Diaspora - Updated 12 February 2024 [First Draft Complete!]

bug report: checking for wrong variable
image

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Oh, great catch, thank you!

Just discovered this in time for a new chapter! Absolutely love your world-building and characters :slight_smile:

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Well that was incredibly stressful. On the upside, I made notes as I was playing, so this might actually be useful to you.

I have two “canonical” characters, because there are only three save slots and I need one free to experiment with. This is how the first looked at the very beginning of the chapter.

Summary

As you can see, pretty aggressive, but I was also trying to keep his abilities more or less balanced. Intuition suffered a bit but Seighin is… not an observant man.

The companions;

Summary

I put Pan on magic, Aisling below decks, Cormac on the helm, Izzy in the rigging, PC watching the stuff, and Sang was left free. My logic for this;

Pan has more experience than Aisling and I wanted Aisling free to do things that might require the crew’s trust.

This was borne out because the next choice was, in fact, something that required having the crew’s trust. So Aisling goes below deck.

Cormac is about as strong as Sang, I think, but Cormac is presumably a better sailer, so he wins out for manning the helm.

Izzy is definitely the most nimble of the companions and by this point SHOULD know the ship pretty well.

And this PC and Sang have pretty similar skill sets, so I pretty much flipped a coin here.

I did NOT rescue Sang and feel pretty bad about it. But my character has a responsibility to the whole crew and frankly, I think he would understand. Not thrilled with the hit to Pan’s opinion of me because I’m romancing them in this character, but I can live with 57% friendship. I will be on the lookout for chances to improve that score though.

Stats at the end of the chapter;

Summary

The second character is my favorite, developed over several careful playthroughs, tweaking it a bit each time. Start of chapter stats;

Summary

I tried to get aggression even lower, and I swear I got it down to 17% once, but haven’t been able to replicate that. I’m surprised Intimidation is even as high as 13%.

For companion allocation I had;

Summary

Pan on magic, Cormac below deck, Sang on helm, Izzy on rigging, Aisling watching the stuff, and the PC free. This was the second one I played through, so I changed some stuff just to see what would happen.

Pan was still the best choice for the same reason as above.

Cormac is my second, my crew is used to obeying him without question, and he’s strong enough to be useful in both fighting the creature and taking over an oar. Below deck he goes.

Sang isn’t a sailor but I thought could probably handle holding on real tight to the wheel and yelling basic commands. He could.

Izzy still on rigging for the same reasons.

And I just wanted to see what was different if the PC was the free, so Aisling watched the stuff this time.

I chose to save Aisling. I could say something here about being obliged by being Bardach or improving my relationship with the companions by proving my loyalty to them or Aisling’s use to the crew as a healer. But the fact is that Aisling is the most adorable character in the game and there’s no way I’m ever going to not save her, regardless of where that leads. It would be like having a sweet, fluffy kitten come limping up to me and rub against my leg, trusting that I would help and then punting that kitten into the waiting maw of a giant squid. Not happening.

I found a passage that confused me a little;

Summary

I’m not sure what’s happening there. One of those dialog tags probably shouldn’t be Cormac.
End of chapter stats;

Summary

Other thoughts;

I’m extremely nervous for Maeve. She’s had maybe four mentions in the game, all of which are either her mentioning her wife or being nice in some way and that makes her a prime character to die to upset players, but not too much. And now she’s abandoned ship with a broken leg. So I have concerns.

I wonder if Pan has/had prophetic dreams. I’m not basing that on anything in particular other than it’s been established that people can have them in this universe and it would be illuminating in hindsight for a few of the things they’ve said.

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Hey I’m new to this thread and was wondering who the RO’s are, thanks in advance.

Male: Cormac, Sangarinus.
Female: Aisling, Izzy.
Awesomeness of awesome: Pan.

Go to the first post on this thread to read about them.

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So I wrote half of this yesterday at my in-laws’ place dreadfully sober but I should at least look respectable in front of them

First, the third interlude, when choosing between Aisling or Sang, Aisling refers to MC as bharda, instead of bardach.

Aisling nods. "We… this hurt us, bharda, but we decided that we were just going to ask you.

line_breaks, misspellings, other stuff.

