Zaharia [Turn based indie RPG]

[Indranys]

By virtue of being a lot more politically correct

That's quite a logical leap I must say. Esp given that they've specified exactly in what ways their setting will be different:

Yeah, looks like I was sperging a bit. Sorry mate.
Anyway I'm glad the dev take some notes to my ramblings.

You know, you actually pointed out what i really dislike of a lot of settings. At a first look your thought may appear correct, but let me explain to you some more of what we're doing.

I took some inspiration from the Zoroastrianism, the zoroastrian culture is deeply different from the arabian (and islamic) one, the tolerance that is unknown for most of the monotheistic cults was common among the zoroastrian, but that's the reason why they are nearly exinct. Actually a lot of anthropologists believe that one of the reasons of the success of the two monotheistic religions (Islamism and Christianity) is their fanatisms and lack of tolerance. Anyway, is not exactly to state that the tolerance is something that belongs to our contemporary culture, because it was actually a well known concept in many cultures.

Anyway, as I said, what you say it's not wrong, not at all. But i'm not studying anthropology because i have nothing to do, i'm doing that because I had the same fear, the fear of creating something that differs from our western society only in the graphic aspect. And I can assure I came out with some good ideas of how develop the zaharian culture without creating a dull utopian culture or copy-pasting the western world.

Glad you understand my worries. Yeah I realize a few dichotomies in arabic and persian cultures, and I'm pretty curious how your setting will handle those two concepts.
It could be a clusterfuck piece of shit, or it could be a cool setting if we pull it correctly.
I guess both of us agree that we need to have some proper justification to use such an exotic setting in RPG, not just because wearing turbans and slashing niggers with curved swords are cool etc.

And please, don't tell me you can't detect my asian thirdworldia charisma even with all those incorrect grammars and poor choice of words in my posts??
I'll be waiting for some more information then, and please don't take my occasional edginess too seriously.
I just wish you the best result possible, and to make your game as cool as your descriptions.

 

[OwNathan]

Glad you understand my worries. Yeah I realize a few dichotomies in arabic and persian cultures, and I'm pretty curious how your setting will handle those two concepts.
It could be a clusterfuck piece of shit, or it could be a cool setting if we pull it correctly.
I guess both of us agree that we need to have some proper justification to use such an exotic setting in RPG, not just because wearing turbans and slashing niggers with curved swords are cool etc.

And please, don't tell me you can't detect my asian thirdworldia charisma even with all those incorrect grammars and poor choice of words in my posts??
I'll be waiting for some more information then, and please don't take my occasional edginess too seriously.
I just wish you the best result possible, and to make your game as cool as your descriptions.

To be honest, I appreciate some criticism if properly argued, I posted in this forum not only to let some people know about the game, but to have some interesting discussions too.

I hope, along with the others writers, to create something plausible and coherent, we're really working on the setting to obtain a strong oriental flavor. Creating a strong and coherent setting will allow us to deal with a lot of different issues of any kind (ethical, political, religious, phylosophical, and so on), so doing a good job is one of our primary objectives. We have more of 300 pages of material about the lore and we barely started to work on it, and there is much more depth that the one you can see in dev. diaries, that are quite short for four reasons: not everyone likes to read a lot on the internet, we need to translate them and it's not really cheap, and we don't want to spoil all the contents of the game.

 

[Horus]

This "Prophet" guy wouldn't be the Muhammed, right?

Great game btw, probably gonna back this up to 40$. Always glad to see people doing different settings than the boring middle ages fantasies. I just hope combat wouldn't be as much as limited as the Expeditions Conquistadors as it kinda reminds me too much of that game.

 

[Zdzisiu]

Couldn't find the info in your pitch. Is the game party based? Do you recruit npc/mercenaries or create the whole party ? To what degree can you control all of your party members in battle? Do they have separate inventory? Separate skills and attributes? Can they level up, and can you distribute the "points" on level up yourself? And whatever more you can tell us about the characters different than the Main Guy.

