Not overcomplicating at all, in my opinion. What players actually experience in the game might not touch on all these things but I think it’s essential to have everything mapped out in detail ‘behind the scenes’ to inform the narrative and avoid inconsistencies. The suggestions you make are exactly in line with my own recent thoughts and that’s almost certainly the route I’ll be taking.
The changes to history are fairly recent, by the way, the point at which it diverged from the course we know being (big spoiler here) the arrival of the Clemens with Halley’s comet in the year 1066. The giant mechanicals are based on the technology discovered in the crashed ship, particularly the android, and powered by the ‘skystones’ created when the comet broke apart.
Just after I started the project, I reached out to a professor of Medieval French at Oxford for some translations (can’t recommend polite engagement with academics enough to other authors, by the way - they are generally delighted to find someone taking an active interest in their field!) and she also supplied me with some good reading about the ‘warrior princess’ archetype in medieval Islamic society. It’s very interesting and allows for a really good route into a more egalitarian shift in Muslim attitudes of the time.
I’ve been working this week on editing previous chapters to allow for some of the changes suggested and discussed in this thread and I’m really quite pleased with the result. Just about ready now to attack Chapter 8 again!
I’ve also been stitching a couple of secret threads into the story, little sub-narratives which won’t greatly affect the broader one but which will hopefully be satisfying for those players who spot them. One of these will involve piecing together the story elements of a sort of 1001 Nights pastiche. I wrote this a while back and I’m now reworking it for use here.
A teaser page from this (please forgive the amateur PS job):
It has been a while since I read the demo, so forgive me if this has been changed since.
The one thing that was disturbing to me at the time I had read the demo was the presentation of the Cathar refugees/former slaves.
I had not said anything at the time because I mean to go back and revisit the passage and vignette to confirm or modify my first impressions but due to life, I have not been able to do so.
Never-the-less, I did want to bring this to your attention @Wiwyums because the way I felt was disturbing and not in the good way.
When they were presented to me in the story, I was left with the impression that they were available for my use/abuse, sexually or otherwise and that whatever I wanted to do with them it was understood to be o.k.
Now, as I said, this might be a misconception, a wrong perception or something that needs to be reworked.
I will try to reread the material asap but because I might not be able to do so in a timely manner I wanted to draw your attention for perhaps another pass or review.
The circumstance was I was being taken over to the female knight’s war machine and the companion I was with was the assistant of the old knight.
Thanks for bringing this to my attention. It certainly isn’t the impression I wanted to create and I’ll take a good look at that passage again to see how I can make it clearer.
Although the twins have suffered previous abuse (the cutting out of tongues was indeed a common punishment during the persecution of the Cathars), their current status is relatively high as aides to a knight and they’re far from submissive, as will be shown later in the story.
Any sexual experience the player has with them will always be initiated by them and will be very much on their terms. They’re highly promiscuous sexually (that’s why Tonzo is so interested in them!) but this is shown to be their own choice entirely. Like you, the thought of extending the player’s agency far enough to allow the abuse or enslavement of npcs makes me very uncomfortable.
Anyway, thanks again for the feedback and I’ll alter that passage to hopefully clarify things a little earlier.
Further to that, I just checked with a couple of friends who’ve been playtesting the game and they had exactly the same thought as you on the first meeting with the Cathars. They’ve told me that they initially assumed they were slaves and even that Ygraine herself had been responsible for cutting out their tongues, something they later realised not to be true (but not until Chapter 6, when I address the Cathars in more detail). When I now look back at that passage, I can see clearly that this is the obvious assumption to make - knowing the whole backstory myself, I just blithely neglected to give enough of it to the players…
I’ve just started my first play-through of the demo and ran into a slight bug while climbing with Tonzo. My MC has a 47 for athleticism and the hobby I chose for him was rock climbing.
When we’re climbing up the Mech, we get to this exchange:
“Are you coming?” he calls.
You follow the route he took, easily swinging between handholds and footholds-you now realize the plating is studded with them-until you arrive beside him.
“Little fish, I’m filled with wonder! Are you sure you’re new to this? Now follow me closely and I will show you your duties.” You clamber after Tonzo, cautiously moving between the footholds and handholds with which the plates are studded. After a few minutes of exertion, you arrive beside him.
“Ah, you’ve arrived!” he exclaims. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d fallen asleep! Now follow me closely and I will show you your duties.”
I’m pretty sure it is a repetition after my MC passed the stat check.
Your teaser got me hooked, it got me hooked very much so! I liked the implementation of time travel here and the subsequent setting change - great stuff. I’m eager to find out what happened to the rest of the crew or even more importantly when.
If you don’t mind, the question I have is a nitpick about metamaterials. When I first read mention of them and hypothetical wormholes, it didn’t quite click with me: on one hand we have these artificial compounds that are governed by electromagnetism and optics (iirc?) and on the other… well, relativity and QM for the most part. These two just don’t correlate in my mind. Is it something that will be expanded upon in future? Or are metamaterials closer to magic in your setting and I should probably shut up?
