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This is to announce that we've (at least from a user perspective) largely completed our move away from our previous hosting at Tsohost and to new hosting with Hostinger. This shift will allow us some additional website resources, and will save Exilian a considerable amount of money over the next few years. We're not expecting any technical issues having finished the move, but if you do notice anything out of the ordinary please don't hesitate to get in touch.

All the best,

The Exilian Team

I've started messing around with Godot a bit.

My ultimate aim is to see if I can use it to build a sort of classic RPG engine of some kind, though I'm at very, very early stages indeed and right now I'm doing things like working out how the animation blending works and how to control it through code and so on and so forth.

I've downloaded a little pack of animated cartoonish guys - I am very much not becoming an animator for this or any other project - and I've got one with some movement code, jump, turn, and attack anims all running more or less properly though the transitions could be more fluid. That said, ultimately I want something fairly zoomed out so I'm not too bothered about building smooth real-time combat or anything.

Thoughts so far: gdscript is pretty similar to python though I've got a lot to learn about how it interacts with game structure more generally, I've been scripting on individual objects but much less on world state and interactions and so on. Some stuff I'm just unused to like passing vectors to functions, it's a very vector-y system which feels odd in that I'm probably going to have to try and workout adding grids for movement calculations etc to an essentially fluid-ish world. I'm occasionally getting frustrated because so much less is directly script-controlled and I'd sometimes rather use a script than have things in clicky draggy boxes, but I'm making progress all the same.

Will post some screenshots and thoughts as I go

Dear friends,

Exilian will be temporarily unavailable in the coming days due to a server move. The aim is to take the forum into maintenance mode tomorrow (Sunday 24th November) and have it back available by Tuesday 26th November. Please keep an eye on our social media for updates in the interim period.

Thanks for your patience!

The Exilian Team

[Game Type:]

Dragon Age: Veilguard - a review by Jubal

Game Type: AAA
Genre: RPG

Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1845910/Dragon_Age_The_Veilguard/

So, I figured I'd write a proper review of one of the most bizarrely argued over games of this year. I played it, and I enjoyed it. Fundamentally, Veilguard is a good game that has a few annoying flaws. I'm probably going to write more about the flaws than the successes, because it's easier to rant about a frustration than give positives in detail, but overall I'm glad I played it despite the issues.

The basics first: it's an actiony RPG, moving even further away from the tactical combat of early games to a two companion system that prioritises combination attacks and doesn't let you directly fight or explore as your companions. The story is more linear than in Inquisition, but there are plenty of periods during the game when you get to bounce between different areas doing sidequests, especially in the midgame.

In terms of the basic plot pitch, the player is dealing with the problems set up in Dragon Age: Inquistion's Trespasser DLC: the ancient elf and god-level mage Solas is seeking to rebuild the world that he destroyed aeons ago at the expense of the Thedas the player inhabits, and the player in stopping him unleashes a potentially even greater threat, leaving a complex mix of alliance, mistrust, and regret. Whilst the name of the game did get changed to Veilguard, in truth this is Dragon Age: Dreadwolf, its earlier name. Solas hangs over the game neither quite as antagonist or protagonist, and is by far its best written character, with the huge quantity of additional lore the player discovers revealing the truths of his past and offering the player a chance to think their way around a figure remembered as the god of lies and trickery.

I don't tend to write much about graphics, mechanics etc when reviewing RPG games, but it's important to state that on this side the game is brilliantly put together. The overall game is extremely technically robust, very pretty indeed, and the locations are wonderfully rendered. Some of the faces look a bit overly smoothed for my taste, but the diversity of locations and exploration was very good fun and I enjoyed poking around new parts of Thedas a lot.

Characters and Dialogues

The writing and plot development in Veilguard, however, have some issues. The largest of these is an over-smoothing of the Veilguard companions and their personalities in the early and mid game, and an equal smoothing of the player's dialogue options with them. For the player, the jokey options are often just slightly lighter, and the grumpy options slightly flatter, versions of essentially the same sentiment: more variation and more consequent impacts on companion approval would have been very helpful for the game to feel more impactful.

The companion characters meanwhile are often overly reasonable, and their problems are overcome often in single dialogues where the player, in their team leadership role of group therapist, points out that, say, difference is helpful when working out problems, and the characters just immediately nod along, something that noticeably isn't how humans tend to react to having the flaws in their thinking pointed out. The Veilguard are a well-drilled, effective team who resolve all their problems very swiftly due to excellent management, which is a good thing in real-world teams but not ideal for writing a sitcom let alone a drama.

That's not to say these are bad characters. Conceptually it's a brilliantly put together team, and the delivery of the endgame (on which more later) pays off a lot of their concepts very well indeed. But the writing's lack of spiky moments - people rarely shout, arguments disappear fast, - risks ending up trivialising some of what the characters are dealing with. Therapy doesn't solve problems by reasoning people through in a single conversation: anger and pain do mess people up for more than about a week. For a game whose core narrative themes are grief and regret, Veilguard repeatedly shies away from showing the messier, more raw and human sides of those emotions, and that's a genuine pity.

World-Building

The third main problem element, besides, is a lack of guts in the world-building. I'm not someone who wants Dragon Age to be grimdark in the true sense, but one thing Dragon Age has always involved is questions of moral compromise, and they just don't arise in Veilguard in most places, in part because the setting has been massaged to avoid them. Some of worst victims of these are the Lords of Fortune, a pirate & treasure-hunter band whose "for gold and glory" motto is set aside when it comes to "cultural stuff" which is sent back to its native cultures after being assessed by a specialist. This (and here I can briefly wear my hat as someone for whom cultural heritage is a major element of my work) isn't a good way to write these issues: it avoids rather than embraces thinking about these problems, about culture and who might be hurt by different choices, in favour of an "it's fine someone's dealing with it". Having a companion struggle with how to honour who they are would have been much more meaningful Like with the companions' emotional states, the writing can come off as glib.

The setting's existing lore also causes some problems with this over-smoothed world-building. Tevinter is a slave society, as has been well established, but in Dock Town despite you hanging out with the setting's anti-slavery faction the actual realities of slavery are barely on screen. The Antivan Crows, a group of brutal assassins who have been established to kill rather than accept failure on the part of their members and to engage in human trafficking or kidnapping potential joinees, have been sanitised beyond recognition to the point where they don't even give you the option of killing literal traitors to their own cause, let alone getting involved in anything that could be as grim as an actual paid assassination. The Crows should be at best uneasy allies for a good character, not just cool caped rooftop-crawling cartoon characters: and it's ironic that a game that has a lot of dialogue about owning up to and then building from one's past isn't interested in doing the work in engaging with its own.

This isn't to say that there's "nothing dark" in the game as some people have alleged. The game doesn't always pull its punches, and there are some pretty horrifying elements. The more alive version of the blight visible in the game is particularly horrible, though it getting locked into a few too many puzzle-game elements does slightly decrease the efficacy of that. The problem is not the lack of darkness but the simplification of it: the Antaam becoming developed into a mere warband to avoid the complexity of the Qun as a stabilising but aggressively invading force, the lack of engagement with the status quo slave society of the Tevinter magisterium in favour of just showing the mad cultic zealots of the Venatori - these things make the player a strange sort of hero, one who can both proclaim that they're saving the world without needing at any point to engage with how broken the world that they're protecting actually is.

