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"No Truce With The Furies" now called "Disco Elysium" - Isometric "modern-retro sci-fi" RPG, 2017, PC

M

Mr. Tibbs

Member
New tidbits in a recent Gamasutra interview. Running on a modified version of Unity, still aiming for Q4 2016.

Q. I’ve seen interesting pitches about the game as an exploration of failure, which helps set it apart from the usual “Be an awesome hero!” sort of game. Did “reversing the epic RPG” drive this anti-hero approach?

A. Yes, but I wouldn't call it an anti-hero approach. The anti-hero is still a hero, only cool. Most of us would actually like to be that, and not a Dirk Squarejaw straight up hero type. Instead of what we are, which is, let's face it – varying degrees of failure. The person you wake up as in No Truce is not a cool, deranged anti-hero. He's a failure.

Like you and I. Like the Soviet Union, or your first love. This person is catastrophic. Ruin is his rest state, it's hard to steer him anywhere but. We expect actually solving the case and not ending up as an insane drunk to be the non-standard ending.

It's about being a man, really.

"We're in many ways trying to reverse the tradition of epic RPGs. Where they have global, we have personal; where they have mass, we have detail; where they have guns, we have thoughts; where they have commas, we have semicolons."
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J

Jacethemindtaker

Neo Member
I'm in the 0.1% that read the title correctly, but I went straight to Ovid rather than Welsh poetry..

Anyway, this looks super interesting. I like the idea of the combat system.
 
M

Mr. Tibbs

Member
For those that are interested, there's been a number of new dev blogs: animation, sound, and further thoughts on dialogue. Still on track for this year.

2016-08-08_15-24-31.gif

Disgrace.jpg

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M

More_Badass

Member
A lengthy update about skill checks in the game
http://devblog.fortressoccident.com/2016/09/19/on-skill-checks/
Most of this is missing from non-combat skill use. Talking and exploring gets a simplified, non-competitive version of the combat rules. Usually this comes in the form of passive dialogue options: have this much of that required skill and you’ll be able to say this thing. Even the games we truly admire – Planescape: Torment, Mask of the Betrayer, Fallout – have little going on in the rules department when it comes to dialogue. Ditto for most tabletop pen-and-paper role playing systems. The tactical depth of using arguments, employing logic, original thinking, empathy – the skill use that covers 95% of our actual lives – makes up 5% of the rule system. Yet my experience tells me thinking is the ultimate game. It’s nerve-wrecking, conversations are filled with hidden doubts; we struggle to trust each other, manipulate each other, stay sane. There is great strategic depth and tactical tension that goes into talking that games haven’t really – for me – begun to represent yet
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So that’s the first thing we set out to create: a truly in depth non-combat skill system. We have four stats and under each stat there are 6 skills. That gives us 24 skills – all 24 have critical non-combat use.
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When designing our skill checks in dialogue, we had two goals:
- Make dialogue more like literature – rethink passive checks
- Make dialogue more like a game – add active checks
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contact-mike-gif7.gif
 
P

Purkake4

Banned
More_Badass said:
A lengthy update about skill checks in the game
http://devblog.fortressoccident.com/2016/09/19/on-skill-checks/



http://devblog.fortressoccident.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/contact-mike-gif7.gif[img][/QUOTE]
Sounds really cool, if they pull this off, we might get some really interesting low budget dialogue-based RPGs. [SPOILER]Always nice to see MotB get some love as well.[/SPOILER]

Especially this part:

