PrimeJunta

They talked about this a quite a bit during the KS and the updates, IIRC. Too lazy to dig up the references, but to my recollection -- Not all souls are equal. Some are strong, some are weak, some are fractured, and so on. I.e., not everybody has a soul powerful enough to produce magical effects, even with training. Use of soul powers requires discipline and training. Hence animancy, orders of paladins and monks, adventurers tempering their souls through practice, and so on. I.e., your strong-souled cobbler would be entirely feasible, and a weak-souled adventurer would probably not get very far. Not very democratic, I know! A preference for consistency in lore is not simulationism*, and Obsidian is clearly putting a lot of effort into it. They've enthused about how the soul mechanic informs the lore -- where undead come from, what the best kind of steel is, how the different societies relate to animancy, what their attitudes are to manifested soul powers, how the gods feed into all that, and so on. I said in an earlier discussion in a somewhat different context with someone else that just because it's fantasy does not mean that anything goes. A well-built fantasy world and fantasy story still has to be internally consistent; to respect its own rules. "No soulful cobblers because :pout:" is lazy and sloppy. Obsidian is not lazy and sloppy with their lore; that's in fact the one thing that they do miles better than anyone else in the business. *Simulationism has nothing to do with lore, actually. Simulationism is the view that a game system should be designed to simulate some real or imagined aspects of the world the game happens in, and the accuracy or believability of the simulation is more important than fun in gameplay. This discussion isn't even about the mechanics; it's about the lore. Hence the accusation of simulationism is entirely tangential.** **I too prefer my games to be enjoyable rather than accurate. Many years ago I have dabbled with some flight simulators aiming for maximal realism, but then I discovered that flying a simulated airliner is really boring once you figure out what the buttons do. However, I do especially enjoy games that manage to excel both in believability and in enjoyability, and I think it would be cool if someone once made a cRPG that explicitly attempted to be both. I even have some ideas on how that could work, but that's a whole different topic.

@Bill Gates' Son: Nonsense. The devs have said a few weeks ago that the game is feature- and content-complete, with the only new assets still in the production pipeline being some b-priority armor and weapon sets, sounds, and final animations. Those are all drop-in resources and any of them could even be dropped without jeopardizing release. Today is June 2. There's six months left of 2014. They'll have it ready and polished by the end of September, perhaps October if they take a nice long vacation. Barring huge force majeure type things, there's no way they're delaying it until 2015. As to your specific objections -- 1. Yes, that's a pretty remarkable achievement. But then they're veterans -- they've worked with many different engines, and have large and complex utilities that they can port over as-is (e.g. their dialog and quest editor). This is all terra cognita, and you can develop really fast if there are few unknowns and you know what you're doing. 2. They left final animations, sound, and FX until the end of the process. This makes production more efficient, but means that any video they would make would make people howl. (Some are already nitpicking about the stuff they have shown.) We know a lot about what they're doing and how they're doing it from several people. A gameplay video would be nice confirmation but it's not necessary. 3. Not in the past several years though, and not when they've had control of the schedule. 4. Not bigger than similar games they've made in similar timeframes in the past, though. 5. Unlikely. The way they work, once it hits public beta it'll be pretty much done. They might tweak a few UI elements or such, but they won't introduce new systems or assets, do major rebalancing or such. That's not how JES rolls.