On the more positive side, there really is a lot good to be said about the deeper world building in the core plot. The build-up and payoff of the lore around Solas and his ancient foes, the Evanuris, is really well played, and unfolds as a deeply personal, painful story of tragedy that the player witnesses and acts parts in rather than just as a dry lore-dump. It's really rare that the good bit of a game is the bit that goes "well let's look at what happened thousands of years ago before the dawn of this world", and Veilguard is an absolute class in how to pull off using that sort of deep lore in game writing in a way that keeps it feeling fresh and present. The better of the companions' quest lines, especially Harding's, link into this very effectively.

The exploration side of the game is also wonderful and I've enjoyed it a great deal. Seeing Minrathous, Treviso, Arlathan, and other areas in northern Thedas is great. I'd have liked more of course, especially a bit more non-urban content in Tevinter, Nevarra and Antiva: countries either get a city or a non-city area. And I'd also have liked more continual access to some Deep Roads areas, which only appear for occasional missions. But those are just "I'd like more game in my game" which in and of itself is a sign that the game is doing soething right.

My final less positive note for this section, on the other hand, is that I was frustrated at some choices that boxed off important elements from past games or cut off potential for the future. The game only accounts for three choices from previous games: the fate of the inquisition, the inquisitor's approach to Solas, and the inquisitor's romance. This would not be a problem if it was leaving the choices from those games alone for future use, but it doesn't: in a game focused on Solas, not taking into account the Well of Sorrows choice from Inquisition makes that major element useless in future, not to mention the potential god-child Morrigan may have made in Dragon Age: Origins who we may have met in DAI. Both have been heavily telegraphed as potentially important throughout the series, and Veilguard not only passes them by but makes it exceedingly difficult for a future writer to ever come back to them.

Core plot

Veilguard flips the script compared to other Dragon Age titles, which had a plot but where you played for the companions: Veilguard has companions, but its soul as a game is in the core plot and that is by and large where all of its best writing is focused. As I said at the start, Solas looms over the core plot as he should do, with important supporting roles for several other characters. After Veilguard, whatever its failings, Solas at least should be laid out a a character among the absolute top tier of computer RPG antagonists: clever, powerfully effective, and yet hamstrung by his character flaws. In a world of simplifications, he remains a Shakespearian tragic figure and the game is much richer for it.

The main regular villain antagonists are big, scenery chewing, and fun. Their abilities and tactical nous are to say the least a little bit variable: my hero was good, but the final standup fight against a "powerful enough to randomly shuffle celestial bodies" level opponent was nonetheless significantly less weighted against me than it might have been. Thematically, though, they work really well together and their flaws as villains and people are engaged with properly when it comes to their defeats. They manage to both be absurd overpowered scenery chewing monstrosities and also be more human than a Corypheus or Urthemiel.

And then there's the ending. Which is great. Whatever my feelings on the middle of Veilguard, I will absolutely hand to it that it has the best end-run section of a Dragon Age game. The gear-shift is stark. From the slow, warm, sometimes stilted plots of bits of the main game, the ends of companion quests add a little sharpness, but then when the final mission run begins the game starts delivering the sort of punches it hadn't been clear it was capable of until that point. For a 70 hour game, it packs a lot into the last three or four hours: the last few missions are emotionally hard-hitting, well designed in their encounters, and pay off the earlier parts of the game very effectively indeed.

Overall thoughts

Veilguard is a really good game. For me it's probably the weakest of the Dragon Age series, but it's still both a very good game and solid Dragon Age entry. I enjoyed playing it, and I'd recommend it to others. Overall it's - unsurprisingly - a lot better than its shoutiest detractors will tell you, and equally unsurprisingly not as good as its most vociferous defenders will tell you. In my view it's worth playing especially for the core plot, and I enjoyed it myself, but it's worth noting that it's both a bit weak on some things other Dragon Age titles have been strong on and really quite strong in areas where some previous titles were a bit lacking.

We're due a Friday: the 29th would probably make sense?

Thoughts welcome!

Plaintext poster here


Please do apply and come along if you're interested!

Seven Grim Little Monsters

By Jubal

It's the time of ghosts and ghasts and things that go bump in the night! To celebrate, or at least pass the terrors of the dark days onto you all to share, here's seven novel or less usual pitches for the sort of little folk-horror monstrosities that one might be unfortunate enough to encounter. Some of them have suggestions for dealing with them - for others, you're on your own. Read on, dear traveller of the dank and dark months. Read on - if you dare...

Eyewig

Rather smaller than an earwig, the eyewig burrows in underneath eyelids and into the corner of eyes, living at the back of the host creature's eye-socket. It latches onto the optical nerve, and can change the tone of what people see, manipulating its host into seeking the most lurid and exciting visions possible to feed its appetite for such stimuli. An eyewig host will, bloodshot-eyed, be found watching the most dangerous sports, the greatest firework displays, the most sultry or daring of entertainers, in an almost obsessive manner. After several months the eyewig will eventually have its larvae burst forth out of the eye, blinding its host, whereupon it will die, its grim life fulfilled.

Shrew of Shades

A tiny animal ghost that has forgotten anything except the terror of fleeing from whatever killed it. It passes through a world it never understood as fast as its little legs can run, always running, knowing nothing but running, spreading the little ends of its fear to those it passes by. Who has not felt, without warning, their hair standing on end, or jolts that wake a being up in the night and make them feel strangely small? Those are the marks of the shrew of shades as it runs. It cannot be reasoned with, and knows neither rest nor hope.

There is no known way to give the Shrew of Shades rest from its bleak little existence.

Pluck-fowl

This creature haunts coops where foxes take the hens, fields where a wolf took a lamb, and homes where a child or a cat died of neglect. It takes the form of a flightless bird, not large, but with ragged spines where there should be feathers, with sharp teeth on the inside of its beak and a gas-grey stare in its wild eyes. It especially attacks those who are asleep, demanding that all must be on watch in penance for the failure that brought it into being.

To be laid to rest, the pluck-fowl must be caught and bundled entirely in feathers and cloth, and then laid safely beside a burning hearth for a day and a night, always watched over. It will often cause calamities in the house where this happens, breaking pots or curdling milk, but some eye must be kept on it at all times or it will burst forth and be even stronger than before. Once this has been done, it will say the names of the gods watching that place three times, and can be placed into the fire where it will be burned, blessing the watchful home.

Toecurler

The toecurler burrows underneath a toenail to lay its egg. As the single larva grows, it pushes out between the toenail and the toe itself, using a numbing secretion to reduce the chance of the host killing it too soon, until the nail can eventually be freed: pulling it out, the adult creature can then use the toenail as a shell in its adult life, protecting it against predators and the elements. The sight of a single legged toenail scuttling across the floor is, needless to say, not ideal for the faint of heart.

The best way to kill a toecurler is with a large hammer.

The Alone

It is said that the alone can best be seen by those whose eyes adjust after hours upon hours of staring without hope that anything can change. Its form has many branches and roots that, unchecked, will wrap themselves around a room, slowly drawing the colour and warmth from everything around it.

Even if there are several people present, they will find themselves more distant from one another around it, less able to share their burdens. An error oft committed is to assume that the Alone can be defeated by mere distraction, its pursuit outrun: it is patient, if patience is even an attribute that such a creature can have. To be defeated it must be seen, and faced on its own terms. Not all can achieve such a feat, and the mighty have no more defense against it than the meek.

