idonotexist42

I believe Alhoon is correct.

Idk if gazers could learn to shape but if Drakons could then maybe Gazers could, considering I think gazers are probably smarter. If not then they could be shaped to be able to shape much as the Drakons were. Perhaps they could figure out how they'd have to be shaped and then get someone to do it to them for them. the limits and requirements for How one accesses magic in the Geneforge setting is very unclear.

word, well I look forward to you getting a more stable version put together hopefully and wish you luck there. The way I judged whether the upgrades were upgrades or not was by reading the third party game guides other people had written where'd they'd looked at the actual differences between the two versions in the script and done like statistical analysis about it and such. Mainly it was the creations where the only difference between the base creation and the upgraded version was that the upgrade started at a higher level and so if you'd kept one of the base creation around long enough it'd be just as strong or stronger for less essence by the time you got the upgrade. The Artilla upgrades I think were victims of this, and the Battle Alpha vs Battle Beta was a major offender (especially since apparently a leveled up thad you'd kept around could be stronger than a Battle Alpha to begin with if I remember correctly from what I've read) In some cases I nerfed the base creation slightly; in G3 and up (G2 was too unstable and I couldn't change it near as much) I created a "poison spit" and "acid spit" ability and gave the Artila the weaker Poison spit and then gave the Searing Artila the actual Searer ability. Then I gave the Roamer the Acid Spit instead of Searer to differentiate them more. I also gave the Searing Artila poison bite for its melee attack (this I could actually do in G1&2) The useless Pyroroamer I replaced with a "Cryoroamer" in keeping with the Fyora and Drayk. The Thahd Shade even though it was already decent I gave the Freezing touch attack that Shades have (and I also turned him blue). Some creations got skills, resistances and armor added, health was tweaked, stuff like that. In some cases I even buffed the Upgrades that were already decent but I didn't feel were different enough flavor wise, like the Glaahk and Ur-Glaahk, the Battle Alpha and Beta. For those two the changes were "under the hood" since they still played the same except they were noticeably tougher and hit harder. Charged creations got significant buffs because I felt that they were mostly useless and as such didn't use them spending all my essence on permanent creations. With Kyshaks I actually gave the original Kyshak the weaker lighting spray type attack instead of the stronger one it initially had and gave the burning Kyshakk the better one. The charged Vlish in G5 I gave one of the Podling AOE attacks. Once I had finished adjusting everything the buffed upgrades didn't feel OP but they did feel significantly stronger and more distinct from the base creations. If you managed to get them early they were OP vs the low level foes you were fighting but lost that advantage as you progressed into higher level areas and were merely even with them and then eventually couldn't keep up. I tried to make it so the Upgraded versions of the creations in one tier were roughly equipotent to the base creations of the next tier, with the exception being the charged creations which I made slightly OP and went with what felt cool as much as what felt balanced since they were temporary. This was all done before the Hard Drive on my Laptop had failed and so I lost everything and I'm starting from scratch but I don't mind. I'd messed with Items a lot too, made the Burning Blade actually do Fire Damage, gave the Guardian Claymore Stunning. I remember that I had tried to give weapons multiple special effects by assigning them some of the stat for the item enhancement (since that was a stat with a number like the skills and resistances and stuff) so it could like slow and curse for example. If I remember right I think it worked but it might have made it impossible to add another enhancement to it on the anvil because it came pre-enchanted. I think I had also given the item enhancement stats to creations and if I remember correctly those did actually work but I'm not sure and I'll have to test it again. With Weapons I focussed on the coolness factor mainly but also tried to make it so that the higher level later game weapons were all useful enough and distinct enough to keep them all around and switch between them situationally. This was because I hated killing a boss or clearing an area and getting a reward and going "oh, this is sorta cool but I already have something stronger so I guess it just gets sold off for cash" I wanted to eliminate being so let down by loot. I created a couple weapons that were like wands that never ran out, or had attacks that creations had but not you, like a hammer (yes I changed the graphic to the hammer and made it blue, and it was a pain in the ass to figure out how to do it) that did the stunning energy attack that Gazers have. When I was screwing with the graphic sheets and whatnot for the items to do the hammer I found out that there's actually unused item icons. There's a cool scimitar with a thick blade, for instance. It was so fun messing with everything that I don't mind having to start all over. I've played all the games in the series multiple times, I've replayed them more than any other game so now this breathes new life into them. These games are old enough that a lot of us here have reached that stage, I think.

