Topics

From the SFF focused peer reviewed journal Messengers From the Stars:

https://messengersfromthestars.letras.ulisboa.pt/journal/call-for-papers

Traditionally distinguished by the presence of supernatural or magical elements, otherworldly settings, epic quests and archetypal characters, Fantasy fiction has been an incredibly popular genre since its inception. Indeed, as highlighted by scholars like John Clute, much of world fiction "has been described, at one time or another, as fantasy" (337). Although Fantasy is sometimes perceived as a form of escapism and at other times as a legitimate fictional realm with its own internal logic, the influence of the Middle Ages has remained a constant element in the construction of Fantasy worlds. From the use of folklore, myths, medieval legends and sagas, different contemporary authors look to the past as a source of inspiration, adapting, transforming and rewriting narratives to not only suit contemporary tastes and ideals but also to mirror present-day anxieties and fears. The works of J. R. R. Tolkien, George R. R. Martin, Robin Hobb, Joe Abercrombie, Marion Zimmer Bradley or Juliet Marillier, among others, are good examples of how the Middle Ages have served to fire the imagination.

Bearing this in mind and acknowledging that Fantasy continues to expand and develop, offering a diverse array of narratives as well as endless possibilities for storytelling and creative exploration, in this number we are especially interested in how Fantasy fiction uses the medieval past to create storylines that resonate with contemporary audiences across geographic, linguistic, cultural and political boundaries. We consider Fantasy in broader terms, including literature, cinema, television, comics/graphic novels, video games, music, etc., and are especially interested in submissions that expand the fields of knowledge and landscapes represented in the journal.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

    Arthuriana in Fantasy;
    Female Agency in Medieval Fantasy;
    Fantasy and the Global Middle Ages;
    Heroism and Monstrosity in Fantasy;
    Medieval Emotions in the Fantasy Genre;
    Medieval Spaces and Places in Fantasy;
    Medievalism, Neomedievalism and Fantasy;
    (Mis)Perceptions of the "Medieval" and the "Middle Ages" in Works of Fantasy;
    Which Middle Ages is it? – Identity in Fantasy.

This was done to use up some ingredients that needed using up and I was quite pleased with it, noting down the recipe here for future use. For those not in German-speaking countries, topfen is more or less similar to quark, a very neutral or slightly sweetened (rather than savoury) soft/spreadable cheese product.

Basically five ingredients:

• Shortcrust pastry (murbteig in German)
• Creamy topfen
• Apricots (4)
• Blackberries (small punnet)
• Sugar

I formed the base in the tin and put the topfen straight on - I should probably have actually cooked the base a bit first to get a drier base and a faster cook. I had the oven on fan 180, and loosely put some foil over the top to stop everything browning too fast while it cooked, I think I did about a half hour like that, then took it out and arranged the fruit on top, I did the apricot segments in a spiral through the blackberries which looked pretty. Same thing cooking again for another half hour, sprinkled some extra sugar on top with about ten or 15 mins to go. And voila, Bob is thine uncle, etc.

And the result:

[EDITORIAL & COMMUNITY NEWS]

Issue 54: Summer 2024

EDITORIAL & COMMUNITY NEWS

Hello and welcome to another issue of Updates from the Forge, your Exilian newsletter of geekery and creativity!

Quite a bit of news this time as we've just updated Exilian to the Simple Machines Forum 2.1 software series. This is a big jump, we've been running the 2.0 series since ca 2011-12, and it will mean a few changes for how the site works. You'll be able to see some visual changes on the forum, and that we've got a much more responsive system for using the site on mobile browsers: we've also now got some useful new functionality for saving draft versions of posts, and there'll be other new features coming soon. That said, tech changes (and this is the first of several planned for the second half of 2024) can come with teething problems, so do let us know your thoughts or if you encounter any issues.

Do also refresh yourself on our new rules on generative language/image model ("AI") systems. As a community we've decided against supporting the use of these technologies – the very large environmental impact, the damage done to artists in our community, and the very difficult potential issues with intellectual property rights were all things we discussed in coming to that decision. As such, we won't be giving slots to AI-driven work in newsletters like this one or in Exilian competitions and social media, and we're committed to support projects in avoiding generative AI becoming something  that they use.

We've also got some really interesting new site content for you to check out if you missed it: this includes the various entries for our Hibernation creative competition, which was won by the excellent Spritelady, and also three new articles, both the second parts of two-part series. The first of these was a discussion of travel in Mexico by indiekid, covering reflections on the later parts of his journey through the country down to the southern border: the third, in much the same vein, has been a fascinating travelogue on indiekid's journey to the isle of Chiloe and the 'edge of the world' facing the Pacific ocean If you'd rather mystery instead of discovery, though, we have you covered there too: Jubal's "The Problem of Focus 2: Focus and Magic" is an article for writers and developers on how to use what he terms "low focus" magic, constructing magic systems based on ideas of miracle and virtue instead of magic being a reliable, studied toolkit. If that sounds good, do give those things a read!

