Alberich

I'd never thought of that, Garrison...they could end up looking like some horrific sea anemones. Until the day they enhanced themselves with armor and became flying peek-a-boo corals...

Well, give the man some room, he's got to save something for the future. No doubt when the eyebeasts start shaping themselves, tripling their power and quadrupling their arrogance, they'll be ready to demand service from the latest generation of Ur-Ur-Ur-Drakons or whatever else is currently on top... In GF 3 I saw the beginnings of the dissent caused by too many big egos in the same command (dangerous combination). Of course, the more intelligence, knowledge, and arrogance they shape into themselves, the cleverer and less restrained they'll be about shaping in even more. I don't think real estate would be a good investment in the Geneforge world.

Was it rogue shapers who made the Drayks, or was it that the mainstream shapers used to make them, then learned the error of their ways? (I mean, they stopped shaping Drayks and banned the practice; not that they reformed completely.) I thought it was the latter - which points up one of the main distinctions I draw. The Shapers, because they do stay human and refuse to shape themselves into madness, can make decisions like that...I have more hope for the future with them.

Waylander, congratulations on the success of your topic! I really, really don't want to spoil it by bringing in a debate on the Israel/Palestine thing (I limit the amount of political arguing I do, and don't come to game boards for it), so I won't comment on that example. But the Germans have historically had a lot of success with this tactic - I read that Frederick Barbarossa, for example, on his way to the Crusade, had a couple of his envoys seized by the Byzantine emperor. His response was simple - to grab a nearby village and explain that delay in returning the envoys would be measured in lives. He got the envoys, and supplies to continue his march, pretty quickly. The French Resistance was heroic in its way, but really did not make France hard to occupy, nor did the resistance movements in other parts of Europe, in either war - except Yugoslavia, mainly because Tito's partisans didn't care whether the local civilians suffered or not. (I don't believe an American resistance of any size could be conducted on that basis.) The Guns of August will tell you about the large numbers of Belgian civilians "shot by the Germans" - but once the (valiant) Belgian military resistance broke, I've never heard that the Germans had serious trouble in occupied Belgium. No doubt the reprisals make the locals hate the invaders, but in the examples you described, the Japanese wouldn't be conducting a "hearts and minds" campaign in any case - it would simply be a matter of force and fear, and civilian reprisals would be an excellent tool for destroying (or reducing to tiny levels) an active guerilla resistance. That's why I favor the "Polish uprising" model. (Which still requires some unsavory allies.) I certainly agree with your basic premise - that in conducting warfare of any kind, there are great limits to how "cleanly" you can do it (which is one of the things that makes warfare horrible in the first place). Especially if you are considering the kind of allies you pick, in a world where the people who can actually help you aren't very nice. And the greater the enemy's advantages, the less scrupulous you can afford to be on that score. My problem with the analogy - the one that to me is fatal - is the nature of the ally. The Drakons aren't just personally powerful and inhumanly arrogant; they are constantly working to shape themselves and their successors into things that are even stronger (and doubtless more arrogant), in a way that the shapers are not. I'm a Windows guy, so please don't spoil GF4 for me, but I know the Drakons ended GF3 with the hope that the Ur-Drakons would soon be ready. And I don't see any reason for the process to stop there (let alone what happens if the Gazers get in on the self-shaping act, and why wouldn't they?). Indeed, that is part of the cold, scary feeling that these games give me - the fact that if you leave these creatures alone for a few years, they don't just get a little older; they get a lot stronger. And a lot easier to replace, if they use geneforges to train their troops from novice to master in a matter of minutes... I mean, in your German/Japanese example, the American resistance (if it used the methods I recommend) together with the war overseas might finally break the Japanese ability to fight. I don't see how the Germans could then go on to occupy the USA - they would also be drained by the struggle, and everyone would be licking his wounds for a while. Given what we know about US productivity, time would be on our side in preparing for any future struggle (as it arguably was during most of the Cold War). With the Drakons, by contrast, time is always on their side, in a major way. Thus, given the choice, the Drakons are the tyrants I would eliminate first.

Drakefyre, true, the resistance would have to be held under iron discipline to stop frustrated hotheads from ruining everything before the time was ripe - it would need its own prosecutors and executioners, and in some ways would have to be as ruthless as the oppressors. (Rent The Informer with Victor McLaglen to see what that side of things might look like...or just to see a great performance.)

