But What if... Wildermyth 2?

We thought the unthinkable question: "What if... Wildermyth 2?" 

(We will probably not make something and call it Wildermyth 2. Anyway, Nate's already kinda over turn-based combat on a grid. But we had a few conversations about it a while ago, and I wanted to note it.)

What would that even be? We specifically built Wildermyth to hold an almost infinite amount of content. There's no point in making "Wildermyth With More Stuff" because that is already Wildermyth.

But, if we did peek down that muddy road, we could go through and think of what parts we'd want to keep vs. what we'd want to change.

Keep:

• Deep characters with relationships to each other
• Procedural generation
• A setting with a lot of nature
• Little bit of darkness, but overall positive tone
• Turn-based squad combat

Toss:

• Overland map stuff
• Official Yondering Lands, including Wildermyth monster types (nothing wrong with them, but I think we're mostly done with their stories)
• Retirement/company churn

Add:

• Focus more on one or a few towns, get to know NPCs long-term
• Focus on one (small-ish) party over a playthrough
• More playable races
• More attention to character arcs

Unclear:

• Main character vs. purely ensemble cast
• Legacy
• Initiative order vs. free turn
• How close to/far from standard fantasy we would be

So, what could be going on in such a game? You could be a little group of adventurers crossing the dangerous wilderness to go between a few towns for Reasons (mercantile?). You could be building your own town. You could just be living in a town, and that's where you come back to in between missions.

Maybe there'd be one main character, maybe not, but you'd still spend a lot of time in a group of some sort, because that's where the deepest relationships would happen.

Maybe fights generally happen at night when you're on the road, so camping for the night could be a much more involved process, with choices to make involving layout, assigning people to tasks (do we want extra firewood & light, better foodstuffs, cleared brush, traps set, gear mended, songs to bolster spirits, etc).

Plus of course, the eternal question, perhaps the most important choice: WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

Maybe characters have procedurally generated "goals." Short-term, long-term. Alice wants a nice house. Bob wants to win the heart of the mayor's daughter. Cheryl wants to avenge somebody. Dunno how explicit/quest-liney that stuff would be, it'd be cool if we could pull it off subtly.

One nice thing about a game like this is that it potentially requires WAY less animation. Animation is something we don't currently have on the team, and it's a big question of a.) how to find someone we trust and like working with for that, b.) oh boy how much it's going to cost, a c.) whether having to go through an outside contractor or studio for animation will make our creation process way less agile/flexible. Questions, all big questions!

The biggest downside is probably, as mentioned, that Nate's kinda over the Wildermyth format, feels like he's done what he wants to do in that space, and has been hoping that something different would pop up that he could get excited about.

We'll see. I wanted to write it down though.