Damn. I guess that's what I get for paying $5 for the whole series. I actually did buy the first three in the saga directly from Spiderweb back in the day when they first came out but I don't think I have any receipts for them stashed away somewhere to prove it if I begged Spiderweb's tech support for a serial number for the spiderweb version Then again they (he? is it still just The Jeff) though they/he was very good about it back then when I changed computers and needed a new code but that was a looooong time ago. I suppose I could be evil and crack it with a keygen, does it still count as piracy if I bought it legitimately first? Technically I even bought it twice lol.

Please? surely there's other mac users out there with the GOG version who have the same issue and would benefit from a fix?

Is there a link to download the scripts most current stable version of this mod? and has the Shalia mod been merged into it? would the two be mutually exclusive if they aren't merged??? I ask this partly because both sound really cool but also because I dabble in modding the scripts (nothing as fancy or deep as you guys I mainly edit items and creations for balancing purposes and coolness) and I want to install these before I start screwing with stuff myself. My tweaks are mainly rebalancing the game by making sure that the upgraded version of creations was actually an upgrade, buffing the ones that actually sucked, making certain weapons cooler and more powerful and such and then after I was done buffing things that would help the character, I then increased the health and power of enemies accordingly so the character wouldn't be OP and slaughter everything effortlessly. In G3&4 I had to make much more drastic changes but in G5 I found the game mostly balanced well and feels like the way I would have done it so I didn't have to do as much.

Sorry to necro this but I'm having a problem installing this mod that no one's mentioned so far. I'm playing on the Mac version and it's the one sold on Good Old Games, and the graphics folder where I'm supposed to be putting the replacement images doesn't seem to exist. I've done the "show package contents" to get into the folder where the scripts and everything are, and instead of a graphics folder there's just this file that's one of those executable command prompt looking things that you cant do anything with and nothing will open. Am I screwed or is there something I can do? a file path to where this folder should be? a way to unpack and repack the seemingly opaque graphics file?

Shema to me was so unremarkable that I don't care enough to hate him. It's an interesting point Owenrus brings up about Rawal's lack of an ideology. I touched on something similar, but while I agree that the other factions are too single-mindedly bent on their own ideology for their own (or the world's, rather) good, Rawals seeming total lack of any kind of ideology rubs me the wrong way too. I tend to favor pragmatism, but here the world is in the midst of this massive upheaval with the fate of their whole civilization in the balance and Rawal seems totally unconcerned. He's just self absorbed, holed up in his mountains trying to wait out the storm, not giving a damn about the country whose government he's a part of. You're right that my hatred of the man stems largely from how he treats my character. But he really doesn't have any kind of humanizing element to him at all, he's just a greedy old man, shrewd perhaps but also the very embodiment of haughty shaper arrogance and condescension. He's not at all unrealistic, he's a very human character in the sense that a real human being could totally behave the way he does without needing any suspension of disbelief, but he doesn't have any qualities that make me sympathize with him at all. When I look at the net effect of his actions in the ending cutscenes, I can be objective and say "oh, well I guess he's not too bad, that turned out well" but while I'm in the game, he's just really, really irritating and unlikeable. idk if he's supposed to be likable, not every character needs to be, but I'm at a loss as to why anyone would stick with the old rat through the whole game. He's not a badly written character, but he is one I love to hate. Ghaldring, he's not really supposed to be likable, I never got that impression. But neither did he ever so affront me in a personal manner that it evoked the kind of deep abiding loathing I feel for Rawal. Ghaldring is almost, well he's kind of bland really. I could see being frustrated in a larger sense, feeling like the way he was written didn't live up to his importance in the story, but from the perspective of my character playing through the games, he doesn't inspire much feeling one way or the other, hardly more than shema. I do have a little admiration for the way Ghaldring gives his political enemies just enough rope and lets them hang themselves (or more accurately, lets me hang them, hang them with extreme prejudice. I was quite pleased to dispose of the upstart lizards for him). I always got the sense that there was a lot going on inside his head even if he didn't really get enough screen time to project anything other than being sort of brooding and aloof. From what I recall of my interactions with Ghaldring, he actually seemed less arrogant than other Drakons or even the shapers. I don't think this was because he was actually any less arrogant, but rather I got the impression he was so full of himself and so secure in his confidence and power that he didn't feel the need to posture so much, he didn't have to be actively condescending because he knew if someone displeased him he could dispatch them with ease and there was no point in brandishing his stick around. Of course, he wasn't so powerful as he wanted us to think, I did manage to slay him, after all.