Finally, we have a couple of recent welcomes, where Exilian has now started sponsoring independent academic groups by providing them with web space and infrastructure. Two organisations, the Medieval Caucasus Network of scholars who work on (shockingly) the medieval Caucasus, and the Middle Ages in Modern Games conference, now  have Exilian-hosted websites. If you're in a similar position with a network or collective that needs a small amount of online space, then do have a chat with us and we'll see what we might be able to do to help.

And with all that said - it's time for a bunch more updates from the nerd forges of Exilian. Do take a look at what's going on below...

CONTENTS:

• Editorial & Community News
  
• Game Development
  
  • Set off for the stars in Cepheida: The Exploration Game
  • Where does the Devil Hide?
  • Tusky's TTRPG GM-Pad
• Arts & Writing
  
  • Microfiction on Exilian
  • Jubal's Writing Blog
  • The Earthwitch Approaches...
• Miscellany
  
  • Summer game fest discussions on Exilian
  • Elden Ring Explorations with Rob Haines

GAME DEV

Set off for the stars in Cepheida: The Exploration Game

Jubal's game setting Cepheida has been knocking around on Exilian for a number of years: it's a sci-fi setting that focuses on a quirky, less human-centred, more exploration focused approach to spacefaring. It was originally conceived in the early 2010s to be the setting for some sort of skirmish wargame, with randomised planetary. It's been given sporadic world-building updates since then, including one published short story, but now there's some significant new development going on.

As of recent months, Jubal has been adapting the Hetairos ruleset to produce a new Cepheida exploration game. The new game and rules will include a range of different alien factions and asymmetric objectives: as crews of explorers, playing aggressively at the expense of your real aims might spell disaster. You can find out more about this project at the Cepheida forum, and learn how to make your way across hostile environments as dedicated S'ruba recon missions, lordly Verwynn out to carve out new homes for their subjects, or strange Tangalak cyborgs, among other inhabitants of the Cepheid star cluster.

That's not all the updates either, as we've had some new little bits of concept art released, including not only some alien sketches of Jubal's but some lovely new banner art with a planet by the talented Adriana Pasierb, as seen above. Stay tuned - more updates will come along in the next few months!

Visit Cepheida's project forum on Exilian

Where does the Devil Hide?

From the maker of the zany sci-fi Twilight Oracle comes a much darker adventure in Devil's Hideout, still in the point and click genre but with a classic cultic horror feel and story. When Lauren, the protagonist, learns from a mystic that the little sister she once thought dead is still alive, she must return to the hospital where her sister was once cared for and unravel how a mysterious cult wove a web of false deaths, disappearances, and devilry...

Sometimes it really is too quiet...

Devil's Hideout promises immersive, horror-saturated pixel art settings for Lauren and her friend Atticus to explore, with an abandoned hospital and its surrounding town brought to live with chilling sound effects and seen from a first-person perspective. With classic item/inventory gameplay and other staples of the point-and-click genre very much in place, this looks an interesting piece for horror adventure game fans to check out.

Check out Devil's Hideout on Steam

Discuss the game on Exilian

Tusky's TTRPG GM-Pad

Relax: it's when there start being moving red dots that you know there's trouble. Right? Right...?

Tusky has a new project for folks running sci-fi TTRPGs: he's aiming to create an updateable tablet/laptop app to allow game masters to beam information through to an interactive "ship's computer" or pip-boy or similar for players at the table. Originally designed to work with Mothership it should also work well for Starfinder or other SF space-crew RPG settings.

The testing version of the software already has a good range of features, including not only log messages with image support but also a flexible system for editable mini-maps for the players to use which can include variably visible icons and visible/invisible region designations. If you're interested in getting an early look at the project and being able to get in on the early features discussion, do head over to the relevant thread below.

Discover Tusky's Tabletop Tools on Exilian

ARTS AND WRITING

Microfiction on Exilian

...still we feel the breath of the hunters, hot on our necks. Still, we lose friends to the ether as each transient community we build is shattered and rent in the pursuit of profit.

In our darker moments, we fear - collectively, huddled around our intangible campfire - that the Hounds have hunted too long; that in seeking out adaptation and inspiration, their instincts draw them to the very concept of fiction.

And yet we persist, telling stories in the dark.

- Rob Haines, 'While We Run'

From very long form to very short form indeed: new Exilian member Rob Haines has been posting about his microfiction writing! Microfiction, often seen as a format on microblogging sites like BlueSky and Mastodon, is the art of writing extremely short minimalist stories or vignettes that imply much of the surrounding tale. It's a great exercise for writers in what can be done with very limited word counts and how to imply the surroundings of a story quickly without providing long information passages.

Some of Rob's archive of over a hundred microfiction pieces include the sci-fi vignette While We Run, exploring the image of being hunted in a futuristic-tinged world; Song and Sonnet, a tale about what might happen to a sword long un-used; and For Having Been Broken, a story of repairs to shattered things and of the giants we might make of them. You can find all of these and more at his collection – links below:

Microfiction at Rob Haines' Creative Space

Share & read microfiction on Exilian

Jubal's Writing Blog

In any case, Jean-Jacques: I'm wearing a wedding ring, and have been since we met."