Greywater Frog

The largish greywater frog is remarkably resistant to disease and parasites: not in the sense that it has few, but in the sense that it can host many with few ill effects. It tends to eat rotting meat from larger animals, as a scavenger: to increase the supply of such, it behaves in ways that tend to clog up and infest water sources. This may include a certain primitive level of dam-building to help water stagnate, pushing animal corpses into the water, and communally depositing feces or other bodily fluids around commonly used drinking areas.

The Greywater Frog suffers in salt water especially, and barrels of it are sometimes hauled from the sea to places where they are known to lurk. Anchor symbols are sometimes inscribed near ponds that they once frequented, though whether this echo of the sea that defeated them has any true effect is unknown.

Shatterstone

The shatterstone is made from the fading memory of a grave which, abandoned, is left to crumble or, yet worse, destroyed. Clinging to existence, the fragments of the headstone, no longer able to fulfil their duty, form a lurching, shifting form without legs or head, but often with reaching, grasping rocky limbs, ready to be remembered for the damage they inflict if needs be, or to shatter other stones in envy of the memories they retain.

The shatterstones will reform pieces into themselves, so breaking them with hammers is laborious and requires separately burying each piece of the stone at some distance: but they cannot abide the light of candles in particular, and they will recoil from animals and children who have had no chance to remember. They can be fully turned back and calmed to dust with proof that the grave's original occupant is indeed remembered in some other way or place, with a document containing their name or the recitation of some deed the occupant performed in life.


And there you have it, seven deeply unpleasant little creatures if ever you needed them - or if ever you needed just one more little fear to needle at the back of your mind. Or the back of your eye... happy Hallowe'en, one and all!

Thinking about how to write a character better and thought I'd ask for advice.

In one of my current WIPs I have a character who is designed to look a bit like a typical fantasy "barbarian", though he's really more of a goatherd and pipe-player by temperament: he's from a hill-folk culture, doesn't speak the lowland language well initially, is often treated as if he's going to be a bit of a brute but is actually a great storyteller with a strong connection to landscapes and parts of the world that the more urbane characters might miss.

But in a bouncy pulp fantasy, I want ways to get snappy dialogue and humour with him can be tricky. Of course culture shock/mistranslation humour is a thing, and I do use a few of those cracks early in the book where him not knowing in-world euphemisms etc is a bit funny and helps me explain various concepts to the reader because there's a character who needs to learn about them. But if it keeps running beyond a certain point then rather than being a contact-humour thing it can easily veer into jokes that end up coming at the expense of the person who doesn't understand. As such, I want to make it pretty clear that he's learning the language as the book goes on, make it clear even from early on that he's not lacking in thought complexity even if he's not always expressing it well, etc.

But then I'm still left with this character who is from a less sedentary, more fluid culture than the main characters, is in a sense quite straight-laced, but isn't the straight man for jokes to be bounced off. The other three characters include one very witty character who's the most point of view type, one scholarly-punny character who is the straight man for jokes, and a dwarf who's a kind of nervous but sweet character who doesn't always read social situations well and has a lot of dwarf-society insights which I find easier to make funny. And then this fourth character, the hill-folk guy... often he doesn't get into the conversations as much, because it's easy to get the roles otherwise: the scholar does the informational bit, the wit adds banter, the nervous character makes observations that are either irrelevant or astute, and then the other guy kind of gets left out sometimes.

Maybe this is more of a problem than I think: he's still a good character and he has a lot of distinctive serious character and emotional moments: he's a character who's finding his way in the world and working out what sort of person he is, and there's quite a bit to be written for that. But all these aspects do make me worry I'm under-writing him.

Any thoughts welcome!

A Halloween-and-associated-October-season thread! People like having things appropriate for the season (whether that means actual horror or just the cosily macabre) so I thought we should have a thread to share witchy, ghostly, ghastly, etc things in your life throughout October. I found the title on the internet archive's Old Book Images flickr account

And my starting contribution is some graveyard photography: this is the place I usually go to see wild hamsters down in Meidling, I realised that a lot of people here may have seen my hamster photos but not seen the wider view of the site. Austrian urban graveyards pull out old graves regularly in a way that isn't the norm in the UK, which for UK readers is why there's a big pile of rubble in the bottom left image.

We're due a Thursday, and the last Thursday of the month is the 31st and I assume lots of people will be doing halloween parties and/or playing Veilguard, so maybe let's do the 24th? Any thoughts/who could get there then?

[EDITORIAL & COMMUNITY NEWS]

Issue 55: Autumn 2024

EDITORIAL & COMMUNITY NEWS

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

Whilst last season was a news-heavy one, the summer has been a quieter time for site-wide news. We've been happy to welcome two new voting members, Rob_Haines and The Seamstress: our citizens, or voting members, comprise most of the more active members of Exilian, and get a full say in how the site is run including electing our council and being able to vote directly. If that's something that interests you, you can find out more about becoming a citizen here.

We've had one new article in our articles section, Apocalypse Now Or Never: Apocalypse Always, in which Jubal takes a dive into why apocalyptic ideas are so common in modern fantasy fiction and especially modern fantasy gaming. This is the second part in the series: in the first part, he covered the development of apocalypses as we know them in fiction today. Do drop into the comments over there if you have thoughts on the utter destruction of everything in existence!

Our range of topics in this newsletter is as ever packed and varied for your edification and delight, and we've curiously ended up with a theme, for this is the tavern special: two of our games are set in taverns and another one involves a spa, and our other topics can even provide musical accompaniment, pub activities, and online space for you to kick back and put the world to rights. Also there's some spaceships. Without further ado, here's some updates from the forge!

CONTENTS:

• Editorial & Community News
  
• Game Development
  
  • Find the hidden art of Innkeeping!
  • Melon Head: a game about a guy with a melon for a head
  • The less hidden art of... more innkeeping?
  • Playtesting with Indiekid
  • We've done inns - what about a spa trip?
• Arts & Writing
  
  • Meeting Luxorian's Crew with Vicorva
  • Rob's Piano Music
  • Exoskeletons and elfin aliens in the World of Infinitas
• Miscellany
  
  • What have you been modelling and painting?
  • Off topic chat in the WBU

GAME DEV

Find the hidden art of Innkeeping!

New Exilian member Sea Phoenix has released The Hidden Art of Innkeeping, a game where you fix up a dilapidated farmhouse in a little fantasy village until it becomes a five star travellers' rest! After your character, an experienced innkeeper, has a terrible stay at a coastal hotel with a monopoly on the area's travellers, a chance meeting leads her to set up a competitor, and eventually to becoming the centre of a regrown community. The whimsical and varied bunch of guests and things to do features seashell collecting, an angry peacock, Homeric references, a grumpy carrot farmer, very amateur archaeology, Jane Austen novels, and a mouse called Branka - there's a lot to discover and explore.

The Hidden Art of Innkeeping is the sequel to Sea Phoenix's previous game, The Lost Art of Innkeeping, and features the same protagonist, Elinor - but can be played entirely stand-alone without knowledge of the previous game and its plot. The game is available on both Itch.io and Steam, where reviewers have been praising its 'hilarious and heartwarming' dialogues and comfy vibe.

If you want to see more for yourself, here's where to find out:

Get The Hidden Art of Innkeeping on Itch

Discuss the game on Exilian

Melon Head: a game about a guy with a melon for a head

Yes, the melon is pink. Look, if you were expecting this to make sense after the title, I don't know what to tell you.

