Thaluikhain

Avernum is pretty egalitarian from those points of view. The Empire, not so much. In X1, you meet women who are exiled for objecting to arranged marriages, and a handful exiled over sexual orientation. Race isn't specifically addressed I don't think, but given the Empire's treatment of other human suspect classes, as well as non-human species, it's hard to imagine that skin color and ethnicity aren't also used as excuses for subjugation and abuse.

Sexual orientation, yeah, there's at least 2 speaking parts in E3 that were implied to be exiled due to it (and one person with a LGBT flag pen, but he could be trans).

But wandering around Valorim, there's little distinction between men and women that I can see, you've got female mages and mayors and military commanders in about the same numbers as male ones, IIRC. Also, you've got a 50/50 chance of the male or female death scream when any human dies.

Likewise, you've got different skin colours in the NPC graphics, and it mentions that humans come in all colours, IIRC. Though, in E3 there's a female champion at the south gate that's mentioned as having a foreign accent, which is odd, since everywhere is in the Empire. And exiles are described as "pale" due to lack of sunlight, which'd not happen with all skin colours. Now, it'd hardly be surprising if the Empire wasn't racist, but there's no reason why they would be, prejudice isn't particularly rational. As an aside, to me that's one of the more interesting things about E3, the Empire is the enemy, you have to hide your identities from the people you meet, but at the same time, the people of the Empire are, for the most part, reasonable people you want to protect from the plagues. Many are severely prejudiced, but almost none are wholly evil.

Didn't know about the forced marriage thing.

I think, in fact, that mysteries combined with the exploration are where Jeff's storytelling really excels in his games.

 

EDIT: as one last addendum to this jumbled post, walking into Valorim was always one of my favorite moments in Jeff's games. The buzz of excitement in Fort Emergency, the uncertain menace of the Empire after the Empire War, the beginning text of the party stumbling into the sunlight, the startling contrast in scenery and background noise... It was riveting. I know that many folks don't care too much about X3 in terms of the series, or even the original trilogy, but that moment right there makes it one of my favorite.

Definitely...when you walk out to the south of Fort Emergence and then move north and west, you get messages about how you've traveled this way before, just the player doesn't know about it and there's nothing on your map...it just feels a bit clunky. But when you walk out to the north of Fort Emergence and then move south and east, the player and the characters have more or less the exact same level of knowledge about what they run into.

Nepharim appeared all the way back in Exile 1. They're as old as Spiderweb Software.

Huh...they just didn't show up in E3 or BoE?

As I remember it, you don't get a special reward for getting all three of each, and the commander's dialogue doesn't change, she tells you there's more, even if you can't find any more.

The shards are important from a story reason, they don't give you any bonuses IIRC.

X, in the tower of Magi teaches you some new spells, though.

Oh, you can go into the Troglodyte keep like it's a normal dungeon and kill everyone and loot the place, if you like.

The Exile/Avernum series' saving grace is the excellent writing by Jeff. As a setting Valorim is pretty generic fantasy. It lacks the unusual setting of the caves. Sure, no elves or dwarves, but otherwise it's a pretty regular world of towns and dungeons. It's fun to play in, but there's not much hook to keep people interested. A series would lose Jeff's writing and be entirely dependent on the writing staff. Could they really sell it? Sure, but they could also flub it, or they could be brilliant but get no attention because there's just no obvious hook.

 

—Alorael, who counts the plagues as slimes, roaches, troglodytes, giants, golems, and alien beasts. That's six. There are certainly other monster problems, but they're not vahnatai plagues.

For the most part, yes, though I'd argue that the society of the Empire is somewhat unusual, because most fantasy societies are terribly researched versions of what medieval Britain was supposed to be like. It's also rather egalitarian, from a gender or race point of view.

Though, that only makes it stand out because so much fantasy is woeful.

Either you are hella farther than me or this dungeon is Not Required to be entered in beating the game.....