well that raises the point of whether or not it's moral to create a being like a servile that's incapable of taking care of themselves. They occupy this weird space between the fully animalistic creations and a sentient being that's …uncomfortable, to say the least. Regardless of whether they have full autonomy or not, or whether that's even a good thing, I do think that they need to be treated better than they tend to be, either way. Even if Shapers are owed absolute obedience by their creations, that obedience comes with a responsibility to care for them and not abuse them. Even though I am very much for creation-rights, I am equally supportive of the idea that shaping itself needs to be tightly controlled. The entirety of the events of the series are a testament to all the horrors that can result otherwise, chaos, carnage, and destruction on a massive scale. It's really not a power to be handled lightly, not everyone can be trusted with it, the shapers are totally right about that. I'm not so sure whether I think self-shaping like the canisters and geneforge is inherently bad or not, but even on an individual scale, the side effects are readily apparent. Even if it were to be allowed, self-shaping should probably be even more strictly regulated than shaping in general. Even the power-mad Barzites were smart enough to pick and choose who got to use the canisters, and to wait and see how people responded before giving them more. Shaping is like the atom bomb, a lot of people will say that it's "unfair" that the US has the most powerful nuclear arsenal in the world and tries to keep other countries from getting their own nukes. I always ask these people if they really think anything good could come of Kim Jong Un having atomic bombs, I ask them whether they think it's "fair" if North Korea uses that nuke to bomb our country, or even, say, south korea. Was it fair to let NK have nukes? even if it was fair, it wasn't exactly wise. Such vast power can only be entrusted to those who won't abuse it, and while we can argue over whether the Shaper's treatment of their creations counts as abuse or not, I think we can all at least agree that they had the collective wisdom not to create anything like the Unbound and gleefully raze an entire continent to the ground. In G1&2 the scope of the games is small enough that you might not get the sense that shaping is as dangerous as it's made out to be, even with the events of G2, they were, as far as we knew at that point, contained into a tiny remote region in the mountains. But in G3, we first start to see uncontrolled shaping really wreak havoc with the lives of innocent civilians on a bigger scale. In G4&5, the whole continent is an active war zone and the damage is plain to see. From what I gather, it'd been centuries at the very least since anything like that happened in Terrestria and a period of peach and prosperity lasting that long is no small accomplishment. The shapers are no saints, they are full of hubris, they are callous even when they are not outright cruel, and they could, I think, stand to be a little kinder without overly compromising their security but they are not without their wisdom. They're kind of dicks, but they're right about a lot of things. I suspect that perhaps, long, long ago, there was another rebellion, and it was the damage done by that conflict that inspired the shapers to so tightly control their art, even though they suppressed all knowledge of that revolt and it made their caution appear as avarice. The Shapers seem like they are actually capable of learning from their mistakes, but wholly incapable of admitting them to outsiders for fear of breaking the illusion of omnipotence, and they're bad at PR, they just tell the civilian populace to shut up and get in line instead of making any attempt to explain why they act the way they do except in the very vaguest of terms.

