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Episode 1 Creator Q &A
🕑 Added 2021-09-26 23:50:51 +0000 UTCHi friends,
My partner and I are here to answer some of your burning questions about Wayfarer! The podcast is divided into two sections--writing and game development, then worldbuilding and character questions.
Spoiler warning for ALL of the Prologue and Chapter 1's content.
TRANSCRIPT
(Tried using transcription software to reduce the amount of time to do this... it worked okay. Just know that Melchior/Mel was either transcribed as "Mel gear" and "Milk" respectively, and I think that's quite funny. Also Velantis became "Alan".)
JOSIAH:
All right, everybody. Welcome to our second question and answer session. I’m sitting here with the author and creator of the interactive fiction game Wayfarer. We’ve got Anna answering the questions. My name is Josiah, and I’ll be the one asking the questions.
Just a quick note: before we begin, we will be discussing a lot of aspects that relate to chapter one, as well as some further planning within the game. So, spoiler warning for all content that is released for the game so far—which is the Prologue and Chapter One of Wayfarer.
ANNA:
Yes. And that includes all branches of Chapter One. (laughs) So you might hear us talk about some content that you have not seen if you did not do a particular path.
JOSIAH:
And if that send something that sends you back to try to find out what that thing was talking about, then—by all means—go right ahead. (laughs)
So, to begin with, we’re going to start with a couple of game development related questions. Probably one of the biggest ones to begin is: how did you learn how to code?
ANNA:
That’s a good question. I think… I do get this quite a bit. The thing with coding is that there’s a lot of different languages out there that do multiple different things. So it’s like, how do you learn? How did you learn to code?
It was more specifically about choosing the language that I wanted to work in and then messing around with it. So it’s a lot of trial and error, which I think is, like, if you—well, you’ve done computer science stuff in school, so I’m not sure if that matches what your experience was—but it’s like you get the tools from the documentation for the language you want to work in, and then you have to figure things out from base principles.
JOSIAH:
A lot of, in my experience, at least a lot of coding comes down to using a combination of things from direct documentation around certain languages, but also examples that people have used online and finding actual blocks of code that you can pull from. Somebody said—"I had done something similar. This is how I did it”—but virtually always requiring some manipulation by yourself.
ANNA:
Yeah.
JOSIAH:
To make sure it actually fits in the framework that you are trying to do.
ANNA:
Yeah. So in my case, there’s three languages that I’m working with.
There’s the Twine story format SugarCube, which is my chosen story format for the game. The reason that I chose SugarCube specifically was because, one: SugarCube is an extension of JavaScript, which is another language that is used in the game. So, if you can understand SugarCube, then you’re on your way to understanding JavaScript.
And then the second—kind of more important reason—why I chose it was because a lot of Twine games over the past decade have been made with SugarCube. So the language is very extensively documented. And I knew going into it that if I ran into a problem or if I had a concept for something that I wanted to do, but had no idea where to start, I could Google it. And I would probably encounter someone who had been trying to do the same thing. And then I can look at what they’re talking about and then try it out for myself.
JOSIAH:
The unwritten rule of any programming language is: the way you really learn how to do things when it comes down to the nitty gritty of it is having a good handle of Google search functions.
ANNA:
Yeah. (laughs) Because that then goes into like the next two languages that I use.
So, the next one is JavaScript. I don’t really write any of my own JavaScript. It’s mostly just pulling specific macros that other people have created for the SugarCube format, and then popping them into my JavaScript file.
Next major language that I use is CSS and HTML, which are the coding languages for making things look pretty on the internet. (laughs) And that has been a lot of trial and error, and a lot of referencing the different resources and teaching tutorials and stuff that are available online. Like you can look up anything.
So, if you’re trying to do a specific thing, you just Google it and then you mess around, and sometimes you spend two hours on Stack Overflow with people being like, “why is this thing not working?” And you’re looking at it like: okay, I’m going to try what this person suggested. Oh, it kind of works, but not in the way that I want it to work. And then you just tweak it and then you try again.
