Fiddles Father

Today on System Analysis, we are sending pointed questions to Papa Fidd/Fiddlesoup the granddaddy of Immersive Ink the best discord server on the web. He is an eSports coach for the middle schoolers that he teaches which is a sentence I never thought I would write.

(1) How'd you come up with this system?

I spent all of the summer of 2023 playing a variety of different Rogue Games, and then I wondered why I hadn't seen very many litrpgs focused on the genre. So I started messing around and thinking about how that would even work in a book. I like when games in this genre have static classes that change the way the game is played so I picked my favorite archetypes.

I still don't remember how I came up with the idea of Death Boons, but I loved the name so much; it's one of my favorite parts.

(2) Was it based off a game you played and loved or a book?

I had been playing Rogue Legacy and Dark Cloud around the time I started and I would like to think they both influenced specific aspects of the story (randomness of dungeons, city building). I was also heavily inspired by games like FF 1 and FF5.

I like having specific class choices but hate hate hate not being able to choose a variety of skills, and I love switching between them.

(3) Is the math a constant obstacle for you?

No, but I very specifically wanted my numbers to stay small, so for the most part, it is basic addition and subtraction. I have a very large doc somewhere I used for book one and book two. I switched to sheets and that made it even easier.

(4) What are the main skills and why did you choose those?

It’s in large part my ADHD, but I am a big fan of games that allow a variety of play styles, and I chose my favorite types of classes to play with for this story. I always play summoner/necromancer, archers, thieves, o classes and knew I needed to do a class like that.

But I also LOVE magic as a plot device and wanted to create a basic mage class. And once I had these ideas in my head, it was easy to create the basic idea that each class had two skills (archer had Scan and aim, Mage had elemental magic and mana drain, barbarian had cleave and stun, but Rod never figured that second one out), and then when I got to the archer chapters, I realized I needed the scan skill to be able to transfer to all classes because of how much fun it was to create bestiary entries.

Its a purposely loose system so that I can add new powers at appropriate moments to properly scale up power.

(5) Did you make the system first or work through the plot first?

I made the basic plot outline very basic; I think it was like three sentences: Rod is trapped in magical purgatory, which is a rogue-lite game. He gets points called death boons that unlock random classes and has to fight against monsters and gods to earn them, and when he dies, he restarts at the beginning of the dungeon where he can spend them.

The final boss of book one is a djinn who has corrupted the second floor because of god shenanigans.

And from there, I developed the system

(6) Is there anything you wish you had done differently?

I wish I had made my blue screens simpler. I went too crunchy and over the top in describing every item in a way I didn't need to. I largely snipped this in the second book in favor of focusing on death boons and better loot instead of going all in on describing everything.

(7) What's a "level up" in your system?

Whenever you die, a store opens up called the death boon store. This store allows you to unlock different classes, level up stats like in Dark Souls, or get a variety of different abilities.

Do you have any recommendations for first-time authors?

Find what you like about a couple of different video games, figure out why you like that aspect of the game, and channel that feeling into whatever system you create. Litrpg systems need to be essential to the plot of the story, otherwise, why have them? DCC isn't DCC without the dungeon and the AI. DOTF isn't DOTF without its system and the multiverse. Penance isn't penance without the roguelite elements. ETC.


What do you want to shout out?

Fondour’s Salt Fat Acid Magic has been my obsession all week. It is such a unique story with fun ideas, and great characters.


You can read Penance here:

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/88661/penance-prison-of-the-gods

Papa Fidd is the owner of the Immersive Ink discord server. It's a great place to hang out and learn.

https://discord.gg/MxYa9W5hZH

If I were you I would join.

Thanks for reading System Analysis. If you have a suggestion drop me a line [email protected] or check out my author website https://storyweaver.quest

You can find older episodes of System Analysis here: https://system-analysis.beehiiv.com/

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