Choice of Rebels Part 1 WIP thread

Hosted Games Works In Progress
921

@Mara, as @jeantown just said, you’re the forum Consultant on How to Be Evil.

You don’t yet have the power to kill all your helots (or the charisma to get them to willingly march into the Harrower) but who knows what might change after a couple more games?

@_jl, glad you liked it, and great suggestions. I’ll do the headers. Turning the index into a conversation is a good idea, but low priority right now. And you’ve probably read (or skimmed past) enough posts of mine to know there’s no need to apologize for writing your thoughts down at length. :slight_smile:

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922

@Havenstone No problem. I hope I get a chance to play it soon. Understandably, and I agree, making the world index more characterised is secondary to actually completing the story itself! Just out of curiousity though, does the index add new content as you progress through the story?

For example, if you killed the priests (I don’t know whether you can or not), would it add to the index something like ‘as of late, most of priests are thought to have been obliterated by < PC > and his horde of followers’ to, say, the section on religion?

923

Oh, @Havestone you made me blush . For me is easy think evil plots, so if you need help Mara to rescue.

924

So far I’ve not had faction credibility blurbs vary by specific stuff you do in the game, just by your overall total.

If you slaughter the de Merre nobles in their beds, that sends your credibility with the aristocracy plunging. But your stat chart won’t say, “they hate you for the brutal murder of the de Merre.”

The idea is that your overall popularity score should be able to recover if you then really work on making nice with them, so that your early murders are eventually all but forgotten. Ditto for killing priests at their altars, robbing helot barns, and the other things that can really tick off one group or another.

I could code it so the story specific comments are in there, but disappear when most people from that group have forgotten them. Think that’s getting added to the “good but lower priority” idea barrel.

Edit: and for changing stuff in the “legendarium,” I’ll be open to specific suggestions for things in the game that should change index text. Not sure we’ve had anything yet…

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925

Guess what?

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/88501596/CoRTest/web/mygame/index.html

Before anyone gets too excited, this is just an update to the previously existing chapters… and I haven’t had time to test it as thoroughly as I’d like, so bits of it are probably buggier than Angela Merkel’s cellphone. Still, assuming it doesn’t break, there are plenty of changes that I’d value your feedback on. In particular:

Prologue:
* Tweaked the jongler prologue, making it rather more centered on the Shayardene national language.
* Some of your choices now move your stats very slightly.

Chapter 1:
* “Choice of the Drazen” – you can now be an aristocrat who finds Breden’s boldness to be inexcusably insolent (coughthreateningcough) and responds accordingly.
* Radmar will now come along to Whendward with you, even if your confrontation with Chirex ends badly.
* I’m popping in a placeholder for P_Tigras’ idea for an easy mode IAP. FairyGodfeather has already articulated his strong opposition. Let’s hear what others have to say. :slight_smile:

There’s now a save point at the end of Ch 1, so if you want to just replay Ch 2, trying different things with the same character, you don’t have to rebuild from scratch.

Chapter 2:
* Raid the tax collector! Close to 40,000 words of new plot to explore! You’ll all be happy to know that this will not be an IAP. That’s not just because of your near-uniform horror at the idea (though that obviously influenced me) but because as I wrote it, I realized it was turning into an integral part of a balanced game, rather than the big “bonus mission” I’d originally envisioned. And while I’d at least consider offering an unbalanced version for money – cf. the “easy mode” idea above – I’d never force people to pay extra to get a balanced game. So enjoy. There are four main branches, some longer (and tougher) than others.
* You can choose to bring Elery along on the caravan raid and make use of her tactical skills.
* Using Theurgy, and Breden’s charisma, are now options for the temple raid.
* Using Breden’s charisma is now an option for begging from the helots.
* You have more options to treat Radmar as Suspect #1 (e.g. on the noble raid).

