Here's where I stuff my page drafts and occasional troping rambles. Warning: This is a hard hat zone!
Had a weird dream last night someone was stalking me and vandalizing pages I'd worked on...
Had another weird dream that giant insect kaiju from space with powers of decay were attacking Earth's major metropolitan centers, with London and Stockholm specifically called out...
Testing edit reasons now.
N💧pe, N💧pe
"Idk what country 🏳️⚧️ is but yugioh must be pretty popular over there" -this tweet
PS: All my unlaunched work drafts are Up for Grabs if anyone wants to use them. Here, have some links so you can find this via the "Related" option: Poinie's Poin,
A board game in which the player progresses through a defined story as they play.
Many board games do not have stories. Either they are totally abstract collections of rules, such as checkers or backgammon, or they have a thematic a Framing Device used to help the player understand the mechanics of the game, such as Clue/Cluedo. And while there are many Tabletop Games with overarching plots set within the universe of the game, such as Dungeons & Dragons or Magic: The Gathering having tie-in novels, the player does not generally play through the stories of those novels when they play the game.
In a Narrative Board Game, however, the game has a plot, and the act of playing the game takes the players through the story the developers have crafted. Some games have multiple different scenarios the player can play through, with each one having slightly different rules and setup, to give the player several possible experiences. Others string a series of smaller games together into a larger campaign, with the outcome of one game potentially affecting the next. There are several ways board games can tell a story:
- The game makes heavy use of Flavor Text, both to set the scene and to contextualize what the players are doing. Many narrative games open with a few paragraphs describing the setting of the game and the players' overall goal. Similarly, the actions a player takes in the real world might have text describing what effect those actions have in the game: A player might just be rolling a six-sided die and trying to get a 4 or higher, but according to the game, they're trying to pick a booby-trapped lock. Many narrative games have either large companion books the players read from, similar to a Gamebook, or apps that serve the same purpose.
- The game has points where the players are required to make a choice or pass some kind of test, with the gameplay diverging depending on their choice. For example, in a detective game, the players might have to choose whether or not to accept a favor from a mobster. Accepting the favor might make the game easier right away, but harder when he comes to collect on the favor later on. Similarly, if the player fails to pick that booby-trapped lock, a bomb might go off and the door might collapse, forcing the player to use another method to progress.
- The game has Multiple Endings depending on how the player(s) did. If the players fail, there may be multiple different failure states depending on how they failed; there might be one ending for all characters dying vs. another ending for making a lot of obviously bad choices. Similarly, there may be a Golden Ending for players who do an exceptionally good job, which usually means passing very difficult tests or overcoming other especially hard challenges.
This style of game is an evolutionary offshoot of classic Tabletop RPGs. Many such tabletop role-playing games included pre-made scenarios for the players to enjoy, but still needed a Game Master to control them, both to make choices about the direction of the campaign and to improvise if the players went Off the Rails. In narrative games, the "Game Master" is usually the game itself, providing the player(s) with a restricted number of choices (so they must stay within the confines of the story) while still providing varying paths for the players to explore. Narrative games can be used to give players the "feel" of a classic Tabletop RPG without the complicated rules, extended setup times, or need to have one player sit out to GM—or just to create an especially immersive experience.
Note: This is intended as a Supertrope that will later include subtropes for Legacy Game and Campaign Game. If the examples list looks a little bare right now, it's because I'm reserving some entries that better fit in either of those categories. If/when this launches, Maths Angelic Version and I intend to template those two up right away and launch them quickly, then add the standard supertrope disclaimer of "please check these two tropes to see if it better fits there before adding it here" disclaimer.
Examples: [currently just a list of titles because this is a draft for collabing with MAV, will fill these out once we like the look of the description draft]
- Arkham Horror games
- Detective: City of Angels
- Waste Knights
- Sleeping Gods
- Shards of Infinity expansion
[[/folder]]
The game takes place in the bright and colorful town of Jelly Town, which is full of colorful, bouncy floating orbs called poins. When ordinary people touch poins, it causes them to undergo a temporary and harmless change in emotions: Yellow poins cause happiness, blue poins cause sadness, and red poins cause anger. The hero, Poinie, is a hyperactive toddler who is pure (and, uh, stupid) of heart enough to be able to manipulate poins instead of being affected by them.