A funny thing about Rawal, is that in the Astoria ending of G5 *spoilers incoming* when he ends up becoming the head of the Shaper council, he seems to be a decently competent and sane leader. As much as I despise his arrogance and the way he treats me as the PC, his valuing of pragmatism over ideology and not being so tightly and inflexibly bound to the Shaper's traditional philosophy and practices is a kind of virtue in practice, despite the fact that it stems from personal avarice and a touch of cowardice even. He is a shrewd fellow, Rawal. But no one puts a control tool in my chest and treats me like a slave and gets any kind of positive regard from me. Even if I refrain from killing him for the sake of the greater good, I still despise him. Yeah, the worst part about Lankan is that he seemingly has no anger at all towards Litalia and the Rebellion (the main rebellion, not his pitiful little insurrection) for causing all his problems in the first place. I can understand his frustration with the Shapers, I can even stomach his pride and unwillingness to craw back to the governor and throw himself on the shaper's mercy, I get that. He's proud, he's stubborn, he's foolish but that part is at least foolish in a way that real human beings often are, it's plausible and relatable even if you think he's an idiot for it. It's that he's a bloody hypocrite who sides with the people who ACTUALLY filled his home with ravening monsters without even the slightest hesitation or thought, that you point out that Litalia put the monsters there and he barely even reacts, doesn't seem to care, that you (the PC) can go and do all the dirty work and purge the island of rogues so he doesn't even have anything left to be pissed about and he's still all just "hur durr, me angry, shapers mean, give canister" that makes him despicable, utterly, utterly despicable. Loathe him, he's scum. At least after taking the canister you can blame his behavior on stars-issue canister madness, but all the worst stuff he says and does is pure, un-shaped human Lankan with no excuse at all. Yeah, I can see him being temporarily taken in by Litalia's glamour/domination while she's there talking to him, cuz that's how shaper magic works, but for him to be totally cool with her even after she's sailed off and he's no longer spellbound, for him to not care when you point out it to him, that's just absurd. If I were in Lankan's position, and I had just been informed that I was duped, I would be enraged about it, I would be beyond wrathful towards the person who had deceived me so, I'd ask the PC to go hack off her head and bring it back on a pike for unleashing a tide of monsters on my home and the bamboozling me. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, but either way the shame needs avenging.

idk whether you're correcting me or alhoon, Hermeneutikos, but I did take care to point out that Astoria's faction IS a shaper faction (even though mechanically it shares reputation with the rebels in terms of questing and stuff) just a moderate/liberal one. Also, Alhoon: I call the Trakovites Rebels because they are. They aren't associated with the main Rebellion that's called the Rebellion, but by definition they are rebels since they oppose the incumbent Shaper Government, they are rebelling against the shapers, they meet the textbook literal definition of rebel. I can see how you might have misunderstood me as meaning that the Trakovites were somehow a part of "The Rebellion" instead of just being a separate, also rebellious faction. They are certainly a third party with a very different agenda than the main "rebels". Assuming the Rebels either win completely, or end up forging a truce and gaining their own sovereign territory, I wonder what they'd call themselves since they're no longer technically Rebels, what would they name their state after the war is over and the rebellion is finished? What sort of government would they end up establishing? The Later point is addressed a little in the G5 endings depending on which one you get but I don't recall it going into much detail or giving a new name to anyone or anything. It's not really relevant to the plot I guess, since the story is over and seeing as you already know who all the players are you really only need to hear who won or did what, titles are a side issue. But Say there were ever a G6 and the rebellion ended 10 years ago, it'd be a little odd if the serviles, Drakons, allied humans and other creations were still calling themselves the Rebellion.