New Exilian member Miggo has arrived with something completely different. Something completely different to what would be a valid question, were it not for the fact that Melon Head is completely different to just about anything one cares to name. A point and click adventure with a world of deeply strange beings and a psychedelic colour scheme, Melon Head developed from an initial isometric plan to a classic point-and-click view as it developed.

In the story itself Melon Head is a sculptor who must produce a great piece of art for the glory of the king. He also has a head shaped like a melon. And a wall-mounted food machine who talks and deals with things by you putting them in its mouth. And that's really just the start, as their hunt for parts for a perfect sculpture leads them to dabble in an alley-man's forbidden romances, discuss wistful romanticism with subway ticket salesmen, and amplify sports game broadcasts - all rendered in the most vivid EGA art style pinks, blues and greens imaginable.

Melon Head has just been released, so you can find your way around this madcap adventure yourself - more info below. Good luck finding your way around the stranger parts of the human - or melon-brained - imagination!

Get Melon Head on Itch

Discuss the game on Exilian

The less hidden art of... more innkeeping?

Yes, if you thought we were done with inns after Elinor's tale above, you are about to be amazed because there is more tavern news to come! This one involves less cutesy pets and a considerable amount more spying on guests and dubious food subsitutions because we've reached the wayside rest of Innkeep, the game where you run a grimy fantasy tavern in full guest-robbery Master of the House style. Whereas Elinor starts her tale with a successful business, a bad queue, and a missed train, the protagonist of Innkeep starts out as a vagrant who is drafted into running his inn after wandering in when the previous owner is in the process of getting decapitated by bandits. No matter where you start from, the desire to build a fine inn is the same - but how you get there might be more than a little different.

The news from the games' dev is very exciting: they now have a new company structure, under the title of Boot Disk Games, and a new publishing arrangement with indie publisher Mythwright to eventually publish the final version. Hopefully these new structures and collaborations will help Innkeep move forward towards our screens - fulfilling our destiny, learning the truth, and cooking a couple of innocent rats along the way. Actual chicken is expensive, guys.

Latest Innkeep news on Exilian
Wishlist the game on Steam

But who could these all be? Indiekid's Yarn Spinning tales post has suggestions.

Playtesting with Indiekid

From our range of fictional resting spots to something that can be done in a real pub: Indiekid has been travelling to test his game projects, not perhaps so far as some of his more wide-ranging adventures through the Americas which he's shared in our articles section this year, but Scotland and northeastern England are probably a little easier to find English language boardgame testing groups in! He's been running tests of Yarn Spinning, a collaborative storytelling card-game that creates some very much madcap situations for players.

There are some really fun anecdotes and useful information sets for those making and testing boardgames, including some thoughts on how to compromise with younger players who find the rules tricky but want to play with a group, notes on the comparative size and organisation of the different events involved, and some details of his preparation and organisation. If you're looking to make and test boardgames, some of this real-world experience might be useful to you in making your own tests happen and ensuring you get the best experience for your playtesters and the most useful outcomes for you. It's always worth remembering that game testing has to happen with real people, not with a sealed-box imagined ideal player, and listening to real experiences is a good way to see how that can work.

Latest Indiekid Updates

We've done inns - what about a spa trip?

The giant tooth-mawed fungus is not how pedicure day was meant to go.

Are you fed up with everyone's stupid requests? Find the cat? Retrieve the magic sword? Kill god? Maybe you need a spa trip - but it will probably end up being to the SPA OF DESTINY, which presumably appears in the title IGNIS UNIVERSIA: THE SPA OF DESTINY, a game in which the Chosen Sisters, having saved the world, are mildly frustrated that their mentor's plans to go on an adventure and save the world again will end up encroaching on their holiday time.

The game offers turn-based combat, a full character roster who remain in the party at all times, 12-13 hours of gameplay, a completely annoyingly generic male protagonist free zone, and if the available GIFs are to be believed possibly a beaver in plaid turning up at some point which we can all agree is very exciting indeed. It's gone through considerable development and a name change since a 2022 kickstarter, and the now available demo should give people a good idea for how the game will look and feel - and just how wrong an attempted holiday can go.

Get the demo on Steam
Read more about the game on Exilian

ARTS AND WRITING

Meeting Luxorian's Crew with Vicorva

Veo Corva's latest novella has been successfully funded on Ko-fi! Entitled Space Dragons: Luxorian's Crew, this space fantasy novella brings readers to a world where dragons and their riders are key to travelling the galaxy, with the rider key as a voice to the crew. For Luxorian, a dragon abandoned by their rider but in need of money, this creates a dilemma: how to run a ship and crew without the rider whose job it was to captain them?

The tale promises spaceships, sneaky robots, horrors from the void of deep space, and working out how to heal when hurt by someone you trusted. V's readers have duly rallied to that promise and we can congratulate them on a 209% funded successful Ko-fi campaign! Using Ko-fi rather than things like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo offers creators a different model: V cited Ko-fi's low processing fees and separation of backer fulfillments costs as reasons for choosing the platform for this campaign, so this may be something other creators might want to look into.

If you want to get yourself a copy, the paperback book is expected to be released for non-backers to buy sometime in the next few months, with ebooks already having gone out to Ko-Fi campaign backers. We look forward to seeing how this draconic adventure through the stars unfolds!

Veo Corva's Ko-fi Page

Crowdfunding thread on Exilian

Rob's Piano Music

Our multi-talented new citizen Rob Haines has been doing piano music and arrangements over in the Artisans' Guilds! In 2019 he picked up the instrument again (presumably non-literally, but we can neither confirm nor deny the possibility of Rob's talents including super-strength) after playing it as a child, and he's been posting some of his pieces. He recently started trying arranging music for the first time, too, with a version of the main theme of Skies of Arcadia posted recently which is lovely to listen to.

If you're thinking of picking up an instrument for the first or second time, or if you never stopped, we'd love to hear what you're up to with it as well - the Artisans' Guilds provide space for all such bardic projects, and bards of all abilities are always very welcome. We hope to see you there, whether as a listener or to delight our audiences, someday soon!

Rob's Piano Music on Exilian

Exoskeletons and elfin aliens in the World of Infinitas

After the removal of Azolinti "Retribution" fleets Elfurr initiated the counter attack. In 2583 AD there was created "Expansion" armada. And king Senuhsert gave an order to continue the conquest till the center of Azolinti Prior Worlds. It was the strongest decision.

Glatlakla who led the Azolinti fleets returned to his homeworld in Azolis-Hmjar and was eaten there by elders. Council of Azolinti didn't like his defeats.

After the creation of "Expansion" fleet, Elfurr by orders of prince-governor Yammra made a massive strike with nuclear warheads. Powerful hyperspace rockets attacked over 500 Azolinti planets and satellites. It was the signal of future invasion.

Admiral User'kaf prepared to finish his mission and capture these 500 worlds for the Elfurr empire. Soon giant fleets of Elfurr reached the Azolinti borders and attacked hundreds of their systems...

In the wide array of writings by BagaturKhan about his huge World of Infinitas setting has come some new entries on the Elfurr - Azolinti Eternal War. The Elfurr, an elfin alien species, and their arthropod-like foes, the Azolinti, fought for over ten thousand years of the setting's history: when Elfurr explorers reached the Taote galaxy and the planetary space owned by the Azolinti clans, existing antipathies and mistrust burst into conflict.

BagaturKhan's extensive notes on the war include details of the Azolinti battlefleet, the Fl'Taa, and the Elfurr special Expansion fleet that opposed them, including the different varieties of warship and commanders, as well as details of some of the most major engagements. It's a really interesting look into the huge but dedicated work of crafting such an extensive setting - do take a look!