One day, Poinie wanders away from home, and, since he's a small child, he doesn't know how to get back. While looking for someone to help him, he discovers a girl named Lilin being chased by a girl named Lolo. Lolo is a bully who's using poisonous Poins to change the feelings of people all over Jelly Town. Now it's up to Poinie to use the Poins to change their feelings back... even if all he wants is help getting back home. He'll have the help of Lilin, a talking, duck-faced poin just called Poin, and all of Jelly Town's Eccentric Townsfolk.
The game is a 3D Puzzle Platformer where Poinie must use the Poins to help people who have had their emotions poisoned by Lolo. By changing the moods of the characters he meets, he can have an effect on the environment, such as causing an angry character to knock over a tree to make a bridge, or making a sad character cry on a plant to make it grow. The game also has a large focus on boss fights, which require the player to figure out what emotions to make a boss feel to "defeat" them.
Notably, despite the game being Japan-exclusive, the game contains a full English script and dub! The script was written and produced by the same team behind the Japanese dub of South Park, so as you might expect, it's surprisingly vulgar.
This work contains examples of:
- Adorable Evil Minions: Lolo's minions, the Hellneows, are adorable evil cats.
- Ambiguously Human: Just what is Poinie? He looks somewhat humanoid, but his lavender-colored skin and giant red nose make him look less so. Plus, there are several NPCs clearly meant to be humans, and Poinie doesn't look like them. It's eventually revealed that he's an alien.
- Boss Game: A downplayed example. There's plenty of platforming and a big hub world, but the boss fights are a big focus of the game.
- Cartoon Creature: Many of the inhabitants of Jelly Town are these. Poinie himself seems to be some kind of... clown person...? Not all, though.
- Catchphrase: The game is swimming in them.
- Poinie: "Yippee yo! You can't touch this!"
- Poin: "Hey, green! Either pee or get off the pot!"
- Lolo: "Nanny nanny boo boo!"
- Bon Jo Vie: "Love and Soul de Relax!"
- Cool Big Sis: Lilin, who helps Poinie learn to use poins and generally looks after him.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Poin (the character) is a living poin.
- Expy:
- Poin both sounds and acts like Cartman, which isn't surprising considering the Japanese South Park dub team did the English version.
- The way Pillow talks, in short, disconnected sentences, many of which are pop culture references, is very like that of the Butterfly from The Last Unicorn.
- Heart Container: Golden Eclairs increase Poinie's life bar.
- Kid Hero: Poinie is so young he can't even read and needs Poin to read signs for him, but he's still saving Jelly Town.
- Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Pillow. Everyone thinks Pillow knows everything, and while it's true he does have some knowledge, if he doesn't know something, he'll blatantly make up an answer.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Jelly Town has Funny Animal residents (such as Pillow the duck and the Hellneows), human residents (such as Lilin and several NPCs), and Cartoon Creature residents, as well.
- Ocular Gushers: Characters using blue poins will often have these. In some puzzles, you even use them to fill puddles and water plants.
- Puzzle Boss: Many of the bosses have some puzzle elements, as you'll need to figure out the right-colored poins to hit them with to counter their emotions. But perhaps the most puzzly is Jack, who is angry because all the water in his lake dried up. Rather than defeat him, you must figure out how to refill his lake.
- Quirky Town: Jelly Town. Even without the poins floating around, the inhabitants aren't quite all there.
- Trademark Favorite Food: Poinie loves all kinds of donuts, but especially eclairs.
- Verbal Tic:
- The Henchies have one, oh yes they do. They always end their sentences with confirmations, oh yes they do.
- The Jungalians MOKYU have one, too!
