Pretty sure I found a bug. If you check the relationships and reputations screen, it shows the relationship percentage for some characters but not their names. This only happens for some characters though, specifically Blythe and Pri.
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Holy cats, thatâs great! I love the pouting expression, lol. Do you have a Tumblr blog I could re-blog this from and/or would you be all right with me posting it to my blog?
Youâll meet Blythe regardless if you side with the traditionalists. As for a romance with a more radical-leaning MC1⊠I donât think so. It would be entirely one-sided, so I might make it an option for the player to have feelings for him, but they would never be reciprocated.
Do you happen to remember when in the story this was and which choices you made leading up to it?
EDIT: I fixed this and it will go into effect with the next update. I forgot to set the variable âmc1_met_blytheâ to âtrueâ after you meet him, lol.
I think Iâm just going to keep the naming situation as it is currently. âBrought into House Xyzâ just means that MC1 was acknowledged as being part of the family, not that their father named them then and there. I think there was just some confusion over me using some antiquated terminology.
Donât have a tumblr but you could go ahead and post it there. I donât mind
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Can I ask for clarification of what all the different non-human races are, and what makes them not human?
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This is the first time ArthurVandelay has posted â letâs welcome them to our community!
First of all, welcome! (:
There are two non-human peoples that live in the Colonies. They just call themselves âpeopleâ, and humanity would never use their self-referential terms, anyway, so Iâve just been saying âseal-folkâ and âdeer-folkâ on this thread and in lore posts and such. MC1 meets someone from each group during their introduction: Boaz and Harper.
Description of Boaz
âBoaz, your grandfatherâs oldest servant, flicks his right ear impatiently. Once, during holiday in the capital, you caught sight of a big bull with shaggy, tan hair. Mr. Boaz somewhat reminds you of that bull, with his prominent brow and nose bridge, broad tip of his nose, and sideways-protruding, bovine-type ears. He has horns, as well⊠only they are not quite like bullâs horns⊠they branch before they curl upward, and he periodically sheds them (youâve never seen a cowâs horns do that!). Below his shoulders, Mr. Boazâs light tan fur ends, and you think that his midsection looks rather like a manâs. His legs, though, remind you of a goatâs hindquarters â sort of looking like he is walking on his tippy-toes and the majority of his leg is one big, long, furry foot.â
Description of Harper
âMs. Harper is a little younger than your father, and that is where your frame of reference ends. She is shorter than a human, only a bit taller than you, but proportionally has long limbs. Harperâs head reminds you of a dogâs, except her eyes are bigger and her ears are very tiny â like little flaps against her skull. Her figure is shapely, with a flexible spine that assists her as she swims like her long, webbed fingers and toes. All over her body, she has several layers of grey fur speckled with dark rosettes that insulates her from the deep, cold water.â
There is an intentional deficit of information about them. The religious and governmental authorities propagate lies about their savagery and inferiority. Class differences between people in the Colonies are so drastic that the majority of peasant farmers wouldnât care, regardless, and the elite classes have an interest in perpetuating the stories that non-humans âdeserveâ subjugation to keep them enslaved or maybe just to give themselves a plausible moral excuse for their deeds.
The Sovereignty came in, like, a century or so ago and began their genocidal colonization efforts. Those forced south fleeing war, enslavement, and disease settled among the sparser populations beyond the mountains and pushed their already-scarce resources to the limit. No one, as you can imagine, is particularly thrilled to venture north and be immediately killed and/or enslaved, further preventing any real knowledge about them from spreading.
We will learn more about them during the other two possible MC2 introductions, which I will work on after finishing the exile one.
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Thatâs pretty much what I was hoping to be able to aim for as a second MCâs goal (with all the problematic trappings that come with it). As I mentioned before, collaboration among locals or oppressed groups with imperialist/colonialist powers was not an uncommon phenomenon throughout history, for a variety of complex reasons.
From La Malinche to Eulalie de MandĂ©ville, to arguably Cornelia Sorabji or Susan La Flesche Picotte â I believe the nuanced situations that would lead someone to make those choices is a fascinating story to tell.
