@macnutsamountfive
Did you have interplay with Mordred? I didn’t reach that with mine… did that come up in gameplay or is that just theoretical?
@Rubyredx04
Oh, you mean the dreams? Because I didn’t have them. I was just talking about future plans.
@MacNutsAmountFive wheee thank you. 
I like that Guen. Nice/fun people can also be bloodthirsty. It sounds like she has a strong sense of herself and her priorities, in a fearless sort of way. I’d love to see what she does in the later books (especially the end of part 2).
@poison_mara I truly hope that Mordred will live up to your dreams… because if he doesn’t, I suspect I will end up poisoned.
@Rubyredx04 If Guen is really really really antisocial, she can have two very brief dreams about Mordred.
@HornHeadFan 
This game was so much fun! And replayable! I’m pretty sure I’ve gone through this game at least ten times. It’s ridiculous in the best way possible.
I think my favorite Guen is the bitchy, selfish one. There’s just something so satisfying about making Arthur sleep in the chair. Her biting comments were really good, and Arthur’s reactions are adorably sad. That said, being unbelievably kind, or fun and flippant was interesting as well. I don’t know, I just kind of liked everything.
Honestly, I have no idea which character I prefer. It sort of depends on the type of character I’m using. I actually prefer Arthur’s interactions when you’re a bitch (maybe I’m secretly a sadist?), and Morgana is really sweet and understanding if you’re kind. And Lance is just fun.
ANYWAYS… I love your game and I love you.
Loved the mordred dream sequences
I just recently made an account after lurking for a month (wow, I sound stalkerish), but I wanted to say that I really love your writing and it’s so fun to keep replaying!
I think you’ve mentioned this before and I’m sorry if I repeated someone else’s question, but a few pages back, people were talking about Elaine so I was wondering what part she would play in this story. I don’t know too much about Arthurian legend, but I’ve read the poem The Lady of Shallot and a small summary of who she is. Will she be playing the same role (seeing Lance through the mirror, rescuing him, etc.) or will it be slightly different? And what would her relationship with Guen be like?
@parade Thank you! I love it that you’re enjoying all the different personality options. For some reason I particularly enjoyed writing Arthur’s reactions to bitchy Guen, and I’m not even sure why. I wonder what a psychoanalyst would make of it. Anyway, thanks for all the kind words!
@Pepper Glad you liked them!
@Princess I certainly don’t mind anyone stalking my game. Thanks for the comment, and I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! Elaine will be a shameless fusion of Elaine of Corbenic (the mother of Lancelot’s son Galahad) and Elaine of Astolat/Shalott (of the Tennyson poem). I’m not the first person to fuse those two characters. My current plan is that she’ll have a brief appearance in part 3 and a large role in part 4. I’m still sorting out some details about her personality and situation, but she won’t be a villain per se, more of a person in a tough situation. She won’t be quite the Lancelot fangirl that both Elaines have traditionally been, but she’ll have her reasons for wanting to marry him. She will have some special divinatory powers that work through reflections (water and mirrors). So to answer your question, I guess I’d have to say that she’s “inspired by” the traditional Elaine characters, but she’ll be different, too. Her relationship with Guen will depend entirely on Guen. If I stick to my current plot plan, the first time Elaine appears, she’ll be making a gesture of friendship toward Guen, which Guen can accept or reject. Guen can support or oppose Elaine’s marriage to Lancelot. I’m looking forward to writing all of those possibilities!
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When i play your game or read all the things that await us, i wish i could purr to express my contentment. Oh well, this is the Internet : *purrs*.
You have all my support for this great story !
Thanks, @Tehani! I hope I’ll be able to follow all my plans and make it all work the way I want. And I really wish I could write faster, because I want so badly for it to be done!
So, I skipped over playing the demo when it was first posted, it wasn’t a lack of interest but I just never did play it - until now - and I wish I’d given it a chance sooner. The first person format took a few pages to adjust to, but afterwards it was quite easy to become fully immersed in the story. Also Arthurian legend <3 I /really/ look forward to seeing more.
Thanks for playing, @xPikachurin! I’m glad you liked it. First person vs. second (or third) is such a tough choice for IF. (also present vs. past tense) Each one has its pros and cons in terms of tone and identifying with the main character. I decided to go with “I” because it establishes Guen as having her own voice, which seems appropriate for a pre-existing character. If I ever write the Robin Hood game that I dream of doing after this one, I’ll be pitching it for the official CoG line, so it will have a genderswappable, original protagonist, and the narration will be second person, with choices in first person, as in the “standard” CoG games.
Hey everybody, just a little progress report because I don’t want anyone to think I’m not working on part 2. Scene 5 is now finished, and scene 6 is almost halfway there. I’ve also nailed down a lot of specific details for the rest of part 2. It’s gotten more complicated than I planned, but I hope that people will enjoy the many different outcomes that will be possible, and the strategizing that may be required to get the endings you want.
I’m still on track to have part 2 finished by the end of the year. (I know that’s a long time; blame my over-demanding day job.) I don’t expect a ton of activity on this thread until then, since I doubt I’ll be making any major additions to the game until part 2 is finished, but I’ll try to post regular progress updates. I’m having a fantastic time working on it every chance I get, and I really really can’t wait for everyone to be able to play it!
EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that I wrote a blog post on genderlocked game protagonists. It’s mostly repeating things that have already been said here, but if you want a summary of my thoughts on writing a game with a genderlocked protagonist, there it is.
