Sense & Sorcery (WIP, Working Title, Gender Locked Female)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Hizzah! The update is posted to dashingdon and now available. Here are the highlights:

Update Version: 0.0.24.12.28.1445

-Added in Do Not Dally with the Dead: Part III in the linear story setion; possibly some name inconsistencies and minor typos that I didn’t catch. At least one more section to be written yet to wrap it all up, probably to arrive in late 1st quarter or 2nd quarter '25.
-Added in scenes in chapter 5 that occur when you take the northward path; these scenes conclude the introduction section for the rogues in the forest.
-Added in a scene where you can speak further with Thera Drearing at the intro party; this occurs in chapter 7 but is only accessible if you have already talked with her in chapter 6.
-Added in a brief rumor / gossip listening section for chapter 7 similiar to those in chapter 6 but with different content. Can be used to get a better sense for some of the players and happenings in the prots world.
-Added in for chapter 5 some of the missing scenes though there is still further expantion neccesary. That said, you can now 1) Proceed onto your grandmother’s all alone. 2) Further deal with the mysteries and surprises your grandmother has in store for her granddaughter. 3) Deal with the beautiful stranger in the woods with the grey cloak and silver-blonde hair. Some of these scenes are still very abreviated as combat needs to be added in and more needs to be written yet, but more complete than it was before. Some warnings and spoilers as some of these paths are not for the faint of heart and those that want to have a happier story, but I feel like there was plenty of foreshadowing and warnings about some of the dangers of the worse paths.
-Added in for chapter 6 scenes for the path where the prot walks to the tavern, leaving the party for a while; this can either be done as part of the mission from Lady Arabella or just as a whimsy on the prots part. Starts the dabbler plots and intros some new characters.
-Added in for Chapter 7 scene where you can give the report on what you have or have not discovered about the circle of dabblers.
-Added in a small patch for Chapter 8 where the prot can pick who she wants as her + 1 for the baroness’s dinner party. This is to sub in for a large more natural selection thereof; also, please note that if the prot has been enthralled or has previously pledged to take someone, she may not have much of an option here. The list of potential guests is currently relatively small, but it may grow; some options were skipped for now as being to complexed to deal with for this moderate update as there’s a time crunch for this update to meet my end of month goal. Other options just wouldn’t be realistic at this point in the game as there just wouldn’t have been enough time to make them viable. Fear not - the prot will have many other parties to attend during her season with a growing number of potential guests, and if she has been enthralled there will be ways to potentially break that in due time. Obviously, this small patch will be expanded eventually.
-Added in the start of our new chapter 9, Enough Enchantment, with a few scenes: -auntlie advice from Lunara, carriage ride to party, greet the baroness, and a few varying scenes depending on where the prot sits and who with in the preparty gathering, and then lastly a short scene wtih sarah swein. Lots more to be added to this chapter, but sadly this is as far as I could get this update.
-Numerous typo/grammer/spelling fixes though lots more to do yet.

While I am pretty happy with this update, despite numerous typos and at least one new bug that I’ll fix next time around, there is still so many gaps to fill, plot lines to advance, and in general so much more to write and code - the game still has a looooong ways to go, but its progress. To be honest, as this a long game, of course feel free to wait to play, if you like, for me to post more updates that will fill in more of these things if you are thinking of starting a new game … obviously up to you, though I will say it takes a while to go through the game, even going relaitvely fast through the scenes to find and personally test the new scenes.

As for my current plans for updates and those things, as always, can never say for sure, but my hope is to get not only one update, but two updates done in the first quarter of '25. I also would like to finish Do Not Dally with the Dead by writing and posting Part IV. Other hopes and plans are to do small updates to my other two posted games, Dice & Dungeon Masters and All the Way . . . the earlier I had a few bad bugs and scenes that weren’t firing off, so I’d kind of like to see some of those things fixed before it goes on a longer haitus, and for the later, the material is fairly easy to write and I have the next two chapters more or less planned and am eager to present them. Warring with all these plans is my need for a bit of a break; not sure, but I may take a few days off before continuing on.

Obviously, I shall post here again when I have more content again. Thank you for your interest in my game!