But the nice thing about working in CSS is that you can use the inspect tool on your browser to see the code, and then edit it and change it and see immediately what those changes are. So if you’re having a problem with… say there’s part of the base SugarCube template that you want to change. When I was working with a base template, I would sometimes be like: “I want to change this thing, but I don’t know how to change this thing.” And then I spend like a couple hours trying to figure it out, trying to target different things, and it wasn’t working. Then I was like, “Oh, just use the inspect tool. It will tell you the name of the element.” (laughs) And you can just go in and edit from there.
That was a long ramble. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
And now our next question: did you have everything plotted, outlined your plan out for Wayfarer before you began writing or coding?
ANNA:
Yes, but with certain restrictions. The way that I handled this is basically the way that I was taught to when I took a video game narrative design course a couple years ago.
So with narrative design for video games, usually what they will do—because they’re working in really, really big teams (this style of working will also be used on for things like, you know, long form TV shows and kind of thing)—but they create a beat chart. So whoever is the lead designer or the story lead, they’ll create a beat chart. And the beat chart is basically where you break down the main points of your action from start to finish. These are the most important plot points. These are the things that are always going to happen on every single run. And you fill out the be chart with certain details that you need to know for those things to happen. And then once you have your whole be chart scoped out, then you can start breaking it down further into smaller and smaller pieces.
So basically what I did was that I created the entire plot and the beat chart for the full game. So, I know the contents of each act. I know how many acts I’m having. I know the main plot points of each act. I know where all the major plot sequences are going to fall.
And then after I did that, then I broke it down further, looking specifically at the arc of each act, so I could figure out how many chapters I needed in each act. And then I broke down the chapters into smaller pieces, and then sometimes the pieces of the chapters get broken down as well.
So, I’m kind of constantly in a state of outlining because you do your general outline and you don’t need to… when you start something like this, you don’t need to know absolutely every single possible thing that could happen, because you need to give yourself room to grow as you write. Because you learn a lot of things about the direction of your character arcs and the direction of your story as you’re in the middle of writing the action.
I think that if you created an outline and then created absolutely every single little plot detail in advance and then stuck to the outline, it would start to feel inorganic after a while, because you’d be forcing certain things to happen. Sometimes you create an outline, and then you start writing the scene, and then you swerve off into a completely different direction because that’s just where things start to organically go.
So, I guess my point is, is that it’s okay to have gaps in your outline, you can flesh them out later. (laughs)
Know your main plots, know your main plot points. And then you can continue to work on your outline as you continue to progress.
JOSIAH:
Because you generally, when you are beginning a chapter—
ANNA:
Mm-hmm.
JOSIAH:
You have the, a strong idea of all the major points that have to happen in a chapter, but you’ll begin a separate outline for that chapter at the start of it, right?
ANNA:
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So for example, I just started working on Chapter Two last week and the very first thing that I did was I broke down my Chapter Two outline into all of the scenes, all of the major beats of all of the scenes, all of the talking points within those major beats.
And now I have like a ten page outline for Chapter Two (laughs), but it’s only ten pages because it’s so extremely detailed. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
So from there, we’re going to move on to some questions about writing and (laughs) it’s kind of clear that a lot of the curiosity comes around the concept of branching paths.
ANNA:
Yeah.
JOSIAH:
Because we have three questions that deal with different aspects of branching paths. Instead of answering each one individually, we’re going try to group them all together and talk about branching paths as a whole.
So just for everybody who submitted those questions, we’ll be talking about how do you plot a branching storyline, like Wayfarer? How do you manage all the branches of Wayfarer, both for coding and for writing, as well—as in, how do you deal with the butterfly effect of having so many outcomes and variables? And all those really come down to is: what is it like managing branching paths?
ANNA:
Yes. So, it can get quite chaotic if you don’t have a way of keeping track of every single little detail. The most important thing is knowing what outcomes are going to continue to be used, what outcomes are not going to be continued to used, what outcomes will be used up to a certain point, and then where are you going to drop them. And also where all of your bottlenecks are.
Basically, a bottleneck is a point in the story where regardless of your previous choices, the narrative always comes back to that point. So, if we look at Chapter One, for example, the player can navigate Chapter One in multiple different ways, but there are two major bottlenecks in Chapter One.
One: the player is always going to end back up at the Count’s villa.
