Sudanna

There's a reason G1 looms so large over the rest of the series. Sucia is the central great failure of the Shapers, from which the other four games of misery and war spring. But it's easy to criticize, and harder to improve. The only way to really improve Sucia's aftermath would be to eradicate every creation on the island. You can't rehome the creations of Sucia like dogs. The ambitious will hunt them down and piece it all back together, in secret. Later games show that. You can't just wipe out the research and repurpose the place - the entire island is devoted to it, it's everywhere, and a lot of it's not easy to remove. Scraps would survive to be found. Why didn't the Shapers just harden their hearts and burn Sucia and every living thing on it into ash? Shapers don't generally like wiping out their creations - they are consistently shown as arrogant, absolute, and dominating, but not sadistic or wicked or callous beyond measure. It's not quite on the level that humans don't like eradicating entire populations of their own people, but it's there. They are also persistently dedicated to the advancement of their science. If they weren't, they'd be all Guardians and Agents - it's the entire raison d'être for the Shaper branch of their order. I hope these traits are recognized as virtues, however paltry, and not flaws! The Shapers abandon and Bar Sucia rather than utterly purge it because they don't want to massacre their loyal creations, and they don't want to obliterate progress. Someday they might come back for the Geneforge, someday they might use what they learned here in a better way, but they're not ready for it yet. What apex-predator human organizations do you know of capable of executing the same choice? It's to be noted that the serviles of Sucia, despite their ideological divisions and rocky beginnings, existed in peace and progress before the unforeseeable Sholai came. There was trade and peace between the villages, the rogues were under control, and things went about as well as they can go in a primitive agrarian society without magic. Is it good that the Shapers left them this way? No, but what were the other options, really? The universe where the unchallenged world-ruling wizard cabal spontaneously frees their (obedient, loyal!) inhuman slaves and welcomes them into the project of governance doesn't exist. Sucia managed, in their absence. The Sholai, their breaking of the Bar, and their grasping for power are what spoils all this. Sucia highlights the contradictory drives of the Shapers. Humanity, security, and progress. You can plausibly change the outcome of Sucia, but only by further sacrificing one or more of them.

Some of us have reached an even more exclusive level of status, that of having had a title in the past but graduated out of that state. Don't you guys know that displaying your status is gauche? Some of us are secure enough not to need it.

Geneforge 1 is unique in that canisters, in great enough numbers to cause significant unintended alterations, are simply mechanically essential for most playthroughs. There's not really any other way to get spells or creations. Later games rely on canisters much less completely.

i overthrew a slaving wizard mandarinate and all i got was this lousy maneating dragon tyrant

Yeah. I don't think Alhoon got it, though. Depending on the game, Rots are one of the only PC creation that just straightforwardly gets a couple extra action points every turn. I think clawbugs sometimes get that too. Which is a little strange, Rots are so stilted and shambly, I never imagined them as being all that fast, like clawbugs seem to be.

They get more action points.

But how can I ensure that that one piece of text is exactly what I want it to be?????

Shadowrun has persistently not made anything less complicated with new editions, only more. I appreciate their vision.

Personally, I've been tormented by the impossibility of finding a good system for Geneforge. I think Avernum could be passably represented by most fantasy adventure tabletop systems, with minor tweaks for setting and magic level. But Geneforge requires some kind of hybrid RPG-wargaming system that just seems impossible to keep manageable.

It is really much too low of a spawn chance.

It's more clearly implied that Khyryk is a widow, and the agent he has mementos from is his dead wife.

How often did going rogue come up? Did rolling for it every time concentration would be checked get cumbersome?

Original G1 Shaper inventory mannequin.

I would assume that the forums have at least a couple other higher-level backers on them. What'd you add, if anything? Personally, I paid to add an NPC to the game: it's the servile with a flute, if you ever find him(unless that art gets reused, in which case he's one of the serviles with flutes). He's a moderately oblique reference to something obscure, hopefully in a classy kind of way. The new cockatrice-esque creation was also largely based on my suggestion, which I've not had sufficient chance to brag about yet.

What exactly are the tracked reputations? The ones for mother, Owen/Mascha, Ukat, and Ahriel, and magnanimous/hard rulership are fairly obvious, but it seems like there are more. Is there a general Vol reputation separate from Owen/Mascha? Is there something similar for the Ahriel underclass/overclass, or are those different outcomes just quest-gated? There seems to be a reputation for formality/informality, does that mean anything at all? Or is that part of another one, maybe mother's or magnanimous/hard? The Nisse don't have one, do they?

Most of the things I'm trying to do don't benefit much from resolutions in this sense, but here's one: See a dentist with my brand-new dental insurance before something goes wrong.

That's really exciting!

The letter keys can't be used to close the inventory because they're used to select items. There's not really any way to change it. I've always used ESC, it's rapid enough. There's some theoretical world where clicking outside of the opened windows does something, or using the inventory shortcut closes the window if there's no item using that letter, but we don't live there. Relish the opportunity to stretch your fingers, it's good for you.

That kind of thing is more anthropology than history.

Huzz-

This test doesn't ask for demographic information, but also doesn't give numerical scores. "Low" "About Average" "High".

Yeah. Technocratic biotechnologist fascist-academics led by a Shaper Ring Council.

Maybe it's not quite the kind of name the topic intended, but what's the word on Jeff getting the term "Shaper" from Schismatrix and the rest of the Shaper/Mechanist universe? Geneforge was originally going to be science fiction, after all.

So I finished Lilith's Brood a couple weeks ago, and I'm sure someone else here has done the same, so: I have a question.