Guest Post: Henchgirl's awesome new Two-Face RPG, featuring EVERYBODY
So some time back, I was toying with the idea of doing a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story with Two-Face where you could flip a coin to decide where to go. I came up will all sorts of scenarios involving a full cast of rogues and supporting characters, and I even had visions of publishing it and including a coin.
Then I started thinking about how to maybe doing an old-school text adventure version that would actually flip the coin for you, which would not only have made each game different but it would have also given players an understanding of what it's like to be be Harvey. That was one of my big goals here besides the gimmick: to really show people just how much choice Harvey does and doesn't have from situation to situation.
Well, of course, real life for the past couple years has been such that it's taking me longer and longer to even write posts for this blog, much less commit to any personal projects, so this lofty idea fell to the wayside. That is, until Henchgirl brought it back to life in a way that's most unexpected and utterly, utterly awesome. I'll let her fill you in:
I make neat stuff
So, Hal's had a really nasty fever going on for the past four-ish days, resulting in calls to doctors and emergency room visits and suchlike. He's much better today than he was even yesterday, but we're all really worn out and he's still cranky and snuffly.
Anyway. As always when he's sick, we're up all night keeping an eye on him. I can't usually make terribly coherent thoughts when I'm this sleep deprived, which is always made worse by the pain I'm always in because my body is suck, so I always fall back on diddling around with things that don't take much brain power to keep me busy during the long, exhausting night shifts.
SO I'VE BEEN MAKING AN RPG, YOU GUYS.
AND OF COURSE IT'S BAT-MANNY.
Actually, it's Two-Face-y, because it's going to be Boy's Christmas present. You are Harvey Dent, making game changing choices at the flip of a coin! When a riot breaks out in Arkham, will you help the guards or the inmates? Will you kill or just subdue? Wind up in solitary or wind up being released for good behavior? Every choice changes the outcome of your story.
(I can't stress how many different directions this thing goes already. I'm only about twenty minutes of play into the game and there are at least six different outcomes so far, which lead into even more. Right now, my story flowchart is on notebook paper, but I'm proooobably going to need poster board before this is through.)
It's fairly dialogue heavy and character based so far, because, you know, it's me writing it. This gives me a lot of creative freedom that I'm needing right now. With the baby always needing attention, I get maybe five minutes of work-time for anything I sit down to write. If I'm writing prose, I'm constantly being yanked out of the sentence I'm trying to form, which results in losing my train of thought and forgetting where the hell I was going--the writerly equivalent of blue balls--but with this, I can just punch out a short scene, go take care of whatever needs taking care of and then pick up where I left off.
Other Gotham rogues can join your party based on the decisions you make throughout the game. So far you can hook up with Ivy, Scarecrow and the Riddler, but there are many, MANY more to come. Also, if you choose one over the others, it changes which villains (bosses) and lairs (dungeons) you'll face down the line.
YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE DOING THE MAZE OF THE MINOTAUR THAT I'M DESIGNING, I'M TELLING YOU.
Get any riddle wrong and you'll be dumped back at the entrance, forcing you to start all over again. Because I'm horrible like that.
Look! Eddums!
My favorite part of the system thus far is the coin flip. At various points in the game, you get to make a "good" choice or a "bad" choice, just like Harvey! I suppose, ideally, you'd be playing with an actual coin and leaving the whole thing up to chance, but it's more choose-your-own-adventure at this stage, for the sake of variety.
And of course, another great thing about this is that I can give just about anybody a cameo if I want to. Roxy Rocket? Hell yes. Zsasz, Lock-Up, Ventriloquist? Mhmmm.
Oh, and...
Yeah. You can walk in on Captain, Al and Techie hustling some guy at poker.
So. Yeah. This will be eating up what little time I don't use for writing actual stuff and being a house-wench.
(I guess "housewife" just doesn't work for me...?)
And of course, as a little self-centered side project...
Catwoman RPG!
I'll probably take two years to finish these, knowing the way my life goes (ask me about the cartoon I've been animating for ten years!), but holy crap, it's gonna be awesoooome.