And two: the player is always going to end up meeting Zenaida and getting on her ship and going to Velantis—because that’s where the story takes place. How they get there is what changes.
And I think with how things branch so much, it’s taking to account… You want to make it feel organic and dynamic for the player. You want to give them a certain amount of choice in how they do things, and then bring it all back together.
So, if we look at—for example—the Viridian Lady sequence on Route B, just on its own, the way that it is structured is you start by going to the villa. And then you have to decide how you’re going to into the villa. And so there are three branches there. You can either climb the cliffs. You can go in the front. Or you can try to go in the front orclimb the cliffs and fail to do that (and then you end up inside the atrium). So, going through those three branches, they’re always going to put the player back into a situation where they’re in the atrium, talking to the Viridian Lady.
Now, what changes is—do they meet Hera or not? What kind of conversations do they have with Aeran throughout that sequence, which is going to ultimately affect his approval level? Do they get the bronze sphere or not?
(Because you can get the bronze sphere directly from her. If you meet her or you, Aeran will give it to you. If your approval is high enough, there’s a whole bunch of minutia that change.)
And then me—as the level designer—I need to decide what out of those tiny choices carry forwards and which ones do not. You could make the argument: “Okay, well, if you’re not going to use everything, why do you have so much choice to begin with?” But the thing about choice is that it affects the players. It changes the player’s perspective on the story. Sometimes their perspective on the characters.
Because I have people who come into my inbox on Tumblr yelling and screaming about how much they hate Aeran. And I’m just kind of sitting here going, “Well, I wonder what kind of content you saw, because depending on what content you see, your perspective of him may change a lot.” So though you might end up hitting the same bottlenecks, if the tiny details were different, then that’s going to inform your opinion of where the story is going and of certain characters, which is going to affect which major choices you make later on.
JOSIAH:
So, I think that really answers the “What is it like for writing?” and also talk about the butterfly effect—
ANNA:
Mm-hmm.
JOSIAH:
How would you say you manage project storylines?
ANNA:
So, it comes down to keeping track of all of your variables and also conditional statements. I have a gigantic Excel sheet. (laughs)Every single variable that I use to control things. Like if I want to record a certain event that happened, I will give that a variable. If I need to reference a certain conversation that happened, give that a variable. If I need to reference the player visiting a certain location, that gets a variable.
So, for example, in Route B (which is the investigation route), going to the Viridian Lady’s villa, going to Deadwood, going to Edgewater, and going to the Cove all have their own separate variables that are set to true or to false, depending on whether you visited that location or not.
Edgewater actually has two variables inside (laughs)because there’s two branches. Because you can decide to either go home or you can decide to go talk to Madam Grey. So, it has two variables inside the variable. If you went to Edgewater, a lot of it comes down to just managing “blank situation, true,” or is “blank situation false”. If blank situation is true, the player gets this text. If blank situation is false, they get this other text.
JOSIAH:
So, one of the ways that really kind of comes into the whole management aspect of it is—for instance—looking at the end of the investigation route interaction within the Count’s villa. It’s not that all of the different paths you can take there lead you to a different…
Let’s imagine every possible interaction you can have within the Count’s villa as a whole bunch of different rooms. It wouldn’t be so much that every interaction that you go to leads you to a different door and into a completely different room.
ANNA:
Mm-hmm.
JOSIAH:
You use those variables to have everyone enter one room and then check different things inside of it.
ANNA:
Yeah.
JOSIAH:
So there’s that one bottleneck where goes into the Count’s villa, but you check variables and things throughout, and that is what affects what content you actually see inside of it—
ANNA:
Yeah, and what options you ultimately can choose to get. And then there are other thing’s too, like non-companion characters will sometimes be given an approval counter. So, the Viridian Lady has one and the Count has one. And so these are behind-the-scenes code that the player cannot see. You can probably figure out—when you’re talking to them—whether they like you or not (laughs). But depending on which dialogue choices the player selects when they’re talking to them, the approval counter will either increase or not. And if you hit a certain point, you will get different results.
