Development Thread: Sacred Seed

[Songtress]

@pyrephox wait there was an Angel game? (that sounds awesome)

So far I am loving this.
@Cobaltasaurus keep up the excellent work.

I have a question in this world, with you magic set up the way it is does the magic planylt/vine/seed.. Has it ever in the history of the world been mismanaged?

Has anyone tried to do something weird and crazy like force a another magical template into existance? (Fire, Water, Earth and Air) but what of something else.... I know you said no living material maybe manipulated... But someone must have tried?

The Seedless Companions of Nobles can they offered up in marriage to other Seedless to form a weird sub heirarchy of Seedless? (they're not common persay, but not noble)?

[Coin]

@songtress said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

@pyrephox wait there was an Angel game? (that sounds awesome)

So far I am loving this.
@Cobaltasaurus keep up the excellent work.

I have a question in this world, with you magic set up the way it is does the magic planylt/vine/seed.. Has it ever in the history of the world been mismanaged?

Has anyone tried to do something weird and crazy like force a another magical template into existance? (Fire, Water, Earth and Air) but what of something else.... I know you said no living material maybe manipulated... But someone must have tried?

Who said it's being managed well now? DUN DUN DUNNNNNN.

The Seedless Companions of Nobles can they offered up in marriage to other Seedless to form a weird sub heirarchy of Seedless? (they're not common persay, but not noble)?

I think the closest thing to a "not a noble but not a commoner" would be specific things like "Seedless head of a guild", "Seedless masterchef", or "Seedless ingredient hunter" concepts: they aren't nobles, but they have a special place in society and some status above just your everyday Seedless. But no, I don't think there's a middle-class born out of Seedless relatives of Seeded, lol. Of course, @Cobaltasaurus can decide she wants that, but nothing I've worked on or seen has indicated that.

[Cobalt]

@songtress said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

I have a question in this world, with you magic set up the way it is does the magic planylt/vine/seed.. Has it ever in the history of the world been mismanaged?

What do you mean by being mismanaged? There are, as far as the populous knows, two uses for the Clora. One being to cook it / feed it to Seeded to give them mana. And the other to try and put it into the hearts of Seedless and give them elemental powers. It's a commodity that people have, so it's probably been mismanaged, sure. There are black market deals for seedless trying to go through the seeded ritual, and dark cults who specifically try to seed people and do ... >.> Stuff.

Has anyone tried to do something weird and crazy like force a another magical template into existance? (Fire, Water, Earth and Air) but what of something else.... I know you said no living material maybe manipulated... But someone must have tried?

Here's some content for you:

A page from a torn journal, found in a burnt down house at the Hillside border with the Wildlands
He calls himself "Zeev" now and his eyes are a blue I have only seen in the wild wolves that roam the frozen forest to the north. He was a Seedless banished from the Hillside duchy for stealing bread. I knew him as a boy, but then he went by the name William. His eyes were brown. There's something unnerving in the way he smiles; too much teeth. When he speaks its like a growl. When I asked him about his eyes he just smiled and told me that his heart is different now and his eyes are a reflection of his heart.

The Seedless Companions of Nobles can they offered up in marriage to other Seedless to form a weird sub heirarchy of Seedless? (they're not common persay, but not noble)?

I'm not 100% what you mean, here. But I'm going to go with "no".

@packrat said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

One thing I would like to see would be that feudal structure being messier and 'flatter', no 'each duke has X number of counts, who has Y number of baronies' with the relationship between them being fixed.

Have barons who are sworn directly to kings, have counts who are richer than dukes, etc. It makes things a whole lot more interesting and also reduces instances of 'Well all the duke slots are full, so I will play a count, who is identical to a duke when it comes to interacting with Noble Power stuff but shittier'.

If you decouple noble rank from a weirdly strict hierarchy you get much more in the way of fun options like 'upjumped' minor nobles with great wealth and power due to recent family fortune, barons who are key to the crown due to being close allies or a cadet house with direct allegiance, snakepit marriage alliances or ailing ducal houses in terrible debt, etc. All sorts of fun.

