Happy Lewd Year!

Wow, nice getting into the really particularly future-y sounding years, isn't it? "2020"... nice repetition, very catchy. Everything after this sounds like it could go in the title of a cyberpunk anime, y'know? Something to look forward to!

Anyway, I mentioned some revelations to be revealed (as y'do) today for what's ahead this year for Devious World, and here it is:

Devious World is getting a spinoff!

... kind of!

See one of the big things about Devious World and why it is the way it is, is that I never wanted to start a ton of games and leave them dropped by the wayside as my interest shifted to something new. I've seen too many trails of abandoned TF games, so keeping everything under one roof as it were lets me keep my focus at least generally in the vicinity of old stuff, so I have a better chance of remembering it's there and working on it again.

With that said, why a spinoff? Well, that's why it's only "sort of" a spinoff. Let me explain.

Whereas Devious World has always had a primary focus of normal people finding out how very abnormal the world around them is or stumbling into new and abnormal worlds, the new project Devious Mundanity will feature characters that are strange or different from the start. Either they're the weirdos exploring a (nominally) normal world, or the weird is their everyday and they don't really blink at it.

So, with that revealed, let's answer some questions I'm sure you'll have, starting with the one people will probably be asking me anyway in comments and on Discord and whatnot even though I'm about to answer it because they got to "Devious World is getting a spinoff!" and stopped reading in a panic.

Are you going to stop working on Devious World to work on Devious Mundanity?

No. 

Simple answer. Devious Mundanity is basically just an expansion of Devious World. It will get worked on just like bits of Devious World get worked on, IE when I'm in the mood to write one of its characters or plotlines.

Will access to Devious Mundanity or its incrementals cost more?

Also no.

If you are getting Devious World incrementals, you will also get access to Devious Mundanity incrementals. Both will also release publicly once a month. Sometimes one or the other might not get an incremental if I only worked on one, but you'll still be getting content at the same general rate as before.

What will change for Devious World?

Virtually nothing. The only real change is that Valerie will be moving from Devious World to Devious Mundanity, due to her already being a witch and thoroughly immersed in weirdness from the get-go. But all her content will remain intact, you'll just open a different file to see her.

Will I need to do anything extra for Devious Mundanity?

Nope. Both games will share an image folder, and when they get releases at the same time they'll come in the same zip file. Really it's just breaking up some characters into one HTML file and some into another, otherwise it's basically still the same game.

So why bother with the spinoff then? Why not just add the new characters to Devious World? Why add the new characters at all?

This is actually the most complex to answer question, in part because it just has to do with my approach to writing characters and how I view the game.

One of the reasons I felt Devious World and Devious Mundanity needed some segregation is that they're just very thematically different, despite all the similarities. Devious World was always meant to be "normal people stumbling into abnormal situations", that was the core premise if it could be said to have one. Obviously that drifted a bit over the years (Valerie being the most obvious indicator) as I itched to work on different sorts of character.

I think Devious Mundanity really started when I began considering a male equivalent for Valerie. I didn't know it at the time, but that was a bit of an indicator that I was chafing a little under my self-imposed restriction of starting out with "normal" people every time. But the more I thought about it and the more I turned over the necessities of certain characters, the more I realized why always starting with your average person wouldn't work forever. Because if I wanted to write a certain kind of character, I basically had to find a way to turn one of the characters I had into that sort of character. If I wanted to write, say, a cosmic-level superhero, I had to find a way to turn one of the characters I had into a cosmic-level superhero... which sometimes works for what I want to write, and sometimes it doesn't.

For example, one of the new characters you'll be meeting in Devious Mundanity, Leo, is an interdimensional/spacefaring bounty hunter. Sounds pretty similar to Cypher, right? So why not just write the content I've got planned for Leo for Cypher and call it good?

Well, for one thing, Cypher exists in his own little setting, which I gradually establish and expand as I go along, but is still self-contained. That's Cypher's worldsetting... Leo's being explicitly interdimensional opens up a lot more avenues. But more importantly than that, really, is the approach. To really be true to the character of Cypher, I have to remember that he's actually Eric, an adaptable but still flummoxed teenage kid... to carry through that feel that he really has no idea what's going on and is sort of just stumbling ahead as best he can in a world he knows nothing about and is completely new to him. Which is great for some things but can also feel limiting to write and be in the head of, and the further he gets from that concept the less authentic he can feel. Leo, meanwhile, was raised in the world of being a star-spanning bounty hunter... he knows the score, he knows what's going on, his decisions are often informed and based on prior experience. It allows a different approach to some of the situations he finds himself in.

Another part is that with more freedom to write characters who are different or from different settings from the start, I'm hoping it will prevent "path creep" on the already established characters. As said before, if I wanted to write, oh say, an analogue of Lina Inverse, I have to figure out a way to turn Cyan into Mina Convex or whatever I want her to be called, with the possibility of having to create two or three or more path splits along the way to doing that to give the reader the feel of choice. And then you still run into the issue of it not really being Mina Convex, an actual Lina Inverse type character, it's just Cyan in Mina Convex's body getting called by her name. If I decide this is a character with a lot of potential for generating good content, I've come to feel it's better if we can just start as them right away. (I fully acknowledge this may not work out the way I want it to, but it's better than not attempting it.)

Which is also a benefit of doing these characters that are different from the start... I can be a lot more straightforward with them. They have defined roles already, they're prepped to get to the action (whatever that action is), hopefully things can be a little more direct with them. Again, we'll see how that works out.

Yeah yeah whatever when do I get the next incremental?

The cheek!

Next Devious World incremental will be Saturday as usual. I won't vouch for it being a big one since while I've been working on it some this week, I was still taking it easy a bit from Christmas too. The first Devious Mundanity incremental will be on the 11th, and both will get a public release on February 1st.

Basically that's it, you'll be getting a few new characters and a different HTML file to view them from, otherwise not much changes. Oh, I do intend sometime this month or the next to start tweaking some of the old leadin bits, like the introduction or some of the character descriptions, they need updating badly.

That's all for now! Again, happy new year, let's make it a good one!