Hey everyone,
So an Anonymous fan has encouraged me to make a post giving some insight into what I’m working on right now, and I figured, hey why not. It’s been almost a year since I last posted, and I imagine most people have given up on hearing much else from me (I’ve like 90% given up myself!).
So, anyway, I’ve spent the last year mostly not working on spanking game stuff, but only mostly. I have been dicking around with different ideas. Some I wrote up a few initial passages, some never got past the “this could be a fun game premise” musings.
Starting last November, and then very sporadically since then I’ve started working on a sequel to Scarlet Moon. Scarlet Moon 2: Eclipse Rising.
I’m on my third(?) significant rewrite of the first big scene of the first episode (equivalent in scope to the chase at the start of Episode 1 of Scarlet Moon) as I try to feel out where the characters are now, what kind of stories I want to write, and what makes for interesting-but-relatively-easy-to-manage game mechanics.
That being said, it’s started to slowly pick up steam. I’ve got about 2500 lines written. For context, the first day of episode 1 in the first game was about 3500 lines. But line count is only a very rough comparison, I’d say I’m probably around halfway done, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less.
Three developments have helped spur my return to Scarlet Moon.
First, I missed them. Their story is by no means finished, and they were a joy to write. Some, like Bright, were really only starting to develop when the first game ended. I’d love to see what additional escapade Juliana drags them into.
Second, I was playing around with the avatar generation features on spicychat. Basically, spicychat’s image generator for profile pics is an impressively good pinup generator. I wanted to see if I could create our intrepid heroines. They came out wonderfully, and it helped inspire me to return to their world. I’ll probably toss in some AI pin ups of various heroines and villains as we meet them, though don’t expect anything more elaborate than that. AI image generation is *terrible* at being consistent, and trying to do anything more elaborate than a pinup is going to be tricky and time consuming (and even generating these pin ups can take a while. For every good image, there’s dozens that are just straight up bad and incoherent).
Thirdly, I hit on a game mechanic that I think has the potential to be interesting, help inspire ideas for choices players can make, but shouldn’t be too onerous to make impactful. The mechanics work like this:
You have four stats: power, craftiness, charm, and heroism. Power, craftiness, and charm are your main stats, heroism is special.
The game will periodically give you a stat check, where you’ll have to choose between 2-3 options, each one tied to a stat, just like in Scarlet Moon. When you make that choice, a d6 is rolled and the result added to your stat. If the result is greater than or equal to 6, you pass. Otherwise you fail.
Not so different from the stat checks in the first game. But, this is where things get different. Regardless of whether you pass or fail, the stat you chose goes *down*, and one other stat goes up. If you pass, then in addition to whatever good things happen in the story, you get to choose one of the other two main stats to improve. If you fail, then something bad happens in the story, and the
game chooses one of your other two main stats to improve at random.
So if you have the choices:
Power: Punch him in the face.
Craftiness: Trick him into slipping on a banana peel.
Charm: Convince him to surrender.
And you choose Power: Punch him in the face. then the game will roll a check d6+Power >= 6. Power will then go down by 1 (can’t go below zero). If you pass, you can choose either Craftiness or Charm to increase. If you fail, the game will choose one of Craftiness or Charm to increase.
Heroism is special. Heroism will only improve when you make especially “heroic” decisions in the game. These decisions might be stat checks, or they might have a guaranteed outcome. Regardless of the outcome, if you make a heroic choice, you gain a heroism point.
Later, if you have at least one Heroism point, you will sometimes get an additional “Heroic” choice. If you succeed, heroism will go down by 1, and you can pick one of your three main stats to improve. If you fail, heroism still goes down by 1, and the game will pick one of your three main stats to improve.
So, most of the time you’re shuffling your stats around. There are two ways to improve your total stat count: Banking and spending heroism points, and picking stat choices with a stat at 0. Note you can’t choose a heroism choice if you have 0 heroism.
Of course, heroism generally means “absurdly reckless” and picking a stat choice with a stat at zero means you only have a 1/6 chance of passing. So my hope is that the game mechanics will incentivize players to occasionally do something that is liable to get them in trouble and spanked (the whole point!) to improve their stat pool. But at the same time, passing feels good, and is how you get successful outcomes for your character, so players will hopefully also generally want to do the things they’re currently good at.
Note that were won’t be any CRPG-style combat in this game. I definitely don’t have the time or mental energy for that. Rather, fights will be action scenes written in prose, and will be where you’ll have the majority of your stat checks. In this first scene, you’ll have to succeed on two out of three stat checks to win. A fairly tall order, since your stats will start out quite low (1 in each stat), but should get easier as you play if you’re smart about how you build your stat pool.
All that being said, don’t get your hopes up too much. There’s no guarantee I’ll finish this first episode, and even if I do, I don’t know if I’ll be able to write more. Treat this as vaporware for now, barely more than a sparkle in my eye.