Read about the Elfurr-Azolintin Eternal War on Exilian

Visit the World of Infinitas Forum

MISCELLANY

Don't think of the big hammer as crushing your enemies: it's just percussive maintenance of your personal space.

What have you been modelling and painting?

Tabletop gaming has always been a part of Exilian - we've always had a wargames or tabletop games section, and one of our first projects was the Warhammer: Total War mod for Rome: Total War, which brought one of the world's most popular tabletop games into the classic Total War Engine (well before Games Workshop came up with the same plan). One aspect of the tabletop world that our discussions on rules and ideas and settings don't always cover, though, is the physicality of it. Models are cool, and it's worth taking a look and having a think

As such, here's a highlight for our modelling and painting thread in the tabletop games forum. This is your place to let us know what you've been making and painting, and what. This neat little Stormcast Eternal was a recent first foray into painting by Zibbit, which we think turned out pretty well! Creating miniatures and bringing them to life through paint is a long-as-a-piece-of-string hobby where some people have highly professional skills and others get by with a simple bold scheme (and your correspondent writing this piece just makes a mess usually). That makes it especially helpful to be able to share and discuss it in a kind and welcoming space: there's always more to learn and more to think about, but equally it's helpful to get encouragement whatever one's level of ability.

We hope you'll join the discussion in that spirit - have you been painting or modelling anything lately? Please do let us know over in the forum's Game Room!

What have you painted today?

Giant 18th century wigs are, for better or worse, just as optional as the booze.

Off topic chat in the WBU

The Workshop Booze Up thread, Exilian's general off-topic chatter space, has not been as well trodden a path as it used to be in the last couple of years, but in this tavern special it's time to give it a highlight. The WBU has been a feature of Exilian since the beginning - the first post of the first version of the thread was post #2 on the entire forum - and since then we've had 1000 posts per iteration of the thread before starting anew. We're now on the seventh iteration of this undertaking, with day to day life chatter, commemorations of the Glorious 25th of May, and everything in between happening there over the years.

Whilst booze specifically is very much optional, having a place to kick back and discuss how life is going or just throw a silly comment in and say hi to people is something very worth having. As such, we'll take this chance to remind you, dear reader, that all are welcome in the Jolly Boar Inn. If you'd like to tell us you forgot your cup of tea, check in on how everyone's doing, express a strong opinion about bactrian camels, or blink at the glory of a flower, the WBU is your space to do so - and we hope you'll join us there.

Latest posts in Workshop Booze Up VII

That's all for this month! If you found any part of this useful or interesting, please do give us a shout to your friends or on your social media - it really helps support our many great creative folks if the word about their deeds is spread by bards and/or blogs to all corners of the land. Until next time, fair readers! May your ways be swift and the clouds light above you!

You can now get the demo! It's available at the Steam store page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2824620/The_Exile_Princes/

The demo version lets you play the first 35 weeks of a campaign, with the task of getting to 40 relation points with a city. If you succeed, or hit week 35, that ends the demo campaign. Only one map size and one faction are available, and the hardest difficulty is locked too: those other options will be unlocked at full release

Found this blogpost which I quite enjoyed, mostly pitches for the sort of Star Wars films I'd in some cases really quite like to watch but which nobody is likely to actually make:
https://throneofsalt.blogspot.com/2024/09/star-wars-movies-that-dont-exist-and.html

[Rules]

Folklore Jam 2024

https://itch.io/jam/folklorejam24

Just stumbled across this: submissions open from October 1st 2024 at 1:00 AM to November 1st 2024 at 12:59 AM if anyone else is interested. I'm not sure if I'll have time to enter but thought I'd share it here anyways

Rules

• Write an analogue game that incorporates elements from a folklore (including myths, urban legends, etc) of your own culture or a place you belong.
• An analogue game is a game that can be played in physical space (but with the advance of technology, can also be played online), such as tabletop role-playing game, LARP and board game.
• Game about a folklore of your own creation is allowed.
• Game about folklore creation is allowed.
• Old games are allowed, as long as they are updated during the jam period.
• No AI or crypto-art! Entries containing them will be removed.
• No hate speech or bigotry!

[The Camp (Day)]

Arco: A Walkthrough Guide

A guide to what's where in Arco and how to deal with it. Still very much incomplete, lots more to be said on all of this.

Act 1: Pilgrimage
A boy and his family go to visit a sacred tree: but someone else is there first.

Main quest
The main quest here is fairly simple and tutorialish: you go to get some yarrow for one of your village members, Ohtil, and he warns you to wash the oil off your hands. Keeping the oil adds guilt, removing it removes some. You then do some bow and fight training with your father.

At night you sneak away to the tree, and you'll be ambushed by some Red Company bandits (we're going to see a lot of these guys). You can escape them with your new Dash skill (make sure you get & equip it before the fight) - it doesn't really make a difference whether you elect to "run" or "fight" here. Stumbling and running away, you'll end up heading into their base and a second, essentially unwinnable combat which ends the chapter.

Locations
The Camp (Day) - you can talk to your parents, grandpa, sister, and Ohtil. You can pet the donkey, or Roberto the llama.
The Meadow (Day) - you get some oily yarrow here. On the right hand side you can find an extra coin.
The Cave (Day) - you can get this location from your sister once you've completed Ohtil's quest. Enter the cave to fight 3 gila lizards and get their eggs, which you can trade for the rattlesnake tail to gift to the tree.
The Camp (Night) - you can steal your father's map key, and open the map chest. You can also observe an owl.
The Meadow (Night) - there's some angry beetles here now.
The Cave (Night) - there's some angry beetles here now. This isn't a duplicate of the meadow text by accident, there's just a lot of angry beetles around the place.
The Tree (Night) - all you can do here is approach the tree and fight some fireflies to get to the base.
The Tree (Morning) - give your offering, head out, get shot at.
The Refinery - get piled on. Survive?

Achievements

• If you pet the donkey enough times it will bray at you: there's an achievement for this.

Act 2
A much older man who doesn't have a lot of family visits an old friend - before things go wrong yet again.

Main quest

Part 1: Murzeku
You arrive in Murzeku and can observe or talk to various locals, including Eztli and her child Cayo. Take a job from your ol' pal Yorka to go deal with some local vermin.

When you return, the village has been burned and you need to work out who by.

Leaving Murzeku after it has been burned is a poitn of no return.

Part 2: Korni to Onem
You head across Iyo lands, tracking the boot-prints of the raiders: including finding the killers, but also realising you need to stop this problem at the source. This involves cutting off the head of the snake, starting by heading to a high monastery, where they'll give you a sidequest to clear out a temple in exchange for information.

Part 3
Armed with information (and an arco), you set off into Kanek lands to try and find out whether a Kanek noble was working with the Red Company.

Part 4
With or without the Kanek noble's relative in tow, you set out for Termanos to get the location of the Red Company's headquarters.


Locations

Murzeku Area Locations

Murzeku - lots of people to talk to here but few that make a gameplay difference. Zumi and Tozi are on the left as you arrive, Roka is next going right, Kora is by the well, Eztli is just below the main path. You can watch the children playing. Dialogues will change after you talk to Eztli, unlocking e.g. a chat with Puzo about your boots and Yuli who's sharpening knives. There's a further change after you talk to Yorka, unlocking new dialogues with Eztli and Puzo.