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Just to make you aware, Dashingdon hosting will be closing soon so I would recommend moving this to cogdemos or uploading a compiled html file:

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Thank you - I really appreciate the warning. Ha, yeah, we all knew this was coming, but I guess I dragged my feat on the move and it is finally catching up now. Hoping to get the moves all done by tuesday provided there is no emergencies, but I will start with Sense & Sorcery and try to make that move today. Thank you again!

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So good and bad news to all - there is an update, however, this is more than a bit of a rush job due to the permanent closing of the Dashingdon website that has hosted all our games for so long. While I shall leave the links up to the Dashingdon variant of the game for now, anticipate those links no longer working within a few days.

The new link to the game can be found here → CoGDemos

Now, as stated, transferring is by necessity a rush job. Thus far, I have been unable to get my art to display correctly, and indeed, some of it I cannot even transfer over. I will look into it, but this is fairly low on the priority list - most of the art doesn’t have functional purpose, so I think you can still play the game without losing out on to much by their being absent.

Sadly, all saved games are gone with the move - the good thing is there is a new saved game system provided by the new website, and you can even save these to your local files, it seems. So, in the long term, not the end of the world, though sadly all our current games on Dashingdon exist only as lost beloved dreams, but so it goes - I really wish there were someway to move those to local saves and then move that to the new saved system on the new website, but I am not aware of a way.
As new games are thus required, I tried to make a ton of new variables, but I only got so far with that. Chances are, sometime before the end of this project, I will probably need to create more new variables, which makes saved games problematic in the long run. However, as best time allowed with the relatively short notice and rush to get the move made, I did try to work ahead on these, so hopefully some of that will be mitigated.

Now then, lastly, the new update was rushed and there really isn’t all that much this time as a result. Here are the notes, Warning: Spoilers via the changelog:

Update Version: 0.0.25.01.17.1000

-Added onto chapter 9 Enough Enchantment more scenes, dealing with most of the formal introduction between party guests, which all sets the mode and tensions for the coming dinner party. Much more to be added to this chapter yet.
-Added onto chapter 7 Sisters & Sacrifise scene where Glea is the accuser and not Alaris. While that scene is nearly done, there are some very short scenes dealing with the fallout of this that I still need to add in.
-Restructured later chapters (as far as we go so far) so now there is another chapter between chapter 10 The Blood Black and now chapter 12 (previously chapter 11) A Masquerade of Governance, chapter numbering has been adjusted to accomadate and a new safe save point has also been added. The new chapter is intended to eventually be a small sandbox chapter to explore the destination realm before the prot is wisked off to the conclave in the following chapter. This sandbox chapter shall be a test to see how well that works and hopefully shall be a template for later sandbox chapters and allow for some small advancement of story and character specific plot points as the player wishes, though it will be only a few days worth.
-Added a scene between the prot and Ravana at the start of our new chapter 11.
-Added on starting stub for chapter 14, as well as a new safe point.
-Added in a bunch of new vars for the move, but there probably are more I will eventually need to add in. I felt now was a good time since the move would likely require new games anyways.
-Fixed a couple minor typos and such, but didn’t have the time to fix some outstandings bugs. Had hoped to do that with this update, but will now hope to do so with next update.

So, baring any sort of emergency or such, for this game and my other games, here are my current goals:

-Move other games to the new website. I will probably start with the current posted forum games and then move onto my other favored projects, such as, likely in this order, Lives of the Star Child, Super Sorority, The Ice King’s Call and then move onto other games that are mostly unheard of and unwhispered about.
-Continue progress on Sense & Sorcery . . . probably 1 to 2 more updates to be anticipated this quarter, barring lack of time for real life reasons.
-Fix the art displayed and try to better understand the new website.

Thank you for everyone’s patience and my appologies for the inconviences and chaos.

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As the links inside of the game will temporarily not work to link to my other games, I wanted to provide the links to anyone who cares for the other games. So, via quoted text from another of my game threads, here they are:

And as the post says now I am really and truly tired - lets all pledge to never ever do this whole game porting buisness again please begs and pleads but happy to have the games for the most part saved. As previously mentioned, a small update to Sense & Sorcery was presented today, and I shall endevour to have one to two more updates to S&S sometime this quarter.