"I've worn wedding rings plenty of times! They were just from other people's weddings!"

"You are a dreadful thief and a scoundrel, d'Alvaratanne. You know that?"

"In this life," said Jeanne, leaning back in the punt and gesturing with an imagined wine glass at the world, "we're all scoundrels in our way. Or ruffians, or weirdos, and I know which of the three I'd rather be."

"In my professional opinion as a weirdo," Ansaler began, and Jeanne burst out laughing before he could finish the sentence.

After finishing a (still as yet unpublished) children's book in 2020, we've not had much in the way of updates on long-form fiction writing from Jubal for a few years, as he's focused on game dev, academic writing, and short stories among other formats. Recently, however, his writing blog has creaked back into life, with a few new snippets from a story recently appearing with a cast of paladins and scoundrels taking shape.

The as yet unnamed story will be book-length and currently sits at a bit over 10,000 words in its draft form: we know that it will be a fantasy adventuring tale, and the snippets posted reveal a concerned council of holy warriors, a linguistic mishap over explaining the birds and the bees, and a discussion of weirdos and wedding rings. If that all sounds like the sort of thing you might be keen to read, why not take a look at the thread?

Jubal's Writing Blog on Exilian

The Earthwitch Approaches...

"Say goodbye to Maxwell, children," said the Earthwitch, without looking at them.

"Goodbye," said Roy.

"Goodbye," said Mina.

"Sleep," said the Earthwitch, in a deep voice that made Mina's toes tingle.

There was silence for a moment. Mina and Roy could the stones of Maxwell's body, and his smiling face, but they could not see Maxwell. Mina smelled something nasty and looked towards the fire: Maxwell's last fish was still there, burnt black.

A new story from rbuxton, The Earthwitch is a short tale of environmental damage given a magical twist. Two children have a companion, Maxwell, a beach-spirit of stones and pebbles: but when something goes wrong for him, the children are drawn by a mysterious figure into a far more deep and fearsome world of spirits, pains, and fears than they could have imagined.

In a world where we're all very aware of the potential dangers humans pose to the planet, the idea of the planet fighting back or being corrupted into our own destruction is a powerful one, and the questions of danger, sacrifice, and what we can ask of people are very real ones even if approached through the fantastical.

Read on to discover more of this witching tale – with its deeply uncertain ending...

Read the Earthwitch on Exilian

MISCELLANY

Summer game fest discussions on Exilian

Clockwise from top left: Mixtape, Tiny Glade, Generation Exile, and Arco.

Regular game fests throughout the year are often interesting showcases of what's coming out in the ludic world, and we've had some good recent discussions on the forum of upcoming games and game projects which might make a good read for some recommendations. Rob, Spritelady, and Jubal have been discussing things including fantasy revenge tales from South America, a generation ship city builder holding the last remnants of humanity, and a cosy castles and glades builder among other upcoming titles. If you're looking for some new games to play and want to uncover a few titles you never realised existed, this may well be something to check out:

Summer Games chatter on Exilian

Elden Ring Explorations with Rob Haines

FromSoft may be famous for crushing combat mechanics, but their worlds can be suddenly tranquil in the right hands...

It's an exciting issue when we get two new projects from a new member, and we have just such an eventuality here as Rob Haines, whose microfiction we report on above, has also been doing a really lovely screenshot project in Elden Ring. Taking on the mantle of an in-world recorder of place and aesthetic, Rob delves around the world and find places and spaces that maybe even the devs might not have thought of as a vantage point or angle on the setting, recording the lavish game world with a photographer's eye for vistas and settings as he goes.

This isn't Rob's first game screenshot project: he's also done a similar adventure for the cosy environmental horror sci-fi puzzle game Outer Wilds (yes that's a lot of adjectives, and arguably self-contradictory ones, but some games defy easy tagging). This sort of game art and appreciation is something we're keen to support and see more of, so if you're thinking of tinkering with something similar, do let us know about it!

Rob's Elden Ring Explorations on Exilian

And that's all this issue has to offer! It is, of course, only a taste of what Exilian as a whole has to give: we hope to see lots more developing projects across our new-look forum space in the coming months. If you've got something you're working on, whether big or small, practice or profession, a little new hobby or a grand design - we'd love to see it here and help support and encourage your creativity. That's what we do here, and we're very keen to host and help more of it happen in the months to come. See you then, and see you in autumn for another set of updates from the Exilian community's creative endeavours!

Dear all,

After some recent tech issues, we're happy to welcome you back to a slightly new-look Exilian, now running on the SMF 2.1 series of software rather than the old 2.0. This is a once-a-decade level of tech upgrade: the new version of SMF will come with a slightly different mix of features and, most importantly. This is the first part of a series of tech changes we're hoping to make, with the plan also being to move Exilian onto a new hosting package later this summer.