 

[Shadenuat]

I took some inspiration from the Zoroastrianism

Marry your sister, gain +100 reputation from your vassals for this achievement.
Truly a codexian game

 

[OwNathan]

This "Prophet" guy wouldn't be the Muhammed, right?

Great game btw, probably gonna back this up to 40$. Always glad to see people doing different settings than the boring middle ages fantasies. I just hope combat wouldn't be as much as limited as the Expeditions Conquistadors as it kinda reminds me too much of that game.

What do you mean with "limited"?
If you have concerns about the actual number of fights, I'll explain why you shouldn't be. Yes, we're working on a game where most fights can be avoided, but that doesn't mean that the fights are bad, are always the worst way to do a thing, or maybe that there are really scarce; for the player that wants to fight, there will be a lot of chance to fight, it's just often not necessary, even if sometimes it can be the easiest or the best way to solve a problem.

If your concerns are about the depth of the fight system, i can assure you we're working on something quite interesting, and some nice features will be available in our prototype.

Couldn't find the info in your pitch. Is the game party based? Do you recruit npc/mercenaries or create the whole party ? To what degree can you control all of your party members in battle? Do they have separate inventory? Separate skills and attributes? Can they level up, and can you distribute the "points" on level up yourself? And whatever more you can tell us about the characters different than the Main Guy.

The game is party based and I forgot to write it. Party NPCs, just like any other NPC in the game, won't be randomly generated, they will be created by us. You will be able to control them in battle (but, if we'll have enough money, we'll develop an optional AI for companions, for the ones who wants it), but you won't be able to directly change their equipment or level them up. We want companions to be living creatures, with own mind and decisional power, so the player will be able to influence them only with proper dialogues. Do you want a NPC to study something different or to change his armor? You'll need to speak with him and the outcomes will change according to the PC skills and the relationship between the PC and the companion.

 

[Horus]

Sorry i should have explained more clearly. What i meant by limited combat system in Expeditions Conquistadors is the lack of content to it. If you fight for 1-2 hours you sadly see all that game offer for battles(Hit the max level cap for the skills). Especially after you switched to the new map, it became painfuly repetitive.

I actually wondered about the customisation in battles. How many equipment options are there? Will the different weapons have difference between them(Conquesters had all weapons work nearly the same way)? What about the combat skills?
You already answered the questions i had about the combat. I wish you good luck with the game.

 

[OwNathan]

Sorry i should have explained more clearly. What i meant by limited combat system in Expeditions Conquistadors is the lack of content to it. If you fight for 1-2 hours you sadly see all that game offer for battles(Hit the max level cap for the skills). Especially after you switched to the new map, it became painfuly repetitive.

We planned something really massive for the fight, but everything depends on the money we'll manage to have. The core features of the fight system will be different: the great importance of the environment (for cover, special attacks, and so on), the presence of different roles on the battlefield, a lot of perks and special skills (each factions gives to the player some unique skills).
If there's something i hate in RPG's fight, it's the habit of using all the same spells/skills in all the fight. We want battles to be various and it won't be easy to do that, but giving a lot of importance to the environment and encouraging the development of versatile characters we think we'll manage to create something fun and compelling.

 

[Delterius]

So, how's the essence will be different from the other fantasy conventions?? And don't worry, I guess it will be epic and grimdark like Dragon Age too.

Pretty sure aristocracy is part of the whole high fantasy deal. And that's half of your quote.

@OP Will follow.

 

[Tigranes]

Looks great, can you deliver? But at least you're telling us nice things. Keep us in the know.

 

[OwNathan]

Looks great, can you deliver? But at least you're telling us nice things. Keep us in the know.

It won't be easy, but we'll do our best to create a worhty RPG. Our situation is not that bad, we have a good team with young and talentend people, but doing bussiness in Italy is always risky.
We'll try to launch a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter UK, if it will be successful there will be enough money to develop the game, otherwise we'll be forced to change something in the design. It will be a RPG, but maybe with less contents or a simpler combat system. What we're sure we'll be able to deliver are the complex dialogues, tons of C&C and a wide range of interpretation.

