When you go to greet the duke as you would greet your own liege, it just has you sidestep. Though if you change the *if (greet = true) to *if (greet = “true”). It will then work.
Love it so far I like knights and such way to much so you almost won me over with the title but it’s a fun story can’t wait to see it progress
@Tyking919 Thanks for pointing that out. It is now fixed.
@TheFallen Thank you.
I’m just curious . . .
When you’re talking to Francois (am I write to assume that Alemagne is modeled after France, Francois being a Frankish name?), the bottom says, “Why not go bigger?” This option was suspiciously blocked, and I’m wondering what’s under it . . .
@adjppm1227
You need to have atleast 50 nobility and it will allow you to set up an Industry.
(( @Goshman if you don’t want me to put things like this just tell me and I will remove it))
@adjppm1227 You are current in assuming the nations, yes. I haven’t exactly been covering my tracks in that regard. As for what lies beneath… Well, haven’t you always wanted to be a medieval industry magnate?
@Tyking919 It’s fine. I’d rather you keep the exact numbers vague, that’s all.
I thought so. A daring guess makes me think that the kingdom that holds the head of the religion is Italy? I’ve pretty much gathered that Roiselle is modeled after Normandy, and that the claim on it is based of the claims held by the Norman Kings of England. And am I correct in stating that the infidels (I love that word) invading southern Alemagne are based of the Muslims that pressed into Aquitaine?
Danke. Merci. Gracias. 
You deserve an award for this complicated world. I would have familiarized myself with it sooner, but I have a hard time picturing geography, so I refrain from reading about the world without a map. As for the Varian Kingdom, I believe Charlemagne originally divided it into something like 150 divisible counties. Might I take the risk of asking if this de jure kingdom is modeled in such a way? If I recall correctly, the counts were often fighting over petty pieces of land after Charlemagne died (and his empire somewhat fractured).
As for the infidels and the Trinitarians, it would be interesting to see what happens if the infidels happen upon the main character and/or the army of King William. From what I understand, a high Piety score would result in the character urging the death of the infidels . . . but might I inquire if a low Piety score would, by inverse, result in a request for tolerance?
As for the incursion of King William into Alemagne, I find it old that he holds true to this petty claim at such a disruptive time in the kingdom’s history. With Alemagne in chaos, a sickly king fighting a destructive holy war to the south, with a powerless heir in court, I do not see why King William does not simply declare a war of conquest.
I did notice that the Trinitarian religion holds a great semblance to those two Abrahamic religions. I was unaware, however, that the fire was a borrowed element of Zoroastrianism. With that understood, I might come to wonder if the Trinitarians hold some believe of a messiah or prophet to come in the near future . . .
P.S. I have an unnatural obsession with Latin, which I am fairly certain you speak to some degree. This is probably where I get my love for the word “infidel” (other than how silly it is, of course).
The empire of Charlemagne was divided in three after his death. The Carolingian Empire ruled by his descendants slowly waned in power. All sorts of infighting, in-family backstabbing eventually led to situations where the Emperor might be ruler of most of Europe but only have a powerbase in northern Italy. Eventually the Pope stopped crowning the heirs Emperor. It’s a really convoluted period in history and I won’t go into too much detail here.
The Varian Kingdoms in the sense of the story and its world is that they at first started off fighting each other once the central authority fell, claiming they were Kings even if they held very little land, but over the course of the centuries with threats from the east and from Alemagne, they began consolidating into a loose confederation. During the MC’s lifetime they have begun to consolidate further and will begin to lay the building blocks for an elective monarchy to hold them all together. This process is urged by the Holy Father, who needs a strong buffer in the north-east which might eventually crusade northwards to expand the reach of the Faith.
*cough*I may or may not be planning on having the second war be a crusade*cough*
King William does not declare a war of conquest because of religious reasons. He can be excommunicated, turning all of the western nations against him and against Norwall. With a casus belli such as reclaiming lost lands, he still has a “legitimate” reason and enough of the cardinals behind his cause to at least have the Holy Father remain neutral in the conflict. The last thing King William wants or needs is the Holy Orders of Chivalry, the Varians and the Alemagne fighting him, with a strong possibility of Strathgeabrain launching raids south while Norwall is mostly undefended.