Well, the latest developments in nanoscience and quantum impermeability suggest a possible link between flux-permissive single unit materials and potential ruptures in the stability of linear models of time and
Ah, who am I kidding? The truth is, you got me! I did a bit of research into negative-index materials and wormholes, realised that I couldn’t really square the two in any plausible way but hoped that I could waffle my way clear regardless! I’m frankly relying on the player’s suspension of disbelief but if you do know of any more credible explanation then I’d be very keen to hear it. I’d have been happier to just stick with an explanation based on QM but the metamaterials wormed(!) their way in because I needed the comet itself to some way enable the time travel.
Since I started this, allow me to humbly present a quick idea: what about exotic matter? Particularly negative mass matter.
It could be speculated to both: 1) create perpetuum mobile for the machinery and 2) at the same time be used by whomever created the wormhole to expand and stabilize it to allow passage. An activation key, of sorts.
Going full pseudoscience here: perpetual motion could work by attaching two objects (1 negative, 1 positive) of an “equal” mass to a wheel across from each other. Having opposite charges, + would repel - and - would attract to +, the system would self accelerate and spin the wheel indefinitely, providing energy for the mech.
With wormholes, this exotic matter could be stored in a container somewhere in the asteroid belt. When our ship gets closer, the mysterious system perhaps wakes from standby mode and injects matter into wormhole, expanding it to the point of being traversable by macro sized objects. And not getting squashed in the process %)
Same thing I keep telling my brain. That asshole doesn’t listen though… Sorry bout that
@anon8836198 Well, this is pseudoscience of the highest order! It’s close enough to my own current macguffinry that I wouldn’t need to change the plot at all to accommodate it but the substitution of exotic matter does make a lot more sense and I really dig your thoughts on perpetual motion (at the moment, I just mumble something about skystones when asked how this works). Would you mind if I use it? Perhaps Dr Svensson could base his outlandish theories on the work of the infamous Professor Jumo?
@Ramidel Thank you - I’m always willing to do this myself so trust that most others will do the same. I’m not selling it as hard science fiction so hopefully nobody will look too closely (although it’s always fun to speculate, as above).
I mean, as a lay person with no knowledge of physics beyond “apple go down”, I can’t say that I’ve ever considered time travel as a genre that needs to be hard SF. I assume it’s functionally impossible in reality, so the breach between reality and fiction doesn’t bother me much.
Besides, this story so obviously gains its strength from the meticulous historical research, it seems petty to harp on something like quantum physics. If you include a potato, though, I’m blowing this joint. Fair warning.
With the introduction’s scope being more explanatory as to the MC’s background and abilities, I think you have established a good balance of “it works but the MC doesn’t have a firm grasp on the details” and “trust me, its magic.” …
Taking too much time to justify such a minor part of the story’s plot would be setting the wrong expectations and boundaries; time-travel can’t be “hard science” when even things like quantum physics is still being argued and debated at their core.
@anon8836198 Thanks! I’ll make sure Professor Jumo is spoken of with appropriate respect.
@Hazel Here’s a little passage from a later chapter just to put your mind at rest!
That night, you all dine together on a balcony under the stars, lying on plump satin cushions, eating and drinking your fill from a menu that bridges continents and centuries. There are hamburgers and halloumi, sushi and tagine. The air swirls with scents both exotic and familiar. You know that Viv always had a guilty passion for fries but when you ask her where they are she gives you a withering look.
“Go fetch me a potato from America and I’ll arrange something,” she replies.
@Eiwynn That’s just how I hoped it would work! As a writer, I like to fuss over these details to line things up as neatly as possible in my head but it would be foolish to push them too heavily on the player when they aren’t needed for the story to work.
Spent most of the week trawling back through the early chapters making corrections and additions. I’ll replace the teaser with an updated version soon.
I’ve also almost finished Chapter 8. There’s a big fight scene still to go and I’m hoping for something to make me angry so I can pitch into that in the right frame of mind.
Procrastination for this week included updating my ‘Crusade Mood’ playlist on Spotify and reading a surprisingly dry book about assassins.
@Ramidel It’s okay, I forgot to light the hookah. I’ll try again!
@Vashnik Just checked and those two options do change the stats in different ways but lead to the same next passage. I’ll vary the resulting text a bit to make it clear the choices reflect slightly different attitudes.
The truth is, you got me! I did a bit of research into negative-index materials and wormholes, realised that I couldn’t really square the two in any plausible way but hoped that I could waffle my way clear regardless! I’m frankly relying on the player’s suspension of disbelief but if you do know of any more credible explanation then I’d be very keen to hear it. I’d have been happier to just stick with an explanation based on QM but the metamaterials wormed(!) their way in because I needed the comet itself to some way enable the time travel.
