Thanks to hundreds of you and hundreds of new backers, we’ve reached our target for the Gullet! We’ve changed it from [C] to [A] priority and will be including it in the final game. The top contributors over the last week were our Anonymous donor ($999), Najiok ($827), Grond ($820), and Kaleb ($370). Thank you all for your support and for helping to get the word out about Torment.
While we aren’t announcing a new Stretch Goal at this time, Torment’s crowdfunding efforts do continue, with every pledge being invested in our development budget and allowing us to put more resources on the game. (We’re not making the game bigger at this point and new funds serve primarily to increase the level of polish we’ll be able to achieve.) We appreciate your continued efforts to spread the word about the RPG rennaissance that’s underway, and our small part in it.
We wanted to take a moment to congratulate Ragnar Tørnquist and Red Thread Games on the successful release Book One of the episodic adventure game Dreamfall Chapters, which was successfully Kickstarted in March 2013. It's been some time coming with the first game of the series, The Longest Journey released 15 years ago. It's always great to see a Kickstarted title receive praise from both its backers, new fans, and press. Check it out on Steam or GOG.com if adventure games interest you.
TL;DR: Gullet Stretch Goal extended to October 31; Gold Tide novella released; Monte Cook Games videos and more.
Hi,
Thomas here. I'd like to start out today's update with a huge "thank you!" for the immense outpouring of support we received for our stretch goal to add the Gullet into the game. We received some incredibly generous pledges from many backers, including an anonymous donor ($1665), Pookie ($1271), Najiok ($900), Hiro Protagonist ($750) and even a pair of $750 pledges from our very own Colin McComb and Kevin Saunders.
Unfortunately, we fell somewhat short of our goal (about 15%, or $35,000) to see the Gullet added to the final game. However, we did not want to see this great effort of yours go for naught, and we also realized based on comments about this stretch goal as it closed that awareness had not spread widely enough. Some people suggested extending the deadline, in part to allow word to spread to where it didn't before.
So, we're moving the stretch goal deadline for the Gullet to the end of Friday, October 31. Just over $30,000 to go!
Coincidentally this is also when we will be closing a number of add-ons from our Kickstarter period. So while new backers are more than welcome you may also want to consider some of our add-on options! And to remind everyone: please specify your add-ons by Friday, October 31!
From the Depths: Gold Released
We've released the first of our From the Depths novellas. If you need a refresher: the From the Depths stories are a series of novellas being written by people involved in Torment: Tides of Numenera and Numenera itself. While not required reading to play, they provide a richer understanding of the Torment world and characters as well as the Tides.
If the Digital Novella Compilation was part of your Tier, or if you pledged for the $15 add-on, then you can retrieve Adam's novella it RIGHT NOW at our site. It's available DRM-free in all the most common eBook formats (epub, mobi, azw3, and PDF).
The first one we're releasing is written by our Design Lead Adam Heine, and set in Ossiphagan – which was the subject of the lore piece in update 34. It is one of the five From the Depths novellas that give specific insights into the nature of the Tides, with Adam's focusing on the Gold Tide. An excerpt:
Luthiya gripped the ragged edge of the rock, her heart beating thrice as fast as it should've been. A wide river of magma coursed fifteen meters below them, and within it—or were they above it?—floated a dozen or so humanoid shapes. They were golden and ethereal, like wisps of flame, though there was nothing to burn. In another place and time, they might've been beautiful, but Luthiya couldn't see past the fire. Fire meant destruction. Death. The Tabaht.
"What are they?" she breathed. And why is Ama excited about these . . . things?
"Fire wights," Ama said.
"Wights?!" Luthiya hugged herself tightly, remembering old Shue ghost stories in which the dead returned from Abaddon to feed on the living.
Ama touched Luthiya's arm. "Hush, child. I'm not ready for them to know we're here. Fire wights is a misnomer, based on how the Ossiphagans saw them. These creatures are very much alive."
"Which brings us back to the question," Luthiya said, more quietly."What are they?"
Ama sighed, as though Luthiya should already know. "Old, of course. Probably not of this world at all. They're extremely intelligent, if somewhat difficult to communicate with. I wonder if the thermebus would be useful in . . ."
Ama continued talking to herself, and Luthiya ground her teeth. The nano often did this: babbling to herself as though Luthiya weren't there or couldn't understand what she was saying. Normally, Luthiya would let her run on—she'd learned a lot of useful things that way—but there were more important things right now. "Are they dangerous, Ama?"
