What type of acknowldgements do you like most in event text?

[Eusebius]

I'm working on my first submission for Coc2. I'm usualy amazed at how different everyone's main characters are, and am always amazed at the varied tastes that show up in the games and the forums. What type of acknowledgements do you prefer the most in sex scenes? Comments and changes based on height, skin texture, or race? Or do you prefer comments on how corrupted you are?

Also, do you prefer it when your character is explicitly given dialogue by the writer, or when the shape of the dialogue is suggested but not explicitly provided? Overall, I'm trying to get to grips on what type of style I should be developing here. If you're the type of player who likes domme characters and are likely to read my content, I especially want to hear from you. Any feedback, whether a vote on the poll or an explanation is greatly appreciated.

 

[Eciton]

I'd have to say I like features more. At least with my main characters, I often put a lot of work into finding just the right TFs, and it's nice to see that acknowledged by the game characters. That being said, despite playing a variety of alignments I have a hard time noticing any differences in text, so that might be a contributing factor in my preference. It could be cool to see your alignment make a big difference in the scene. I think in terms of body comments, height and genetalia are probably the most important. Oftentimes, my characters' height is reflective of their personality and how dominant or submissive they are. Genetalia for obvious reasons.

I prefer more implicit dialogue when I'm playing. I tend to do slight roleplay when I play these types of games, pretty much just creating an outline of my character's personality and keeping that in my head when I play. Makes the game more enjoyable. So when my champion speaks dialogue that feels in-line with their character, it can really make the scene for me. On the flipside, seeing them say something out of character can be pretty immersion breaking. Since it's impossible to cater to everyone who's going to read the scene, it's probably best to go with a somewhat silent protagonist.

Good luck with the submission btw!

 

[Stemwinder]

Do what makes sense for the scenes you're writing. If it's a conversation it'll be awfully dry if it comes off like one character talking to themselves but if the dialogue is more arbitrary and not meant to do more than set up a different scene you can skate by with minimal or vague player-response.

Along those same lines write acknowledgments that might enhance what the scene is meant to be rather then trying consciously to work in as many as possible. If it would be funny to acknowledge the PC's height (like they're going through a small door for instance) then that can add something but there's no reason in that scene to make mention of What Pretty Eyes You Have.

And most of all do what's fun for you. A submission I'm doing has talk scenes that aren't like any in the game so far; they're more like conversations and the player will sometimes be prompted for input and given response choices that are purely for the sake of roleplaying. I did them that way because I like it when games give you roleplaying options and feel that the PC being able to express an opinion or react in more than a generic way is important to building up palpable chemistry. Worry about what works in service to the stories you're telling and what you like about them before trying to cater it to what anyone else might prefer.

 

[PuppyPrincess]

Oooooh more dommes <3!

Personally I really like when scenes reference features like height, tails, emotive ears and so on! My characters tend to be pure and my main champ is a smol subby mess so I tend not to get much out corruption variations outside of bimbo when I try them briefly. But I love when scenes reference my champ blushing in embarassment, tails wagging in excitement, size difference etc.

Dialogue wise, I'm really fond of how Wsan does it in scenes like Evelyn, Orlaith, Rina where most of the champs dialogue/feelings are suggested but mainly only speaks explicitly in direct response to questions in scenes.

Good luck with your writing =)

 

[Gothamson]

You can put up polls!?

 

[Greyfox643]

I'm satisfied with just alignment, but I MUCH prefer when I get addressed by my current race typing.

Like, I worked to be a winged elf slut. ACKNOWLEDGE MY AWESOME.

 

[Akhter13]

Can you see that second schlong, that's what keeps slapping you

 

[Erzulie]

Dommes: good.

I am massively put off by text that assumes what my character is thinking and feeling that is completely removed from any decision the character has made or taste the character has established. Note that merely choosing to be The Hero in a game does presuppose some stuff, so I'm not claiming that every PC be treated as tabula rasa.

On that same note, confirming the decisions and preferences I've made for a character in a RPG -- any rpg, not just a sexytimes one -- is absolutely gratifying. The illusion of the world working in tandem with you is what I'm here for.

I'm not against the PC talking or against silence or thought bubbles: instead, I'd recommend having short statements that synergize really heavily with the choices the player has made. So if the PC has no explicit dialogue but their described comments are consistent with the very last choice the PC made, then thumbs up. That's a bigger deal than talk or no talk.