 

[Haba]

Sounds good on paper.

The only advice I can give is to be realistic with your scope and plan accordingly. I trust you've also kept an eye on similar projects and their results? Expeditions comes to mind, for example.

 

[oscar]

In Zaharia there is no gender discrimination, and there aren’t signs of an aristocracy that could demand inheritance privileges. In addiction to this, tolerance for diversity is preached in the holy books. All this allowed a better integration and a cultural evolution, also thanks to the positive contamination of ideas from the different populations that settled down in the area.

Huh?

A coherent and plausible world

Presence of mature themes like slavery, sexuality, racism, theology, philosophy, morality, politics, and so on;

 

[OwNathan]

In Zaharia there is no gender discrimination, and there aren’t signs of an aristocracy that could demand inheritance privileges. In addiction to this, tolerance for diversity is preached in the holy books. All this allowed a better integration and a cultural evolution, also thanks to the positive contamination of ideas from the different populations that settled down in the area.

Huh?

A coherent and plausible world

Presence of mature themes like slavery, sexuality, racism, theology, philosophy, morality, politics, and so on;

There will be more cultures in the game and, in addiction to that, what is written on the dev. diary it's just a summary of the main features of the culture. It is true that some patterns of thought are uncommon or non-existent in the zaharian culture, but it's also true that exist different shades of those characteristics, some innate and some derived from the cohexistence with other cultures.

 

[Mastermind]

So basically you're making the primary nation a liberal democrat Mary Sue.

Erection deflating at an alarming pace.

 

[OwNathan]

So basically you're making the primary nation a liberal democrat Mary Sue.

Erection deflating at an alarming pace.

Not exactly, we aim to point out the flaws of humanity, those "we're sooo cool and liberal" characteristics will be mostly a facade (just like it happens in reality), than some universally shared behaviors. The theme of a lot of quests will be in fact what lies beyond those features, in addiction to that the player will find out a lot of interesting things about why the society has evolved following this way, and the reasons will not be "pure and good" like they seems, quite the opposite. And it will be a spoiler to reveal most of them, because they're linked to some quests and secrets.
The zaharian society is flawed, its flaws are in part different from the ones of the european medieval society or our contemporary society, but they exist. Most of those utopian and happy guidelines are something recent, because they came along the reconquest of the zaharian territories, that is quite recent in the setting.

As I said, lack of racism doesn't mean that all the people won't be racist, and it doesn't mean that the innate intolerance of mankind does nor shows up in different ways. During the history of Islam there was a couple of moments that saw islamic sultans creating the basis for a more tolerants society, thinkers and writers of any religion used to be invited to the court to share their culture, their knowledge. Did it last? No, not foverer. And even when it was alive and functioning, it didn't changed everyone in rainbows, because some features of mankind need time to evolve, to adapt to a new context.

Ataturk tried to change the culture of people in Turkey, but as you can see he wasn't a God, and now there is an islamic party at the government and people outside the city are just narrowminded as they used to be before the revolution. Yet Turkey is quite different from a lot of other islamic countries, women are not compelled to cover their hair for example, but a lot of women (especially outside Istanbul and Ankara) still wear it for religious reasons.

Just don't take literally everything written in that dev. diary, it's hard to completely define a culture in just 500 words, we just pointed out some main features of the religion (not the culture, the religion, religions are made of empty intentions).

 

[V_K]

I really don't think you should be apologizing for the game not conforming to some sexist/racist/whatever dicks' preferences.

 

[oscar]

Thanks for the serious response.

Fallout: New Vegas hit a decent compromise I thought, even if 99% of players ended up assuming the NCR were the good guys and the Legion was evil (partly Obsidian's fault for not fleshing out the Legion enough IMO). The NCR are liberal, democratic, prosperous etc but inefficient, corrupt and their 'democracy' is dominated and manipulated by the wealthy and is falling into the same problems that plague our real-world USA. The Legion by contrast has a certain purity and spiritual discipline that the NCR-types lack.