A few things to keep in mind. Firstly, with any kind of resistance, passive or otherwise, a really brutal occupier has a simple way around it: reprisals. Speak to a crowd, and everyone who stays to listen to you disappears. If three soldiers die in an ambush, 30 citizens of the nearest village are shot. Support for the resistance would dry up fast! And the moral equation becomes a lot harder then; yes, you can say that they, not you, have just killed thirty of your neighbors, but it still doesn't feel right to do a beautiful, heroic, and futile act that dooms them. The Polish Uprising would be my model. That is to say, secretly train units for open warfare...but do not do any actual "resisting" until after the German and Japanese empires are locked in a death struggle; then field the secretly trained units and otherwise support the German side in the war - e.g., ambush convoys on their way to the front, when the Japanese have no time or resources to spare for the reprisals, and conduct espionage for the Germans. And keep that cell structure intact and those suicide pills handy. I don't call anyone a coward for picking another option, and I don't think any of us really knows how brave he is (or whether he can kill) until he actually faces the situation.

Given the attitude that seems to be built into the Drakons -- perhaps as a result of their shaping themselves -- I wouldn't have much choice. Neither the Drakons nor the Shapers are much interested in leaving the rest of the world alone, so neutrality would not be a good option. Moreover, a civilized (though unfree) world in which Shaping is controlled and canisters are banned has a better chance of evolving into something I like than is an anarchic hell-on-earth dominated by the latest generation of ego-mad unearthly-powerful inhuman carnivore-gods. I would doubtless end up as a staff officer for the Shapers. And I would probably die in a soon-forgotten battle against an obscure sect of canister users. (But while I lived I would press endlessly for reforms of Shaper tactics - "Don't act like CRPG clay ducks, people! If a stranger comes in and kills you two at a time, either pursue him, yes, even over the edge of the screen, or consolidate somewhere else! Or at least, you know, fortify a little better...") To answer the other question, I think war is a dreadful thing, but that submitting to the rule of the Drakons (let alone whatever comes after them) would be worse. "Nobody likes to fight but somebody had better know how."

Re: Barzahl, also, don't forget that he had used so many canisters himself as to carry his arrogance far beyond anything we can easily imagine. The notion that anybody else, even another canister user, could be a real threat to him was simply inconceivable. (The same went for his obnoxious Guardian, whom I assume we all killed simply to "clean the gene pool," no matter what our views on the Shapers in general.) That no doubt gave him a much more relaxed attitude to sharing than any of us would have while we were still ourselves. Re: Ideologies, to my mind one of the interesting aspects of the game is that there is really no faction I can completely sympathize with, not even the Awakened (due to the means they want to use). It's a little like working and voting for real-life candidates instead of the ones we really want to see.

LS, that's a bit of a positive feedback loop, though, isn't it? If you're going to make everyone your enemy, use canisters - if you use canisters, you make everyone your enemy... GC, thanks for the compliment, but, O, sinner, what conditions you place on virtue! There would be no moral problem to wrestle with if you could get just as much just as easily without sinking into the foul embrace of Demon Canister. Every ending so far has given me at least a little hat tip for staying canister-free (even if it's just telling me that I can hold up my hand and see that I stayed fully human). I'm no shaper extremist, but I always end up with them because, hell, no, I won't glow!

GC, I, by contrast, am a Canister Prohibitionist and think the good old Temperance ballads - http://www.pdmusic.org/winner/sw74tsp.txt - should be rewritten in a canister context. Don't use canisters, dear brother Let thy footsteps follow mine To the schoolbooks and the trainers - Don't adopt the glowing shine. Purchase training at the fortress, Better far is that for thee. Slay creations by the thousand - Get thy skills with clean XP. CHORUS Stay thy hand from them, dear brother, Don't bulk up and tempt the fates Try some target practice, swimming, Self-help books and lifting weights. O, use not those foul canisters Though thy spells will boom and bang; Thoul't slay thy friends (and sisters!) And will never feel a pang. Canisters instill a factor Most unhealthful to thy pride. Honest study builds character -- Leads to less sororicide.

For those with curiosity and time to spare, this chapter (of an anti-L. Ron Hubbard book) - http://www.clambake.org/archive/books/bfm/bfm07.htm - includes a section on an effort to carry out some of AC's prophecies...though the scenes sound a little too explicit for us to expect them in GF5.

