Blood and Runes (WIP) -- Updated January 10th

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Welcome to the forum, friend! :wave:t5:

And thank you for catching all of those typos. Grammarly has failed me.:pensive:

The ROs will not be gender flippable. As @JBento pointed out, a large part of Ralys’ character arc stems from being a woman. In addition, Idar would only be able to amass the power he has by being a man and Dalia’s power considering her gender will come into play later. Even Aariz’s gender impacts the game in minute ways, thought to a lesser degree than the others.

What I will say, however, is that depending on if the MC is a man or a woman, characters will treat them differently in certain circumstances. For example, if you choose to go to the left wing in the brothel, the man you find will grow angry with you if you are a man, but first assume you are another prostitute if you are a woman.

The MC’s magical abilities are set, partly because of coding and partly because they allow for them to be an assassin rather than, say, a general, but yes, they can wield three types of magic, one of which I haven’t introduced yet.

Customization will be in the next update! I’m not sure how I’m going to introduce it yet, but it will be there!

Thanks for your kind words! I’m certainly having fun so far :grin:

Edit: Considering the demo is so short and you all might have more questions, I’ve added a link to the tumblr page beneath the demo link. I’ll accept RO asks, world-building questions and things of that nature, but please try to keep it SFW. If you’re curious about world-building you can ask it here as well, of course, but for more detailed/niche information, head over there. Thank you!

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Cool story you have here. The prologue isn’t wordy but it is impactful and gives enough context to understand what’s going on.

I’m also interested in the sexism and homophobia part. It’s the kind of elements that fleshes a story but because of understandable reasons it really isn’t used much around here. always liked it in the sea of infinity saga, but since this story isn’t genderlocked I’m excited to
see the diferent situations you put us in

Keep going on👍

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First off, thank you for your kind words! I know I’m sounding a bit redundant at this point, but every reply brightens my day :smile:

The homophobia in Reian is very much similar to that of asoiaf’s. It is not persecuted and there are no laws against it, but side eye and shade is given, especially if you reach a certain level of nobility. When I say ‘casual homophobia’ I mean along the lines of snide words, a thinly-veiled insults and things of that nature. Which the MC might run into. But in terms of actual hate-crimes and such, I don’t plan on including them.

Sexism works a little differently. Female MCs might experience things that male MCs don’t, and male MCs might experience things that female MCs don’t. For the most part, the MC, as a member of the King’s Order, is not affected by it in terms of their day-today life, but when dealing with the people outside of that institution, it might be different. As I write I plan to include flavor text as such, and possibly different scenes in certain circumstances, depending on coding and the workload.

Now that I’ve finished my little tangent, I have a couple of questions for the people on this thread:

  1. Without looking at his character description, do you think that chapter 1 gave you a decent impression of Aariz as a character? If it didn’t, I might go back and try to create a stronger one for him.

  2. How did you enjoy the fight scenes? I will be the first to admit that battle scenes are not the strongest point of my writing, but hopefully they didn’t come across as too weak. They are something I am working to improve on.

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@anon44460681 on both your questions I think you did a decent or good job of it. As we all know we can always improve but for a first go through I think it’s fine with what you did for both those points :smiley: and I’m looking forward to more

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The dichotomy between his interactions with the MC and the other characters certainly show the reader in no small terms his personality. On one hand you have him being BFFs with our protagonist, quips and compliments and whatnot that show the deep care he holds for the MC.

On the other hand, when it comes to those he doesn’t care, well, he is certainly… unbothered by their… existence, let’s say. Resan taking a hostage and Aariz seemingly not even registering said hostage is quite memorable/ funny. I can’t speak for others, but for me he certainly made an impression.

I’m not qualified enough to speak too much on this point, since I think of fight scenes as flavour to the story and characters, hence not that important. What I can say, at least, is that they are descriptive enough to properly imagine them. I had no trouble picturing what was going on in them.

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Depends. Is Aariz a dude who likes to play and joke around, but ALSO very much enjoys the fact that his job not only gives him complete impunity to beat people to death but that it makes it actually part of his job description? If so, you absolutely nailed it.

Besides my earlier remark that the Aariz v guards sequence goes too many screens without a player choice, I found them good.

EDIT:

Harsh, but fair.

I don’t particularly dislike him, but admittedly “willing enforcer for a brutal monarch” IS unlikely to make him my BFF.

