Song Of The Fallen WIP: Yet another Codex Entry posted for opinion

Since we’re apparently the (poorly) chosen of the MoonGod(ess) I expect darkness to be par for the course when it comes to our mysterious destiny.

Also considering as how this is inspired by wheel of time, are there, besides the obvious, any differences in abilities and magical prowess/aptitude between male and female chosen of the same God? If so, is that why this game is gender locked?

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I don’t think “destiny” is the right word to use. I won’t say I have an aversion to the idea of fate or prophecy, it can be a really powerful and compelling narrative tool when used correctly, but it’s not one I find myself inclined to really use, not for this story anyway.

Although the “future” can be read by some (like in the scene with the Seer), it’s very fluid, subject to change and open to interpretation. There are no events pre-determined, no “Dark One rising” you were destined and born to face. Choices are made and people react. In some cases, certain conflicts are inevitable, but that has less to do with fate (understood as a path you’d always end up walking, no matter your choices) and more to do with the characters you’re surrounded by and the world you’ve now become a part of. This conflicts may come sooner down one line of play than another, their nature and motivation may change, the contextual lens through which you see them may also vary.

If you wind a rubber band around your finger enough times, it will inevitably snap loose or break, but is this because of some mysterious prophetic force or a combination of a choice and the nature of the rubber band?

Ultimately, whatever happens will happen either because you or another character chose for it to happen or because you were not in a position to stop it from happening.

Well in WoT it wasn’t really that women had inherently greater prowess/aptitude than men (although certain threads did tend to be used better by certain genders), rather saidin (male half of the One Power) was tainted and so using it eventually drove men crazy. This resulted in a stigma surrounding men and channeling, thus for a long time it was accepted that only women should and would use magic.

So it’s the same here in the sense that your gender does not inherently determine your ability. However there’s not taint or a “One Power” with a male and female half. Instead, the gods all have their own gender (as much as a god can have a gender).

-The godSun is male
-The godStar is female
-The godSea is male
-The godWind is female
-And no one’s really sure what gender the godMoon was

It’s strongly applied custom for a Chosen and the members of their Clave to be the inverse gender of their god. As such, the sunClave has it’s Sisters.

So in short, no, that’s not why it’s gender locked.

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Then it seems Ehren defies custom, if he truly is a chosen of the godSun.

Well, he’s not a Chosen. He was meant to go to with Heleana to the sunClave to join the Wardrens (who act as protectors for the Sisters, but are their own separate entity). But then, you know, all that stuff happened.

He was too busy figuring the God/ess gender to read, also there are exceptions to every rule like the Wolfguy in WOT.

And now we’re gonna have to convince him to do the same for us. Unless the MC looks really mature for his age, though I’d rather he didn’t as I’d actually like to preserve my mc’s youthful looks as long as possible, we’re gonna need a big, strong and adult (looking) companion in order to not look like the two runaway children that we are, as I assume staying put in our little village with Bella for another 2-3 years is neither possible nor smart.
That’s apart from the fact that if my mc was a bad enough farmer to not be able to decently feed his aging mother and himself, he sure isn’t going to be able to support (what appears to be) a young and growing girl as a farmer.

It’s going to be amusing watching Ehren’s reaction when you tell he not going to the Clave because you killed a Chosen one with a bound blade

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Of course I’m not going to tell him the truth, rather I’ll play to his sympathies for not letting us end up in either whatever horrible orphanage system this world has or out on the streets.
Or alternatively enlist his help in my quest to track down Bella’s presumably wealthy family for a share of the reward money.

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as I’ve said once before and others have said as well powerful scenes man powerful scenes.
glad your adding a anger stat as my mc leans to being stoic and angry more then not. and on the stoic question to me is more of a actions speak louder than words type of person but also as afew others have mentioned one who shows little emotion outwards even tho they may be feeling a hundred different things.
on belle my mc pretty much said little to nothing to her in the cave as he was suspicious of what she was at the time I mean a kid out in the wilderness with a storm starting up giving real vague answers to questions of how she got there can you say bad omen anyone?and he didn’t promise to keep her safe not because he’s a as***** but he doesn’t make promises that he has no way of knowing if he can keep or not.promises are powerful things to some people.also on your best friend I chose the option where he was caught stealing and left in the street bleeding.to me what motivated my mc to help him was the fact that everyone passing by pretended he wasn’t there and that the mc a younger kid couldn’t and wouldn’t pissed my mc off into action…well in my minds eye anyway. sorry for jumping back and forth on the subjects but two more things on the weapons as I haven’t seen it said yet how about a war hatchet tho I’m all for unarmed fighting too nothing says pawned like getting destroyed by someone only using their strength and hands.last thing with being both stoic and angry I see that as someone who while full of anger isn’t controlled by it but don’t just turn the other cheek either…if that makes any sense but moving on I’m enjoying your work and hope you continue with your powerful scene writing

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Well to be honest I haven’t really done much in the way of extensive planning when it comes to combat yet. At this point all I’ve really done is roughly map it out for myself and do some light research into combat and weaponry so I can begin to get an idea for how to make it work in my world and still maintain at least a semblance of logic and realism. (sorry for taking so long to reply, btw)

It’s evolved somewhat and probably will again, but for now my basic idea doesn’t really focus so much on throwing a bunch of cool weapon ideas at you and running with it from there. Rather, I want to look at different fighting styles (projectile ranged, long-range, mid range and short range) and the weapon which would best fit each style, be it for either practical or thematic reasons.

