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The Protestant Revolution with Elves - Let's Play Sir Brante Hello and welcome to a Let's Play of The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante.  The what? The LSSB is a choose-your-own-adventure type game from Sever Games. Set in a politically unpleasant world, we guide the second son of a third-string noble from birth to a massive revolt in their hometown. The setting is heavily inspired by both the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution, with some fantasy elements thrown in. So you have not-elf sword nobility desperately trying to keep onto their privileges against upstart human robe nobility, while theological battles about the right to interpretation of holy texts rage on both within and without the church. Wait, what this about elves? The Arknians are a blue-skinned people that live for a very long time. Officially, they're also stronger, faster, smarter, and just all-around better than humans. Officially as far as their empire is concerned, of course.  The empire? The Blessed Arknian Empire is, as far as we know, the only state in the world. It's an absolute feudal monarchy, with an Arknian imperial family and all-Arknian feudal nobles who rule over an almost entirely human population. While humans are bound by divine Lots, Arknians aren't, and are thus considered to be unquestionably above humanity. The lowliest, poorest Arknian is by law above even the most respected human noble, let alone a rich human merchant. However, the number of people who are starting to question this is slowly rising. And what's this church stuff? The Church of the Empire is going through a tumultuous period. The Old Faith, harsh and merciless, keeps true to an old interpretation of the Twin Gods - humans are given their lots, and they are to suffer them throughout their whole life. Some priests, though, even those high in the Church hierarchy, are rejecting that in favour of individual interpretation of the gods' will - the New Faith. But change does not come peacefully to the Church, and the Inquisition will not put up with heresy without a fight. Alright, how will this work? We will be taking it a few events at a time out of purely practical reasons - if I did an update per event, we'd be here for months. The thread will vote on a general direction we're to take in the near future, and I will choose accordingly. Now, the game itself isn't terribly long, so we'll be covering a few playthroughs for different paths. The first one is going to be mostly blind for y'all, so it won't be... optimal.  Either way, the chapters cover the following periods: Childhood (0-7), Adolescence (8-15), Youth (16-19), Peacetime (20-27), and Revolt (27). We will be trying to balance our chosen career, our complicated relationship with our family, our family's standing in the Empire, and the politicking of the different factions involved in our hometown. Right off the bat, we can't win them all. For example, we can't have your family be elevated to sword nobility and keep the peace in the family for reasons that will become clear later. Neither can we side with multiple factions: once the fighting starts, we have to choose one (or just flee the city). All of the more involved endings require being focused on them specifically, so it's unlikely we'll get to them the first time around, though there is a good one that's not too difficult to get. So, onwards, let's tip this rotten house over! Playthroughs First playthrough - Georg Brante (Conspirator) Childhood - 1.1 The Birth of Georg Brante - 1.2 Georg's Toddler Time - 1.3 Grandpa's Home! - 1.4 Childhood's End Adolescence - 1.5 A Bigger World - 1.6 Getting Schooled - 1.7 Family Secrets - 1.8 RIP in Piss - 1.9 The Blood Tide - 1.10 The End of Adolescence Youth - 1.11 Bright Lights, Big City - 1.12 The Entrance Exam - 1.13 A World Without Lots - 1.14 Recruitment Drive - 1.15 The March - 1.16 The Feds Peace Time - 1.17 Coming Back Home - 1.18 The Brante Family Schism - 1.19 It's Like Poetry, They Rhyme - 1.20 Feudalist Realism - 1.21 A Blast From the Past - 1.22 Career Opportunities - 1.23 Municipal Politics - 1.24 Some Light Heresy - 1.25 It's Quiet, Too Quiet - 1.26 The Powder Keg - 1.27 The Giving of Thanks - 1.28 Two Many Dinners - 1.29 Yet Another Secret Plot - 1.30 Follow Your Heart - 1.31 Calling in a Few Favours - 1.32 Brante's House of Heresy - 1.33 Counter-Schemes - 1.34 A Good Year - 1.35 Everything Is Coming Up Brante - 1.36 Discord - 1.37 The Noble House of Brante - 1.38 All Chair, No rear end Kayten fucked around with this message at 02:32 on Dec 10, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 23:13
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Random fanart goes here Kayten fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Aug 29, 2022 23:13
