mattmanganon

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

Also, who would be interested in having Karre and Zen-Aku as their partners?

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

One world that i was hoping for us to do at one point is a mini-campaign i wrote while sick in bed with the 'Rona in 2022 with nothing to do but sit there and write. Also, Disney+ had just uploaded the entire of Fillmore and i loved that show as a kid.

After the Sorcerer escaped from Norrisville high ((The party kinda released him earlier in the campaign, because they are idiots who don't understand that actions have consequences)) things seemed to calm down... (Or you can base this after the point where the Sorcerer lost most of his power when he lost the Chaos Peals) However, this all changed when a new transfer student arrived at Norrisville high, one Adrien Agrest from Paris. Shortly thereafter, new monsters started appearing similar to the ones that mysteriously stopped appearing in France recently. Then things went from bad to worse when a foreign exchange program transfered one Marinette Dupain-Cheng to the school, also from France. It was then that a heroine by the name of Ladybug showed up and started to fight the monsters alongside the Norrisville Ninja. Then, after that, a third hero showed up calling themselves Chat Noir. With regular robot attacks included in this, Norrisville High have decided to bring in the Ninja and these new heroes and bring them under the school's control. Naturally, none of them agreed to that. So, in response, Norrisville has brought in a ringer in order to end the problem. A new Safety Patrol that has been given full authority to bring the Ninja, the Bug and the Cat in by any means necessary. Cornelius Filmore and Ingrid Third are now heading up something of an Inquisition, questioning students to find the heroes civilian identities.

The party seemed to enjoy it well enough when i ran it. And if anyone wants a copy of the PDF i wrote, just pm me.

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

@King Kindred With the "Villains taking over their stories" idea, i recommend looking at the Lorcana disney card game. Specifically the Floodborn villains. Pretty much, the game has 3 types of characters:

Storyborn: How they appear in the movies
Dreamborn: How they appear in Lorcana's specific story
Floodborn: How they appear in the Bad ending of their orginal story (E.G. Jafar ascends to become a veritable god of magic, while Aladdin is leading a resistace against him. Gaston uses Belle's Fathers inventions to keep Belle away from Beast so that he remains in Beast form, Hades actually succeeds in taking over Olympus by giving Hercules his godhood and distracting him with being a hero to humanity while Hades ascends to become King of the Pantheon, etc.)

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

@King Kindred Well, on the Am and Karre front, would it be ok to go with the Garland backstory in this way:

Garland is who Xehanort worked with back in the day to perfect the Nobody creation technique, then they went their separate ways. Garland has created Am and Karre as his Angels of Death, and much like in FFIX, during their first story, Am ends up killing the old man in frustration of his attempts to limit her power. After Am kills Garland and Terra, she throws her lot in with whoever seems more story appropriate at any given point. Maybe one of the Villains of the World, maybe Xehanort, maybe Maleficent, maybe the Organization. At this point, her only goal is to get Karre back on her side so they can spread war together, just like dear old daddy wanted.

The important thing is that Garland doesn't survive long enough to muddy the waters of the story, he's simply "The mad genius who was the first to perfect the Nobody creation technique. He had his own plans to save his world, but dies before he can go through with it and instead, Xehanort made off like a bandit with his notebook on how to do it." Sort of like Ivo Shandor in Ghostbusters.

This is assuming that Xehanort is still behind the Organization in this game. If not, replace Xehanort with whoever. But in any case, a Final Fantasy character has an important role in the story, but it's more of a foot-note rather than another whole long and messy storyline we need to worry about.

If it's still a no, i'll shut up about Garland and move on.

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

How would you all feel about Mickey Mouse's House of Villains being how the full story ends here?

@King Kindred

In all seriousness, i LOVE House of Mouse and am pissed that Disney won't upload it to Disney+. Especially at this time of year, because Snowed In At The House of Mouse is one of the most underrated christmas specials. Plus, so long as we get that kick-ass musical number.