We're gonna have some counties and baronies and stuff out of order. I just like going with a set number up front so people can easily slot in. And that way there isn't 100 duchies all over the place.

[AeriaNyx]

I am super, super impressed with this concept. It's fascinating! And I'm learning a lot by watching this process. Good work! I am really excited to see the finished product!

[Testament]

Yeah, I'll probably give this game a try when it opens. Haven't read over everything, but probably will once the wiki stuff gets set in stone an whatnot.

[Griatch]

Good luck with the game, @Cobaltasaurus, @coin (and others?)!

The story and world concept looks fun and interesting!

Since I develop Evennia, which Arx is based on, I tend to first look at game projects more from the technical side than from the player/world-building side.
I don't know where you are with the actual code-creation of the game (or if you are solely at the planning/world building phase) at this point. However, since you are new to Evennia/Python, I suggest starting early to consider how to technically build the coded systems you make plans for - make an inventory (ever so sketchy) over what can be borrowed/adopted from Arx and what cannot, for example. See if there are tutorials for particular concepts. Ask specifics in the Evennia support channels.
At a given level of coding experience some things may turn out to be pretty easy to do, other things less so - that can lead to changing your priorities for your first release.

You have a lot of base help from Tehom's Arx codebase now that it's released as open source. But Arx is still a very different game from what you have in mind, I'd wager. So getting familiar with 'vanilla' Evennia (by asking, reading docs and doing a tutorial or four) will be useful also if you plan to mainly work from Arx' template.

... Just some suggestions on the code side. If you need Evennia help, don't be shy to drop into the Evennia support forums or IRC/Discord (can ask here too, but I don't check here as often). We have plenty of people learning their way around Python while working on their games.
.
Griatch

[Cobalt]

@Coin and I are working on our Metaplot bible and stuff today. And we've come up with some stuff that is For Player Knowledge about the world in general.

---

------ Clorian Knowledge Of The World ----
Where do we live? In Hortia is the continent, Cloria is the kingdom, The Garden is the Capital. The Kingdom is divded into six domains, each Court has one and then there is the Wildlands home to the exiled and the outcasts.

Are We Alone? On In Hortia? Yes. In the world? No. There are three Nations over two other continents.

What are the other nations? Metelia, Akuji, Airendin.

What Do We Know Of Metelia?

• Metelia is a nation of technologically superior, magicless people that reside on North Metelia. We’re particularly fond of their cheap textiles and clothing.
• The Metelians have caused great strife in Cloria in the past by poisoning the Queen of the Court of Ice, causing that court to completely collapse.
• The Metelians are obsessed with metal and minerals. The general belief is that they poisoned the Queen of Ice to try and get the Temporite that the Snowfall duchy has access to.

What Do We Know of Akuji?

• The Akujin are a reclusive nation that reside on the Western part of North Metelia. What little contact the Clorians have had with them is whispered to be unnerving.
• The Akujin have strange powers that are said to rival that of the Seeded… only they are without elements. They say that the Akujin can read the future, or move things with their minds.
• The Akujin’s power is said to be from a strange drink that they imbibe at all times. A delegation of Akujin once came to the country bringing it with them and when it started to run out before it was supposed to they immediately left.

What Do We Know of Airendin?

• The Airendi live on South Metelia, and they have destroyed the land. It is now a barren wasteland. The Airendi are nightmarish. The Metelians keep them at bay by patrolling the border between South Metelia and North Metelia.
• They are cannibals that can steal the souls of those that they devour.
• They are ruthless barbarians living on a continent with no laws and no rule. There is little in the way of society. Given their cannibalistic nature there’s very few of them at this point.

[Pyrephox]

Oh this is sounding coooool. And I love that there's the potential for diplomacy and intrigue with other nations that aren't (from this) either Good or Evil.

[Cobalt]

@Pyrephox

[Pyrephox]

@cobaltasaurus ...and now I'm scared. Good job!

