Weekly update, and Chapter 1 has been approved. Which means we move on to Chapter 2.
This is a fairly big change. Chapter 1 is a sort of ‘welcome to being a vampire!’ chapter where you learn the basics of existing. Chapter 2 uproots the action from New York to Europe (Paris and then Baveria). There’s a lot of potential for romance here, and of course surprise Napoleon.
We get to see some historical impacts of your choices in C1, and meet the final RO (or ROs, depending on whether you miss one in C2).
There is also a cameo from a famous author, and a few twists and turns.
That’s some wonderful news to come back to. I hope you get good feedback that helps with development and also some nice comments. I hope testing it goes well.
Please remember, this is a work in progress: the chapter is likely to swell and grow (in fact, there is already a load of cut material on my home PC, but I’m on a laptop in Kyrgyzstan at the moment…). However, right now I am mainly working on chapter 2. Feedback, comments, thoughts are all appreciated. Hype is especially adored.
Here are some things that would be especially helpful:
What did you make of the main ROs you met (Lazare, Fred, Wolfram, Virginia)?
Is the story engaging, fun? Do you have enough to get involved in?
Do you have enough to immerse yourself in that age?
What are your favorite bits, what doesn’t work so well?
Does there need to be more space between being Runciman and meeting Lazare?
Yeah, there’s more development of that in Chapter 2.
The first three chapters are really adding layers of complexity so that when you finish you have your vampire. The idea is:
C1: gets you into being a vampire!
C2: some personal consequences emerge! Plus RO time.
C3: adds the final mechanic that puts you hurtling toward the situation in the prologue. More RO time, so that you’ve spent enough time with 4/5 potential ROs that you could be in a relationship at that point. Also opportunity to change gender.
So basically you should have a developed character by the end of C3, including backstory, plus relationships with all five ROs and several other figures.
I would love the option to choose my title – getting called ‘Ms’ in the 18th century took me out of the experience a little, and I’d prefer if I could choose to be addressed as ‘Miss’ or ‘Mrs’ if I so desire.
That’s an easy fix. You do have the opportunity to change your title but I can settle that one quickly tomorrow.
I just deployed a hotfix so that going to an opium den and having dreams of your future doesn’t crash into a sex scene with a male prostitute, so rather than tinker constantly I’ll deploy that in a bit.
Okay, but wouldn’t that kind of be how opium happens? Or after or while opium is happening…
Also, I may have overdeveloped my own headcannon backstory. I thought we’d be telling our origin, so I picked Belgium as an origin and even named the otter Turpin.
I’ve just played through the demo for the first time and I am so excited to see where it goes. I liked Vampire’s Kiss but I also wanted more, so I’m VERY excited to see you tackle a larger story. It’ll be exciting to see a longer Heart’s Choice story as well, as I feel they tend to be on the shorter side (nothing wrong with that but I am more compelled by spice if there’s other things happening in the plot.)
My personal favourite RO is definitely Fred! I am so excited to get to know them. I did see that you were planning to allow us to shape their gender but I do hope you will also leave in choices where we leave it up to them. I find every major character (that we have met so far) to be very fascinating. I can definitely see myself replaying multiple times to get to know literally everyone. I think it can be a difficult feat to make everyone seem so interesting and you have achieved that for me.
I’m also very pleased to see one of your inspirations is TYOV. I think it’s a great idea to play with the mutability of memory. I also think it’s challenging to work into a CYOA, haha. Perhaps working it into choices, so players are aware or potentially have some control over what their vampires remember.
I’ll answer the questions you posed that I haven’t already answered.
Is the story engaging, fun? Do you have enough to get involved in?
I’m definitely engaged and having fun. I think there’s enough for me to get involved in, in chapter 1, but I’m unsure. It might be easier for me to answer that part whenever chapter 2 releases. I am so into what you’ve written so far that I could spend many hours in the story you’re crafting.
Do you have enough to immerse yourself in that age?