GF1&2 I almost always side with the Awakened; they're the only ones who I have no ideological dispute with whatsoever, they're almost too easy. In GF2 I have played the Barzites as well, even though they're sort of crazy and they don't treat creations any better than the shapers do, but at least they treat YOU, the PC much better than any of the other factions. You're not an errand boy, you're Barzal's right hand man and you get enthusiastically rewarded with wealth and power and in the end you ascend to practical godhood. My head cannon is always that my character pushes for the serviles to be treated decently and runs my holdings in an egalitarian fashion but taken at face value the Barzites don't really have any kind of moral high ground at all, the motives for joining them are purely for personal gain. I also have a hard time stomaching the way he killed Shanti, I'm glad you get to duel and strike down the guardian who killed her like the scum he is. Idk how much you already know about what happens in the later games, and I'll try to avoid doing any explicit spoilers and be as vague as possible, but I'll ask you this: Do you ever side with the Takers in G1&2? Like the Shapers are oppressive, but what lengths are you willing to go to depose them? If you're cool with the Takers, then I suspect you will continue to side with the Rebels. If you're more of an awakened kind of guy, you might find yourself siding with the shapers in the later games despite your policy disagreements with them. In G3, I find the rebels have almost no redeeming qualities whatsoever and the Shapers don't do much that's terribly offensive. In G4, you start as a rebel, and for most of the game they seem decent enough, but you might change your mind towards the end. I think starting as a rebel makes it easier to stick with them throughout the game because you'll probably have a moral issue with betraying the people who you're told are your team, but I'll also note that the Shapers in G4 are largely quite reasonable and don't do anything terribly unpleasant either. G5 the dichotomy breaks down and you have multiple factions again; there's technically only two Rebel Factions (The Main Rebellion and these guys called the Trakovites who have their own agenda not connected to the Rebellion, both the Shapers and Rebels want them all dead, actually. Personally I sympathize with them but think their goals are ultimately futile) But there's a shaper faction that leans more towards an Awakened type viewpoint that wants to sue for peace and end the carnage. Then you've got two hardline factions, one is the typical sort of shaper you see in G1-4, another is going even farther and is, in my opinion, a little nuts. The main rebel faction is the same one that's been around since G3, with the same leader. If you hadn't played G3/4, and don't have any of the rebellion's past transgressions in your mind, they doesn't seem that objectionable at all. Neither side, with the exception of the extremist shaper faction, seem to be doing anything at all out of the ordinary for a war, it's almost just a stalemate when you come on to the scene, their methods are roughly the same so it comes down to who you back ideologically. I generally lean towards taking the liberal shaper faction's side in G5, but I have sided with the rebels just because the Shapers piss me off by how they treat ME, and I want to wipe the smug arrogance of their faces (you will likely despise Rawal in particular, getting to kill him was the main thing that swayed me to the rebel side). Much as I joined the Barzites in G2 because they didn't' treat me like an errand boy and indulged my ego, I joined the Rebels in G5 for the same reason, with the additional mountain of spite towards the shapers for being so bloody condescending the whole game, whether I agree with their political views or not. I find, that as I get older and more mature, and as I replay the series more and more times, my opinions actually soften instead of cementing. The virtues and flaws of each side become more readily apparent and in the grand scheme of things they start to look pretty similar, like there's not much of a difference between the Shapers and Rebels at all besides the lip-service they pay to their supposed ideals. Of the games past G2, only in G3 do I have really strong feelings one way or the other, I only played the Rebel side once, just to see the content and I could still barely bring myself to side with them. I find it fascinating how the Geneforge series is able to evoke such strong, strong emotional and moral reactions, it does it more than any game I've played. The whole genuinely philosophical element and the moral quandaries it brings up is really novel and cool. It's why Geneforge is not only my favorite Spiderweb franchise, it's also one of my favorite RPG series of all time (despite my numerous minor complaints). It also forces us to realize things about ourselves as we make those choices, which is pretty cool and unique for a video game. Do you favor order and stability at the cost of oppression? Or do you favor liberty at the cost of anarchy and carnage? where do you draw the line balancing Ends and Means? will you side with a faction who you disagree with ideologically over one you sympathize with because the latter's methods are just going too far for you to stomach? It's brilliant, truly brilliant. Also the whole fantasy/sci-fi hybrid setting and overall premise/world are really unique and well constructed too. I don't think I've ever seen a game series, or even a book series that had anything close to the Geneforge world. And I read a lot of fantasy and sic-fi. Spiderwebs world building is really one of their main strengths and I think that Terrestria is the best one Jeff's come up with so far.

Lankan really pisses me off. He's a moron. The shaper he was pissed at wasn't even being a dick, the shapers were not responsible for the problem in the first place, if it weren't for the bloody rebels running amok sewing chaos there wouldn't be any rogues to begin with. And then siding with the person who actually caused your problems. And do you ask me to take care of the rogues? no, no the imbecile just wants a canister. And when I go and singlehandedly purge the entire island eliminating the problem they rebelled over entirely, does he stop his foolishness and go home? no, he just sulks in his swamp. I loathe the arrogant fool. Rawal. I joined the rebellion out of sheer spite so I could gut the smug rat-bastard like the swine he is. I felt bad for killing astoria and alwan, taygen I didn't feel remorse but took no pleasure in it, but Rawal, him I enjoyed killing. Had I the option, I would have made his death slow and painful indeed. Nobody puts a control tool in my chest and treats me like a pawn and a slave and gets away with it, and he even had the gall to act like I should be grateful for it. I gotta say I'm not liking Redbeard much at all so far in Avadon.

