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@Avery_Moore congrats on finishing the game! I’m glad I got to help beta test it! Good luck in the contest I know you will do well :+1:

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I really loved your work 10/10 !
And the ending … Wow​:sob::sob::sob:

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what about the beta testers, do we get special mention when released.

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Lol Brittish English is yje original form of English XD

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that is unfortunate, but i wish you well in the scoring. Congrats on completing your game.

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No, Daffy is Loony Tunes. Huey, Duey and Louie are Disney ducks :duck: :yum:

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i love the original ducktales.

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Well, that wouldn’t really be fair, since some of the submissions don’t even have a WIP thread. They could be a million times better, and you wouldn’t even know it. :yum:

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thats why VHS Beat betamax better Advertising and PR campaining…
No im not that old

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Not long ago, someone was questioning whether Interactive Fiction can be elevated into Academic Literacy … well, i think “The Lawless Ones” has proven Interactive Fiction certainly can do it :slight_smile:

There are few society related topics that deserve some academic debate:

  1. the backstory on how Honey chose to become “woman of the world”, due to her kind personality of not willing to harm others via assassination , stealing or robbing … so choosing her choice of profession seems the logical way , as in the romance story MC also assured her that Honey’s profession isn’t less honourable than the rest of them… . by contrast , Viper’s approach on not wanting others to take advantage on her is to be a ruthless and merciless assassin , in which others will think twice before trying to have bad intention on her… so it is kind of sad ladies of the lower society took such radical but different approaches on their survival, it makes us wonder what people willing to do just to stay alive …not because they like it

  2. the ending between lawful good and chaotic good, it will be made a fine academic debate on which path is better in order to change the way of society … is the Lawful Good way of Reformation within the government better ? (although it comes with sacrifice of betrayal towards those who once follow you?) or is it better to start a rebellion? ( although it mostly comes with a bloody violence outcome such as the French Revolution)…in both cases, innocent lives will be in jeopardy, whether they are upper or lower classes… i still don’t think the French King and the Russian Czar’s family deserve the fate the receive in those respective revolution, that’s why my personal preference is still peaceful Reformation within the ruling government if it is possible

Honestly speaking , i don’t think even Shakespeare’s poet can make me think that much… but to be fair , i don’t really understand Shakespeare’s poet except for Macbeth ( thanks to Tin Star and Maria Agustina’s explanation) …Lol :smile:

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When I submitted the game, I included a list of all the beta-testers in the “Additional Notes” section. There’s a total of 53 people all together. :grin: (I should say though, that this list only includes beta-testers who provided me with feedback on the game, such as spelling, grammar, coding and continuity errors.)

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aw…

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Oh wow… That’s a hell of a compliment right there. You’re going to make me blush! :blush:

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… Well to be fair, that’s kind of what beta-testers are for. :yum:

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k (f!@#ing 20 character requirement)

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As to your second point, I rather obviously hold the opposite view on the comparative merits of those two endings.

Spoilers

Of course to start with I never was much of an Hobbesian.
That being said, my mc believes, much as I do that, as the translation of the Internationale says: No saviour from on high delivers, no faith have we in prince or peer.
In the world of Villains (the Lawless) and from the pov of my mc both of these are unquestioningly true. My mc has absolutely no faith in the Monarch and the existing government that their desire to improve the lot of the people in the lower city is anything but a cynical ploy. Why? Because the Monarch and his nobles have had all the time in the world to start showing a modicum of concern, yet they did not, only when their own government starts to be threatened by a rival organisation with arguably more popular legitimacy then the government do they sit up and take notice. Even then, apart from the one overture to the mc they do precious little, they could have deployed their own initiatives to improve the lot of the lower city even without the mc on their side and the guild disbanded. Yet they never do, if the mc refuses to disband the guild they are only ever shown to act with ever increasing repression and it is that very repression that keeps stoking the fires of revolution and eroding their own legitimacy.
Therefore in the chaotic good ending they bring the revolution with all its ills and excesses, but also all of its promise, of choice of genuine freedom of hope for a better tomorrow upon themselves.