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Just a quick post on status of upcoming update; not done yet, but I’ll probably - barring some real life strangeness - aim to have one released sometime this weekend, or, failing that, shortly after. Then a question if I want to push onto one last update before a brief haitus while I work on some content for my other games or not - we shall see. While the things I really want and need to do for this game (i.e. work on combat, clothing and inventory, magic, and travel) are going to beyond the scope of the next update due to time constraints, I can probably get a few more of the holes in the narrative filled in, which, other than chapter 4, will make the game flow a lot better. Anyway, hopefully sometime this weekend . . .

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I am happy to let you all know the new update has now been released on cog demos.

As per the changelog, here is what to expect:

Summary

*Update Version: 0.0.25.02.22.1600

-Expanded ch. 14 to have a scene where a maid dresses the prot and gets her ready for the day. Varying interactions can occur dependent on the prots personality and choices.
-Added some text to an empty conditional that I missed earlier in chapter 8 during the Mr. Northwood enthrallment encounter.
-Added a brief social encounter with Mr. Northwood for chapter 11, varying on if Mr. Northwood was truly enthralled or not, and what level of appeal he and the prot share.
-Added some conclusion and wrap up to the post true enthrallment and attack matter of Mr. Northwood in chapter 8. Kind of brief but should wrap up that section of the chapter.
-Added into chapter 11 a brief scene wherein the prot and her family converse with either Glea or Alaris who has a bit of a proposal for the family.
-Set up very vague outline for rest of chapter 11 and plans for wrap up of chapter which should flow to chapter 12.
-Added in chapter 11 specific talk for Stara.
-Added in chapter 11 specific talk for Sophia.
-Added in some chapter 11 specific talk for Morgan.
-Added in sleep and dream and time advancement segment for chapter 11.
-Started fleshing in some of the skeleton for chapter 11, but lots more to do.
-Added in chapter 11 specific talk for Ravana.
-Added in visiting Ravana scene for chapter 11. If your relationship is high enough, upon the first visit she may reveal the secret of why she spent the evening with Wanderflame.
-Added in visiting Sophia scene for chapter 11.
-Added in visiting Stara scene for chapter 11.
-Added in visting Glea scene 1 and Glea confrontation scene for chapter 11.
-Added in chapter 11 specific talk for Glea; some additional talk to be added in yet in a future update.
-Added in chapter 11 specific games, teachings, and story telling for Mera and the prot; these will continue to shape her personality, which will become more key in later portions of the game. In addition, during the game of hide and seek with Mera, some of the mysteries of the game can be partially revealed if the prot finds certain hints in certain places. Some of these actions with Mera may have a lasting affect later in the game.
-Added in partial skeleton for chapter 11 prot room action navigations, though not much there yet. Will fill in on further updates.
-Added in chapter 11 specific talk for Diana (this is a small abreviated section so far, and I might add on more conversation topics in a future update.
-Started fixing text on relationships for prots parents, aunt Lunara, and Uncle Damian - to clarify, the prots father and uncle Damian are brothers, the others are only related by marriage. May take a while to find and fix all text that regards these relationships.
-I had somehow missed setting up extra string, bool, and integer variables for aunt lunara; these have now been added and I will not use them until chapter 15 to prevent crashes.
-Added in chapter 11 specific talk for Aunt Luanra; as with Diana this is a very small, abreviated sampling to likely be expanded in a future update.
-Added in chapter 11 specific talk for cousin Mordred; as with Diana and aunt Lunara it is very small and abreviated, to likely be expanded in a future update.
-Added in start to chapter 15; this will vary depending on a sanity check (alacrity_vs_lethargy vs d100 roll) to set the initial scene and tone, whereon after the chapter proceeds to the start of a bit of an adventure for the prot and either Lady Whiserie, Lady Swein, or Lady Thera as well as one female maid/thrall. There is then a short encounter scene wherein the prot’s group “interacts” with a group of strangers, and some brief diologues to help set the tone and tensions of the group. Proceeds onto the circus scene, though that still needs to be written.
-Added in chapter 6 specific talk for Ravana, accesible after a succesful relationship check pre-ceremony section of chapter.
-Added in chapter 6 specific talk for Morgan, accesible after a succesful relationship check pre-ceremony section of chapter.
-Adjusted chapter 6 leveling scene so it hopefully will work a little bit better; while I am optimistic that it has been improved I doubt that this is the final variant of it, but we shall give it a try to see how it works pointwise.
-Added a little bit more to the skeleton of Chapter 11’s walking scenes, but so much more to add. To be added in an update hopefully relatively soon.
-Added ending for chapter 11; bit more to be added in between this and the rest of the chapter, but the ending of the quest to reach the sage should now be apparent, and it should flow into the following chapter in what I hope is a rather spectacular manner, setting up for the tensions to come in future chapters.
-Added onto chapter 12 to accomadate for the ending of chapter 12 a little bit better. Also expanded so the prot meets a new npc, Chaveen, at the end of her encounter with the conclave lords and her mother and uncle.
-Bridged chapter 13 to wrap up, though more might be added and adjusted in some points: This chapter now has a blazing row with the prot’s uncle, the declaration that she must marry someone he has picked, and of course a new encounter with the villianess, as well as clarification as to what just happened to everyone at the end of chapter 11.
-There was a bug where the coding wasn’t allowing selection for a nick name for the prot’s close friend; I am hoping that is fixed now.
-Many bugs, grammer, and spelling errors fixed, yet, as always, plenty more to find and fix. I should note I do need to add in the fix for the long loops yet in a few chapters; I will most likely try to do that next update. For now, please try not to save your game in a looping segment, as it probably will not load correctly until I add that fix.
-A few more variables were added; I appologise as I know these can break games, but I felt it was needed. There are still more vars that need to be added, but as I add them in I will endevour to not use them until early midgame to avoid prematurely breaking saves.*