"What?" Ama looked at her and blinked, obviously having forgotten Luthiya was there. "Oh, no, child. They are not fire any more than they are undead. They aren't even hot, though they can become so. They communicate through a form of temperature variation. One could spend another three or four lifetimes trying to under—"
"Ama," Luthiya said as politely as she could behind clamped teeth. "Why are they exciting?"
Her face lit up as she said, "I don't know."
"What?"
"There's something important about this place, Thiya. I feel it, and it has something to do with the wights." There was a spark in her eyes Luthiya had never seen before. Joy . . . but scarier. "I think we can help them."
"Help them?" The nano was always strange, but this was beyond that. It was one thing to spend hours staring at some metal orb that hung by its own power, but Ama seemed unusually detached from reality at the moment. "We're having enough trouble helping our—"
"Look!"
ma pointed as some of the wights came together in a circle. Flamelike coils stretched forward from their bodies. Arms, Luthiya thought. The wights plunged their arms into the magma, then the circle began to spin. The magma spun with them, as though the wights were stirring it.
As Luthiya watched, the magma changed color from red, to orange, to gold. The wights rose into the air and a tower of golden magma rose out of the river with them. She gasped. How is that even possible?
The magma continued to rise. Some of the wights remained at the base, coaxing more magma into the tower, while others guided it toward the cavernous ceiling. Finally they reached the roof where a smaller circle of wights had formed and was molding the magma into the ceiling itself.
Luthiya wasn't sure when it changed, but the magma became a shimmering black, a pillar of twisted glass that hadn’'t been there before. "Like the chantry," she said in awe.
"And the bridges," said Ama, smiling down at her. "Think what we could do with their help. We could rebuild this city."
Monte Cook Games Videos
Monte Cook Games has released a set of "How to Play" videos which serve as excellent introductions into the Numenera pen and paper game. If you're unfamiliar with the game's world and rules – or even if you're not – the How to Play Numenera video is definitely recommended viewing. Less relevant to our backers, but still a fun and interesting watch, is the How to Play The Strange video. Both feature Monte Cook, Shanna Germain, Bruce Cordell and Jen Page. Give 'em a watch!
The Sorrow (formerly known as the Angel of Entropy) has been hunting castoffs like the player for quite some time. Some castoffs have managed to evade its attention so far, while others have been tracked down and mercilessly destroyed. The Sorrow will be a major antagonistic force in the game. Since you – and all the other castoffs, for that matter – aren't strong enough to stand against it directly, you've got to find another way to deal with it.
For the moment, I can't say any more than we've already revealed in updates, but the question of *why* the Sorrow is hunting the castoffs will definitely be revealed over the course of the story.
And on the Bloom:
For narrative reasons, the Bloom zone takes place entirely in the creature's interior, but you may get to see some Bloom exterior in the Sagus Cliffs zone. I can't say for sure because Sagus Cliffs hasn't been completely designed yet, and I don't know which scenes will make the cut… but I agree that it could be fun to depict, so we'll see what happens.
We're laying out our playable space in “scenes” – discrete locations or levels where gameplay takes place. It's essentially the same as in the Infinity Engine games. In PST, examples of scenes would be Ragpicker's Square, the NE Hive, the Dead Nations, the second floor of the Mortuary, etc. The Bloom zone is divided into a number of scenes, which are meant to portray those sections of the Bloom that the player can access. In theory, there are other parts of the Bloom that the player will not see in this game.
Bedlam
And finally, we wanted to give a shout-out to the Bedlam Kickstarter. Based on The Banner Saga's engine and with inspiration from FTL and XCOM, this title mixes a fast-paced "blitz" turn-based battle system with elements of rogue-like games and RPGs for what promises to be a pretty unique and engaging experience. With $96K funded of their $130K goal and a week to go, they are close to the finish line, so give the project a look if that sounds cool to you!
TL;DR: Gullet Stretch Goal ends on October 16th; Adam on character advancement; Colin on Ossiphagan lore; please claim your pledges and choose your add-ons by the end of the month.
We've made good progress on our The Gullet stretch goal. As Thomas mentioned in update 32, the Gullet is an area in the Bloom that is currently not planned to happen, but which we feel would add a lot to the flavor and pacing of the location.
You can read George's description of the area in update 32, but maybe it's good to explain a bit more what we feel it would add to the Bloom. As you would expect from a Torment area, the Bloom is heavily focused on dialog and narrative choices, as well as offering opportunities for exploration and discovery. The Gullet by comparison is closer to a puzzle in the sense that it offers a specific problem you have to overcome, with multiple solutions to success. Once in there's no way back and it's about using the tools at your disposal to get through. Exploring the location in more detail will allow you to find (the remains of) previous victims of the Bloom that were trapped in the Gullet, and scavenge for tools and knowledge that will aid in the challenges ahead. (The Gullet isn't a Crisis per se, but is relevant to one.)