(Basically, don't be Fallout 4.)

Like everyone else, callouts of explicit morphologies are really gratifying, the more the better. Corruption always seemed mushily defined and I'm indifferent to it (yes, I know it's a central setting conceit, but still), but having your appendages be part of the story is a distinct high point.

 

[Aelana]

(Basically, don't be Fallout 4.)

There is some interesting discussion about choices with games like skyrim, fallout 4, and witcher. Haven't played fallout 4, so I can't speak for it. But skyrim has the issue of no personality PC. The PC is not a character. Skyrim refuses to give any character traits to the PC, and as such any interaction with an NPC falls flat on its face. Even Serena, which IMO is one of 5 actual characters in the game, cannot interact with the PC. They ACT AT the PC. While the PC is just here to observe, and occasionally shouts at stuff.

The witcher games on the other hand have a well-defined main character. And it has Jennefer, which is IMO adult Serena at its core. But it actually has INTERaction. You can talk, and fight, and forgive Jennefer.

In short, I'd rather read a contribution in the witcher sense, with a well-defined character that sadly misses mine, than a skyrim-esque 'PC as blank blob' character.

You can see one of the best possible skyrim-esque takes in the Coc-Tits games: Fisianna. I pushed through her content, and... She is well written. But the content refuses to assume anything about the PC, which creates some problems. It cannot truly interact with the PC. Its choices become "Do you want to continue this content yes or no?". They are not real choices. In fact, I argue Fisianna becomes the main character in the content, and the PC the sideshow. If you take in any context of the rest of the game, it can actually become weird, because the stakes are exponentially higher in the rest of the game. I wrote a post how my steele would probably interact with her: "Fisianna, I know being a teenager is hard, but I just got raped by a space dragon, sooo..."

The tension between the game and Fisianna is a missed opportunity. Steele does regress in some perspective. Coming from an intergalactic playmate, bounty hunter and scavenger back to high-school problems requires motivation by the pc. Like, wanting to have normal high-school friends that steele didn't during their school time. Maybe steele got bullied. Maybe steele could not get out of their father's shadow, and never had friends that just cared about them. And Fisianna sharing her story about her parents would become more intimate if steele would share their issues with her. But for that, you have to assume stuff about the PC.

 

[Eusebius]

Dommes: good.

I am massively put off by text that assumes what my character is thinking and feeling that is completely removed from any decision the character has made or taste the character has established. Note that merely choosing to be The Hero in a game does presuppose some stuff, so I'm not claiming that every PC be treated as tabula rasa.

On that same note, confirming the decisions and preferences I've made for a character in a RPG -- any rpg, not just a sexytimes one -- is absolutely gratifying. The illusion of the world working in tandem with you is what I'm here for.

I'm not against the PC talking or against silence or thought bubbles: instead, I'd recommend having short statements that synergize really heavily with the choices the player has made. So if the PC has no explicit dialogue but their described comments are consistent with the very last choice the PC made, then thumbs up. That's a bigger deal than talk or no talk.

(Basically, don't be Fallout 4.)

Like everyone else, callouts of explicit morphologies are really gratifying, the more the better. Corruption always seemed mushily defined and I'm indifferent to it (yes, I know it's a central setting conceit, but still), but having your appendages be part of the story is a distinct high point.

I do think that this can be rather hard to write around. I do agree with your point, getting feedback that accurately reflects who you are is huge. However, being on top of this completely would require an insane amount of additional writing for every single case and a very strong familiarity with just about every event tag that reflects choices. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it requires significantly more effort. Thanks for the thought. It's certainly something to aspire to. Maybe once I have a track record of accepted submissions.

 

[Eusebius]

There is some interesting discussion about choices with games like skyrim, fallout 4, and witcher. Haven't played fallout 4, so I can't speak for it. But skyrim has the issue of no personality PC. The PC is not a character. Skyrim refuses to give any character traits to the PC, and as such any interaction with an NPC falls flat on its face. Even Serena, which IMO is one of 5 actual characters in the game, cannot interact with the PC. They ACT AT the PC. While the PC is just here to observe, and occasionally shouts at stuff.

The witcher games on the other hand have a well-defined main character. And it has Jennefer, which is IMO adult Serena at its core. But it actually has INTERaction. You can talk, and fight, and forgive Jennefer.

