A Gods Guide to SBURB

Are you struggling to progress? Found something weird? Or just curious about some systems? Well then welcome to Sburbian Mechanics! World's Best* guide to the game that ends the world! (*May not actually be the best. But hyperbole sells baby!)

[sburbian-mechanics]

Uh, Hello? Is this thing on?

Oh, uh. Ahem-

Greetings! If you are reading this, that means that you’re on Froggernet. Aka: Your a Sburb player. You might have a lot of questions, like; how do I complete this quest? What types of dungeons are on my land? What powers do Mages have? Which enemies drop gas grist? Or maybe you are just curious about things, like what kinds of Npcs are on Prospit, how the game generates lore, how to beat the Nightmare Heir, or what fraymotifs are available to you.

Hell, maybe you even want to ask about the post-game, or optional content!

Unfortunately, Sburb does not come with a game guide. And while there are some forums on Frogger, none all in one place. What to do?

That’s where I come in! Names gracelessGrandeur, or GG. Me and my friends have successfully completed Sburb, and with the help of a…normal source of infinite information, I’m here to help with your Sburbian woes! Ask about whatever mechanics you like, and I’ll be here to help you out! No matter what species, moral alignment, or odd request. I specialize in the game's mechanics, thus the name of the blog, but I'm free to answer anything. Just don’t ask me to fix your game. I’m a god, not a dev!

UPDATE: Make sure to scroll the ggs guidelines tag to know a bit more about the kinds of asks I am willing to take. Spoiler alert: pretty much anything, you just gotta be specific.

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[OOC: This is an askbox along the lines of sntechsupport or sburbian-sage, just from a former player perspective! This does NOT take place in the Replay Value AU, though it does take heavy inspiration from it. Details about the universe, and the blogger, will be revealed as we go along! My main blog is @creativeinfinite13. Happy asking!]

[astridsplace]

aspects as game elements

time: rules, mechanics, constraints, grinding, fps

space: setting, ui, controls, simulation

light: the main quest, goals, tutorials, cutscenes, progression, story games

void: glitches, bugs, speed running, un-intended playstyles, skipping story

breath: open world, exploration, play, side quests, single player

blood: npcs, multi-player, teams, dating sims, social games

life: player stats, lives, hp, save files, inventory, rewards, ranked, resource management

doom: hazards, game over, balance and difficulty, challenge modes

mind: visuals, style, graphics, and audio

heart: roleplaying, dialogue options, choices matter, the emotional experience

hope: immersion, escapism, genre

rage: enemies, combat, realism

[sburbian-mechanics]

Hey this might be kind of a strange ask, but recently i noticed the messaging program i use has been saying that my status is playing some game called "Sburb" and i looked it up and eventually found this account. Any idea why this might be happening? I dont have this "Sburb" game on my computer at all or whatever discs the online search results were talking about either. The little timer thingie that shows how long i have been playing is also negative?

Hmmm. Do you have any clones, alternate selves, or alternate timeline variations of yourself that you are aware of? They might be playing SBURB and accidentally transferring their data to your account somehow. In this case, I would say a mirror dimension is most likely, as the numbers are going into the negative and you don't appear to be concerned about a recent influx of meteor storms. Even if you are not aware of any such dimension, it's good to check just to make sure that it does or does not exist in your universe. The best way to check is to hold up a mirror to another mirror at midnight exactly, with one of them being made of obsidian. If you see something, it's the mirror dimension!

You could also be the person trapped in a computer while your real self is playing. Try common glitch-finding techniques- the simulation people typically make for an AI version of their past selves typically isn't very bug-tight. I hope this helps! And I don't apologize for any existential crises. You were probably going to figure it out eventually, and you're likely making too big of a deal out of it anyway.

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It's always "What does this mean about my identity!?" or "Has everything been a lie?!" but never "Huh, this is helpful." and "I can exploit this!" people are soooo overdramatic I swear.