A few notes on the changes that you might notice, or that are coming down the line:

• We are going to return to a dark theme as default, though the current light theme, 'Skyclad', will remain available when we build the dark theme.
  
• One major new feature that's now available is post drafts! You can now hit the "save draft" button to keep the text of a post safely squirreled away for whenever you get time to finish your thoughts
  
• We'll be looking at other new features to be made available - the 2.1 series allows for tagging other users in posts and some improved notification systems - so do stay tuned for more updates there.
  
• You can't currently create multiple polls within a single thread: the mod we used to do this doesn't function on the 2.1 series, and we're actively looking for a replacement.
  

Most importantly, we're keen to have your thoughts and opinions on the new system: it's important to us that we're getting the look and feel of the site right going forwards, so if something doesn't feel right or there's functionality you're missing then please do let us know.

For this month I think I could do any of July 25, 26, or even Saturday 27 for a change... what would people prefer for the date?

The Problem of Focus II: Focus and Magic

By Jubal

A while ago (longer now than I'd like to think) I wrote a piece called The Problem of Focus, in which I outlined the concept of high and low focus as separate from high and low fantasy as a way of categorising fantasy settings. To give a very short definition, in a high focus setting, cause and effect are consistent and recognisable, whereas in a low focus setting they are nebulous and mysterious. This especially applies to magic: a high focus magic user casts a spell with a defined cost and outcome, and it happens. A low focus magic user meanwhile performs something closer to miracle: a situation where the rules of the world are not utilised to do something, but set aside or broken in a moment of revelation or awe. Where high focus magic users are often experts with particular skills, low-focus magic users are often paragons whose virtue or connections to items or external powers enable them to produce magical outcomes.

Games tend to be high focus in how they deal with magic and the fantastical. But are there ways we could de-focus fantasy in games – and would there be advantages, or at least a different player experience, in doing so? That's what I want to try and answer in this article.

Casting spells - practical toolbox or mystical revelation?

Why drop the focus?

To consider why and how we could use more low focus magic, we first need to re-examine why high focus is the norm. There are two connected but distinct key reasons for this. Firstly and perhaps most importantly, it assists gameplay from the player's perspective. If you want a game with any sort of strategic element to it, then knowing what you can or cannot do is very important. Low focus mystical moments are more often the stuff of cutscenes: it's harder for a player to use a singular, strange effect repeatedly and have it maintain its sense of mystery.

The second reason for having high focus fantasy in games is a matter of bounded creativity. Because low focus magic is in part defined by its being outside the usual cosmic rules, stopping it feeling like a cheap and unearned way to solve problems requires very careful handling. It's hard to write low focus as well when you have a strong protagonist, and games usually do: this is because people want to make a meaningful impact on the world around them. Low focus stories - often fairytales and folklore – often have very ordinary protagonists or point of view characters, for whom their interactions with magic feel numinous and special rather than being part of their every day lives. (Low focus in this sense can share more elements with some kinds of horror, though I want to focus here more on the folktales and mythic side of things).

So low focus, in contrast, can give us a different feel for the players of a game. One of the keys a lot of game try to aim for is senses of wonder and emotion, and those can end up disconnected from the fantastical when magic is turned into a specialist's toolbox rather than a wondrous discovery or revelation about the world.

Low focus in magic

Magic has been our starting point here – so how do we reduce its focus whilst still keeping it playable? It's a tricky problem: take for example wishing for things. This is a key sort of low focus magic: it's not bounded, the effects are often unpredictable, and it can be a singular grant of mystical power rather than something you wake up with every morning. But this creates problems: for a game we have to in some way bound the effects of a wish to avoid it being either an instant problem-fixer or accidental world destroyer. This can then box the player in, and make it feel like GM fiat (at the tabletop) or an annoying menu exercise if a computer game gives you a list of what you're allowed to wish for or not. D&D makes Wish quite a high level spell for this reason.

Making magical abilities more singular is probably a good way to start resolving this. High focus magic tends to have big toolkits of specific function spells: in a low focus world being The Guy Who Can Turn Into An Otter may well be enough in and of itself. If played right this sort of thing can also produce some interesting problem solving in games, where a smaller toolkit forces some innovation in the player's approach. Low focus magic needs to click into character and narrative much more closely than high focus magic, because its expression needs to feel earned by those things: it's not bounded by hard rules, so it needs to be effectively bounded by the plot or it will start feeling like a cheap and gimmicky deus ex machina rather than an earned numinous or emotional moment.

How do you defeat the bad guys when your gift is talking to rabbits?

Magic in low-focus worlds is also best used in ways that are perpendicular to an immediate obvious function. By this I mean that rather than the player being given an ability to "tool up" for likely challenges ahead, they are given a skill or ability (like the aforementioned ability to turn into an otter, say) and encouraged to work out how it might help solve their problems. This makes magic more a rooted feature of the world that the player must deal with, rather than a focused tool in their hands, and so emphasises the sense that there's something special and mysterious about it.

