PMD: Explorer's Log [Eggware Edition!]

[skinstealer]

hiii okay so

we had the idea to start a Group Playthrough thread on our own forums, and while we will not be moving the Prize System here, we want to extend the invitation to do this challenge to this community as well!

let me copy and paste what's relevant....

we've been wanting to do a group gaming event for a while, and with the help of some friend brainstorming, this came to mind...a pokemon mystery dungeon themed event where the focus is simple: do a run of a mystery dungeon game- any PMD game, any mods/romhacks/randomizers you want, even picking an unfinished run back up- as long as you are posting about it here on our forums!

rules are simple, right? even though we can't reward people for it in the same way we can on our own forums (eggs are out of our hands....), it is still greatly encouraged to do similar things to over there: make bios for your pokemon, or even any areas they inhabit! share them here! make your own challenge rules! make little fanworks for people's stuff! have fun!

and now, our next post will be our starting entry for our own run...

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okay! we started our run yesterday- not planning on doing a Whole Lot in-game yet because we have stuff to do otherwise but we wanted to start rotating our starting guys in our brain a bit.

we're going to be playing PMD Explorers of Sky, specifically randomized with SkyTemple. the gist of our randomization is as follows:

• random mons, but we did get the option to pick starter if we didnt like the quiz result so that it'd be petz friendly (more on that later)
• random items (possibly a mistake)
• random tilesets/floor plans/names/OST for dungeons (very fun so far)
• did not randomize moves, stats, abilities, etc. we are not the best with PMD gameplay so we figured this would minimize suffering.

and our personal challenge for the run...

new team members must be petz-compatible to some degree, and we have to hex them. this means that most of our team is going to either be quadrupeds, floating scrimblos like magnemite or the porygon lines, or bipeds we slap back onto the ground. our petz skills are pretty advanced at this point so this still gives us a pretty wide pool to work with, as well as having bases for a lot of mons from our other various runs ready to go. certain mons will absolutely get priority because of that- if we already have a base for something, we'd be fools Not to use it and get that extra party member. hopefully we can get some decent team comps off of this...

on top of that, we're going to be using our pokemon OC generator (soon to be hosted on the HD site once we get a generators page up proper) to randomize some little appearance variations and personality ideas for these guys as characters. actual relationships between characters will be handled via petz interactions, so that we can get cute screencaps of them interacting.

also, blanket perm: you can make whatever fanworks of our guys. if you end up making petz versions, we can even have them hang out in-game- though we are down to do any kind of lore building or even RP (though we would probably need a different thread for that...) with any characters people make. our locations are also free to use for your own purposes!

so...we started the game.

our first randomization didn't go so well because we forgot to make starters pickable and got slapped with snover and that simply will not do. re-randomized and got raikou first try, which was exciting as hell because we've wanted to make a raikou character for years and never really gave ourselves the opportunity to do so. it's a quadruped, it's a tiger, and it's super cute- especially with the prompt we generated for him. a round build...jesus christ it's raitora at home. while we didnt end up making him THAT round, we definitely made him soft and cute for the petz hex, which...
 

[image description: a petz collage of a raikou hex, featuring a small, squishy build and features, the standard raikou color palette, a star + moon patterned body instead of stripes, and four fangs instead of two. he looks very grumpy.]

meet cloudburst, the leader of Team Storm Drain. he's a rough and tumble raikou with a paranoia problem, exacerbated heavily by people treating him like shit for being the runt of his raikou litter. he's a goddamn legendary and he's as big as a vulpix. just a little guy. as demonstrated by the fact that i immediately wiped to the first pokemon in the first dungeon (a fucking smeargle that failed sketch and then struggled me to death) he is Not good at fighting and has a major inferiority complex over it. his greatest wish in life is to become a prolific artist, taken seriously for his work, but he has yet to get any credit in his community, likely because...

he is also....a bandit! Team Storm Drain is a bandit team, not sanctioned by any guild of high standing...and we will be framing our exploits in our run as that of an evil (if bumbling, team rocket style) team! it felt like a fun twist, and we really like these two...which, let's get on to the partner mon.