[sburbian-mechanics]

hey so what if like, i’ve been in a “dead” session and i really haven’t liked it so much, (please don’t judge me!! i don’t know why i’m here :( ) and i got this kid to let me into their session while they were making their chain! yay :D! BUT… i’m already in a session? but it’s a bad one so maybe it’s fine??? what does it mean to join a session when i’m technically already in one? i have a feeling there may be some sort of consequence but it can’t be that bad, right? whatever happens i can fix? i don’t want to be here no more :(

Hmmm...I never heard of someone joining an SBURB session from within an SBURB session. (Not including cases were Carapacians ended up being players, mostly because they did not set up the game SBURB, they just kinda discovered they had planets.) It might be the sort of thing that is fatefully impossible? Computers end up failing, SBURB discs go missing, that sort of thing.

However, sessions merging is actually something that exists, and being able to communicate before the merge is an early sign of it. Based off of what I know about SBURB, I think it's likely they might be coming to your session instead of the other way around. It would be just like the game to replace your normal lepercaun allies with actual players if the games are connected in some way, and it typically doesn't like giving Dead Sessioners any sort of break. However, it is also possible they are supposed to "rescue" you from your dead session if it is somehow physically impossible to finish...this is probably what will happen if you are a Muse. They get slotted into damsel-in-distress roles a lot.

Whatever ends up happening, good luck with your session! I'm Sure you'll need it.

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[sburbian-mechanics]

Hello there!

My Knowledge on alchemy is rather good, but one confusion I do possess is on the acquisition/copying and creating of text through alchemy.

We can see copies do work, but do you believe every writing is possibly in the alchemy system ? Even ours?

...This could be an important source of LORE!

I don’t see why not! It’s sorta like a Babels Library (human thing,) if you think about it. Everything that has been written or could be written is in the alchemy system- although I doubt SBURB will alchemize a book of gibberish unless you do something really weird. And yes, SBURB is compatible with every language. How else would other species play it?

[sburbian-mechanics]

so, uh. Me and my team beat the game a few years back, super great, I still dream about its awesomeness.

But we're all still aging? We all achieved god-tier before we claimed the ultimate reward, and I kinda thought that the conditional immortality included a pause on aging. Are we- just going to age forever?

one of the fun parts about god tier is that you can actually chose what age you want to present as! Any age you’ve already been, you can shape shift to. However, you won’t age past your species natural lifespan, so once I get to like 100 I won’t age anymore. Still, I like appearing like I’m 20 or so, because that’s closest to what I feel mentally. (And it’s near my species physical prime.) Although sometimes I will appear as a kid to play pranks!! Shapeshiftings fun :)

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[sburbian-mechanics]

We have a BIG problem

Our heart player prototyped his wisdom teeth that then got prototyped with a moth from his land

Everything kinda ok, moth buddy is having a crisis but not exploding

The thing is, the heart player died it was an accident

Mind player panicked and prototyped dead heart player's body with HIS sprite, that at the moment was a doll

Now we have doll guy and moth buddy and they both look like our friend and we are all panicking amd we don't know if we can fix this

you have two friends now! Good luck!

[sburbian-mechanics]

hey, is it normal for massive differences in planet quest difficulty? cause our space player is literally relaxing and sipping chilled passionfruit smoothies on a giant lilypad and captchaloging frogs, whilst I have to deal a land that kills you if you make a single misstep & time travelling underlings, and that diamond fucker. is this divine punishment? did the frog that is apparently reality decide that I needed humbling?

yeah, actually this is nothing unusual. SBURB seems to assign planet quests based on some emotional growth it wants you to complete and your ability to beat it. Thus, people who are able to grow without it being physically dangerous or just have less talents before they entire the Medium get easier lands compared to people that are more stubborn and malcontent or have more combat experience. These people can coexist in a session, and so, you can planets of varying difficulty in one session as well. Still, this system is kinda bullshit, because sometimes SBURB doesn’t follow its own guidelines to make a point, and its quests take into account the past and the future as well as all possible outcomes across timelines, so sometimes it gets screwy because of that too. So basically, good luck. GG out!

