Fun Stuff > MAKE
I'm making a video game! - and I could use your input/comments
Cornelius:
I chose the boars in the example specifically, as they can be a credible threat, compared to the predators. It's not just a personal threat, but also a threat to their subsistence, and to the entire community. That's one element for understanding much of the middle ages: thought centred more on the community, than on the indivicual.
That, and, though I doubt personally that it was the case for many common people, the way to think both of the material and the spiritual world as coexisting. I've heard that likened to how we have an online and offline presence nowadays.
Either way, happy to have been of some help!
LTK:
--- Quote from: oddtail on 26 Feb 2019, 04:46 ---- the "sapient animals" part complicates things too. Civilization doesn't exactly need to advance to tame the wilderness if the characters you meet ARE the wilderness.
--- End quote ---
Before civilization, humans were just as much part of the wilderness as other animals, and even today there are tribes who have never changed their hunter-gatherer lifestyle. They have no need to 'tame the wilderness' because they don't have runaway population growth to necessitate it. If different species of animals formed a society in the absence of humans, it would probably be the herbivores, who have more to gain from creating a safe place from predators. Also consider that, without humans, there might still be cave bears, cave hyenas, woolly mammoths and giant deer in Europe, so once such a society had been established, medium-sized predators like wolves might consider joining it if larger predators are a major threat to them. Maybe it's a last resort for wolves that have been banished from their pack.
At that point you might see a clash of cultures occur between the animals living in the wild versus those living in civilization. If the mixed-species society encroaches on the wilderness, like burning forests to create larger grazing fields just like humans did, the animals living there might form an uneasy alliance and raid the cities to cull the herd and preserve their own way of life.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like an interesting setting full of possibilities. I hope you can make it happen!
oddtail:
--- Quote from: Cornelius on 26 Feb 2019, 06:39 ---I chose the boars in the example specifically, as they can be a credible threat, compared to the predators. It's not just a personal threat, but also a threat to their subsistence, and to the entire community. That's one element for understanding much of the middle ages: thought centred more on the community, than on the indivicual.
That, and, though I doubt personally that it was the case for many common people, the way to think both of the material and the spiritual world as coexisting. I've heard that likened to how we have an online and offline presence nowadays.
Either way, happy to have been of some help!
--- End quote ---
The real-life annoyance of "boars destroying farmers' crops" does take on a very surreal (but also kind of cool) atmosphere when the boars are very much aware of what they're doing, but they just don't give a crap because they are easily twice or thrice the size of any individual farmer.
oddtail:
--- Quote from: LTK on 26 Feb 2019, 06:43 ---The more I think about it, the more it seems like an interesting setting full of possibilities. I hope you can make it happen!
--- End quote ---
I hope so too, but if I go even a little beyond skin-deep, it'll certainly not be in the first game. I have ideas for like five different narratives in the setting (including possible sequels to the first game), but I'm trying to keep my eyes on the prize - namely, completing even a single viable game.
Forcing myself to write down and subsequently forget great ideas that just do not FIT the coherent game I'm trying to make is very frustrating, but I imagine that's part of any creative process.
Tova:
It definitely is.
Keep them in a notebook somewhere. They might fit a future project, who knows.
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