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

@King Kindred Hmmm, i see what you mean, although i think people probably would have prefered the Maleficent angle to be played into more. I mean, the first game is the most coherent because it plays with familiar characters with a simple "Bad guy wants to get the maguffin and take over the world" story. The Organization, as Bacon said, are mostly intollerable as people, and yet the game still treats them as characters that you should like.

I think trying to expand the Disney villains roster would also have actually given you in-game reasons to be visiting the disney worlds. I mean, everyone agree's that one of the biggest problems with KHIII's story is that, despite a lot of the worlds being fun, almost none of them actually play into the wider story or have any lasting impact. Maybe even bringing in some of the other Final Fantasy villains would have also done some good. Would loved to see my mans Kefka serve a role in it.

And i think that that's the franchises biggest failing as a whole. It's whole premise only exists in that first game. "A crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy!" when that barely ever actually happens after the first game. I mean, Squall and his gang pretty much disappear after the first game, only showing up briefly every now and then. Vivi and Setzer show up in 2 in glorified cameo's. Zack has a glorified cameo in BBS. Cloud and Sephiroth keep showing up for cameo's across the games, but they only ever serve as window dressing to what's going on around them. The franchise is far more focused on its original characters. Now, wanting to focus on original characters isn't a problem in itself, but kinda is when we look back at that tag line and realized that a good number of the audience did not sign up for that.

Now, i think that it'll work in this, because, we don't have the problem of having to sell this story to a wider audience. The organization being made up of evil versions of the PC's will absolutely work. When i ran my campaign, my version of the Organization (Or at least, the team of bad guy Nobodies i had running around) were evil reimagnings of Disney heroes which is why my party kinda were able to get emotionally invested with them, even if that emotion was "FINALLY, WE SHUT THAT BASTARD UP!!!" But i could tell they were kinda digging fighting an evil Aladdin and evil Arial, because there was that inbuilt familiarity.

Anyway, i'm just rambling at this point. I'm gonna go to sleep and hopefully come up with a way to help make this work better than the games when i wake up.

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

@Bacon It's not bickering, i mean, i don't think anyone's wrong for liking him, i just don't and it's simple as that. I don't think he's a terrible character, just a harmlessly inoffensive character who simply outstayed his welcome with me personally. I do acknowledge that others have opinions and are entitled to them. The only hill i will die on in this franchise is the hill that everyone already conceded long ago "This series is a really great concept that was horrifically badly executed and was mostly saved by the Disney aspects and the absolutely top tier gameplay." Because even DDD when the story was at it's most confusingly convoluted, actually had just some really solid and fun gameplay and movement mechanics to fall back on. In fact, the only game i gave up on was Chain of Memories, which just became incredibly tedious to play.

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

@King Kindred Honestly, i think it was DDD that did it for me, specifically because that was the game that took my feelings for the Organization from apathy to active hatred. Like, i didn't care about them in CoM and 2 and they were just on the cusp of outstaying their welcome, but didn't. Then DDD brought them all back in a "Hey, it's all your favourites!!!" kind of way that tipped me over the edge.

Reminds me of an old meme i made for a Simpsons group when i was playing through them.



@Sadu To be fair, that one was just a joke

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

@King Kindred Honestly, i sat down and watched all of the cut-scenes on youtube... Maybe it's because i played 2 and DDD first, but i'm gonna be honest, i cannot bring myself to give a shit about Axle as a character. Like, i tried, i really tried, but i could not motivate myself to even slightly care about him. And i should specify, i don't hate him. Because hatred is a feeling and i don't get those for him. He is a non-entity that the game tells me i should be emotionally invested in, rather than giving me a reason to:

Game: "Hey, it's Axle!"
Me: "Oh."
Game: "Aren't you happy he's back!"
Me: "Not really."
Game: "Well you should be."
Me: "Why?"
Game: "... Because this big, epic, fanservicey moment doesn't work unless you care about him."
Me: "But i don't."
Game: "... Hey, it's Axle!"

Kingdom Hearts: Heroes of Hope

@Bacon