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1.1 - The Birth of Georg Brante And so we begin. Every attempt begins with us writing our life down.  This philosophical musing does come into play eventually.  Whether the choices you made were your own to make, or were they influenced by something greater.  In fact, you could argue that it's one of the key points in the theological debate between the New Faith and the Old Faith.  For this run, we take the environment approach. We are a product of our environment, as lovely as it may be.  And so, our childhood begins!  These types of pop-ups are story events unrelated to our choices. Certain major happenings in the world go on without our ability to influence them at all. There are more of these when we are young - after all, what can a single child do against a world so much larger than themselves?  On top of that, these events teach us, the player, more about the world - what does the "El" prefix before a last name mean? Who are the imperial heirs? Why was our hometown important, historically-speaking?  Here is the main screen at the beginning of each chapter: a small blurb on the left, and the possible events within the chapter on the right. On the left and right you can see various tabs that give us additional information. The event are grouped into Personal (affecting us directly), Family (affecting family members), House (affecting the Brante bloodline), and Career (affecting our chosen career, which we will select in chapter 3). Each event has a set of conditions to trigger. Usually they pop up immediately after we hit whatever the condition is necessary, but sometimes other events with triggers pop-up before that. Let's take a look at what we can work towards before the age of 8.  Being trained in swordfighting by our dad, despite our low birth, requires us to hit 4 Determination, and choose Train With Father when the event pops up. Events can have lasting effects - this one comes up all the way in the end of chapter 3 if we take a certain path.  DEATH! Well, a lesser death. You see, in this setting, outside of very specific circumstances (subject to theological and, most importantly, legal discussion), people can die a total of three times before finally croaking for good. There are choices that will get us killed, and there are more than four in any playthrough, so you can end things early. Sometimes they give good stat increases, and sometimes they help you get out of a sticky situation, albeit at a price. So don't just throw your life away willy-nilly.  Just as there is an event that comes with hitting 4 Determination, there is an event for hitting 4 Perception. The ramifications from this one come up a bit sooner, about halfway through chapter 2. As you can probably tell, where the determination event is more physical, this one is more spiritual.  I'm not going to get into the details for the sacraments just yet, suffice to say that the Church sucks, the Lots suck, and perhaps going against them is a good thing. Noble blood does have direct magical effects, however, even if it wasn't acquired by being born a noble. This will be expanded on later.  Now we move on to the Personality tab. Here we can see our current stats. Our final, properly useful skills only show up in chapter 3, but they build off the stats we build in our childhood and adolescence. Determination, uh, determines how much we put up with while trying to get what we want. The deck is stacked against us - despite being the son of a noble, we're a commoner, and the Commoner's Lot is to suffer. The higher our determination, the more we are an unruly child who isn't putting up with this poo poo. Perception, our second stat for childhood, focuses on two things: observing the world, and learning how things work. This covers both the banal (we see something is off with our sister's behaviour!) and the theological (hm, perhaps some of the things the priests are telling us don't quite fit together).  Our third stat is Willpower. Willpower is our main resource for doing things. Almost all actions we can take require Willpower to do, though there are options to restore it instead. As long as we don't hit the negatives, we should be able to do most actions, we're just gonna need to rest afterwards (there are significant exceptions to this in one of the paths for reasons that will become self-evident if we reach it). Spending time with our family when it's at peace, meeting up with old friends, avoiding going to a stressful party to take a nap instead, all of these restore Willpower. Conversely, openly challenging your boss' legal decisions or burning down a warehouse spend it. The jist of it is - we should try to not hit the negatives, especially before important events. Our final stat is a death tracker - how many times we have died a lesser death to a maximum of four.  Here we can see the Destiny tab. On the left, we have the events that have happened, or can happen to us. On the right, we have a timeline of what happened in this chapter so far. Since we've only just been born, it's empty for now.  The Character tab repeats some of the information from the Personality tab and expands on it a bit. We can find our age, estate, and career here.  