Disco Elysium Pre-Release Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Saduj]

Grognardy stuff but it's going to be rather different in the context of a story RPG with no combat system.

"Non-traditional combat system". There is combat with dice rolls, just not much and its done in text.

 

[Kasparov]

Grognardy stuff but it's going to be rather different in the context of a story RPG with no combat system.

"Non-traditional combat system". There is combat with dice rolls, just not much and its done in text.

Well, it's definitely not what most cRPGers are used to when they boot up their Baldurs Gate or Icewind Dale.

 

[Infantry]

https://killscreen.com/articles/no-truce-furies-pushing-videogame-writing/

Haven't seen this article (a little dated at August 18, 2016) referenced yet in the thread, so I thought I would share.

 

[Neanderthal]

#Drizzt

No truce with the Elf!

The Elf in all his self righteous shame stands at the heart of all decline, all nightmares, all horror. See him stand there amongst us and yet seperate, preaching sedition through his very existence. There must be no countenancing his kind, there must be no rest 'til all mankind is free of this blight upon us. He pollutes and makes a mockery of all we good Human folk strive for, and we must stand strong together and say no, or else be victims of his terrible guile. Burn the forest, burn the wood, burn the Complete Book of Elves.

And in the burning ashes of that devastation we shall see a new day dawn, a day for the Neanderthal to stand forth proud and proclaim his ages birth!

 

[eXalted]

Kickstarter when? Will back.

 

[Black Angel]

2) Tyranny of cool
If a skill has a great name, if a talent is poetic, if a mechanic is haute tension – it’s in. We’ll make it work. Beautiful stuff does not get taken out because “someone somewhere” didn’t understand what it does. If it’s clunky or extraneous we iterate and redesign until it works. We will always have talent names longer than “Small Black Flowers That Grow In The Sky” and “The Intense Humming of Evil” combined.

I can't help but feel like this is a jab at inXile getting rid of HP-Pools system for the Torment: Tides of Numenera.

 

[Marat Sar]

I thought I'd throw some comments in the pot since I seem to be stuck on the dialogue I'm working on anyway.

Has the 2nd season of Fargo had any influence on it, or is it just me?

I acknowledge Fargo and the series it's based on has had an effect on us, but personally I don't have Coen brothers receptors. Not my cuppa. The Shield and The Wire are the main inspiration behind the "cop show" part of No Truce.

As for the rest -- there's more than a regular cop story going on, since it doesn't take place in our world. What no one realizes at this point (because we need to focus on one thing in the marketing) is that our setting has many different historical periods that add another dimension to the already madly varied geopolitics. For example, a heist movie narrative set in Vaasa in the 70s can be inspired by Scandinavian noir, while a story set in Iilmaraa's ancient mass society (3200 years ago) is inspired by Mika Waltari's "Sinuhe". We have a lifelong dream of a setting that spans all our influences -- a setting that can do any genre of story. For each time period / location the genre that fits best.

"No Truce With The Furies" is us using the cop show format to introduce the city of Revachol (a sort of disgraced world capitol) in the fifties. Aside from The Shield and The Wire it draws on Dashiell Hammett's detective stories and of course welsh poetry. (Richey Edwards and RS Thomas). We also have an undying and somewhat ridiculous love for the Damien Marley single "Welcome to Jamrock".

I fully understand no on asked for this -- writers just fucking love namedropping and it's Sunday.

Have you talked about itemization or is it too early for that? No doubt the system will be as different as most other aspects of this game. Unless you have decided to omit items entirely. If not will items have any economical value to them or will their value be measured in another way? Emotional perhaps?

You know, this is something we might actually ask "the community" about. Usually I dislike "hey y'all, lets all design this game together" stuff, but maybe it'd be interesting as a one off for the inventory? We might look around where to start the topic -- and then present some ideas we have and see what interesting Inventory-related ideas are out there.

At the moment we've kept it quite traditional, instead focusing on the Thought Cabinet (our "second" inventory where you switch around thoughts.) And yes, there has even been some talk of omitting the Inventory altogether. This would mean changing clothes in specific story locations/dialogues (of which there would then have to be many, of course). This would allow us more control over what clothes the character is wearing, which can lead to wonderful moments where the game reacts to your clothes and expands their social function. Then again, it puts even more strain on our writing team.

We do want to focus on the social impact of different clothes since it works super well in tabletop D&D.

It would be easy to think of this as a pretentious game (...) I have hope that it won't be terribly pretentious.

