On Tumblr, I’m posting Honor Bound facts, both about the characters/setting and about the writing process. I thought I’d share them here too! I’ll update the list as I share more…
95 Facts Within
- Amato the cat’s looks are based on my cat Orlando:
But her personality is based on my cat Blueberry. Jerome the cat is the other way around (though is much more competent and wild than either of them).
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Fiore, Catarina, and Simone were the first characters I thought of for the game, and they were very quickly followed by Raffi and Korzha. Denario was the last major character I made and fleshed out.
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At the very early stages of planning, I thought of making Savarel and Raffi as be a polyamorous pairing for the MC, but I quickly changed my mind.
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Viola, Pietro, and Andie are very, very loosely based on three genderswapped, aged-down, and edited-out-of-recognition versions of TTRPG characters I’ve played. The “Viola” character was a homebrew Monsterhearts skin, “Andie” was a Monsterhearts werewolf, and “Pietro” was a Daeva from Vampire: the Requiem.
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After the events of Chapter 4, Korzha wrote a personal condolence letter that took them a long time to write. They almost didn’t send it at all.
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Savarel fell off a horse at a young age and despite living in a place where there were a lot around, is nervous around them as a result.
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One of Matia’s most treasured possessions is a pair of gloves given to them by a deceased colleague.
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Raffi’s older sister is very high up in the Teranese spy network, but she doesn’t drop the smallest hint about it because Raffi.
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Despite being a plant biologist, Fiore is not great at keeping houseplants alive at all and really appreciates having the money to hire someone to look after them.
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When they were children Denario took the fall for something the PC (on purpose or accidentally) would have got in trouble for, and has never said what it was.
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Although she tends to act blase about it, Catarina worries about Fiore quite a bit, but she tends to express it via being cross that they’re not looking after themself.
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One of my favourite songs from the Honor Bound playlist is “The Suburbs (continued)” by Arcade Fire which I found late in the project and listened to on repeat during writing some scenes.
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But for the last few months of writing and editing, I listened to the Disco Elysium OST constantly.
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Behind the scenes, Fabien and President Faraci have a very juicy hate/hate relationship and I wrote a spicy story about them having a tryst which very few people have seen.
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Fiore really likes cats; they’re mildly allergic but they put up with it because: snuggles.
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Denario once had a conversation with Dr. Adelia Rojas in which she gave him some very firm but very good advice. He did not take it.
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There was a time Raffi climbed a particularly tall mango tree to get just the right fruit for their dad’s cooking that night, and everyone came out to make sure they didn’t fall down.
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Once, Matia had an experience that made them wonder if the gods were literally real, but they also suspect they were hallucinating.
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Korzha is very fond of spicy food, the spicier the better.
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Savarel doesn’t like fiddly fastenings on their clothes, even if they’re not metal, and prefers cloth belts to buckled ones.
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Teran originated from a short tabletop campaign that my wife ran for me and a friend, but it was very different and involved airships and magical powers. I referenced it as a throwaway moment in Creme de la Creme as an inside joke, and then decided to flesh it out as I got further in writing the series.
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I was originally going to force Fiore and Korzha’s romances to be even more slowburn outside of the player’s choice, but got impatient so I put in options to start earlier.
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I made plans to include an optional hookup with Lucian or Lavinia in Honor Bound, and even coded it, but cut it for pacing reasons.
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An early version of a Raffi storyline involved them struggling to pay child support for an ex-partner - not because they were the other parent but because they were old friends and Raffi didn’t want them to be in difficulties.
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There is a scene with Savarel that is spontaneous in-game, and it was spontaneous out-of-game too: I didn’t plan to write it that way, but it just felt right.
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There is an extremely silly inside joke throughout Honor Bound that is so ridiculous that I can never drop the slightest hint what it is.
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Those who played early versions of the demo will know Jerome the cat was originally called Mathieu, but I changed it late on because of too many character names beginning with “Mat-”. Mathieu was named after the playwright character Mathieu Avenerius; Jerome is named after the artist Jerome Clay from Westerlin.
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Matilda the sheep is named after a real sheep who is legendary in my family.
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More than one thing that happens in the game was reflected in real-world events while I was writing.
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More than one event/element in the game is drawn from my own experiences. (All my games include this, but Honor Bound is particularly so.)
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Denario was never particularly invested in law-enforcement but fell into it because people said he’d be good at it: after leaving home, he became less defiant and more going along with whatever. But he’s good at making friends when he wants to be, so he went upwards until he ran into trouble.