The House tab is next. Here we can see how the Brante household is doing. Reputation tracks how the rest of the nobility perceive the Brante dynasty. It's our status in high society. Like the other stats on this page, if it hits 2 (out of 10), a permanent very bad thing will happen, and if it hits 8 (out of 10), a permanent very good thing will happen. Sometimes you can nudge it in either direction with your actions, and sometimes it moves up and down based on the rest of your family's actions. Wealth tracks how much money the Brantes have. Money is important: sometimes you need to help a friend disappear or open up a print shop. Don't let it hit 2, and try to hit 8. Unity is how well the family tolerates each other. There are a few... issues within the Brante family that cause friction, especially when you consider that the Brante children tend to go in opposing directions. If this hits, the family ceases to be: those of us who remain in the house essentially become roommates, while others die or leave. The Heir to our family is our older brother, Stephan. As a commoner, we are not in the line of succession. Yet.  The Family tab shows us the members of our immediate family. Note Stephan's mother's last name. We can click on any character, and we'll see a small blurb about them, and their attitude towards us. The other tabs will slowly be opened for us as the game progresses. With that out of the way, let's get born!  As all other souls (subject to exceptions), we begin and end life at the Pillar.  The Pillar is the place of the Twins.  The Twins are... complicated.  The Elder.  And the Younger.  I'll be honest, I've played through this game like a dozen times, and I still have no idea what that shadow is, only guesses.  I will make the first choice. We will be going with the shadow, because it's a lot easier to pick up Determination and Perception than to get more Willpower, especially this early on.  And just like that, the Twins turn into our mom and dad.  And our strange guest disappears.  And so it begins! -- Now, for the voting. In order to keep this moving at an understable pace, I'm going to take the thread's general directions and make choices accordingly. When an important choice comes up, we will be voting on it specifically. So, a few questions for now: What stat should we build? 1. This world is unfair, and we need Determination to keep going. 2. We must learn more about a the world before making a judgement. Work on our Perception 3. Perception without Determination leads to inaction. Determination without Perception leads to bad decisions. We need to strike a balance. How do we deal with things we know are wrong? A. An injustice to one is an injustice to all. We won't stand for it. Loudly. B. We are a newborn. We know nothing. If our parents tell us to pretend mother doesn't exist when company is around, so be it. We're a good boy who does what they're supposed to. We'll vote on our attitude towards our family when we get to know them a little better.
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Aug 29, 2022 23:14
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balance good boy the stranger has taught us many things, we should be wary to not spend his gift before we know the situation on the ground floor
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Aug 29, 2022 23:47
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I'm sure someone else will have idea on what to vote for, I'm just going to sit and watch Georg Brante end in graves over and over again.
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Aug 29, 2022 23:48
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2b
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Aug 29, 2022 23:50
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1A. Filled with determination to stubbornly rage against everything that bothers us from a young age.
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Aug 29, 2022 23:56
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1B seems like the closest thing to a proper Undertale reference out of the given options.
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Aug 30, 2022 00:00
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1A. Stand loud and proud, my friend!
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Aug 30, 2022 00:00
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This aesthetic looks to be my jam. Also, I vote 3A.
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Aug 30, 2022 01:21
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2 B
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Aug 30, 2022 02:43
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SIGSEGV posted:I'm sure someone else will have idea on what to vote for, I'm just going to sit and watch Georg Brante end in graves over and over again. 
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Aug 30, 2022 05:18
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3A
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Aug 30, 2022 05:26
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1A
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Aug 30, 2022 06:32
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THanks for doing a let's play on this game. I recommend it all the time, it's the darkest game that I've ever played that's dark with a purpose.