We have less than one more week left to the October 16th deadline. If you've been wondering why we feel tied to deadlines, it is because it's necessary for us to lock in each Zone's area design as we move into full production for it. We’re working on the Bloom currently and can only devote a certain amount of time/resources to it before we have to move on to ensure that other Zones get the attention they need. Currently we're 73% of the way to reaching our funding target, which will allow us to take on the Gullet. You can find our current funding total as well as top and newest contributors on our website. Just for clarity: all raised funds still go into Torment’s development, even if we do not hit the goal by the end of October 16th. But reaching this goal allows us to commit to including the Gullet. George would love to see his complete design realized (which is rarer than you might think), but we need your help to do it!
Speaking of the site, we recommend everyone to head over there and register on our website if you haven't already. Please specify your add-ons by Tuesday, October 31, 2014 and contact us immediately if you have any questions or difficulties. At that time, we will be closing off the add-ons that were available during the Kickstarter. Other offerings may become available, but they may not be the same values. (For example, during the Kickstarter, we made Wasteland 2 available as a $25 add-on. As the game's retail price is currently $40, we will be closing that option out. But if you gave us $25 during the Kickstarter to get Wasteland 2, we want you to be able to get it for the value we promised to you as a TTON backer.)
We've gotten great feedback on the website and Jason has been outstanding in quick turnarounds on improving it. One request from many backers was the ability to add a custom pledge amount to purchase add-ons or upgrade to available tiers, so we added this feature on the Pledges page. If you'd been meaning to upgrade or were looking at some add-ons, now's your chance. Any pledge will be registered instantly – verify your PayPal email and press "claim transactions" on the Email Addresses page if it does not. Check the Rewards page to see what add-ons and tiers are available to you. Not all rewards are available indefinitely, some tiers or add-ons become closed as rewards already shipped or due to limited availability.
Kevin out (for now).
Character Advancement
Adam here. I'm going to talk about how character advancement will work in Tides of Numenera.
Before that, I should tell you how it works in Numenera tabletop, because it's not a strictly traditional advancement system. First, as we've often said, you get XP when you solve problems, complete quests, and make discoveries—not for individual kills. Second, XP is spent, not accumulated – like cyphers, XP are a resource not intended for hoarding. Most of the time, you'll have less than 4 XP, because that's how much most character advancement steps cost. Third, you can also spend XP on short-term benefits—on things other than character advancement.
That last one raises a couple of obvious questions. Why would you spend XP on short-term benefits when you can give your characters lasting benefits like new abilities (or flipped around: what happens if you spend all your XP on short-term benefits and get to the final confrontation with a 1st-Tier character)? Also, if the game has enough XP such that players can spend some on short-term benefits and max their Tier by the end, what's to stop them from spending all their XP on advancement up front, basically maxing out their Tier halfway through the game? How could we balance the game like that without scaling?
Our answer to these questions is what we are, in Torment, calling Discovery Points (DP). Throughout the game, you will gain both XP (per character) and DP (for the party).
Experience Points are gained primarily by accomplishing critical path tasks: progressing quests and solving Crises and other major encounters. Each character gains their own XP individually, though usually if the party completes a Crisis or a quest, all party members will gain the XP. (SIDEBAR: Sometimes you can leave a Companion behind and pick them up again later in the game. In these cases, they will gain their own XP outside of your influence (they don't just sit around waiting for you, after all). So if you pick them up again, you will find them close to your level.)
Each character spends their own XP on character advancement steps, each of which cost 4 XP. These advancement steps include:
1) Increased Stat Pool
2) Increased Stat Edge
3) Increased Maximum Effort Level 4) Additional Skill Training
5) Improved paincasting ability (Last Castoff only)
6) Additional Class Abilities (beyond what you get for your Tier)
7) Reduced Armor Penalties
Every four advancement steps, the character will advance to the next Tier. The first five can only be advanced once per Tier, and #5-7 are really optional steps (the Last Castoff's paincasting ability will be improved in other ways in the course of the game).
Typical character advancement might look like this: (gain 4 XP) add a new Skill, (gain 4 XP) increase Might Edge, (gain 4 XP) increase Maximum Effort Level, (gain 4 XP) distribute 6 new Stat Pool points. Then as soon as the fourth one is done, that character advances to the next Tier—they gain new abilities from their Focus and choose new abilities and Skills from their Type (glaive, jack, or nano). They can also then use XP to purchase any of the advancement steps again toward the next Tier.