If we'd seen a few more of the Legion's benefits (for Roman-wannabes they seemed to lack the knowledge, engineering and culture of Rome, perhaps the Spartans would have been a more apt namesake) in-game, it could have been a nicely balanced conflict.

The weakened state of humankind following the atomic blasts offers an opportunity to unite the world under one flag. By using brutal and militaristic tactics, the Legion seeks to take advantage of that weakness and create one society united under Caesar. Caesar claims that the atomic bombs were sent by the God of War, Mars, for just this purpose.
The ultimate goal of the Legion is to unite humanity. They see democratic societies as tools that the rich and powerful used to keep the majority of humanity in a state of constant irresponsibility. By keeping the people addicted to consumerism, they could effectively drain citizens of their wealth whilst rendering them ineffective. This not only partially explains the Legion's disdain of alcohol and chemical stimulants, as well as pointless luxuries, it also explains why they see the majority of people as "animals", and are so quick to use violence against them. To them, "animals" are any creatures that live only to survive. Humanity, in their eyes, is defined instead by the ability to override the fear of death and the base instinct to survive. Those who are able to face death head-on can more easily sacrifice themselves in pursuit of a greater societal goal.

Caesar greatly dislikes democratic societies, especially the NCR, because of their glorification of the wealthy over the worthy. In addition, Caesar greatly dislikes sectionalism and consumerism, because he believes they turn humans into "animals", or simple beings that live only for the sake of surviving. Caesar believes that it is his opportunity and destiny to unite all humankind under one banner, ushering in an age where each human is judged by their merit, and given power accordingly. This way of thinking exemplifies the differences between the NCR and Caesar's Legion. The NCR believe that basic mercantilism will eventually bring peace to the wastes. While the greedy may rule now, when peace and stability come, the populace eventually will gain more power through reform. Caesar, however, sees that as a curse, not a blessing. In his mind, it will allow humans/"animals" to be preyed upon by the greedy. While the NCR uses their great wealth to fund research to improve the average life expectancy of citizens, the Legion believes that longer lives come at the cost of humanity and purpose; people who blindly try to extend their lives should instead attempt to live without the fear of death hanging over them. This is why the Legion refuses to use medical sciences, except in rare cases. Given how little common ground exists between the ideologies of the NCR and the Legion, these factions will undoubtedly contest each other until one is defeated

My only reason for dredging this rather political stuff up is that on the outward face of it the Zaharians seemed a little too clean and (liberal) utopian for a historically-grounded setting gunning for realism.

 

[OwNathan]

I really don't think you should be apologizing for the game not conforming to some sexist/racist/whatever dicks' preferences.

I'm not apologizing for anything. I'm just explaining what we are doing, because the dev. diary can be misleading. I did not apologize to some people who said "why arabs and not vikings" (not here, elsewhere), because i had nothing to clarify to them.

Zaharia won't be a game where every single person is a selfish bastard that hates everyone else, just because I don't think it's something beliveable. And it's true, there are some apparently utopian features in the setting, but a culture is made by people, and people are heterogeneous, a culture does not define every single person. Christianity is about love, but during one of my last plane trip I sit near a priest that spent two hours spitting his hate against different people on my face.
The setting won't be a hell on earth, but neither a magic land of peace and understanding.

Thanks for the serious response.

Fallout: New Vegas hit a decent compromise I thought, even if 99% of players ended up assuming the NCR were the good guys and the Legion was evil (partly Obsidian's fault for not fleshing out the Legion enough IMO). The NCR are liberal, democratic, prosperous etc but inefficient, corrupt and their 'democracy' is dominated and manipulated by the wealthy and is falling into the same problems that plague our real-world USA. The Legion by contrast has a certain purity and spiritual discipline that the NCR-types lack.

If we'd seen a few more of the Legion's benefits (for Roman-wannabes they seemed to lack the knowledge, engineering and culture of Rome, perhaps the Spartans would have been a more apt namesake) in-game, it could have been a nicely balanced conflict.