Main take away is that the majority of family npcs have had a significant amount of new content added; a few ROs had a minor amount of new content added. I really thought I’d get more done on those, but I’ll freely admit that I got distracted by some other aspects of the game - on these aspects, I think the main plot should be more apparent now as you go to the current later chapters. Anticipate some serious drama and horror, as per the parent Sword & Sorcery genre, though I hope it is balanced out with some lighter sections too.

Now, I originally planned to do some major summaries and post some new polls - but after pretty much nearly a couple days straight on writing, coding, and then bug checking, I am truly exhausted, so we shall save that for some time soon, though I will now conclude this update today with a brief offer of some expectation for the future.

Thus far, we have a few of what I would consider story chapters (that follow the main plots of the game), a couple sand box like chapters that let you wander about and do your own thing up to a point with some major constraints, and have lacked for the most part the third type of chapter - heavily branching chapters. Now, as we move closer to mid game, I intend to supply more chapters that will be completely different depending on what choices and paths you have picked. What factors will determine what chapter paths you will be cast to? These:
-What ROs is most interested in your prot and which ROs you are most interested in.
-Which characters are the villains of your story.
-What location you decide to go to (anticipate a decision point soon as whether to remain in the realm you are in, go to bath, or go to london).
-What subplots you have pursued (i.e. are you investigating the dabblers or maybe earnestly trying to help them, are you truly trying to compete against your mother and uncle for dominion of your family towers, are you on the side of the ton or the towers in their growing schism)

Lots has been done - a lot more shall need to be done. Once more, antciipate a few polls soon, as well as some reminder summations of prior poll results. Also, I shall probably push on for one more update of Sense & Sorcery before a brief (about 2 months or so) hiatus wherein I shall work on progress for Dice & Dungeon Masters and All the Way. I’ll hopefully also have the next section for Do Not Dally with the Dead sometime next month, though I need to fix some plot stuff before I continue on with that, as I am dissatisfied with a couple of the potential endings for that story and want to do better, to give you all the best version of that story I can manage.

In any event, a thousand world of thanks for trying my game and entertaining this update - happy paths to you all!

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It’s a great concept, and I love how large and ambitious it seems! However, you really, direly need to use some sort of spell checker at minimum. I couldn’t find a single page without a spelling or grammatical error of some sort in this new content. It’s insanely distracting and makes it difficult to focus on the lovely story you’re telling. Is English your second language? If so, maybe you might try Grammarly. I know several ESL speakers who find it very useful!