Predictability may be another element to play with. In D&D terms, wild magic with its panoply of random side effects is less high focus than regular magic, because it leans much more heavily into the idea that magic is not something that plays by predictable rules. The downside of this approach is that unpredictability is frustrating for players, but sometimes the sense that you are genuinely channeling a power beyond your ken and that you're not fully in control is something worth giving to the player to support the sort of story that you want to tell.

What you tell the player also matters a lot. Whilst concealing aspects of the game can be frustrating, it can also be important in creating certain effects. For example, magical effects in a game could be tied to player decisions: if this is a world where piety and miracles are connected, pious acts might make it easier or more likely that they can. In this case, a lot of the difference in focus might be made by the exposure of that logic: you could give the player a visible piety score and they'll have a high focus system to work with. Alternatively, hide the score and make it a more narratively framed effect where the player gets an extra option at a key game moment, and the system will be much lower focus. (This does lead to a question about whether focus can be externally increased: in a computer game, someone is likely to ultimately produce a game guide for example, but that's a whole other area slightly beyond our scope here.)

A final thought is that low focus magic is often well placed with some external or physical element involved. Having a mysterious artefact or gift from nature or the gods helps remove the element of "but how does this work" from the picture as far as possible: we may be able to tell how this specific artefact works, allowing the player to work through the game, but we can avoid a wider detailing of exactly how magic as a whole works. Low focus means avoiding and rejecting systematisation and clear logic in favour of unique elements, mystery, and emotion as ways of building payoff.

Low Focus in stories

Odysseus getting some help - deus ex machina, or recognition of virtue?

Fundamentally, in games, mechanics are there usually either as challenges, as aids to storytelling, or both. When thinking about low focus mechanics for our magic, we might therefore want to think about the impacts they could have on what the player can do and what sort of stories that fits or results in.

Emotion is something that I think is very key to low focus magic. Effects need to feel earned in games, and in a low focus game we're ditching the idea of earning them through pure skill. It's therefore very important that the payoff feels like it has been earned emotionally, precisely because the character will not have earned it through sheer power and ability. The fundamental difference between well written low focus magic and hand-wavy problem solving is that sense of pay-off: a sense that the character has earned the effect, even if they didn't consciously plan the effect.

Linked to the idea of emotion is the idea of virtue. What virtue means varies a lot between cultures historically, and types of virtue can differ. Virtue can be both affirmed by, and make viable, mysterious and magical interventions. The Greek concept of kleos for example could absolutely include help from deities: the original deus ex machina showed not that a hero was getting a free pass on solving a problem, but that the hero was worthy of being chosen by the gods. In some cultures virtue requires giving up thoughts of revenge, in others seeking righteous vengeance is treated as an obligation. Whatever the character's virtue system is, low focus magic should work in relation to it: this may be magic showing the character's worth, or alternatively magic as a darker representation of their willingness to depart from the virtue system. High focus, by systematising magic, tends to externalise it: low focus needs us to take magic back into a more social and natural context.

A further key idea we visited in the introduction to this piece is that we may want to make lower focus games also lower in the status of their protagonists. This doesn't necessarily need to be the case: mystery and magic can happen to high status characters too. However, given lower focus reducing conscious, direct control over magical effects, it can be a better tool for permitting a character who we might less expect to understand and manipulate the inner workings of the world to still have influence or impact. The greater sense of odds and struggle that a weaker or lower status character faces can make high focus magic feel stranger in their hands, but can make lower focus magic feel better earned.


Conclusions

In this article we've covered a range of features that might help you implement a low focus magic system in a game or story, and help you decide what sort of story best suits this kind of magic. We've seen how the aim of low focus is to imbue magic with a stronger sense of mystery and awe, and how we need to focus on making that feel earned through emotion, virtue and story beats rather than through skill, power, and functional utility. Some sorts of characters and stories may be better suited to that kind of system, allowing us to re-evaluate who our ideal protagonists might be.

In terms of implementation, we've covered a number of key points. Using magical effects that are somewhat externalised through objects, or represent a singular grant of power not necessarily directly connected to a single functional task, can help emphasise the idea that magic is here as a strange form of power rather than a toolkit amenable to study. Not always making the cause-effect relationship of a game decision entirely clear, or making the outcomes of a magical action more random, can reduce the extent to which the player feels like magic is a simple, controllable effect. Tying such effects more closely into the plot can help make such impacts feel earned rather than frustratingly random.

That's all for this article: hopefully that was interesting, and I'm keen to hear about any instances of trying to implement this sort of magic in your stories and games! I'm not sure when or if a Problem of Focus part III is coming, but I may look more at how particular settings and games currently deal with the problem of focus, or perhaps give some ideas on how the gods and creatures of a setting could be aligned with high and low focus systems – let me know what you think. And, of course, thanks for reading!

I like Dragon Age, we're getting new drops regarding Veilguard (I really preferred Dreadwolf as a title but oh well), so here's a thread of minor squees and speculations.



