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Okay, now that that’s out of the way… hi!
Sky has had a hankering to run something new. We’ve been going at Dragon Quest: Voyages for two years, and while I’m still enamoured of it, I can understand why he’d want a change.
Back when he did NaNoWriMo 2010, Sky wrote a short story called Dream of Mana. It’s no secret that we’re both in love with the Mana series. Anyways, the premise of Dream of Mana freaked me out a bit at the time (I don’t really remember why, and I hesitate to re-read the story), because it seemed like a complete mindscrew to me. I kinda grew interested in playing another Mana campaign, though, and he REALLY wanted to run one, so here we are.
My character is named Liam, and I rolled him up as a Skald (from the Heroes of the Feywild 4e book). I’m having him use an instrument instead of voice to trigger his aura changes, though (yet I still feel silly and self-conscious because lolBard). I’m having the same problem playing him as I do with Mark in that he’s entirely too good and unassuming to be protagonist material, so I’m having a hard time getting into his personality, but I’m having fun so far.
Then sometime around we started playing, I decided that I’d play Legend of Mana to get in the mood.
Ho boy.
For those who don’t know, Legend of Mana is an old-ass PS1 game that came out in 2000. It was the black sheep of the Mana family as it seems NO ONE liked it because it wasn’t like Secret of Mana or Seiken Densetsu 3. It has a limited world building system (you decide where to put areas on the map, and it affects elemental balance and such), and it has 68 quests, most of which are obscure and easily missed.
I’d say I played the game to death in 2000, but that wouldn’t be true. I actually never personally finished one of the main storylines (though I’d watched Sky do it). No, I was very fond of the tempering system (synthesis on crack), and I was very proud to have made a 567 damage Dragon Scales Knife with close to 8 essences for each element. (The recipe I’d used has been long superseded with better, however.)
Legend of Mana is what inspired my character for Reflection of Mana. Keith was basically an expy (warning, TV Tropes) of the male character from the game, but I think I made him different enough that in the end, he really was my character. I did keep his overly long curly hair, though, and he had a red bandanna (they make it obvious that it’s a hat in the official art, but I was going off the sprite so bleh). I’m still really fond of that character, and despite differences with people, I can still read the logs and remind myself how much of a delightful bastard he was. I’m seriously thinking getting a commish of him…
More under the cut, to spare your poor RSS feeds.
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