What Would Your Story Be for the Next Mario Game?

KingAmir_W3

Goomba
If you could write the story for the next mainline Mario game, what would it be about?

Would you bring back an old villain, introduce a new character, explore a new world, or take Mario on a completely different adventure?

I'd love to hear your ideas! 🍄
 
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سلام کینگ امیر، به این انجمن خوش اومدید!

مطمئن نیستم که انگلیسی صحبت می‌کنید یا نه، اما اگر براتون امکان‌پذیره، پیشنهاد می‌کنم به انگلیسی پست بذارید، چون زبان اصلی این انجمن انگلیسیه و بیشتر اعضا فارسی صحبت نمی‌کنن.

امیدوارم اینجا بهتون خوش بگذره!

(Hi @KingAmir_W3 and welcome to this community, I'm not sure whether you speak English or not but I would recommend posting in English if possible since this is an English-language community and most people don't speak Persian. I hope you have fun here!)

I think it depends exactly on what the next Mario game is. If it's a mainline game or pretty much anything non-RPG then I would probably not mind an original villain (like we had with Wart, Tatanga, and originally Wario) and maybe an original major side character (like we had with Rosalina, Cappy, or Yoshi) but a complex plot probably isn't needed.

Something simple like the main villain and their underlings overtaking a kingdom, stealing artefacts/magic, transforming civilians against their will, etc. and Mario and friends have to stop them can work okay. Though side plots that the player can interact with optionally, like we had with Rosalina's storybook wouldn't be unwelcome, and basically anything can work for that, it could be interesting for something like that to give a slightly more fleshed out villain origin story.

I think Princess Peach Showtime was a pretty good execution of a story involving an original villain, original setting, original deuteragonist and NPCs, but still a relatively simple plot to fit a non-story driven game, so something like that could work for a main series game.

If it's an RPG on the other hand, then yeah I definitely want a more substantial original plot (including a chapter-format if it's a Paper Mario game) which has more substance than Sticker Star, Colour Splash, or Paper Jam. I don't have any major ideas for entire plots right now, but I think another complex/tragic villain or if not than then an iconic original one with a highly memorable design and speech patterns would be amazing (heck even just a female villain who is actually the main villain herself and not an assistant/team member with a male boss would be highly welcome, since really the only ones we've had so far in the RPGs are Cackletta, the Shadow Queen, and the Shroob Princesses, all of which were decades ago, the Shroobs have mostly non-intelligible speech and language, and the Shadow Queen is only met at the end of the story while the primary villain for most of the story is a man), and I'd like it to take place in a new setting with diverse NPCs that have memorable personalities like we had in Paper Mario TTYD.

I also think that having more LGBTQ+ representation would be welcome, not necessarily as the main plot of the story (though that could work if it's handled well), but even just like having a female character casually refer to having a wife or girlfriend would be pretty cool.

Also if it's a Paper Mario game then I'm happy to retire the whole thing about making everything about being literally paper, the characters in-universe being highly self-aware of being literally paper, bosses being stationary, abilities being paper-based, etc. I always preferred the way the first three Paper Mario games interpreted the paper more as a presentation style than a physical law about how the universe works.

One other thought I have any this applies to both RPGs and non-RPGs is that I don't think they should steer in the direction of making Mario x Peach and Luigi x Daisy explicitly canon romantic couples since in my opinion it's not necessary to make them canon, and those pairings were always meant to be open to interpretation in the first place and plenty of fans (including myself) prefer to see them as just friends or ship them with different characters.
 
سلام کینگ امیر، به این انجمن خوش اومدید!

مطمئن نیستم که انگلیسی صحبت می‌کنید یا نه، اما اگر براتون امکان‌پذیره، پیشنهاد می‌کنم به انگلیسی پست بذارید، چون زبان اصلی این انجمن انگلیسیه و بیشتر اعضا فارسی صحبت نمی‌کنن.

امیدوارم اینجا بهتون خوش بگذره!

(Hi @KingAmir_W3 and welcome to this community, I'm not sure whether you speak English or not but I would recommend posting in English if possible since this is an English-language community and most people don't speak Persian. I hope you have fun here!)

I think it depends exactly on what the next Mario game is. If it's a mainline game or pretty much anything non-RPG then I would probably not mind an original villain (like we had with Wart, Tatanga, and originally Wario) and maybe an original major side character (like we had with Rosalina, Cappy, or Yoshi) but a complex plot probably isn't needed.