So, with the Viridian Lady, it’s technically a disapproval counter because that’s just how I did it. Every time the player is snarky or belligerent with her, she has a higher disapproval count. And then that ultimately affects what information you get out of her (because the information you get from her has its own individual true/false failure variables), which affects whether that information leads you to the location of the Chalice or not.
If your disapproval with her gets too high, she’s not going to give you anything decent. You can’t really use it.
The Count, on the other hand… (laughs) I did this specifically because I thought it would be hilarious to punish players for being snarky because everyone likes taking the snarky options. It’s not a punishment, but I wanted to have some kind of consequence for people being snarky. So, the Count has an actual approval counter. The snarkier you are with him when you get to his villa, the higher his approval gets. And then if it’s high enough, he will invite you inside his villa because he wants to… He just enjoys being snarked at by the main character so much he wants them to work for him permanently. And that created a whole other combat branch that it was not planned and delayed the release of the demo by a month and a half. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
So, yeah, if you’ve ever had a situation where the Count actually forced you to continue working for him. That’s because he’s just been so entertained by your snark and your sass.
ANNA:
Yeah, basically. And you can get on that, regardless of whether you have the chalice or not. It’s a lot harder if you don’t have the chalice—or if you’re pretending not to have the chalice. There’s a lot of different ways it can go. But yeah, basically in terms of keeping track of it, a lot of it comes down to just recording all of the Boolean variables—
JOSIAH:
Boolean being true/false—
ANNA:
True/false, yeah. And then knowing how I’m going to use and reference them later on. So, like, there’s a lot of stuff. There’s a lot of variables in Chapter One that don’t need to carry over because I’m not going to reference them again because Chapter One is a contained event. I don’t need to know. I don’t need the player to remember whether they gave Luthais their cloak or not. They don’t need to. There’s a variable for whether you paid Yarrow or not—if you go to the Docks and encounter them talking to Aeran—like there’s all these tiny little variables that affect certain, very specific things in Chapter One that don’t need to be called on ever again.
So, in my Excel sheet, when I finished Chapter One, I highlighted all of the variables that I didn’t need to use anymore. And then I unset all of them in the game because I don’t need the game to continue to store that information. It just takes up space.
JOSIAH:
All right. Well that was enough for (laughs)all the branching storyline questions. Next question on writing is: how do you balance making sure the player’s main character is active in the story and driving the plot—AKA choices matter without the player feeling as though the narrative conflicts with their character’s personality? AKA, how they would react or feel in the scene?
ANNA:
I think when you start a project like this or a narrative like this, you have to accept the fact that you cannot account for every single possible thing that a person could imagine. And there are going to be times when players feel that the main character is saying or doing things that is not in character for what they’re imagining.
Because I’ve had comments about this. I’ve had people say that the main character is too aggressive. I’ve also had people say that the main character is not aggressive enough. And my perspective on that as a writer is that I have created a base personality for the main character based on who they are and how they fit into this world. So, it’s taking into account the established history. They are essentially a mercenary. They are a 30-something mercenary without magic in a magical world. That is the baseline, and the character is working within that baseline.
I am inviting players to play this role. And if they want to imagine something that goes outside that role and something later conflicts with that, then that’s kind of that’s between the player and the game.
JOSIAH:
For instance, if you were to have a character who wanted to be somebody who is incredibly adverse to violence, who is frail, and also incredibly shy and a bit of a shut-in—it’d be hard to do for somebody who spent a good portion of their adult life as a mercenary.
ANNA:
Yeah. Like, those two things don’t really work? They’re kind of like opposite to each other?
So, my recommendation for players it to think about what the game is asking when you make your main character. Think about what the game is asking you to do in terms of role-playing. This isn’t D&D, you can’t create whatever you imagine because I am creating a story and I can’t account for every single possible choice because those choices are infinite, right? This is the difference between running a tabletop campaign as a DM and writing an interactive narrative where you give the players a certain level of choice. But ultimately there has to be restrictions because I can’t account for everything. Otherwise… you can’t write infinitely. The reason it works in tabletop games is because the DM doesn’t have to write all of the other choices that we’re not taking. (laughs) You know?