We're planning on balancing the game out to 6th Tier (the maximum Tier in the Corebook), though completionists may still be able to purchase certain advancement steps beyond that if they collect enough XP.
Discovery Points are primarily gained through (wait for it) discovery: figure out how to communicate with an ancient (and alien) intelligence, access a memory abandoned by the Changing God in your brain, or decipher the tale told by an ancient set of moving cave drawings.
DP can also be gained by accepting Intrusions. These are opportunities to make an easy encounter more interesting, rewarding the player for dealing with an added complication. For example, say you're taking on the Sorrow directly (it's not a good idea, but let's say that you are). You discover it's weak against fire damage and, with the help of a flamethrowing artifact you found, are actually doing pretty well against it.
Then an Intrusion occurs. The Sorrow begins to shifts its own molecular make-up so that it's weak against something else but fire barely hurts it. This Intrusion won't always happen: most Intrusions will only trigger when an encounter is already proving easy for you, and many of them have additional conditionals that must be met. Now that this one has triggered, you have a choice: you can spend 1 DP to stop the Intrusion (how that works out narratively depends on each Intrusion, for example maybe you strike a lucky blow, doing little or no damage, but disorienting the Sorrow long enough that it can't finish the shift), or you can let it happen to gain 2 DP.
DP is gained and used by the whole party, and it is spent on short-term benefits. We haven't finalized what all those benefits will be, but some examples might include:
• Refusing an Intrusion • Making a recovery roll without needing to rest • Gaining an extra level of Effort on a task for free • Taking extra movement during a Crisis • Performing an extra action during a Crisis • Retrying a failed action during a Crisis • Crafting special items that require a crafting cost
The goal here is to maintain the mechanics that make Numenera fun, to keep Torment balanced (so we can estimate approximately what power level characters will be in a given Zone), all while doling out frequent and exciting rewards.
Far to the southeast of the Sagus Protectorate, a ring of mountains stand, carven alien faces adorning their peaks. Fires erupt within this ring, rivers of magma pouring down the inner faces of the mountains to create vast pools of constantly churning molten rock and metal.
Few, if any, natural volcanoes remain extant on the planet today. So then how is it that Ossiphagan’s ring of fire continues to bubble, boil, and erupt in a never-ending cycle?
Based on the best guesses of the Aeon Priests who have ventured here, the Lava Fields of Ossiphagan seem to have gone through at least three major shifts. Before the volcanoes erupted, the plains were home to enormous beasts covered in spines and claws, larger than almost any beast known to the Ninth World. None alive in the Ninth World know how they came here, whether they were created or grew, or whether they were one of the civilizations that dominated the planet in epochs past. Neither does anyone know why so many of these behemoths died on these plains – whether they chose this place or were slain here, destroyed by some power of untold magnitude. But die they did, in staggering profusion, and their steel-hard bones stood testament to their passing in the eons that followed.
An illustration from Adam Heine's upcoming From the Depths novella, set in Ossiphagan (artist: Rebecca On)
In later ages – how much later, none can say – the terraformers came. At least one civilization among the prior worlds had the ability to engage in terraforming and large-scale geological reshaping. We know this because someone hurried along the process of continental drift to join the continents into a supercontinent, created impossible landscapes, thrust crystalline spires into the sky, and re-routed the entire continental subduction process to channel a good portion of the Earth’s magmatic flow to this single point, where they carved alien faces high on their artificial mountains, from which the lava spilled. Why? None know. Some suggest that the fire wights that prowl the constantly bubbling magma may be the descendants of the original builders – they have certainly bedeviled Ossiphagan’s visitors throughout living memory.
It is believed that yet another civilization made use of these planetary forces for their own ends. Visitant legends suggest these planetary forces were used as a massive, interstellar forge, and that Earth was an important stop for the ships that plied the interstellar winds.
So Ossiphagan was born. The bones that littered the landscape provide excellent natural insulation against the flame, the fractures and striations within the basis for an intricate network of tunnels and walkways, and so seem to have been repurposed into towers filled with incomprehensible machinery. Force screens that still (largely) function might have shielded those who ventured into the super-heated air. Within the towers, alien and almost-incomprehensible control panels seem to direct the flow of magma from one holding pen to another – perhaps to purifiers or waiting vessels? The academics are uncertain on this point. Some of the bone-towers appear to be designed to signal through the air, for they emit non-lethal (to humans, at least) pulses of energy into the sky – perhaps to direct vessels, or as a lighthouse of some sort for the planet. Other towers seem to have played a part in guiding the molten metals to ruined buildings ringing the great furnace, for great sweeps rotate and direct the churn. Aeon Priests believe that for uncounted years the Forge of the Night Sky played a vital role in interstellar and intergalactic trade.