[QUOTE]So this is how we’ve re-thought passive checks. The versatility of this simple system – let me just repeat it one more time: YOUR SKILLS TALK TO YOU – is pretty incredible. It is hard for us to imagine writing the game without it already. We can do really weird stuff. Like [B]Half Light[/B] – the skill that controls your adrenaline gland and your prey drive – can railroad you into a rage spiral where you hound an innocent suspect on something they clearly didn’t do. And it takes another skill’s intervention for you to get out of it. The next moment a skill can wildly expand the options you have avalable, for example: [B]Drama[/B] whispers insane method acting ideas into your ear. Or your [B]Pain Threshold[/B] tells you to stab yourself in the hand to make a point. Whatever you do – don’t. [B]Pain Threshold[/B] is an unstable masochist. It will only leave you screaming with your hand nailed to the table. And then – while screaming with your hand nailed to the table – [B]Rhetoric[/B] to the rescue! Make a political point out of this. Tell them you’re a victim of your own macho mentality. Tell them (with your hand still nailed to the table) that years of chauvinism have led you to this low point in your life.[/QUOTE]
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L

Labadal

Member
If they manage to do what they want and the writing turns out to be at least decent, I can see myself playing this over and over again.
 
P

Purkake4

Banned
The idea of getting "stuck" in a particular conversation track (like getting pissed off) seems really interesting. I pretty much any RPG up to Planescape: Torment you still have the standard dialogue of going back and reasking all the questions and whatnot.
 
P

Poodlestrike

Banned
Gameplay wise, it sounds like Academagia but with more visuals (and more involved, with the track locking and whatnot), and I love the aesthetic. In.
 
P

Purkake4

Banned
I can totally imagine using this engine for some Lovecraftian horror RPG-s, the dialogue-gameplay system would be perfect for that. The setting is public domain and there's a bunch of pre-written campaigns by Chaosium that should be easy-ish to license.
 
M

More_Badass

Member
Purkake4 said:
I can totally imagine using this engine for some Lovecraftian horror RPG-s, the dialogue-gameplay system would be perfect for that. The setting is public domain and there's a bunch of pre-written campaigns by Chaosium that should be easy-ish to license.
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That internal dialogue system would be perfect for showing loss of sanity
 
P

Purkake4

Banned
And the combat would be rare and very deadly, something you wouldn't really want to make a whole combat system for. No one wants to fight waves of cultists or baby level starspawn, it's mostly about getting away with or without your sanity.
 
D

DataGhost

Member
Very interested in games where stats affect the dialogue and story like fallout and pillars.

Thanks for posting, I wouldn't have known about the game otherwise. Sing it to my list of games to watch for
 
P

Purkake4

Banned
New blog post on their roleplay system:

For “No Truce With The Furies” we adapted those same pen and paper rules for an isometric RPG. I firmly believe it was the right choice.

The years have seen a lot of critique of our own system and even more learning from others. We’ve followed the debates around J. Sawyer’s design for Pillars of Eternity, rated editions of D&D and even played Temple of Elemental Evil for it’s turn based engine. We’ve done our time, so to say. Today I want to share some of our main beliefs as designers of role playing systems. These are not the “pillars of our design”, just some reasoning behind our rule system. The list is meant to show where we’re coming from to fellow designers and RPG enthusiasts.
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Throwing around some nice references.
3) Unsymmetrical is symmetrical

It’s good to have almost useless things and seemingly overpowered things. A good composition is not all equal parts. A good composition is equal experiences. There is great symmetrical tension and effect in a seemingly useless abilities that you try to use for the sake of cool. Pull off Spook, Shocking Grasp and Spell Thrust in Baldur’s Gate and you’re a wizard. All builds should not be viable, but all builds should be interesting. Some skills only pop up one or two times — they will be all the more special for it. While other’s buzz around as often as possible. (Empathy always tells you what people are feeling but when Shivers comes in, it’s a special moment.)
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5) Small numbers

Congratulations, you just got +1 of something. It’s a big deal. Six is the maximum. You don’t get 28 experience, you get ONE POINT to put into a skill. That one point gives you the aforementioned +1 bonus. You don’t suffer 76 damage, you lose TWO LIVES. The smaller a number, the less you have of it, the more dramatic it will feel. We large mammals have two to three offspring. We have one home. We have two eyes. Our numerical values are large and chunky, losing one is tragic and gaining one is a triumph. Our system reflects that.
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M