So, I think if you’re approaching it the way that I have approached it, where you have this base personality and you work within that framework, then you want to think about the different choices that would work, personality-wise for, someone who has lived in that situation and offer as many of those as you can. But eventually you do have to put restrictions on it because…
Like, I am kind of modeling the way that I do choices off of BioWare games, to a certain extent. I say BioWare games specifically because I tend to work in groups of three.
One is not a choice. Two doesn’t feel like enough of a choice because it’s either this or that. Three feels like a happy medium. Having more than three choices—although sometimes I do have more than three choices, it depends on what’s going on—having more than three choices gets really difficult to generate content. Probably the game that had the biggest influence on this is Dragon Age: Origins. Dragon Age: Origins had a gigantic team of writers. So they could go through adding, you know, six, seven choice options for the main character for a wide variety of different things.
I am a single person. (laughs) So it’s not feasible for me to constantly do four to six or more dialogue or action choices. So I usually try to keep it around a rule of three, just because two doesn’t feel like enough, but four is too much. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
Even that being said, I feel like Dragon Age: Origins—and some other games to an extent—do suffer from the “Is there anything else?” problem.
ANNA:
Yeah.
JOSIAH:
Where you’re working within a dialogue scene and you’re given a list of like five options, and you say one of your dialogue choices, you get two sentences from the character that’s specific to that dialogue choice. And then they say, “Is there anything else?” And then it moves on to another set of dialogue choices.
ANNA:
Yeah.
JOSIAH:
So it’s less of a branching path and more of a like multiple choice exam.
ANNA:
It’s a cycle. And I do use cycling questions every so often—usually for exposition because like the player needs to learn certain things.
But I like to have branches within cycle question cycles, because one of the things that annoys me about video game writing is that sometimes if you ask questions out of order, the dialogue feels very inorganic. So, I’ve been trying to account for using true/false statements and also referencing certain passage history and game history, to account for…
Like, all right, you have a cycle of four questions. If you ask Question 2 before you ask Question 1, the pace of it is slightly different. Or if Question 1 has—or if Question 3 has information that is important for Question 4 and you ask Question 4 first, you’re going to get slightly different results than if you ask things in order. Just because, like… it’s complicated. It takes a little bit of time. It’s a little annoying (laughs). But in terms of keeping the flow of dialogue as organic as possible, I like doing that even though it is more work because ultimately… I’m a playwright, I cannot handle not having dialogue that flows right.
JOSIAH:
(laughs) Last question on writing: With Interactive Fiction WIPS, it sometimes seems that readers and players don’t understand the concept of an alpha draft and are quick to judge. As someone who wants to create an interactive fiction, but has imposter syndrome and a fear of it flopping or being hated on, on any tips?
ANNA:
Ooh, this is a really good question because being afraid of negative experiences and negative reception is something that happens in every medium, regardless of what kind of content you create. And it’s a really difficult thing to work through.
Even if you try to have… I hate, I hatethis phrase… When I was in school and people were like “Oh, you know, you’re a writer, you’re an actor, you just have to have a thick skin and don’t let people’s criticisms get to you.”
At the end of the day, publicly released content is always going to have criticisms. There’s always going to be someone who reads your thing or sees your thing or experiences your thing—and hates it. And some people will want to yell at you about how much they hate it.
And so, I think what it really comes down to is making sure that you have healthy way of receiving that negative criticism and then putting that energy and shoving it off someplace else.
Sometimes I get some really negative stuff in my inbox. Sometimes I get, you know, comments on itch where someone enjoyed the material, but they didn’t enjoy the material. And they’re like, “I like this, but I wish this”.
And the way I handle it is that I have a few close friends who I share that information with just so I can vent about it. Once I’ve vented about it, then it’s just kind of like… You brush it off, set it aside. Don’t think about it again. It’s okay. I think you do need to let it out because no one likes getting criticize. Criticism is real. Especially negative criticism or unasked for constructive criticism.
This isn’t just interactive fiction, it’s anything, really. People who consume media… The audience doesn’t understand all of the minute decisions that a content creator may have made to make the thing. They just see the thing, consume the thing, decide they don’t like the thing. They’re like, “Why didn’t you do this? I hate this. You should have done thisinstead.”
