@WulfyK: 3a. Yep, adding more raid options would take days – assuming you’re suggesting I write different text and not just have all the “choices” lead to a near-identical face-off with an Ecclesiast. The temple encounter isn’t a short one like the barn raids or helot begging, after all. Remember, I’m not doing this full time; a day of writing is usually 1-2 hours, or up to 4 if I’m lucky. (Like @HornHeadFan, I’d like to take some time off work to write full-time for a week – that might just happen next month, fingers crossed).
Because my priority now is advancing the story, I’ll only go back to edit the existing text where I think it will significantly increase the quality. For example, I agree with you that having more Radmar in the bandit scenes is important; I’ve not quite integrated Elery and Radmar to the extent I think they deserve. But in my view, extra raiding options like a new temple or caravan or market town to raid are at best Nice To Have (let’s call them NTH) – fun but adding nothing other than a bit of extra replayability. A writer can always add more NTHs; but at some point, you just have to stop. I’m content that the scope of the bandit chapter is broad enough for a quality game.
And in some places, adding more choices/details would in my judgment diminish the quality. They’d slow down the pace, or bog readers down in extraneous detail that has them flipping to the Index when I want them caught up in the flow. Of those kinds of changes, I’d say Less Is More (LIM). Take 5c, for example – if you had been suggesting that in the game I add more detail about the private life of Alastor Fellen, I’d call it a case of LIM. Fellen only has a name because it would have been unnatural for her comrade not to call it in certain scenes. Yes, I want her dialogue to suggest a life beyond her brief appearance in the game; but as for the details, I’ll just join Michael Ende in saying, “That is another story, and will be told another time.” (Spoiler: that time never comes).
When I respond to a suggestion with NTH or LIM, feel free to keep arguing – everyone’s taste is different. Ultimately, I’ll be writing this game to mine. But there will be cases where I’m persuadable.
5b: Yep, exactly. It’s grayed-out because I thought I’d give high-INT players a hint that a lower-INT character would have the chance to lose here.
5c: Alastor Fellen’s kids are back in her home in Corlune, the great trading city of the Shayard Coast. Their house isn’t that far from where the River Veldre meets the sea. Her husband is a shopkeeper selling dried fish and olives. But while I’m happy to spin that yarn for you on the forum, adding that kind of detail in-game right now would (I think) be a LIM error. Humanizing the Alastors can come later.
5e: “Five punishments” isn’t really how people in this world would think of it; that’s much too precise. Like other terror-states, the Hegemony routinely piles on as many punishments as it thinks it will take to get the message across – and yes, betraying an Architelone earns a more vehement response than helots hiding a runaway. As for Ester Cabel, any Shayardene would take for granted that she was tortured and shamed before the Slow-Harrowing. If she wasn’t publicly paraded between towns like Bleys, it was only because the odds of someone trying to rescue Bleys were negligible.
5f: Yes, in theory the noble should have been tried by her peers. And in theory, any noble in the Rim could complain to the Archimandrite that Zebed overstepped his bounds. But there are some crimes where it makes sense to publicly grumble… and heresy isn’t one of them. Especially not when aristarch Keriatou was the one who called in Zebed.
5g: Both you and Xedia know exactly what you’re doing if you betray Bleys – there’s no way that anyone in this world would expect the Karagonds actually to have mercy on a Telone who betrayed his master. Not for a second. If Bleys were spared, it would be such a transparent trap that Xedia would expect you to kill the family and not come anywhere near him. (She probably assumes you’ve killed his family anyway). No: when you say, “I’m glad we understand each other,” you’re confirming that Bleys is the victim.