Something simple like the main villain and their underlings overtaking a kingdom, stealing artefacts/magic, transforming civilians against their will, etc. and Mario and friends have to stop them can work okay. Though side plots that the player can interact with optionally, like we had with Rosalina's storybook wouldn't be unwelcome, and basically anything can work for that, it could be interesting for something like that to give a slightly more fleshed out villain origin story.

I think Princess Peach Showtime was a pretty good execution of a story involving an original villain, original setting, original deuteragonist and NPCs, but still a relatively simple plot to fit a non-story driven game, so something like that could work for a main series game.

If it's an RPG on the other hand, then yeah I definitely want a more substantial original plot (including a chapter-format if it's a Paper Mario game) which has more substance than Sticker Star, Colour Splash, or Paper Jam. I don't have any major ideas for entire plots right now, but I think another complex/tragic villain or if not than then an iconic original one with a highly memorable design and speech patterns would be amazing (heck even just a female villain who is actually the main villain herself and not an assistant/team member with a male boss would be highly welcome, since really the only ones we've had so far in the RPGs are Cackletta, the Shadow Queen, and the Shroob Princesses, all of which were decades ago, the Shroobs have mostly non-intelligible speech and language, and the Shadow Queen is only met at the end of the story while the primary villain for most of the story is a man), and I'd like it to take place in a new setting with diverse NPCs that have memorable personalities like we had in Paper Mario TTYD.

I also think that having more LGBTQ+ representation would be welcome, not necessarily as the main plot of the story (though that could work if it's handled well), but even just like having a female character casually refer to having a wife or girlfriend would be pretty cool.

Also if it's a Paper Mario game then I'm happy to retire the whole thing about making everything about being literally paper, the characters in-universe being highly self-aware of being literally paper, bosses being stationary, abilities being paper-based, etc. I always preferred the way the first three Paper Mario games interpreted the paper more as a presentation style than a physical law about how the universe works.

One other thought I have any this applies to both RPGs and non-RPGs is that I don't think they should steer in the direction of making Mario x Peach and Luigi x Daisy explicitly canon romantic couples since in my opinion it's not necessary to make them canon, and those pairings were always meant to be open to interpretation in the first place and plenty of fans (including myself) prefer to see them as just friends or ship them with different characters.
I just wanted to test if anyone here speaks Persian 😅
سلام کینگ امیر، به این انجمن خوش اومدید!

مطمئن نیستم که انگلیسی صحبت می‌کنید یا نه، اما اگر براتون امکان‌پذیره، پیشنهاد می‌کنم به انگلیسی پست بذارید، چون زبان اصلی این انجمن انگلیسیه و بیشتر اعضا فارسی صحبت نمی‌کنن.

امیدوارم اینجا بهتون خوش بگذره!

(Hi @KingAmir_W3 and welcome to this community, I'm not sure whether you speak English or not but I would recommend posting in English if possible since this is an English-language community and most people don't speak Persian. I hope you have fun here!)

I think it depends exactly on what the next Mario game is. If it's a mainline game or pretty much anything non-RPG then I would probably not mind an original villain (like we had with Wart, Tatanga, and originally Wario) and maybe an original major side character (like we had with Rosalina, Cappy, or Yoshi) but a complex plot probably isn't needed.

Something simple like the main villain and their underlings overtaking a kingdom, stealing artefacts/magic, transforming civilians against their will, etc. and Mario and friends have to stop them can work okay. Though side plots that the player can interact with optionally, like we had with Rosalina's storybook wouldn't be unwelcome, and basically anything can work for that, it could be interesting for something like that to give a slightly more fleshed out villain origin story.

I think Princess Peach Showtime was a pretty good execution of a story involving an original villain, original setting, original deuteragonist and NPCs, but still a relatively simple plot to fit a non-story driven game, so something like that could work for a main series game.

If it's an RPG on the other hand, then yeah I definitely want a more substantial original plot (including a chapter-format if it's a Paper Mario game) which has more substance than Sticker Star, Colour Splash, or Paper Jam. I don't have any major ideas for entire plots right now, but I think another complex/tragic villain or if not than then an iconic original one with a highly memorable design and speech patterns would be amazing (heck even just a female villain who is actually the main villain herself and not an assistant/team member with a male boss would be highly welcome, since really the only ones we've had so far in the RPGs are Cackletta, the Shadow Queen, and the Shroob Princesses, all of which were decades ago, the Shroobs have mostly non-intelligible speech and language, and the Shadow Queen is only met at the end of the story while the primary villain for most of the story is a man), and I'd like it to take place in a new setting with diverse NPCs that have memorable personalities like we had in Paper Mario TTYD.

I also think that having more LGBTQ+ representation would be welcome, not necessarily as the main plot of the story (though that could work if it's handled well), but even just like having a female character casually refer to having a wife or girlfriend would be pretty cool.

