an interracial experience, possibly amusing.
• Reveals poor character, i.e. implies it’s free, but now wants money, has a boss to threaten the PC with.
• Reveals they are surprisingly the opposite personality in bed.
• Reveals they are deeply vulnerable in some way, emotionally needy for some reason.
• Reveals they have secrets on the pillow, i.e. this was the point of seducing the PC.
• Reveals tattoos that tell a story about past deeds, exploits, beliefs, mottos.
• Reveals tattoos or marks that indicate of a gang, a cult, physical abuse, sex work.
• Reveals a prosthetic limb, an implant, a welded cuff or a collar suggesting wounds or an owner.
• Reveals deformities, fur, or other evidence of non-human crossbreeding in family.
• Reveals they are a shapeshifter or have an enchanted form, i.e. a dragon or someone really hideous.
• Reveals they have a husband/wife/someone else really jealous.
• Reveals they have a fetish, must have something specific to become aroused.
• Reveals they have an STD. Sexual transmitted diseases are just not fun, unless you’re using them just to whimsically punish a player for fun. It could be used as a consequence of a failed saving roll, however.
• Reveals they are conflicted about sex, they were trying to be chaste, etc.
• Reveals they were a virgin, and now you’re in big trouble with someone or something.

Ideas to develop the player character. The PC:

• Is allowed an actual love romance that leads to a long term relationship.
• Is then allowed to recruit a henchman or henchwoman that provides perks in a relationship, or even bring them along on adventures.
• Is allowed to feel powerful.
• Is allowed to feel powerful by submitting.
• Is allowed to be a prostitute for money, themselves.
• Is allowed to use character skills in new and creative ways, if the sex scene is gameplayed.
• In forming a relationship, creates conflict in terms of faithfulness, promises, and infidelity.
• Offers a roleplay path to retiring a character to the married life in a castle, and possibly children which can form a new adventuring party.

Ideas to advance a plot through the NPC. The NPC:

• Sleeps with the PC, but then falls more for another member of the party.
• Is trying to use sex because they want something from the PC.
• Is using the PC as an alibi for something.
• Actually dies in the PC’s arms, leading to accusations of murder, or demonic possession.
• Incapacitates the PC to steal a map, a book, treasure, horse, sword, etc.
• Reveals a quest on the pillow. PC can offer help, or can try to get to the treasure first.
• Insists that according to their cultural laws, they are now married to the PC (Firefly, etc.)
• Reveals a life-threatening situation they are in, and their desperation for help.
• Is trying to persuade the PC to join a cult, sex club, etc.. This leads to quests.

In many of these cases, the primary question becomes: what does the NPC want? If you establish powerful wants on the part of the NPC who the PC is having sex with, good writing naturally flows from it. This is hard though, and I’ve failed at this to some extent.

It may also help to ask, if the NPC is a possible romantic interest, then who or what are the attracted to, and why? This can also reveal a lot of character.

A big sticking point to incorporating all of these ideas is the gender-locked nature of the gameplay. To incorporate romantic encounters at important points in your plot, you would almost need to have a gender locked protagonist.

Or you would have to “cheat” and change the gender of the NPC to the opposite of your PC, and then assume the PC is straight. What a mess. Maybe that in itself is a big reason why romance isn’t used much in a meaningful way in RPG’s, and why the Witcher franchise seems to stand so tall in this capacity. (I haven’t played the Witcher games personally due to not liking to play male protagonists.)

The BoEF also touched on the idea of “ratings”. I’ve been grappling with that lately myself. Here are the proposed ratings, which are the American scale of course:

PG-13 – Deals with mature subjects including sex, but without explicit scenes or descriptions. Love, flirting, and seduction are all acceptable, but the actual sex occurs offstage.

R – Nudity and sexual situations are common, although level of detail stops at gratuitous details that could be described as pornographic.

Other useful points from the Book of Erotic Fantasy:

BDSM is now mainstream, not a fetish or taboo. Clubs have BDSM nights, it’s a fixture in the fashion industry. Love between Human and non-human (Vampires and Werewolves) is also mainstream.

Assigning an alignment to a type of lover is interesting to help a player to play their character.

Assigning an alignment to an entire society is also useful. The alignment becomes a sort of shorthand for thinking about sex norms in different societies and regions of the game setting.

Not so useful points:

Some things in the book are just silly. A “masterwork” condom, for example.

I also wasn’t a huge fan of the photos, but they’re OK. Consistent, quality artwork throughout would have been very expensive and time-consuming most likely.

Tantrist, Kundalini. I strongly disagree with using real-world Earth terms like this in a D&D setting. These come from Hindu and Tibetan religions. Maybe the authors were trying to be non-specific in terms of campaign setting, but this is just worse.

I skimmed the ‘bestiary’ in the BoEF, which did not really interest me, as my campaign setting is well-developed, for better or worse. Some interesting entries, however, were the half-devil, half-giant, and pleasure golem.

That’s about all for my reactions and notes on this thick, lengthy tome of erotic treasures. It’s well-worth a perusal, and I find myself curious about trying to design some erotic gameplay. The sections of the book dedicated to gameplay, like the mini-scenario at the end, seemed very short of practical examples.

The book lists play-testers in the credits page. I’d like to hear their feedback. Because honestly a lot of this could boil down to the vanilla D&D rules, but spiced up with adventures in brothels. And how do you ‘succeed’ at a sexual encounter? How would this work?

1. Simply getting the NPC naked and/or into a compromising situation is enough to complete many character developments or plot advancements.

2. Physical success (Agility, Toughness, Romance (techniques), Engineering (toys, ropes, who knows)): pleased your lover X times, resulting in advancement or quest success.

3. Emotional success: (Empathy, Psychic) need to achieve some kind of intimacy to solve the puzzle and advance. Physical skills don’t matter.

4. The opposite of #1, the NPC getting the PC naked and into a compromising situation is enough to slip the PC a pill or wake up tied to the bed, etc. and move the plot forward.

If your plot hinges on this encounter, the design concept of “Failure with Consequences” might be useful. You moved the plot and achieved your goals, but failure on your rolls means the success is only partial, or you received no extra reward or treasure, or something bad happened, but you still moved forward on a technicality.

That’s all for my reactions to this book. Good luck, and happy gaming.