[image description: a petz collage of a gastrodon hex, featuring a green and lavender body with yellow accents, spikier features overall, eerie eyes with coencentric rings, and earrings piercing one of his...frills? he is simply sliding around.]

it was a tossup between gastrodon and latias for options (there were more but both of those ones are HUGELY gay-associated mons for us, it was not really a question of anyone else getting in), but we already had a gastrodon hex ready to go and the storm theming with a raikou and a gastrodon was too good to pass up. we actually used a gastrodon in competitive for years with storm drain, so it just felt like the right move.

typhoon is the loyal henchman to cloudburst's evil team leader, and is devoted to a fault. cloudburst values his company deeply, but overlooks some of the gastrodon's feelings sometimes...if these two had a sort of pinky and the brain dynamic, typhoon would be pinky without question. silly, eccentric (though so is his "boss"...) and willing to do whatever he says- though he might not be effective at it. even so, typhoon is also the secret muscle behind the team, and oneshots shit frequently in our playthrough. it is actually fucking disgusting how good at fighting he is compared to the literal legendary on the team, most likely because he's fully evolved and has a way better movepool. a lot of the fights in-game end up with me (as cloudburst) ducking for cover behind this guy and letting him water pulse things to death, because otherwise i will die in two hits and cry.

typhoon is also very into being Evil™ and delights in petty heists with cloudburst. the two of them love to scheme. unfortunately, typhoon, while a lot of Slug Muscle, is also known to bungle operations pretty bad- based entirely off of the fact that i realized part of why i was doing such shit damage was because he kept using mud sport every time he saw an enemy across the map. he no longer can use mud sport. also, he generated Weird Eyes, angular shapes, and ear piercings, which i felt made for a suuuuper cool punk-y character. he's so cool.

[image description: a petz collage of cloudburst and typhoon, mainly them exchanging loving glances and staring into each others' eyes.]

which, of course, now we have to see the petz relationships side of things....within like 2 minutes they were cooing and fawning over each other, which is a pretty solid "it was love at first sight" conclusion. cloudburst must have set off for the big world and found himself head over heels for the punk slug...and the two became criminals together, albeit criminals literally no one takes seriously. they are gay against the whole world...

we'll write more about locations later, but i am Not up for image describing screencaps of dungeon tilesets right now. that will be another day!

[skinstealer]

okay!! we have been playing a little more of our run and have been developing more lore....

cloudburst and typhoon are a part of a bandit's guild, far less huge scale than a typical explorer's one, but still pretty tight knit. cb and typhoon are newcomers to it, but they've been making a few companions...

that's right, randomized NPCs are becoming Official Characters in our lore if they are hexable! we were able to pick out 5 to work with that would be possible to make, and with some luck, two of them were on bases we already had. here they are...

[image description: a petz image collage of a clefable hex. her body is pale lavender with deeper lavender wings and claw tips, and her expression is worried and uncomfortable. her eyes also have little eyelashes.]

meet betsy! she's a newcomer to the bandit's guild as well, and maybe too sweet for this kind of profession...but she's surprisingly good at what she does. she works with speckles, who i'll introduce in a second, but she's got a sly streak under her worried expression and fidgeting. she has a deep love of makeup and glamour, which would be fun to figure out in the PMD universe...but she maintains a degree of paint on her claws at all times, and gets very frustrated if it gets chipped.

[image description: a petz image collage of a mewtwo hex, featuring a light blue striped body with a darker tail and face freckles. it looks rather moody.]

speckles is betsy's team leader and a much more experienced bandit- it appears that betsy signed up later than it's been doing things. being a mewtwo, speckles immediately commands respect through its legendary pokemon status, though people seem to recognize it more as just being a really solid thief than a god-like figure. both it and betsy use psychic moves to entrance people and steal their shit, an effective strategy that brings in a solid amount of loot. in its off time, speckles very much enjoys gambling, and is known for hosting game nights at the local guild for people to get really fucking salty over. it does however, hate being put on the spot, and doesn't particularly like being watched or observed outside of its heist attempts.

as for how everyone gets along in this new pool of characters....