The Trinitarians don’t hold faith in a messiah, per se. They have a score of prophets they believe in, who are messianic figures to some extent but never revered to the point of Jesus of Muhammed. In the Trinitarian belief system God is one being, who has divided himself into three parts, each of which is as important as the others. Prophets are the voice of God, who bring about guidance to mankind. If one were identified, despite the corruption of the clergy in many ways, even the Holy Father would be forced to bow down and worship the Prophet. According to their scriptures, a Prophet makes an appearance every few hundred years but the likelyhood of them being born into far-eastern cultures or far-southern cultures is much greater than them being born in the sphere of influence of the Trinitarians. That means that to a certain extent any religion worshiping a single deity is seen as a kind of misguided following of the Trinitarian God, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be converted to the True Faith with the edge of a sword.
Ave! Three years of Latin, most of which I have forgotten. Enough to recognize in most cases when sentence structures are correct. Sometimes it gets difficult to construct Latin prayers for the story, because I learned classical Latin and medieval sources, such as the Catholic church, bastardized it over the centuries to the point where my limited knowledge is completely useless.
Ah, the Holy Roman Empire. So good in theory, so utterly awful in actuality. As for the Varians, I sincerely hope they unite under a single banner–Norwall’s. Of course, that would lead to an excommunication. Oh well. 
This is why the clergy shouldn’t be allowed to control sovereign states with their holy orders and what not. All these excommunications over wars of conquest–tsk tsk. One war to unite two kingdoms. Not a score over a single, petty tact of land. In this regard, the pagans were incredibly effective. If you were a pagan, they could subjugate you. If you weren’t, none of the pagans had a problem with you being invaded and conquered.
In regards to a war of excommunication against Norwall–yeah, that would be a problem. After King William takes Rolluise, however, I might wonder if he looks northward (pending the non-Trinitarianism of the Strathgeabrains).
Religion has a nasty habit of converting people and saying, “Totally your choice,” while holding a sword against their neck. I look forward to taking part.
You speak Latin in a low form? You must be a god.
The Varians uniting under the banner of Norwall will not be happening. Them forming an alliance, however, is about as likely as a German sitting on the throne of Great Britain.
King William will probably direct his gaze north. Whether he has the support from the Norwallian nobles, the church or his own health remains to be seen. He has seen four wars and is getting on the older side. I’d say he’s already past the life expectancy of the average man during those days and he’s still commanding a war from the frontlines, basically.
The Strathgeabrain are a Trinitarian kingdom in their own right. They are very much unorthodox in the way the common people practice it, but they are still Trinitarians. In their case the political field is much more open than in the case of Alemagne. King William could theoretically march north and conquer them and the Holy Father would have little to say in the matter. Strathgeabrain is considered the backwaters of the western world. It’s hostile landscape, weird language and still deeply ingrained pagan roots make them be seen mainly as uncivilized barbarians, but as long as they worships the One True God, the Holy Father couldn’t care less about how backwards they are or if the King of Norwall were to go north and civilize them.
I would say though, that King William’s son and heir has already sired a daughter, who is set to be betrothed to the north.
Nope. Probably just crazy.
Hello Goshman,
So, I just finished playing the first two Chapters of your game, and I would like to leave here some of my thoughts and initial impressions.
As a story, Knightly Tale has none like it. Currently there aren’t many Medieval stories in CoG, to be fair, but when compared to Oh so many other books of Medieval adventures, none have quite stirred me and made me feel inside its world as yours did.
Certainly that has to do with your extensive (or at the very least greater than average) knowledge of these times, and the details you wrote into it are balanced to the right amount–Not too detailed to the point of boredom, nor too bland to leave things for the mind to wonder.
As an adventure, I cannot comment too much on it since the bulk of it is not yet ready. I’d much rather wait to see the peak of it in the following chapters to say more about it.
All in all, I do hope that the first two chapters served, however, as a strong introduction to the world and the characters, that the player would feel involved enough to care about what happens next.
As a game, in the other hand, if it continues in the same course, I’m afraid it won’t have much replay value, since there have been little room to variation in the story. Not only so, there are little things that let us craft our signature in the character’s story…
Having a small amount of stats is not necessarily a bad thing, but I feel that yours haven’t really been used to their fullest potential. As a source for inspiration, I would recommend the first two installments of Choice of Romance, for it too has a small amount of stats yet it manages to make somewhat good and constant uses of them. The third installment, not so much.
In any case, I hope that the following chapters will be more filled with choices for the player to make, paths to craft an unique adventure. So far the little choices we are able to make are too bleak (left or right, which stick to take) and the others, possibly more significant choices (investments to make in your city, which kind of soldiers to focus on) are kind of filtered because the game already has an inclination to which is right amongst them.
