Machinations of Amirus Intro+Act 1 Postmortem*

February 2, 2024

*Does it really count as "mortem" if only like 1/3 of the game is out? I don't know but I'm sure going to post about it!

About 6 months ago I put out the intro and first act of a visual novel, Machinations of Amirus. (It's free and will take you about an hour if you want to run through it before reading this. I am simply not going to worry about spoilers, either for Act 1 or for my plans for Act 2/3 going forward.) My goal here is to think out loud about what I was intending to do, what I did, what works in my opinion, what could be improved within the confines of this basically-a-first-draft, and what's worth keeping an eye on going forward.

Adapting Machinations of Court and Frame to a VN-ish format

July 2, 2023

For @liananana's Narrat Jam 2, I'm poking my ideas for a political, intrigue-based mecha game that cares deeply about ties between people with power into a little linear VN storyline. A TTRPG designed for PVP troupe-level play is pretty different from a story following one person! So I'm gonna think out loud about what I'm changing and why.

Ah no I'm writing another dicelessness article by accident oh god help

Off the bat, one of the technological aspects I ran into is that Narrat is very particular about skill rolls. They're binary in nature, you have to define how they work up front, and you don't get the roll value on a check, just pass/fail.