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Savarel believes fervently in the gods and the teachings around them, and in observing the world for potential divine messages, but doesn’t believe that everything in church teachings is literal.
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Whenever Fiore goes on holiday they daydream about life being like that every day. They’re great at going “oh! We should do this all the time, it’s so nice!” but never get round to it.
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When Matia thinks about it too much they get irritated that they went so long thinking they were cis, but in reality they had so much going on that there was no space to think about things like that consciously.
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Raffi’s been to parties with the fanciest people in Teran, but didn’t know who most of them were by sight, so will sometimes see a newspaper and go “wait, where do I know them from?”
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I have forty pages of an unfinished novel sitting on my computer based on the Teran setting (the version with airships and magical powers - see Fact 21). I wrote it for NaNoWriMo at least eight years ago but because it was NaNo, and because I’ve always struggled with long book plots, it didn’t go anywhere. But one of the restaurants the PC can visit in Honor Bound is from the novel. And I used the first few pages as a writing sample when I first applied to write for CoG!
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Catarina loves feeling independent and mature, and would rather not admit that she also likes curling up in a blanket listening to Fiore reading.
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Simone doesn’t want to go into acting, because she hates the idea of people thinking she’d be helped by nepotism.
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Viola got in trouble at a previous school for beating up one of the other kids in her class.
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Pietro got in trouble at a previous school for encouraging some of the other kids to break into the teacher’s office.
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Kass encourages and invites “problem” students to the school because she believes a hothouse city environment with a lot of political stuff around isn’t healthy for anyone, especially not very indulged children of the rich and fabulous.
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Field Marshal Mandriotti has kids who aren’t old enough for the Teranese Service yet, and despite what his parents and siblings think, he doesn’t want to encourage them to become career officers. This has caused some friction at family gatherings.
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Korzha’s family and community were very badly affected by the tumult of the Dahaikan Secession. It’s only been a few decades, and for them and many others, that history casts a long shadow.
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I introduced Bramble and Lulu the dogs late in the game, when I realised I needed dogs for a particular mid-to-late-game sequence of events. I had to go back and retro-engineer the dogs in.
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I wrote a ton about the relationships between the major NPCs before I started writing: most of it got into the game, though in some cases there wasn’t quite room to fit in.
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I also wrote a ton about the romanceable characters’ sex lives, experiences, and what they enjoy in such situations. Again not all of that made it in - once I was writing, the way I’d framed some of the characters’ preferences didn’t quite work. But I was still glad to have done some groundwork and it made me feel less self-conscious when I got to writing those scenes.
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Savarel is someone who likes to read in theory, but will sit down to do so, then remember something they need to do, then get distracted, then remember that they wanted to read once they’re doing something else.
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Matia has had their leather coat for long enough that it’s worn through a few times, but they’ve been carefully repairing it. At some point, it will become a Ship of Theseus situation.
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Lani Capello likes playing tennis, but is better at swimming.
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Pietro’s and Viola’s parents are probably all part of a deeply cringe and self-important swingers’ community. Valentina Morarre and her spouses are innocently unaware.
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Matia runs hot; they rarely get cold feet or hands. That means they’re not great at making pastry, but they have a lot of tolerance for washing fruit and vegetables, which is often how they help their parents in the kitchen.
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Jaime loved public speaking, and was excellent at it. Their university presentations made Fiore get flustered (since Fiore is a huge nerd).
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Korzha has had some not-fantastic romantic experiences that contribute to the pace of their romance in Honor Bound
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Savarel doesn’t do art per se, but they find it very relaxing to paint walls for decorating.
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Raffi would love to become a firefighter.
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Catarina hasn’t kept a diary for some time, but she did for a bit when she was twelve or so and then burned it.
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The island of Ravella has some very beautiful seaside towns, as well as some very grim and deprived ones.
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Every so often - a couple of times a century, maybe - Teran makes noises about annexing more of the independent islands between them and Zaledo. Sometimes it’s successful and sometimes Zaledo has stepped in to get them to back off. Either way, things have historically been tense between the countries.
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Catarina does kind of think ghosts are real and wishes it could be proven so it could be a cool scientific discovery
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The original idea for Honor Bound began as a game set in Jezhan, guarding a young teen from the Jezhani royal family.
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Matia and Raffi’s names were originally spelled Mattia and Rafi.
