Not Your Mother's Shire
Hamlet meets Sharknado. A dark romantic comedy set in a fantasy world ruled by unusual dragons. Comparables: Dragon Age, Rick and Morty, Monty Python, Discworld, LotR.
-500k words over 11 chapters.
-Play as male, female, non-binary; straight, gay, bi, pan, ace, poly.
-7 gender-swappable, player-sexual romantic options.
-2 factions: Dragonsworn or Dragonfall.
-(In)finite cosmic powers(!): choose your alignment--Yin, Yang, or Yolo; harness Timeliness with pre-cognition, post-cognition, or scrying; master a psychological fighting style by choosing a Psycho Path.
-Choices matter! Multiple endings. Relationship meters. Opposed stat system: muscleness vs skillfulness; unbreakable vs. untouchable; magnetism vs. omniscience; taskmaster vs. shiny!
I originally live-dev-ed this on the Choice of Games forum from early 2021 to 2025: https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/full-beta-not-your-mothers-shire/94274
Hosted on Dashingdon during playtesting: https://dashingdon.com/play/dwsnee/not-your-mothers-shire/mygame/
At the time of posting on itch.io, the original forum page had: 100k views and 15.7k unique clicks for play via DashingDon--pre-publication, no advertising.
Thanks to the many lovely playtesters over the years.
**I developed art for each companion (each gender for each) and for each dragon, but haven't figured out how to display it here. I might update in future to include. You can find the art in the drop-downs of the first post in the forum hyperlink above.
Comments
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Life got busy so I haven't been on the COG forums in quite a while and only just learned that this got moved. I'm genuinely baffled that they didn't want this masterpiece but I'm so excited to finally read the ending!
I wish you all the best going forward and would love to follow any future projects you embark on. Is there a good place I could sub to for any updates like that?
Hey, Xormin. Thanks for finding me! And for all the support over the years. I may have some stuff coming out soon. We can message each other here for now.
As I love Discworld, Monty Python and LotR, I had to try this. So far, I am not disappointed. The writing is generally Discworld-delicious, some of the comedy Pythonesque. What I find missing, if I may offer a humble...consideration for future projects, is a bit of the LotR deliberateness. Because NYMS is written for everyone, it ends up feeling rather one-size-fits-all that doesn't really fit anyone well. I chose svelte female elf, yet the narration feels from a male pov, and there has been nothing unique based on my choice of race. At one point she was even carrying a guy, making me wonder if that happens even if you choose halfling (I cannot see Frodo carrying Aragorn, for example). I realise making each race and sex distinct, especially in such a long Interactive Fiction would be hard, but I would sacrifice some of the frequent quips and puns for a few flavourful lines to make our chosen mc more unique. All that said, this is still a fun and silly story! Thank you for this, and I'm off to keep playing!
Thanks for reading! And for the feedback. I rather like the idea of a hefty halfling, but I see your point. I'll do better next time, I promise!
Nooooo the forum post was removed, do you have alternate links to the character art?
Oh god. Oh jesus. I've made it all the way to chapter 9 and I think I'm locked out of Saz's romance? please advise. I need him so bad
There is an intimacy-level threshold for each character based on player decisions. You should be able to check in your stats, but I think you need Saz at just over half his bar. Hope you enjoy your orc romance!
I have the art. It's just not posted anywhere. Finding it a home is sort of on my list...
I will play it in dashicon, congratulations for completing
Sorry for the question, but is the game complete? I can't say, so sorry, by the way, the game looks great, so congrats <3
Yes! Sort of. I haven't figured out how to integrate the character art I made, but you can play through the entire game. And thanks! Hope you like it.
Only the itch version is complete right?
Hi! I tried to run your game but got this error message: "Permission denied to access property "cside" on cross-origin object", which stops me from proceeding past the "Praise" screen.
Uh oh! I'll try to fix it. In the meantime, you can play it here.
UPDATE: That should be fixed now. Thanks!
The game opens without issue. But on mobile I can't scroll down on a page, and thus can't select any choices. Is the whole game playable on dashingdon too? If so i'll play it on there. Can't wait to dive into this story.
Oh no! Okay, I enabled scroll bars for mobile and then tested it on my iPhone. Let me know if that fixes it for you! Alternately, yes, you can play on DashingDon.
Thanks for your support and enthusiasm!
It works perfectly now :)