And it’s like… you don’t understand what that creative process is like. So sure, yell about it. Whatever. You, as the content creator, need to accept that people are not going to like it. And then you don’t have to take that constructive criticism if you don’t want to deal with it. Let it out. And then don’t look at it again.
JOSIAH:
That’s really good advice. And I think “Look at it and deal with it” comes down to one of my personal favourite things I’ve ever heard about anything that could upset you or things that can be tough. The bottom line is to realize that you’re not alone and it’s okay to have those feelings.
ANNA:
Mm-Hmm.
JOSIAH:
Because something I’ve seen far too much—whether it be within theater or within careers or within anything—is people who have negative feedback or have something negative happen to them, they begin to fall down a whirlpool of “I must be the only person this is happening to. I need to deal with this because everyone else seems so much better in dealing with it than I am. So I am the outlier.” And then they don’t really deal with it in a healthy way.
Whenever you receive things like that, that might give you that fear of something flopping or a fear of being hated on, and it’s okay to feel upset about it.
ANNA:
Mm-Hmm.
JOSIAH:
Because it is something that is upsetting. And if you just try to think that you should not be feeling this way and try to bury it, then it’s only going to be a negative thing. Like Anna was saying, if you have those people around you, or if you have some way of taking it in and dealing with it… Venting about it and then finding a path to let it go away, that’s how you get past something like that.
ANNA:
And it can be like… especially if you’re an indie developer, artist, content creator, or whatever, like the…
Dealing with negative criticism has honestly been the most difficult part of this entire project. Because someone gives me a one star rating on itch. I have no idea why they gave me a one star rating, unless they say it specifically.
It could be… maybe the game failed to load for them and they’re angry about that. It could be maybe the game was really not for them. Something that comes up a lot with interactive fiction, especially on platforms like itch, is that people come into it expecting a 2D or 3D video game. And then they see they have to read and then they’re angry about that. So—one star rating.
But with the rating system, unless someone actually gives a review, I have no idea what they’re thinking. I don’t know. I can’t know. I will never know why someone gave me a two star or one star rating. And so, I can’t let that… I can process that—and I usually vent to you about it. I’m like “Someone gave me a one star rating mehhh!!”— (laughs)
JOSIAH:
And particularly within my experiences, both within like creative endeavors and outside of it, there are sometimes situations in which somebody is coming in looking to have a negative experience. Either they are looking to vent or they’re already in the bad mood. And so that affects their interpretation of what’s happening.
Or sometimes. even in some extreme cases, they’re actively looking to get a reaction out of you. It could be that they haven’t even played your game, or it could be that they haven’t read your thing. Maybe they are dealing with some type of jealousy or some type of feelings of inadequacy themselves. And for them, the way that they have chosen to deal with it is by attacking somebody else. It’s an incredibly unhealthy and unproductive way of doing that. But it’s what they’ve chosen to do. And you can’t control that.
ANNA:
Yeah. The main thing is—and I think this comes down not just to like any kind of online interaction, but just life in general—is that you cannot control the actions of others. So find ways of processing it that work for you and that are healthy for you because ultimately, especially as an online content creator, you don’t know what’s going to get thrown at you. You need to process it and let it go.
JOSIAH:
And I think the bottom line for all of this is all of this is easier said than done.
ANNA:
Absolutely. Absolutely.
(laughs)
Some people are going go into your game looking for things to be wrong. And some people are going to be like, okay, here’s two things that I liked, but also here’s this gigantic paragraph about the things that I really, really did not like. For me, in particular, I’ve been getting a lot of messages about the mechanics, because some people really don’t like failure and they are very angry about it. (laughs) So, I can’t control that reaction. It’s like, okay, maybe this game isn’t for you.
Like, I hate puzzle games. You cannot make me play a puzzle game. If there’s too many puzzles in the game, I’m done, I’m out. I hate puzzles. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the game is bad. It just means that I’m not the target audience. And some people who come in to review or rate your game, they’re not going to be the target audience, but they’re the kind of person who wants to be loud about it. So, you kind of just need to accept it, process it, and then move on.
JOSIAH:
Moving on to questions about characters and world building. What are your inspirations behind the city of Velantis?
ANNA:
This is a good question.