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Mayor Tedesco always had political ambitions and would love to go bigger with it if they could, but they’re nervous about being a smaller fish in a bigger pond.
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Denario has probably met Rys from Noblesse Oblige, but didn’t know that was their name.
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Auguste/Janna definitely have.
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Fiore absolutely adores fireworks.
66: Originally I didn’t plan to allow the PC to romance Denario and Savarel at the same time, but in the middle I realised it could work, and promised myself I’d do it if I had scope for it. -
I coded most of chapter 11 and chapter 12, then went back and wrote most of chapter 11, all of chapter 12, and then back to chapter 11.
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One of the most complicated parts of the game is related to romanceable characters checking in with you if you’re simultaneously romancing other people. I had a long section of code that was designed for running RandomTest to check that everything was working as intended.
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One of the other most complicated parts of the game is related to where the PC is living at the end (and with whom, if applicable). In my first draft I tried to get away with eliding details but it felt weird and the playertesters told me as much too. So I added it in, which I’m proud of despite the amount of time it took to do.
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For my wife’s first time playtesting the full draft, she broke the game because she was too emotionally reserved and the slow romance she was doing (Savarel) ended up in a limbo where they were both romancing and not.
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The parts of the game I reworked the most were Chapter 6 and Chapter 8. There were two different storylines I planned then changed that were going to have significant progressions in those chapters.
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Between Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, I wrote the Royal Affairs expanded epilogue.
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I was simultaneously working on the Elite Status: Platinum Concierge additional writing when I was creating the Honor Bound outline. While I wrote Chapter 2, I was also working on the Elite Status beta testing.
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I also did various other pieces of contract work, mostly while I was writing Chapters 1-4 and around Chapter 10. Looking at my developer journal notes, the chapter 1-4 period coincided with getting burned out (juggling three different projects will do that!)
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Denario would love to visit more of the islands: he hasn’t seen very many of them, and hasn’t ever left Teran.
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Matia loves the idea of going to the Westerlind mountain ranges.
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Savarel’s been to many of the Teranese Islands, but right now prefers to stay in one place.
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Fiore’s visited Zaledo a few times for work trips and vacations, and adores it. They’d love to go again.
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Korzha hasn’t been back to Ravella since leaving for the Teranese Service.
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Raffi’s ridden on an aeroplane once before, and it felt absolutely magical.
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Catarina has a list of places she wants to visit, along with a plans of when she wants to make it happen.
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Princess Josiane has met Parliamentary Officer Marietta Crane, and they get on pretty well, though Josiane thinks Marietta doesn’t take her job seriously enough.
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Very early on, I had an idea to have Kass and Doria’s youngest son working at the school, but I cut it while I was outlining. Some MCs can hear about an aged-up version of their son from Kass.
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I originally timed the Dahaikan Secession longer ago, but realised I wanted it to potentially be within the memory of a PC, and to be more recent in the memories of older characters such as Alva or the President, so I brought it to a more recent date.
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The god Veslua is said to appear to sailors in the form of a vast black seal to assist them in times of need.
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I initially had a much more complicated set of stats relating to the school and town strengths, but my editor pointed out that it could be streamlined (this is a common theme when I’m outlining!)
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None of the major characters have healthy sleep patterns.
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As a child, Matia would rescue injured animals and bring them home, to their parents’ chagrin.
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There’s a spot on the hill above Elene’s Prospect that Savarel likes to visit and sit alone when they get a moment. There, it feels like the gods are surrounding them.
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Korzha has some letters from their old colleagues that are precious to them, but it feels too self-indulgent to reread them.
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Many years ago, I ran a rules-light one-shot parlour LARP based in a version of Teran (with psychic powers and perpetual war) about a ridiculously corrupt parliamentary election. I made fake fancy cocktails with fruit squash and edible glitter, and “recreational drugs” which were mints also covered in glitter. There was a lot of glitter in general. The new Prime Minister won because he got the vote count guy’s boyfriend out of police trouble.
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One of the books I enjoyed rereading during writing Honor Bound was Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I especially enjoyed the landscape descriptions.
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Oestrogen wouldn’t completely save nonbinary Savarel, but it would benefit them a lot.
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I learned about bristlecone pine forests while writing Honor Bound - look them up, they’re neat.
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Although exact times aren’t usually mentioned, I looked up a roughly equivalent latitude and longitude for the climate around Elene’s Prospect to check approximate sunrise and sunset times for different times of the year.