earanhart

Even outside of conversation, she states she is from Medab. And she makes a point of telling you. "You might want to know, I am no Taker. I come from Awakened lands." Sure, she isn't saying she's a member, but she also makes a point of implying it. That seems to indicate her fear isn't that great. I read it as an open secret. She keeps her mouth shut about politics, and no one bothers her about it, but everyone knows. 

That ain't cheating (unless you yourself think it is). That's advice for stealth from SpidWeb. Pull parts of encounters rather than the whole thing at once. Intended function. Given how many enemies pull nearby others, if Jeff wanted you to take all 4 at once, he would have made them call each other.

I would argue the Takers look better through that lens. From everything they've seen, it's very much a "one of us will not survive" situation. If they were to find the Sholai homeland, would their masses be happy to just go over there and not have to deal with Shapers. Their leaders, clearly not. But the "get out of my house" drayks? Maybe, maybe not. Their leaders burned that bridge before it could be built. And it's possible that the act of Taking your Free is too important to them and they need the war. Which would firmly put them into the no-excuse evil box alongside the Barzites. But as to the excuse of genocide? If it's truly you or me, your children or my children, morality doesn't play in. That's not even grey, it's not on the white/black spectrum. And I don't see any evidence of the Takers as a group thinking the outcome of the existence of independent Creations being anything other than the binary survival of one group or the other. And even their leaders aren't totally on the "kill all Awakened" board. There is that one Awakened merchant in Zhass-Uss. They could easily have been killed or even just refused access to food and shelter until they left a long time ago. Their existence is tolerated. Sure, probably someone is keeping an eye on them to make sure they don't try to send information home, but they don't appear to be mistreated. Merely mistrusted.

As for the other sects viewed through the genocide lens, well . . .
Barzites make no excuse for their atrocities. They simply don't care.

The Loyalists see it as maintaining the old order and (at least nominally) protecting the Commons from a Shaper War when two factions have their powers. Which is at least defensible, but then there's all of the other stuff wrapped in their issues.

And the Servants are trying to buy their way back into the Loyalist camp by killing off the other three.

49 minutes ago, alhoon said:

And thus, we are back to your question: 

When genocide is on the line, is a moderate approach even morally good? 

I don't know. It is a hard question. 

But I know what a Drayk would think. 

This is why I say that the Awakened want to be the good guys but aren't. 

They're certainly the closest thing to it in these mountains, other than possibly Sharon who has the opposite problem (willful ignorance).

But to a first time player, before deciding which team to support, they appear to be the only moral choice. This boosts their initial popularity, in addition to being the first group you encounter that aren't slavers.

Edit: I will say for clarity sake that the Awakened are the only faction who aren't clearly the bad guys here. But whether or not they are good is easily debatable.

Let's spin your stance back into my earlier question then:

Can a moderate make a claim to moral goodness when genocide is on the line? 

There's a reason that EVERY Dryak left the Awakened (if they ever joined them in the first place). Ellrahs dream never included any non-Servile Creations (as it is communicated to the player of the games). Even in the face of MULTIPLE full Shapers working with them (to inckide Zakary at that point), the Awakened failed to make even ONE of the reptilians sympathetic to their cause. They ain't the "good guys" to other Creations. Only to Serviles.

Here's a few things I noticed back in OG2 that feel even more pronounced now that hamper the Awakened as being either the good guys or the ones with a shot of surviving:

The only Awakened who are willing to go the least step above and beyond their orders in support of their cause are Brodus Blade (who very much grumbles about having to even be there at the time) and Xander who isn't exactly in a stable mind-set. Every other Awakened you meet in dangerous area refuses to budge from the exact location they are set or told to patrol, or to assist the Apprentice even with a bit directions. "The rogues are heaviest near the burnt tree to the east, and we've mostly seen Vlish" type things would go a long ways towards showing their goodwill to the Apprentice. This isn't one or two cowards, this is a systemic pattern throughout their military (which is most of them we see), which means it is encouraged by their leaders. 