Caption: "An agent of Dunryd Row attempts to perceive a "housed" soul within a piece of evidence." So yes, he is using his arcane powers. (I couldn't find the reference, but I do seem to recall that the fist holding that... thing was confirmed to be the Dunryd Row emblem.) Let's recap the known facts and supporting pieces of evidence. Fact: Josh referred to Dunryd Row as 'secret police' and 'spy service' and said that it's staffed by ciphers. Fact: A portrait of an agent of Dunryd Row shows a character in uniform performing an investigation. Fact: Adam Brennecke referred to said agent as a 'detective' and stated that he 'investigates murders and such.' Metatextual point: street addresses are common circumlocutions for police headquarters. Scotland Yard, Quai des Orfèvres etc. I can't think of a street address standing in for a state police, however. The Lubyanka for example was not a euphemism for the CheKa or the KGB. Context: Dyrwood noble families are stated to engage in feuding on a regular basis. My hypothesis: "Secret police" in its modern sense presupposes a law-based state, where said police organization operates outside the law and in secret. I do not believe this fits Dyrwood exactly, since it is described as a feudal state, where the lord is the lawa. Therefore, Josh must have used the term to suggest an idea rather than in its precise technical meaning. I'm assuming, however, that 'secret police' is the closest he can get to expressing it in two words.¨ Therefore, to reconcile all this evidence, I posit that Dunryd Row combines several different but interrelated functions. It is an investigative police organization, similar to Scotland Yard, in that it investigates crimes of a particularly notable and complex nature. In particular, it investigates crimes that are of direct interest to the ruling classes of Defiance Bay. If some scullion gets his head bashed in in a barfight, it's unlikely that they would be called in, but if the daughter of an aristocratic family is found dead in her bed the day before her wedding, they most likely would. In this function, Dunryd Row agents operate openly, in uniform, and as recognized agents of the Erl. It is a spy service. It gathers intelligence on what is going on in Defiance Bay, and reports its findings to the Erl. It keeps tabs both on various local movers and shakers -- the aristocratic families, the organized crime, the trade companies, and what have you -- and functions as an arm of counter-intelligence against foreign agents. It also undertakes specific intelligence missions in this aspect of its function. In this role, the agents of Dunryd Row operate clandestinely. Finally, Dunryd Row has extraordinary powers, including at the very least the power to detain suspects for interrogation, but possibly including secret courts and the ability to "disappear" people. From where I'm at, this job description does not exactly fit the term 'secret police' in that it is not primarily a tool for political coercion or suppression of dissent, but it is clearly different from your normal town guard to make use of the term warranted. Thoughts?

Quote from Adam Brennecke: (Source.) How do you reconcile that with "secret political police?" "Detective" and "investigate murders and the like" sure sounds more like Scotland Yard than Gestapo to me.

@Gromnir what's your interpretation of the picture?

One more thing about Dunryd Row -- apart from what they've said, we can also make inferences from what they've shown. What they've shown is a portrait of a sympathetic-looking character in uniform -- note the prominent symbol on his vest -- using his cipher powers to investigate an object. That looks a lot like a police detective going about his job, and not a whole lot like a secret police agent repressing dissidents. I don't think it would be wise to ignore that either.

Yes, illathid, therefore "combination of Scotland Yard and Her Majesty's Secret Service."

@Mor, political repression is not a new invention, and secret police -- whether under that name or something else -- isn't new either. Frumentarii Jinyiwei Council of Ten and their State Inquisition I just went over what we know about Dunryd Row, and it appears to amount to roughly this, both items from update #65 -- It was characterized as 'secret police' It was also called a 'spy service' It is staffed by ciphers It is 'respected, if somewhat feared and mistrusted' The vibe I'm getting is more of a combination of Scotland Yard and Her Majesty's Secret Service than CheKa, frankly. I don't recall mentions of major political dissent or repression in Defiance Bay, and it seems to me that something like the Aedyr Empire or one of the Vailian city-states would be more likely to host a ruthless political police than a 'free palatinate' consisting of a loose confederation of erldoms led by a duc. It seems the Dyrwoodians feud a lot between each other: that seems to provide the most logical job for Dunryd Row.

I have an AD&D Lankhmar module in a box somewhere.

I dunno, perhaps we've been reading different fantasy. Some of my favorites among the "classics" are Fritz Leiber's Swords cycle, Michael Moor****'s Elric, and Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea. None of these quite fit your description IMO. Le Guin especially explores the social ramifications of magic, and her characters have a lot of frailty and fallibility. All of these exist in static, apparently fundamentally unchanging worlds and societies too, though. (Tolkien disliked Wagner and vehemently denied that his Ring had anything to do with the Nibelungen one. Which made me LOL when I read that, admittedly.)

Did you factor in the cannibalization? I.e. the extra revenue from EA wouldn't be gross, it'd only be the difference between the EA price and the initial sale price plus interest. I think it's a fairly safe assumption that every EA sale made is one day-1 sale lost -- it's unlikely IMO that many EA buyers would not be day-1 buyers if EA was not available.

