5.f. Well, really, I designed the relationship around a character who’s attracted to certain things and turned off by others. The game presumes an initial strong physical attraction just to get things rolling, but you can definitely cancel that out by behaving in ways Breden finds unappealing. As for the four loves, if you were speaking koine with Breden you’d doubtless be using eros to describe his/her love. Agape’s a little too lofty and disinterested, philia not impassioned enough, storge too familial.
6.c. There’s no law forbidding marriage between free provincials; but for an aristo to marry a merchant would in effect end their recognition as noble by their peers. They’d be permanently stepping down a huge notch in social status and privilege. As a result, Houses that lose their land generally end up forming a subcaste that can/will only marry other similar unfortunates. They usually can’t find an opportunity to marry up, but marrying down would be to forever remove that alluring possibility.
Your family, if you’re an aristo, is not quite reduced to that level; and your father has doubtless been doing everything he can to find a way to marry you up before settling for an even less fortunate family and continuing (likely cementing) your House’s downward spiral.
The Canon prescribes that the eldest child inherits any lands and houses belonging to the family. All other property may be freely apportioned by the matriarch or patriarch in a will witnessed before an Ecclesiast. At marriage, spouses become co-owners of each others’ property, and one spouse may complain legally to the Ecclesiast or aristarch if the other disposes of that property without mutual consent. There’s a strong incentive for provincial families not to (officially) squabble too much over property, as wherever ownership of property is deemed legally unclear it may be confiscated by the authorities pending resolution… which then rarely comes.
Yes, there will be opportunities to affect Anarchy in Ch 3 of the game. You could murder the Archon’s cousin, for example… that can’t help but affect people’s perceptions of how much the authorities are in control. You’ll have some choice of how you respond to Hector coming after you. And you could start a religion.
Mara de Jade Lie-Breaker – called Shame-Veined by the Thaumatarchy.
Status: Aristocrat
Anarchy: 1
Ruthless: 52%Compassionate: 48%
Skeptical: 48%Devout: 52%
National: 50%Cosmopolitan: 50%
Charisma: 2
Combat: 0
Intellect: 1
Wealth: 137
Followers: 56
Arms: 10
Bloo0
That religious stat is buggy as hell, well i raid temple and say against xaos stupidity result my devout stats grow? Also i need more breden is a traitor dialogue with my follower scum i want they hate her badly enough to make them if something happened blame her as spy
Yep, Mara. Your character will generally be anti-priest and a Lie-Breaker regardless of whether you’re skeptical (of whether Xthonos and the Angels exist) or devout (claiming that the priesthood has distorted the Word of the Angels).
If you make it to the temple raid with a 50-50 Skep-Devout rating, the game currently has you give a little speech which (I thought understandably, given the context) aims to appeal to the devout, not to the skeptical:
“You’re no servant of the Merciful Angels, woman,” you call back fearlessly, pointing to the slate sky. “We are. And I say, anathema on all those who distort the truths of Xthonos and call it Canon! Damnation to those who use the name of the Angels to justify murder!”
This nudges people’s perception of you very slightly into the devout zone. I wouldn’t have thought a 2% bump counts as “buggy as hell.”
If you want to stay totally neutral on the religion stat, don’t go raiding temples. (edit: or convince me that I had a bad idea and I should let you raid the temple without tipping the religiosity stat either way).
I’ll see about adding dialogue where you actively believe that Breden’s a traitor and set out to convince the band.
HMM :-? I just raided temples due my character hates that stupid no sense religion, and show my slaves that Mumbo-Jumbo didn’t have any power at all over them. How hell make me devout??
*Mara goes Vatican insult pope and raid the relics. I hardly doubt people considers me devoted after that. Or maybe Catholic view of devout is different ?
Mara, if you’re raiding the temples then obviously you’re not too friendly with the structure of the priests and so on, but when you give the reason that you raid them because they have corrupted the true faith people who agree with that will see you as pious.
Imagine that, when raiding Vatican City for loot, it is a time around just before the Protestant Reformation when the Catholic Church had a pretty bad reputation for corruption. Many of the time’s would-soon-be Protestants would have no problem with the Papacy being thus raided, as they saw the Pope as a figure that contrasted with their interpretation of the Christian faith and the Catholic church as being rotten and in need of either massive reforms or destruction.
Devout Catholics obviously see the matter a bit differently, but when you pit yourself against the religious structure while at least putting on airs of some sort of devotion then you need to be in some way at least justifying it with potential reforms that folks will agree or disagree with.
I think it’s fine to default to the religious appeal if one’s convictions are utterly neutral on piety or skepticism here. My impression was that the Shayard is fairly religious and so a character who doesn’t really care one way or the other finds it easier to take on airs of piety and saying that the current tradition is corrupted rather than to argue against it entirely. Maybe if the Main Character was Nereish since their culture tends more towards skepticism, but not Shayardenes.
Thanks, Golgot – that’s pretty much exactly how I intended that scene to be interpreted.
WulfyK, belatedly, there’s a decadrachm coin which is worth 10 drachems, and a gold stater is worth 10 decadrachms. And yes, in light of that economy update, I need to update the reference to you finding small chests of gold staters in Rim Square.
And here’s a link – sorry to have missed it at the top of this page!
@Golgot@Havenstone I just assume my character was lying about all speech. Why I couldn’t lie??? IM A POLITICIAN.I give one of reasons to rebel destroy mumbo jumbo. So mumbo jumbo couldn’t be a real speech. That’s why I couldn’t be devout. It’s like when Voltair ridiculized about church, was pure irony, he wasn’t a pro Jesuit , lol. A politician like Mara telling the truth, sure she is so sincere when kiss dirty peasants exactly same sincerity when Hitler and Stalin pacted about conquer Poland and talked about peace.