Unrelated, but next point: where are the Awakened Drayks, Thahds, or Battle Betas? We have conversations with examples of all three. Sure, the battle shaping line aren't known for their stability or intelligence, but players can speak with multiple types of them and they seem to want a place to belong and a role to fill, even after going Rogue. Telling me the Awakened couldn't get one to till the soil, or work as a guard in Medab? As for drayks, back before the three factions split we are told that everybody got along. Back when Zachary as helping all of the Sucia escapees to rebuild the secrets of Sucia. And the Awakened couldn't convince a single Drayk to agree with them? The explanation I can think of here is that the Awakened don't care about Drayk Rights. They'd be happy to let Drayks remain Banned. They only want Servile Rights. Being persecuted is not an excuse for ignoring the other person persecuted by the same enemy. But the only Drayk we see in Awakened lands is specifically there to sabotage them (and even at that doesn't do a great deal that way. Locks them out of one mine and a swamp that they don't seem to have use for.) We don't see any evidence that the Awakened have fought a Drayk at all until/unless the Apprentice joins them.

As for the war between the Takers and the Awakened, gotta ask how much effort the Takers have put into that? We see them send exactly ONE Drayk, and a few skilled Serviles. Most of the problems the Awakened are having appear to be from actual Rogues, and even moreso from former Awakened Rogues. Yes, the Takers do attack Fort Muck, but most of the other Taker units in Awakened lands are infiltrators and spies. We don't see a single defensive construction by the Takers from Medab to Zhass-Uss. The Awakened aren't a major focus to the Takers, or at least haven't been for long. Between the Takers and Barzites, we see some very impressive defensive structures (walls, mines, barracks, etc.) that have traded hands several times and still have active defenses on both sides. That's a key difference in those wars. And we don't see any sign of Barzites in Awakened lands (other than at Freegate itself). We know the Awakened have agents in Barzite lands. And the Awakened have control over the only entrance and exit from the Improved Lands. It doesn't make sense that the Takers started or even maintained the aggression between them and and the Awakened. Why initiate a second war front when you're already at a stalemate with the guys to your south? Especially when they are the only path you have to getting raw resources such as food that you can't produce yourself. I doubt it was Learned Pinner who started the Taker/Awakened war, but the Awakened being the first belligerents makes more sense than the Takers attacking unprovoked. And the Takers have better control over their military Serviles and Drayks than the Awakened do.

I would argue that the Awakened want to be the good guys. But they're also living in a time of war and that's not conducive to having a black and white morality. Enough of them are shades of grey that it's hard to call them actually good, but with the exception of Tuldaric all of their major players (even going down to Brodus Blade) display some desire to be good. But we see too many of their actions and moral failings. "Guards" who hide in the bushes when enemies pass rather than running back to send word. Assassination of the leaders of the closest thing to an ideologically allied party. The target practice rogues. They are close to being "good guys", and they want to be "good guys", but they ain't there.

I suppose it comes down to the ancient question of "is it the action or the desire to do good that makes a man good?" 

None of the other sects seem to want to be "good". The Takers are moral, sure. But it's the morality of survival and strength. They don't care about the Commons. They might not be evil to the core, but they also aren't good. The other three options . . . are slavers. 

I think there's also a matter of players not familiar with the series other than Mutagen (maybe) and Infestation not realizing that a core theme is that there are no good guys with power in this world. The Awakened are the only faction who the player is introduced to as if they were "the good guys".

Unaligned/Loyalist: players may not even realize this is an option, but it has the same basic problem as the next.

Servants: slavery of the worst kind. These guys are basically the Dutch East India Company on steroids. But they failed before game start and caused ALL THE PROBLEMS. Joining them is basically admitting that there isn't a good answer, so you're just gonna clean up the mess and eventually pretend it never happened.

Awakened: want peace. Maybe a bit naïve, but seemingly their hearts are in the right place. You're first meeting has them saving you from an ambush. They want to talk the Shapers into letting them live on their own. Until you see more of the game, it's hard to take issue with them.