Companion Trailer

Confirmed companion roster is:
Harding: The Scout
Neve: The Detective
Emmrich: The Necromancer
Taash: The Dragon Hunter
Davrin: The Warden
Bellara: The Veil Jumper
Lucanis: The Mage Killer

We know Neve is a mage from the gameplay trailer, and Emmrich must also be. Harding is presumably a rogue, I'd guess Lucanis must be as well, and Taash and Davrin must be warriors. Less clear what Bellara is - could be another rogue as she seems to have a bow in the trailers? If there are only seven in the final game that'd be the lowest in the series so far (though DA2 minus all the DLC only gave you seven in practice). I would be unsurprised if we had at least one bonus companion available who hasn't been revealed for plot reasons.

I'm very happy to see Harding back, I'll be interested to see who else is on the cards: many characters would now be too old or very complex to bring back, but there are definitely some options, Dorian is an obvious possibility given the Tevinter setting, and Maevaris as an explicitly trans character has become a bit of a fan favourite although she's mostly been in spinoff media that I've not read. Josie would be nice to see and doesn't have an obvious reason not to be there (AFAIK she can't die in DAI).



Gameplay trailer

The gameplay looks much more DAI than DAO/DA2, which is a minor disappointment to me but not an unexpected one. I'm mostly here for the story in any case.

Minrathous having that kinda searchlights and loudspeakers authoritarian aesthetic isn't necessarily quite how I'd realised the place would be, there's definitely a certain mid C20th dystopian aesthetic to it which is quite interesting. Also maybe the Venatori will get more interesting this time, they always felt a bit second fiddle redshirts in DAI to me.

Plot thoughts:

Spoiler

This is, they've said, very early game, so we clearly disrupt Solas' actual plan early and then deal with the consequences of that, which almost certainly means that by disrupting his ritual we ruin whatever plan he had to keep the other elven gods trapped - the thing he built the veil for in the first place. So the plot as a whole is probably fighting over the veil and then finding ways to keep it stoppered up properly. Something like "kill Solas and use that to mend the veil" and a "Solas sacrifices himself to make the veil permanent" ending options or something? I've not been keeping up well with all the spinoff media which makes it harder to have any clear ideas.

We're due a Friday pub, I can't do the 28th due to travel, so we probably need to go for the rather sooner date of the 21st. Any objections?

Hi all,

A small bureaucracy announcement that we're doing a round of tweaking elements of the forum structure, one of our irregular series of spring cleans. To that end we have:

• Archived four subforums. The Fox Box forum hasn't been in use since Flamekebab left over half a decade ago, Spears of Arda was a project that never got anywhere and has no active release, and the Factual Writing section of the forum is a bit superfluous as people can just post things directly to the Great Library, submit to Exilian Articles, or link to their own blogs, other journals, etc. And on a very meta level, archived the 2020 Spring Cleaning board which was about the last time we (in that case mostly our esteemed Sebastokrator Tusky) had a good go at cleaning things up here.
• I've neatened up the organisation of the archives. There's now a specific section for old event forums and one for larger but now defunct site areas and projects. That's not to say the new system is entirely logical, but I think it looks a lot less messy and will make finding things in the archive a bit easier if anyone wants to. From now on new things added to the archive should probably be added to a dated spring clean board, we have those for 2017, 2019, and no 2024.
• Two subforums have been broadened a bit in remit. The Coding Medieval Worlds forum is now bundled with other Medievalisms/Gaming stuff as we're now hosting the Middle Ages in Modern Games conference website, and the Caucasian Prosopography Project has been renamed to the Medieval Caucasus forum for similar reasons.

Importantly, if you have any other suggestions of projects that a) have no working release and b) have been abandoned for 3-4 years or more, then please let me know in this thread so they can be properly archived. Also reports on any out of date pinned threads and other such things would be welcome. Many thanks!

[FAQs]

The Medieval Caucasus - An Intro

This forum, previously and still largely about the specifics of high medieval Georgian prosopography, is now more generally becoming the Medieval Caucasus forum on the site. As such, here's an intro thread about what that actually means.

The Caucasus, the mountainous region that sits between the Black and Caspian seas, has for much of human history been at the edge of Empires: the Russians, Ottomans, Safavids, Seljuks, Byzantines, and far more besides have all had their time. It's a wildly culturally diverse part of the world, with a huge range of religions, languages, cultures and ethnic identities, with the rugged terrain creating enough isolation for local areas and peoples to remain distinct but often also channelling enough cultural contact to create new and syncretic ways of life along the way.

This forum is about studying this world as it existed between ca 500 and 1500 AD: at one end of this period we have the closing stages of the Sasanian-Roman divide over the region, which in the seventh century was replaced with the falling back of both against the rapid spread of Islam, an event which would change the character of the region forever. At the later end, the two main early modern powers in the region, the Ottomans in the west and the Safavids in the east, were beginning to muscle in, in some ways re-establishing an ancient pattern of east-west divide contesting the Caucasus. The millennium between these points sees much of the identity formation and religious and cultural development of the groups we know from the Caucasus today - and is still a very hotly contested period in the cultural memories of all the major modern peoples of the region.