@Nonek If you're really interested in this aspect of Tolkienian mythos, he talks about it fairly extensively in Letters. There's also a fair bit of stuff in Unfinished Tales. I don't think he had that kind of parallel in mind, though. The Rohirrim in particular he modeled on the Anglo-Saxons transplanted into a horse culture -- he was unhappy about them losing to the Normans largely because they had no cavalry, and wanted to set that straight. The major point though is that all through the thousands of years of Tolkienian mythos, there's no real change. The wars in Beleriand are fought with the same weapons and same tactics as the wars of the Ring thousands of years later. The orcs of Morgoth are no different from the orcs of Sauron. The society of Gondolin is ordered more or less the same way as the society of Gondor, even though we're talking two entirely different cultures. The only change is that things keep getting worse. The apogee of elven achievement was Fëanor and the making of the Silmarils; it was all downhill from there on out. The high point of human culture was Númenor, which was a pale echo of Valinor, and its story was one of continuous decline. Same thing for everything else. So the war of the Ring wasn't during a dark age; it was a continuation of decline that started before there even were humans or elves. In the entire history of Middle-Earth, nobody ever invents anything. Somebody might make something uniquely glorious or powerful -- the Rings, the Silmarils, a badass sword --, but that's a lone, individual achievement, not something that changes anything in society, warfare, farming, building, or anything else in any meaningful way. It's only in the Lord of the Rings itself that there's clear signs of technological innovation, and that's presented as exclusively evil -- Sandyman's new smoke-belching mill, Saruman's rape of Orthanc's trees to feed his forges, and what have you. The trilogy culminates with the return of the King -- a restoration of an ancient, just order where the high and noble rule by (divine) right over the happy but dumb peasantry (Ioreth!), just like in Númenor or the early days of the kingdoms of the Dúnedain in Middle-Earth. Most heroic and high fantasy is similarly timeless, whether we're talking books, movies, or games. I'm bored of it.

@Nonek Yet Tolkienian fantasy is archetypically static. The only type of change that's there is decay. Nobody ever invents anything, except apparently Saruman, and that's not exactly a redeeming quality of his.

@TrashMan Out of curiosity, are you for or against firearms in P:E? I'm asking because of my hypothesis that it's a proxy for general conservatism in taste regarding fantasy.

I just did some browsing on the P:E wiki (massive kudos to the people maintaining it, by the way). We know quite a lot about the world of Eora already, more than I thought really, since the lore has been coming out in dribs and drabs. I really like it. One thing that I thought was kind of "meh" about P:E back during the Kickstarter was that it seemed like very traditional pseudo-medieval western high fantasy. I've done that so many times, in games and books and movies, that I really wasn't all that keen to see another one. That's in fact the main reason I only backed at a relatively modest level (and why I backed T:ToN for significantly more). Now, however, it's clear that Obsidian's writers have put any number of really interesting twists on it. So much so that it's almost like it's only tradfantasy on the surface. Man am I digging it. Elves and dwarves. I didn't think there was a way to make them interesting again, but hey, they did it. Quite simple too, really. Stick 'em on the Antarctic ice cap. It's also arguably true to their origins, since Tolkienian elves and dwarves are to a great extent modeled on Nordic folklore. I'm especially digging the character concept of Sagani, and the notion of Pale Elves speaking an ancient language far, far away on endless fields of ice is exciting. Breaking the mold of culture=subrace. In tradfantasy, nonhuman cultures are monolithic. If there are different elven cultures, for example, they're different subraces, like the drow for example. Big points for breaking out of this mold, and making the elves of Dyrwood and Eír Glanfath the same subrace but different and antagonistic subcultures, and for the really interesting elven-human combined culture of the Aedyr Empire, complete with institutions like the haemneg. Social issues. Slavery seems to be an institution that the loremasters have considered carefully, since we know how each of the different cultures treat it -- practiced in the Aedyr Empire, abolished but lingering in Dyrwood, while the Vailians conduct a brisk slave trade. (I wonder if we're going to meet a Vailian slave trader? That could be explosive simply because they gave the Vailians dark skin... I hope we do actually.) We've also got a lot of information about the status of the Orlan, religious antagonism between followers of Magran and Waidwen, the complex relations between the Glanfathans, the Aedyr Empire, and Dyrwood, and so on. The aumaua. Polynesian-Japanese flavored semi-aquatic demihumans instead of slope-browed half-orcs with the occasional Noble Savage rising above his racial station? Yes please! Change. One standard trop in tradfantasy -- whether Star Wars, Tolkien, or D&D -- is that nothing much ever changes. Empires rise and fall, for sure, but there's no technological or real cultural change. If the possibility of change is present, it's always a threat -- a Dark Lord threatening to unravel the entire world. Fantasy, especially high and heroic fantasy, tends to be extremely conservative in its outlook this way. Obsidian did tell us that they were doing this from the outset, which I think was wise of them, since I think a lot of fantasy fans, perhaps especially IE game fans, consider this central to the genre. Firearms are symbolic of this -- I think a lot of the resistance to their inclusion springs from here: having them is a reminder that things are changing, which does break out of one of the most fundamental features of tradfantasy. I can understand that, even if I don't sympathize with it. Fantasy with change is much more interesting to me than static fantasy worlds where the Dark Lord rises, and is defeated, and Balance is Restored to the Force. Ancient history connected to the present. Okay, so we have to have a mysterious ancient lost empire leaving creepy ruins all over the place. It wouldn't be a proper fantasy game without them. Trope, yes, but a good one. I dig the twist they gave this too: figuring out what the creepy ruins mean for the people living among them. That they've become sacred sites for the Glanfathans, and a resource to plunder for the Aedyr Empire. (The former, by the way, nicely explains why the ruins we've seen look so clean and well-trafficked -- obviously their Glanfathan keepers have been taking care of them.) All in all, I've been enormously pleased with the direction Obsidian has taken with regards to the lore. The core tropes are there -- elves, dwarves, ancient empire, wizards, rogues, priests, what have you -- but just about everything has an interesting and new twist to it. This is much more interesting than, say, what BioWare did with space opera for Mass Effect, i.e. just put in all the tropes without examining and questioning any of it, which made everything incredibly predictable. I like it when writers keep me off-balance rather than feeding me something that's familiar and comforting. I'm getting increasingly excited about this game, and most of that excitement is because of the lore. Thank you for that, Obsidian.