Takers: they want you dead. Even joining them, they only tolerate you because you are useful. To a new player, they're really hard to sympathize with once you talk to two Taker Drayks, and certainly after talking to a single Drakon. Sure, maybe they are "just really militant Awakened who got lost along the way", but how many of them are even polite to you before you join them?

Barzites: Everything that's wrong with the Unaligned/Loyalist path, but ALSO they're addicts and insane. Unlike the Takers, they don't think they have a moral footing. They don't even care about being right or wrong, only about being powerful. In a way, they reveal some of the moral problems with the Unaligned/Loyalist path because they do still follow (parts of) Shaper Law. 

To a player who is just meeting this world and is used to games where there is a Light Side or a Good Path and a Dark Side or an Evil Path, which one do you join? According to Steam stats, most gamers play the Good/Righteous/etc. path of a game before the Evil one. The Awakened are the closest GF2 has to a 'good guy' path.

Pair of questions here:
Which of these endings counts as a 'good' ending per achievements?
Which endings are possible for a pacifist run (realizing that you'll be relying on NPCs and environment to kill people, so not a true pacifist)?

Part of this you can explain as Shapers are trained, not born. It's a totalitarian, fascist, academic meritocracy in many ways. You might consider yourself elitist rather than xenophobic. 

And, of course, individual variations will apply. Just as much as one Guardian with a chip on his shoulder can start the death of a language, an Agent fascinated by a newly found magical discipline might preserve it and absorb several of its facets into Shaper culture. They'd just need to display its merits to the Council.

When I did a DnD conversion of GF (admittedly I only used GF1 creations), the two I had the hardest time finding things to represent them were turrets and (of all things) ornks.

Painted over some Mass Effect Reapers for vlish, used hyenas for roamers, and Xorn make great Spawners one you throw some green on them. Didn't match the game graphics, but felt right.

Balphabet were gorilla minis, raptors for fyoras. The rest are fairly standard.

I had a few Drakons and an Eyebeast, but ran those as BBEGs, not player accessible Creations.

Missing the quest from the infernal in Experimental Chambers for killing Tuldaric. Rewards 1 Strength and 1 Essence Mastery.

Thank you!

Is there a list of the artifacts and their effects yet? Can someone point me to that if so?

I could see this done in a Nethergate style, giving us a party for both sides. Would need something to replace most Shaping, though.

On 3/21/2021 at 10:42 AM, Bear Arms said:

Unrelated, but instead of making a new thread, I have a question: should I keep 'junk' I find like bowls, spoons, bones, etc? Is it used for crafting?

The only "crafting" in GF1-M uses Rough Crystals only, through a very few specific locations. The most expensive recipe uses 30 Rough Crystals and requires Mechanics 4, but it comes fairly late game. Decent reward, but by no means unique or build-defining. 

Edit: the other (and far cheaper) recipes make consumables. You will likely encounter these first. 

It didn't get overly cumbersome.

I took to keeping a distinct d20 on the side for this and just rolled it in the same fist as any damage they took. Tried to put this on the player side initially, but that took too much time. Easier to ask for the Con bonus when it was a question.

Wizard wound up swearing off Cryoas because they rolled poorly on that check. Purely random, but sometimes random doesn't look random.

AoEs were the bane of our Shaper. Had at least three times were a well placed fireball made multiple creations go rogue at once. This would probably have caused a TPK or two if I hadn't decided that Rogue Creations are NOT allied with whatever other enemies are present. Which makes sense. 

The Ranger who used only Unstable Creations (by my system, not GF Unstables) wound up taking the Warcaster feat to keep his one-at-a-time under control, but that is more because he played a low-Con Ranger than this system. 

The party did use the rogue system to their advantage as well. Casting Bane on big Creations then focusing that target until it failed to cause chaos in the enemy party was a common strategy for them.