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Thank you for the review rnngghgs - let me write a few things in reply.

First, thank you for trying my game. I am truly pleased that you enjoyed the story and appreciate your sharing that.

Regarding the writing and typos and such,

Summary

which is the bulk of your review, Sense & Sorcery and I have a few unique challenges in this regard, essentially physical and technological limitations, my philosophy on language, and British and regency language vs. American.

I believe I’ve mentioned this earlier on the thread, but it is buried some fifty posts ago, but I do have some eye problems, so that accounts for some of the typos. While I realize I can make the text larger, this sometimes makes some of the coding more challenging to visualize, ironically enough, when dealing with nested if statements and such. To make these games I use CSIDE and Notepad++, however, while CSIDE has a relatively good spell checker, there are certain functionalities that it lacks, so more often I find myself using Notepad++ to save time and effort, as I’ll inevitably have to go back to Notepad++ to get done what I really want anyways. Now, Notepad++ does have a spellchecker mod that I can and did add, but it abruptly stopped working a long time ago, sadly, thus, no spellchecker on there. As my game is more code orientated than some others, I can not port in the text to a more robust writing program, as that would destroy the coding, which is far worse than having a few typos and spelling faux pas. That all stated, I recognize that there are rather a few typos and respect that as legitimate feedback. If you find a typo that that is particularly troubling, I’d absolutely adore your letting me know what it was and where in the game it occurred, so I can find and fix it.

Now, secondary to legitimate typos that cause all sorts of rubbish in the writing, I do hold a strong philosophy on punctuation marks. Simply put: Punctuation marks are for pacing - the supposed “rules” of /grammar/ are ;only; that - and nothing more . . . I do recognize that many school systems do teach grammar as actual rules, and to grammar purists it can be alarming and troubling to see supposed violation of beloved rules of grammar, but language is always changing. What is in vogue for conventional punctuation one decade will change a few decades later. If one doubts this, please read some writing from a hundred or two hundred years ago or further. Indeed, if memory serves, I believe 20% of a given language changes every 500 years - punctuation is one of the most malleable areas of language and so I kindly ask readers to disregard supposed punctuation errors, unless it is something that is very obviously not what the writer intended. As Sense & Sorcery is part of a child genre with the parent genres of Regency and Sword & Sorcery, the punctuation usage in those parent genres are part of what influences my punctuation use within Sense & Sorcery - obviously, regency hales from that time, and I do think much of the writing was more liberal on some punctuation; for Sword & Sorcery, being born in the 1920’s by Howard, we see there also a rather liberal use of hyphens and colons and exclamation marks. In any event, I apologies if the punctuation is troubling for some readers, but I feel strongly on this matter.

Lastly, there are a few instances where i go with the English / British spelling for a word rather than the American English equivalent, i.e. towne rather than town, colour rather than color, blonde rather than blond. I will be the first to agree that with usage of these I need to be more consistent, but the intent is to better ground the language in appropriate regency usage, which is something I can further refine during editing. However, I can certainly see some of those spellings being mistaken as actual errors, which can add to the disjointed feel you are indicating.

Now, as far as Grammarly - while I’m not going to search for the thread and quote right now - I know choice of games and thus hosted games had a post that seemed to say use it at your own risk as writers that inadvertently present writing that is not their own as their own will not be allowed to publish their stories. Though for myself, as you probably can tell by now, I would really have no use for Grammarly - not only am I an English speaker, but I also hold a degree in creative writing where I did rather well (3.9 GPA). Sorry for the not so humble brag, but no, English is not my second language.

In any event, I am thankful for the feedback and will conclude this with two further things.

For the future, I am very happy to receive and review individual instances of potential language errors, though if I feel it is not a true error, I will probably not adjust that instance. I would also, however, kindly ask that in future reviews players not give blanket statements that the language is troubling, as that has already been adressed here and several times on this thread.

Now, while some of the language will not be changed now or ever due to my philosophy of language or my going with language and spelling that I feel is appropriate for the voice of a good regency - sword & sorcery mashup, some of the language problems are the legit result of typos. Those I can and occasionally do clear up with the use of CSIDE, but with only a few hours per week that I can launch at these projects due to having a full-time job and being a caregiver for a family member, that means putting fixing typos as a stronger priority will result in a lot of progress and momentum being lost.