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Aug 30, 2022 08:10
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Alright, closing the vote We will be working on Determination and fighting the power, at least for now.
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Aug 30, 2022 11:06
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1.2 - Georg's Toddler Time And we're off to the races!  Our first conscious event gently introduces our immediate family      We have our parents, Robert and Lydia.  Our older brother Stephan.  And our sister Gloria.  We also get to see the seat of the gods - the Shining Pillar.     This is probably the last time Stephan, Gloria, and you have such a good time together. Enjoy it while you can.  We get ditched almost immediately.  Just like that, she's gone.  That's fine, we can make it home on our own, we're a whole... one years old.  It's hard, but we got this!   Thankfully, Mom helps us out.  Twiddle-dee and Twiddle-dum over here seem to have learned a thing or two about ditching their sibling.  (They absolutely have not)  A year later, we remember the festival of the Great Descent, an important religious holiday set up by the Church.  If nothing else, mother is really into the Old Faith.  Anyway, we get to spend time with our commoner sister.           Gloria explains how she sees the whole affair to us.  I wonder if she only likes the prayers because they're poems of a sort?  Anyway, this whole thing sucks, we're stuck up here with Gloria eating stale bread while Stephan dines on extravagant meats downstairs. We're not into this.     Now, does this mean the Twins disliked our approach? Or are they just watching?  Either way, we hosed up Gloria's poem.  We learn a little bit about our place in the family.         And that we'll soon have a brother!  Another year passed, and we get taught how to act with Stephan.        Mother loves us, she really does. She's super into the Old Faith, though. That's not a compliment.  Anyway, this is bullshit, he hit us first, we did nothing wrong.  Mother doesn't like this.  Not one bit.  Our own good, huh?  But life goes on.    Gloria lets us in on a little secret. She's not very good at this, but she's only just started.  Now, we're no longer a baby, but that doesn't mean you can just abandon a three-year old.  Mother finds Gloria and gives her an earful.      Gloria gave as good as she got, though.  And now we come to our next decision!     As you can see from our options, sometimes they open up quite a bit. The little lock to the left of each one shows us whether we've met the conditions needed to pick it. We have enough Determination to complain about Gloria, but not enough Perception to go and secretly write poetry with her. Note that comforting Gloria is the first decision we have where we have to spend Willpower. The result would be quite nice, though - Gloria will like us more (to a maximum of +5 eventually), and our relation with her changes to "grateful". This can come into play later. For the record, we could've had a similar thing in the previous event, if we had just accepted our punishment. Mother would've been grateful, which could've come into play later, but we're not putting up with being treated like that. The final option lets us build even more Willpower. As we grow older, we usually only get +5 Willpower options, rather than the +10 here. On the other hand, purely banking Willpower isn't a great strategy outside of one very specific path - there's a cap (no more than +30), and we'd miss out on building stats and thus skills down the line. -- What do we do about Gloria secretly writing poetry? A. She dumped her three-year old brother to go do things she's not supposed to! Of course we're going to complain. B. We already got on Mother's bad side for disobeying our Lot, so we know how Gloria feels. We should comfort her after this lecture. C. We're three, this is super not our problem. We should leave the room and find more bugs to look at.
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Aug 30, 2022 13:39
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B. As a three year old child, it's obvious we will need to build allies for the future reckoning to come.
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Aug 30, 2022 14:07
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B - let the commoners band together to
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Aug 30, 2022 14:18
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B We need to start gathering allies for the revolution .
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Aug 30, 2022 14:25
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B - We must all take care of each other.
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Aug 30, 2022 14:34
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B - given that (from what I'm reading) our dad changed his lot through acts of great service, Lydia's insistence that no one can change their lot seems strange. If he can strive and advance, why can't she?
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Aug 30, 2022 15:30
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B. Sibling solidarity.
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Aug 30, 2022 15:36
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B Obviously us commoners have to stick together (and cut off our piece of poo poo brother's head in like 20 years I'm pretty sure).
