Progress Update
15 of 18 tasks complete. Getting there now!
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Progress Update
The writing for chapter 4 is officially finished!
Now onto the editing phase. 
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Yay!!! That’s sooo exciting to hear!! Out of all the WiPs I read this is hands down like a top 3 story of mine(the top 3 all keep switching spots with each other 
) I’ll constantly just come back every now and then and play through it again even tho I’ve done it like atleast 20+ times at this point and every time I still love it
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Just a quick grammatical note on dialogue tags: Dialogue tags should directly pertain to the act of speaking, e.g with words like “says,” “asks,” “replies,” “shouts,” etc etc. Other actions that only describe what they’re doing while speaking, instead, should be separate, full-stop sentences rather than dialogue tags.
Two specific examples in the text:
“You question” would be a dialogue tag (changing the “y” to lowercase: “you question”), while “She glances at you,” and “She pauses,” should be separate phrases, like “She glances at you.” and “She pauses.” Or you could make it into a dialogue tag like “She pauses, then [continues/adds/explains],”
“you exclaim” would be a dialogue tag, while Lord Maleagant’s action would be a separate phrase (““Why, thank you.” Lord Maleagant stretches his fingers across his chest.”).
I love Morgana and dislike her mentor Merlin. He’s rude to MC at first because he doesn’t trust us, and if you refuse his meager attempt at making peace in Chapter 3, he gets all huffy and walks off saying “I tried!”—but did you? Did you really, Merlin? You immediately gave up! With the immaturity behind his “wise” reputation and his mad-scientist willingness to test potions on people he hasn’t properly informed, I think my MC’s gonna keep him at lance’s length.
Also choosing to accept his attempt at making peace was like:
Merlin: “Sorry for not trusting you at first, let’s move past this”
*shakes hand*
*checks stats*
“Merlin: Distrusting”
Me: “I SEE RIGHT THROUGH YOU, OLD MAN”
(This is a light-hearted observation, it’s actually kinda funny to me)
I really wanna expose his deceptive ways to Arthur/Elaine, since I’m sure they don’t know.
Right, and I also wanna say: I really appreciate the fact that you can’t change Arthur/Elaine’s mind about having children. In my personal experience with media, I’ve noticed how fictional couples’ disagreements about having kids always end with the one who initially didn’t want kids changing their mind, so it feels significant that I’ve found a story that doesn’t go that route.
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I’m not meaning any disrespect to the author or fans, but I was warned off this story because of this aspect by some other readers. No kids. Read the first chapter myself and when Arthur said I don’t want kids just because I say so I was like yeah nah not for me. First the Pendragon bloodline thing, secondly kings usually have blood heirs and fictionally who wouldn’t want want a freaking kid with King Arthur of Camelot!?! But it’s whatever imo would’ve made more sense if it was like Lancelot or someone else. Just my two cents.
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Thing is, Lancelot (was a slut) did have at least one (acknowledged) son by one of the Elaines (thinking she was/while she was passing herself off as Guinevere) and in most of the cycles he has many of them, though only one of any real note as a Round Table knight. There is no story where Lancelot does not have a son, and it would be far more of a stretch to the mythos to write a tale in which he doesn’t (chastity was…not his strong point.) But there are many versions where Mordred is not Arthur’s son, rather solely Morgana’s (and while I may not be remembering correctly, there’s a version where he’s Morgana’s son with Merlin, even.) It is perfectly fitting with many versions of the Aurthurian tales to have an Arthur who is unwilling to have a child, even if it takes some modern-day extrapolation of attitudes. Not to say that people would have been particularly happy with it, but there were plenty of loopholes in inheritance law to allow for things like sterility/barrenness (and “unwillingness” which was sometimes due to homosexuality or asexuality or even just actually not knowing what the hell to do…royal history is very…unsettling sometimes) or simply someone having all daughters and no sons in areas where women could not inherit.
And if you want kids you can pursue pretty much any other opposite sex ROs. Why would someone having a hard boundary about children turn you off of the story? Would you feel the same way if they were gay or straight instead of playersexual?
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Eh, personally it has nothing to do with his hard boundary for me as an ex-arthurmancer.
I just remember being really caught off guard after having a few romantic moments and slipping into the “arranged marriage to true love” trope as the queen with a true icon, and suddenly being told that it wasn’t going to include the chance to have a family in a place that low-key hates her and she is isolated in.