So, let’s put that as our first poll - to what priority would you like to see editing for this work?

  • It is the only priority - do not proceed on with anything else until all is edited
  • It is a strong priority - commit at least half of your free time to editing
  • It is a moderate priority - try to do an hour or two a week of editing
  • It is a weak priority - I am okay with the bulk of editing occurring later on in the process of making this game
  • Do no editing - editing should Never Ever Occur
0 voters

There are a few other polls I also want to present. Some I will now, some I will do later, as I am now running out that there free time for the day:

In the scene where the protagonist, Morgan, and Mera go for a walk, they encounter a thief-taker half incubus who may try to Enrapture the prot and Morgan to make them help with his investigation. Morgan can stop this and tries to block this from happening via casting a ward, however, currently, if the prot has her sense to low and is attracted to men and thus incubi the prot will be compelled to stop Morgan from casting a spell at the handsome man, which results in both being Enraptured by the man. So, my question is, should it be easier for the prot and Morgan to avoid this outcome, i.e. being Enraptured?

  • It seems fine as is - the current limiting factors (having a low sense and being attracted to men) are sufficient to warrant the situation and outcome
  • It seems too abrupt - there should be a larger possibility to get out of this plot (being enraptured)
0 voters

I am going to revisit the question of the regency travel section - while I have bought more books on regency travel, I am starting to think I will never have sufficient time to actually read them. There are a few articles online about regency travel, however, those alone are not going to be enough to make that section as detailed as I’d hope. So, inevitably, my question is, would you be alright with a more abbreviated regency travel section for chapter 4?

  • I’d be okay with a relatively abbreviated regency travel section that may not use the actual real regency roads but might have a few sights tossed in to make up for that.
  • I really would like this section to be accurate, to use real regency roads, and to have notable landmarks occur at the right places.
0 voters

In the plot where the protaganist goes to visit and check on her grandmother, she may possibly suffer magical burnout and lose the capacity to cast magic. At present, as this is an alpha, I’ve kind of hand waved that aside and ignored it, but eventually it will need to be addressed. Two possibilities exist - I can either a) have one of the characters potentially help the prot regain her magic with some heavy hooks, and I have a plot in mind for that, or b) I can make an alternate path where the prot has to spend her season without magic. While I probably will make magical burnout a possibility later on in the game, that early in the game seems premature and means really missing near all the game, so it will probably lead to an abbreviated story at that point, and a premature, likely bad end. So, in regards to that early instance of magical burnout, would you like a) to have one of the character’s help the prot out, for a price, to regain her magic, or b) like an abbreviated alternate story line that will probably terminate with a relatively bad end or c) have both options.

  • a
  • b
  • c
0 voters

Just a reminder that while I consider the polls non-binding, they and their feedback are important to me and I do put heavy consideration regarding them when making my games.

Probably more polls upcoming, and hopefully one last update before haitus in a few weeks.
Thanks again for trying and testing my game all!

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Perhaps you might consider simply copy pasting the text into a word doc while play testing in order to spell check? For specific errors, here are a few notable ones I recall off the top of my head. Hope it helps!

-you consistently use “fowl” when you mean “foul.” Amusing, but “fowl” is a noun meaning a bird, not the adjective you’re looking for.
-you consistently misuse to/too
-early game on several occasions you use “ascent/descent” (though misspelled) when you mean “assent/dissent.” These are different words with different meanings.
-you misspelled “smirk” as “smurk”
-you consistently misuse loose/lose, affect/effect, and weary/wary (and in the case of the latter, you misspell “weariness” with a “y”)

I congratulate you on your degree, but the above mistakes are common to schoolchildren and ESL speakers, thus my original comment. It was not meant to cause offense. I’d suggest you concentrate on fixing these rudimentary mistakes and strengthening your overall grasp of the English language before worrying about the complexities of archaic / Regency style prose vs more modern language.

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Remembered another: you also mistakenly put “belay” when you meant “belie”

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Thanks for catching and notifying me of those typos. Thankfully multi-replace can easily fix those. As for the other stuff regarding editing and poll results, I’ll eventually provide a more in depth reply at my convivence when I have time.

