FACESFORCE'S PROFILE

author=argh
You really, really want to do the main quest first. There aren't really any other good "starting points" (even the bazaar merchants and basic mindscape enemies are tough for a first-level party), and experience is relative so you'll waste the automatic level up if you just do the puzzle-based ones at level 1. (That one quest you're stuck on, in particular, has a pretty high challenge rating. Have you looked at the quest ledger? That tells you what level you should be before attempting quests.)

Aha~ That was what I was missing. Indeed, I failed to notice the quest level indicator, and now I feel much more satisfied for the moment. Thank ye verily for bringing this to my attention; I had originally just felt the difficulty wall was absurd, but the developer took that into account as well. My hat off to you.

Let me see, I only have about two major events that would count as a near death experiences.

The first time was when I was 11 and my step uncle decided to point a shotgun at me and my father, because we were digging up a road bump the man had decided to set up in the middle of a public street, that damaged my father's porche when he rode over it. Luckily for me, my father is a bit of a terrifying person at times, and he put himself in between me and the shotgun and scared him with mere shouting.

The second time was of course, 5 years ago when me and my family woke up surrounded by flames. The gun stash had just caught fire, as had the moonshine, so bullets were exploding, sending shrapnel everywhere. We all luckily escaped the cabin before the roof began to cave in.

The third time, and I am not sure this would count, was last year in japan. I went on a 75 day trip to move there... And I ran out of money with 11 days and 2 hours to go. I was in Saitama, and my return ticket was at haneda airport, over 80 miles south of me... So I started walking.

Day 3, I exhausted the last of my rations(Three onigiri, 1 for each day...). By Day 5, the sky tree was in sight. I would walk until my feet would scream, and walk some more. Find a park, a place to hide at late night, and sleep wrapped in my sleeping bad and tarp. Day 6, Shibuya. Day 7, I made it to lower shinigawa, my feet begin to bleed, I keep walking. On the 8th day, I made it outside of the airport, and for the first time in my life, I collapsed face first into the grass. I remember a kid asking me if I was alright, and I in my infinite pride, managed to say "Hai, dajoubu desu.".

It was the next day when I awoke, I discovered I could no longer walk further then a half mile before my body would give out. I was literally at the verge of starvation, about to die because I used up too much and had no food to fuel my body. I was going to die, in such a pathetic way. I considered stealing from a convience store, but I knew my odds of getting away were terrible, I was the only white man for miles arround. On the 9th day, I found I needed to sleep most of the day, because I had no energy to spare, Death was knocking.

On the 10th day of the entire quest, or the 7th of no food, I finally prayed to God for salvation for I would die that night of starvation, and behold it came; A japanese woman named yuko came up to me, read my name tag and brought me to her apartment. Her husband had left her that day, and she wanted someone to talk to. In exchange, she cooked me a feast and baked me a loaf of bread. Trust me, the religious symbolism was not wasted on me. She promptly tossed me out to the street with my clothes clean and the loaf of bread wrapped in a cloth.

I am ashamed to say, I eat most of that loaf that night in the park, and saved a small piece for morning. That was the closest I have ever came to death, and I respect food more now then ever before.

author=pianotm
I wasn't on yesterday so...

Happy birthday to whoever's birthday it was recently, is today, or will be in the near foreseeable future.

Actually, my birthday is on Saturday, so happy birthday to me, but I doubt that it will actually be happy.

Ahahaha, thank you as well~ Happy birthday to you as well.

So, I narrowly avoided getting questioned by the military today, and have plotted my course to leave the country once more. ...Funny, it sounded a lot more innocent then it sounds now I am typing it. Strange how that happens. Either way, the only thing in my mind is that I hope my new apartment won't be too small...

Well, here is the thing about breaking the fourth wall; Sometimes it is done correctly, and other times it is done really poorly, and most of the time in rpg maker it is done absolutely terribly.

It comes down to how the deleviery is; For example, let's look at two dramas that I have recently been watching, that is "Castle" and "私の嫌いな探偵; The Private Detective That I Don't Like"(And yes, one is american and the other japanese)
In Castle there are a ton of forth wall breaking moments where the main lead Nathon hints that he was on "Firefly". These are well executed, and overall lead to making people smile, which in the realm of fourth wall breaking is what you want. You don't expect a laugh when you break the fourth wall, you expect a smile.

In "私の嫌いな探偵", both of the main characters realize that they are in a ridiculous japanese detective show, and at times they break the fourth wall with hints at being self aware, only to cover it up hypothetically. This is very playful, and amusing, but it is not very funny, just enough to make you smile. In other words:

That is the main problem with fourth wall humor; Not everybody takes a hint or quite understand if this is supposed to be funny or not. Now I have addressed the common pitfalls in television, let's address it in rpg maker games: It normally does not work well at all. The reason this is a hard form of humor to come across in a rpg is because of the medium. At the beginning of playing the game, often the player has experienced years upon years of bad humor in games, and is desensitized to it.

Now I am not saying for you not put fourth wall breaking humor in your game, by all means go ahead! Just don't be disappointed. In the end, my best advice is these 3 things:
1.Do some research: Watch some Carlin, watch a couple of movies where the fourth wall is broken on a normal basis(Wayne's world comes to mind sadly -_-'''). The more research you do, the funnier your jokes will be. Also, play Kentona's "I expect you to die" for a short, but good example of old school rm2k humor.

2.Make a rant: Grab a friend and come up with a few bits. If you can make them laugh(Borrow jokes if you must! Everyone does that in the beginning!), you are well on the way to making your game absolutely hilarious. Also, remember your audience!

3.Don't overuse it: Over using a joke can do one of two things: It can make it funnier by reference, or it can make it feel cheap. And cheap in this case is bad. It all comes down to how you deliver in the end.

EDIT: I spent the entire time people were putting up replies to type this. Sorry about that! And yes, Deadpool is a perfect execution of breaking the wall.

*sigh* I should give up, I really should! *sob*
I am working on a complete pre-evented text based combat system that has a class system. So, in other words, every fight I have to script to be different and give the player new class specific options.
A example would be that a dual blader would just run into a bar filled with goblin mobsters, kick over a table and stab a goblin through it, while a sorcerer would be forced to dodge around the room, avoiding getting shot while charging up his magic.(Note that everything is in ascii and described)

Possible? Oh yes. Mind mindbogglingly annoying to set up the stored variables and repetitively playtesting due to dice rolls? You know it.

I am tempted to just make it if combat somehow goes past 150 turns to just kill the player off. So tempting...
However, the most it has gotten is to 47 turns in my currant test bed, with only one table and three tommy gun wielding goblins. Thank gods.