Edit: in the earlier parts of the game, they did sometimes aggressively let their Thahds go Rogue. Put an Unstable or two in the middle of a group and then simply drop concentration. Worked nicely, not sure why they stopped doing that.

Thank you both.

I am not willing to say this is the best way to play Dungeons and Dryaks, but is a functional one. We had fun with it. If someone is looking for a minimalist take that fulfills the flavor, this may be what they want.

Spawners struck fear into my players. Walking into one area with 5 of them had them cussing me out. Heh.

Things like lower-levels. Does such a list exist? Starting to go back to look for them since I skipped over them initially due to power levels.

For anyone looking at this in the future, now that this campaign is complete I will give some of my experiences with it.

Overall it worked very well. Not quite how I hoped, but really well.

5 players, a Wizard who went full Shaper, a monk who took the Guardian line of custom feats, a ranger who dabbled with Creations, and a rogue and druid who ignored most of the new mechanics.

The first canister I dropped gave the Eldritch Blast cantrip with Constitution as the casting stat to the monk. This was on session 2 and gave them the idea of what was going on fairly well. Would suggest similar approach to any Geneforge DnD.

The Wizard/Shaper kept two tank creations and a swarm of missile creations on hand, they added barely more than the Druids summons to combat, but were far more versatile, so I will call that system a success. Overall party damage was raised slightly when placed against one or two targets, but against groups it stayed about the same. 5e alpha strike problems were exacerbated, but that simply meant I needed to give Big Bads some minions. The bonus action command worked well, but I can see it being limiting for Sorcerer or Bard Shapers.

The Guardian style Essence Manipulation strike and "potions" were a lot more useful than I expected them to be. They allowed the monk to become very dangerous, but his internal essence pool was a natural limit and once he dropped four feats into it it SHOULD have been gamechanging. I call this another success.

The largest problem I came across was walking space. Several times the wizard had to reabsorb his Creations or leave them behind because of small tunnels. Tactical decisions, I call this another success.

Biggest thing I would change to this system if running it again would be to make canisters have multiple uses, so three or four players can use the same one if desired.

I ran the canister madness with no rules, simply told the players what was happening, let them RP it, and occasionally told them something was making them angry. It worked well, and the monk stopped using canisters cold-turkey once he realized it because hos character wouldn't abide by loss of control of himself. The Druid never touched a canister, some something "unnatural." Fair enough. Made for a good table dynamic.

Edit: should note that the druid was a summoner druid, using the core abilities there. His summons were not as useful as the Creations in most respects, but were better at battlefield control due to their expendability. Eight bodies wherever you want is a potent wall, even if each one dies in a single attack.

Necromancy, but because Steam has a habit of breaking direct links into their forums (and just made me go on a 10 minute search for this), I'm copy/pasting the above mentioned Steam solution here (at least I think it's the same one, works on my copies of GF1-GF3, haven't tested A4 but I have no issues there so cannot test). Hope someone else benefits from this.

Step 0: Make sure you don't have any compatibility options enabled, or anything that you tried to alter the .exe file of the game, since it might cross with these settings, making the settings I'm giving you not work as intended.

Step 1: Download the ADK (Assessment and Deployment Kit) for Windows 10

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/dn913721.aspx

Step 2: Install it (Remove anything that is not related about ADK (compatibility assistant) by unchecking the other tools that appear in "Select the features you want to change"

Step 3: Open the 32-bit version (If you open the 64-bit one, it will tell you the executable (example: Geneforge 1) will not work for that version of the ADK, and you need to go to the 32-bit version anyways)

Step 4: Select "New Database" from "Custom Database" in the middle left of the program box.

Step 5: Click on "Fix"

Step 6: In "Program File Location", search the game you want to fix (example: Geneforge 1), also, type the name of the program to be fixed in "Name of the Program to be Fixed".

Step 7: Click Next.

Step 8: Click Next.

Step 9: Search for "ForceDirectDrawEmulation" and tick it.

Step 10: Click Next.

