Ironheart - Discussion Thread

That’s dedication. I would have gone for the bibliosphere’s peasant loaf, but that’s just me.

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That was so good! I don’t know how I’ve missed this story for so long, but now I’m really looking forward to reading the whole thing. I really could see a whole series of books set in this world, whether it follows the same characters or not.

If I had one criticism it would just be that I didn’t quite know what my character looked like. I’m not saying that it needs a big character creation segment, right down to eye-color and shoe size, but a little something might be nice. Just so I can picture myself among the crusaders to know how much I fit in or stand out.

Really though, I can’t wait for the full release of this story. If the rest of it is half as good as the beginning it will be one of my all time favorite CoG’s

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@Hazel That is a frankly far more sensible and edible option!

@Camille622 Thanks so much! The question of the MC’s appearance is one I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and discussing. In my first draft, I did have a brief customisation section in the prologue but it threw up a bunch of quandaries later on, both mechanical and ethical. I’m still not completely opposed to the idea though, if I can figure out a way to do it right… It’s very useful to get your feedback.

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Norman Gingerbread and boring books on Assassins is far better procrastination than I usually do! Also great that you are making progress. I am definitely still rather excited for this WIP!

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Almost a month since my last update but I’m still making steady progress. Chapter 9 is almost in the bag and I’ve also spent a lot of time rejigging some of the stats after I realised there were a couple of later fights it was near impossible to win.

Recent procrastination has included rewatching ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ for the first time since its release and freaking out slightly at the thought that I might have subconsciously lifted a couple of scenes from it. Also, I’ve been wandering around Lebanon in Google Street View and finding it incredibly helpful for descriptions of the environment.

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I’ve updated the teaser today with the addition of Chapter 4: Blood Never Sleeps (title is a handy quote from Saladin himself!) - it’s a nice dramatic one and ends on something of a cliffhanger…

IRONHEART TEASER

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So is Ygraine always gonna ignore us from now on if we were with her at the lake and will she never be interested in marry us? Also I remember reading something about her relationship with the Cathar twins, is she still with them and will that even be brought up?

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No, she’ll remain attracted to the player and will be willing to enter into a more formal relationship once they become a knight/emir, which will inevitably happen. That said, she is a real stickler for status and hierarchy throughout and that’s something the player will have to accept in her if they choose to romance her (although they can argue on the subject with her).

Currently, it’s only vaguely hinted that she may have had a sexual relationship with the twins and she’ll be faithful to you if you romance her, unless you yourself have a sexual relationship with all three, in which case a spot of polygamy might be possible.

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So how long does it take to become a Knight because, I forget his name sorry, said he already knighted me? Also you said she’s remain faithful unless you’ve had a relationship with the twins, so she’ll still be with them if you done anything with with them as well?

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Yes, you’re effectively a knight from now onwards. Ygraine won’t really be confirmed as having any kind of relationship with the twins unless you show that you’re amenable to a polygamous relationship, in which case you can if you want initiate one which includes all three. I’m still kind of tinkering with the details of it, to be honest…

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I’ve had a busy week essentially undoing a lot of my work from the past month. I’d tried to write Chapter 9 in a way that would accommodate both Papacy and Caliphate players in the same essential story but it just wasn’t working and the harder I tried to force it, the more complicated it got… So I made a tough choice and started again almost from scratch, writing completely separate paths for each one, as well as another mostly different path for players without affiliation (it’s possible at this point in the game to have given up or lost your lands and title).

To balance out the sometimes disheartening task of unpicking a lot of my earlier work, I’ve also been building a segment for Chapter 10 that’s a lot of fun to write - a medieval basketball tournament…

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Chapter 9 is done. Finally! The experience of writing it was like falling into an endless pit wrestling a Balrog, only I don’t feel I learnt as much from the experience as Gandalf did…

I’m approaching the final furlong now, with only a few hurdles left in my way. Here’s one I need a little help with from players who’ve experienced the early chapters:

Do you think that a return to the ‘future’ should be allowed at the end of the game?

  • I don’t care.
  • Yes, that’s how it should naturally end.
  • Yes, I need that as a possibility.
  • No, I think it would cheapen the rest of the story.
  • No, provided the reasons why it’s impossible are clearly enough explained.

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If you have any views that don’t fit neatly into the options I’ve offered, please let me know!