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[astridsplace]

aspects as story elements

time: the plot, structure, pacing, editing

space: setting, worldbuilding

light: exposition, character relevance, information onscreen, canon, answers

void: ambivalance to the plot, b-plots, side tangents, breaking of story convention, what’s off screen, subtext, mystery, questions

breath: character freedom and agency, exploration and fun and journey, the middle of the story, the hero, the protagonist

blood: character relationships and obligations, secondary characters

life: character goals and backstory, starting circumstances, beginnings

doom: character obstacles and arc endings, resolution

mind: character choice, options, pov, demeanours, internal monologue, style and presentation, acting in a wide range

heart: character identity, internal conflict, nature, truth, dialogue, acting authentically and consistently, motivation, what’s underneath

hope: character beliefs, tone and theme of the story, genre, comedy, fantastical

rage: rising action, conflict, climax, drama, real world parallels

[sburbian-mechanics]

Thought this was pretty interesting! Thinking about aspects as story elements is a pretty good way to get to meta magic methinks.

[sburbian-mechanics]

Do you think it would be theoretically possible to change classpects??? If so, how would you go about it?? My session has no Time or Space players, but we have Void and Doom, a prince of doom and a witch of void to be precise. But if you could, idk, reach into the source code of sburb and change variables, would our sessions be viable and not necesitate a scratch? These classpects seem like a good choice if you wanna survive impossible odds. The prince is god-tiered but not the witch. Could there be some fraymotif we could do???

Okay so it is possible. I know that at least- it's incrediblely uncommon, and you have better luck being struck by lightning while buying a winning lottery ticket, but it is possible. However it cannot happen by messing with variables or the source code. (Which you should Not be doing Anyways!!! Especially if this is your first session- it's recomended to be at least 500 years old before even trying to edit something small. Messing with extra-dimensional code is not something to be taken lightly. People die in the best-case scenarios. It's far more likely you will end up erased from existence with all memories of you banished from reality itself.)

Instead, changes to classpect typically come from either a Choice, a predetermined glitch, or an extreme permament personality change. Which typically end up all being the same thing in the end, because that's what happens when the game you're playing can see the future and ajusts for it. You can win the game without needing a Space or TIme player anyways, so you should be fine! There is really no need for a Scratch 90% of the time. Really, you'd think the fact that you need to sacrifice your whole timeline/existence would be a pretty big hint that this is a worst-case-scenario sort of thing. So don't worry! You'll be fine.

Probably. GG out!

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[sburbian-mechanics]

Asking this for a friend.

Let's say that this friend of mine is a derse heir of void, who's recently started to commune with the horrorterrors.

Let's say that the horrorterrors have been really helpful to my friend, and he's actually getting on really well with them.

Let's say, purely in the realm of hypotheticals, that this friend has caught feelings for a horrorterror.

Is there any way my friend could use his powers to withstand the direct presence of a horrorterror without going mad, turning to slime, or anything else?

Hypothetically, this friend might be hoping to take one on a cosmic dinner date.

Got any advice for him?

Hmmm, this is a tough one. I fully support seducing eldritch gods but I didn’t really have much contact with them during my session. I can’t imagine it’s THAT much different than dating normally- wait no. Different species have way different perspectives on romance, so maybe have your friend ask the horrorterror what even counts as romance to them, and then if they’d want to peruse that relationship? I’m pretty sure that healthy communication is a good foundation for all forms of relationships inter-universally. Other than that…be respectful, caring, and not afraid of emotional vulnerability. Or tentacle sex.

GG out!

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I’m so glad that romance is much more varied among different species. I’m AroAce by human standards, but I’ve had strong Eyebsorvant crushes. I always felt out of place as a kid because of that…so I’m really glad that there can be alternative options. You don’t even have to marry! I’m single, and no one expects me to marry anyone anymore!!! I’m free!!!! :D

[sburbian-mechanics]

Can you explain the difference between Prince of Space and Prince of Time? (Personally wise) I relate to them both, and I can't decide which one I am.