Step 11: Click Next. That should finish the custom database settings.

Step 12: Click on Save, ADK will tell you to name the database created. Name it "Geneforge X (the version that you want to fix.)

Step 13: It will then open a "Save as..." for the .sdb file that is going to be created, name it again "Geneforge (X)"

Step 14: Click on "Save".

Step 15: Now we need to run those changes, right-click on "Geneforge (X) [Program File Path], and select "Install".

Step 16: The database should have made the changes now.

Step 17: Now you can try running the game via your library in Steam, the changes are automatically made everytime the game is run.

Happy shaping!

20 hours ago, alhoon said:

If you create a drayk and give it a breath weapon that is a cone of 30 ft or something, and the Drayk's breath does some serious damage,

I actually did a 20 ft cone with 8d6 fire damage, DC 19 Dex for half. Drayks are kings, but they also have a chance of going Rogue every time they roll initiative, so players have to decide if it's worth the risk.

Edit because I thought I said this in the original post. Blargh.

Quote

The suggestion is to balance out a creature for 3-4 rounds of battle.

 That's been in the system since the beginning, using the DMG targets for spell damage and reducing for 3 rounds of duration (with exception for Drayk who is overpowered but chancy, and Mindstealer Vlish (in lieu of Terror Vlish) who do less damage but come with a Charm effect on their attack).  I wanted a single creation to feel less useful than a same-level spell across a 2 round combat, but feel noticeably more useful by the start of the 5th round of combat that day. It also enables the party to go longer without needing a long rest or other form of spell recovery, and my table is used to my dungeons being long enough that they run out of spells if they don't ration (two of my players especially enjoy the tactics of rationing their long/short rest features, one of whom loves the theme of the exhausted hero emerging from the fight/dungeon only to pass out as soon as he finds safety, so I play it up for them when I can and it makes sense).

My Meteor Swarm equivalents are for a Shaper who does devotes everything they have to this ability, so they no longer have any spell slots above 5th level because they are walking around with 6 high-level Creations. At this point, across 4 rounds of combat, the total army needed to feel similar to or better than using at least the following: a 9th level spell, an 8th level spell, a 7th level spell, and a 6th level spell, even though it costs two more spell slots beyond that. That's why I felt using Meteor Swarm was a decent yardstick, because doing that amount of damage every round is worth the cost if battle goes beyond the third round. If anyone prepared Meteor Swarm they would probably find a way to use it by the third round of a combat, if they don't open with it. Since I have the total damage from a 6 Creation army at similar to damage to what Meteor Swarm does to an individual target, I think I have it in the right spot. They can do that damage every round (assuming they can position all 6 Creations correctly) but only the Drayk has any AoE capabilities.

I feel the Trakovites are a different enough creature, as their philosophy is that Shapers should be denied Shaping. That is a direct attack (even if just philosophical) against the Shapers, not a mere NIMBY. As for other rebellions being mentioned, I can only think of one mention of that, in the Shaper ending to G4. A lot of ending text gets ignored by the next game(s), but that one I think is different because it's history. We don't know if those rebellions involved Shapers or were attempts at wholesale war against the Shapers. They might have been exactly what I was imagining, but the only thing we know about them is that they exists. As for opening intro texts, we don't know if those wars were rebellions or expansion on the Shapers side, nor do we really know how long ago those were. Given where Shaping started, what the first three creations were, and where the center of Shaper power has been for recorded history we know they started out as a warring tribe who developed a better weapon than anyone else. At some point they became a power both on Sucia and the mainland. After this the Council was made, after this Sucia was banned, and somewhere in there the Shapers forgot where they came from. That's a big thing to forget over just a few centuries. When and why the Council was made, how old the Shapers are, how the Guardians and Agents came to be, when Shaper Law was codified, most of the contents of Shaper Law, all of these things we simply don't know and they would shine a lot of light on this topic. I'm not saying they wouldn't simply curbstomp anyone who tried to leave their control peacefully or only with traditional weapons, I'm just saying the Shapers during GF1 live in a world where they have been the power for a VERY long time, with no threats of any kind that we know of. After so long and so much evolution, we don't know that the Shapers are the same war-tribe they used to be. They certainly don't seem to care about bloodlines very much. That would explain why they are so slow to respond to this rebellion: they aren't used to actual war. If they were, then at the first sign of something wrong they would have sent out an Agent, and when she didn't return a squad of Guardians, probably backed by a Shaper or two.

