Hello to the wonderful community of Failbetter Games! In the past, I’ve often been more of a lurker than a poster, but I do hope to take advantage of the friendliness and intelligence that this forum does have to offer.
As it approaches the gift-giving season, my one of my usual MOs is to give out games tailored to the tastes of close friends or family. In this instance, it is Void Bastion. In this game, you take on the role of an orphaned noble child. As the child grows, you try to discover the reason for why the Emperor called for the destruction of your home, and learn to deal with the moral struggle of whether the best course is revenge or forgiveness.
If anyone would like to take the time to play a few storylets, it would be appreciated. To provide any feedback would be appreciated even further. If you’d like to receive appreciation in the furthest matter possible (perhaps to reach some appreciation nirvana state), there are a few details in particular I’d like to have noted:
1- Any grammar/spelling issues that I may have overlooked.
2 - Any writing tips, if you feel this does not meet the usual quality found in StoryNexus games (I am my worst judge, but not the best critic, I’d like to know exactly where work is needed).
3 - Any notes on the world in particular. I left it generic as a writing decision in the beginning. Things such as the name of the empire where the child lives or the exact status of the child’s family in the rank of nobility. The reason for this had been to allow the reader to integrate how he/she feels this world should look like and how it is ruled (which is a preference of the person who this game is made for). However, as I playtest this game myself, I’m beginning to wonder if this would be a mistake for others.
Feedback or no, I do want to again give my appreciation to anyone who has taken the time to play this game, and to also extend that to the developers of StoryNexus, for whom this would not be possible.
Well hello! I think perhaps this is the politest message I’ve ever seen :]
1/2 - On the very first card, part of it reads “The adults were already up. Or maybe they didn’t even sleep.” I think this reads a bit awkwardly, strictly, sentences shouldn’t begin with ‘or’ or ‘and’. I think simply removing the ‘or’ would remedy this, though you might also replace the full stop with a semi colon, but it’s a personal stylistic choice that you can disregard utterly :]
On the Nightmares of Attack card, the result is titled An Explination - misspelling of explanation.
On the Rest for the Dead card result, “…the rest of you manage to get all of the bodies together…” the second ‘of’ is unnecessary. Also “You cannot even afford a tombstone for them now, only a large, flat rock with their names carved into it by a now dull knife. You swear you will preserve their memory better than this.” The word ‘their’ is missing from the last sentence, and the word ‘now’ is used twice in the first, which is a little jarring, maybe simply “…their names carved into it with a dull knife”, though if you want to place subtle emphasis on the point that it was once sharp, and by proxy that this world was once bright and prosperous, do add something to that effect!
3 - I’m not sure if I missed something somewhere in my playthrough… but if the ‘You are no longer a child’ card is the content boundary, I agree with your wondering, in that this world could use a little more detail - it’s indeed good to leave room for players to integrate their own imagination into your writing, but I think in this case it could do with a few more cues, and errs on the side of being a little too generic. There were quite a number of characters, but no real connection was forged to any of them - there seemed to be little to no interaction or conversation with them (granted, I played the pinned card where Sissy leaves first, which I think shut off a few ‘sometimes’ cards with she and Wymond).
All that aside, nicely done! Everything written under -3- is as I would have written for a normal SN game, so take it with a grain of salt as this is a gift for a particular person :]
Oh Lord, and not only do I follow the rule of no ‘And’, 'But’s, and 'Or’s to begin a sentence, but I often am the first one to point them out to others. I’ve made the corrections you have pointed out, it’s always wonderful to have more than one pair of eyes.
Fantastic notes, I would have never thought of the first part of this! As for the second part, it was a reminder for me to add that in (I had completely forgot to add in some minor conversations).
You have been most generous with your assistance already, Corentin, thank you!
This is just musing out loud, and I wondered for a while whether it was worth even posting. But on the subject of how generic or specific the world is…
To me, the big question is how much you want to allow (or rely on) the reader to imprint their own culture or heritage. In my case, I just kind-of assumed we were in mediaeval Britain, because that’s a setting I’m familiar with and there was nothing which immediately challenged me to pick anywhere different. But then I turned up a card which referred to an emperor, and - whoops! - mediaeval Britain doesn’t work any more.
