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If I choose to pursue a platonic relantionship with Neville playing with Arthur, is he going to be gay or hetero? Or it will be left open if I dont romance him?

ValHallen wrote:If I choose to pursue a platonic relantionship with Neville playing with Arthur, is he going to be gay or hetero? Or it will be left open if I dont romance him?

If you don't express your romantic desire for Neville and simply treat him as your best mate, it will be left 'open'. (He won't discuss his sexuality with Arthur, and Arthur won't be given an opportunity to ask him about it.) Just as in real life, unless someone makes their sexuality part of their public persona, then it doesn't really factor into a friendship, however deep it might be. To be honest, from the stuff I've written so far, if you ignore the romantic dialogue options directly addressed to Neville and Christina, they are effectively asexual.

On the other hand, if you do express a romantic desire for him to the point where he confides his feelings for you and then set out to abuse the relationship (by stringing him along, or playing around with other party members), then that would be a very effective way to wreck your relationship with him, Christina, and most of the other party members for the duration of the game (making it quite a bit more challenging, if not impossible, at higher difficulty levels).

It lives! Woo!

I really like the description of the changes and I'm even happier that it will be longer. I'm looking forward to playing it!

There will be some kind of choice beyond how you treat your party members?

And why I would treat a party member bad if it will only harm my status and lose one member?

Fen maybe will reply better than me, anyway even if I'm tired after a long driving trip... I can say that in some situations you'll be somehow forced into choosing either one or the other guy (I mean like a choice where you need to support one or the other, and such). Also, losing a member won't be something "easy" to happen. You need to put a lot of effort to lose someone

And yes there are many choices, with skillchecks, like "lock pick Svetlana private room" = skill check, and depending if is successful or not, there are COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SCENES. So not just "tough luck! you failed." and stop. So that's why is taking so long to write

ValHallen wrote:There will be some kind of choice beyond how you treat your party members?

Of course! You can choose the activities you train in – each party member is skilled in about three disciplines which they can teach you. These activities are not related to evening ‘camp conversations’ and so you can train in one character’s discipline while romancing or building friendships some other party character(s).

You can also choose conversation options which don’t affect your relationships with the other party members directly, but rather develop your own stats (for example, a conversation choice might develop Courage along one path, and Endurance along another).

At several points in the story you can also choose what kind of combat missions to engage in. For example, you have a choice to assault a bandit compound from the main entrance or decide to sneak round another way. This choice will determine the nature of the battles you have (ambush, assault, infiltration, etc.), which party members are best suited for various stages of the mission, and the skill-sets needed to effectively complete the mission.

I will address this aspect of Roger Steel’s role-playing framework in a later SP, and it’s still being designed, so we may have to dial back the big concept a bit. But I have done some thought experiments retro-fitting the RS combat mechanics to, for example, the Loren combat framework.

In my head it works - but then, in my head I'm the next Hemingway…

ValHallen wrote:And why I would treat a party member bad if it will only harm my status and lose one member?

Let’s put it like this: Suppose you feel you need to gain favour with Party Member A, and they have indicated to you that Party Member B has something which would make them feel warmer to you if you 'liberated'. Then you could do something which you might otherwise not…

Alternatively, you may wish to role-play your character to develop certain skills and attributes which invites you to go down one path rather than another…

And then there are those situations concocted by certain evil'n'sneaky writers where a course of action that seems like a good idea at the time turns out to have not such good unforeseen consequences…

As for losing a party member through a bad relationship, in developing the script I realized that actually none of the party members are there because of you, or your brother or sister… That’s why the game is called "Roger Steel and the Human Element", and not "Ann and Arthur’s Excellent Adventure" , and also why you won’t actually lose party members, they will just become a really ineffective and argumentative group of curmudgeons, which means you lose most of your battles, which means your poor old sibling may never get rescued… (Well, you never did like them much, did you?)

FenCayne wrote:Very simple romance chart for those who requested one:

Ann x Christine | Lesbian
Ann x Neville | Hetero.
Ann x Roger |Bi.
Ann x Svetlana | Bi
Ann x Hamilton | Hetero.
Ann x Anja | Lesbian

Arthur x Christine | Hetero.
Arthur x Neville | Gay
Arthur x Roger | Bi.
Arthur x Svetlana | Bi.
Arthur x Mei Ling | Hetero.
Arthur x Abhay | Gay

Platonic (best friend) relationships are available for all characters. There is no penalty for not wanting to pursue a romantic relationship, only for being an ass. And even there, some characters are more tolerant than others.

Oh hi there!, three romances available for me!!! is this Christmas???

jack1974 wrote: ↑Thu Mar 26, 2015 10:30 pm I'll make a proper chart with portraits in next days, so people can put faces to names (not all characters have been properly introduced yet).
But yes as you can see is as big as one of the Loren's next two games

Jack I know you've had trouble with the act ect... But is this able to be done yet? So excited for this as I was back then and seeing the chart with char faces may excite many (myself included)

Yes the characters are finished, I just hadn't the time to do it. Hopefully in the next week I'll find the time

Yay! can't wait to see it.