Rules of Awareness.
Something I came up with and started thinking about earlier today, regarding this project. This is more of a ramble as well as information about the project itself, rather than a progress report.
When I first posted this thread there was an initial bit of backlash over the project being just another mindless parody RPG with no thought to it, and trying to hard for cheap laughs. That really wasn't what it is about, but I do believe I might have brought it upon myself. Initially, Palasiel Quest was planned out to be a web-comic, and the main characters had totally different personalities and ticks to the ones they do now, and when I decided to make it into an RPG Maker game, I still had that mindset of a webcomic carried over, which is why I kept emphasizing the parody part of it.
Palasiel Quest has since evolved from that over the months of development and has started to become it's own RPG...almost. One of the key things about it are having Rules of Awareness.
For those that don't know, Palasiel Quest is about 5 young people from the real world being spirited away to world of Palasiel, an RPG world. Where RoA is involved is asking yourself: "How aware are these characters? To what extent do they know that they are in an RPG? How aware are the NPCs?".
I think this plays a key part in how engaged a player might be with either the character(s), story, or the setting. The 5 main characters are most aware, but they will never be so aware that they KNOW they are being played by the player. They will also never be aware of things such as BGM changes (unless of course the music is in-scene), or tileset changes and then comment upon them. They WILL, however, comment upon changes in the scenery and comment about the creation of the place.
I think I get just a little bit of leeway with this since because of a character called "The Creator". He is the person who introduces the game, the one who brought the main characters to Palasiel and is essentially the personified character of the developer, i.e me). He acts as a guide to Daran for the first parts of the game, before returning to simply overseeing the going-ons in Palasiel as well as pop up every now and again for some hints or banter. The main characters know that Palasiel is a world that's been created, by The Creator.
Those are the Rules of Awareness I have set for the 5 main characters.
As for everyone else, the NPCs. How aware are they? Do they know that they're in an RPG world? No, they don't. However most will act like NPC would/should. Their level of awareness only reaches the point of which they think that Palasiel is the only world there is. While a few will make remarks to certain RPG-esque happenings, the way they actually portray these remarks (through dialogue or whatnot) will always be within the boundaries of their awareness level.
What will be interesting about the 5 main characters is their familiarity with RPGs. In the original concept, back when I wanted it to be a webcomic years ago, all the characters had played RPGs before and therefore knew most things about them. While Palasiel Quest will cover some common tropes and clichés, they will either be played straight, or deconstructed. Palasiel Quest will never try to make a joke out of everything. Writing comedy is hard as hell, anyway. Daran, the main protagonist, isn't COMPLETELY familiar with RPGs. You'll find that he's played a Kingdom Hearts there, and maybe a Final Fantasy title or two. Ariel, his side kick, LOVES RPGs and plays them regularly. She is the one who will know her stuff.Same goes for Opal, fifth main character. Keon and Sanya, have never played an RPG before and their lives and it should be interesting to see how they cope in the RPG world, especially with players playing as Daran who isn't all that familiar with them, so he'll be finding out stuff about Palasiel at the same pace the players will.
Again, sorry. Not much of an update. Just me rambling on at 1am. I actually have to do about 2 weeks work all over again, because I had a harddrive failure and lost everything, but I had a backup on Dropbox which isn't too far back. All I have to do is replace all the facesets with the portraits I have, and insert on characters voices for about 2 scenes and that's it. So progress had been halted for the past 2 weeks.
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Also thank you for the support, Pokeymon. I think maybe my post might help alleviate some of the initial concerns people may have (had).
