Frayed Knights Development Updates
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Okay, for those new to the discussion, here's what drama stars are about: Whenever you do something interesting (make a decision, fight a monster, etc.), you get one or more drama points. These gradually fill in some stars at the top of the screen. The stars begin by getting filled in with bronze points, then they gradually become silver, and then gold. You can then (spend) these points on an effect that changes the game, even up to restoring the entire party to life (well, non-disabled condition) with almost full health and stamina.
The trick is that any time you reload the game, the drama stars are reset back to empty. The idea is that you can play Frayed Knights like many people (including me) normally do reloading when things go poorly (and you remembered to save at the right place), or you can stick with it and get similar results through spending drama stars. Was a character was incapacitated in the boss battle? If you have enough drama points, you can bring .m back immediately. Even in the middle of the fight. Or you can reload and fight the battle again and try to not lose anybody. Your call.
Then he tackles progressive pre-order pricing:
Unless a developer has a track record I can trust (which usually means a history of released games I liked), I won't throw money at an unfinished game. I am painfully aware of the failure rate of first-time indies. If the game is fully playable and worth the price RIGHT NOW, then okay. Fine. But I won't spend money on the promise of an unproven stranger.
There are a couple other concerns I'd have with the model, too. First off, I really do not have a clue how much pre-orders might rob from release purchases. Secondly, I would worry that broken pre-release versions could generate some negativity from the core base of gamers that would have been your first, most vocal fans. I'm sure most gamers willing to fork over the cash to play a pre-release version, but there's always that worry.
Before moving on to monster names:
When I was in sixth grade, a friend of mine started talking about the (Yellow-Bellied Sapsucker.) He'd heard the name of the bird. While the rest us normal humans would call it, (Some kind of woodpecker,) the more specific taxonomy struck us as hilarious. This was also a common trick to pad out names in games like D&D (particularly later in an edition's run, when they are struggling for monster ideas themselves).
So the idea of all these zillions of variants running around the world with some kind of spotter's guide classifying them all, written by adventurers who might be short on creativity or a sense of wonder, sounded like a good idea at the time.
So we have weed goblins. One NPC refers to (diamondback nagas) (referring to snake-women creatures). Juvenile Ceiling Lurkers (as opposed to Adult Ceiling Lurkers, or Floor Lurkers, or whatever.). Brittlebone Skeletons. Etc.