It was just sort of awkward and pressuring when she had to decide right then or there if she still wanted to go through with the wedding (which I always do, because I want to play as a queen and it’s the whole reason she’s there!) and I get so put off by Arthur and his team never letting mc know before they even arrive about his child-free stance that is incredibly important in a marriage contract, and just romance Lancelot in secret lol
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Ah. Makes more sense now.
I have to admit it’s not been a problem for me as I find this Arthur entirely unappealing. I tend to chase Kay.
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Children are for sequels. I don’t know if this game will have a sequel, but assuming it doesn’t, there you go.
The “hard part about that” is that it’s basically rape, and as such not something many people are okay with. “Just seduce him” is, similarly, going against person’s explicitly articulated preferences and thus not much of an “alternative”.
If you’re going to suggest options, then how those options reflect on morality of the MC should be taken into consideration. At the very least recognize such actions won’t suit every MC, so to suggest they’re easy solutions to the problem is far from true.
Morgana for her actions is painted a villain, and quite rightly so. There’s a reason you don’t have a line of courtiers just causally repeat her actions as if it was perfectly normal and socially acceptable behavior.
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I am not gonna go to the morality issue, it just that it’s choice game so there is a choice going that way, let player decide what they want to do.
Player can be more assertive or just entertain being passive, it is a choice, I am not saying this will have no consequences, sure put consequences there for player to choose which one they able to live with.
I am just taking cue from Morgana like in most story she either use glamor or drug Arthur to have that one child.
MC have their own kingdom to rule, so I am being unfaithful and tumble with someone else is better?
I never said there there will be no consequences, if player have qualms for doing it then they can ignore this option, for those that want to go that way either due to roleplay villain or tired of this treatment they can have option to do something about it even if this resorting to questionable method.
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Am I the only one who just figured that the insistence on no children was code for Arthur being asexual? It seemed like a neat solution for the Arthur/MC/Lancelot triangle and something I hadn’t seen before.
Of course that turned out to be a false assumption… but my MC said to Arthur that it was too soon for sex so I don’t know if they discuss something about contraception in that scene.
If this was some story the author created from scratch okay I’d respect it. But this is based a pretty popular story, and it’s more me fan girling King Arthur like I said in my og post. I tried this story when I asked some IF friends in a group chat for something similar to The Bastard of Camelot and one recommended this one but said be warned you can marry Arthur but he doesn’t want kids. I was excited but sad as I am one who is has always been more of a Arthur fan than Lancelot in many adaptations of Camelot Tales. I gave the story a try anyway for a bit, but none of the ro’s appealed to me and since Arthur was off the table I stopped reading. Problem solved. And reading through this entire forum post I can see I’m not the only who shares that sentiment.
Plus, like the previous post said, we are not told this prior to be putting on the spot with marriage contract (mcs family is also effected) and later when asked Arthur won’t give my mc any explanation other than a firm no. If you are going to ask that from a person explain why.
And in my honest opinion a main character, who is pretty popular and central to the story shouldn’t have too many restrictions so to speak. But that’s the author’s prerogative as it’s their story, I can just figure we’d agree to disagree and move on. I do wish them best of luck though!
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Well I’m just gonna see in this upcoming update.
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Progress Update
The editing continues!
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Some Chapter 4 Info:
So this chapter is very wide as opposed to long, which usually people don’t like that much since it makes it appear shorter. But doing so allows lots of different choices and differing situations to pop up.
Editing has resulted in me adding more friendship scenes and more ways to develop some specific relationships that could enable the player to have some big choices in the final chapter.
It’s always hard to balance length and player choice, and I am usually on the side of player choice, so that usually means I need to flesh more out afterwards, so players don’t feel disappointed. I understand it can be hard to see how choices affect the story so I have to make sure that picking each path actually changes dialogue, outcomes and later choices. This is my first proper choice script game, and don’t want it to seem like your choices only matter at the end of the game.
I made a whole chapter split based on player choice as to if a war occurred or simply fizzled out. Yet I seem to still get feedback suggesting player choice doesn’t feel impactful enough. Any advice folks?
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Not really advice, but an observation on that last…the character does not seem to be impacted by the siege choices. That, I think, is what those complaints are about. PC feels rather static in the game.
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Heartbroken! I want kids! No fair. So we cant even adopt!?
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Not with Arthur/Elaine
Arthur/Elaine “Abstinence or accidents” Pendragon needs no heirs. They already know how that ends.
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