If you don’t do something about the sheer havoc this thin is wreaking,

Thing.
__

line_breaks gone rogue before

You spot Roise and Daghan a little ways back;

__

You’re hopeful it won’t be long. The modifications you’ve done to ship

Either to the ship or to ${shipname}
__

Too many line_breaks between

“I suppose I can do that.” Not the most exciting job, certainly, but being in a legendary storm should be exciting enough for Izzy…

and

That means Pan’s the one left to roam…

Story
  • I manned the helm myself and obviously got my ass handed to me by the storm, but there’s no way someone else was captaining my ship. Thankfully Pan was there to lend me a hand, and the image of Deaman pulling and Pan pushing the wheel had me snickering like a kid.

  • I’m so proud of Aisling. On that first encounter with the Iskendi, back in Tarracina, I didn’t send her to do anything because I was worried she wouldn’t be able to pull her weight if left alone, but this time I pit her against the storm and boy, did she delivered. She kicked ass ~sheds a tear~

  • When I got to the part where we had to choose between saving our companion or saving the ship, I understood that last poll. (Also, you went there. Jesus I’m having DA2 flashbacks with Fenris sprawling all dead on the floor on that first playthrough)

  • I think Izzy’s brush with death is my favorite of them all —grab me grab me grab me!

  • May I say that the fact that Pan’s friendship lowers by 5% if you don’t save them broke me? It is the same with Sang, probabbly because he’s a soldier and he sees himself as disposable (ouch). But Pan, my sweet sweet Pan (meanwhile my Deaman’s here, practically worshipping the land they walk on). And Izzy’s lack of interest. Wow. That girl is brutal loving the drama

  • Cormac’s and Aisling’s reactions if any of them dies. Just perfect.

  • Cliffhanger… CLIFFHANGER :grimacing:

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@Jaybirdy Just played all the way until Interlude 3, which did not load. From what I experienced thus far, it is an immersive story, though the RO with Aisling seems misleading. Izzy tells you to go for it (which I already had once), but the only chance I get and Aisling seems confused by it. The mention of the “item” did sap my interest a bit, because the story was just doing so well without it, but since I don’t know where you are going with it I can’t really say whether it works or not.

Playing a funny minded character, none of the responses to seeing Sang with our mother resonate.

A joke, like suggesting if he really wants to bribe our mother he should offer , or asking if he wants me to call him Dad when he marries my mother, I don’t know, something.

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What happens with our mother?

@BrownBetty Thanks so much for all this data. The passage that puzzled you was an indentation error, which I’ve fixed now, much obliged. It was really cool to hear about your canons and get a sense of what options get you the stats, too, so thank you!

@pimenita My condolences on your present ‘respectability.’ :wink: I think I got all the spelling and line break stuff, and as always I’m sitting here cackling at the things you notice and the reactions you have to them.

@kckolbe I’m not sure why the interlude’s not loading for you. I just updated a couple of the chapters; if it continues to give you trouble, please let us know. As it happens, that interlude is the place where the PC can actually initiate the Aisling romance; they (the romances) all have slightly different pacing, and a certain amount of character development needed to happen with her especially before that could really go anywhere. Izzy’s not necessarily aware of some of it, but she does pick up on the fact that Aisling (in certain circumstances) has a bit of a thing for the PC, hence her encouragement.

I know sometimes magic item plots can be a bit uninteresting, but I’m hoping it’ll turn out satisfactory regardless. We really needed a leverage opportunity, given the numbers involved, and I think the nature of the item and what we’re going to do with it will serve to introduce some mystery into the setting itself as well. We’ll see.

@stsword Fair point. The bribery option was meant to be a joke, but I’ve clarified the wording so that it more obviously reads as humorous, because there was definitely some ambiguity there before. Thanks for the note.

@No_This_Is_Patrick When exactly? @stsword was referring to the beginning of Sangarinus’s interlude 3 scene, where he and Roise are discussing weaponry. As for what happens to Roise long term in the plot, we’re definitely keeping that one under our hats for now!

Thanks again, everyone, for the feedback and suggestions! We really appreciate the time you take to test our game and bring things to our attention. You’re all great, and we hope you have a lovely holiday season and new year!

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Sometimes a chapter won’t load for me as well, when that happens I save it then refresh the page and load it back. Straight loading back has also worked.

When you get back you find Sanguinus hanging out with your mother.

The dialogue choices were to flirt with Sang, which doesn’t work if your character doesn’t flirt with guys, worry that Sang might try to off your mother, or to suggest he’s trying to bribe her.

Which the author clarified was meant to be a joke, and will reword it to make that less ambiguous.

Spoikers

Anyway I played with the new update, does who the kraken grabs dependent on factors such as who is assigned to what or your relationship score with them?

