Monarch of Witches (W.I.P.) [Demo 1.0.3]

@Ylva , I haven’t read Freak: Amidst the Neon Lights ! :open_mouth: That’s sounds like a cool idea. I’ll check it out and see if and how I could do something similar.

@Generikb Yup! Mp is mana. When I was making the list I was thinking along the lines of the skills themselves when filing stuff under Magic/Non-magic stats. I can move it though. c: I hadn’t really considered going more in depth of magic in the stats menu. Mostly because most choice games I’ve played don’t go too far into skills/skill sets. It definitely would make more sense. I’m definitely up for the challenge of adding that.

I was actually considering taking out Summoning, because the way I was picturing it, it was just elemental golem-like summoning, which I now think would be better as options that pop up for using Elemental magic. I could replace it with Enchanting.

I’ve done some minor world building. The world itself is called Oharia and the country the story it’s set in is called Athal. When it comes to technology I’m basing it off of our current day society, since in this world magic can’t do a lot of things that technology can. To use active magic in Oharia the witch has to at least have direct line of sight, even when it’s an AoE kind of spell. In the case of some Necromancy spells, the witch has to have direct line of sight or be touching something of significance of the dead. Like a grave, known burial or battle ground, heirloom, etc. There are also no spells that allow anything close to teleportation. I haven’t concerned myself too much with other countries around the world right now. It’s one of the reasons why I’m considering making this a two-parter. The first game being all about your rise to power and the second game being about the repercussions of your rise to power (depending on the ending you get). In this world if you’re a witch, you’re actually a part of the majority globally. What I mean by that is that magic is hereditary and it’s a dominant trait. Like, you have a 80% chance of having a baby with magic and a 20% chance of having a baby without. And out of that 80% you have a 50/50% chance of your child being an active witch or passive witch. I hope that makes sense. And it’s fine! I actually love intrigue kind of stories and thinking about political relations in worlds. ( I actually roleplayed in the forums for a game called NationStates at one point. :laughing: )

First off thanks for answering my questions to the best of your current ideas. And second, you’ve raised yet another set of questions. What are the lives of the non-magical humans like? Are they given a name for being without magic by the witches? Are they lower class citizens? Are they considered equal at all to witches with either active or passive abilities? Also is there a class divide between the active and passive ability witches? And finally, I have one question that awaits answering of previous questions. :wink: Until next time.

p.s. You never did get back to me on the one thing though. Can I make the DoD?

p.p.s. Now that I’ve seen it I can’t unsee it. Oharia/O’hare airport

Are you offering or planning to offer beta testing opportunities?

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Could I use my own skills through the corpse?


Huzzah for necromancy!

Prosiac

One of our companions is a prosiac rights activist.

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Everything “Witch” is my favourite :heart_eyes:

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@Generikb what Dark_Stalker said! To elaborate a little bit more: Officially Prosaics, or non-magical people, are equal to Witches, but in practice, it’s far from the truth. For example, exceptionally few, if any, Prosaics hold offices or high ranking positions like CEO, General, or Region Manager. There’s barely a divide between active and passive Witches. They can hold the same offices/positions unless it truly is required for an active witch to hold it due to their skill set. And we’ll see on the DoD. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

@baka00 Yup! I’ll be posting Demo’s here first. I expect the demos to end midway through the story. Once I finish all the possible endings I’ll release Beta builds in the Hosted Beta section of the forums.

@Dark_Stalker Yes you can! It would be a slightly higher skill check for whatever ability you’re trying to make the corpse use.

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Demo 1.0.2 is now out and the Changelog has been updated accordingly.

My sister brought up a good point for the female option. She’s dyslexic, so when she saw skirt she thought it was shirt instead, causing confusion. This is why I changed it to dress instead. So if anyone else finds sentences or words that might cause confusion for someone who’s dyslexic, and I’ve missed it, please let me know and I’ll get right on changing it.

This is a small update to begin allowing the player to really build up the initial stats they want to focus on for their character.

Please let me know if there are any questions, concerns, or suggestions. Any help is appreciated and I’ll answer all questions to the best of my ability.

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So, for those interested, I have a question. This story/game is going to have some fighting in it starting after chapter two depending on your choices.

I was wondering, what would you all prefer when the health bar hits zero? I was considering a few options:

  • The first would be, when the health bar hits zero, you die and restart from a checkpoint.
  • The second would be, when the health bar hits zero you black out and are ‘revived’ later. Maybe someone else would die in your place (similar to Lost Heir, if I remember correctly).
  • The third would be, when the health bar hits zero, you’re crippled (think Fall Out series) and it makes the rest of the battle turns harder until you or your opponent dies.
  • The fourth option could be some kind of combination of the 2nd and 3rd. Maybe when your health bar hits zero, you fall unconscious and get a strong permanent debuff (for lack of a better term) for the rest of the game.