While this won’t be clear from the storyline so far, using your followers’ skills to win at bandit raiding is not consequence-free. Each time you choose to make use of Breden’s or Elery’s skills, you’re increasing their leadership credibility with the band. That’s all peachy as long as you intend to remain on good terms with both of them, and as long as you don’t seriously disagree with them over a course of action…

There are a few tweaks I still mean to make to Ch 2. Notably, I want to do more to differentiate what happens when you visit Alaine Leybridge in the winter from what happens in early spring. And I still need to write in more severe consequences if you stop raiding before you have to and let people starve – at the moment, they still just keel over passively and die, which as FairyGodfeather pointed out is not how our outlaws would actually roll.

But that’s not priority – Ch 3 is now priority. I want to finally get the plot rolling forward again! (It’s been almost a year now since I wrote anything with Platon in it).

Enjoy, and please do feed back.

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926

Noooo! It’s 2:40am. I want to sleep. Zzzzzzz sleep. Sleep for me. Update will still be there in the morning. It’d better be at least. Yay update!

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927

Must…resist…urge…to… Play CoR instead of fulfill prior obligations…

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928

I was playing the tax collector update and it said something like error or selection error when we were waiting for the couple days to attack and I clicked next to continue.

929

On the jongler prologue path, he calls you ‘my girl’ even before you’ve set a gender. Just pointing that out. ^_^;

930

@Havenstone - I too got an error at the “collecting tax from the tax collectors”. :wink:

line 5654: Non-existent variable ‘frame’

What a story so far, though. Makes me sweat the decisions and makes me almost cry at times. Brilliantly told, captivating story. Only done one run so far, but by golly, this one is a buy, to be sure! :-bd

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931

I chose to try and attack the tax collector and I get an error saying it has no frame and the option to go forward isn’t there.

932

Yeah, I tried to attack the tax collector and after I’d threatened the family of the guy with that title that begins with Tu so that he’d spill the beans it ended up saying that there was an error in that there was no follower variable. (Edit: More specifically, it says “line 6143: Non-existent variable ‘follower’”.)

Anyway, I just want to comment that this was excellent! It’s been a long time since I’ve played through a bit of this, but the ability to go on as a more aloof nobleman with a lesser focus on the helot-loving is very nice, as are the other touches of personalization that I’ve noticed in some of the other paths.

933

Aw… is this Havenstone’s subtle way of telling us that we’ll have to pay for the full thing anyway? :((

Edit: Loved the “Drazen Choice” additions, by the way!

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Congratulations! the game is tons better.

I love the new bards version its more credible.

Drazen choices are awesome due alllow me don’t love that ugly helot in forest and represent what a ultra noble could think.
I don’t end all but i want my father love me more to say drazen path lol. I almost make him shut up once . I have to end game lately but for know is awesome…

935

@Wyrmspawn
Choice of Drazen. Oh, the character development of us!
Also, now with the ability to use Breden’s charisma, I can now focus being the brains of this rebellion.

936

An update! Jolly good - I’ll look forward to playing again this evening.

The Choice of the Drazen path raises some intriguing possibilities, and I’ll look forward to seeing how it plays. It would be interesting to see a revolt which is primarily intended to restore the ancient rights of the Shayardene nobility, as opposed to liberating the helots.

937

I keep getting this error when I’m doing the tax collector mission, it pops up just when the attack on the tax collector starts.: line 5654: Non-existent variable ‘frame’

938

This is the most amazing update I’ve ever seen. I literally started crying with joy and happiness when I saw that Havenstone hadn’t given up on this.

939

OK: I fixed the “follower” variable, the “my girl,” and (I think) the “frame” variable problem – at any rate, I just played through the Bleys the Telone path with no error messages. Please let me know if they pop up again!

I’ve also noted that there are at least two more sections I’ll need to tweak in light of the “Drazen” path: the scene where you (possibly) send your father along with the mission to the helots, and the scene where Simon/Suzane joins the gang (which now needs some options which don’t involve telling your new noble recruit that s/he’s going to be doing the chores just like everybody else).

Thanks everyone who’s played and fed back so far – really glad you’re enjoying it. And bless you, Beez, you don’t need to worry about my finishing it (barring my untimely demise). Just worry about when I’ll finish it. :slight_smile:

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Please don’t have an untimely demise Haven…