It grabbed Sang, but I saw someone else mention it getting Aisling which didn’t happen for me.

Is it possible to get no one grabbed?

I was thinking either Cormac or Sang would work for the rowing or steering, but maybe Cormac on steering is a more optimal choice…

Who gets grabbed is dependent on your friendship scores: the kraken will take whoever’s is the lowest, regardless of where you assigned them to be.

(Also if you wouldn’t mind throwing the last part of your post into spoiler tags for people who haven’t gotten to the chapter yet, I’d appreciate that.)

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I was very pleasantly surprised by this game. It’s been here for a while and I occasionally checked the active thread, but avoided it because I expected a game that’s story was flimsy and was mostly MC upgrading a clan and having it go
“You are __ years old
You can build
A barracks
A armoury
Several houses”
And so on so forth, which is why I never finished choice of rebels. But I saw that someone had said it was quite a long demo and I read tons of positive comments so I decided to give it a try. I realized that it wasn’t just a base building game and had lots of character development, for equally enjoyable characters. I liked how the base building elements were worked in with dialogue and conversation instead of just stating something, haveing it happen, then skip an in game year and do it again. Overall great game I will definitely be one of the first people to purchase the game if and when it releases. Sorry for the lengthy post. Anyway Good luck.

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Hello, all!

We’ve got an announcement to make today. After being advised of some legal grey areas in our plan to release Diaspora chapters early to our patrons, we’ve decided to rearrange our Patreon. Specifically, we will not be able to offer our newest chapters any earlier to patrons than anyone else. Everyone will be getting access to those as we finish them, at the same time.

To try and compensate somewhat for this change, we’ve revamped the Patreon and added several new tiers. The Omen previews, once a feature of our tumblr, will now be longer, less frequent, and part of a Patreon tier. We also have plans to offer (starting in February) character and world bonus content, a monthly newsletter, a new style of poll (separate from our tumblr polls, which will stay where they are) that will allow Patrons to influence game development ahead of time, and so on. For those of you especially keen to support us as writers, the top tier will give you access to other, non-Diaspora projects we’re working on, should those be of interest to you.

Of course, if you were on Patreon simply to get chapters in advance, we understand if you prefer to withdraw your monthly contributions, and hope you’ll continue to play and enjoy the chapters as they come out. We apologize for any inconvenience; our preliminary research into Patreons and legality did not turn up this issue and we were quite alarmed to become aware of it. With the exception of the Omen’s move, nothing should change on our tumblr or the CoG forum.

We don’t anticipate that the work we’ll now be doing for Patreon will significantly slow our pace with the general updates of Diaspora. In fact, we’re hoping that some of the things we’ll be creating there will streamline parts of the process. We’re still committed to getting the game updated in the timeliest manner our lives will allow, and as always, we greatly appreciate everyone’s support, whatever form it takes.

-Kiku and August

The Game
The Patreon
The tumblr

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This is the first time I’ve read this WIP and I immediately fell in love with it! I love learning about this new world and everything is just so well written! Being able to change the characters, or at least some characters, minds along the way is quite satisfying - especially since it happens gradually!

I can’t wait to see where this goes! :smiley: Lovely all around!

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Not sure if this has been asked before, but are you planning on making any sequels to Diaspora or is it going to be one book only?

We’ve gotten a version of this question on tumblr, I think, but it’s worth answering here.

Long story short, we’re not really sure. There’s a definite possibility that we’ll write another story in the world of Diaspora, though our goal is to tell a reasonably complete tale of how Clan Maghnus came to be there in Diaspora alone. As such, it’s likely that any future story would take place somewhere other than the area surrounding Tarracina, or at a different time, or both, to allow us to focus on that other story.

At this point, we’ve definitely not planned far enough ahead to say anything with certainty, and we’re keeping our options open.

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Coming here after a long while I gotta say I admire how the story is developing and hope you sail that ship succesfully to the end :wink:

There’s one issue that bothered me tho, so without further ado

Spoils

…it’s the presence of Castulian entourage (Sagn and Pan) at the blood ceremony, given how I’ve previously chosen to talk with Baltasar in private and restricted the following conversation back on own ship to crew mates only - hence finding both southeners available to cut hand was surprising to me.

Apart from that it wasn’t obvious to me why burning Esdras’ mansion and stealing child slavery contact were mutually exclusive (no reason for it not to anonymously “surface” afterwards), and also
someone ate “to” in this part:

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