With its consequences, of course.
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Itâs not what I would choose, but the option will be there and itâs not up to me to decide how the playerâs story is going to go!
I think so, too!
Yes, like I said previously, there is pretty much no way that that particular choice/ending is going to go well for MC2, their people, and basically everyone else.
Thank you. The descriptions of them left me a bit confused and I felt like I would forget their features the more I read, but I suppose our main character has had no proper introduction to who they really are, and where they come from. I could get a sense of (based off my choices) MC1âs oblivious and privileged yet good-hearted and yet racially biased sympathy. I liked Mr Boazâs blunt rebuttal that he and the other deer-person would get along just because they are the same race. I can see why you left things vague, and it makes sense as a focal point of your story revolves around these peoples that MC2 is our means to actually reveal that information.
In my case, I like when authors include basic reference or glossary terms for the readers sake. I like the mystery your library adds with missing excerpts and biased sourcing. Although, maybe a base description of all of the characters besides their stats would help keep my brain less jumbled. Or perhaps you have thought about adding more books to the library as the character learns or acquires things? Itâs why I ask because I wondered if there were more races, or if I overlooked something. Iâm waiting anxiously to see how you build the backgrounds of MC2 now and when their and MC1âs paths will cross.
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Yes â I want to get across that there are other types of racism than literal âpitchforks and torches angry mobâ.
How do you mean? Like a physical description, or something else?
Thereâs a trace of this already in the code if you snoop â I kept it in but didnât âactivateâ it just so I wouldnât forget to write the other ones, lol. MC1 will have the option of publishing their experiences in the Uncharted Territories using a few tones (neutral/âscientificâ, sympathetic, or full hatred âthis is how weâre going to exterminate these peopleâ type deal). I think the âneutralâ tone one is the only one in the stats code at the moment, but Iâve debated adding other things to the library as/if the player encounters them. For example, there are definitely going to be culture-exclusive âbooksâ that only unlock if MC2 is of a specific people.
Would people like it if I also added things like the Apocryphal literature you can find in the Fellowship Academy or the bedtime stories of exile MC2?
Iâve been absolutely obsessed with this game lately. Unlike a few other commenters, I donât mind different accents, or pecularities in how different people speak. In fact, I quite like it. It colours the characterâs personalities better than if youâd kept their speech plain in the text, and then just described the different the ways they speak.
While most games in here that allow non-cishet playthrough (which to be fair, is most of them) those differences are often glances over in the rest of the narative. Which isnât bad. Sometimes it can be good to play a game that acknowledges your identity while making it into a non-issue in the setting. I quite like playing those games as well, and we should absolutely have such games, however sometimes I do like games like these that while they let you be lgbt+, they also acknowledge the harsh relaties that often come with it irl, and I think we need more games on this website that do that because so far games like these (in many aspects, not only what Iâve just described, also less stat obsessed stuff, for example) are far and few between.
I also like that even if MC1 is a radical, the dialogue options when talking to Boaz about the other person âlike himâ doesnât change. It acknowledges that even if you yourself lean a certain direction politically or are marginilized yourself, that doesnât mean you canât be ignorant of other peopleâs marginilization.
That aside, Iâve found a slight mistake in the code. When youâre playing as a nonbinary character, any nonbinary character, choice of pronouns or other things doesnât seem to affect this, when you get to the point in the story when your character is supposed to be 13 years old, the age on the stats panel still says youâre 10.
Anyway, as a final note I wanted to mention that after many playthroughs, my favourite character (MC1) to play in this game so far is Claudine Asohill, a nonbinary person who uses he/him pronouns, is a radical, kind and worldly, and may have a slight crush on Laz. As for MC2, Iâm personally most interested in playing a deer-person atm.
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This is the first time DevonTabris has posted â letâs welcome them to our community!
First of all, welcome to the forums! (:
Iâm glad youâre enjoying it!