When you return, Murzeku has been burned. The left house you think has Puzo's corpse in, and in the next one you'll find Yorka's body. You can find Cayo and promise to get him to safety in the third hut, further right. You need to pick up the Kanek necklace that's sparkling on the ground next to that, and then look at the footprints in the mud, to unlock the next path. These last two are the non-optional interactions: you can leave Cayo behind, which will get you additional guilt when you reach Korni You seem to get some guilt from seeing Yorka's body, so you might be able to reduce guilt by skipping examining all the houses.
Murzo Farm - you can talk to Noza here above the path to get a heads-up about the bandits, and get some free murzo from Kora who's at the bottom of the screen. When you return after fighting the lizards, it will have been burned. Your character tries not to remember Noza and Kora's names.
Copse - you can observe Brogs here and pick Murzo. On your way back after fighting the lizards, there will be some poachers here: either dialogue option will start a fight. You can then search the bushes for their traps and goods - there's a chance of taking some hp damage from a snare here.
Shrine to Yoza - you can pray (or not) here and give shrine offerings. You can donate meat, a ring, or coins. The ring gives 3xp, the others don't seem to have an effect.
Lizard Rocks - You can find a ring on the far left of the screen. At the top right, some tracks will reveal the way to the Poachers' Camp.
Poachers' Camp - If you come here before fighting the lizards, there'll be some bugs to fight.

Korni Area Locations

Meadow - you'll get some description of your feelings here. You can get vigo thorns off a cactus mid-screen, and see Onem in the distance with an observation point. Two darker trees have a footprint observation next to them.
Lonely Hut - there's two Tuags here. If you have a non-meat food, you can offer to share a meal with them and you'll get given some throwing knives and a whetstone. Conveniently, looking in the hut on the right hand side of the screen gives you some cheese that can be used for this purpose. An observation point mid-screen gives a not very useful footprint. There's a lamb in the bushes here that can be turned into meat or, later, retrieved for a quest.
Korni - Etzli lives here and will either be glad of her son's return or distraught at his loss. Puzo's cousin also mentions him. Paquini lives in a central house and will give you a quest to look for some bandits who may have been responsible for Murzeku's destruction: you don't actually need to do this quest to advance the main plot. You meet Atzi the merchant here and can offer to escort him to Onem.
Old Village Ruins - There are bandits here. You can learn their hideout location by listening to them. A point in the bottom left gives a bootprint that isn't the one you're looking for. There's a chest here you can shoot. It'll explode and hurt you if you do.
Monolith - This is where the Red Company men who burned Murzeku are holed up. Find them in the upper cave and kill them to advance the main quest and unlock the road to Onem. The bottom cave contains a two-part fight against a lot of bugs, which will get you some XP and some mushrooms.

Onem

Hinterlands - there's blueberries available on the left as you enter this screen. The bounty hunter will enter from the right and you'll have to confront him. You can go for your bow, at which point you'll fight and kill him, or you can greet him and share a meal.
Fields - there's a cookie seller here.
Empty Fields - you'll get jumped here by the shovel gang. You can fight them for XP, but if you pay them off they'll give you a shovel and the ability to combat equip it to give future enemies a good shovellin'.
Mountains - you'll get jumped by bandits here too. You can pay them off for ten coins, or fight them.

Achievements

• Hungry: at the Lonely Hut, there's a lamb at the observation point next to the hut itself.
• Heartless: saying you don't like cookies to the woman in the fields south of Onem.
• Bounty Hunter's Hideout: at the steep path, head to the left side of the screen, then down and left around the rocks. There'll be a red side arrow: take this to find the hideout and get the achievement. You probably need the Bounty Hunter's Map from killin him in order to do this.

Act 3
A girl who dreams of being a warrior rather than a farmer decides it's time to live her dreams - but they might turn out to be nightmares when brought into reality.

Main quest
Part 1: Katzan
This is Itzae's village, and you are Itzae. You want to prove yourself to your family and neighbours, though they're all a bit tired of your fists being such a major part of your self-proving.

When you enter the temple the world changes.
When you head from the Chili Tree to the Burnt Forest it's a point of no return.

Part 2: Xinatzu
This is the area where you need to choose how you'll deal with the curse from part 1 - you can elect to seek help from divine intervention, or go to the arena and prove yourself in bloody combat. Either way, you'll need some help to get to where you're going.

Your points of no return from here are the river valley for the arena path, and the cliff base for the holy ground path.

Part 3a: Holy Ground
Leaving the Holy Ground again is a point of no return.

Part 4a: Zurkano
You've left Kanek lands, and need to find your way in a strange new world.

Achievements

• At the start of this act you can get a premature roll-credits by insisting to your uncle that you're willing to give up your warrior dreams and become a squash farmer. The game lets you do it, ending your adventure.
• The 'happy boy' achievement can be obtained by giving a trasgo a stick.
• The 'entrepreneur' achievement can be obtained once you reach the trasgo merchant. You need to hold 15 sticks: this is the only place you can sell things in exchange for sticks. Essentially, get meat from hunting, sell the meat for sticks, once you have 15 you can get the achievement. Then use the sticks to buy worms and have a nice fishing trip.

Act 4
Two Tuag siblings are heading off to do a deal with some magia dust which they've got funds to buy. Things aren't going to go according to plan.

Main Quest
Much of the Act 4 main quest doesn't have No Return points, but I've split it into logical story elements.

Part 1: Aziya
In this part, you head for the Dust Transfer point across the desert. You can get supplies and sidequests at the small town of Aziya.

Part 2: Motakar
The dust transfer failed: now you (optionally with one of the Chalis who had been going to sell you the dust) need to track the thieves. The bigger settlement of Motakar is the main point here.

Part 3: Red Desert
You're now in Chali country, trying to find your way to a hermit who sold them the dust in the first place. The Chalis mine and refine red tetl rock in these hills.

Once you reach the path to the hermit, you realise your camels aren't up to the journey. Doing the sidequest for the stud farm will resolve your issue and let you progress.

The path from the Red Desert to the Hermit is a point of no return.

Part 4: The Hermit
It's an old guy, he's got information but he wants you to kill a creature out of legend first. No big deal.

Part 5: Salt Flats
You're reaching Newcomer country - and getting closer to getting your funds back. But at what cost?

Side Quests
~To Be Written~

Tactics
Acid Queen
~To Be Written~

Achievements

• This is the best act for getting the "stingy" achievement for holding forty coins (though I think you can easily do it in Act V as well, if you've hoarded enough stuff and Atzi sells it all). But getting the red rocks from the quarry and then selling them at the refinery in red desert country is pretty profitable, in any case.
• To get the Sheriff achievement, you need to use a rope to abseil down the last cliff before the point of no return on the map, the one which has a crab sitting above it and a cave visible on a ledge below. You'll find a somewhat disturbed Newcomer woman in there. Don't drink the tea!
• You can find the toaster by digging in the desert: I think you need an ideal spot, so you need to "keep searching" twice. Once you have it, just pull up your inventory, click the toaster and press u to "use" it. You'll lose 1hp from the toaster popping up at you, and get the That Toaster achievement.

Act 5
The endgame: our heroes from acts 1-4 all go to confront the Red Company together. Time to end this.

Part 1: Termanos
You need to get on a train! Your heroes may not share your enthusiasm for public transport, and indeed there's a large problem when it turns out to not be a very public sort of public transport.

Part 2: Oil flats
The oil is very much a metaphor for the darkness of the soul. But also, it's oil.