What I found unpredictable about the G1 endings, aside from Trajkov turning out to be a pretty good guy, is that in the awakened ending your character doesn't actually do anything to help them at all. You become a crazy warlord and they benefit by helping the shapers fight you. I was pissed. Some champion I turned out to be. Avadon feels like the most conventional fantasy of all of them. Avernum was typical high fantasy but with a world that felt much deeper and had unique twists on some of the fantasy races. Avadon reminds me very much of any number of fantasy novels I've read that are heavy on politics and intrigue, even the way Avadon is a politically neutral (within the pact) agency that's above the law and your character is a sort of special agent, and the way Redbeard is this shifty cryptic dude whose somehow immortal-ish feels very familiar in entirely the wrong way. It's odd, because when I think about it I don't see the sort of setting and plot Avadon uses quite so much in video games, at least anymore, but I've read quite a bit of fantasy and it gives me the impression of a fantasy novel that's decently well written but at the same time totally unmemorable.

I like geneforge as a fantasy/sci-fi hybrid, and I don't think it would have been as cool if it were pure sci-fi, the way it juxtaposed magic and genetics was really quite novel. It had a very distinctive feel that would have been lost if it were wholly science fiction or wholly fantasy. The blending of the two is what makes it my favorite of spiderweb's series and one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Avadon really isn't doing it for me so I'll also be glad to see Jeff move on to something else. I'm really looking forward to the Avernum 3 remake that's probably next. Geneforge remakes would be cool (give them Avadon's junk bag, that's the one thing I love about that game, and running out of bag space was always a big problem with Geneforge, especially from 3 onwards) as would more sequels. I'm curious to see what the next new IP will be.

in GF4 the sides are obvious, but the rebel's goal of creating the Unbound is hidden almost till the very end. For most of the game the Rebels and Shapers both appear fairly reasonable, but the rebels don't do anything that makes the Shaper's paranoia seem wholly justified, then boom, you find out about the Unbound and it's like "oh dear, the shapers were right the whole time after all"

I like what he does in the ending, rather. Where he takes over the world but then is a fairly benevolent and egalitarian ruler. The whole lead up to that seemed a little needlessly Dickish, since most of the serviles didn't even know he was there and didn't' wander into the northern wastes anyways. I assume he must have done so out of paranoia or at the behest of the takers. Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but isn't there a journal entry or something where he notices he's going a little canister crazy and backs off on them and just waits to use the geneforge? Most of my early play throughs I'd already allied with the Awakened or Obeyers and met with the other Sholai by the time I ran into him and just assumed he was a generic bad guy. He could certainly have stood to be a bit more communicative about what his endgame was, I might have hesitated before hacking him to pieces if he'd gotten more screen time earlier in the game.