Oh I can understand the issue with this one! Lots of people lean way too hard into thinking of Princes as a complete negation of their aspect- leading to a lot of misidentification as princes of complementary aspects. But it’s really not that complicated! Princes tend to actually have a lot of common with their aspect- maybe even too much. The things that they have in common with their aspect opposing aspect are superficial- in a very literal way. Sure they may look like that aspect, or have the most stereotypical traits of it, but they always have much more identification and internal thoughts resembling their true aspect. They just take those traits to such an overwhelming/unhealthy extent that it looks like the complementary aspect. Like a circle!

Okay maybe that isn’t phrased the best. Let’s get into examples! A Prince of Space screams perfectionism to me. Wanting to create the most perfect, most meaningful, best creation and extension of themselves that they often don’t make anything at all. Or bring others creations down because its not “good enough” or “highbrow”. The things they would make would be kept in stasis- never being allowed to grow to their furthest potential in fear of it growing worse. This is ultimately destructive of course, as they cannot prevent the decay of stasis nor the winds of change no matter how hard they try. From the outside they might look Timebound- being all anxious and busybody about their appearance and presentation of themselves and their creations while tearing down others who don’t meet their standards- always worried and stressing and moving is a very Timebound thing to do. But as you can see they are still very clearly Spacebound.

A Prince of Time on the other hand, might appear calm and creative from the outside, but often has enough inner turmoil and energy to power a major city. They probably have an attention-disorder, and what looks like a calm front is just them disassociating and losing track of time as they think about 7 different things at once. Perhaps their creations aren’t even that original- it only looks that way because they are mixing like 27 seemingly unrelated inspirations they are obsessed with. I can see them be an amazing scrapbooker or webweaver- or making a lot of different philosophical points about life and death through their slam poetry. They would perhaps be a little too obsessed with death and change- becoming nihilistic to the point of stasis maybe? Pretending to be okay with all their extential fears by saying that “nothing matters and we all die eventually so we might as well do nothing because nothing we do even matters anyway”. They would care a lot though, about everything. The very embodiment of a fake idgafer. A more intense Prince of Time might hate their aspect- denying inevitability due to some grief. A person stuck in the past, lamenting all that time has took from them, while making sure everyone else is dragged down to their level of misery. They might even try to pull of some supervillain type gambits- trying to find immortality or freeze time itself to resist entropy. Either way, a Prince of Time, while seeming calm and philosophical, is probably just depressed and dealing with existential dread that may or may not manifest in unhealthy ways.

How’s that? My session didn’t actually have a Prince, but there was definitely one in my debate class before The Meteors. It’s their natural habitat really…that and the internet. There is no escaping them in the depths of forum arguments. Anyways, hope I helped! GG Out!

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Hmm…that wasn’t an extremely long length. It’s probably where these things should be at! Only problem is that I didn’t really go over powers or anything? Hmm. Maybe I could request that when in the asks you want to include powers, personality analysis, or both. Powers would include Denizens and quests and stuff as well! Probably better than trying to squeeze a gameist and archetypal lens into one post. Much to think about!

[sburbian-mechanics]

I, uh, just accidentally broke my sylladex. I can’t retrieve anything from it and I can’t put anything in it. There’s also some very important quest items in it. What do I do?

Well. Don’t know how you did that exactly, but congratulations? My honest advice is to just get a new syllabi, which drops from most Underlings. But that won’t exactly get your quest items back so honestly I’m stumped. I wouldn’t worry about it too much, (the Game loves its obtuse fate based systems,) so there’s a good chance you’ll get them back at exactly the time you need them. But uh. I don’t know how to fix this. GG out?

