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Dev Log #3

Continuing to beaver away at scenarios and enjoying exploring the variety of relationships with the Druid and the Crone, the two recurring characters who are consistent through the phases. I originally wanted to have the Druid play a greater role, even with a special ending, but it made the mechanics really muddied. For the sake of making the game easier to play, I decided to keep the Druid (and later the Crone) as scenario options.

Additionally, I whipped up a quick bit of art for the cover page. I'm not a visual artist by trade, so its very rudimentary but something is better than nothing!

I'd also like to talk about a bit out inspiration!

I decided to take the cycles theme to heart and use the cycle of the moon phases as the core gameplay loop. The idea of being a werewolf who is managing life to avoid a disastrous transformation on the full moon was inspired by a game called Don't Escape by Scriptwelder. In that game, you play as a werewolf on the day of a full moon in a cabin in the woods. You have to solve point-and-click puzzles to lock yourself in and prevent your werewolf form from getting to the nearby town. As you can see, I cribbed the idea from that game. I don't know why, but that little point and point-and-click game has just lodged itself into my brain and never quite left. I'm glad to finally have an outlet for that little muse.

Dev Log #2!

After consideration, I've went ahead and changed the moon phases to only include 3 scenarios each. This should help keep the scope of the game manageable and make it more likely I can hit my stretch ideas. Additionally, I've decided to make the New Moon phase a special one where the player gets to choose one of three scenarios to work on a character score of their choice. This should add some more player agency in the events, and prompt the player to reflect a little bit on how they've developed their story and character.

I got more work done on the scenarios, too! Slowly chipping away at them. With the reduced workload per each phase, its easier for me to start one scenario, then feel compelled to sprint to finish the other two since I'm already 1/3rd the way done. I also made a table for the scenarios rolling, so they all fit on one page. My plan is to figure out how I can reduce the amount of pages to the absolutely strictly needed amount, to make the game easier to access for more kinds of players.

 For today though, I will be playing a solo TTRPG called Tangled Blessings in order to fuel my creativity and inspire my writing, plus get some more insight into the medium. I'll be posting my whole playthru on my tumblr and crossposting to twitter!

Starting late but I'm confident I can finish in time! 

I'm developing a solo, journaling TRPG called The Moonlit Lodge for this game jam. In the game, players take on the role of a werewolf who must manage their emotions and basic needs throughout the month before their next transformation. Throughout the 7 phases of the game, the player will encounter other beings such as the Druid, hunt down their next meal, and even deal with the more sinister side of the woods they live in. At the end of the month, the player will tally up their current statistics, and make final rolls to determine how the transformation night goes.

Alternatively, players who are not interested in using random dice rolls to determine their game path can simply pick whichever scenario and action they think looks most interesting.

My primary three goals are to understand how to craft a small scale, single player TRPG, how to create usable character sheets, and learn how to format the PDF well, if I have time.

I made a trello last night to track everything I need to do! I pared things down to the critical components for the most part, and if time ends up getting away from me, I may shift from 7 phases down to 3, using only the quarter and new moons. I can also halve the amount of scenario options for each phase instead, if that seems feasible.

And today I made my first full scenario set! Its not pretty, but I'm saving full formatting for the end.