I pull from a lot of different things and a lot of different places, but the main source of inspiration is the Byzantine Empire and also Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. I feel like a lot of fantasy draws from Greco-Roman inspiration, but I am doing this because this is what I’m really comfortable with. I’ve spent a lot of time with Greco-Roman history, as well as Byzantine history. Partially because of my theatre background. The first thing you study when you study theater (laughs) ancient Greek and Roman plays (laughs).
And when you study theater history, it’s not just about reading the play. It’s also about the historical context, the culture, the language, how the language has been translated into English in different translations and stuff, and fashion, you know… Like architecture, you can’t talk about ancient Greek drama without talking about amphitheaters.
I wanted the setting to be Mediterranean because I wanted to move away from fantasy set in Northern Europe or in England or in Scotland or whatever. I wanted to move away from Tolkien, you know, that kind of (laugh) that kind stuff, that kind of era of fantasy. So I moved my main source of inspiration into the Mediterranean, which meant that I then started pulling from ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and the Byzantine empire. So yeah, that’s (laughs) that’s where that comes from.
JOSIAH:
And we’re going to start seeing some more of Velantis soon. What is the weather like in the various regions in the world of Wayfarer?
ANNA:
It depends on what region you’re in. The whole planet is explored and settled, so there’s basically some kind of real world relation in most areas of the world. All major continents are in the southern hemisphere. So the further south you go, the snowier and the colder it gets. So with a country like Farandor, it’s in the really, really far south—it’s close to the south pole—but it’s geography is based on Norway. (laughs)
And then up near where Rona is on the map, in the continent Istaran, that’s based on rainforests and they have monsoon seasons and that kind of stuff. It’s all rainforest and jungle. And Sathir is a desert.
So there’s a lot of different things.
JOSIAH:
Moving on. Would the Chalice have worked to fix the main character’s injuries if they have did get injured?
ANNA:
Nope. Hard no. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
Because the chalice is what?
ANNA:
It’s magical.
JOSIAH:
And what doesn’t affect the Wayfarers?
ANNA:
Magic. (laughs) No, but like… The Chalice is old. It’s from pre-Astrandium times. So it’s magic is like really, really far back, but magical immunity predates that. So they would be immune. They can’t use it.
JOSIAH:
I believe it was brought up a couple times in Chapter One, but that’s a thing with the Wayfarers as well that they’re not only immune to magical effects being cast by a person, but they’re immune to magical artifacts.
ANNA:
Yeah. And they can break the enchantments on an artifact with touch depending on how that enchantment was done. Some things that are really, really old—like the chalice—like the main character can pick it up with bare hands and not affect it at all because the enchantments are so old. (laughs) And so twisted up together that they can’t break it.
But something new where they might be able to pick it up and be like “Oh, hey. I broke that light. Because this light thing that was floating above my head is new conjured magic and I just reached up and touched it and now it’s broken.” (laughs)
JOSIAH:
That’s why the blacksmith is very nervous when you go into their shop.
ANNA:
Yes, yes. Thelkar does not want you to be there. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
Would you define Wayfarer as a heist game? Since the main goal seems to be to recover the Relic?
I guess to flip that question on its head—isthe main goal to recover the Relic?
ANNA:
Nope. (laughs) That’s just one part of the game. And as Chapter Two proceeds… As Chapter Two comes out, you’ll see why this is not a heist game.
JOSIAH:
That’s a quest.
ANNA:
Yeah. It’s a quest.
JOSIAH:
Within the overall game.
ANNA:
Yeah.
JOSIAH:
So what would the main cast—beside Aeran, of course—be like if they had no magic and were recruited by the Wayfarers when they were younger? Or even would they? I can imagine Ren dodging the heck out of Cenric to stay with Raven and Ves.
We’ll just start with Ren. What would Ren have been like in the Wayfarers?
ANNA:
Gone. Oh, he would not have joined (laughs). He would have found a way to peace out. Like, if Ren doesn’t…
Okay. So, this question can be difficult to answer because—and the person who submitted this question did mention this—the way that I create my characters is so informed by their history and their environment that it’s really hard to detach them from that because they essentially become a different character. But for the sake of a fun question, Ren without magic would have still found a way to escape. (laughs) And he probably… he’d be able to manage it. You’re not getting a hold of him. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
How about Alexia?
