MOABS third draft
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Hi guys! Last week I finished a third draft of the design doc I’m working on, the Mother Of All Beat Sheets (MOABS).
This was always my fear too. But the results are just so exciting! Like I said last week,
significant improvements are on the way. I’m psyched about getting them out to you ASAP.
By its nature, the MOABS is full of spoilers (including plot twists), so I’m trying to limit who has to see it (and end up having their game spoiled). But some selfless contributors have seen early versions.
With the third draft, the MOABS is roughly complete; we now have a (very) detailed outline of story beats to implement. The existing Bangkok structure has been kept – but we’re moving around some events, introducing a few new locations, and bringing forward the introduction of some important NPCs (and an organised crime subplot stolen fro...I mean
inspired by Johnnie To, which the heroine will get sucked into). The overall aim is to pack out each episode with more variety and more for her
to do (instead of being passively led through the story by NPCs). I think you’re gonna love it!
Next steps
What’s left is some fine tuning. The structural changes have created some continuity and characterisation issues. (For example, Connor’s role in sexualising the heroine has now been spread out across a few different NPCs, which is a big improvement for the player – but that’s left his story role feeling a little inconsistent, so I want to work in a few extra story beats to handle that. Also the heroine’s friendship with the bargirls requires a little more bonding time than is currently planned in the MOABS, so I want to squeeze in some “friendship mini-quests” to make that feel believable. That kind of thing; technical story stuff.)
Workflow
The MOABS has now become so big that it’s actually kind of hard to visualise. I’ve put together a calendar of story beats allowing me to easily move things around and visualise where the story beats we need can be inserted.
I took a break from it to write this report, but I’m itching to get back to it!
While I’m working on this, our illustrator lovely
Victoria is working on a few avatar improvements that we’ll roll out as part of the reintroduced Lifepath. (More info on that will be released in a little bit.)
Okay, thanks for reading, guys, I’m gonna eat lunch and get back to work! ❤
TL;DR Same as always.