But as is so often the case in the Ninth World, those who might have shed light on the truth seem to have disappeared, and with them the history of Ossiphagan. All that remains is guesswork: perhaps the trade route died or the galaxies spun apart or a war swept the shipping lanes. Whatever the truth, the great vessels stopped coming. The control towers went unmanned. Time worked its insidious ruin on the structures, and the faces on the peaks eroded with the centuries.
A black-and-white version of the cover illustration from Adam Heine's upcoming From the Depths novella, set in Ossiphagan (artist: Rebecca On)
Yet the constant churn continues. The old machines in the heart of the mountains still push the molten rock and metal through the mouths of the mountains. Those who have come to Ossiphagan—whether driven to a last refuge by the forces of the Tabaht or exploring the fires that erupt to the southeast of the Sagus Protectorate—report that the force-screens still hold against the fire wights that roam the channels. The controls still function, if anyone alive can puzzle them out. Other secrets may lie hidden as well.
The name of the Forge of the Night Sky still conjures wonders. But as far as anyone can tell, nothing from it has reached the sky for years.
History of the Lore
In July 2013, we revealed an image from Chang Yuan. My original title for it was “The Ruins of Ossiphagan”, but Kevin thought we ought to have something more evocative (personally, I thought it was plenty evocative, but that’s because I knew what the whole picture was about when I requested it; in retrospect, Kevin was right – as usual).
The three options I provided all still work:
- The Dwellers in the Magma Fields - The Bonedancers of Ossiphagan - The Forge of the Night Sky
It was the latter that won out. Just as well, because Adam got to write about the first two for his novella, telling us about the bridges and bones and the strange lights at the heart of the picture. But we’ve got more secrets for the place, and you’ll uncover those as you play Torment.
Wasteland 2's release saw a few developers that worked on both that title and on Torment visit inXile offices. Here's a snapshot from Brian Fargo's twitter:
From left to right: Chris Avellone, me, Colin McComb, Brian Fargo, Steve Dobos, George Ziets
This led to our fans on the Codex to ask the astute question "what does one haircut matter?" The answer, it turns out, is a lot:
Adam Heine is missing from the picture, but we are planning on another team meeting in the near future. Whether we’ll all be sporting the Colin look by then is to be determined.
TL;DR: website re-launched – please confirm your pledge and any add-ons, Endless Battle lore, ask Torment developers.
Hi,
Thomas here! As Wasteland 2 is getting close to release and Torment: Tides of Numenera closer to full-scale production, we're excited to announce the official relaunch of the Torment website and backer system with an overhauled functionality. The new site is largely the work of Jason Dora, one of the Torment backers, who answered our call for a web developer in Update 29, and has since joined inXile full time.
Torment's New Website
The key functionality of the new site that will interest you is that you can now declare your add-ons. In fact, if you intended for Wasteland 2 to be among your add-ons, then just login and tell us when you're ready to get your Wasteland 2 key. Wasteland 2’s commercial launch is Friday, September 19. You can specify Wasteland 2 add-ons now by visiting the reward page and adding Wasteland 2 to your selected rewards. Keys will be made available before release.
More generally, the new backer system means you will now be able to manage your pledge in great detail. We have changed our system into one that tracks your contributions as inXile Points (XP or just Points). The more Points you have, the higher your Level within our system; the higher your Level, the more possible Rewards are available that you can buy with Points. As an existing backer, you will start with 100 Points for every $1 you donated, with your reward choice matched to the one closest to your total pledge. That is, each $.01 USD = 1 Point.
This may sound a little daunting at first but it does not impact the value or rewards of your pledge in any way. You will get the rewards that you pledged for during the Kickstarter campaign; the value of your pledge is unchanged.
What this system does is give us the ability to reward our backers for activities other than (or in addition to) pledging money, though we’re not using this capability yet. Currently, the concept of Level is only used to gate rewards that already had prerequisites (e.g., certain add-ons were restricted to certain Tiers). If, in managing your pledge, you find anything inaccurate about it, please contact our customer support and we’ll figure out what’s amiss and fix it for you. Again, if anything you see doesn’t match what we said during the Kickstarter, it is simply a mistake – tell us and we will fix it.