FAQs

Q. Isn't there some thing about white people being Caucasian?
A. We have 19th century racism to thank for that term: the 'race science' of the time suggested that white people originated in the Caucasus, a theory that was ultimately derived from people believing that Noah's Ark landed there and that some myths suggested the classical mythic titan, Prometheus, was chained up in the region. This belief is, to put it gently, not endorsed by modern scientists or historians.

Q. Your intro doesn't mention Russia, isn't Russia important in the Caucasus?
A. Russia really only moves into the central Caucasus in the 18th century: before that and certainly in the middle ages it has minimal influence in the region.

[Socials]

The Middle Ages in Modern Games is a group of scholars and an online conference that has existed for a number of years to promote the study of the reception of the medieval period in modern gaming contexts. Their main annual event is an asynchronous conference - that is, papers are delivered as very short text format communications, in a public forum where other scholars can read, comment, and discuss the ideas and findings involved. Since 2024 the conference, along with helpful links and details on past events. has been available at the middleagesinmoderngames.net website hosted on Exilian's server space: the previous iterations of the conference were done as microblogging conferences on Twitter. The MAMG network also runs a strand every year at the Leeds International Medieval Congress.

MAMG Website

Socials
MAMG Mastodon
MAMG Twitter
MAMG BlueSky
MAMG Facebook
MAMG Instagram

[New Hosted Projects: June 2024]

New Hosted Projects: June 2024

Today we're very happy to announce two projects that Exilian is now helping support with web hosting. Part of our mission here is to support independent academic as well as creative endeavours, and we're delighted to be taking the chance to help two really great scholarly events/networks have a stable, workable home online that can ensure their work reaches more people and is more accessible than ever before.

The Middle Ages in Modern Games is an online asynchronous conference where participants provide ideas and discussions of medieval worlds in gaming in a short written format. The conference's first to fourth years were as a Twitter conference before the format changed in 2024 to a WordPress site hosted by Exilian. This week is the fifth Middle Ages in Modern Games conference itself, which will see academics from across the world provide thoughts and ideas on a wide array of aspects of games and game dev. This includes sessions on Warfare, Empathy, the Fantastic, Aesthetics, and the Dev process, among others: it should have some really interesting reads for developers, historians, and members of the public alike.

We're excited to welcome MAMG to Exilian alongside our existing work in this area which includes hosting the Coding Medieval Worlds workshops every year!

Visit the Middle Ages in Modern Games Website

Coding Medieval Worlds & The Middle Ages in Modern Games: Exilian Forum

The Medieval Caucasus Network is a group of scholars from around the world which exists to help connect people and expand understandings of the Caucasus and surrounding regions through the medieval period. Their work includes organising conferences, running a mailing list to connect scholars, putting scholars in touch with potential funding sources for conference travel, and much more besides. Their work includes not only academic staff but independent scholars and graduate students, and covers a wide range of disciplines and areas including archaeology, digital humanities, and art history as well as historical approaches to all parts of the region.

Exilian has long had some links to this area via our executive officer's work on Caucasiology, including us hosting some of the earliest versions of what was then the Caucasian Prospography Project and is now known as the (still unreleased) Prosopography of High Medieval Georgia database. Whether you know something or nothing about medieval Caucasia, there will doubtless be much more to discover!

Visit the Medieval Caucasus Network

The Medieval Caucasus: Exilian Forum

For updates on this as I'm doing it all week. This week is the fifth Middle Ages in Modern Games conference, now hosted on its own website rather than Twitter, the infrastructure provided by, um, us, and and there's going to be an exciting range of papers available. I'll try to post here a few times over the next few days with links to some of the batches of papers as we go

Not sure this is a yay so it's not fetting into that thread, but it's fascinating: BBC article today on how New York City's wildlife is mutating and changing due to its urban isolation and changed diet.



I think the bit that most fascinated me was the mention of this paper, which suggests that the NYC population of white-footed mice is getting long term evolutionary change to their digestion to better cope with higher fat and sugar intake in their diets, as a result of them eating far more human-food leftovers. I don't think I'd realised that this sort of change was big enough in mammals to be measurable over the sort of span of time that New York has been urbanised.

Finally got us a little channel trailer-video recorded. Thoughts welcome

[Coral Crown (Hades II Siren Song)]

Coral Crown (Hades II Siren Song)

Come o sailors, hear my music
Em
Echoing through sea and cold
Em                    G          D
Bring your hull into my harbour
Em
Join the teeming wrecks below
Em                    G          D

Down, down
Em     Am
King of bones with the coral crown,
Em                             D
Drown, drown
Em     Am
Save your breath, for tonight you're going to drown!
Em                               D                            Em

Gods and witches cannot tame me
Curses are my endless muse
All who hear me, prince or pauper,
This shall be their final cruise

Down, down
King of bones with the coral crown,
Drown, drown
Save your breath, for tonight you're going to drown!

Come to me my tasty morsels
Always room for more...
More...
More...!