I do have an actual question, though: Do you plan to support 'foreign' PCs as concepts, or keep PCs to native concepts? My personal preference would be for the latter, since I think it's much harder to keep people to theme when you have half a dozen foreigners running around who don't have a very good connection to their 'home' culture, but I can definitely see an argument (especially for intrigue) in having at least ambassadors/etc. represented by PCs who can be around and active more often than an NPC would manage.

[Cobalt]

@pyrephox said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

@cobaltasaurus ...and now I'm scared. Good job!

I do have an actual question, though: Do you plan to support 'foreign' PCs as concepts, or keep PCs to native concepts? My personal preference would be for the latter, since I think it's much harder to keep people to theme when you have half a dozen foreigners running around who don't have a very good connection to their 'home' culture, but I can definitely see an argument (especially for intrigue) in having at least ambassadors/etc. represented by PCs who can be around and active more often than an NPC would manage.

Right now, it's the latter.

The Metelians due to a history where they are believed to have poisoned the Queen of the Court of Ice (a now defunct court) are not allowed landfall on In Hortia. So they don't have any ambassadors. "But what about traders?" one might ask-- well it would be difficult to play a Metelian trader because they're restricted to their boats and as far onto the docks as is needed to unload stuff. Otherwise, they aren't allowed to come ashore.

The Akujin are even more reclusive and isolationist. There could potentially be ambassadors at some point but they would likely be NPCs. They especially wouldn't be people with their powers as PCs. I might consider refugee concepts from Akujin but they'd end up being effectively Seedless.

The Airendi are nightmarish cannibals.

[Rucket]

How's the theme stuff going? Anything more you can tell us about the nightmarish cannibal people?

[Coin]

@rucket said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

How's the theme stuff going? Anything more you can tell us about the nightmarish cannibal people?

The nightmarish cannibal people are nightmarish and cannibalistic.

I'm quietly working on stuff for this in my head, I just haven't had a lot of time to put anything to paper. My next project for it is to finish the outlines of the elemental power sets, which I plan to do in the next couple of weeks.

[Cobalt]

@rucket lmao, what do you want to know specifically?

I've not had a lot of time to put stuff down on paper, but it is all working around in my head-- just being eaten by school and work. I'm still working, but slowly!

[Rucket]

Was just curious how much you had on them. Are they based on anything in particular?

[Cobalt]

@rucket said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

Was just curious how much you had on them. Are they based on anything in particular?

I have more secret metaplot information written down about them, yes. . But I don't have more for public consumption on them and probably won't until we open and people start trying to explore (ill-advised!) other continents.

As for "what's it based on?" -- I have specifically tried to avoid basing any of the cultures on any real world cultures except in the context of "how would humans react if they had X power or Y ability and how would that shape their culture", because I don't want to misrepresent anyone's culture.

And I've tried to avoid basing them off of any fictional race/culture because I don't want to steal someone's intellectual properties.

[Cobalt]

Small Update, mostly decisions:

A) Unless someone wants to volunteer to make a bunch of houses / rosters— I’m going to make rosters for the major duchies of each court, and the guilds, and then anyone that pops up in the backgrounds of those characters.

B) I’m thinking about using FAE for the game, and so am thinking of doing a small campaign to test it out. If you have an interest in that it would like run on Fridays. Will be set in the past of the games timeline.

C) I thought about reloading with the Arx DB but I’m worried I won’t learn python as much if I just take the code already available— as much as I love the Arx code. But I waffle because “why reinvent the wheel?”.

[Jeshin]

I suggest looking at Arx systems as effective ways of implementing similiar systems. Just emulating them by writing it out yourself and understanding why you're doing each part can be hugely beneficial.

[Roz]

Picking apart someone else's code, putting it back together, and changing it is one of the best ways to learn code!

[Cobalt]

@roz said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

Picking apart someone else's code, putting it back together, and changing it is one of the best ways to learn code!

Not for me. I don't really learn anything by taking other people's code. I've looked at the Arx code countless of times, but for the most part I go "...........????"

So if I go with the Arx code then ... I'm not going to be learning how to code in python, and adding systems written specifically for my game will probably not get happen.