I’m only doing it because of YOU! I LEARNED IT FROM WATCHING YOU! :sob:
runs into bedroom crying
slams door

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Ouch. That’s a harsh statement, but I can totally understand where you’re coming from; Aariz is absolutely a Blood Knight, and his… morals are very skewed. That being said, as his creator I feel inclined to say that I do plan to cast him in a more human light, and I hope that you’ll see there’s more to him than simple brutality, even if you don’t like him :grin:

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To answer your first question, Aariz comes off as a caring, fun and competent partner, but is dismissive or straight up cruel to strangers; even more so with targets. I do like him bc I usually play a more hesitant, chill character. The bad cop to my good cop haha

I’m firmly of the belief that fight scenes should be short and to the point when it isn’t a boss battle or final showdown. So far I’m enjoying it, especially since I’m a magic main the whole blood control thing is fun and different from the classic ‘rain fire unto thee’ approach

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To be fair, the MC is also the willing enforcer of a brutal monarch, and [redacted], but yes, I see where you’re coming from. Good news is that even if the MC and Aariz are close friends and partners, they don’t have to be for the entire game. You can make choices to distance yourself from him if you like!

That’s very much the vibe I was trying to give him! If I write him well he’ll be a complex character but his ‘us vs them’ mentality is quite black-and-white.

I’m glad the fight scenes entertained you! I was admittedly nervous about them.

Great! That’s the vibe I was going for. Aariz is very much a ‘me and mine’ type person. When he loves someone, he loves with every part of him. If he does not :woman_shrugging:t5: .

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I definitely got a very strong impression of Aariz’s character, but it was exactly the one @JBento got.

But I didn’t get the impression that the MC is a willing enforcer for a brutal monarch, so maybe that needs to be a bit clearer. Like, nothing says we’re willing, and I don’t know anything about the monarch. Even beyond that, there’s nothing that says we have to be brutal, whether the monarch is or not. Yet Aariz chooses to be.

I didn’t even get into any fight scenes, because you know I’m not brutal.

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The MC’s circumstances – and the order they work for – will be expanded upon in chapter 2! One thing I will say is that the reason they’re in these circumstances lies heavily in the way the King’s Order opperates. The rest I’ll leave to you all to figure out.

And that’s fine! You don’t have to like Aariz. He’s not a good person, after all. He’s an assassin and a Blood Knight and his fighting style is brutal. I totally get why some people might not be crazy about him.

Off topic, but does anyone have recommendations for a map-making website? A lot of chapter 2 takes place in the Sanctuary and before I have them travelling everywhere I want to get a semblance of they layout.

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Azgaar’s Fantasy map generator is one of the better map “making” websites I’ve seen, you can even zoom in on the map, click on the cities and see their layout, which is rather cool.
It isn’t too hard to figure out how to use but like the name says it’s a map generator not a map maker, still good tho.

Another good one that you can use is Campaign Cartographer, you have to buy and download it, but it’s definitely worth it since you can create a map from scratch.

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Thank you! I’ll have to check the links out!

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Just to be clear I chose magic option when I went to the left wing.

I really like the brutality of the combat scenes, flows really well. Keep up the good work.

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Thank you. I’m not home right now but when I get back I’ll comb through it. Did you choose a weapon in front of the brothel? If you did, which one?

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Don’t worry about it. Take your time.

I chose the sword infront of the brothers.

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It should be fixed now!

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Would you be interested in poly routes?
  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

How do y’all feel about poly routes? I’m open to basically any combination (I’ve been toying with a few) except for Ralys and Idar, who absolutely cannot be in a poly together due to plot reasons. It’s a lot of work though, so if that’s something you guys aren’t interested in I don’t think I’ll do it. If it is I’ll certainly consider it.

Edit: as @Paradox1 has pointed out, this is a bit difficult to decide on since you haven’t met most of the ROs. Will ask again/open this back up once more of them are introduced!

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If the girl going to kill us I like say one thing he did it( yep I’m going to throw some of them to the bus magical bulshit magical rules and I’m following that rule I’m not taking in the first punch)

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This is a difficult choice to make so early on. We haven’t been properly introduced to the RO’s yet. I would suggest rescheduling the vote to a later date until we get a feel of how the different RO’s behave.

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