Oh, and here are the images I generated of our intrepid superheroines:
and the two villains they’ll be contending with in the first episode (assuming it sees the light of day):
I’ve played with generating characters idea using free version of sexy.ai and just coping you character descriptions. It was fun and the results are very interesting, try it yourself. Engines i used are epicPhotoGasm, BABES, Realistic Vision v51.
I’m your follower from the very beginnings of Potions wars. I remember you did some fan fiction writing back then in parallel. I red every CYOA i could find on internet but Scarlet Moon remains my favorite. I still run it from time to time but only transcript version. I must say you created interesting classes but i’m not much into CRPG. I’m glad you are going with much simpler system now. I see that Heroic stat can be put in entertaining context in both submissive and dominant directions.
I really liked the system Robin Pierce created for Adventure book games. Although he didn’t fully exploit traits as some had only single use throughout the whole game. I guess it was over ambitious. I actually bought the second one back then :). I wonder if you considered adding something similar to the feature of rivalry in which when you lose then your bottom cannot go below certain level. It was present in both games with different mechanics but as a permanent handicap. One other thing i liked is point collection while returning hub/central. It added non linearity to game and opened possibility of recurring events which can be fun.
I’ve felt Scarlet Moon ended a bit too soon. Or maybe i was sorry it ended when things started turning hardcore. There are so many different characters and settings. Your scene descriptions are superb. I’m impressed how you created interactions with companions. Tania appearances are my favorite. I was returning to read those so many times. Leopard and Princess episodes were also a lot of fun to play. There is so much humor everywhere in the game. I only wish we had more encounters with Mrs. Rossi. I was imagining our heroine doing some odd jobs for her for stats while occasionally being sent to cut some switches or what not.
Your short games Samantha Stone and Maddy Mischief were really good. Whenever i come here i’m hoping for an update. I’m glad you are still writing, no matter how slow it goes. Cheers!
I’m glad you enjoyed it so much!
I had originally envisioned taking a sort of “hub” approach to Scarlet Moon when it first came out, similar to Dianne’s Promotion, but I quickly decided it would be too difficult to give a good narrative flow to, and complicate the game too much. It also isn’t conducive to letting events build on each other, so there wouldn’t really be any room for any of the supporting cast to develop.
I also liked the Traits in Pierce’s books, but they’re definitely not a thing I’ll be introducing. I messed around with similar systems, but quickly found them rather difficult to work with. Some traits are going to inevitably be significantly better than others.
Scarlet Moon was cut a bit short. I’d originally envisioned 10 episodes, not 7, but between a bit of creator fatigue, and knowing my life was about to get very busy very soon, I wanted to make sure the game was complete in case I never got back around to it.
Princess will definitely be coming back if I stick to the sequel. I think her episode was my absolute best, and she was a joy to write. Leopard I’m sure will make another appearance.
Tania is interesting. She had some great moments, and I adored her, but the sequel is taking place in a universe where Scarlet Moon didn’t pursue any of the romantic interests. Indeed, she didn’t even meet Tania.
I’d love to introduce her to Scarlet Moon (again), but I’m not quite sure how. Sexual tension is a key part of her character. So if I introduced her, she’d pretty much *have* to be romantically interested in Scarlet Moon, but I’m not sure I want to force a love interest on the player. Especially since I don’t plan on giving them any other romantic options. Fleshing out the three disparate romance branches just took up too much of the game for my tastes.
I suppose I could give players *just* Tania as a romanceable option, and it’s her or nobody. Let Tania do her thing and the players can either engage with it, or just treat her as a villain who uses seduction as a weapon. But I don’t know how well that would go over.
We’ll *definitely* see more of Miss Rossi. I agree, she’s a very underused character. I’d been planning to flesh her out more in some of the later episodes when I cut the game short.
I love the idea of getting Scarlet back!
Sad not to have the combat, since playing around with that was extremely fun, but I also agree with the need to cut away unneeded and time consuming fluff like the combat and romance, I would even suggest cutting back on clothe and gender options, just to make it easier to write, but both of those are popular and should only be removed if they massively ruin the flow of writing the story.
I also agree with using the dynamic stats, since it makes it easier to control the difficulty, while still allowing for players to feel like they have an impact on how Scarlet is build.
About Tania, I think it could be an idea to have her be the only romance, but it might be better to make it less romance and more just sex friends, I personally feel one of the biggest missed chances with Midnight was not exploring her whole game of cops and robbers.
While I don’t really go for the sub routes, the idea of the superhero accepting her loss to a thief and going somewhere to get a spanking is sexy as fuck 😀
And having Tania be more of a frienemy/rival, could be a fun relationship, even in a dom route, where Scarlet would be the one getting the upper hand and Tania reluctantly accepting punishment to avoid getting exposed as Midnight.
