Category Archives: Misfortune
Scarlet Moon 7.1.4

A new version of Scarlet Moon has been released that fixes a crash in the first episode experienced by anybody who uses anything other than the “genderdetermined” setting for their clothing. Basically, there was an assert floating around in there that I used for some ancient debugging session that I never removed.

Many thanks to the fan who pointed out the crash for me!

Also, been poking at Mischievous Misfortune here and there. A big problem that I’ve been wrestling with is that the Twine UI is HORRIFICALLY basic. It doesn’t let you do ANYTHING. It doesn’t even let you search in your current passage! *Notepad* lets you search! If your text editor has fewer features than Notepad, then you have *got* to work on your priorities. So that’s made development incredibly slow, clunky and frustrating, which has been killing my desire to work on it.

However! While searching the internet for solutions, I stumbled across a wonderful little program called Tweego: https://www.motoslave.net/tweego/

It’s basically a command line utility that lets you write your game in one or more files using your own damned editor, and then compiles it into a Twine game for you. No need for that horrifically basic UI. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s been making things so much smoother for me.

So yeah, hopefully we’ll start to see some actual progress on Mischievous Misfortune soon.

AKA

Mischievous Misfortune Aspects Figured Out

Alright, so I think I managed to take everyone’s *wonderful* ideas and condense them into 7 aspects that I think capture everything people were wanting to see, based on the aspects they posted.

Here’s the list:

Steal Everything Nailed Down: You steal stuff. Even when it’s nailed down, and especially when you’re anxious. A normal person might pull out a fidget cube and futz with it when she’s nervous. When you’re nervous, you steal her cube. This also means you’re very very good at theft. So good in fact, you can steal her cube without her noticing. Right away. Unfortunately, people tend to eventually notice when you’re constantly stealing their stuff.

The Good Is The Enemy of the Perfect: You are a master planner with acute attention to detail, and a strong work ethic. You will plan a caper down to the smallest detail, and think of (almost) every possible way things could go wrong, and devise a plan for that too. Unfortunately, even you can’t think of everything and you really can’t handle it when things go sideways. You also detest settling for “good enough” and will strive for “perfect” even when you don’t have time or are otherwise under pressure to get something done.

Born Dom(me): You are smooth, sexy and able to convince damn near anyone to drop their pants, and/or go over your knee(for fun or otherwise). Very useful when you’re looking for information, need to distract a guard, or just want to blow off steam. On the other hand, you’re sometimes a little *too* confident in your dominant sexiness. As a result, it’s not that hard for crafty individuals to turn the tables on you either because they saw through your act, aren’t interested (and may, in fact, be a little insulted), or are a Born Sub whose just plain better at seduction than you. Also, your natural dominance may rub some people the wrong way, intimidate them too much to be helpful, or cause you to ignore them even when you shouldn’t. This is the dominant version of Born Sub.

Born Sub: You are playful, sexy and able to convince damn near anyone to jump your bones, or put you over their knee for a little bit of fun. All it takes is a little wiggle of your round, full, excessively spankable ass, and a taunting wink. Very useful when you’re looking for information, need to distract a guard, or just want to blow off steam. On the other hand, you’re sometimes a little *too* confident in your cheeky sexiness. As a result, it’s not that hard for crafty individuals to turn the tables on you either because they saw through your act, aren’t interested (and may, in fact, be a little insulted), or are a Born Dom that’s just plain better at seduction than you. Also, you have a hard time telling people “no” and may find yourself doing what they tell you, even if you don’t want to. Usually you can turn this to your advantage. But not always. This is the submissive version of Born Dom(me).

Vixen Smile: You’ve got one of those smiles. You know the ones, full of mischief and naughty glee. People look at you and immediately assume you’re up to no good. Someone put a pin on the teacher’s chair? You’re the one who ended up over her knee and howling whether you did it or not. This has gotten you into all sorts of trouble. But it also means you have lots of experience being in trouble, and are thus very well equipped to handle it. You have also learned to use your mischievous grin to distract people away from your *real* mischief to something small and inconsequential. This is the naughty counterpart to Puppy Dog Eyes.