To manage your pledge, log into your account on the new website and go to the Rewards section. If you did not register on our old site yet, you’ll need to now. You will find your selected reward(s) and its point cost under the Selected tab, and under Available you will find a list of all the add-ons and rewards available to you at your current Level. The Locked tab shows rewards you can unlock by levelling up. With a few clicks you'll be able to select any and all add-ons you've been waiting to define!
Some backers who supported us through PayPal instead of Kickstarter used different email addresses on PayPal and Kickstarter, which resulted in them having multiple accounts on our old system. On the new backer portal, we tried to make things easy by cleaning up our accounts list and giving all of you who have multiple accounts a single one with their email addresses linked as additional emails. However, for such merged accounts we had to guess what the primary login email should be.
If you only had one email address: you should be good to go. If you had multiple accounts or email addresses: try logging into the most recent account you used; that has the highest odds to be the primary one that was chosen for you (if not try one of your alternate email addresses). Once you're in, you should see all your other email addresses listed in your profile. If you can’t figure out how to get in, or if you create a new account and don’t see what you expect, please contact our support team and we’ll help you out.
Once registered, please note we use email addresses to track all pledges. Please make sure the emails you used to pledge are all linked to your account and verified.
Kickstarter backers: Please choose all add-ons from your Kickstarter pledge by Tuesday, October 31, 2014.
Please note some tiers/add-ons may not be currently listed, we will be rolling these out soon.
The Gullet Stretch Goal
With the relaunching of the site we're also looking at introducing some limited stretch goals. These will be for things for which we have not yet made the final call – content or features that will not happen in our current schedule, but that we hope to be able to add.
So we're pitching you – our funders – the Gullet, one of the areas from the Bloom. George Ziets did an amazing job on the Bloom design. We originally planned to cut a number of areas from that location but have been able to bring some back in, but in the current scope the Gullet is not a part of the Bloom's design. Here's George's description of the area:
Deep in the guts of the Bloom is a jumble of fleshy veins and cavities, known to natives as the Gullet. It surrounds a foul organic stew, containing the minds and memories of those devoured by the Bloom. The pulsing of a titanic heart reverberates from somewhere below… if you find yourself trapped here, the sound will drive you mad.
Few reach this place by intention. Most are eaten by a Maw and emerge in the Gullet, half-digested, to spend the final days of their lives in screaming agony. Transdimensional echoes of the Bloom's victims wander through the tunnels, lost and insane. Bizarre creatures, bred by the Bloom in its guts, burst from their wombs to hunt. Forgotten machines and artifacts lie half-submerged in Bloom-flesh, plucked from distant worlds of the past or future.
The only way out of the Gullet is down… to follow the sounds of the Bloom's beating heart and descend to a place where the Bloom's consciousness is at its most malignant and aware.
This area would add a ton to the Bloom, particularly as it provides more adventure-type gameplay and will better balance out its pacing. But currently we think we’re already stretching our team with the areas we’ve already committed to. With our limited stretch goals, we'll be looking to raise enough money to commit to adding the Gullet to the Bloom, by bolstering our environment art team to both make the Gullet and to benefit all other locations as well – remember that all pledges support the game development and reaching the Stretch Goal in reality gives far more than just the Gullet.
Of course, we have to make the call so that we can plan ahead, so our time is limited too: we're looking to raise our total amount raised to $4.75M by October 16th! If you’d like us to restore George Ziets’ Bloom design and fully implement it according to his original vision, consider spreading word of our continuing crowdfunding (or increasing your pledge) to help us reach this goal. All of your friends who missed the Kickstarter can still contribute to making the best Torment ever. (And while the new pledge options aren’t as favorable as those we gave you during the Kickstarter, they are better than after we’ve stopped crowdfunding and are onto preorders.)
Lore Update: Endless Battle
Colin here. This lore update begins to explore some of the backstory of the largest conflict in the castoff community – a conflict that (as the name suggests) still burns a century later. As usual, this update is probably not essential to playing or understanding the game’s story, but it does provide a backdrop for a larger comprehension.
On the broad plains of the Verxulian Waste, south of the Valley of Dead Heroes and far to the east of the Oasis of M’ra Jolios, a battle has raged for centuries. Most wars in the Ninth World are short affairs, heavily dependent on the cyphers and artifacts the combatants bring to the fight. With the possibility of a single artifact dramatically altering the terrain of the field (whether through reality shaping, gravitics, dimensional warping, time dilation or compression, consciousness alteration, psychic aftershocks, or more), the potential for utter devastation from the poorly understood machines of the past is ever present.
How then does a battle burn for centuries in an age where opposing forces could wipe their foes from the very face of reality and history?