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Some other polls now here presented. Post poll review and summary of past polls and what is to come to be presented sometime in the future.

If I were to rate this game, I would rate it:

  • G
  • PG
  • PG-13
  • R
0 voters

I am okay with there being abbreviated bad or suboptimal endings at times if the prots actions move to far from the main path and storyline of the game:

  • Yes
  • Yes, but only for a few extreme circumstances
  • No
0 voters

The easiest school of magic to add to the game is Divination I have been thinking of starting to add it in at certain points, however, this kind of unintentionally penalizes prots that choose a different school of magic to specialize in. Would you be okay with my writing and coding in the divination sections first?

  • Yes
  • No
0 voters

Of the pastimes, I would most like more content added for:

  • Arcana
  • Art
  • Dancing
  • Elegance
  • Etiquette
  • Falconry
  • Fencing
  • Gossip
  • Music
  • Rhetoric
  • Spellwork
0 voters

For all major characters there are both relationship variables and romance variables. Thus far, I haven’t bothered adding them to the stats page; this is kind of due to some of my personal predjudice and feelings on these variables, as I feel that in real life you are not likely to automatically know the true strength of a relationship or the promise of romance. Also, in a game with magic, there are potentially ways to find this information through sorcery . . . however, I think the games to a point where I ought to either add those in or not. But there’s a few different options here:

  • a) Add in and openly display relationship and romance scores for all characters with no need for magic
  • b) Add these in, but make them only viewable if the protaganist has the correct magic to view them
  • c) Add in a text variant where the relationship and manerisims for participants will be described but not revealed numerically
  • d) Add in all three of these choices and make it selectable at the start of the game or via the stats menu
0 voters

Next up - we have a huge cast of characters, and it is only growing larger, which I think is normal enough in life and literary adventures. You live and have experiences and meet new people, etc. etc. Now, for displaying characters in the stats screen, this begs the question - should I display all current characters in the stats screen at the start of the game, or only reveal them as the protaganist meets them.

  • Only add character descriptions, rel scores, and such to the stats screen as they are met in the game (more realistic and kind of simplifies and further individualizes play throughs)
  • Add them all in right at the start (gives a better view of the scope of the game, but provides tons of spoilers)
0 voters

Lastly, and this poll is just for readers of the linear story Do Not Dally with the Dead, would you be okay with a really dark ending for that story, or would that destroy the experience of the story for you?

  • I’d be okay with a super dark ending, the kind of ending that makes GOT whimper in misery.
  • I’d rather have a happy ending, or at least not a horrible ending
0 voters

With that and the polls from a few posts ago, I think that is plenty. I am now back off of break and adding in new content once more, including some editing and bug fixes. However, anticipate this next update to be a small update.

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137

Thank you to everyone that has voted on the polls. I’m going to leave them all up a bit longer for anyone that wants to reply, and post just a couple more now. These will be the last for a while, as I realize you all probably don’t want to spend all your lives answering my polls.

The first question may seem a little odd, and be assured that it will be anonymous. The reason I am asking it is to better gauge the current age of the audience my game has attracted. It is a companion question to the earlier rating question and the following adult content question.
What age group are you (please be honest - this question is anonymous):

  • 12 or younger
  • 13 - 17
  • 18 up (an adult)
0 voters

Both the parent genres for whatever genre Sense & Sorcery is in flirt with adult situations at times and often have adult situations. While there is such a thing as clean regency and I’d argue clean Sword & Sorcery I’d argue that even the clean variants often have edgy, border line moments. For the early game this question didn’t seem to really matter much, but as we move closer to mid and late game, I think the question needs to be asked: Should Sense & Sorcery have adult content?

  • No - Keep it clean Ed!
  • Yes, that would be fine; I am indifferent.
  • Yes, I would prefer there to be adult content.
0 voters

The following question won’t come into play until mid to late game, but I have always thought the protagonist is unique in being essentially two different beings - the spirit from the Outer World (our world, actually, and more over, yourself, the player) and the regency sorceress with the sigil on her forehead. There are various plots I can do to have fun with this and offer some new opportunity. So would you be okay with a plot where the “You” in the game and the sorceress split up, at least for some time? This would allow the spirit to wander around and affect the world on it’s own, and allow potential body possession opportunities to expand the game, though it will challenge the sense of self for the sorceress’s identity a little.