[image description: a collage of betsy and cloudburst interacting. cloudburst looks suspicious in some images, and flirtatious in others.]

well okay i guess cloudburst has a thing with betsy. i guess this guy just gets around? the two of them get along really well and cb is super flirty with her, which despite her worried expression she does really like. judging based on stuff with cb and speckles later, it's a safe bet that team storm drain has solidly allied with team...i haven't figured out a cool name yet. maybe Team Magic Show or something like that? i kind of like the idea of them having a magic act theme.

[image description: a collage of typhoon and betsy interacting. they seem fairly neutral on each other.]

i was wondering if typhoon would be jealous of the attention betsy gets, but they just vibe. not much to say here, they're just kind of chill with each other.

[image description: a collage of cloudburst and speckles interacting. they are having fun and playing together.]

cloudburst and speckles however REALLY hit it off. you know that cloudburst is hitting up gambling nights super hard. these two are buds.

[image description: a collage of typhoon and speckles interacting. they seem fairly neutral.]

and then typhoon is just kind of alright with speckles. i think typhoon might have trouble making friends, leading him to be more attached to cloudburst....

[image description: a collage of betsy and speckles interacting. they don't seem to be paying much attention to each other. ]

and then speckles and betsy themselves are like. purely neutral on each other, 100%. they are in this for The Business, not friendship. if i had to guess, betsy came in looking for an apprenticeship and speckles had an open spot.

that's the new fledgeling team...up next are the storeroom owner, a local townsperson, and the head of the thieves' guild itself!

[skinstealer]

big things happening in our playthrough! we FINALLY unlocked recruitment (i say as if it hasnt been only 3 sessions) and spent some time looking for party members. there are a lot of potential members in the areas we have unlocked, and we're going to try and go for umbreon, absol, and stunky soon. lots of favorites and ones we've already made in petz!

for now, we've recruited two new members: lilith the vaporeon, and beethany the combee. we werent planning on getting a combee by any stretch, but we realized that combees Are hexable (sadly not vespiquen, which sucks extra because beethany is a female combee!!!) and she was so nice when she asked to join our team after a job...she must have been so happy when cloudburst and typhoon stole shit for her. missions to recover objects are probably paid heists/muggings? and then outlaws are like. rival thieves to the bandit guild i think. whatever works!

we've only had the time to make lilith, but we felt like she was more pressing than making the other NPCs for now. team members come first!

[image description: a petz collage of lilith, a vaporeon with an inverted color palette (though her eyes and outlines are still black) and a striped body palette. she looks very refined and snooty.]

lilith is a handful, plain and simple. she is a weird goth girl with refined tastes, and has turned to a life of crime after feeling like she needed more money to fulfill her needs in life. she prefers bitter tastes and fancy food and often pesters the rest of storm drain to stop eating garbage and sweets. cloudburst and typhoon weren't super sure on letting her onboard...but her helping hand and strength moves make her surprisingly brutal and effective in taking down marks and other goons.

[image description: a petz image collage of lilith interacting with typhoon and cloudburst. both interactions look fairly neutral.]

unfortunately, when it comes to lilith's relationships with other established characters in petz...she's pretty boring. she doesn't mess with people but sometimes people wrestle with her, and that's pretty much it. even with her refined tastes and defined opinions, she and other people are just...pure neutral. it's all business. maybe there's some bickering here and there, but she is, at the very least, very professional. this is just a job to her.

[image description: lilith interacting with betsy and speckles. more neutral interactions.]

yeah she doesn't have anything significant with Team Magic Show either. she's just not here to make buddies! hopefully beethany injects some intrigue into the team...

while a bit of a letdown character-wise, the idea of her being businesslike has potential, especially with how helpful she's been in actual missions. we're actually starting to do missions without wiping!

next up...figuring out some areas, including the bandit's guild!