On the other hand in the lawful good ending, the mc gets turned into the Monarch’s lapdog who has to pretend to be that “saviour from on high”. However compared to the potential of the revolution the knighted mc is hamstrung and the very act of betrayal they are required to commit will likely mean a definite erosion of their goodwill and legitimacy amongst the people they’re ostensibly set-up and supposed to “help”.
What they actually seem to be able to deliver, a few guardrails in factories, the de-jure abolition of child-labour and schooling for most children, is decidedly lackluster compared to what the guild had seemingly already managed to achieve before the mc betrays it. Particularly since i doubt the “schools” in the Lawful good ending are in any way properly funded, except for maybe one or two model ones for propaganda purposes.

That said, by making us into a martyr the Monarch probably does the mc’s legacy a great service by making them a martyr, since they will not be around to partly own any mistakes the revolution does make and atrocities they commit, they mc gets to be this world’s revolutionary idiol: the untainted architect and catalyst of it, instead of a real leader who inevitably has to get their hands dirty.

On a more personal level I do wonder since both Hotshot and the kid seem to possess no small measure of leadership ability what their roles in the revolution and its aftermath might be?

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Hmmm… again i fully respect and agree with your point of view :slight_smile:

That being said, i don’t really agree that without my MC to personally leading the revolution of change … the revolution can be an automatic success , even if the revolution is lead by men or women with great ability … take example, i believe Breden, Suzane/Simon, Elery , Hotshot, MC’s child in Lawless one and Honey are all leaders that can lead a revolution of their own, but it is not necessary that their visions as well as their way of execution has the same effect or a confirm success in a revolution …
i will take example from “Lawless One” first it had been written that some of my guild members consist of some of the more horrific criminals of all times… and their crimes are written there as well, so in a revolution do they have right to “misbehave” and apply “mis-behaviour” towards opposite gender of the opposite faction? in many revolution or war there had been documentations on how these “revolutionist” abuse their right (by using the name of their leader) and cause harm to ladies and even children of the opposite faction… even with our MC personally leading the revolt, it will be a difficult task to keep an eye on the more notorious criminals within his/her rank… so imagine with the revolution leads by another person who enforce it with our name, these notorious criminals could misuse and mis-interpret our cause for their own satisfaction , let say if Hotshot, our child and Honey tries to enforce the true nature of the revolution, these criminals could have claim these are not the MC’s true meaning …and re-interpret it with their own visions , without MC being alive , there is no proof that what is wrong and right for the MC’s revolution… revolutionist can claim tolerance towards their action by pretending they are enforcing the will of their late leader, and these always cause problem among the true revolutionist… i meant of course we can trust Hotshot and other loyal guild-mates but splinter cells always emerge from every revolution :slight_smile: Hence in this case, i think without MC personally involve in a revolution, things will get violence and more innocence lives will suffer… well lives of the nobles are still lives, we can’t simply said they don’t deserve our mercy just because they are nobles right? :slight_smile:

and the next example, perhaps i can take from the Chinese Empire history of Ming… the last Ming Emperor is not necessary a bad emperor , he was mislead by many minister and he was indecisive, the rebel leader General Li defeated the Ming Emperor with sweet promises, but he himself had been proven as an un-abled leader where his dynasty “The Shun” only last one week before being defeat by the Qing… with his defeat , the Qing employ a bloody massacre on several provinces when the took over… hence won’t it be better that if the late Ming Emperor had someone capable of helping him reform the dynasty ? At least more innocent lives can be spare :slight_smile:

and well…in the case of Rasputin, with all his charisma and “talents” (magic and divinity?) he should had help reform the Russian Empire instead of ruin them… if our main character was there instead of Rasputin, the Russian Empire and the royal family could had been spare the sad tragedy … our Main character can slowly persuade the Czar to give up his power and turn Russian into something like the current United Kingdom ( parliament with the Royal family as the symbol) :smile:

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Spoilers

I wasn’t trying to give the impression that the revolution would be an automatic success, just that the people are much more likely to have a real choice and a greater chance at true freedom and self-determination than without it.
Again from what I take away from it the Monarch wants to preserve as much as the current status-quo as possible, only agreeing to reforms that cost little, such as the guardrails or are mostly token and then only if the mc agrees to betray their own people and serve as a tool. There is no indication that without the mc agreeing the government even so much as genuinely considers coming up with their own legislation and taking action to improve the lot of the common people in the lower city.