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Aug 30, 2022 16:42
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B. We stand together.
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Aug 30, 2022 17:01
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B - to quote High School Musical, we're all in this together.
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Aug 30, 2022 17:13
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B Gloria is also a kid and she's about the only family member who treats us well
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Aug 30, 2022 17:18
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dervival posted:B - given that (from what I'm reading) our dad changed his lot through acts of great service, Lydia's insistence that no one can change their lot seems strange. If he can strive and advance, why can't she? I don't think this ever gets explained in a straight-forward fashion, but a while back, a century or two at most, an emperor introduced a university system for male children. These kids can learn legal matters and become local judges, administrators, and low-ranking officers - the Nobles of the Mantle (see: Nobles of the Robe in Ancien Regime France). These do not come with a title or land, but they do come with noble privileges - such as being allowed to carry and use a sword, and being above the commoners in the legal system. A poor nobleman is still a nobleman, while a rich mine owner is still a commoner. The creation of Nobles of the Mantle was a practical decision: legally, only nobles can rule, since that's their Lot, but there wasn't enough of them to administer everything everywhere, something had to be done. Since the Arknians are above the Lots and can break them, the imperial family slowly started ennobling Nobles of the Mantle as the solution to this. Naturally, the Nobles of the Sword - the families who support the empire through war (see: Nobles of the Sword in Ancien Regime France) - look down on these young upstarts, with some demanding this dilution of the meaning of what a noble is be rolled back. A key difference between Nobles of the Sword and Nobles of the Mantle is inheritance - the children of Nobles of the Sword are nobles at birth, while the children of the Nobles of Mantle aren't. This is why Stephan is a noble - his mother was a sword noble, while Father is merely a judge. Stephan's mother died soon after his birth, and father remarried Mother later. This is the first major complication of the Brante household. We'll break this down in more detail when it comes up. All this is a long-winded way to say that we're in a unique position - we're a commoner by birth, but we can become a noble if we study hard, get into university, and become a judge ourselves. Gloria is pretty much poo poo out of luck - marrying Father didn't make Mother any less of a commoner, and the university is only for men. Kayten fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Aug 30, 2022 |
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Aug 30, 2022 17:31
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B for bandwagon
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Aug 30, 2022 17:51
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C for willpower.
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Aug 31, 2022 11:09
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Kayten posted:A key difference between Nobles of the Sword and Nobles of the Mantle is inheritance - the children of Nobles of the Sword are nobles at birth, while the children of the Nobles of Mantle aren't. This is why Stephan is a noble - his mother was a sword noble, while Father is merely a judge. Stephan's mother died soon after his birth, and father remarried Mother later. This is the first major complication of the Brante household. We'll break this down in more detail when it comes up. We should kill our dad (and disown our mom) for knowingly bringing us and Gloria into this unjust, cruel world as a member of the oppressed underclass.
