Custom scene example part 1: Overview and Preconditions

Hi all,

Step 1: Overview

The first step when making a new scene is to write an outline. It's a good idea to post this to get early feedback from me or from other writers.

A good place to do this is on discord. Use the general-scene-creation channel and tag me to draw it to my attention.

This is important because it might let you catch issues early on before you start dedicating much time to the scene - for example if someone else is already working on something very similar.

The outline itself should be short: just a few sentences.

It'll also be helpful to follow it with a summary of key paths through the scene – those that are likely to be most interesting to players.

Here's a screenshot of how you might report a scene idea on Discord:

Step 2: Preconditions

The next step is to decide on the preconditions. You don't necessarily need to report these to me, unless you're unsure if they can be implemented in the game.

It's helpful to decide on them early though because they'll affect your writing.

For example, this example scene requires that the jerk has the "jerk" personality, which means there's no need to write content for other ones. Choosing your preconditions before you start work might help avoid wasting time writing content that'll never be seen by players.

You can also write comments about scene frequency in your precondtions. This isn't important for your writing, but it'll be helpful when I connect the scene up to existing Newlife content.

My preconditions for the blackmail scene are as follows:

The PC has a partner.

A male NPC exists for whom all the following are true:

- Is not the PC's partner.

- Is not a restricted special NPC (i.e. does not have the no_random-appearance trait).

- Has the Jerk personality.

- Does not have max liking (close level) towards the PC

- Has not been TROUNCED by the PC, and has not had a negative outcome from previous blackmail attempts.

- The PC has cheated on her partner with this NPC, and that cheating has not been discovered or timed out.

Any severity of cheating is valid (other than NONE, obviously), but the scene should perhaps be more common at higher severities.

The overview and preconditions should be added to the top of your YML file, in a comment. You should also add the username you want to be credited as in the changelog, unless you want your submission to be treated as completely anonymous.