So yeah, we're working together on plotting it out. As she puts it, I'm the Giffen and she's the DeMatteis. Definitely works for me! So yes, if we do manage to pull this off, you can bet that you folks will be among the first to know!
Then I started thinking about how to maybe doing an old-school text adventure version that would actually flip the coin for you, which would not only have made each game different but it would have also given players an understanding of what it's like to be be Harvey. That was one of my big goals here besides the gimmick: to really show people just how much choice Harvey does and doesn't have from situation to situation.
Well, of course, real life for the past couple years has been such that it's taking me longer and longer to even write posts for this blog, much less commit to any personal projects, so this lofty idea fell to the wayside. That is, until Henchgirl brought it back to life in a way that's most unexpected and utterly, utterly awesome. I'll let her fill you in:
I make neat stuff
So, Hal's had a really nasty fever going on for the past four-ish days, resulting in calls to doctors and emergency room visits and suchlike. He's much better today than he was even yesterday, but we're all really worn out and he's still cranky and snuffly.
Anyway. As always when he's sick, we're up all night keeping an eye on him. I can't usually make terribly coherent thoughts when I'm this sleep deprived, which is always made worse by the pain I'm always in because my body is suck, so I always fall back on diddling around with things that don't take much brain power to keep me busy during the long, exhausting night shifts.
SO I'VE BEEN MAKING AN RPG, YOU GUYS.
AND OF COURSE IT'S BAT-MANNY.
Actually, it's Two-Face-y, because it's going to be Boy's Christmas present. You are Harvey Dent, making game changing choices at the flip of a coin! When a riot breaks out in Arkham, will you help the guards or the inmates? Will you kill or just subdue? Wind up in solitary or wind up being released for good behavior? Every choice changes the outcome of your story.
(I can't stress how many different directions this thing goes already. I'm only about twenty minutes of play into the game and there are at least six different outcomes so far, which lead into even more. Right now, my story flowchart is on notebook paper, but I'm proooobably going to need poster board before this is through.)
It's fairly dialogue heavy and character based so far, because, you know, it's me writing it. This gives me a lot of creative freedom that I'm needing right now. With the baby always needing attention, I get maybe five minutes of work-time for anything I sit down to write. If I'm writing prose, I'm constantly being yanked out of the sentence I'm trying to form, which results in losing my train of thought and forgetting where the hell I was going--the writerly equivalent of blue balls--but with this, I can just punch out a short scene, go take care of whatever needs taking care of and then pick up where I left off.
Other Gotham rogues can join your party based on the decisions you make throughout the game. So far you can hook up with Ivy, Scarecrow and the Riddler, but there are many, MANY more to come. Also, if you choose one over the others, it changes which villains (bosses) and lairs (dungeons) you'll face down the line.
YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE DOING THE MAZE OF THE MINOTAUR THAT I'M DESIGNING, I'M TELLING YOU.
Get any riddle wrong and you'll be dumped back at the entrance, forcing you to start all over again. Because I'm horrible like that.
Look! Eddums!
My favorite part of the system thus far is the coin flip. At various points in the game, you get to make a "good" choice or a "bad" choice, just like Harvey! I suppose, ideally, you'd be playing with an actual coin and leaving the whole thing up to chance, but it's more choose-your-own-adventure at this stage, for the sake of variety.
And of course, another great thing about this is that I can give just about anybody a cameo if I want to. Roxy Rocket? Hell yes. Zsasz, Lock-Up, Ventriloquist? Mhmmm.
Oh, and...
Yeah. You can walk in on Captain, Al and Techie hustling some guy at poker.
So. Yeah. This will be eating up what little time I don't use for writing actual stuff and being a house-wench.
(I guess "housewife" just doesn't work for me...?)
And of course, as a little self-centered side project...
Catwoman RPG!
I'll probably take two years to finish these, knowing the way my life goes (ask me about the cartoon I've been animating for ten years!), but holy crap, it's gonna be awesoooome.
So yeah, we're working together on plotting it out. As she puts it, I'm the Giffen and she's the DeMatteis. Definitely works for me! So yes, if we do manage to pull this off, you can bet that you folks will be among the first to know!