I went the shaper/infiltrator way (and often found myself retreating at high speed while my creations fought on), but I don't doubt that it's possible with any class.

Lord Macintosh, you're quite right about GF2. You can defeat the whole thing, even the "challenge" areas on Torment, without using a single canister. Whether this is worthwhile is a question of taste.

GC, I always play on Torment. I always buy at least 2 INT per creature, and yes, I have had creatures flee on me even so (when they are wounded enough). Whether I buy more int than that is very situation-specific...I don't keep creatures and build them up; I always make what I want for the task at hand. Intelligence is usually a low priority simply because other things are more important, but if I'm expecting "mental" attacks from the enemy (or I've got essence to spare), I'll buy it. Precisely controlling my creations is very important to my style of play (particularly because a lot of my character's points go into "infiltrator" skills, so I don't have a lot of extra power to overwhelm the enemy), and INT can be a good investment for that.

My character was hopped-up on canisters (this was GF1; he didn't know better), but happily he resisted the geneforge temptation and blew the d****d thing up. My later characters became anti-canister partisans - they don't much love the shapers or the rebels either, but they are dead set against people making themselves powerful and insane in the canister/geneforge way, and eventually kill everybody who does that. So far, that has meant that they ended up siding with the Shapers. It'd be nice if a later game let you adjust the Geneforge so that you could "un-blue" those people and save them... Two of the answers fit me, since I let Trajkov kill himself and then destroyed the Geneforge without using it (I had already killed the boy who gave me the booby-trapped gloves).

I dislike the AI - I always play first time as a shaper (fire specialist) on Torment. Concentrating attacks on the exact opponent I want is especially important to me (particularly in places like the shaper testing grounds on the first island). So is moving the creatures around to where I want them to stand (especially if I'm ganging up on something big that attacks up close and I want to waste its movement points, or avoid its area effects; or I want to heal someone). So is not getting into fights I don't want to have yet. Also, I often start combat mode before the enemy sees me, and I want to place my (hasted) critters where they can get in range and get off two shots apiece, every last one of them, right when we go around the corner. (In fact, I like to use combat mode for a lot of pre- and non-combat situations; and zero-int creations are a thorn in my flesh when I do that, always getting me into encounters I don't want.) Only in rare cases do I use zero-int creatures (usually when I've got something that's really hard to kill and I am trying for that one extra point of dex or something), and only more rarely yet have I been happy with the results.

I like the button in Nethergate that lets you disable the character editor "cheats" to avoid temptation - so a nocheatsdurnit or noapplesineden would suit me. I liked the Nethergate idea of making the character editor a very public part of the game, instead of a secret code you searched online or bought a special manual for. Then people who want to play that way can do it openly and get the game experience they like; and people like me who don't even want to be tempted can simply switch it off and take it from there. I never liked the video game custom I saw (when my brother played action games) of only including part of the game manual with the game, so that you had to buy extra magazines or search the internet to find out how to use the rest of the game (combo moves etc.). I never saw a CRPG that really mimicked that, but I like for games to stay as far from that as possible.

"where in geneforge man came from...?" Don't you know? The stork brings them.

Also, even if you join a faction, you may not be as irrevocably committed to it as you think - i.e., there is probably a way out for you. Even from the factions' point of view, whether you do what they want is more important than whether you are a card-carrying member, or so I found it.

Quote: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally written by Artequila: Dominatrish -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Originally written by Student of Trinity: Submission vlish. Radiovlish appear!

