About

February 18, 2024

1–2 minutes

Also ran (noun): A horse or dog who finishes the race out of the money. A non-competitive loser. Winner of the coveted Participation Ribbon.
A dictionary, probably

What This Is

The Also-Rans is a tongue-in-cheek parody of RPG settings while also actually being an RPG. Games generally are pretty bad at telling stories; gamers really want to be playing the game, not reading. Conversely, stories are pretty bad at making the action happen. Why not marry the two of them and have the story do what it does best and the game likewise?

How does it work?

The idea is that there’s a decently fun combat game to play while a story is being read to you. Usually in RPGs, the adventurers come into town and scroll through the yak-yak given to them by NPCs, then go out into the wilderness and bash monsters, unperturbed by any dialogue, plot advancement, or brain activity whatsoever. And that’s cool, making numbers fly out of the bad guys’ heads is satisfying.

But could it be done at the same time?

That’s what I am intending to do.

Imagine getting to beat on monsters while you’re being told about what has been going on in town. The kicker is, RPGs assume you’ll win every fight, because if you hit a GAME OVER, it is also STORY OVER. So yeah, we should avoid GAME OVER screens if we’re trying to tell a story. If you lose, then you don’t get the experience points and loot, but otherwise, just play another combat and get good.

Are there boss fights? Yes. Are they always beat up monster, make numbers fly out of head? No!

So this is a game and a book? When can I play it?

The demo is my goal, but I am still building up my skills in that regard. So, ASAP on that.

In the meantime, please read some story excerpts. Or some character bios. Those will give you a little taste for now, and I’ll share what I can as things cobble together.