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Mysteries and Dungeons One

 Hello. C J here. It’s time for more Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue Team. This has got to be one of the best games Nintendo has ever made. Nintendo clearly worked hard on this one as a team. Writing stories requires research and that is what this post series will be about. Research needs to be fun or the final product will be boring. I named my machop player character Jaran because that sounds like a name my setting could have in it and my pikachu friend Pikae. So Jaran and Pikae might need some fan art. All of the Pokemon I recruit will be given names I can use in my setting. I’m reliably getting really nice story ideas out of all this.

My rule is each run through a dungeon is a separate story with a separate team. I already have dozens of story ideas on file. The first dungeon in the game is Tiny Woods. It’s small at only three floors. What would happen if I had a similar magical forest full of insect and plant monsters somewhere in Quantum? The biome system in Quantum is set up to handle this well. I’ve run Tiny woods about 15 times to gather items and level up. The next dungeon up in the list is Thunderwave Cave. This one has poison and electrical themed Pokemon. I’ve done it about 10 times to level.

Dungeon three is Mt. Steel and I’ve done it once including its boss. The story really picks up here as the boss mentions that they were driven to act incorrectly by recurring natural disasters. This is the point of the story, to help rescue people caught in these disasters. Now that I have beaten the first boss I am allowed to recruit Pokemon from the wilderness. The language here in the game about how this works is very Pokemon. After a fight your opponents might come to value you as a friend and want to join your adventure. The characters are a team of friends. Very good storytelling there.

So Jaran and Pikae now have Maran the magnemite as a friend and that means I can take a third character into a dungeon with me. Most dungeons cap out at three characters. They have a nice team base, a good store of healing items and also a new friend. I’m still counting the story ideas I have now that I have three names to use. I think Jaran and Pikea are doing their job properly.

But do they have huge tracts of land?

Well yes, actually. I’ve bought my Pokemon some nice tracts of land from Wigglytuff.

Somehow I don’t think that was the way the joke was meant to be interpreted. More soon.

C J Mcpherson

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