Well, in any CRPG, if the designer is going to put extra time and energy into improving it, I want most of that time and energy spent on stories and interesting characters. I already made my suggestion about a lightly "customized" game based on the way you played past games (to create an illusion, if not much reality, that your past characters affected the current game). The "Nethergate" idea is intriguing - once the scare value of the Drakons has worn off, maybe you get a Drakon hatchling option. In that role, you have to deal not only with the Shapers, who will never grant you peace 'til all your friends are re-enslaved, but with that new breed of ur-shaper-critters, who want to do pretty well the same thing from above and are outstripping you... That said, I would like to see the series reach its end before many more sequels come out. Not that I don't love it, but some aspects of the game are as depressing as real politics (and war) can be...and it would be nice to have an at-long-last finish to the war. One where the player gets a broad range of really stark choices...e.g.... - The obvious ones; the player helps one side vanquish the other, and becomes a power in the resulting empire. - The equally obvious one; the player wipes out the Shapers and the Drakons both, and creates a new order himself. - "Nice Guys Finish First for a %$#@! change" - The chief Drakon pays you a fortune to re-engineer him with greater powers; but you figure out how to use the same process to change his personality at the same time. He and the future drakons he spawns don't have that anti-human pround and mean streak, and they are able to make a peace treaty that works (because they're still the stronger half). - The "preachy pacifist" ending - the player tires of it all, sneaks off to an island, and lives in peace while the two sides of the rebellion scorch the earth and kill each other, down to the last two guys, who are stabbed by palace eunuchs or the GF equivalent. Said PC then ruminates on the futility of war and starts a commune, that, in a twist of irony, grows into a...naah. - "War of the Roses" - the PC uses his advanced Shaping skills, or allies, to create humans that can intermarry with drakons; after a generation of forced marriages (Shapers and Takers are equally totalitarian), the combined race goes on to rule the world in a shaper-like way, but with more restraint based on the awful past. - Beneath the Planet of the Apes, but with a "gene bomb" or "germ bomb" and maybe an Omega Man aftermath...or perhaps the world, cleared of humans and drakons, is populated by an especially intelligent but extremely pacifistic strain of Ornks. (I'd say, "And the Ornks had this planned all along," but that would be silly!) - The same, but the player was clever enough to hide in a germ-safe bunker with his new mini-Drakon mistress (or the sex-reversed equivalent)...the two then go forth to repopulate the world. (If that seems a little weird - naaah! - the PC could instead be able to invite a mix of NPC's to enter the bunker with him, and according to what they are like, the world turns out differently...killing/inviting the right choices makes a better world). Of course, stark choices like this might strain the idea of "postwar sequels" (okay, the rebellion is over; now for the next challenge...). But I'm sure the designers have plenty of other ideas to delight us.

SNM, I think the answer is "no." In GF 1, you pretty well have to be a canister junkie to get through the game, and learn things the shapers Would Rather Not Have Known. I remember that there was some threshold point where I noticed the "extra" effect of the canisters on myself, and it was pretty deep in the game, but there had simply been no question of limiting my use to keep myself, you know, un-blue. (Lots of canisters have an effect similar to the Geneforge, but not as marked.) If the canisters are meth, the geneforge is crack, only more so. That's the fundamental conflict the game creates for you - the awesome power those things give you comes at a heavy price to your humanity. The Awakened want you to save them - by becoming something that scares them. In the later games, by contrast, you can keep your canister virginity and still win. My first time through, I always do that. If you're playing G2, you'll have occasion to meet people who've used lots of canisters or undergone similar processes, and you can see for yourself how they are affected. I won't spoil the surprises by telling you more.

Thinking about it, there's another reason why I like keeping it the way it is. In the game as it stands, genetically modifying a human has rather unpleasant side effects. He loses his moral restraint and self-control, or at least gets a looser grasp on them. It's an important part of the game, because it sets up some of the dilemmas that give the world its "cold" feel. In in a sci-fi game it might start looking like commentary on real-world genetic engineering, and as such would be distracting or repelling. I like it better as "part of the magic."

It took some getting used to, but part of the charm of the first 3 games - especially the third - is the way there isn't a faction you can get all the way behind, or an ending that is really emotionally satisfying. I mean, the guys who believe in liberty want to get there by converting you into a glowy-blue sociopath, or doing some of what they rebel against, or both...and in time they're resolved into a subset of "the" rebellion, or unwilling Shapers. It's a little like real politics; the major parties are coalitions, and the faction of people-who-really-think-like-you-on-all-the-major-issues isn't going to get control, so that whoever you support is something of a compromise. Of course, it would be kind of nice if the very, very, honest-to-Fate last Geneforge game would let you make a better world at the end, just for the novelty and for the sweet taste. But I won't bank on it.

I'm glad it is the way it is. Genetics and allied trades are very active right now. To make convincing science fiction would have required a lot of effort in learning what the science looks like now, science that is subject to change between game sequels. Convincing science fiction, like convincing historical fiction, requires more author research than it used to. If it's going to be unconvincing, space-opera type science fiction, why not simply make it fantasy to begin with? The stuff about DNA tinkering (with no further details on gene expression) is simply part of the setting for the adventure, and doesn't detract from the fun.