[sburbian-mechanics]

So I, a rouge of rage, have ended up becoming the emotional core of my group, but no matter what I try, arguments keep on breaking out. I've tried to ask for someone to step in, but it's not working and I'm at my limit. Any tips for dealing with this before someone ends up attempting murder?

This…this is…familiar. Sometimes people, even those who are friends…can’t get along. Don’t even like each other, not anymore. Trying to make them get along is good for the game of course, and making sure that they know you are there for them is important. But you can’t solve a problem that’s not yours. You’re not supposed to take everyone’s emotions for yourself. Even if you’re the leader.

You can try of course. But that stuff gets to you. The pressure can be overwhelming, consuming, unpredictable…and- and- the worst part of insisting you can handle it yourself? Is when people believe you.

That’s when you break. That’s when you become the one doing the murdering. They’ll claim they never expected it, but looking back it’ll seem inevitable.

My advice? Remove yourself from the issue. If they can’t handle it like friends, that’s fine. If they discover that they can, that’s fine too. You’re under no obligation to stick together after the Game ends. You only need to make sure they can work as a team, and be there if they need it and/or struggling. But don’t take that burden for yourself. It may seem like the cool, responsible, respectable, mature and leaderly thing to do, but you’re a kid too. You’re not that above them- and may end up even worse in the end. Take care of yourself. That always comes first. GG out.

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…projecting much? Heh… even if your not doing it for selfish reasons, or feel more indignity and self righteous than emotionally overpowered, doesn’t mean that you are immune to this advice. We’re more similar than different. And I shouldn’t have to tell you that Rage can be just as volatile as Heart.

[sburbian-mechanics]

hi. me & my friends just entered the medium, and I can't find my client player? i was about to get back to helping them build up to their gates, and they're just gone? our mage says they saw them on Derse, "which makes no sense, since they haven't god-tiered, and woke up on prospit" (mages word's). they are a "knight of breath" apparently. is there anything we should do? (page of blood, mage of mind, slyph of life, bard of heart, seer of space, witch of time, rogue of rage)

What I’m guessing is that they woke up on Prosput and flew over to Derse- maybe unconsciously, maybe not. Or it could be that they found a Derse teleported somehow- either on their planet, or on your home planet if SBURB was produced by a company capable of building them. Both of these cases are weird and unusual, so I don’t doubt that this happened for a reason. Maybe they found or are looking for something on Derse, or are needed there for some reason. Politics maybe? I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Just get in contact with them or pop over to Derse, and tell them that they need to help you out with something.

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Don’t know why you need to give me your classpect info for this…I dont really see how it matters??? Froggernet is just like that sometimes I guess.

[sburbian-mechanics]

Can an heir of void passively manipulate the horrorterrors and have a homeostasis and symbiotic relationship with them,like Venom in a way.

I mean like- probably? Hell if I know what the Horrorterrors are capable of. And Frog knows that sapients are capable of most impossible things, so who’s to say they can’t? That seems more of a you issue than a general one- I haven’t heard of such a thing being done before, so I don’t really have any advice to give you. Good luck though! GG out!

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[sburbian-mechanics]

Hi, I'm sorry if you've answered asks like this before, but my computer crashes after too much backreading. I'm also sorry if this is too vague of a question I'm not sure how to narrow it down. Is there anything to do in-game after godteiring, but before The Choice? I know it's cowardly of me to put it off, but I want to wait for more members of our session to godteir, so we can potentially do it together so it'll be less frightening.

@bloodless-eyes (Kankri Vantas)

Well, actually you’re supposed to godtier during or after the Choice! I know the ease of doing it and the popularity of speedrunning tactics has confused some, but you can tell because after godtiering you wake up on Skaia. This is supposed to be fast travel, so you can fight the Black King quicker! I don’t blame you for waiting though. Sessions are dangerous and tricky, and going slow and safe never hurt anyone. In the meantime, try fighting the Nightmare Heir if you feel up to it! I described the basic outline of it here, but honestly I’d love to talk about it some more, maybe go into certain details if you have any questions. Good luck with your session- GG out!

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