extremely tentative farm game test drive

Saving Sunbridge

hi this is a SUPER quick and dirty test drive for an idea i’m still fleshing out—please feel free to invite your friends if they’re cool, but i’m not making a big public thing of it until i have more information done lmao.

the basic premise: your character has been isekai’d into Sunbridge Town, a small village in the vein of harvest moon/stardew valley/story of seasons, by the sunsprites, our jumino/harvest sprite/etc. equivalents. a Threat looms over the town—expect the details to either get much more specific or to change entirely, but the magic that has existed in it all this time has been draining over time as the townsfolk find themselves burdened and struggling with the encroachment of Big Capitalism. the draining magic has resulted in poorer harvests and other parts of the town faltering, resulting in a vicious cycle. the harvest goddess figure has even grown sick! in a last ditch effort, the sunsprites have gathered up the magic they have and summoned strangers from other worlds to assist. they’re on a time limit, though they have at least a season or two, and if they manage to save the town, heal the harvest goddess, and return the magic to its full power, the sunsprites will be able to send everyone home.

setting notes

for now, picture the sunsprites as particularly sparkly juminos. they are represented by a single spirit who takes a more humanoid form, for now just referred to as the harvest goddess, who was able to explain the situation to the new arrivals. her presence is sporadic.
with few exceptions, the townsfolk were largely unaware of the sunsprites and the magic in their town before the arrival of the strangers. they sure are aware of it now! they’re learning about this magic just as much as y’all, and are reacting in various ways to everyone’s presence—from curiosity, to eager helpfulness, to fear.
the sunsprites have made space for the new arrivals to sleep and settle in a fairly recently abandoned farmstead. there’s plenty of room, but not necessarily much privacy; a lot of people will be group bunking in the barn or having a big sleepover in the house’s living room sort of deal, if they haven’t chosen to pitch a tent and camp outside.
technology level is typical of stardew valley et al; low, but not nonexistent. we don’t have internet.

places your character can be

the abandoned farmstead where characters will be staying
the forests behind the farmlands. they’re just normal woods, but they go deep enough and get thick enough that there’s little point going in there unless you seek the sunsprites, whose emergence point is the lake in the grove in which the harvest goddess stays when she takes on her humanoid form
the ruins at the town’s edge. it’s hard to tell what they used to be—remnants of a previous town, perhaps? there’s only one structure intact enough to really go inside of, and there’s stairs that lead to a basement with yet another set of stairs going down, and no telling how deep it goes…
the beach! it’s a beach. it has fun beach things. you can go fishing here
the town itself, which contains all your basic town amenities

character notes

please note you can play whoever you want on this test drive but i want to set expectations about who can and can’t be played in the actual game on the off chance that it happens so that you know what you’re getting into.

canon characters and ocs are all good. ocs can be from existing canons as long as they’re not weird about relationships with canon characters
characters i am probably not going to allow in the game if it comes to fruition: AUs (including CRAUs), anyone based on a real person, customizable protags who have inconsistent relationships with canon characters (ex. WoLs, inquisitors, shepherds)
characters who aren’t going to engage with the setting right off the bat are going to be a bad fit—”my grump needs a couple weeks to make friends first” isn’t going to work unless you can append something like “but they’ll immediately be worried about the livestock and start working with them”
characters are probably going to be allowed to have powers that aren't game-breaking. they can also have their pokémon or whatever. if you want to nerf your character's powers, you can.
nonhuman characters are not humanized. they also aren't downsized unless it would be game-breaking, or if you want them to be.