I love to know about your progress. Soon you advance soon I meet my Mordred :*. Also, I hope there would be a poison party when my guen will play the lute and Morgana sing a curse then BOOM!!! Poison time and all giants go to the bathroom :))
Lovely blog post. Well articulated–unsurprisingly.
Having said it to @Cataphrak about Sabres way back when, I’ll offer it here too: there’s nothing wrong with writing a simple Broadsides-style genderswap into a “historical” gameworld, and damn the consequences for eg who gets to be in a room with whom without scandal.
IMHO Broadsides worked, despite being anything but thoroughgoing in exploring the distinctive implications of an all-woman navy. That exploration would have been a fascinating worldbuilding exercise, and very impressive if successful… but the point of the swap was inclusion and (to a lesser extent) constructive cognitive dissonance, not consistent worldbuilding. And that’s ok.
In a hypothetical g-swapped Guenevere, anyone who wanted a reflection on gender roles in (near-)history could play a female Guen, and anyone who wanted to play a male protagonist could see how things felt with a simple pronoun switch. The bits that felt weird, uncomfortable, implausible, inconsistent? Chuckle at them, and maybe chew over why they felt that way. If you don’t find it fun, no need to “play” that storyline.
All that said, I think it’s also a respectable aesthetic decision to only write a genderswap if you can pull off consistent worldbuilding for any gender choice. (As the CoG team attempted – and in my view largely succeeded – with AotC). Meanwhile of course it’s vital to keep telling stories about people dealing with real-world gender attitudes and expectations, as well as escapist or alternate-world stories that level the playing field. And I can’t wait for you to publish this one.
Hi I’ve quit lurking and joined the forums so I can say that I really love this game. And I’m an Arthur fan. He’s adorable.
I do have one concern about the game. I’m not a Christian (I’m actually an unofficial Buddhist), but I am bothered by the absence of Christianity in this rendition of the Arthurian legend simply because it played such a big role in both the actual life of King Arthur and in the legendary version of his life. The search for the Holy Grail in particular becomes impossible when Christianity is removed from the story. How are they supposed to search for the Grail when they don’t believe in the power of the Grail? I do dig the sort of pagan-style goddess religion, but it creates some big holes in the story of King Arthur.
Aside from that, I really want to see more of ditzy Guen, the one who just wants to play with her kitty and wear pretty dresses. 
For some reason, I find her hugely entertaining.
I know you won’t add anything until the end of the year, but I can’t wait until then. I guess I’ll have to, though. 
@poison_mara thanks! I don’t know that Mordred’s arrival will be soon, exactly, but every word I write brings us closer. I’ve done some more long-term planning, and I think I may be able to incorporate the story about Guenevere and the poison apples into part 5 – a long way off, and I can’t promise anything, but I hope I can make it work. Sadly there are no giants other than Meligaunt in part 2. Maybe later.
@Havenstone Thank you for reading the blog post, and for your thoughts on it. Your support of my game means a great deal to me. I agree wholeheartedly that genderswapping in historical and historical-ish settings offers a lot of untapped potential for exploration of gender concepts. My favorite playthrough of AotC was the one with the male protagonist and female LIs, because the power relationships ran so counter to convention, but still felt authentic within the game-world. “Constructive cognitive dissonance” indeed – I’m going to hang onto that phrase.
In theory a lot of interesting stuff could be done with genderswaps in the Guen game, precisely because the story depends so heavily on certain gender assumptions… but I just don’t know that I’m up to it, because it really would require a lot of rethinking of the plot and world (to the point that it would strain the Arthurian material more than I think I could manage). Robin Hood seems like a much easier venue for that. I could make Robin and the Sheriff, maybe even Prince John, all genderswappable and see what that feels like. I guess I’m going to be writing games for a very long time.
@Mirabella Thanks for joining and for posting! I’m so glad you like the game (and Arthur). Believe it or not, I’m actually a (very liberal) Christian, and I have a great love for the more positive spiritual elements of medieval Christianity (Dante’s Paradiso, yes; the Crusades, not so much). Christianity certainly is woven all through the traditional Arthurian legend, so I had to think hard about whether to make it part of the game or not. In the end I decided that it added a layer of cultural complexity that would have overpowered some of the game’s other themes. I also just wanted to see what an Arthurian world might be like without it. So either there won’t be any grail, or, if there is, it will have a different religious significance – it’s not like sacred cups are exclusive to Christianity. Overall, the game will continue to be a combination of tradition-inspired material (like the battle of Badon Hill) and original stuff (like Maris and Bretta). Anyway, I really want ditzy Guen to be a viable and consistent personality choice. Though I have to admit she’s the hardest to build into the plot in a cohesive way. Once part 2 comes out, I would be really grateful for any suggestions that might help shore up that interpretation of Guen’s personality. Sorry it’s going to be such a long wait, but I’m doing my best to make the wait worth it!
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@Mirabella Actually, many modern (and very old) versions of King Arthur’s legends don’t have a christian element at all- and more or less every version that comes out now is pagan, or deals with Christianity vs. Paganism. So really, paganism is just a big part of the legends as Christianity is. Personally I’m happy to see an all-pagan version since those are a bit rarer now. (Mists of Avalon made the christianity vs. paganism thing veryyyy popular and that still has it’s mark since most Arthurian writers take notes from it or books inspired by it.)
The Guinevere trilogy I think had a grail- but it was a ‘the grail is inside YOU’ sort of storyline. Though I do believe Galahad was pagan in it and actually found a magical grail of ambiguous origin that he used to cure his sick christian grandpa.
THERE WOULD BE POISON!!! MARA HAPPY MORDRED KITTIES AND POISON APPLES. BEST GAME EVER!!
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