Here’s my own current feelings on this:

I don’t really want to allow it since a lot of the story’s emotional impact is centered on the fact that that future is now gone. You have to live in the world you’ve created and you have a chance to help drive it in a new direction and learn from the mistakes of your own time. Also, simply ‘resetting’ everything would be an unsatisfying end because it would dissolve all the new relationships you’ve made in the game. However, I am aware that some players might see a return to the future as their goal throughout the game and I don’t want anyone to end up feeling cheated.

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No way. Allowing a return is the cheap literary device, “it was allll a dreeeeammmm.” (Other opinions welcome of course. :wink: )

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A mandatory ending no, but a possible ending that’s probably a little harder to achieve I think should be added. It would be fun to play as a character that has a goal of getting back to the future no matter what or who stands in their way.

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Maybe not the same timeline we came from but the future of the time line we are now.

Like “were you expecting to came back to where you started? Well jokes on you.”

:fox_face:

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My view: If it wasn’t originally conceived as part of the story, then no.

Even the mass media understands you can’t go back into the future without changes and differences (eg the Michael J Fox films of the 1980s and 1990s) and so you would actually be going into a new time arc anyways and not the original.

So, even if you allow the MC to go forward in time once more, it will not be to the same place they started.

Unless you use the cheap literary devise @Mary_Duffy mentions: dreams. Then my response would be: why have the time travel in the first place?

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Yes, one of the difficulties is just that - any future you ‘return’ to wouldn’t really be the one you remember, just an extrapolation of a few hundred years from the 12th century of the game. In fact, the only way clear to doing it that I can see (without springing a big deus ex machina on the reader) would be to let the player find a still-functioning pod from their craft and use it to sleep out the intervening centuries. They would then wake in a world determined largely by their choices throughout the game. While this sounds cool in theory, there are a few problems with it in practice:

1 - It still leaves the player alone in a completely unfamiliar world which is probably an unsatisfying way to tie up the story. All the people they knew in their original time and the friends they made in the 12th century will be irreversibly gone.

2 - Speculation of that magnitude is a little scary for me as a writer because it seems to unavoidably involve some personal moral judgements (something I very much try to avoid). For example, what does a future defined by a Caliphate win look like? Is it better or worse than a world shaped by the Papacy? How about the total destruction and rebuilding of society proposed by certain characters in the game - will it reduce instances of war as they claim? Or lead to a far worse cycle of violence? These are all very interesting questions and ones the player is encouraged to consider for themselves, but I don’t feel qualified to attempt any actual answers!

3 - The final reason is a little selfish… The player is taking an active role at a key point in history so any future would have to be highly reactive to their choices throughout the game. Frankly, this would mean writing a LOT of alternate futures (in addition to all the endings for those who choose to stay in the past) and I’m very aware that @Mary_Duffy wants me to finish the story before Halley’s Comet comes round again in 2061! :wink:

EDIT: Just reflecting on what I’ve written above - how about a possible but difficult to achieve ending which would involve the player going to sleep in a pod then waking to find, as @Hearts suggested, a future which definitely isn’t the one they came from? The game would then end before any more details were revealed. Is something like that worth having as a kind of Easter egg? Or is it worse than no future ending at all?

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If you make it clear that sleeping in the pod is a one way trip and will be different than the one mc is from, i think it’s fine.

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This is a very valid argument. I wouldn’t mind a wait-out-the-future ending, though. Especially not if you could approach the story with that as your initial goal. Then when the opportunity presents itself, you’d have to decide whether you’re ready to risk it. Based, for example, on whether you tried to change the past as little as possible.

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My preference is for the possibility to return to your own future (possibly with a time-lost love interest), because that adds a serious moral and personal choice and a potential goal for your MC. Your own future is an alternate timeline from the world that Ironheart’s events create, of course, but I don’t consider that a problem - it just means that multiple timelines can “exist,” which is fine.

Regarding the all-just-a-dream construction, I disagree that it’s that simple. In a setting with multiple universes, existential questions are actually important. “What’s a dream? What’s reality? What matters to you?” In Silverworld, for example, the past only exists because it can be travelled to; does that make it unreal? (Well, the gold is real enough…) Do the locals matter if you can return home? Does your own home timeline matter more than the timeline the False Icon wants to create? Taking it back to Ironheart, if the PC can go back home, it’s up to the player to decide whether their time as knight or emir in the Middle Ages was real or a dream.

If going home is flatly impossible, that means that that story is closed off, and any PC who “wants to go home” is out of luck. Which has its own charms, of course.

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