  • Yes, I’d welcome an opportunity for the Spirit and Sorceress to split up for a while and think the spirit and possession plots might be fun.
  • No, I’d rather the sorceress and spirit stay as one throughout the whole game.
0 voters

Probably more polls I could ask, but you guys have been great answering my polls so far. I am currently working on the new update, probably eta about two weeks as this will likely be a shorter one, though as usual I can never say for sure.

4 Likes
138

Still working on the next update. Few more things I kind of want to fit in, but time and energy may mean a lot of these things will need to wait for the future.

In the meantime, one more super sneaky poll:
Would you be open to more polls while waiting for the update?

  • No - go forth and write and code Ed and think not on polls!
  • Sure, I love giving my opinion and think this is a good way to give my opinion to help the game along.
  • Cake is so delicious! And yummy!
0 voters
139

Hi! Bug here! In the dinner section, both the “Drink and eat with gusto” and the “Drink and eat with some daintiness” lead to the eating with gusto text and stats. Same for the soup part.

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140

Thanks for notifying me about this and testing my game! If I remember correctly, I think for this section, you have an etiquette skill check. Failure on that check results in eating and drinking with more gusto than intended. Granted it was a couple years back that I wrote and coded this section, but I think that was how it was supposed to work. Basically, in the early game many acts will result in embarrassment or worse, and as you level up you should more often succeed in society or on the battlefield.

As long as I’m online tonight, I figured I’d give you all a couple more polls as most did not seem to resistant to taking more polls and we do love cake. Some of these poll questions are intended to best determine audience and what the audience would consider ideal for the game.

So, to begin with I consider myself first beyond all things

  • a fan of regency stories (i.e. Jane Austen, Georget Heyer, Regina Scott, etc.)
  • a fan of rpgs (Dnd, Pathfinder, Rifts, WOD, etc.)
  • a fan of classic sword & sorcery (Robert Howard, Henry Kutner, Fritz Leiber, etc.)
  • a fan of urban fantasy
  • a fan of classic fantasy (i.e. LotR)
  • a fan of something else entirely and none of these . . .
0 voters

I would like

  • more romantic options, but understand that some may be less intricate
  • Fewer romantic options, but for those present to be deeper and more involved
0 voters

The next one has some spoilers so I guess only vote on this one if you either have already played a good bit of the game or are okay with spoilers. So, on the path where Glea stays with the prot and her family, Glea suffers from a multiple personality disorder, due to her duel fey-human blood line. Basically the fey variant of Glea trying to claim dominance over her human side. My basic thought and impetus for this was a sort of Dr. Jekyl / Mr Hyde or Hulk / Bruce Banner sort of story line - there’s lots more to be written in yet. For the parts that have been so far, do you feel like there are enough hints of what is really going on, or is to hidden?

  • There seems to be an appropriate amounts of hints
  • More hints need to be added; it all seems to abrupt so far
0 voters

Not 100% sure, but I might try to post the update sometime this weekend. Once more, this will be a smaller update. Some of the things I wanted to do with this update will not be present or finished in whole, though there will of course be some progress.

Once done with this update, we will go on a hopefully brief hiatus of maybe a couple months as I get some work on other games (All the Way, Dice & Dungeon Master) and some real-life stuff done. More on that and poll results, eventually; maybe at the same time as the update, maybe a little after. Maybe more polls too - we shall see.

Also, hate to write it, but Do Not Dally with the Dead is probably going to get delayed again. Way to dally . . . i knoiw, i know … in any event, I think I will stop posting anticipated completion dates for that story, as I can’t seem to hit my mark there, but it will eventually be added to the linear ficiton section, but might be a while.

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141

After careful consideration, unless I suddenly end up with more time and energy, I am going to move back the update to wednesday/thursday this week, as there’s still a little more I really want to sneak in, and its next to impossible for me to finish it up this weekend as I have to work some long hours and I seem to have come down with some minor illness.

7 Likes