Centuries ago, the Changing God met one of his children for the first time. This castoff, who claimed the status of the First Castoff, the eldest sibling of all his heirs, had been badly hurt in a struggle with the Sorrow, her skin utterly burned away. She wore a mask to conceal the damage, but her castoff regeneration was unequal to the task of restoring her. She sought answers from her sire, tracking him across the Ninth World to find him. She wanted to know why the Sorrow attacked her and the other castoffs, how they could stop it, and how she might earn a new body for herself.
The two of them were inseparable for a time as she awaited his aid in growing her a new body to replace the scarred wreckage of hers – they traveled together, seeking truths and long-buried secrets. But their alliance was shattered when at last she demanded that the Changing God stop deferring her; her body was beginning to decompose. Yet the Changing God refused to transfer her consciousness – he gave her a bottle of embalming fluid and told her to make do with the body she had. They fought, the confrontation teased out greater truths from her sire, and she realized that he had been hiding too much. Rather than share his secrets, he turned his back on her. She demanded his knowledge, and suddenly their personal struggle turned into a larger battle, each pulling their friends and allies into an ever-expanding conflagration.
Their feud created a schism in the castoff community. Dozens of castoffs flocked to both sides, coming to stand for the side they thought right. Some sided with the Changing God, believing that he had a plan to stop the Sorrow’s genocide, or from a loyalty to the man responsible for their creation. Some sided with the First, believing that she had their best interests at heart against a man who had proven himself time and again to be focused solely on himself.
Realizing that the First was an existential threat, surpassed only by the destructive power of the Sorrow, the Changing God marshaled his forces to eliminate his foe, and this is when he discovered she had secrets of her own: she possessed a reality splitter she called Reconciler of the Truth. He discovered that his weapons were worthless – every time he launched a massive attack, she simply replaced the reality with one where the event didn’t occur, and then merged the realities together, collapsing them into a single observable state. Twice a day, she changed the course of the war, pushing ever closer to the Changing God’s headquarters as he struggled to launch multiple stratagems that would divert her attention.
After failing to destroy her several times, he sought a counter and at last managed to discover and repair a similar device that he named Heaven’s Rejoinder. Now time in the Endless Battle is torn, multiple parallel realities rolling and twining around each other, merging and splitting again with the major attacks. The two sides move and counter-move, trying to act secretly in ways that will allow them an undeniable victory, so much of the Endless Battle is fought in shadow, in clandestine tactics and small-squad engagements. They build and layer their feints, giving ground on certain fronts so that they can advance on others in separate realities.
But even this device was not proof against disasters. Over a century ago, the Changing God succeeded in summoning a biological moon and transitioning his consciousness to a body he created remotely within it. The First was occupied in a battle with the Sand Knights, a deadly mercenary company in the employ of the Changing God God who had been stymying the advance of the rebels for over a decade. Her lieutenant, Paj Rekken, was charged with leading an assault on one of the Sand Knights' fortresses, and gained entry just as the First was torn apart in a coruscation of energies. Rekken did not know the First had been destroyed and snapped the realities together quickly to maintain the victory over the Sand Knights. By the time Rekken learned of the First's death, the First was irrevocably lost.
His purpose achieved and his opponent eliminated, the Changing God remained on his moon, above the fray, and returned to his researches. Yet despite the removal of the principals, the battle rages on, its contestants battling for ideologies of transparency, equality, and the common good on the First's side, and for duty, devotion, honor, and the hope of winning the Changing God’s trust on the other – the castoffs on the side of the Changing God do not want the First’s ideology dictating their lives. It is no longer merely a castoffs’ struggle. True, castoffs who are not directly involved in the Endless Battle provide funding to either side, or to both, in order to advance their own agendas – with centuries of knowledge behind them, with organizations of their own to tap, they have no shortage of funds. It is a place where warriors test their mettle, where mercenaries earn coin or renown, and where suppliers of food, flesh, and material can find a buyer of last resort. Though the commanders hold occasional parleys, there are too many here who are invested in seeing the war continue.
