August Analysis
Another first Saturday has come and with it another monthly update.
Hunting was quite important for medieval nobles. It was a well-loved and noble pastime and the source of the wild meat which nobles preferred to eat. Relevant to Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex, English kings reserved huge stretches of the countryside as royal forests specifically to support their hunts. More than that though it was a social ritual and a way to practice combat and horsemanship with a managed, though still extant, amount of risk. The primary profession of nobility in DGR's time period was, after all, war.
Of course, just as in modern times, there were certain "hunting seasons." This isn't because of the dictates of law naturally, since the player character is quite literally the king. Rather some seasons are better for taking good quality game, and maintaining a good stock of animals does require some prudent management. They are slightly out of era, but a number of hunting manuals exist on this topic: the Livre de chasse for example.
However DGR is ultimately a game of choice. It also uses personality traits to enforce roleplaying. Depending on what sort of king you are, you may insist on only hunting the best possible quarry no matter what. (Though you can still act against your personality by spending a limited resource).
Though hunting is recreation, it isn't all fun and games. Sometimes things go badly.
Indeed, sometimes they go very badly.
Resource narrative (formerly quality-based narrative) is a term invented at Failbetter (and continued at Weather Factory) to describe a sort of narrative design in which storylets are arranged by the interplay of resource states rather than a mechanism like branching. Alexis Kennedy has written a bit more about RN.
I touched on this in the monthly update linked above, but DGR consciously makes extensive use of this sort of narrative. Every random event in fact is gated by qualities. Some are large, like the phase: it wouldn't do to see an itinerant court event when you're at war and raiding the countryside. Others are more specific: having a personality trait at a certain threshold, having encountered a certain event previously, or, relevant to this post, having recently hunted too many hart out of season.
Options especially use this pattern. Let's say you had a strange encounter while hunting: the animal you were hunting randomly died during the hunt!
It may not be a great idea to go ahead and eat the meat. In this state however, you notice two less-than-safe choices (as indicated by the color). What if our king had studied medicine in the royal library (or elsewhere)?
Mechanically, this new, safer choice is provided if the player has at least 3 in the medicine trait. This is a "resource" in an RN sense. There are a number of ways to gain this resource. It is also fungible, such that gaining it one place is identical to gaining it elsewhere.
Oh, by the way, there are a number of other ways to get a safer option on that event…
Tournaments! Some of the hunting events got a little involved, so this is not yet begun. However this is intended to complement hunting in developing martial skills outside of war. More on that next time.
Hunting
Hunting was quite important for medieval nobles. It was a well-loved and noble pastime and the source of the wild meat which nobles preferred to eat. Relevant to Arbitology: Dei Gratia Rex, English kings reserved huge stretches of the countryside as royal forests specifically to support their hunts. More than that though it was a social ritual and a way to practice combat and horsemanship with a managed, though still extant, amount of risk. The primary profession of nobility in DGR's time period was, after all, war.
Of course, just as in modern times, there were certain "hunting seasons." This isn't because of the dictates of law naturally, since the player character is quite literally the king. Rather some seasons are better for taking good quality game, and maintaining a good stock of animals does require some prudent management. They are slightly out of era, but a number of hunting manuals exist on this topic: the Livre de chasse for example.
However DGR is ultimately a game of choice. It also uses personality traits to enforce roleplaying. Depending on what sort of king you are, you may insist on only hunting the best possible quarry no matter what. (Though you can still act against your personality by spending a limited resource).
Though hunting is recreation, it isn't all fun and games. Sometimes things go badly.
Indeed, sometimes they go very badly.
Resource narrative in DGR
Resource narrative (formerly quality-based narrative) is a term invented at Failbetter (and continued at Weather Factory) to describe a sort of narrative design in which storylets are arranged by the interplay of resource states rather than a mechanism like branching. Alexis Kennedy has written a bit more about RN.
I touched on this in the monthly update linked above, but DGR consciously makes extensive use of this sort of narrative. Every random event in fact is gated by qualities. Some are large, like the phase: it wouldn't do to see an itinerant court event when you're at war and raiding the countryside. Others are more specific: having a personality trait at a certain threshold, having encountered a certain event previously, or, relevant to this post, having recently hunted too many hart out of season.
Options especially use this pattern. Let's say you had a strange encounter while hunting: the animal you were hunting randomly died during the hunt!
It may not be a great idea to go ahead and eat the meat. In this state however, you notice two less-than-safe choices (as indicated by the color). What if our king had studied medicine in the royal library (or elsewhere)?
Mechanically, this new, safer choice is provided if the player has at least 3 in the medicine trait. This is a "resource" in an RN sense. There are a number of ways to gain this resource. It is also fungible, such that gaining it one place is identical to gaining it elsewhere.
Oh, by the way, there are a number of other ways to get a safer option on that event…
What's next
Tournaments! Some of the hunting events got a little involved, so this is not yet begun. However this is intended to complement hunting in developing martial skills outside of war. More on that next time.