In short, I'd rather read a contribution in the witcher sense, with a well-defined character that sadly misses mine, than a skyrim-esque 'PC as blank blob' character.

You can see one of the best possible skyrim-esque takes in the Coc-Tits games: Fisianna. I pushed through her content, and... She is well written. But the content refuses to assume anything about the PC, which creates some problems. It cannot truly interact with the PC. Its choices become "Do you want to continue this content yes or no?". They are not real choices. In fact, I argue Fisianna becomes the main character in the content, and the PC the sideshow. If you take in any context of the rest of the game, it can actually become weird, because the stakes are exponentially higher in the rest of the game. I wrote a post how my steele would probably interact with her: "Fisianna, I know being a teenager is hard, but I just got raped by a space dragon, sooo..."

The tension between the game and Fisianna is a missed opportunity. Steele does regress in some perspective. Coming from an intergalactic playmate, bounty hunter and scavenger back to high-school problems requires motivation by the pc. Like, wanting to have normal high-school friends that steele didn't during their school time. Maybe steele got bullied. Maybe steele could not get out of their father's shadow, and never had friends that just cared about them. And Fisianna sharing her story about her parents would become more intimate if steele would share their issues with her. But for that, you have to assume stuff about the PC.

For your knowledge, the famous issue with Fallout 4 is that you're effectively shoehorned into playing a specific type of character. All potential for actual roleplay is hamstrung by the game's dialogue design and the voiced acting.

I do hear what you're saying about character interaction. I'll have to spend some more time thinking about how I can account for player agency and characterization in written works.

 

[Erzulie]

Fallout 4 had a legion of problems, but the rather unique one to which I obliquely referred was the dialogue wheel obfuscation: a dialogue option description was often not the dialogue that played when said option was selected, thwarting the ability to select which option suits the character.

 

[Alypia]

Paraphrasing Problems in Bethesda and BioWare games are one of the reasons why I work hard on my tooltips.

 

[Stemwinder]

I do think that this can be rather hard to write around. I do agree with your point, getting feedback that accurately reflects who you are is huge. However, being on top of this completely would require an insane amount of additional writing for every single case and a very strong familiarity with just about every event tag that reflects choices. I'm not saying it's impossible, just that it requires significantly more effort. Thanks for the thought. It's certainly something to aspire to. Maybe once I have a track record of accepted submissions.

Personally I've found that the rarely-used background tags are very useful for this. They each pack some material for you to make safe generic assumptions from (that a minstrel would necessarily need to possess a little flair or that a slum rat would not be refined in their manner like a noble scion would be).

The trick is to do it surgically rather than try to go broad. Rather than write an entire paragraph of dialogue that's specific to a particular CoC2 background you can cheat and make one or two lines background-specific in a scene and write the meat to correspond to any character. That little tidbit of acknowledgment will make the scene appear to be tailored. If you can find when and where to place those you won't have to do a bunch of additional writing but those playing it will probably be drawn in.

 

[Alypia]

Personally I've found that the rarely-used background tags are very useful for this. They each pack some material for you to make safe generic assumptions from (that a minstrel would necessarily need to possess a little flair or that a slum rat would not be refined in their manner like a noble scion would be).

The trick is to do it surgically rather than try to go broad. Rather than write an entire paragraph of dialogue that's specific to a particular CoC2 background you can cheat and make one or two lines background-specific in a scene and write the meat to correspond to any character. That little tidbit of acknowledgment will make the scene appear to be tailored. If you can find when and where to place those you won't have to do a bunch of additional writing but those playing it will probably be drawn in.

More likely, the little tidbit will only be noticed by very few people, which is the case for acknowledgments like these. Unless you go preposterously blatant, like saying "GOSH, MY TIME AS AN ARCANIST TAUGHT ME THAT YOU SHOULDN'T DO THIS MAGIC THING" or "MUAHAHAHA I AM DISREGARDING YOUR DESIRES BECAUSE I AM A DARK KNIGHT", a lot of people a) won't understand the reference, b) will assume that no such reference exists in the game, and c) complain about it.

That said, we still prefer the relatively seamless integration, too, for the same reasons you bring up.

 

[Stemwinder]

Ideally it won't stick out at all. The scene will just 'feel right' by vocalizing/illustrating an idea that meshes with aspects of the type of character they chose to use.