THE PIT (Fortuna Discussion Topic)

Seems to me Fortuna (the game) is drawing a lot from what made Homestuck (or more specifically, sBurb) good way back when, like the integration of deities/first gen AIs as mechanical game constructs like saving/loading, cf the Denizens and how some have cosmic roles more integral to reality ticking over as intended. We meet the really important dudes first (as necessitates the raised stakes to showcase a "plotworthy" game run where things have gone horribly wrong before we even started) but there's plenty of scope to speculate what game-mechanical roles less important deities play (less important in the limited perspective of a Sun God run), what kind of circumstances might raise them to prominence a la Apollo, and how the game plays were a different deity casting its shadow over the game universe.

The patron deity mechanic gives us a taster of that and allows for a lot of speculation. Could there be a "Huntress run" where Athena is driven to frustration a la "our" Apollo, seizes control of every ship captain, planetary president, and other influential individual in the across gametime and gamespace, and sets the entire thing in motion against you?

(I envision this in part because the "normal" Fortuna game reminds me of another game I like - 80 Days, where the world quite distinctly does not revolve around you and your journey, and on the whole NPCs have their own lives going on before and after you dropped in on their city/planet. A run where that's turned on its head because a normally-chill goddess is literally sending the entire universe out for your blood appeal to some folks?)

Fortuna (the adventure)'s first Tutorial run kind of suffered for having played Undertale so recently; Apollo's chipperness was setting off alarm bells a mile off. (Question for clarification: in a run where the Roman Apollo isn't banished to the tutorial, is it a Hermes or the Hermes who acts as the ship AI?) It wasn't until much further down the track that we learn "oh ok this isn't supposed to happen", so I'm left wondering how meta the game is "meant" to be (answer: as meta as you want it to be, clearly.)

As for the spelling - for an ostensible English teacher, I'm pretty chill about people making mistakes. Other than when deities say them, I mostly treat them as quirks of characters' speech? Less-than-perfect spelling doesn't offend me on any level when it's not a barrier to readability, so it's not breaking immersion or nuffin'.