ANNA:
Alexia would have gone. And the thing is that she’s book smart. So, I think if she didn’t have magic… like magic is a huge part of who she is and a huge part of her character. But she is book smart. So, I think she would have done really well mentoring under Varyn.
JOSIAH:
Would she have been someone who would have stayed in the Spire? Like as a researcher?
ANNA:
Yeah. Yeah. She would’ve mentored with Varyn because she would’ve gotten along with her. And she would’ve stayed in the Spire and just kind of like researched things? Maybe work with Cenric to figure out some of the weird mysteries that are happening in the basement. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
Exactly. How about Calla?
ANNA:
Calla? Oh my God. I think she would’ve gone. She would’ve been recruited…
Now, mind you, it would depend on whenshe was recruited. I could see her family keeping her—if she didn’t have magic—I could see her family brushing it under the rug and doing everything possible to make sure that no one finds out about it, especially the Order. And so I think if she joined the Wayfarer Order, I think she would’ve pulled a Varyn and joined as an adult when things in her city or town—or wherever she happened to be living—didn’t go so well.
But I also think that she wouldn’t have stayed with the Order for very long. She would’ve gone, gotten some training, and then peaced out like two years later and joined a pirate crew or something. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
Feel like this can be an interesting answer. What about Melchior? (laughs)
ANNA:
I’m making such a face right now. I’m going to pass.
JOSIAH:
Because Mel—I think more than anyone else—is sort of the… He would not be the same character.
ANNA:
You cannot take his magic away from him. It’s not possible. It’s not possible for that.
JOSIAH:
I was tempted because I had a feeling that was going to be the answer. I was like—what if I just skip Mel? And then just have people riot? (laugh) Oh, sorry—
ANNA:
Sorry. We forgot. We’ve forgot about the blue theatre kid.
JOSIAH:
Nelani. I think that would’ve also been very—
ANNA:
I don’t think she would’ve joined. Because the thing is that Aos is so isolated because it’s up in the mountains and you need to fly to get there. I there are Aeda who live in Aos who don’t have magic and it’s no really a big deal. So I think she wouldn’t have joined the order. She would’ve continued to do exactly the same thing that she does, just without magic. And it’s not a big deal. Yeah.
JOSIAH:
Yeah. Lastly, would Felix join the—
ANNA:
Order? Yes. This is a part of his—
This is—
This—
Yes?
(laugh)
Yes. Okay. All right. Mild spoilers. I’m okay with mild spoilers.
What I was going to say is that this is part of his backstory already. Because the thing with Felix is that he canonically has low levels of magic. So, he’s not magically immune. He’s magic is just so weak that he can’t really do anything. A main part of his storyline is him figuring out alternative ways of using magic. That’s why he’s an alchemist. There’s part of him, I think canonically, in the game, that wishes he had magical immunity because then he couldn’t just gone and joined the Wayfarer Order. But he doesn’t have magical immunity. He just has weak magic.
JOSIAH:
And the interesting thing about that world is that for characters like Felix, you’d actually probably be better off without magic. Because you’d have an advantage instead of just being weak. To be fair, at least you can still use magical artifacts and things. Which is a whole other thing.
ANNA:
Yes. (laughs)
JOSIAH:
But yeah, that is what would have happened to all the characters. And that is the end of our questions!
ANNA:
Thank you so much, everyone, for sending in questions. These are always fun. This is only our second time doing one of these, but I think we’ll probably do our next one when Chapter Two fully releases on Patreon for the alpha build.
JOSIAH:
And then we can prepare for all of the Mel questions. (laughs)
ANNA:
(laughs) I’m sure there are many questions. Because Melchior is arriving in Chapter Two. So, I’m sure there’s going to be many, many questions about him because… that’s going to be fun.
JOSIAH:
To which all them will be as dodged as the one here (laughs)
ANNA:
I did not dodge that very well.
JOSIAH:
If anything, I think people are going to be even more intrigued right now, if they weren’t enough already with Mel.
Thanks for joining us. Everybody hope you all have a fantastic day wherever you are and we’ll catch you next time.