38 minutes ago, alhoon said:

The locals in those settled islands are, as we learn in the games, strongly encouraged to abandon their culture and forget their history. 

Where do we learn this? In Mera-Tev it is implied that the only reason the natives aren't talking about their history is because they are scared it will label them rebels somehow. The fact is in GF5 we see more cities that show signs of the original inhabitants architectures than not. If Shapers were strongly encouraging conquered people to forget their history, they could easily have destroyed and replaced all original buildings over the course of a generation. They've had hundreds of years to not do this in both Mera-Tev and the Storm Plains, places with easy access to building materials and good climates.

11 minutes ago, Triumph said:

It's always irked me that you don't get to visit Icy End until after your alignment is locked in, because I feel that town does more than anything in the game to show the rebellion in a sympathetic light.

Huh, I can see that, but for me Icy End was the point that said "Drakons are just Shapers 2.0," especially with the cake sidequest. I don't think that was the intent of that sidequest, but it's how it comes across to me. Icy End made me want to see the other intelligent creations rebel against the Drakons and the Shapers, or set up for an Astoria-style faction.

The later alignment lock was better in G4 (and a bit of an overreaction to G3s early lock, IMO), but I think there needed to be one more minor event on the Shaper side just before the final battle. Even just the General being gone from his office after you turn in the quest before.

3 hours ago, wackypanda said:

G3 probably had less focus on creations being oppressed precisely because it was the main argument for joining the rebel factions in G1 and G2. But I think G3 is the worst of the games at showing both sides in any case.

I'll agree with this. I think the largest alignment hole is that until the end of GF3, and I mean the western side of the Isle of Spears, the Player doesn't really have a sense of why any non-ego-maniacal Shapers enforce their laws the way they do. From an outsiders point of view, who cares about a strong other faction? Lets trade with them, similar to how the Scholai get treated after GF3. Shapers don't have an issue with Scholai who don't learn Shaping (from what we can see). The problem comes when the laws that govern the Shapers internally are ignored and their magic is used. Until you get to the End-game of GF3, the only thing you really see that hits this is the Spawners. GF3 did attempt to show some of this "Benevolent Shaper Rule" with the necromancers zone at the end of Island 2, and then the series enforces it a bit as practically every bad thing in the series comes when someone ignores the Shaper rule of "Don't go here." Even after GF1, ignoring Shaper law is the direct cause of almost every problem in the game, beyond common banditry which if the Shapers weren't having to fight a rebellion they could afford to go stamp out. We have indications from GF4 and GF5 that that used to be one of their public services: keeping the roads safe. Are they heavy-handed, absolutely. Probably too heavy-handed. Look at a Gazer and you understand why Shapers control their arts. Look at the bugs from GF5. Look at the description of giant rats from GF2. But until the end of GF3 you never really get a slap in the face that says "This is what Shapers want to prevent!" 

I wonder, if the Rebellion had happened without any rebel Shapers, if canisters could not give the ability to Shape, how would the Council have acted? I imagine that at least two of them would have been "Wait, what? Umm, okay. Give us back all of our serviles and ornks. You can buy batons from us if you really want." There would be some war, but at a certain point the Shapers would ask if it was really a worthwhile war. Killing the people who would be paying your taxes. We do know they conquered most of Terrestria through war, but that was centuries ago. Even the "Recently settled" lands have been under Shaper control for long enough that the locals say "centuries ago." And they stopped at some point, because Drypeak Mountains are a "Distant colony."