Ah, the beloved Shadow of Pretension, my friend and collaborator! I love pretentious things. I love it when other people make them -- and I am seemingly incapable of making unpretentious things myself. The way I see it, whenever someone lays a claim to something with their work -- innovation, soul, true aspirations -- it's taken as pretension, and justly so. Pretension is what we call ambition when it fails. And I wholeheartedly support failure when the right aspirations are in play. Matter of fact, I would even go a step further: I support a great failed aspiration MORE than I support a worthy success. Failure is what other people can build their successes on. If we fail with No Truce With The Furies (those pretentious wanks really didn't pan out!) even if we don't get to make another game someone will learn from it. Finally someone will produce a similar thing. And I believe this thing has a reason to exist.

I don't know how the dev team can keep it together, I would've strangled someone already.

I find the furry effect mildly amusing.

Are you guys actual communist pigs btw.?

I'm a blood drenched communist pig, but I claim to understand and empathize with the inner lives of fascists too. Plus, I've also seen an Excel sheet with a budget on it so naturally I loathe taxes as much as the next capitalist wanker (good bye half our development time!). There's another left-leaning writer on our team but he's a social conservative. We also have a writer who is -- are you ready for this? -- a woman. One writer we've had an eye on is a devout capitalist knight but he'd rather try and sell socks at the moment, he'll join later.

The thing is, you can't have real writing without politics. All writers are political. The way it affects our game is: we have politically defined characters, the world has economic tension and relativism, the full spectrum of ideology is represented as it is in reality -- an integral, devastating, constant presence. Colliding narratives about the world. And not "through a lens of fantasy", just plain political stuff, only in a different geopolitical situation. (The situation rather makes it more political).

However, none of us are Hollywood liberals. I make what I want to play and I want games to go beyond political themes as just window dressing. Let the player be real god damn racist -- or paradoxically, even a Hollywood liberal -- if it's written with insight.

Grognardy stuff but it's going to be rather different in the context of a story RPG with no combat system.

I'd say we're avant-grognards. One part avant garde, one part grognardism. I reserve the right to make fun of grognards because I'm half grognard myself.

*perks up* did someone say electrochemistry?!

What we're building towards with our little blog is finally getting to show off our skill list. Electrochemistry is on there too, a Skill under Physique. It's one of my favorites at the moment. I think there's great ground to cover with neurotransmitters and character building in RPGs. Drugs too. People are more literate about brain chemistry now than, say, ten years ago. Hopefully that allows us to write about it and design systems around it. Resetting resistances, opioid receptors, stuff like that.

 

[Cadmus]

What the fuck, this game sounds like the best game ever. The eventual disappointment is going to kill half the RPGCodex.

in before vaporware shovelware bullshit game

 

[Blaine]

Usually I dislike "hey y'all, lets all design this game together" stuff, but....

Good. Don't listen to any of these people, including me, except about this one thing.

The Codex has better notions about cRPGs than anyone else in a general sense, and they're a good guideline, yet I think the most important notion overall is that games should be designed by tyranny rather than by committee.

 

[Helly]

Here's what you'll get once you let us:


I'm sold. It really sounds like you're doing this game with the codex in mind.

 

[da_rays]

Wow....got high hope for this....just saw the conversation example they made ontheir website through the dev blog. They seem to know what they are doing. waiting patiently for more update on this.
But sadly what Cadmus said is true. If this things turn out to be shovelware/mobile adapted crap/*insert shit that get you pulling hairs* , its gonna take a good chunk of whats left of my positive anticipation toward CRPGs . But for now overall feeling : Cautious with a dash of excitement with a nice cherry on top. And gotta say , i love the feeling they are giving with the dev blogs. Now lets wait for them to show us some more sweet stuff

PS: Good thing i posted , OCB almost took over when i saw this was on 2nd page of the rpg forum. This shit need more attention. Or we need to be fed more information

 

[Siveon]

Godspeed you pretentious communist fucks.

 

[Bubbles]

yet I think the most important notion overall is that games should be designed by tyranny rather than by committee.

Got burned by Age of Decadence, eh?

 

[Blaine]

Got burned by Age of Decadence, eh?

No.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Hard to get burned by AoD. At worst, you probably believed Militiades most sincerely.

 

[Murk]

This thread should be labeled NSFW, cuz it's sexier than porn.