However we aren’t yet at a point in the game where combat has much in the way of import or focus, aside from the basics of training. But judging from my writing speed, even that is a ways off.


Which brings me to my second, more general point. I don’t think I’ll be able to make my monthly update deadline (at least as far as September is concerned). Everything I’ve been working on up until now has been about slightly polishing the earlier section (though I still have barely blinked at the many grammatical faux pas), adding more choices and text where I felt it was lacking and implementing the fifth Tempestuous trait throughout. I’ve also been working on finally finishing up the Call (feels like I’ve been saying that forever) and while I’m nearing the end of the Seaborn section, I still have two others that I haven’t even begun with. Aside from that I’d still need finish up all the conversation options with Bella, in the cave, all of which would only bring every potential path level with a Chapter 2 ending, I haven’t even thought about any actual Chapter 3 writing yet.

Anyway, what all that means is that while there is new content, it really isn’t anything that’ll move the story along a great deal and is all character based or about adding greater context, and that just doesn’t feel like a proper update to me.

If I’m able to fly through everything to do in Chapter 2 within the next two weeks, I may be able to post at least up until the opening section to Chapter 3 by mid September, but even that wouldn’t be all that much.

I’m realising just how incremental progress is as the dialogue options and my insistence to make them all at least a little different requires me to move laterally before moving forward. This means that even though I’m adding a decent chunk to the overall word count, most of those words are only seen on repeat playthroughs when making different choices.

So with that in mind, I’m thinking of forgoing my monthly update plan in lieu of updating only when I have something of significance, for a single playthrough, to show.

My mind isn’t set though, especially as so much of the feedback has been very helpful, so I’m open to any opinions, thoughts or preferences on this.

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thank you for the reply and as the saying goes slow and steady wins the race so no worries about missing a deadline especially one thats self imposed

I’d say keep the self imposed deadlines and work on finishing what you’ve already got for that deadline, (in my personal opinion) what matters is that something that wasn’t there before was created and accomplished within that deadline, regardless of any way you look at it, that’s still moving forward. (Again in my personal experience) it’s always more effective to make things into continuous habits and routines.

To sum up: Any progress is progress nonetheless and you should feel no qualms about pushing out a fully (laterally, in this case) finished section within your deadlines rather than (to quote) “updating only when I have something of significance, for a single playthrough, to show” whenever that time is. Going back and having to edit/polish previous writing to include extra additions to said writing and figuring out possible ramifications in later writing for said additions is faaaar slower and more tedious than simply writing ahead with all of those things already in mind, so I wouldn’t worry overmuch about how you’d fare with deadlines in further chapters :wink:.

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Still disappointed this is gender locked. I love the premise of it, but the gender lock is an immediate off put and kills the vibe of the story.

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That’s a little harsh, as long as the story is well written and interesting to me I can live with the gender lock.
Besides, according to the author this project is already ballooning laterally, and I for one like to see this project actually finished.
On that note, is it my imagination, or do stories that are gender-locked to a male protagonist draw much more ire for this than the reverse, on this forum?

Add my vote for keeping up with the monthly releases, if at all possible. Even if I had hoped to have at least the post blackout conversation where I can confront my “companions” about wtf happened, I realize that it’s important to finish up the loose threads in the previous chapter first.
@Left4Bed can we (attempt to) flirt with Ehren in one of the branches you’re writing now for the calling?

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It’s not your imagination I noticed it too.

I think it has something to do with the fact that most mainstream games lock you into “badass white male”.
So some may get annoyed to see a COG game (which is well known for diversity) to be locked as male.
I might be wrong myself though.

For, one all the games that are gender-locked will, if finished and released, appear under the separate Hosted games label, making them technically speaking just games using the COG scripts and not COG labelled games, as such.

As for “badass white male”, While I do prefer to be able to play a male protagonist, I actually prefer that protagonist to be gay and either mixed or fantasy race (I like (dark)elves) if at all possible. I’d also prefer him to be intellectually gifted and cute rather than a meat-head with muscles that would put the Governator to shame.
It’s rather obvious that we cannot get exactly what we want all the time and if a story manages to captivate me I can overcome most slight disappointments with regard to protagonist customization.

Yea but I guess for some its too.
“Breaking” for them.

I personally can get into almost any different character so I myself don’t understand the problem perfectly well.

I know about that I just meant games that come out tend to allow gender customization.

I personally am not arguing for the idea that all games should be completely customizable.
I am just trying to understand it.

I prefer monthly updates, but is the author’s decision anyway. I can’t wait for new kills! Killing Ehren will be rather satisfying for me.

I’m really sorry you feel this way. It was a decision I’d agonized over since I don’t believe in superficial variables. If I was going to allow a gender choice, I’d feel compelled to create branches that were unique to the specific gender, as opposed to allowing it to be a cosmetic choice that only serves to reinforce immersion. Unfortunately, doing this would really over complicate the story and tie my hands in regard to hitting certain plot points.

I know I could just make it a choice that doesn’t require all this extra work or complex maintenance, but that’s not how I like to write or tell stories, and it wouldn’t be the kind of game that I want to make. But I do understand and respect your frustration.

I do have plans for that, yes, specifically when you choose to the option to find a minstrel. Unfortunately I haven’t started writing that section yet.


So I’ve decided to stick with the monthly update cycle, piecemeal though it may be. I’ll be posting sometime towards the end of the week.

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I was gonna ask why have it gender locked why not just make it so your character is called like “you” “them” “they” rather than a gender like “him” “he” (well you probably won’t change it because you’ve wrote lots of the story, I was just suggesting)

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