Also if it's a Paper Mario game then I'm happy to retire the whole thing about making everything about being literally paper, the characters in-universe being highly self-aware of being literally paper, bosses being stationary, abilities being paper-based, etc. I always preferred the way the first three Paper Mario games interpreted the paper more as a presentation style than a physical law about how the universe works.

One other thought I have any this applies to both RPGs and non-RPGs is that I don't think they should steer in the direction of making Mario x Peach and Luigi x Daisy explicitly canon romantic couples since in my opinion it's not necessary to make them canon, and those pairings were always meant to be open to interpretation in the first place and plenty of fans (including myself) prefer to see them as just friends or ship them with different characters.
 
I should not be hired to write stories for any Mario title, and you will quickly find out why. They'll involve the following: Baby Mario and Baby Luigi as major starring characters alongside Mario and Luigi, a crossover with Dynasty Warriors, Wario and Waluigi being recurring butt-of-joke comic relief characters, and monsters from Starcraft, Diablo, and Alien would be involved. Genre would be comedy horror, and it would be M-rated.
 
I mean, there are so many potential pitches. There are probably a ton of threads across the site with various parameters for new game ideas. Most of the time, I riff off existing material, because A) I'm a Wikier and B) Creating from whole cloth isn't that interesting to read in text form because the reader has no frame of reference to imagine what the writer is thinking of. Here's some junk I have lying around.

Paper Mario Sticks Again - Following the events of Paper Mario: Sticker Star and Super Mario Odyssey, Mario takes the Odyssey to the Sticker Star to catch up with Kersti. However, an evil plot is brewing just behind the canvas, requiring Mario and Kersti to team up again to save the day! Building on Sticker Star's mechanics, Mario again wields sticker power to fight enemies. Instead of Things being single use super moves, they are permanent sidearms with lengthy cooldowns. Paperization has been upgraded to allow for flipping and rotating any object, and more puzzles require using objects from different courses, giving puzzles more axis to test the player with and increasing how much it feels like the world is but a scrapbook.

Paper Mario: Page Turner - Mario goes to fight Bowser and save Peach, but Mario... loses? Bowser negates every one of his attacks with time manipulation powers and locks Mario in the dungeons. He finds the librarian sprite Bowser took the power from and she gives him the last scrap of it: the ability to leave the book containing their paper world and reenter it it on a different page, warping through time. The catch is that they can only go backward up to three days, they need upgrades to have more granular control over how far they jump, and they cannot advance past when Mario was imprisioned. Can Mario and Bibliorm use this power to flip the script on Bowser?

As you can probably tell, I'm favor of keeping the arts and crafts world of Paper Mario. It provides a lot of material to jump off of, from stickers to coloring to origami to papercraft in the official titles, and a library and book theme here. And also, more awful puns. I love a good pun.

(Sticks Again exists because I'm a Sticker Star stan, and paying off on Kersti's dialogue while fixing the flaws of Sticker Star is a win-win. Page Turner's basic premise of "flip through a book for time travel" was made to spite people who say "Paper Mario takes place in the real world" by being a completely valid premise that requires it doesn't. Nintendo might even do it too, they do not care about lore. As you can probably tell, Page Turner looks a lot like Majora's Mask, but where that game uses time travel for a dour and apocalyptic tone, Page Turner would be using it for wacky puzzles like growing a plant in multiple different ways. to use as differently arranged platforms.)
 
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Mario and Luigi are in the Peach's Castle and they hear "Mario!" And they run and see that Bowser Jr. has kidnapped Peach in his clown car and flies to the Bowser's Castle, Luigi says "this time where defeating Bowser NOW" and uses a cannon, Mario and Luigi reach the castle and they enter, they fight against Bowser and is a replica of the SM64 fight and Mario says "So long kinga Bowser!" And Bowser runs and Luigi goes to catch him while Mario rescues Peach and they go back to the Mushroom Kingdom but a purple storm comes and they hear "I HAVE FURY" and Fawful appears and he sents Mario and Luigi to a abandoned town, everything is destroyed and dark and Luigi says were so close to save her, and HOW FAWFUL RETURNED? And both start to investigate the town and Toadette is damaged and hidden behind a house and Mario finds her and she runs and Mario doesn't understand why, the Bros go to search her and they catch her, Toadette tells that she was scared because believed that Mario was Midbus and she tells that Fawful is back because the Dark Star did Fawful to survive, and Midbus destroyed the whole Toad Town, and Mario is frustrated and refuses to let Fawful win and the Bros go to search Bowser and the adventure starts.
 
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