March Update
Welcome to another regular monthly update. The bad news is that there isn't much to report. The good news is things should be returning to something approaching normal by this time next week. I've still got a lot of other work to do now, both the paying kind and otherwise, but at least I should be able to carve out large blocks of time to work on DGR going forward.
I'd like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding. I really appreciate the kind messages.
Rather unexpectedly, there was a recent discussion about DGR on another forum. It's still going on at the time of writing, in fact! Also much to my surprise, there was a rather vigorous discussion of some of the names used.
DGR is an alt-historical scenario. From the beginning I have striven for "hard historical fiction," in the sense of hard sci-fi, however. I'm trying to get as many details right as is possible, even if I'm also allowing enough invention to allow the game to be replayable. This does include even superficial things like names.
A central conflict in this game is that of two competing claims to the English throne: the Norman claim, gained by the incomplete conquest, and the Saxon claim, from the northern barons' support of Edgar Ætheling. Both are of these are fairly large, strong realms. Both of them claim to be the real England.
I ended up with "Bryttania" — etymologically connected to the title "brytenwalda" — as the title for the Anglo-Saxon England, and simply "England" for the Norman England. I fully admit that the former isn't a good name. However, they aspire to more than a title like "Northumbria" communicates. A compelling argument was made in the aforementioned thread to have each side call themselves England, but in their own tongue: thus "Englaland" and "Angleterre" for Saxon and Norman respectively.
I'm not fully convinced of this myself. If someone were to briefly look at the above screenshot, they may not really know what those names meant. Almost everyone, on the other hand, will recognize "England." Either way, I would definitely not mind hearing more input on this!
In any case, that discussion inspired me to decouple the display name from the internal name. So regardless of which way I go, it will be easy enough to mod the name to your preference.
I'm honestly not sure. The more I try to plan things, the worse they seems to go. What I do know is that I'll let you all know on (or around!) the first Saturday of next month. Thanks for reading these updates!
I'd like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding. I really appreciate the kind messages.
What's in a name
Rather unexpectedly, there was a recent discussion about DGR on another forum. It's still going on at the time of writing, in fact! Also much to my surprise, there was a rather vigorous discussion of some of the names used.
DGR is an alt-historical scenario. From the beginning I have striven for "hard historical fiction," in the sense of hard sci-fi, however. I'm trying to get as many details right as is possible, even if I'm also allowing enough invention to allow the game to be replayable. This does include even superficial things like names.
A central conflict in this game is that of two competing claims to the English throne: the Norman claim, gained by the incomplete conquest, and the Saxon claim, from the northern barons' support of Edgar Ætheling. Both are of these are fairly large, strong realms. Both of them claim to be the real England.
I ended up with "Bryttania" — etymologically connected to the title "brytenwalda" — as the title for the Anglo-Saxon England, and simply "England" for the Norman England. I fully admit that the former isn't a good name. However, they aspire to more than a title like "Northumbria" communicates. A compelling argument was made in the aforementioned thread to have each side call themselves England, but in their own tongue: thus "Englaland" and "Angleterre" for Saxon and Norman respectively.
I'm not fully convinced of this myself. If someone were to briefly look at the above screenshot, they may not really know what those names meant. Almost everyone, on the other hand, will recognize "England." Either way, I would definitely not mind hearing more input on this!
In any case, that discussion inspired me to decouple the display name from the internal name. So regardless of which way I go, it will be easy enough to mod the name to your preference.
What's next
I'm honestly not sure. The more I try to plan things, the worse they seems to go. What I do know is that I'll let you all know on (or around!) the first Saturday of next month. Thanks for reading these updates!