 

Where are you O.o, what province/near what city. weird o.o.

How many of the monster plagues have you defeated yet?

That's an earlier game, I think E2. I didn't know they had Nepharim back then, I thought that was a new thing with the Avernum remake.

Eh, it could be done one movie per game, except with 3 split into 2 (because you split the third movie into two these days, it's a rule), as long as you got rid of the story, made everyone a teenager (preferably white and cishet) who spend much of the time whining about love triangles.

The bigger problem is that if you leave out the focus on Avernum proper it becomes just another generic fantasy series. In this case, a generic fantasy series about wandering heroes who encounter the monster/plague of the week. The story doesn't take place in one geographic area, nor is there much in the way of recurring characters, nor are the characters compelling. Erika and Rentar really only have any resonance because of having been built up in previous games. The same's true of the Empire generally.

 

So generic fantasy.

Why? And why would recurring characters stop it from being generic?

Myself, E3 was the first of the series I ever played, and it didn't seem generic to me, the world building went off on a tangent from the usual fantasy setting. Certainly, Erika and Rentar weren't interesting (nor the dragons, for that matter), but they were of very little interest for the vast majority of the game, they didn't need to be.

In any case, it's not just the source material, it's how it's used.

How would X3 set up? I'd think it would have to be a TV series (whereas the Empire War could pretty well be a movie), but even that doesn't as easily work. Seven plagues are a lot less easily managed than three endgame quests.

True, though some were mostly incidental. Only the alien beasts is necessary, plus some evidence of who did it beforehand, maybe one fake piece of evidence as a red herring. Of course, getting all of them would be better.

Also...7? Am I missing one? Or does one of the normal monster plagues coincidentally going on count as one?

Actually, given how inhospitable the caves are as an environment, getting anything at all to grow is a minor miracle. I doubt there are many weeds to worry about.

There's a zillion and one large unfriendly creatures running around quite happily, though, it can't be that inhospitable. Some of them are plants, IIRC, so there should be less hostile, but still unwanted plants around.

—Alorael, who thinks it's more likely that someone, somewhere, would find a use for any weeds. As food, as material, as decoration, something. If all else fails, the thing is clearly so uselessly dangerous that it becomes useful as a weapon.

Sure, "weed" is a matter of opinion, if nothing else it'd burn. But if it's taking over your farmland to the exclusion of the plants you want to grow, it's a problem.

Oh, there's a point, how do they manage their flora when not active? They'd not want some noxious weed ruin all their stuff in the meantime.

Ah, but if they reboot the setting with the movie, would they make new games based on the movie reboot?

Yeah, to do justice to it, you'd either have to have a TV series, or a movie about something mostly unrelated to the game, the games are just too big.

When I inevitably become a massively popular movie producer, I'm going to see if I can make a zillion part movie series based on the Exile games, though.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -Bill Gates on RAM

I had heard that he'd not actually said that phrase, even if the sentiment was there.

Well, there is the old Avernum 3.

IMHO, Exile 3 is much better, though, but I think I'm in the minority here.

Yeah, always liked the worldbuilding of Spiderweb games. The fantasy settings are quite different from the boring old LotR rip-offs we see everywhere. And also there's plenty of zany stuff...the Vahnatai being Roswell Greys is an absurd idea, only it somehow worked.

Now that I think about it, it's a common theme for the player to be exploring a new world. As a player, when I walked out of the north entrance of Fort Emergence for the first time, I had no idea what the game was going to be like, what monsters or societies or economy there would be. Which is also true of the characters making up the Surface Explorers, so there's not really a conflict there...though going round Upper Exile the first time, there had to be a bit of exposition going on to tell me things that I was supposed to already know.

Eh, I always edit my PC graphics, and all my Nephil have clothes.

If nothing else, they'd need armour and something to attach their weapons to when not in use.

Alternatively, the reason they don't wear underwear is because it stays in their drawers. Or people keep stealing it along with the rubies.

