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Factions & Races & Allegiances & Classifications

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Factions & Races & Allegiances & Classifications

from JoeUser Forums

I never promised that Elemental would be a simple game. I just promised it would be good. :)

For casual players, there are factions.  Elemental has 10 default factions or you can create your own.

Next up are Allegiances. This is also of interest to casual players.  The Kingdoms and the Empires. Pretty straight forward.

Now we get into the more hard core stuff. For people who are into this stuff like we are. You have the races and the classifications.

First, let’s start with classifications. There are Men and there are Fallen. Men are sentient humanoid beings that are “natural”.  Fallen are beings that were created by the Titans. The Sentient Fallen were created using Dragons and Men in parts – sometimes mixed in with other stuff.

When Master of Magic was developed, such talk of “Fallen” would probably have seemed totally the realm of “magic”. Today, however, we can imagine a day where scientists begin using DNA from various animals to make “better” humans.  That’s basically what the Fallen are as a classification. 

In Elemental, the world of “Men” is a broad classification.  The Ironeers are men but in another universe they might be called dwarves. But Ironeers in Elemental are men.

There are 5 races of “Men” and 5 races of “Fallen”. Each is quite different from one another.

I’m a Tolkien fanatic so let me put it in Tolkien terms.

The Kingdoms would include Men, Elves, Dwarves.  The Empires would include Orcs, Saruman version Orcs, and the Easterlings.

Of course, in Elemental, players can toss all this out and make their own race if they want. I made a Na’vi today in our internal build.  I decided to make them aligned with the Kingdom.  Are they “Fallen”? You decide.

85,136 views 37 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

Players can create a faction. When they create a faction they can choose its race from one of the pre-existing ones OR create their own race. Then they can choose their allegiance - Empire or Kingdom.  The choice of allegiance is the one that determines whether they use death or life magic and its environmental effects.

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

Turning fantasy tropes around is not necessarily a good idea. Most fantasy races such as elves, dwarves and orcs are psychologically very powerful. They represent a mythological people with an idea about humanity in the real world built around them. If you make orcs good then really they aren't orcs anymore, they're something else. Having a race that is brutal cruel monstrous and ugly is something I want. Elves are nobility incarnate, they represent in many ways the ideal picture of aristocracy. Dwarves are your working class folk. I want these stereotype races in the game. Call them whatever you want but the ideal they represent should still be there.

Instead of going against fantasy tropes may I suggest adding new ones based on ideas about humanity. The noble warrior society (Samurai, Spartans) seems to go very well with a beastly figure (kind of a taming the animal within thing). You could easily take the lives of many families who are in the marines and make that idea of humanity into a race. You could easily take whatever race my avatar is (Yeti?, Trogg?)  and build this around them. 

Not sure why I felt the need to post all this. Will try to restraint myself in the future.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

Hopefully this has't been mentioned in other places and I just missed it -

Until this journal there were 6 fallen and 6 man factions - why the change to 5 each?  Making room for custom factions on each side?  Just curious.

Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Micshoop, reply 27
Turning fantasy tropes around is not necessarily a good idea. Most fantasy races such as elves, dwarves and orcs are psychologically very powerful. They represent a mythological people with an idea about humanity in the real world built around them. If you make orcs good then really they aren't orcs anymore, they're something else. Having a race that is brutal cruel monstrous and ugly is something I want. Elves are nobility incarnate, they represent in many ways the ideal picture of aristocracy. Dwarves are your working class folk. I want these stereotype races in the game. Call them whatever you want but the ideal they represent should still be there.

Instead of going against fantasy tropes may I suggest adding new ones based on ideas about humanity. The noble warrior society (Samurai, Spartans) seems to go very well with a beastly figure (kind of a taming the animal within thing). You could easily take the lives of many families who are in the marines and make that idea of humanity into a race. You could easily take whatever race my avatar is (Yeti?, Trogg?)  and build this around them. 

Not sure why I felt the need to post all this. Will try to restraint myself in the future.

 

If you create your own factions then they can have all the standard lore you want!

Personally I created a bunch of my own 'lore' to make the uninteresting worlds or blank situations (like X3) more interesting and consistent. I consider the standard elves, dwares and humans against the orcs goblins and such to be the same as a childrens tale about sleeping beauty or snow white now.

It allows me to have a more immersive game (which is my ultimate goal when playing games basically).

 

Also its damn fun.

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

Hopefully this has't been mentioned in other places and I just missed it -

Until this journal there were 6 fallen and 6 man factions - why the change to 5 each?  Making room for custom factions on each side?  Just curious.

Precisely. We decided to reserve the art assets for the other two factions as assets that players can use for custom factions.