 

[Prime Junta]

Jesus fuck. I'm bracing for the inevitable letdown. Falling from somewhere this high is going to hurt like a bitch.

(Please let this be real. Please?)

 

[Kev Inkline]

I thought I'd throw some comments in the pot since I seem to be stuck on the dialogue I'm working on anyway.

Has the 2nd season of Fargo had any influence on it, or is it just me?

I acknowledge Fargo and the series it's based on has had an effect on us, but personally I don't have Coen brothers receptors. Not my cuppa.

What about Brian Fargo?

The Shield and The Wire are the main inspiration behind the "cop show" part of No Truce.

Since you mentioned The Wire I am obliged to buy your game.

I don't know how the dev team can keep it together, I would've strangled someone already.

I find the furry effect mildly amusing.

I was afraid your furry would know no bounds.

As for the rest -- there's more than a regular cop story going on, since it doesn't take place in our world. What no one realizes at this point (because we need to focus on one thing in the marketing) is that our setting has many different historical periods that add another dimension to the already madly varied geopolitics. For example, a heist movie narrative set in Vaasa in the 70s can be inspired by Scandinavian noir, while a story set in Iilmaraa's ancient mass society (3200 years ago) is inspired by Mika Waltari's "Sinuhe". We have a lifelong dream of a setting that spans all our influences -- a setting that can do any genre of story. For each time period / location the genre that fits best.

Are those places you just mentioned featured in your game, for real?

I wonder whether you might know about Waltari's cop stories as well, featuring this gentleman, Inspector Palmu. They were adapted to film 1960-69, almost overlapping the maain period of your game.

 

[bminorkey]

this is pretty cool http://devblog.fortressoccident.com/2016/09/19/on-skill-checks/

 

[Kasparov]

Whaat. Don't post for a few weeks and get flushed down the drain with the rest of 'em idle threads! Whatever dudes :D

Anyway.

Here ya go:


"ON ACTIVE SKILL CHECKS"

Robert Kurvitz
Game Designer

Last time I talked about our passive skills checks – ideas involuntarily forming in your head, sensations creeping up your spine. An active skill check on the other hand, is the moment where you force your mind and body to react in a certain way. You direct a skill to go off.

Every dialogue has at least one active skill check moment. Think of these as important shots in a combat sequence, mini showdowns that form a knot in the scene. This is what the story has been building towards. Have they been lying to you all along? Can you dance, or will you grab the mic and sing karaoke? We want every appearance of an active skill check to feel weighty. It’s a dramatic juncture: either a closed door or a fork in the road.

In No Truce With The Furies an active check appears in the form of a special dialogue option. This usually happens deep in the conversation. It looks like a regular dialogue option, but highlighted:



The phrasing of this special dialogue option tells you what you are trying to do, not what you will do. A tooltip menu tells you what your chances of succeeding are:



The task and your ability to perform it face each other like armies on a battlefield. You vs the world. On your side are your stats (character creation), your learned skill (leveling up) plus the items in your inventory and the thoughts you’re thinking. On the opposing side – the difficulty of the task.

An element of chance determines the outcome of this attempt, the game roll two six sided die. But before you do you should prepare, nudge the odds in your favour a bit.

PREPARING FOR BATTLE
You can prop up your side by rummaging through your Thought Cabinet and changing stuff around: maybe it would pay to be a radical feminist at this juncture? Or wait, no! Better to think really, really hardcore racist thoughts. That’ll do the trick, dazzle them with your advanced race theory! But would your character do that? Do you want to take your character in that direction?

Maybe you should just use drugs and face the consequences later – or put points in the appropriate skill if you have any saved up. We want to bring min-maxing (upgrading your character on the fly), potion use (drug use in our case) and inventory management (changing thoughts in your Thought Cabinet) to dialogues. We want you to buff yourself up mid-dialogue and play it like a turn-based combat encounter.

ON THE OPPOSING SIDE
It’s not only you who can change. The task at hand becomes harder or easier depending on the changes you’ve made to the world. Wanted to “get” what “the kids nowadays” are listening to? Maybe the music happens to be a bit more “basic” today because you waited? Wanted to convince your partner to get drunk on the job? Something you said has him reaching for the bottle. Wanted to come up with an exciting mystery? A shadow on the wall in the evening light has inspired you. All these things can make checks harder or easier. These modifiers give us a nifty little tool to show the player the game is taking note of their actions in the world.