Iâve decided to keep accents recognizable in the text, but âtone them downâ somewhat going forward. People might have noticed that in the recent update, even, but I thought this was a nice compromise.
While Iâm not sure it will win me any popularity contests with the wider internet, Iâve never wanted to shy away from reality in my writing. I wouldnât make this setting, even though it is technically âfantasyâ, so fantastical that people just donât acknowledge marginalized identities in-universe, for example.
Yes, there are a few interactions like this. Off the top of my head, MC1 can be very religious/nationalistic/just plain hateful towards âdeviantsâ around Laz and Belvidere while being a âdeviantâ themselves, and neither of them really understand why you would react that way. Youâll also be able to side with the traditionalists regardless of gender, ethnicity, or sexuality, and there will most definitely be more interactions like those along that route.
How do you mean? For example, are we talking grammatically (i.e. improper syntax) or otherwise?
I actually think I just caught this a few days ago, lol. Iâve fixed it and it will be visible when the new update reaches the public (or one week earlier if you happen to be my single Patreon supporter, haha!).
I love hearing about original character(s)! As one can imagine, I test the game myself A LOT, so I have a few go-to templates for MC1. My requisite traditionalist/cruel/isolationist/everyone-hates-me character is Abner Set IIII, a cis man who is holding out for his father to play matchmaker because âitâs the proper thing to doâ. My radical/kind/worldly/people-like-me character is Dulcie Fix, a trans woman who is very outspoken and falling hard for Laz.
Iâll do that introduction after Iâm done with the exile one, then! (:
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I meant that when your character is 13, but only if youâre playing a nonbinary character, it still says youâre 10. And that other choices you make (like pronouns, because I tested this specifically) while playing said nonbinary character donât affect that the age is being displayed incorrectly. It was a bit of a run-on sentence. Iâll try to be more concise in the future for clarity. But good to know itâs been fixed.
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Ah, all right â yes, Iâve fixed this.
Itâs fine, I understood! (:
I wanted to mention that there is a new update available for members of my Patreon (all one of you, lol)! It will be accessible by the general public via this forum thread one week from today. Iâve finished the exile MC2 introduction and will be working on the deer people MC2 introduction next.
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Sorry for the Late Reply. Yes a brief physical description including their personality would be helpful I think, especially considering how much additional information the reader has to carry in the beginning.
Since MC1 carries a journal for notes on the expedition, at-least in my play-through, I do not know if this always occurs or not, it might be fun to write the descriptions in-character, similar to the library? A journal of all the details our MC1 picks up on their fellow companions and the Individuals they meet the more they learn about them?
Or really a simple section with a character guide is enough. Whatever is better for your story. In the end, this doesnât detract from the experience and Iâm able to enjoy it fine, but I always enjoy novels with large world building more easily with some small guide so I can quickly check something that my character should know, but I may have blanked on.
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Thereâs a new update up! In this update, Iâve:
- Completed the exile MC2âs introduction.
- Fixed assorted coding/grammar mistakes.
- Added the chapter header for Introduction 2C.
- Finally added the map to the library.
Follow my Tumblr blog or join my Patreon page to see additional lore, what-if scenarios, and early updates! You can also always feel free to ask/tell me anything on this thread! (:
Hmmm⊠I think I might go back and add this later. Itâs something that is usually suggested to me during beta testing, but thereâs not really any reason not to add it in earlier.
I think a combination of both would work best â something written in-universe but not by your character (their personality is so variable that I think I would have a hard time writing it).
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Yeah an update!
I canât wait for my two super sweet MCs to meet!
I do have to report that they seem to be several options that are grayed out even if you meet the requirements.
So far I noticed two.
When you speak to your companions with MC1 and with the brother of MC2 when you go to the city.
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I love the details of bigotry you get when you play as trans. Itâd be great if, in the party scene where Lazaro is worried about how youâll be seen because youâre two men sitting outside together, you get to say something like âThey donât see me as a man anywayâ if youâre trans.
Also, I think there are some Weary/Wary typos. Where weary is used in place of wary.
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idk
the way this is phrased is just sending me rn
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