Yes, all revolutions tend to spawn some nastiness in their wake, that would be practically guaranteed even with the mc alive and present, but alive the mc is a former crime-lord of flesh and blood with all their flaws. Ironically they may have more authority, or at least their name and vision might, as a martyr then they ever would have when alive. At least in the case of the chaotic good mc the “man who spurred them on” will not get to “sit in judgement of all wrong” and that is at the very least for the most part a healthy thing.

It also isn’t like the Monarch was or is prepared to clean up his own government’s act. Some of those guys Hotshot potentially gets executed over “murdering” were most likely some of the most vile and corrupt scum of Monarch’s guard, the government’s own assassins and thugs. Just because they wear/wore the uniform doesn’t mean they should get a free pass.
That is why the Lawful-Good route’s offer comes too little too late and smacks of government condescension and insincerity. If they were in fact sincere they would have treated it more like peace talks with either a genuine revolutionary group or even a rival government at that point. Which would have meant real compromise, truth and reconciliation (committees) and basically the whole shebang, where not only the guild cleans house (and dissolves) but the government would have done so too.
That this never happens, not initially and not once during those five years of increasing repression that sees the actual authority of the government and likely the state of the nation decline with each one seems to me to be indicative that the Monarch’s government only ever acts out of self-preservation instinct in an increasingly desperate and repressive attempt to maintain the status-quo at all costs.

What they do by making the mc is martyr is killing the only leader on the other side who might have been willing and able to negotiate a mostly bloodless end to all of it, just not on the rather bad terms of their initial offer. Which is a dose of reality, cause unless it is an unconditional surrender (which is what the knighthood most closely equates to) the first round proposals of peace negotiations are almost never the ones that get accepted, there’s always elements of haggling and compromise of the sort the Monarch’s government seems utterly unwilling to even contemplate with their “take it or leave it” initial offer.
So by the time of the mc’s execution on the chaotic-good path they have crossed the point of no return and well-made their bed, with no other choice but to lie in it by then.

Again in the lawful good ending the mc gets treated as little more then a messenger boy from the monarch’s government to the lower city with very limited, if any at all, powers to engage in more than symbolic or token reforms.
The lawful-good mc does (seemingly) not have the standing and (moral) authority with either the people, where their legitimacy and trust gets badly eroded due to the betrayal, nor with the nobility where they are on the very lowest rung, to achieve any truly great reforms, let alone move to a constitutional monarchy.

While the end results of the revolution will be far from perfect they will at least have the potential to be better than the lawful good ending and even should they not be, my mc will have given the people, at least for a while the things he never had as a former slave, freedom and choice.
Those things, like all good things, can be misused terribly so even, but is that really worse than the condescension and frankly utter Dickensian misery of the status-quo?

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Yeah…i agree that we could had negotiate more with the Monarch to gain a more favourable outcome, and hotshot’s demise was unexpected :pensive:

But when i read the epilogue of the Lawful-Good ending, it seems to indicate that my MC had high respectability among the lower rank people, where it also indicate that it might slowly influencing a reformation to other part of the Monarchy as well … and it seems my MC does have some influence over the Monarch , well as @Avery_Moore mentioned…this path allows the MC to work closely with the Monarch for a better future :slight_smile: , although it will be difficult … but since my main character is skillful in silver tongue , and with the help of either Honey or Viper …we might have a better chance to reform the monarchy :wink:

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That’s a matter of personal opinion… a wrong opinion, but a personal opinion nonetheless. :stuck_out_tongue:

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