prompts

when the new arrivals are shown to the place they’re staying, it’s…well, it’s going to fit them? it hasn’t been abandoned for terribly long, so the farmstead isn’t exactly decrepit, but it clearly wasn’t taken care of over this past winter. there’s also not exactly space for everyone to have their own room or anything—there’s exactly one private bedroom, and it’s likely that people are going to want to share the floorspace if they aren’t interested in stuffing themselves into the rafters of the barn, which is probably happening anyway. the fields are full of weeds and sticks and stones. how is your character settling in? are they helping clean up? are they fighting someone else for space? do they want to actually do farming?
the sunsprites will often leave quests for the new arrivals! these will appear randomly, and require people to interact with and assist each other. some quests your character might be on include:
- the river is low and dry this year. one of you has been tasked with collecting and recording, in whatever way they can, sorrowful memories from as many people as possible, so that the harvest goddess can hear them and her tears can fill the river again.
- the cold of winter is lasting longer than it ought to into the beginning of spring, with frost still clinging to the land. to nurture the flowers that wait in fear for the chance to grow, a pair of people will have to find something one of them has never done before that the other can guide them through.
- the soil is weak, and the harvest is struggling. a character is asked to remind the soil of what its bounty means by sharing something they've made with their own two hands, freely and without anything expected in return.
- or make up your own idea!
the townsfolk have a jobs board up in the main square! you can post any requests you’d like up there so that someone else might be able to help!
there’s a festival coming up!
- the festival could be…
  - a celebration of the autumn harvest
  - a beach party
  - a flower festival to celebrate spring
  - a night market
- your character could be…
  - partying, of course
  - helping with the setup and preparation
  - inviting others and trying to make the festival really happen instead of just being like four people standing around awkwardly
if you want an npc existing resident of any kind, please make a prompt and let me know! you could ask for…
- someone specific:
  - the harvest goddess; ill, but eager to help as best she can. generally kept in the forests behind the farmlands, in a grove near the lake the sunsprites emerge from.
  - ethel, an elderly woman who’s known about the magic all this time and is thrilled about the new arrivals. softspoken, gentle, and blind. lives with her more outgoing wife, eudora, who hasn’t disbelieved ethel but is still stunned to see the magic and the sunsprites real and in person.
  - melanie, a researcher in her early 30s here to investigate the history of the ruins at the edge of sunbridge town. brusque, blunt, and suspicious of magic in all its forms, and so meets all the newcomers with a healthy dose of caution and suspicion—but she also has a thirst for knowledge that makes it easy to get her talking.
  - bellamy, mid 20s, local florist and dandy. seeks beauty in everything, and the beauty in sunbridge town has kept him here all this time, and despite his general nature of cheerfully flouncing about, he’s struggling with watching the town falter. tentatively hopeful that the new arrivals can help, and while the weirdness of many of their existences frightens him, he’s eager to assist if asked.
  - felix, a middleaged man who owns the local tavern/bar. gregarious and generous. a little skeptical about the new arrivals’ ability to help, but has taken this whole “magic is real” thing in surprising stride—or he’s just too focused on his business to worry too much about it.
  - rowan, early 20s, waitress at the local tavern/bar. puts on a friendly face at work for the new arrivals but has a standoffish caution around them outside of it. an artist who’s saving up money with the intention of moving to the big city where she hopes to be more successful, but struggles with her attachment to the town and how it hurts to watch it suffer and to think of leaving it.
- a general archetype:
  - someone who is suspicious of the new arrivals—did your character take their job from the board? have they been forced into the same circumstance? is your character just trying to buy something from the store and it’s become a whole thing?
  - a small child immensely curious about the new arrivals—do you want to be interrogated?
  - someone who works with the livestock—let’s talk about animals!
  - idk choose your own adventure i don’t have a full cast yet

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Bulat hasn't been in the closet for a while, apparently.

"Ah, that makes sense. I kept mine in the shed next to the polearms."

He'd thought about being more circumspect about his combat heavy background for a short minute but concluded that hiding it would make him look more suspicious in the long run. Hes already slightly out of touch with how regular people act and he knows it. What other exciting things can be found in a broom closet...

"This one's more of a linen closet. Need any sheets?"

It smells strongly of cedar in here, which better than other things it could smell like.

The polearms, plural, huh? Alfyn registers this, but doesn't seem particularly weirded out by the implications.

"Shucks, that's kind of you to offer, but I've got the blankets I've been traveling with right here!" He pats the unrolled but yet-to-be-fully-unpacked olde tyme bedroll he laid out, stands, and stretches his back. "Good to know where they are as other folks trickle in and get settled, though, right? Not everyone's coming right off the road like I am."

He wanders after Bulat to help with his search.

"What about you? You more of the traveling warrior type, or did you have a permanent posting somewhere? I mean, with the polearm shed and all."

It's polite to keep things organized, so he's making sure to refold everything in here he shook out trying to work out what it was. It's not neat as a pin, but he can fold a sheet just fine as long as it's not fitted, which these are not.

"It's more of a home base. I travel for work, but nothing beats having your own room and space to come back to. How about you? I don't recognize the exact plants you've got over there, but there aren't many professions that dry their own herbs on the go."

You don't see a lot of travelling chefs. He doesn't seem like an assassin but, you know. Neither does Bulat.

"I'm Bulat, in case you were wondering."

"Oh, right! Egads, if my ma could see me now, forgetting my manners like this."

Alfyn offers a friendly, gloved hand to shake.

"The name's Alfyn! I'm an apothecary. I've spent most my life working alongside my friend Zeph in the village where we grew up, but I struck out on my own recently to see if I could do more good as the traveling sort."

It doesn't look like he noticed that Bulat neither specified nor confirmed what exactly it is he travels to do, as a profession. He's all smiles and enthusiasm.

"Nice to meetcha, Bulat!"

Bulat has a strong, firm handshake.

He's trying - and succeeding (?) - to act really normal about hanging out with someone who certainly seems like a kind and honest regular guy. He's got a lot of self control but there's a certain amount of underlying excitement he can't do anything about. Oh well, nothing wrong with being positive, right?

"Same here! If I take an injury in the fields, I'll count on you to patch me up!"

Absolutely nothing wrong with being positive! Alfyn grins, shaking Bulat's hand in kind. It's not precisely a soldier's or warrior's grip, but he's seen plenty of hard work in his time.

"That's what I'm here for! Or if you take sick from overwork in a new field--heheh, if you'll pardon the pun. It'll take me a minute to learn the local flora well enough for fresh medicines, but I'm pretty well stocked from home in the meantime."

He pats the sturdy satchel he's still wearing across his shoulder.

"So, where're you from, man?"