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 26
Players can create a faction. When they create a faction they can choose its race from one of the pre-existing ones OR create their own race. Then they can choose their allegiance - Empire or Kingdom.  The choice of allegiance is the one that determines whether they use death or life magic and its environmental effects.

Now that's pretty sweet. When we create our own races, what kind of choices do we have? Do we point-boy certain benefits? Do we choose a base model our units will have? Tweak the facial features/height?

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Micshoop, reply 27
Turning fantasy tropes around is not necessarily a good idea. Most fantasy races such as elves, dwarves and orcs are psychologically very powerful. They represent a mythological people with an idea about humanity in the real world built around them. If you make orcs good then really they aren't orcs anymore, they're something else. Having a race that is brutal cruel monstrous and ugly is something I want. Elves are nobility incarnate, they represent in many ways the ideal picture of aristocracy. Dwarves are your working class folk. I want these stereotype races in the game. Call them whatever you want but the ideal they represent should still be there.

Instead of going against fantasy tropes may I suggest adding new ones based on ideas about humanity. The noble warrior society (Samurai, Spartans) seems to go very well with a beastly figure (kind of a taming the animal within thing). You could easily take the lives of many families who are in the marines and make that idea of humanity into a race. You could easily take whatever race my avatar is (Yeti?, Trogg?)  and build this around them. 

Not sure why I felt the need to post all this. Will try to restraint myself in the future.
You don't need elves to picture the ideal aristocracy. But people gets less touchy when you picture them as a different race/species.

But even using them, then people loves to draw look alikes with the real world. And complain. Just reading the Dragon Age forums there were quite a few threads of people "seeing things" (seeing things about the modern world, because anything before the modern world doesn't count XD ).

What the game's races/factions should show traits that serve a purpose to the story. They can also have traits for the sake of variety. :P

(Egads x1)

Reply #33 from Elemental Forums Top

"You don't need elves to picture the ideal aristocracy." I am not disagreeing with this. Having the ideal aristocracy be another race helps suspension of disbelieve when they lack the less noble things that make us human. I think that if you wanted to mold a race based upon the most ideal and beautiful image of 1920s and 30s aristocracy in Great Britian you will come up with something very close to Tolkien elves. Maybe not pointy ears but the sleek build, manerisms and noble ideas will probably be there. That is really all im asking for when I say "Turning fantasy tropes around is not necessarily a good idea.". The essence, that idea is what I'm looking for. I think that's why tolkien's races have been used so much. No fantasy races have had the impact that Tolkiens races have had and there is a reason.   

Please don't misinterpret this as saying I want no variety, I enjoy things that differ from the tolkien races. I personally love China Melville's cactus men from his books. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_of_Bas-Lag

If you haven't read them then you might enjoy them. I will warn you they are dark but very well written and very original. None of the classical fantasy and he is already being copied by other writers to some extent.

Happily we are all getting our wishes granted.  :grin: :grin:

Reply #34 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 30

Hopefully this has't been mentioned in other places and I just missed it -


Until this journal there were 6 fallen and 6 man factions - why the change to 5 each?  Making room for custom factions on each side?  Just curious.



Precisely. We decided to reserve the art assets for the other two factions as assets that players can use for custom factions.

That's awesome Frogster. What about Flying Races or Races that hover like winged things did in MoM?

Side Note: I loved how these types of Races would be immune to Earthquake magics as they weren't actually touching the ground.

Reply #35 from Elemental Forums Top

As long as the Race/Faction has a sentient component in it, then almost anything should be doable.

A race of 7 foot tall slobbering idot beasts, without the sentient hierarchy, would seem a bit far fetched if not totally unbeleivable. Perhaps as a conscripted group for another faction to use as cannon fodder, OK but then they would be neither a Kindom or Empire in and of themselves.

Having said that. Now given a race of 7 foot tall slobbering idot beasts, with a Magic weilding Matriarch! Now that is a different game tool all together. :)

 

Reply #36 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 26
The choice of allegiance is the one that determines whether they use death or life magic and its environmental effects.

Aw.  I was hoping to be able to use both.

Reply #37 from Elemental Forums Top

So I'm a little confused about the role of races.  Now that we have 1G we can make our own nations/factions.  The actual race we choose is said to only be cosmetic though by you in another post somewhere and it has no effect that I can see yet.  All the items defining our kingdom are the strengths and weakness we choose.  So does race matter or not?  Are you classifying a faction as a race maybe?  I don't see an Ironeer as an option for race at the moment anywhere.  Is that the fifth kingdom race and will be coming later (there are currently only 4)?