Part 3: Showdown
Walk in, burn everything, fight a big machine, have a last shootout, roll credits.

Achievements

• You can get the "Useless" achievement easily when boarding the train. Just buy a ticket: you don't need one.

Overall Achievements, Tactica, and Notes

Maximising Guilt
Act 2:

• Do find Yorka's body
• Don't save Cayo
• Go for your arco and kill the bounty hunter

World and Lore

Peoples
There are five key peoples.

The Iyo are a herding culture who live in rolling hill country. It's not clear how - or if - Iyo society is organised above the village level. Iyo country has monks (at least at Onem), and pilgrimages to sacred sites.

The Kaneks are a forest people: some farm in forest clearings, others hunt. Kaneks have an aristocracy, unlike the other three indigenous peoples. They are also known for being fierce warriors by the other peoples.

The Tuags live in the desert and specialise in desert foraging and crossings. They are known for being traders, and have village elders much like the Iyos.

The Chalis. Chalis seem to work with technologies that the Iyo, Kaneks and Tuags don't use as much, making use of rifles and running refineries for the rocks they mine.

The Newcomers are a colonising people. They have a local capital at Termanos. Their society is very oil-hungry, leading to wide scale drilling, and makes use of machinery, railways, and firearms. Most bandits in the game appear to be Newcomers at least in that they're not visually distinct from Newcomers and tend to use firearms, although some groups that are narratively not Newcomers are still presented the same as them (the locals in the Iyo mountains for example).

Bestiary

Axolotl - They appear to have some level of sapience in this setting.
Camels - appear to be native to the region, ridden by the Tuag.
Donkeys - mostly seen in Iyo country.
Firefly - actually hurt if they get too close to you in this world. Which they'll keep trying to do.
Gila Lizard - a common native lizard. Quite aggressive.
Goat - It's a goat. It'll probably try and eat your hat.
Humans - they're a species, they're going in the bestiary.
Llamas - rideable, in contrast to their real-world equivalents.
Owl - Seen as an omen by the Iyo.
Trasgo - A goblin-like creature. They like sticks and rocks.
Sun spider - A huge creature found in an ancient ruin. Only one of its kind seen.

[Part 2: Apocalypse Always]

Apocalypse Now - Or Never?

By Jubal

Part 2: Apocalypse Always

Is the promise of modern fantasy "you can prevent this"?

In the first part of this article series, I looked at the history of apocalypses, and particularly at the difference between the historical idea of apocalypse and that used in modern fantasy. The most fundamental difference in these ideas is that religious and mythic apocalypse is usually fundamentally impossible to avert: it is a matter of fate rather than choice, and it is revelatory, both of the ultimate way that divine plans will unfold, and in revealing the flaws and problems that made the present world rotten to begin with.

Modern fantasy apocalypses, meanwhile, are very much possible to avert. They have more in common, as we saw last time, with older European fears of steppe conquerors than fears of religious apocalypses, and they often represent and reflect very modern anxieties about human-scale actors being able to achieve global destruction. This very feature is core to how we set up disasters that heroes can overcome – and therefore to modern fantasy as a whole.

Of course, not all fantasy operates on this sort of world-ending scale, but it's undeniable that quite a lot does, and in a lot of cases it's operating on this scale from the audience's perspective. For example, it's not made wholly clear in Baldur's Gate 3 to what extent there are still forces on Faerun who might be capable of resisting the villain (or a villainous player character) if they win and achieve god-like levels of psionic power. But from the perspective of the game-world, this is an irrelevant question: you and everything you might have cared about are definitely lost. The world that is ending, in short, doesn't need to be the multiverse to make something apocalyptic, it needs to be the world as an audience perceives it. A totality of destruction that leaves either nothing at all behind, or a world so changed that it's twisted out of recognition.

Modern fantasy also tends to rest on the premise that the world is under threat and that the role of heroes is to stop that threat. This is rooted in a sort of inherent small-c conservatism in the genre, derived in part from Tolkien's scepticism of machines and industrialisation: the status quo or past and its protection are the essential objective, and enemies are often seeking some form of darkly transformational 'progress'. Even where the world is rotten and is fundamentally changed by the heroes, this is often presented as a return to an older, more balanced or more free form of existence: Aragorn's fourth age Reunited Kingdom will not at least to begin with have the corrupt lethargy of Denethor's retreating Gondor, but this is a return to or echo of the Numenorean past rather than a move forward into a new and reimagined future.

That's not to say that fantasy needs to operate like that, or always does: something like NK Jemisin's Broken Earth books would be a prime example of questioning through fantasy whether worlds and their status quo situations do, in fact, need to be broken. Nor is it to say that there's anything wrong with an external threat as the core of a story. Tolkien wasn't wrong that the protection of the natural world, and of what we retain from the past, are things with real value, nor was he wrong that there's something that sits badly with the practice of breaking things for the sake of knowledge-seeking or avarice. The tendency to make the external threat the core of the genre, though, is one of the things that makes apocalypse so embedded in fantastical literature. It's also how moving such a world-ending event forwards becomes a necessary part of plot writing, and therefore is key to the birth of another feature of the apocalypses we know today - the modern villain.

The devil acts through the evil hearts of men. Thanos just acts.

Think how many villains want to end or destroy the world in some significant way in modern media. It's probably a higher number than want to actually rule the world, which is curiously damning regarding how good we seem to think our own planet and its fictional counterparts are. Some of these want to destroy the world in order to replace its current inhabitants in some way, reflecting a lot of modern fears about obsolescence and change, whereas others want to destroy the world in service of some other goal.

This represents another shift in apocalypses: they are often now produced by much clearer, sharper villains than are the case in much premodern literature. Whilst yes, Loki is ultimately responsible for Ragnarok, he is far from consistently the scheming villain of Norse myth, and in a biblical apocalypse, Satan really has rather little agency in bringing it about. These figures might precipitate and symbolise apocalypse, but they don't have a fundamental motivation for it, in part because they don't have a motivation for very much. The devil is presumed to want to tempt mortals on account of being evil, but it's incredible just how rare it is that one actually sees him planning anything whatsoever: his role is to show and bring out the evil that was already within people through temptation, not to be a figure with true narratively described agency to create and cause evil. Few writers since perhaps CS Lewis have described apocalypses that have this sort of moralising character to them, and Lewis very explicitly was drawing on Christian models.

Consider that against Thanos, whose active quest to gain the infinity stones is a major driver of the plot, or Corypheus in Dragon Age, who actively seeks to use the breach in the veil to enter the Fade and claim the empty thrones of the gods. These characters, as apocalyptic villains, are oriented around particular plans and goals that the heroes must compete against. They are active characters in a way that really can be said of very few literary villains of past ages, and in many cases they, not the hero, are the driving force behind the plot. As we saw above, an active threat to the status quo gives something for the hero to come up against.

But why from the audience perspective are they used quite so much? What makes this particular formula work?

Good guy or not? Iif the world needs saving, everyone has to chip in.

The essential reason why apocalypses keep getting used in modern SFF is that they are a very efficient plot driver. The impending apocalypse is a quick and easy way to ensure that there is something bad going on that is relatively easy to telegraph to a viewer, reader or player. We have a well developed visual language for absolute villainy, rooted in a mixture of classical and biblical imagery combined with cultural memories of twentieth century fascism. Deploying that alongside a sense of immediate threat engages an audience fast, buying attention span that can then be used to develop the world later. It is normal that at the starting point the scale of the apocalypse isn't fully revealed, but this is to allow for a slowly escalating scale of threat as the media develops.