No idea how that would work. OTOH, it'd be interesting if, for example, unspecified services had more than one surface team active at the same time, or Romans and Celts racing each other to complete quests in Nethergate.

The really old Spelljammer game, like the Avernum ones, would remember what stuff you'd sold to stores and you could buy them back later. Only, it remembered one set for each store, not one set for each game. So start a new game, and the stuff from last time will be there. Almost certainly not intentional, but gave the impression that the game was more than just you. Now, of course that doesn't take time into account, just when it was last updated, but maybe something like that could be put in place.

Now, whether this would be worthwhile, and if it would fit any given story, is another issue.

--Clay bricks I think. These aren't fired clay, BTW, this is workable clay, and it should be stackable.

Bricks as a trade item? Well, yes, they'd have some value, but you'd probably want to be using something that it's well-known for being heavy and awkward to transport.

In general, I agree though, I like the idea of collecting random stuff from places to sell. OTOH, I think it's mentioned in some of the Exile games that "gold" isn't literally all in coins, it includes tradeable stuff as well.

Bit off-topic, but isn't he called Stan in the BoE version? Was the joke a bit too obvious and out of place?

Yeah, seconding that the coif looks better, it's a bit of a purple blob without it.

I think the idea is that, when attacking, that magic glow is effectively being "thrown", so it would become a missile.

Ah, that would make sense, yes.

Then I suppose you'll be happy to know that I plan to add a way to import a custom graphic for your PCs.

Is that really necessary? I mean, it's easy to just alter then PCS.bmp file.

It looks a little odd to me that the caster has magic stuff on their hand, but loses it when attacking, rather than using it to attack and not having it normally. Though looking at the existing PCs that is true of two of them. Also, the waveblade is really big, maybe twice the size of the vahnatai warrior's one.

OTOH, I always modify my own PC graphics anyway.

—Alorael, who actually admits to some surprise over the absence of more cross-universe characters. It's the kind of easter egg that is both common and seems to fit Jeff's style, at least in earlier games.

Personally, I'm glad of it. That sort of thing can fail to work very badly, as different universes have a different feel and different monsters are appropriate.

For example, I didn't like the GIFTs in Nethergate, that had it's own milieu they didn't really work with.

You mean Tor right? He also appears in e2 near the beginning. I would count him as memorable. I would think he could be an inclusion.

Not sure, but I think that's the name, yeah.

Oh, and the Shareware Demon just came to mind. Memorable, appears in multiple games, and is important to the plot, in a way.

Hmmm...probably really pushing it, but isn't there a guy in A1/E1 that gives you supplies and explains what Exile is like (a bit), who you run into again in E3 who is discussing moving to the surface? Not so much a plot characters as a introductory world building character.

—Alorael, who actually thinks E1/A1 really set the bar high for minor characters. Random meat-sellers get surprising characterization. No, not always a life story, although sometimes even that, but you can get a sense of who random people are in the towns. A lot of that loses prominence in later games. No one cares about Merry. Or whats-his-name the kind of arrogant wizard/Shaper/whatever selling mid-tier spells.

Wasn't "Merry" any number of identical Merrys spread across Valorim? They can't be a character because there's lots of them, and they can't do anything about their towns because they are identical, barring what each of them sell.

Likewise that Archer that can't remember where he works, so he keeps ending up behind the counter at half of every archery store you visit in Valorim. Unless that's symbolic of archery being a useless skill best forgotten.

IIRC, the shopkeepers in Exile in E3 had a lot more character than the surface ones, but there were lots less of them.

Names and descriptions, yes, as long as they aren't generic. If the name of a character class is already used as the name of a profession, a type of person, an order of some sort, etc., that wouldn't apply. However, this is hard to discuss because we can no longer see the original suggestions we're talking about.

GW did try with someone using "Space Marine", though. IIRC, they didn't win, but they could cause a headache.