Gender is easy since everyone has a butt, and the only picture of Scarlet Moon is on the title screen. So I just need to make sure I use variables for gender, and Twine makes that very easy.
Clothing is actually a top priority for me. I *love* it when a game lets me customize my character’s clothing (especially their panties). For one thing, I have a GIANT thong fetish, and it’s rare to find a game with fixed panties where the panties are a thong, and being able to dress my character up in various outfits is fun too (so long as it isn’t too tedious to do, like many of the life sim porn games out there.). I will admit that the clothing disrupts the flow a bit more, and makes spanking scenes more difficult, but it’s worth it to me.
As for your thoughts on Tania… Wildfire. You are a genius. I *love* the idea of having Scarlet Moon and Tania having a bit of a frenemy/rivalry relationship, with perhaps some sexual tension (because you know. Tania). Midnight taunts and baits Scarlet Moon, and for whatever reason seems to get a kick out of going toe-to-toe with her.
But at the same time, Scarlet Moon can occasionally lean on Midnight as a resource (probably with a price, and certainly some snarky taunting).
I’ll need to think about this. I don’t know how much of this would end up manifesting, but I like it. A lot.
OMFG GREATNESS RETURNS!
I’m so happy to hear that you not only found your motivation again but that there will also be a sequel to Scarlet Moon. Scarlet Moon is still my favorite text based spanking game (followed by Dianne’s Promotion and Welcome to Puttsdale). The dice system sounds very intereseting. Did someone perhaps got inspired by D&D and/or Baldurs Gate 3? 😀
Maybe you could let the player choose at the start of the game if they romanced Tania in the first game and want to romance her again, and then make scenes matching their choice? But that would also mean more story paths again, which was one of the reasons why the first game became so overwhelming at the end.
In the end you have to find your own way. But it’s good to hear you’re still out there and found a new engine that might just be what you wanted.
As always my animeotk account is open for questions if you want some input, a test player or simply a second opinion. 🙂
Careful. All this flattery is going to go to my head! 🙂
Certainly not inspired by D&D or Baldur’s Gate 3 (don’t even get me started on how atrocious I find 5E’s skill system. If you want see examples of a good skill system, check out FATE or Dark Dungeons X). I haven’t played Baldur’s Gate 3. I’m not a big fan of Larian OR 5E, so I haven’t felt an urgency to try BG3. Someday, in 5 to 10 years when the price drops, I’ll probably check it out.
The skill system was actually inspired by a thread on animeotk asking about how to handle “spankings as punishment” in a game, where the player’s goal is generally to succeed. It occurred to me that if you had a system that rewarded players for doing things with a low chance of success, then players might feel like they can make a sub-optimal choice while still playing the game “well.”
If I decide to allow a single romance option with Tania, I’ll probably give players the ability to say “we totally romanced in the first game.” It wouldn’t really affect much outside of the first scene with her most likely. And it would be easy enough, when I first introduce her, to have some way of the player signaling that Scarlet Moon knows and is in a relationship with Tania. There probably won’t be any onscreen dates though. I want, as much as possible, for every possible scene of an episode to be available at the start of that episode. But possibly Scarlet Moon’s interactions with Tania could be different depending on if they are romancing her, interested but not yet dating, or just see her as another villain.
Does this mean it possible to find Scarlet on spicychat?
Scarlet Moon isn’t there. I did create a different superheroine in spicychat called Justibabe way back when I first discovered spicychat: https://spicychat.ai/chat/39129f0e-51a2-40c5-b917-14e87df462ac
I wasn’t super happy with it, partially because I think these AI chatbots really work best if 98% of your interactions is with one character, and superhero storylines actually end up with quite a few different characters all interacting (the villains, any other heroes, exasperated authority figures, people in your civilian life).
Mostly though, I just use the option to generate an avatar for my account to create the images, open the ones I like in a separate tab and save them.
That’s a shame, characters that have been trained by their original author are generally just more fun to play with.
And there is really a lack of superheroes that aren’t just “This popular superhero, but horny” with no other work put into them then, name + horny.
But yea you do unfortunately have to play all other people then the A.I. itself, which can be a bit of a downer.
And it’s best not to do more then a single scene or the A.I.
Yeah, I hear you. The most luck I’ve actually had with creating an AI character is one on character.ai: https://character.ai/chat/FZbNaKQTn7o7XvD3Wvthp_n2rliWDgAMgiYWwn6zR_I
The basic premise is that you are the child of Aphrodite, and she’s “recruiting” you to take over Eros’ job (he being spoiled and lazy). And she has learned from her mistakes with Eros…
It’s a little bit obnoxious because character.ai’s filter is getting better.
I *do* have an Aphrodite on spicychat: https://spicychat.ai/chat/15e0c499-d889-40b8-b539-5300ea780c50, but she’s turned out a bit meaner than I’d like. I probably need to tweak her definition some on there.