yeah, you're right that agonizing over balance too much isn't necessary, but I want to strive to have it at least sort of balanced. give each class a distinct feel and play style without the power differences being so obscene that players feel penalized for not picking a certain class or the strong classes trivializing gameplay. The upside of tabletop and having a GM is that at least it's easier to scale the enemies to be balanced with the players on an as needed basis if the GM is willing to put in the effort to tailor the rules to their player but I'd like to spare them from having to do it too much. I plan on giving every class their own perks/feats/whatever you want to call them in order to give them some identity beyond skill costs and health/energy/essence pools. I feel like it probably won't be as hard to come up with unique things to flavor most of them, but the Warrior vs guardian thing still gets me because I can't think of anything the warrior would have that realistically the guardian wouldn't. I may just end up having them be mechanically almost the same and just say the geneforge took care of giving the warrior all the stuff the guardian trained for. maybe take away some of the cool stuff I came up with for the guardian (can shape in combat, passive buffs for creations based off your skills, and certain others distinct from the shapers- aimed at having a small pack of permanent companions and then make weak disposable ones on the fly as opposed to the Shapers who will keep a larger pack all the time that's overall more powerful) and compensate with higher base stats, since that can more easily be explained away with self-shaping. (hmm, looks like I just answered my own question) rogue chance for life crafters will be low/nonexistent for level appropriate creations, and then increase steeply if you try to make ones beyond the limits of your regular ability or make more than you can comfortably control. I'm reminded of pokemon, where if you don't have the proper badge then they'll disobey you. So if they play it safe, they're like a weaker shaper that's a little more physically robust (still not good at melee but less fragile) but if they want to risk it they can push a lot of raw power and pray their unstable drakon-thing doesn't turn on them. I think shock troopers will focus around the in-combat shaping and powerful disposable creations instead of just being a shaper that also hits stuff sort of like the mechanic I came up with for guardians but built around it instead of being a side-feature. give them a smaller essence pool but cheapen charged creations accordingly. Agents and infiltrators will be mechanically identical probably. minor flavor differences. I feel like agents might favor battle magic for ranged and use knives up close while infiltrators might favor ranged weapons for dealing damage and having to lean more heavily on mental magic and stealth than the Agent will but I won't force them into the niches too strongly. Agents always felt to me like the sort of "James Bond" type spy that's not actually all that discreet. Serviles will be the only class that really has shaping nerfed to the point of strongly de-incintivising it but have really high base physical stats and potent magic slightly weaker than agents/infiltrators. Be a one man wrecking crew. Shaping is probably going to be sort of OP given how it'd be possible to power game using the more complicated and flexible shaping system, so they'll have to be pretty hardcore in order to compensate for missing out on that. probably play up the crazy cultist angle as a sort of subclass vs the modified by shaping way of acquiring power. Always thought that servile magic was interesting. Sorceress will be a glass cannon, really heavy on the battle magic but physically frail, probably use battle creations as meat shields to let her keep a safe distance. I'm starting to think this will be best suited to one player and a GM (let's call them a "Gene-master" lol) rather than a party of several players. You could do it either way (ah the beautiful freedom of pend&paper, it's worth the math) but combat would end up really slow if you had like 4 or 5 shapers with a huge pack of creations or something. Plus balancing for a party rather than a single class at a time is harder, since some comps are going to be hilariously OP. (though again, the GM can scale up the power and quantity of enemies as needed). Perhaps after the initial version is set, I can make a multiplayer variant where the classes are all nerved in a way that makes them co-dependent

Update on the pen and paper thing: It's the last month and a half of the semester and Chem and Trig are both getting pretty heavy. I still plan on doing it, but I probably won't get a chance to really sit down and work at it until the summer. I am still brainstorming when I get a chance. In terms of balancing the classes, much like in the games, they'll all have access to shaping and to magic, whether they're geared towards those or not. I'll be differentiating the classes more and giving them unique abilities and mechanics, but everything from the original games will be accessible to all classes. The real issue with class balance for me is between the Shaper and Rebel classes, at least the ones that overlap like warriors and guardians or shapers and life crafters. The easy way out is to treat them as identical but that doesn't seem quite right to me for lore reasons. Especailly that I can't see any way warriors would have any advantage over guardians, a guy with a sword who used a geneforge and has to lean on canisters vs. a guy trained in both the arts of war and shaping? Nerfing the warrior's shaping and buffing his combat relative to the guardian makes sense mechanistically, but lore wise, why would a random "warrior" be more skilled at arms than one with the training of a guardian? For life crafters vs shapers, I thought about maybe balancing power against discipline and control, where the lifecrafter is forced to lean heavily on canisters and can make creations higher than their level would normally allow but they have a chance of going rogue, vs a shaper who is more constrained but doesn't have to worry that stuff will blow up in their face when they push the limits. I think that balancing combat (melee vs ranged within that) vs. Magic. vs shaping (including fire vs magic vs battle) in general is going to be the more difficult feat than the specific classes themselves. It also occurs to me that if you've got a party of 4-5 players and they all have creations, it will get messy quick. I've thought of limiting how many creations each class can have, with shapers having the most, life crafters being able to make more than them theoretically but they'd risk losing control, guardians and shock troopers having fewer, sorceresses having less than them, with agents and warriors being heavily constrained. All of them would be able to unlock more slots as they level up, and the late-game will end up with a lot of big pitched battles. distributing canisters will come down to how the GM and party want to do it. My job is just setting up how canisters work, which is pretty easy since I'm not going to change them at all. Content creators can have them strewn about as generously or sparsely as they want in their campaigns. Quests work similarly, the basic framework of what a quest is is part of the game system, but I don't really have to come up with much there "quest giver wants you to do x for y reward and z xp (maybe adjusted for quest lvl vs player lvl)" and people just come up with whatever they need for their campaigns. I'll eventually want to create my own campaigns, of course, but I'm not going to worry about that until the rule framework is at least far enough along that it requires play-testing. for the Future of spiderweb, not my dreams of mangling of their best IP, I haven't heard anything besides a brief rumor that didn't catch on of retirement. Presumably A3 remake is next up, then Geneforge remakes possibly. I'd love more new Geneforge games, but I suspect that they won't happen. I haven't actually played any of the Avadon games, but it'd be cool to see a new series and setting, Jeff's world building is always great. Or a Nethergate remake, for shits and giggles.