For instance you can choose between spearmen, bowmen, or both, but the game itself tells you that the King would make better use of bowmen since spearmen he has plenty, so what is the point of choosing something else?
I was also a bit surprised to hear my character say that he doesn’t care about the lives of those people he selected to bring to the King. I understand that most of them will be dying, but of all the things described in the game and my character’s “Humility” I thought he’d care more about the people, commoners or not.
As to the amount of text between choices… I’m sure that there are plenty of people who do not mind that. Take a look at Way Walkers for instance. However, I do think that you need to have more choices, meaningful ones that affect your future, regardless of how much text is presented in between them, otherwise people will have to treat your game as a book instead of an Interactive Fiction. Which is fine in and out of itself, but it is different from what people expect to find on a Choice of Games title (Hosted Game or otherwise).
I’m not a fan of “Huge walls of text” between each choice either, but I somehow didn’t bother in your game because I liked the writing so much, by the way. Not everyone would think this way, though.
There are people who prefer to have plenty of customization rather than story, but I for one would rather have some consistent, meaningful choices than hundreds of fake choices that merely affect one-instance description; I prefer to have choices that allow me to play the game in dozens of different ways.
Like I said, I hope the first chapters will serve as introduction to the real game, that hopefully will be coming in its subsequent parts.
@GoldenXan Thank you for your thoughts. I will put the feedback to good use and it means a lot to hear constructive criticism.
I am planning to revise the first two chapters to include more choices and more text that depends on your stats and hidden variables, influencing the world around you. The closing stages of Chapter II need more work, but were necessary to speed through so I can concentrate on the CScomp for the remainder of the month. I will be adding variation depending on how you have built your character, into especially Chapter II. The mother of the MC for example, is right now only two quick mentions in the span of the story in a time where she would be most important. Believe me when I say that expansion will happen before this is ready for any kind of commercial release.
You are correct that the goal of the first two chapters is to bring the player into the world and to get to know the MC before I throw them into the thick of battle with life-and-death choices. On the list of things to do is to add more choices that give you a better sense of what the strengths and weaknesses of the MC are without needing to check the stats page necessarily. For example, when the MC is keeping vigil he muses about not knowing what the words mean of the prayer. With enough nobility, you would have been trained to read, write and speak the ancient language as basically a second language. These small things will also eventually bleed into following chapters where such knowledge is exponentially more important.
Remember that this is the life of a person of noble birth with very strict duties as a squire (which is another section I need to add to) with little to no realistic choices in his own life. Only in Chapter III where the MC is a Baron, a fully grown man and acknowledge peer in the high nobility will you begin to see real choices and freedom from the constrains of society and status.
Thank you again for your candid words. I will come back to them whenever I need motivation to go back and retool sections of the story.
New page means link:
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/240460362/KnightlyTale/web/mygame/index.html
When choosing religion for the third time their a ‘val’ error
@Goshman Were you going for a Samwell Tarly feel for the Duke of Sterling’s son?
Well, technically, both the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon peoples were of Scandinavian descent, so that is pretty likely.
If King William dies . . . I’m not sure. We would most likely lose the war, but, as it has been put–chaos is a ladder.
Awww, no incursions into the far, uncivilized north. And to think, here I was, so excited over turning their desolate wasteland into a more gruesome, war-torn desolate wasteland on the promise of culture revolution and salvation! Nothing is so fun.
@TheFallen Fixed.
@MSox99 Not in any conscious way, no. Perhaps subconsciously I may have added characteristics.
@adhppm1227 Well with Queen Elizabeth II being the granddaughter of the man who changed their family name from “Saxe-Coburg and Gotha” to “Windsor” I’d say it’s very likely a German would sit there. Then there’s the House of Hanover which directly preceded them and ruled a few centuries.
There will be plenty of time to march north. I’m just saying King William probably won’t be the one to do it.
Very nice, I can see a promising story developing. The only issue I have is it is a bit too linear for me. The choices along the way do not really have much impact on the character from what I can tell. But for sure a great work in progress. You should spice it up with a few battles that have choices and definitely with romance.
"the Geabrain people brave and rugged due to the mountainous and harsh lands they inhabit. "
should be:
“the Geabrain people are brave and rugged due to the harsh, mountainous terrain they inhabit.”
But overall, from what I’ve read of it, it is a great story with a compelling plot, it will be interesting to see how it develops and where the protagonist ends up based on the choices of the player. Good job man!