Issue 1: The Dream

[News] This Newsletter Now Exists

Welcome to the Veiled Age Herald. This will be a monthly newsletter that will serve as the main place to follow Veiled Age. I try not to spend too much time on social media or even Discord, so this serves as a way for me to share updates with you directly.

Each of the 12 issues this year will also feature some lore about the Veiled Age world setting. As the setting has become a little more mature, I thought people might enjoy diving deeper into it. The fact that you signed up to play this game means you have an overactive imagination and like reading. It’s totally not just an excuse to consolidate my messy worldbuilding notes into something presentable.

[News] Episode 2 Closed Beta Concludes

Recently, we had a closed beta wherein a few friends played through the new (unpublished) content. Two of them were kind enough to sit down with me and give me hours of feedback in person. Based on that, I have a good idea of what edits I’d like to make before publishing the next episode. But that episode, Dwellers of Bodenforst, is in a pretty good place. It’s very different from Secret of Gloam Lake, and opinions already differ or which one is better. I suspect each episode will be something of an experiment with a new approach or new mechanic.

There will also be an intermission episode. It’s pretty much finished, but I’d like to release the two together. It’s shorter and simpler and is more about dialog than adventure, but it was written right after I did a lot of worldbuilding, and I think it shows.

[Changelog]

As a browser game, Veiled Age is continuously updated, often with little bugfixes and nitpick edits. Here are some recent ones.

• Fixed references to stars or the night sky to reflect the lore. The stars are gone. Sorry.

• Fixed half a dozen minor continuity errors.

• Fixed bug that broke Gloam Lake right at the beginning.

• Added a fallback value to the Butterfly Effect function, so that if we fail to find a choice you made in a previous story, we can assume one.

• Added terms of service / privacy policy (we're all grown up now.)

• Added the Insight counter. What does it do? Well let’s just say there was once another game with an Insight counter which did some innovative things, but in my opinion was way underused compared to its potential.

• Money now persists between stories/chapters.

[Lore] The Nature of the Universe

The Veiled Age universe is much like ours, with stars and galaxies and planets. But beneath this material realm is a realm of pure thought inhabited by gods.

Reality has two layers: the material and the Dream. As matter is the substance of the material, aether is the substance of the Dream. Aether is raw consciousness, and it makes up all immaterial objects. Thus, matter and aether are the two fundamental substances of the universe.

The two layers can be conceptualized as overlapping planes with a shared geometry. What happens in dream-space can affect a corresponding area of physical space, and vice versa. For any living thing, its material body is connected to its soul, an aethereal object in the dream.

Gods are the native beings of the dream: purely conscious, immaterial beings made of aether. Within the dream, gods absorb aether over time. Gods can expend aether to alter the material according to their own thoughts. Such an act is called a miracle. The presence of a god can even warp the laws of reality nearby. Such a place is called an altered realm.

Gods are not omnipotent, however. The greater the alteration (the greater the size, scope, and conceptual deviation from the original state of affairs), the more aether is expended. This is why the gods tend to intervene infrequently and in small ways, and why they seek mortal devotees to help accomplish their ends.

On a smaller scale, material creatures can also use aether to alter the material, either by channeling the power of a god, or by channeling the raw aether from the dream. There are many names for this process, but most just call it magic.

[Commentary] I Dream of A Different Kind of RPG

Personal question -- What is your favorite form of fiction, considering all mediums and genres?

For me, it's a sci-fi/fantasy RPG. One driven by strong narrative, expressing timeless themes, with an overall sense of grand adventure and heroic struggle in a dangerous world, featuring a mix of endearing party members who develop over time. Many of these can be had in a novel, but the roleplaying aspect takes it to another level for me. I want to be invited to put my mark on the story with things like character customization, dialog trees, branching storylines, deep relationships, and problems that have more than one solution.

This describes numerous D&D-inspired games like the Baldur's Gate trilogy, Dragon Age: Origins, Neverwinter Nights, and Planescape: Torment.

(I also love a good JRPG. Even though these stories usually give the player less narrative agency, their great linear stories often more than make up for it. I’ve played a ton of them and am currently loving Trails from Zero. Andrew, my business partner and Veiled Age’s engineer, is a Xenogears loyalist.)

However, I'd be lying if I said I finished all these games. Unfortunately, there is an aspect of the RPG design template that doesn’t sit right with me. Story and roleplaying are usually advertised as the primary attraction, but most of the player’s time is spent walking around, doing repetitive combat encounters, and picking up random junk off the floor.

Don't get me wrong, all this can be quite fun. But many times, I've been invested in a game's story only to realize quite suddenly that I've grown tired of the gameplay, and I feel depressed at the prospect of 50 combat loops between me and the next story beat.

For me, The Witcher trilogy of games is a prime offender. Solid stories with believable characters and weighty narrative choices. Mediocre gameplay featuring an outrageous amount of subsystem bloat and annoying chores.

Rarely, an RPG comes along that not only has a great story but also nails all the video game aspects as well: thrilling combat, gorgeous environments, cutting-edge graphics, satisfying level-up progression, fun equipment system, etc. The remake of Final Fantasy VII comes to mind. But here's another thought: does every RPG need to be arranged like this at all? Does it even need a battle system? Does it need graphics?

When I first started working on Veiled Age, I didn’t know what I was trying to build. It’s a lot like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. But it also has character creation, dice rolls, dialog trees, secrets, and dungeon-like scenarios with puzzles and traps. At some point I had to admit that what I was making was an RPG.

Veiled Age represents an alternative, minimalistic template for a fantasy roleplaying game. It’s what happens if you take a story-driven fantasy RPG in the vein of Baldur's Gate and delete 98% of its features. Its systems and stats are always in direct service of written fiction. Which means I won't have to program 50 monsters between each plot point and you won't have to grind them. Deal?