It would be interesting if they'd done something like what bioware did with Mass Effect, where your choices carry through the series. Would have been a nightmare to make though given how complex the story is. That's why I always wanted a Blades of Geneforge, we could explore all the "what if"s.

Yeah, I was curious about joining Trajkov and killing Gnorel, do the obeyers get spared? Do the Takers perish but Trajkov still gives the serviles equality? I'm curious because I like what Trajkov does, but the takers still piss me off.

One of the other interesting things is that the events of Geneforge happen in a vacuum, there's no larger international community meddling in their civil war, unlike pretty much every real world war ever. Only a couple Sholai diplomats who think everyone on Terrestira is crazy and don't want any part. No russia and united states backing different horses. Spiderweb's games, I notice are all like this, lots of internal fracturing and factions within two at most main groups, it's all mostly internal politics not wars between two sovereign nation-states (save for avernum after gaining independence, but it starts, technically as internal) with a host of other countries looking on and casting bets or being drawn in via a complex web of alliances.

I feel like the french revolution is perhaps a decent metaphor given how messy it was and how the revolutionary government got so bloodthirsty. Except the royals got overthrown too quick. Most real world rebellions tend to be rather brief, though the current Syrian situation is a similar sort of stalemate to what GF has. Perhaps the Iranian revolution where the Sha's monarchy was replaced by an equally extreme and totalitarian theocracy is a good representative of the Shapers vs Drakons? The palestine-israel conflict where it's a long drawn out war between two sides with valid points but questionable methods? Really though I don't think there's any exact parallels to the real world but rather the Geneforge story draws on bits and pieces of multiple historical events, which is better storytelling anyways.

I thought the way the series went from having a broader spectrum of factions with a moderate one in the middle to being polarized between two really flawed extremes and then came full circle in the final game giving you back a variety of options was a good thing. Astoria is a little bit of an easy way out, much like the awakened, but being the final game in the series having at least one happy ending where stuff works out well is good. And it's realistic, the internal tensions within the shapers and the rebels were bound to fragment them eventually, it'd be harder to accept if all the rebels just continued to go along with the Drakons mad scheming like they did in G4, or if all the Shapers were hardliners like Alwan. Something had to give at some point. Plus I still ended up going full rebel on one playthrough just because I so utterly loathed Rawal and wanted to kill that smug <insert string of expletives>. Taygen is equally despicable, Alwan nearly so. Even Astoria still has an arrogance to her that is a little demeaning. I agree with her views and she's kinder than the others but still full of herself in that typical shaper way that's gotten increasingly grating every time I replay the series. Sorta like how in G2 I ended up gravitating towards the Barzites just because they were the only ones that didn't treat me like some errand boy.

I actually liked how the Drakons were handled in GF, the idea that instead of just being a big dragon monster it's a race of dragon-like beings who are the epitome of shaping gone out of control, who've shaped themselves into existence and went on to steadily driven themselves madder and madder and become mirror images of the very shapers they oppose. The way the Drakons became like the shapers and the way their arrogance caused tension in the rebellion was a big theme in G4&5 especially. The greed+hoards thing was a relatively minor concession to typical dragon tropes, but even the way their avarice was handled I thought wasn't too "generic dragon". If the Drayks and Drakons had just been big dumb monsters and not intelligent beings it'd be different. And yea the little Fyoras in the art are super adorable.