0 voters

I really like what I see so far, there seems to be a good range of skills, both magical and non-magical and I’m finding it quite difficult to decide how I want to make my character. There’s a nice range of magic which is always hard to choose from, but then you have the psychology option too. I’m going to have to do multiple playthroughs to see what I like. Can I say I was quite surprised at how much I liked the default names? I never thought of using weekdays before and some of them are quite catchy. Thanks for interesting read!

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@rasberry
Permadeath.

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Permadeath why ? :sob: I don’t like starting from start.

No, permadeath means if you die, the game is deleted and you can never play it again. :neutral_face:

@rasberry: In case you’re looking for another option, my own game lets the player choose between 1 and 3. (Admittedly, the debuff is pretty minor, because I don’t really want to punish the players…)

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That’s worse than starting over.

I should clarify that that was a joke; I’m very much against permadeath in these sorts of games (or any games, for that matter). :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I knew that it was a joke. Can’t I play along a bit. ( but that confusion with the permadeath was real )

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Hey in Rpg it’s common for you to keep killing your characters and leaving them behind. It’s not you can’t ever play again, but your character is dead… and you restart…


Although if someone dies in my place, I hope it’s the ro that’s first to go…

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This looks like a good start. I have noticed a few typos and possible problems, though:

Click here!

nerve wracking

Strictly it’s “nerve racking”, but “wracking” seems to be an accepted alternative.

You…

…wring your hands in anticipation.
…adjust your tie one more time.
…smooth down the front of your dress.

Is this the gender choice? Only I know that some people are against using clothes to determine gender.

So, the selectable first names are all weekdays? :confused: I don’t really have a problem with that, but I had no idea that they were the first names, rather than surnames. (They’re not exactly common first names)

You particularly enjoyed one lecture when your class covered…

…the School of Vigor. Magic that can be used to heal or poison others.
…the School of Mind. The school of illusions and possible mind control.
…the School of Necromancy. Magic that’s used to reanimate the dead and the path to possible immortality. Briefly touched upon due to it’s unpopularity.
…the School of Elements. Controlling fire, water, air, and earth. A classic, but very efffective.

This is probably a minor thing, but it seems weird to me that there’d only be a single lecture on each school (unless there are dozens of schools not mentioned here). Also, that should be “its” and “effective”.

Well, there’s a big difference between a tabletop RPG (where the story continues even if you have a different character) and a ChoiceScript game, which can take several hours to get back through the story to where you were before. A better comparison would be a Rogue-like game (where deaths are permanent and you have to go back to the start each time), but Rogue-likes don’t really have any plot to go through, just levels of monsters to fight, and the entire objective is to see how far you can get each time. Trying to do a ChoiceScript game like that would be a very bad idea.

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Ngeeh, I think the term “the game is deleted” is exaggerating :sweat_smile:

Permadeath is permadeath. :skull:
If the MC is affected by permadeath, their in-game progression will be reset (in a simpler term, the save file will be deleted instead of the game).
Example of this kind of permadeath are games where they have “hardcore insta-kill restart-from-beginning” difficulty mode: DMC series (Heaven or Hell / Hell or Hell), Hollow Knight (Steel Soul mode), Rive (NG+), CoD arcade mode, etc.

If the NPC is the one affected, that means you’ll never be able to see that one NPC for the rest of your playthrough. As the result, certain important events trigger might be locked out forever; like Skyrim (unless there’s something like secondary trigger or something).

Due to the punishing nature of this mechanic, permadeath is a minefield on gaming design decision. But if done well, permadeath will add more value that you won’t get the same :gem: gem if you remove it from the game.
I believe there’s some games out there which uses permadeath as its core element (CK2 and Sunless Sea come into mind).


Since I put a textwall for somewhat an off-topic, it’ll be unfair if I don’t put the same for the WIP itself, do I? :sweat_smile:

@rasberry
It seems that a lot of ppl have a high toleration with “die and reload checkpoint” style.
While that death system isn’t necessarily bad, it’ll make the story somewhat more gamey instead of narrativey. I mean, if you can go with the other option, why not? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just my two cents :moneybag:

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I’m miffed that I’m always late to the good stuff. :grimacing:

The demo as it is is too short for me to give any sort of solid judgement on it, but I like what I see so far.

As for the poll, I’d prefer the first option. It’s the simplest of the options, and I’d much rather see more Days-of-the-Week-Witches than have our MC be cooped up in a hospital or somewhere worse.

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Soon you hear your name called out. " Mr. …"

This is a little confusing, people might think it’s last name being selected first.

Why was Tuesday and the weekend skipped? Why are they names?


Mr. Burner’s pretty great.

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