Behind the Scenes: An Outline Old as Time

I was digging around in some of my old Wayfarer folders and came across one from June 2020 (almost 5 years ago now wow). I can tell how old it is without looking at the date because of the font I was using and also that I hadn’t switched to working in dark mode yet. What I was trying to put together at the time was a list of different elements I wanted in the character creator, and there are some surprising similarities and differences between what I was thinking of then and what I have now. 

CC’s are weird, especially in interactive fiction where there is no visual component. Appearance is still important though, and you almost have to be more specific about it because if it’s going to play a role at all and not be something that the player selects and then forgets about, you have to decide how those elements are going to be referenced in the text and what they add to it. Outside of appearance, CC’s are also weird because you need to decide what is and is not important. You can get infinitely more and more specific, but more specificity does not necessarily make a good CC unless it has some kind of use. 

My original notes—called “act 1 outline” and yet failed to go over more than basic CC ideas—are a bit funny because they’re both specific and not.

Two things jump out to me here. 

At one point, I seem to have been playing with how to name the MC. I think it’s interesting that I seemed to want to make the MC’s surname static, something that the player could not adjust, and their surname would depend on who their mentor was. I got rid of this idea early on (I don’t even remember this note) since IF is the one place where player inputted names can really shine because everything is text. There is no reason not to let the player name their character in a game like this. But what I do remember is the moment when I added in the option for the MC to take their mentor’s surname. This wasn’t in the first demo (prologue + a portion of episode 1), but I remember the fan discussion in the Discord server surrounding it and there was enough instances of people either wishing their MC could have the same surname as their mentor, or specifically inputting it so they could roleplay like they did. I decided to add it as a CC feature that has gameplay consequences since it was such a popular idea. 

This is extra funny to me because before I ever gave the Wayfarer Grandmaster a name, Amali Sero was on a list of default human names. Brissa Varyn’s surname was also once Aderyn, which I think is still an optional default surname in the existing game.   

The second thing that jumps out to me is this idea of choosing the MC’s age, with different perks depending on “experience level” (I guess my justification would be the older the MC is, the more experience they have, therefore the better Wayfarer they are… or something like that?). I remember considering this as a way to confront the age differences between different ancestries in the game—elves and dwarves live longer than humans (melusine and aeda heritage were not an option for the player character at this time). But I remember this getting a little finnicky to deal with especially as Aeran’s role grew and it became very important that he and the MC were around the same age. If the player can choose the MC’s age and Aeran needs to be the same age as the MC so they can train together, then Aeran’s timeline suddenly can get shifted around by player choice which plays hell with the overall timeline. 

I like the concept, but I’m glad I got rid of the idea. 

The next note that I find interesting (after a lot of scrambling around with ideas about what elves look like that eventually got scrapped, although I think some of the small details—like having two-toned hair—made their way into the codex and then I got rid of it, so if there is ever confusion about elven hair colour from a lore point this is the likely culprit) is that the player could choose from three backstories: Renegade, Survivor and Hero.   

Oh no. 

(This sounds pretty Mass Effect for someone who has not actually ever played Mass Effect. 😂) 

So, the Renegade was supposed to have broken away from the Wayfarer Order and is working completely on their own. The Survivor has a tragic backstory that has taken them away from the Wayfarer Order. And the Hero works tirelessly for the benefit of others and the player character made name for themself by coming in and fixing problems. 

This idea lived and died in the outline, I never tried to implement it. I think with the scope of the game (and also how the Wayfarer Order’s history changed) it would have been a lot to manage three very different starting points for the player character. Regardless of how your MC behaves or what relationships they make, all of them start in the same place: down on their luck in Rona, having a very bad day that only continues to get worse. 

I do think it’s interesting that this background choice determined the moniker that the MC goes by. There may be something similar to this in the future, but for now, we leave it there.