Trouble was, that happened late enough that I’d already invested in my own vision of the world… so it was tricky to recover from, and all references to the emperor just “felt wrong”.
My experience would have been that tiny bit better if: (a) the world was even more generic so that I could have imprinted my own title onto the person currently called “the emperor”, or (b) there had been a bit more detail nearer the start so that I formed my view of the world within a different set of constraints, or (c) it was all made out to be a bit mysterious, so I had fair warning that I’d better not make up my mind yet.
But, hang on. You’re writing this game as a present for a specific person, right? So why should you care what I think? If he or she is going to enjoy it like it is, then that’s what really counts.
Cheers
Richard
[edited for a typo] edited by Morton on 12/17/2012
Not that it affects anything much, but for my two cents’ worth - I at first assumed I was in a Middle-Eastern or Asian country, and upon reading ‘Emperor’ my mind switched over to China/Mongolia. I wonder where you intended it to be set, if anywhere?
This is fun. I also tried to convince myself it was the fall of Rome for a while - which didn’t quite work, because “the emperor” and “the barbarians” were on the same side. But pretty much all of the text would work in that setting just as well.
I’m a bit worried that I’m hijacking Grawr-Rawr’s thread, but it’s fascinating how two people can end up with firmly-held and (almost) self-consistent images of the world, which are nonetheless completely different from each other. I think this is an extreme version of what FBG call “Fires in the Desert”: Fires in the Desert - Storychoices
[color=#009900]Very much so. I always think of Le Guin; how you can easily get to about p. 80 of Wizard of Earthsea before it becomes very casually apparent that the vast majority of the characters are dark-skinned. Which, if you’re a middle-class white kid reading it in Oxfordshire in the 70s, is quite the earthquake.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Or for that matter how you can play through nearly all of Fallen London without noticing that the Bazaar is made of custard.[/color]
Oh no, Morton, don’t be worried about that at all. I find it fascinating as well.
I actually had made the assumption that most people would assume it was a medieval Europe setting just because of some of the terms used (hollow, bastion, knights). I’m pleased to see that other settings were thought of. While the exact inspiration of the setting had not been named yet, it makes the game a bit more interesting to plan in imagining that it’s Middle Eastern, Roman, or British.
Originally I did play around with the idea of making up my own term for the ruler, but I decided against it. Primarily, because I couldn’t think of one. Secondarily, I came upon the realization that (in my opinion) the word emperor is a bit generic on it’s own. Off the top of my head, I can name four emperors/empresses: Hirohito (Japan), Zoe (Byzantine), Catherine (Russia), and Agustin (Mexico). While they all had used a single term that, in English, translates into emperor, I believe that we can all agree that a story set in 11th Century Rome would be vastly different than 1800’s North America.
And with that single sentence I now find the term ‘delicious friend’ something much more giggle worthy.
[quote=Alexis Kennedy][color=#009900]Very much so. I always think of Le Guin; how you can easily get to about p. 80 of Wizard of Earthsea before it becomes very casually apparent that the vast majority of the characters are dark-skinned. Which, if you’re a middle-class white kid reading it in Oxfordshire in the 70s, is quite the earthquake.[/color]
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I love those books so much.
I have hardly played anyone else’s stuff, due to busy-ness. But this one looks intriguing. Soon.
I just ran into an interesting bug. I was a Woman. I got the card where you’re attacked by wolves, Children of the Night. The guard is gone, so I can defend and lose strength or attack. I attacked.
…Then it told me I was now a little boy. o_o
IT’s also a bit strange that I can get someone killed and then it’s impossible to learn my lesson if I draw the card again. edited by MidnightVoyager on 12/18/2012
[quote=MidnightVoyager]…Then it told me I was now a little boy. o_o
IT’s also a bit strange that I can get someone killed and then it’s impossible to learn my lesson if I draw the card again. edited by MidnightVoyager on 12/18/2012[/quote]
Hm… well the wolf attack could have been very traumatic for you! You again felt like a child even though you were a woman before!
More likely, though, I forgot to add the constraint against those things happening. I greatly apologize, I’ll rectify that immediately. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. If you’d like to pm me what you remember your stats had been before this mishap, I’ll be more than happy to get it fixed for you.