If you donate lavishly, you should get a reputation for being generous... or foolish. It should not erase past misdeeds. Perhaps if you're running for political office and want the backing of the faction you're funding...

Looks nice. Really, really nice. Interesting to get a peek under the hood as well, but the whole is coming together super-well. Point light shadows would be gravy. This really is how IE games would look if they'd kept making them!

Waitwait, I think we may actually be in agreement here. From where I'm at, the Priest and Wizard classes appear to fit the Vailian culture nicely, whereas the Barbarian, Chanter, and Druid are more Rauatai or Glanfathan, no? If so, what exactly was your objection again?

Okay, now you're confusing me even more. Why do you figure the Vailians practice no magic?

Why do you figure the Vailians used to have druids and shamans but stopped believing in them? As far as I know, Italians or their cultural predecessors (Romans, Etruscans, Greeks) never did. They encountered Gaulish (Celtic) druids, of course, and reported on them -- just like the Vailians are (presumably) encountering Glanfathan druids. (If you think that Renaissance people didn't believe that magicians couldn't cast real spells, by the way, you'd be mistaken. Witch trials went on looong after the Renaissance.)

Ahhh... OK, now I get what you're saying. Thing is, the P:E setting is a colonial type situation. We have the Vailians who are a lot like Renaissance Italians, and then we've got all the other cultures like the Aedyr, the Glanfathans, the Rauatai, and so on. Some of these cultures have coexisted for a long while; others have only recently encountered each other. Now, a Vailian druid or shaman would be odd, but a Glanfathan druid or Rauatai shaman wouldn't. The tech level has nothing to do with it IMO, but cultural context does.

I still don't get it. We had magicians, both fictional and real-world, in both periods, doing more or less the same thing and having more or less the same status. Even the old AD&D rulebooks explicitly state that the rules are applicable up to and including Renaissance-level settings. I think there are even stats for an arquebus in there somewhere. So other than conservatism ("all the IE games were pseudo-medieval and had no guns"), why does pseudo-medieval + magic make sense, but pseudo-Renaissance + magic is "a mashup?" It's not a bloody mashup. The Renaissance with its alchemists and astrologers, saints and miracle-workers, was just as "magical" a time as the Middle Ages from where I'm at.

Of course there don't have to be. The question is, why is it a problem if there are?

What if we're in a world where there isn't an equivalent of the Roman Catholic Church? P:E's doesn't.