My only reason for dredging this rather political stuff up is that on the outward face of it the Zaharians seemed a little too clean and (liberal) utopian for a historically-grounded setting gunning for realism.

That is true, but some features are justified by the recent history. Not only the Prophet was directly involved in a process of renovation of the religion and the culture, in addiction to that the zaharian nation is living a golden period of economical growth. Right now Europe is in a deep crysis, and it's not strange seeing the growth in terms of popular support of all the reactionary right-wing parties, it's something normal. I know it very well because in Italy we have an aweosome party based only on racism, against southern italian and immigrates, that during the crysis lived a steady growth, stopped only by a some scandals.
The player will live the end of this golden age, he will see new problems arise and he will see all those "liberal" features being tested by reality. That's the reason why everything seems so cool and utopian, just like in any growth period in our history, there is money and food for everyone.

I hope those explainations will be useful to better understand the real political and social situation of the setting. We're working really hard to create something beliveable, to give depth to every single feature, but it's not that easy to fully communicate it in some short dev. diary, that's why I spent some time to clarify those points.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

OwNathan
After reading your your explanations, the storyfag in me is
Hope you can deliver.

Btw, you tend to misspell addition as addiction.

 

[Aurore]

As a female gamer I salute the gender equality thanks. Call it politically correct if you like but what it does is make the game accessible to both halves of the population which is far more important than satisfying misogynistic fantasies in the name of craving historical accuracy.

As a woman I want to play a female and I don't want to be discriminated against for being one. Simple as that. That really should be the end of the story in ALL games not just this one.

 

[OwNathan]

OwNathan
After reading your your explanations, the storyfag in me is
Hope you can deliver.

We all do. In the worst scenario, we'll steal some money, apparently is not a crime around here.

Btw, you tend to misspell addition as addiction.

I blame the school system for this.

 

[Mortmal]

In Zaharia there is no gender discrimination, and there aren’t signs of an aristocracy that could demand inheritance privileges. In addiction to this, tolerance for diversity is preached in the holy books. All this allowed a better integration and a cultural evolution, also thanks to the positive contamination of ideas from the different populations that settled down in the area.

Huh?

A coherent and plausible world

Presence of mature themes like slavery, sexuality, racism, theology, philosophy, morality, politics, and so on;

There will be more cultures in the game and, in addiction to that, what is written on the dev. diary it's just a summary of the main features of the culture. It is true that some patterns of thought are uncommon or non-existent in the zaharian culture, but it's also true that exist different shades of those characteristics, some innate and some derived from the cohexistence with other cultures.

Thats sounds the right idea , but better not to discuss about gender equality here , nothing good can come out of it theres a kneejerk reaction mostly because of misoginy and also bioware's romances simulators . You can link them historical facts, antiquity had several cultures , zoroastrian of course , isle of tera matriarchies,even native american goddess queens(google senora de cao) , they wont change their minds. Even crusades had women fighters later, but its only reported by the historian anna komene, wich is not surprising as the male historians were monks and therefore , like some codexers, not supposed to even look at women.

 

[laclongquan]

I want to caution against the concept of racism into a period-correct game.

You see, racism is more important to modern time because of the lessened importance of hating other people in the next region. It's pretty hard to hate the OTHER in the next city, next region, because you know the world is big and your personal world is big. So you change to hate the people that look different from your own. People in modern time, due to modern transport, simply has a personal perception of their own world that is bigger than people of pre-industrial times.

In ancient time, it doesnt matter what people in the next village look like. They are of another world, so we hate them. You can see it in literature of medieval times in europe, in asia. Everywhere, really.

Which mean if you plan for a period-correct game, absolutely do not pay attention to racism. We period-nazi are more happy in that case. Only liberal who is really bad with history would demand racism in such thing. Not that it's not existed, but it's really low on term of things, and if you pay attention on that you dont have enough for other, more worthwhile things to do.

 

[Outlander]