Make yourself at home my darling
Take a dip and stay a while,
Down, down
King of bones with the coral crown,
Drown, drown
Save your breath, for tonight you're going to drown!

Had a short test today, of the The World Above scenario. We didn't get that far before my unfortunate test partner had his character eaten by a gryphon, but it was an interesting test all the same. I think I may need to make the chaos in the scenario somewhat greater, a double one (which is what triggers caverns collapsing) isn't a high roll, but that said it's a game where tunnelling is hard so a full tunnel collapse is a big deal. Maybe I need a lesser but more frequent option as well as the current "full collapse".

Also not really sure what to do about the typical-for-the-game scenario where someone at the end of their move just walks into a monster lair or lava flow and gets disembowelled or deep-fried respectively on the spot. In some ways that sort of randomness is a bit of a joy of the game, but if it happens early and nobody can help the player character it can be a bit rough. I think maybe just better and clearer rules for player death might be worth having. Also it's partly that I often play this game with two players rather than the four or five I originally wrote it for, which means in "normal" circumstances another PC is more likely to be in reach to help a player. Maybe I should balance for four characters more heavily and make it such that in two player games the players get a hoplite companion or similar?

Any preferences? We're due a Thursday which would make the 30th the right option I think, but I'd be willing to switch to the 31st if people would prefer.

Just saw the sad news that Bernard Hill, notable for playing the captain of the Titanic and Theoden of Rohan, has died. I don't really react much to or notice actor and celebrity deaths a lot of the time, but this one I definitely did: his portrayal of Theoden was for me one of the critical moments of the Jackson LOTR films and he played the character wonderfully. Definitely someone whose work will stay with me.

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68962192

Other equivalently big franchises of games have their own thread, and I'm playing Fallout 4 now thanks to Tuco, of this parish (or at least of this parish's pub) who kindly got the game for me.

I think I'm about at the halfway mark for the main quest, though I've hit level thirty by doing slightly more "radiant" quests than I probably needed to (that's the quest design system where you get formula quests with randomly assigned locations to clear/do things at: Skyrim does similar with its barrows etc). Of the game's four main factions, I'm working for the two least authoritarian ones, as you might expect, and my character is dating the nearby post-apocalyptic "city"'s foremost and indeed only journalist and is best friends with a robot in a synthetic human body who is a medical nerd.

Things I've been enjoying with Fallout: I'm definitely liking the capacity to build and design settlements and their defences. I have a few quibbles about the system but generally it works really very well. I think the main drawback of this and the Minutemen parts of the game is the spiralling micromanagement: rather than feeling like I'm building a bigger and more successful volunteer army and overall system, instead I'm feeling more and more stretched as I, personally, get asked to run around building yet more machine gun posts for every small farm in post-apocalyptic eastern Massachussetts. It'd be nice to be able to feel like you're more in a command role with some of that stuff (the castle mission and sections were good on that front but the rest has gotten a little grinding on occasion). But anyway, designing the buildings themselves and making rooftop bars for my post-apocalyptic citizens is something I enjoy a lot.

I think there's enough lightness in the setting for it to work, whereas I think I'd feared it would all come across a bit darker. I'd probably slightly tone down the gore in places by personal preference but I accept I'm at the low-tolerance end of the market there. Things like the occasional chasing down cats quest definitely help break up the shooty gameplay, and I'd probably have liked a ratio further in that direction with if anything less combat and more dialogue. I love the fact that companions are more fleshed out than in Skyrim (which, as the other Bethesda game of that generation, is the obvious comparison), though I'd have liked even more there probably. That said, I accept that combat is in a sense much easier to produce more of than interesting quests, so there's that.

I also actually think that the thought put into post-apocalyptic society is interesting in places (though really lacking in others). On the minus side the usual raider/civilian ratio being miles off thing is present, and it does repeatedly strike me as weird how the whole setup is visibly not more than a year after the bombs hit but in game it's actually two hundred years (in which time nobody has moved any of the dead bodies and there has been no soil erosion whatsoever). I think the game would feel like it made more sense if it was more like a hundred than two hundred years, or if there'd been a bit more of an attempt to think about what 200 years looks like. But if we handwave that, the society stuff I like, in particular the thing of people retreating to live in more densely packed centres within older buildings: "Diamond City", which is built in the ruins of a baseball stadium, is doing precisely what people actually did historically in periods of stark de-urbanisation: in Arles, this even happened with an amphitheatre and I wonder if this was a historical nod. I have some thoughts on how one could have made some of this more interesting, especially since if you do have 200 years to play with then you start getting into questions of whether e.g. some raider groups might actually have ended up with hereditary leadership etc (and it'd be interesting to contrast the cosplay-knighthood of the very very unfuedal Brotherhood with a situation where an actual warrior leadership class was emerging in parts of the game world). So that's all something I've found interesting to mull over.

Anyway, there's a good amount still to do (for those who know, I'm at the "go to CIT" stage of main quest) but I'm away this week so I'll report on my feelings on the ending sometime in May probably! And I'll share screenshots then if I have time too.