More_Badass

Member
A lengthy update about active skill checks
http://devblog.fortressoccident.com/2016/10/06/active-skill-checks/
Every dialogue has at least one active skill check moment. Think of these as important shots in a combat sequence, mini showdowns that form a knot in the scene. This is what the story has been building towards. Have they been lying to you all along? Can you dance, or will you grab the mic and sing karaoke? We want every appearance of an active skill check to feel weighty. It’s a dramatic juncture: either a closed door or a fork in the road.
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So okay, you’ve seen the odds and you’ve seen the modifiers. Now it’s time to either click on the check or not. If you do, what – if any – are the risks in failure? This is where my favourite thing about our active checks comes in. Notice how we use two colours of highlighting?

võrdlus4.png


That’s because there are two types: white checks and red checks. What happens once you roll depends on the type of check. The first is safer.

If you fail a white check you suffer damage (mental or physical), but nothing happens in the world, no negative consequences – just the lack of positive ones. You don’t “get” that wacky music, your partner tells you to stop trying to get him fired. The proverbial door in the dungeon remains closed, the treasure out of reach. The white check becomes greyed out. You can try again later once you’re better at it (put more points into the skill), or you can make the task easier by changing the environment. But if you do succeed you get access to a special nook in the content: a bunch of clever things to say that build your character, or inadvertedly solving a problem somewhere else. You may even find an entirely new side-case to take on, or new project for your Thought Cabinet to process.

Red checks on the othe hand are dangerously unsafe. If you roll this bad boy – THE NEGATIVE RESULT IS PLAYED OUT TOO. Say you were trying to come up with an idea and you fail a red check. You don’t just stand there clueless, you come up with a bad idea. A really bad one. An utterly idiotic one. Tell your friends to fuck off. Tell them all to fuck off because they’re “cramping you’re style.” Your character will not be able to tell the difference, they will think it’s a good idea.
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Players almost always try red checks. The negative content is fuel for role playing, and it’s also – dare I say – fun. Failure puts you in the skin of your character. You can be embarrassing. Weak. Ridiculous. Full of yourself. Just plain wrong. Paranoid. Idiotic. Every director knows that actors build characters out of failures and fears, not heroics. We’ve noticed players instinctively feel the same way. They begin to search for red checks to fail at. Especially the right ones – the ones that fit their character. They do this for character building, but also because they’re curious of the outcome. It feels like playing with fire.
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D

decoyplatypus

Member
More_Badass said:
I seriously love titles that are phrases and sentences

Gods Will Be Watching
The Flame in the Flood
House of the Dying Sun
Everybody's Gone To The Rapture
A Knife Made Of Whispers
The Sun Also Rises
We Shall Wake
I Shall Remain
That Which Sleeps
The Last of Us
All Is Dust
Beneath A Steel Sky
The Static Speaks My Name
My father's long long legs
No Truce With The Furies

Titles like that have almost an elegance to them, the sense of a thematic subtext
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Super late to this, but I am fully on board with longer titles. One of my pet peeves over the last decade has been the marketing mandate to reduce every movie's title to a word or name: "The Bear and the Bow" becomes "Brave." "A Princess of Mars" becomes "John Carter."

Anyway, title aside, the game sounds neat. I'll be watching this one.
 
Drac84

Drac84

Member
Game looks amazing, but is it too late to change the name? Like almost everyone here I read it as furries
 
M

More_Badass

Member
RPGam3r said:
Everytime I see the title I see furries like a lot of others, and no it is not good.
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I mean, that's on the person, not the title

Like if someone sees Westworld as Wetworld and goes in expecting something that is definitely not a western/sci-fi show, how is that the title's fault?

It literally take a milliseconds to re-read a title that seems odd
 
R

RPGam3r

Member
More_Badass said:
I mean, that's on the person, not the title

Like if someone sees Westworld as Wetworld and goes in expecting something that is definitely not a western/sci-fi show, how is that the title's fault?

It literally take a milliseconds to re-read a title that seems odd
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No Truce with the Furries doesn't sound odd though, it sounds reasonable. Just saying, there are many people misreading it.
 
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