Mara-- a 52 devout is a non-significant score. It also assumes that your character’s lying – you don’t care to anything like the extent your little speech implies – but that you lie on the devout side, because that’s the useful/default side in a religious society. If you don’t make further choices that suggest actual devotion, you should stay right there: politician-devout, appealing to the Angels when it sways the masses. At least that’s how i’ve been seeing it.
Ok, but you have understand my Mc won’t stop lie. So if you don’t track lies I would look a goody to shoes in stats and block any evil action in future chapters destroying all role play. I mean my character wouldn’t say Truth until take power. Like all dictatorial leaders before. They didn’t say “ey I would kill half population in gulags and starving your children FOllowing me MAO”
Adding my two cents to the discussion above, I think if the MC has a devote/sceptical value of 50 or slightly more or less, s/he should have the choice to use one of the variants in the temple, and thus determine if the value will increase or decline.
@poison_mara, you don’t have to lie. If your MC has CHA 2 she becomes Lie-Breaker no matter what she says.
@Havenstone
6.i. If there’s no interbreeding between helots and nobles for at least 300 years, shouldn’t the two groups have distinct looks?
j. Does the canon consider marriage between two nobles and marriage between two helots the same thing?
k. Are there other sub-classes of the middle class?
Hey Mara, I’ll see how to manage the stats so it doesn’t confuse lying with actual sincere devotion.
WulfyK:
6i: oh, there’s been plenty of interbreeding, despite the efforts of some Ecclesiasts. Just no intermarriage.
J. Good question, and one i’ve not answered yet. Can you think of ways you might expect it to differ?
K. Well, in a sense there are as many subclasses as there are guilds, as they tend to have distinctive liberties. And a lot of the free townsfolk in a place like Rim Square who serve noble estates have non-guild crafts, like poulterer, or veneur (hunter), or fletcher. And I always reserve the right to make more up if I think it’ll make the game better.
@Wulfyk Its not the same roleplaying wise. Believe what are you saying or just lie as a politician. Also stats would be important late on for future choices.
Instead of having to add a lie counter or something silly to every such event in order to keep track, maybe later on you could just add a fake choice where you feel it’s necessary that says something along the lines of, “That seemed to be a very powerful statement coming from you! Did you believe it?” with a choices to respond something along the lines of ‘nope, I’m lying through my teeth’, ‘absolutely, I believe that with all my heart’, or ‘maybe a little but I care mostly about the practical concerns for saying that’. Then Mara can be happy without adding on a cumbersome lie counter stat thing to any scene with potential duplicity or checkers for high lie-counters later on and she move on to asking why we can’t just poke out the eyes of all the helot followers and laugh at them as they stumble over tree roots.
Or alternatively there’s assuming later on that anyone who picks a devout option while being cynical is lying should that prove to be important at any point. I guess that would put people in the middle down as basically opportunists with maybe a bent one way or the other but with care more for public perception that anything, which is basically how it is now. So, for example, picking up pious options later on in the series might get you different texts depending on whether your piety is really high, if the cynical is high instead, or if it’s neither but in some sort of grey middle zone.
On that note, little changes from the baseline obviously cause a big difference in whether you are explicitly, say, a nationalist or more into the multiculturalism, but as you go to the extreme end does that change anything? If the multicult stat is maxed out, for example, would that result in the character just about disdaining anything tending towards a nationalistic culture of the Shayardene as provincial rubbish that they’d not care to pass away? Would there be a line where a nationalist would go from accepting other cultures in the common struggle against the Karagonds (so long as they are fighting in common for the freedoms of all their countries against a mutual foe strong enough to stamp down any particular one) towards maybe thinking that anything foreign to Shayard is bad and to be shunned, even if it’s from others than just the Karagond occupiers?
I await expansion of the demo (and eventually actual release) with eager anticipation, keep up the good work!
@Havenstone, @poison_mara If a noble MC tells Breden that s/he’s concerned about helots, a question follows if s/he’s honest, I think a similar thing should be done whenever the MC is fisrt confroneted with a decision that affects the scep-dev and the nat-cos stats.
6.i. But are there no typical “noble” and “helot” looks?
j. First of all, who allows a couple to marry, and can an aristo force two helots into a marriage even if they don’t want to? Then, are the wedding ceremonies (vows, customs, etc.) the same for both? Also, are the actual attitudes on cheating the same?
k.does the view of the “merchants” towards the MC cover the whole class or only merchants in the narrow sence?
@Golgot your comment made me remember one odd thing, if the MC chooses either freedom of Shayard or no restriction of the trade and travel between the provinces when talking to Breden and then spares Zebed and the second Theurge, s/he tells them of thieir goal, but if s/he selects both, neither one gets mentioned. I think this should be corrected, an MC can desire both things.
I dont need a entire new text a choice you believe your speech? And answer nope drop the devout stat. But any kind of hidden stat for bad characters lies could be useful like *mara +1 >:-)
I just think that a couple of fake choices would be easier than starting up a lie counter and having to keep track of it, which may very well be wrong.
@Golgot fake choices don’t change stats, so I would have the same status as a saint being Hitler. So later on in games I couldn’t do bad things or things I want to do my stats and supposedly present me as a hero. My character hates mumbo jumbo and raid a temple because that hatred could lie to some foolks but she is not devout, and i dont want later on i couldnt say i hate mumbo jumbo and i want all believers and temples get burn due game suppose i raid temples becouse im ultra religious. its not same save a boy to do a good thing, than save it to eat him later on. following game mechanic i save it so im a hero even if im preparing a child barbacue for dinner
sure she is so sincere when kiss dirty peasants exactly same sincerity when Hitler and Stalin pacted about conquer Poland and talked about peace.