The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #477: Ideas on Some Future Thirteenth Hour Projects and More - A Children's Book, Card Games, a Twine Text Game

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast

I'm doing this episode as a future note to myself about some projects that I've been toying around for awhile that I'd like to delve into in the next few months:

-An illustrated children's book that I'm temporarily calling "The Imperial Ranger's son" - a story written from the perspective of a child in the Capital City of Tartec (the kingdom where a lot of The Thirteenth Hour takes place), who is in school with other kids his age whose parents don't necessarily work for the Empire of King Darian. Logan in The Thirteenth Hour grapples internally with the idea of being a representative of a government whose actions he doesn't always agree with, but he is an adult. What happens for children when no adults are around is complex, especially as children try to come to terms with opposing views of the world and how their parents fit in. We learn views (and prejudices) from those around us, so what would happen when a child who has a parent working for the Empire is mocked at school for such a lineage or told his father is not going to live very long as an Imperial Ranger? What happens to him and his mother when his father leaves for months and the others in the class whose sensibilities lie elsewhere respond with a mixture of pity and derision? Isn't it not dissimilar to the current black and white state of affairs to separates the current political climate in the US? I think it's something that could be written simply, with underlying themes of love and parental responsibility with deeper undertones that comment on tribalism and fear of what we don't understand/agree with that could be appreciated by adults or older children.

In episode 448, I spoke about a idea concerning a Thirteenth Hour card game that would fill in a part of the book, near the end, that I never got to write about.

In episode 446, I spoke about a Tomb Raider card game that might take what I learned making the Rocketeer card game and apply it to another fan project, also using sprites I designed before.

Speaking of the Rocketeer, while I was making the Rocketeer Twine game as the backstory for the card game, I got the idea for a Twine text based game featuring Aurora from The Thirteenth Hour, since there's a part near the beginning of the book where she is working at a inn. I thought it might be interesting to have a sort of "inn simulator" with some kind of overarching storyline (?a mystery - e.g. perhaps a crime is committed in one of the rooms and Imperial soldiers are sent in to investigate. Aurora mentions at one point in The Thirteenth Hour that she doesn't have an especially high opinion of Imperial soldiers and hopes Logan won't turn out like them, so perhaps this is how that came to be) that occurs as she is trying to navigate the ins and outs of helping customers, serving food and drinks, and mucking out the stables.

Thanks for listening!

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