Puppy Dog Eyes: You have big, soulful eyes, and the best damn pout this side of the Atlantic, and you know it. People take one look at you and your innocent, cherubic face and they refuse to believe you could possibly be up to any mischief. Unfortunately, your cute, youthful face makes it really hard for people to take you seriously. Adorableness dialed up to 11 is great when you’re getting out of trouble, not so great when you want people to take you seriously. This is the innocent counterpart to Vixen Smile.

Luck Favors the Clumsy: You are simultaneously the clumsiest, most unlucky person on the planet, *and* the luckiest person on the planet. If there’s something fragile nearby, you will fall and break it. If there’s a patch of ice, you will slip and fall on it. Probably into something fragile, even if makes no damn sense for a fragile vase worth thousands of dollars to be sitting on a marble stand next to a patch of ice. Of course, because you slipped on the ice, the superheroine flying towards you at superhuman speed zoomed over you instead of into you, and got herself stuck in a wall. Meanwhile, Steel Jaws of Doom snapped from the ceiling and would have captured you if they weren’t being wedged open by that marble stand you knocked over. And sure, you dropped the precious jewel you stole, but it bounced off the floor, conked its owner on the nose and landed back in your lap.

Of these, Born Dom(me) and Born Sub are dominant/submissive variants on the same scene, and will tend to apply in the same situations. They’re really just dom/sub variants of a generic “Seducer with Spankings.” Heavily inspired by When In Doubt, Sub It Out, and tries to incorporate some of the seduction themes of a few suggested aspects.

Meanwhile, Vixen Smile and Puppy Dog Eyes are my take on the Guilty Aura and Innocent Aura respectively. Steal Everything Nailed Down captures the kleptomania that Wildfire suggested and The Good Is The Enemy of the Perfect tries to capture most of the ideas suggested for elaborate plots, being an egghead, and not handling things well when they fall apart.

Note that *none* of these are the aspects I started with. So, thank a lot everyone! Your ideas really helped me come up with some good, fun aspects I think, and I’m excited to start writing.

Here is also a link to the easiest part of the game to create, its intro screen! This screen provides a (mostly) brief explanation of the game’s mechanics, and allows you to create and customize your character. I would be grateful if people could take the time to look it over and provide feedback.

Blubb2 was kind enough to look over it a while back, before we’d come up with aspects, and helped me squash a bunch of bugs, so many thanks Blubb2!

AKA

Mischievous Misfortune Aspects

I’m doing the groundwork for Mischievous Misfortune right now. I have most of the character creation screen done, as well as the sidebar that allows character customization. Right now, the only thing left in character creation is coming up with Aspects for the player to pick.

Aspects are brief phrases that establish a fact about your character. Could be about their background, personality, how they approach problems, etc. These can then be invoked to let the player pass skill checks without rolling, or compelled to complicate your character (mostly to get their fanny whacked). Aspects can range from things that interest them (“Distracted by the Shinies”) to how they approach problems (“Act First, Think Second”) to even outside facts about the character (“Watched Over By A Mysterious Figure”).

Perhaps one of the best examples of aspects I’ve seen is the song I Am Moana from Moana. This song is basically Moana listing a bunch of her aspects: “Daughter of the Village Chief,” “Descended from Voyagers,” “It [the Sea] Calls Me,” “The Call [of the Sea] is Inside Me.”

So what I need from *you* dear readers are suggestions for aspects! Aspects should be double-edged swords: you should be able to think of a few ways the Aspect can benefit your PC, and a few ways it could make their life complicated. For example, “Act First, Think Second” may allow the PC to escape a sudden ambush, or snatch the jewel as soon as things go south, but it might also cause them to leap blindly into a trap, or even say something stupid to their Aunt, who just so happens to be tapping a rather thick looking paddle against her palm.