This is especially interesting for developers of role-playing games, because an apocalyptic system maximises possibility while minimising necessary buy-in for players. If the player's very survival relies on them facing down a threat, then there is no need to ensure that the player is otherwise bought into the values or necessity of protecting any other thing in particular. In a game context, where one wants to get the player involved in the game fast with minimal backstory dumping, this has very great utility. Unlike for a book character, who can immediately act according to an in-world perspective, players of a computer game don't immediately have mental access to all of the surrounding lore and how the world works. Short-cutting that with an immediate large threat is, therefore, extremely useful.

An opening threat can also be a good driver of secondary action, for example by creating scenes where the audience and point of view heroes are aware of how bad things are right at the start but where the rest of the in-setting world takes time to catch up. This helps set up a lot of potential interactions and persuasion to come together against a common threat (Dragon Age: Origins and Mass Effect both pull this one as examples, but indeed we get it in Tolkien as well in the tragedy of Boromir). This necessity of pulling together against a common threat also allows for a wider character cast.

In particular, that's especially important for players with evil outlooks or motivations. The apocalypse is the threat that allows someone who is essentially self-serving and venal, or even pledged to some other horrible goal that is at odds with the one being pursued by an apocalyptic villain, then they can still be part of the action. In a situation that's this bad, you might need all the help you can get, even if that help is pretty grim itself – or even if you're pretty grim yourself. You know things are bad when the world is calling on you of all people, and it's certainly true that a villain – where else are you going to steal, murder and pillage if you don't have a world left to do it in?

The adventuring party of unlikely or varied heroes as a stock trope therefore is significantly ease in its setup by having a common threat to unite against. That in turn allows for the kinds of writing that people often want in SFF and in stories in general, where we get contrasting characters from different walks of life. This is especially useful in stories with varied secondary-world settings, because it means we can have characters who understand different elements of the world taking part, and it's useful for creating a lively, diverse points of view core character group to begin with.

Having built up our heroes, we come to a third key point about apocalypses: apocalypse implies climax. Especially if there is a villain behind the apocalypse to confront, but even if confronting the apocalypse is a matter of turning back some non-human force, there must be a turning point or final confrontation where the apocalypse is defeated. That is, basically, the moment when a writer gets to let rip with their special effects budget: destroying bad things is fast and punchy and can be truly spectacular. An apocalyptic climax helps give the audience an immediate, visual sense of achievement: think the fall of Barad-dur, or Alduin the dragon crashing to earth, or all the big explosions at the end of Fallout 1.

One can have a big explosion without a strictly apocalyptic threat, of course, but if the threat is apocalyptic, it gives a much bigger scope for "problem solved" as an endgame situation. A merely human scale threat begs the question of why another, similarly human sized threat won't rise again in the near future: there will always be scheming viziers and cruel kings and ruthless generals. The very apocalyptic nature of a threat tends to make it something that genuinely is irreplaceable, such that at the very least the next apocalypse will need to look rather different. This amplifies the sense of achievement for a game player, or relief for a book reader, in imagining the world after the heroes' adventures.


So there are some thoughts on why apocalypses are useful – and why we have quite so many of them knocking around SFF books, media, and games. We've seen how apocalypses are good for helping audiences rapidly enter a story-world, for explaining a story pulling together diverse character casts, and building strong narrative climaxes with a sense of achievement. We've also seen how that's often underpinned by driving, plot-defining villains that threaten a status quo that needs protecting.

There are, however, still some questions left to be answered, and in part 3 of this series I'm going to look at the problems with the apocalypse as a driving narrative force – when it shouldn't be used, whether it's over-used, and what creators could do to vary or change the format in what they write. Until then!



This is the second part of a series. You can read part one, A Brief History of the End of the World, here.
 

Did a test with trickthegiant playing as the Lexihad and myself playing the Verwynn.

The scenario was "extraction", requiring the players to pick up robot bodies from a central crashed ship. That in turn played hugely to the Lexihad's strengths. I just started with a knight and a polymath, and no crew, whereas the Lexihad's big prophet-explorer squad turned out to be a huge benefit. Even though I got there first, there was no way I could take on the Lexihad's superior numbers.

Possible fixes:

• Verwynn polymaths should maybe start with a guard.
• For one-shot games it might make sense for players to choose their crew after the planet and objectives are revealed: if I'd had more troops it would've evened the score a bit.
• For extraction scenarios, multiplying how many robot bodies can be carried by numbers of crew is really helpful to factions with a lot of regular crewmen. Might need to change it so only one can be carried per adventurer at a time, though I don't know how I'd explain that from a game logic POV.
• Verwynn knights are underpowered right now: hard to stop combat being a simple numbers game because more dice better, and their 2d6 is weaker than having a +d6 from an extra crewman.

Other than that it was a fun test, we explored an open but rugged landscape, there was a high-defense native sapient species living in high tech pods who were, whilst highly defensive homebodies, nonetheless very curious about the newcomers and tricks converted some of them. Two earthquakes triggered on the map, wrecking one of the pod-villages and in the second case killing two adventurers in the last turn of the game.

Friend of Exilian James Holloway used the Cepheida monster generation rules as the basis for the most recent episode of his podcast Monster Man! He created some plains biome monsters which seemed pretty cool, and I think it's a nice example of how the generative world-building in the game can go.

You can listen at either of the links below:
https://monsterman.libsyn.com/special-episode-science-fiction-monster-roulette
https://www.patreon.com/posts/special-episode-110834426

So this happened:
https://nanowrimo.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/29933455931412-What-is-NaNoWriMo-s-position-on-Artificial-Intelligence-AI

And it's pretty miserable honestly. They're arguing that banning AI would be ablist and classist which Sure Is A Hell Of A Take. Especially claiming it's classist, given that AI works by hoovering up the work of large numbers of not-elite creators to be juice for technologies owned by the top end of society's elites. Their argument that it creates accessibility equally feels crap, because the main publishing costs that can be reduced by AI use are things like cover art, which ends up being "making things accessible" to indie writers by taking work away from indie artists.

Then there's the ableism bit. Now, I think that one of the more valid uses for AI (though I'm jury out on whether it's worth the heavy costs of development) is accessibility: producing rough summaries and text transcriptions or loose frameworks in a case where you're then going to edit and fill them out, or for producing written descriptions of images for blind folks if nobody else has bothered to do it. That said, that's not what NaNoWriMo are doing here - they're making it pretty clear that they're blanket OK with AI writing, which means AI for core text production and plot-writing is in there too. That is not something AI is good at, and claiming disabled folks can't do it feels really infantilising.

And there's just... no recognition of the criticism? At all? Which feels weird, it really feels like a counterattack post rather than a "we've weighed all this up, we hear you, but here's our position" which makes it come across SO much worse.


EDIT: Got sent this link which suggest that this is inevitable money talking: an AI-assist writing tool called ProWritingAid is this year's major sponsor. https://pivot-to-ai.com/2024/09/02/nanowrimo-gets-ai-sponsor-says-not-writing-your-novel-with-ai-is-classist-and-ableist/


My one plus side from this is that I'm probably finally not going to feel bad about not doing NaNoWriMo this year, because I actively don't want to support a project that's going to be this amoral about how it operates.

We're back to due a Friday this month I think, which means the 20th or 27th could both be options. Thoughts welcome!