"I'm from a town a few days north of the Imperial Capital. Larger than this one, but not quite a city. I've never actually done out-and-out farmwork, but when it comes down to it, it's just hard work, right?"

Bulat actually doesn't like talking about where he's from, but Alfyn's easy to talk to, and he spills more than the absolute nothing that he meant to before deflecting to the present.

"You look like a sturdy guy yourself, but if you, say, need a boulder carried from one place to another, or someone to fill in for an horse and pull a plow around, all you need to do is ask me nicely."

He taps his chin.

"Horses are the ones you hook up to a plow, right? Or is that oxen?"

He's seen both pulling carts, but hasn't really paid much attention to what they do off the roads.

...The Imperial Capital of what? While he's curious, Alfyn knows he has no context for anyone else's world and would need to sit down for quite the story--and Bulat's already steering them away from that conversation. He tucks the question into his mental satchel for another moment.

"Huh. Uh, I think you could do either, long as they're the same sort and shape of animal if you're using a pair. You don't want one going a lot faster than the other or pulling the plow lopsided, is all... I think?"

Rubbing his chin, Alfyn considers the ceiling for wisdom from above, then laughs.

"I'm from a farming village, but I knew I wanted to be an apothecary since I was real young. I helped out in the fields when I could, but I don't have the same know-how built up as my neighbors."

So it's more about steadiness than overall strength? Good to know.

"I'm sure someone local will know plenty about farming - might even be something special that has to be done with the soil here, since there's a very real harvest goddess. Best way to learn something is by doing it, of course. But it'll be good for morale to come back to a clean house, so I want to get that started first."

He locates another promising door. It's pretty cluttered in this one - there might be a broom in there somewhere, among the umbrellas and board games and such.

"Good for morale..." he repeats to himself. That's soldier talk if he ever heard any; it wouldn't sound too strange in the mouths of one or two people Alfyn got to know on his journeys.

The similarity just makes him like Bulat more.

Alfyn keeps walking to look in a cabinet, since there's no way two strapping gents like them will be able to search a closet that stuffed without knocking everything over into a bigger mess.

"We'll need more than a broom for a clean house, won't we? Gotta make sure everything we'll want to use right away is spick and span. That'll be tableware, cooking gear, chamber pots... well, hopefully those won't need cleaning, after going unused this long."

The thought of an un-emptied chamber pot sitting around for a season or more... eugh, gadzooks.

Edited 2024-10-11 02:56 (UTC)

Organizing this one fully might be more than an idle task. There's one snowshoe with no sign of the other - did someone just shove every loose item into this one at once? Is that a tin of butter cookies? He checks it. It contains sewing supplies. Not immediately useful, but maybe if they turn up something that needs mending? He's happy about Alfyn diving right into logistics and planning. Figuring out what you need available and when is a skill that's so handy in just about any situation, and he's happy to back him up and expand his search targets.

"I'll hope for the best, but steel myself for the worst." Dealing with human fluids outside of blood and more blood might be a nice change of pace, who knows!

"Dinner'll be important, you've got that right - nothing better to bring a group of people together than a shared meal. My old group was pretty close despite our differences, and I'd credit the chef with a good part of that."

To his surprise and delight, the cabinet Alfyn's looking in contains games, dusty as they might be: a chess or checkers board, dice, packs of cards, and even a small, wooden skittles set. A farmer's life isn't all hard work and weather!

As he puts the games back--they're not the immediate essentials he and Bulat are looking for--Alfyn agrees heartily, "Hear, hear! After a busy day, there's nothing like sitting down together to a good meal and maybe a round of drinks to get the laughs and stories flowing. And that's the glue that holds people together."

He smiles to himself, thinking of both Maggs' tavern back home, and the odd octet he'd been part of during his recent travels.

"I reckon you had something to do with it, too," he adds thoughtfully. "You're an easy guy to talk to, Bulat... and seems like you spend time thinking of others."

Well, here's the dustpan... where's the broom?? You'd think that'd be the more obvious one to find! It's more funny than frustrating; he doesn't mind laughing at himself. He'd like to find the broom eventually so he can tell everyone how long he spent looking for it - proving Alfyn's point even as he makes it out loud.

"Hey now, keep talking like that and you'll make me blush."

Too late - oh well. He's got a soft spot for compliments, and that's one weakness he's not particularly interested in defending. He's not above counterattacking, of course, that's always been part of his style.

"I suppose it takes one to know one, Alfyn. This kind of situation'd knock most people off guard, but you landed square on your feet and started making the best of it for the sake of the whole group right away."

Alfyn blinks, then ducks and scratches the back of his neck. "Shucks," he murmurs, warmth visibly suffusing his face. He's an open book, this one, and he couldn't look more sweetly flustered if he tried.

Then he picks his head back up and grins with fully felt, summery brightness.

"Thanks, pal. You get used to strange sights and situations when you've been traveling, so maybe I've got a leg up on other folks... and if that leg gives everyone else here somethin' more to stand on, then I couldn't be happier. An apothecary has a sworn duty to help people, you know?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

extremely tentative farm game test drive

Saving Sunbridge

setting notes

places your character can be

character notes

prompts

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