I want 5 Aspects, of which the player chooses 3. Currently, I have the following possibilities:

“Distracted by the Shinies”

“Act First, Think Second”

“Cocky Casanova/Cheeky Femme Fatale” – Technically this is two aspects, but they represent dominant/submissive versions of the same thing. These will mostly apply when you have an opportunity to manipulate someone (or be manipulated, or run into angry ex-lovers or whatever). The aspect invoked or compelled simply determines if you take a dominant or submissive role in your seductions.

This is your opportunity to push me into writing a bunch of situations that you like, so don’t be shy! I’m going to be looking for every opportunity to compel or invoke Aspects. So if there’s a situation you want to see a lot of, try to create an Aspect that captures it and tell me about it. Remember that the basic premise of the game is that your character is a cat burglar trying to make a buck while being hounded by a Superman-esque superhero(ine) called Moonlight, and either a Batman-esque supermanhero(ine) named Eclipse, or a Catwoman-esque burglar whose name is TBD. That’s still up in the air. Meanwhile, you and your old, but strict Aunt will be working hard to make ends meet.

Naturally, if I like someone else’s idea better, I will replace one of the aspects above, so don’t stay silent if other people have already suggested a bunch of Aspects! I’m looking for all the ideas I can get. Also, your suggestion doesn’t have to be boiled down to brief phrase. Feel free to give me some vague, wordy paragraph describing what you want the Aspect to capture. I can then take that paragraph and try to come up with an Aspect that captures it.

AKA

After Scarlet Moon

Things seem to have settled down on the Scarlet Moon front. I think we’ve gotten most bugs fixed (though if you ever run into any, please let me know). So now we can start thinking in earnest about what comes next: Mischievous Misfortune.

As I start working on Mischievous Misfortune, I’ll be periodically posting some thoughts and questions. These will mostly be musings that I’m looking for feedback on. This is going to be another multi-year project, and I want to make sure it’s something that both I and all of you can get a lot of enjoyment out of.

The first question is what features can be safely dropped. It seems with every year I get busier, so one thing I will be looking at is if there is anything we can cut from Mischievous Misfortune compared to Scarlet Moon. At the same time, one of the big selling points of Scarlet Moon is the detailed character customization. I don’t want to lose that. The question is: Is there anything that isn’t worth the effort?

For example, you will still be able to pick your gender. I’ve interacted with quite a few fans who really like being able to make their character male. So gender selection will still be there. On the other hand, there won’t be any combat. While I have interacted with a few people who like the combat, many of you just skip it entirely, and combat is *a lot* of work. By dropping combat, not only will I no longer have to worry about implementing and balancing the various powers that each character possesses, but it also means I can use Twine, which will make Mischievous Misfortune *much* more portable than Scarlet Moon. So gender is in, combat is gone.

But what else? How important is bodytype and musculature to people? Would anyone be acutely disappointed if the PC has a big, soft bottom and (if they’re a girl) ample (though reasonably realistic) breasts? Letting the player change the bodytype might not seem like much, but it does make the spanking scenes a fair bit harder to write. I have a much harder time when I don’t have a clear image in my head of what the spankee looks like, and having to write small variations for each bodytype interrupts the flow. This scene in Samantha Stone gives a pretty good idea of how much better my spanking scenes are when I have a clear sense of what the spankee looks like: Samantha spanking.

Even if we keep bodytype and musculature I’d probably want to limit both to just two options. bodytype will have “slender” and “voluptuous” while musculature will have “soft” and “fit.”

Height we will definitely keep, but will probably be simplified to “short”, “average”, and “tall.” Outside of some of the buildup, and when describing other characters, height doesn’t generally have a huge impact on the spanking scenes, so that one’s very low effort for me. Similarly for hairlength, hairstyle, and skin color.

Clothing definitely isn’t going anywhere. Clothing can be a lot of work, but clothing is a big part of a spanking for me, and something that other people tend to gloss over, so I want to make sure people have plenty of options there.

On the flip side, is there a customization option that people wished we had in Scarlet Moon, that they would like to see in Mischievous Misfortune? Clothing they would like to see? Hair styles? Now is the time to ask!

AKA