So okay, you’ve seen the odds and you’ve seen the modifiers. Now it’s time to either click on the check or not. If you do, what – if any – are the risks in failure? This is where my favourite thing about our active checks comes in. Notice how we use two colours of highlighting?



That’s because there are two types: white checks and red checks. What happens once you roll depends on the type of check. The first is safer.

WHITE CHECKS
If you fail a white check you suffer damage (mental or physical), but nothing happens in the world, no negative consequences – just the lack of positive ones. You don’t “get” that wacky music, your partner tells you to stop trying to get him fired. The proverbial door in the dungeon remains closed, the treasure out of reach. The white check becomes greyed out. You can try again later once you’re better at it (put more points into the skill), or you can make the task easier by changing the environment.

But if you do succeed you get access to a special nook in the content: a bunch of clever things to say that build your character, or inadvertedly solving a problem somewhere else. You may even find an entirely new side-case to take on, or new project for your Thought Cabinet to process. And yes, even a bigger gun, we’re not above those. White checks are locked gates for content and rewards. (Which we think of as one and the same). Even finding the gates counts as progress. Part of the game is mapping out these “closed doors” and then returning later once you think you need what is behind them – or if you’re just curious.

Our Art Director compares white checks to using dynamite to mine more content out of the game. It’s relatively safe if you plan your rolls carefully.

RED CHECKS
… on the other hand are dangerously unsafe.





If you roll this bad boy – THE NEGATIVE RESULT IS PLAYED OUT TOO. Say you were trying to come up with an idea and you fail a red check. You don’t just stand there clueless, you come up with a bad idea. A really bad one. An utterly idiotic one. Tell your friends to fuck off. Tell them all to fuck off because they’re “cramping your style.” Your character will not be able to tell the difference, they will think it’s a good idea. You the player are stuck saying something truly idiotic with a winning grin on your chartacter’s face – or doing something very dangerous.

You can always come back to white checks but red checks can only be rolled once: here and now. If you don’t they are lost forever. Think of red checks as forks in the path – if you don’t try it now you will never get the chance to. The suspect will leave the hallway, the train will leave the station. But you might fail if you do.

FAILURE IS FUN
Players almost always try red checks. The negative content is fuel for role playing, and it’s also – dare I say – fun. Failure puts you in the skin of your character. You can be embarrassing. Weak. Ridiculous. Full of yourself. Just plain wrong. Paranoid. Idiotic. Every director knows that actors build characters out of failures and fears, not heroics. We’ve noticed players instinctively feel the same way. They begin to search for red checks to fail at. Especially the right ones – the ones that fit their character. They do this for character building, but also because they’re curious of the outcome. It feels like playing with fire.

This adds an interesting effect to Skills and spending experience to improve them. It can be useful not to. It’s rewarding to be bad at some things because it produces interesting red check failures.

You’re right to raise an eyebrow. “In our game you are defined equally by your strengths and weaknesses” is the type of wonk a lot of designers would like to utter. But I think we’re slowly earning our right to. Week by week, month by month of development.

You’ll be the judge of it of course. Either way, I bet you’ll pull that red trigger 90% of the time.

Next week I’ll introduce our four main stats and how they shape your character. Til then.

 

[Kasparov]

Since you mentioned The Wire I am obliged to buy your game.

Good stuff!

Are those places you just mentioned featured in your game, for real?

Vaasa and Iilmaraa, they're are part of the world and lore of NO TRUCE! and might be referenced in dialogues with certain characters or presented as trivia when exploring the Martinaise city district.

 

[Shadenuat]

The negative content is fuel for role playing, and it’s also – dare I say – fun. Failure puts you in the skin of your character. You can be embarrassing. Weak. Ridiculous. Full of yourself. Just plain wrong. Paranoid. Idiotic. Every director knows that actors build characters out of failures and fears, not heroics. We’ve noticed players instinctively feel the same way. They begin to search for red checks to fail at. Especially the right ones – the ones that fit their character. They do this for character building, but also because they’re curious of the outcome. It feels like playing with fire.

 

[Howdy]

So there is some play testing going on? Do you have any plans on extending the testing to top tier prestigious forum's, who hold impeccable catholic tastes?

 

[ArchAngel]

Yea, if you need 10+ pages of discussion about every progressive sentence in your game, 'Dex will help you for free. They will even say best things about your mother every time they find such sentences.

 

[Got bored and left]

So, since failure is not inherently a bad thing in the game (well, not always, anyway), are you doing anything to curb potential save scumming?