I think so, but I’m not a huge history buff. I definitely find historical settings fun, though. It’s hard to say either way as Chapter 1 feels very character focused, which makes sense as it is the introduction.
What are your favorite bits, what doesn’t work so well?
Everything about Fred! Haha. I liked getting to know Lazare as well. Probably my favourite isolated event is the duel with Lazare. I love love love duels, especially getting to go at one with a sword. Selfishly, I would love a more detailed duel scene, but I also understand if that kind of thing isn’t your jam.
I also think the mirror scene (was it a dream sequence…?) where I believe you can think about your PC’s transition is cool, but it is seemingly binary? As a NB player, who ended up in that scene, I felt that the options were lacking. It’s possible I misinterpreted things, but this was one of those scenes where my choice didn’t reflect in the text afterwards so I’m a bit unsure on this point.
As for a more general ‘what doesn’t work so well’, I’m not sure how much of these issues are just that the content is unfinished or if the coding still has kinks to work out. I ran into some issues with stat adjustment code showing up in the text (which also means it did not change the stat) and improper wording with they/them pronouns selected. Sometimes a choice I’ve picked is not accounted for and the text behaves as if I’ve chosen the opposite. Let me know if you want me to be more specific.
Does there need to be more space between being Runciman and meeting Lazare?
I’ll assume this means seeing Runciman. I don’t think there’s a need for more space, I think its a bit funny that Lazare is just there. Right away. Throwing a glove in my PC’s face. Rather than that, I think perhaps the passage of time is a little unclear or maybe how we made it to the main floor of the tavern. That might be intentional, though.
Finally, and this is just wishful thinking so feel free to ignore this bit, but I also find Eoin so fascinating. I don’t know what you have planned for him, so again, feel free to ignore me but… It would be so cool to have some focus on the PC’s dynamic with him too, especially as the PC’s creator/master/sire. If he were an RO… It’s fun to think about. I’d love to be able to shape whether we are on friendly or antagonistic terms with him. Again, every major character so far is so fascinating… I’m spoiled for choices here!
This is really helpful! And please DM me any specific examples of where there’s a pronoun disagreement or you end up doing the opposite of intended! Always eager to fix those issues. Same with stats showing. This is the subbing/beta process part of the work - ironing all of that out.
The duel scene is a little short, and it’s something I’m extending for the finished draft. The mirror scene I’m a little worried about; NB players should immediately have an option as to whether they wish to be seen as a man or woman; however, if you’d rather the sculpt does not reflect a binary choice and there’s a third option available, let me know in the DM what you want to see. It’s easy to fix!
When you’re turned by Redfern, he uses the phrase “Suck deep on my dark promise." I really think it would be better as “Drink deep of my dark promise”. It’s more alliterative and sounds less like a dick joke.
When you’re asked if you have a kid, I think “None that I know of”or the like could be a good answer if you’re not going to be the childbearing person in a relationship. Does my wandering soldier of fortune have a child? He sleeps around enough, so maybe he does have one somewhere? How would he know for sure?
Happy to change the dialogue with Eoin to something else, but I’m not going to add the option for not knowing if you have kids.
The reason is that this is very difficult to apply. It doesn’t work for female protagonists (you’d think they would know) and raises issues of body that might be uncomfortable for NB players. That wild make it only an option for men, so I’d have to reconstruct the entire dialogue tree to have it split off for gender groups. And I don’t think the payoff is worth the complexity that would add to a single beat - particularly as ‘I don’t know if I have kids’ isn’t something that would have a later impact on the narrative.
I think including it as an option would also raise the expectation in players’ minds of a surprise child/descendant showing up later, leading to disappointment when they didn’t.
I haven’t played the first chapter yet, but I strongly co-sign this. I’m not sure how it’s planned to be handled, but I would also be pretty miffed, to say the least, if I was Fred and my love interest wanted me to stay as a single shape/presentation.
Pick an animal as your first feed when you go out hunting. Although I didn’t go by myself, I went with Lazarre. It might play out differently if you go alone.