There is no chance of peace; the soldiers here are eager warriors and their commanders are intractable, always thinking they have a chance at breaking the stalemate. The battle remains confined to a geographically small area that has been tremendously scarred by the horrors of Ninth-World war; the scars extend through multiple dimensions and timelines. The commanders have found that the reality-bending Reconciler and the Rejoinder have made major destructive weapons worthless, and so they have had to resort to new tactics: hand-to-hand combat, personal reality shields, flights of envenomed arrows, detonations of limited effect and duration, poison gas, and more prosaic mechanical and primitive traps… the best they can hope for is small and incremental progress in their struggle, but they have reached no further than this stalemate. Mazes of trenches crisscross the terrain, with bunkers behind the lines and deep divots of earth torn between them. Portals find occasional use, but the trenches remain the best way to move troops without exposing them to the withering death of pulsing beams and curtains of energy that sweep across the field. Gravitic fluctuations are common in that no-man’s-land, and free-roaming energies crackle and hiss in the air. Quantum slug-throwers pierce the sky day and night, and torn dimensions leave room for ultraterrestrials to step through and wreak havoc.
But they are castoffs. They have lifetimes to learn the craft of war, and they believe that they may yet find a way to destroy their foes.
So a brief recap for those unfamiliar: the setting of Numenera and Torment is Earth one billion years in the future, known as the Ninth World. A billion years is as far removed from us as we are removed from being single-celled organisms. In those epochs, a number of great civilizations have risen and then disappeared into obscurity, each one orders of magnitude more advanced than all but the wackiest science fiction could even imagine.
The people of the Ninth World, however, are at approximately medieval technology levels, but they live among the debris and leftovers of a billion years of civilizations. Of course there are no books or other degradable things still lying around, but there are massive monuments made of metals nobody recognizes, giant crystals floating in the sky, mutated descendants of bioengineered creatures, automated military constructs following orders that don't make sense anymore, and other weirder things that have withstood time.
The Ninth Worlders don't understand how to make any of this stuff, but they know enough to cobble together useful artifacts from what they find.
To (finally) get to the question, "this stuff" is the numenera, but it doesn't just mean sci-fi devices you find lying around (you actually don't find sci-fi devices lying around much, but have to cobble your own). It also means the invisible forces still in the air. It means the datasphere that some civilization built around the planet -- the one that can be accessed if you know what you're doing (not that you'll understand what you find) and beams the occasional strange vision (known as glimmers) into people's heads at random. It means the creatures that look like they stepped out of a horror film. It means the dirt itself, which has been worked, refined, manufactured, or grown and then ground back into soil by time.
Although we do frequently use "numenera" to refer to the items and devices you will find in Torment, it really is ubiquitous and can be used by the clever or knowledgeable in infinite ways.
Torment's Crisis system (which we introduced in ridiculous detail here) might best be thought of as our "more than combat" system. Or better yet, think of it as a tabletop encounter, where combat is certainly one way to handle things, but where players have many, many more options available to them as well.
Yes, Crises are all turn-based. But no, they are not necessarily all combat. We use the Crisis system whenever there's some kind of time-based pressure the player must deal with. For example, it would be a Crisis to sneak out of a prison or to try and rescue people from a rampaging horror. In the first case, the pressure comes from the guards who are patrolling or responding to alarms. In the second, of course, it's the horror itself that provides the pressure. In both cases, while combat is a possibility, it's not the ideal solution to the problem.
So the "other things" you can do depend on the individual Crises themselves. You might be repairing (or disabling) ancient devices, persuading people that you're on their side, creating distractions to temporarily stop the horror, etc. We wouldn't be able to do this kind of thing well in a massive dungeon crawl game, but since we're focusing on quality over quantity -- on a dozen or so handcrafted scenarios, woven tightly with the narrative and environment -- we can afford to make each one really interesting.
As for quests, certainly there will be some that result in a Crisis, but just like PST there will be many quests (maybe most quests) that you can solve with just conversation and exploration. We're excited about the Crisis system, but this is still a Torment game, after all, and that means that conversation and narrative are king.
If you'd like to ask Adam a question about Torment – or about anything, really – you can do so at his website here.
The Strange, by Monte Cook Games
Monte Cook Games recently launched their second successfully Kickstarted pen and paper RPG, the Strange, by Bruce Cordell & Monte Cook. This game has a fascinating multiple reality setting crossed by a chaotic network of dark energy and the Strange. It uses the same system as Numenera. Like Numenera, the philosophy is to offer fascinating worlds and settings and a rule system that doesn't get in the way of the experience and the GM's storytelling.
There have been some very meaty interviews with the Torment team since our last update. Rock Paper Shotgun did a massive interview with Colin McComb, Adam Heine, George Ziets and Kevin Saunders, read part one here and part two here. GRYOnline interviewed Adam, Kevin, and Jeremy Kopman about game mechanics, story, companions and combat, an interview that's available in Polish but also in English.
Our project lead Kevin Saunders has noted on twitter we hope to have a screenshot for you by the end of the month, so hopefully it'll be less long before you hear from us again!
