Things We Almost Did, But Didn’t – Part Two

on June 13, 2018
Chapter:

So this guy right here was almost a whole-ass additional member of the party, Professor Fnipper Zookenheimersteinbergbaum. His class was “Demon Hunter,” but though it shares the same name of of the class as our favorite emo, Illidan Stormrage, this was meant to be more the Van Helsing type of demon hunter. Outfitted with shitloads of engineering gizmos, a double barrel, and a rueful outlook on basically everything, he was ultimately axed very early on for several reasons:

– Five is already the ideal party count.

– Once we made the Field Medic, Syr’Nj, having two party “gearheads” was just flat out redundant.

– Gravedust, though he is and was a Mystic, was also meant to be the “Marksman” class, later modified into its own specificity by virtue of being inhabited by a Tubed player. That would have added to the overall party redundancy to have both.

– The concept of demons, I guess, were going to be a shitload more ubiquitous, but that was something that got toned down as we wanted to keep things on a more (relatively) grounded level in terms of magick and the paranormal. The Demons ended up being the alien creatures from Cyberia, and so they would not be as present as they might have demanded for him to be a main character. Perhaps he would have been a hunter of demons in a world where demons were not really a thing until he was one day proven right about the demon threat, but… eh.

– There would have been a bit of thematic/narrative redundancy with Bandit, as they’d both wind up being Odd Cogs, and Bandit was I think just more interesting a character overall.

– Too self-indulgent, even for me. He’s largely based on the character I mained for yeeeears in WoW, and though I obviously would want some sort of “self-insert,” I felt that this went to far in that regard.

So at the end of the day… while he may have been an interesting addition to the cast (possibly as a side character to show up later), I just felt like he wasn’t adding anything to the group dynamic that wasn’t already well covered by everyone else.

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