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Aug 31, 2022 11:30
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1.3 - Grandpa's Home! We're not one to join the pile-on on our sister.    We got her back.  And in return, she's grateful.  Note that this action cost us willpower. We have enough for another action, but after that, we'll have to take an option to restore some.  We grow a little older to the ripe old age of 4.    This is one of the major complications of the Brante household. Stephan and Gloria are technically both half-siblings to you and unrelated to each other.       We're also seeing the beginning of Stephan's character being molded by the society around him. Into a giant piece of poo poo.   He's gonna get worse before he gets better.  Gloria won't take this lying down though.  We're meeting another addition to our family for the first time.    Nathan is our only full sibling, what with us sharing both a mom and a dad.  This is also the first time we're seeing Mother being angry with us for what we perceive is no reason.   Again, we're four, so it's not like we can understand the gravity of the situation for her, so we just see her lash out at us for something we didn't even do.  If we had agreed to be whipped back when we whacked Stephan with a wooden sword, we would've been able to hug Mother through this. But instead, to protect our tiny baby brother, we're gonna try to be focus of Mother's anger - we can take a beating, he can't.       It's not a fun time for anyone involved.  Father to the rescue.    Listen, Robert Brante may be a judge for the Empire, but he's probably the closest thing to a decent person in the entire aristocracy. He tries to be a good person, drat it.  We keep building that Determination.  Look, Nathan's kinda gonna be like that for most of his life. He's a gently caress-up, and honestly, I find that very endearing. He doesn't fit into this garbage society.  We finally have enough Determination for the event to trigger. Now, this is a positive event, but sometimes we hit negative ones, like if we let the House's reputation drop to 2. I'm honestly not sure about what order they trigger in if you have several events going at once. This can get complicated once we have a career and have to juggle all sorts of stats at once.  Swords are a privilege of the nobility, so we're not even really allowed to touch one.    Not like that's gonna stop us though.  Hm, perhaps this was a bad call.    Father solving problems.  Teach us to sword. We're clearly not going to stop.  This is the first time we've stood up to Father in our life. Let's see how it plays out.    Stabbing school is in session.  Note that we went into negative WIllpower with this. It took a lot for a four year-old to stand up to his dad like that. This means that we won't be able to do a lot of actions until we bring it back up to zero at least, so we should work on that ASAP.  When a triggered Destiny event completes, we get a little pop-up. These come into play later.  We turn five, and Father starts hiring tutors for us.    But before that, we get a present!  This is the first time we've been out in Anizotte proper.     Hell yeah, let's get those toy soldiers.  This is the first time we encounter other nobles in the world.    Thankfully, Father is here to protect us.  Our Willpower is in the negatives and we need to bring it back up. We didn't do anything, that kid tripped.  Our dad can beat up his dad anyway!  Oh.  poo poo, maybe not.  Thanks, Father.  We have a picnic with the whole family, which is a rare occasion.    The closest thing to peace in the family for a long while.   Oh, more family.  That's good, right?  drat, everyone's really making a big deal out of this.   And there he is, the man of the hour.  Gregor Brante, hands down the worst person we're related to.      The very picture of nobility.     I'm sure he will teach Stephan to be a good person.   At the house for all of five minutes and already on our case.  Gregor does what he does best: abuse the poo poo out of his relatives. -- First and foremost, how will we react to this absolute bullshit? 1. We are determined enough to save our tin soldiers. They're a gift from Father, and aren't his to destroy! 2. What the hell, this is unfair! How can he do this to us! We're a five-year old kid and should cry about it! 3. How dare he! This oaf of a man who we've never seen before comes in here like owns the place and wrecks our present? Hit him and hit him hard! Secondly, we've hit 5 Determination, which gave us the sword lesson. How are focusing on stats for the rest of our childhood? A. We didn't hear no bell. Keep piling on Determination. B. We're determined enough, let's see if we can't start building Perception. Oh, and for some of the more fun events, I won't be showing you the consequences while you vote. No peeking!
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Aug 31, 2022 12:04
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Save the soldiers and learn some Perception If we cry or try to hit him I think dear old granddad is going to beat us half to death. Maybe saving the toys will mean he only beats us a quarter to death. And we should have a little bit in all our stats while we're young, we can specialise later.
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Aug 31, 2022 12:24
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Black Robe posted:Save the soldiers and learn some Perception This!
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Aug 31, 2022 12:43
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3. How dare he! This oaf of a man who we've never seen before comes in here like owns the place and wrecks our present? Hit him and hit him hard!
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Aug 31, 2022 12:48
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1 and A. We aren't taking any guff from this old man, are we? Save our soldiers.
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Aug 31, 2022 13:16
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Black Robe posted:Save the soldiers and learn some Perception Yeah, this seems like the best choice given 'wait until the old gently caress is asleep and use a kitchen knife' isn't a given option
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Aug 31, 2022 13:16
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1b
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Aug 31, 2022 13:18
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Y'all are cowards. ed. Also the thread seems to like Gloria, so I'm making a decision or two based on that. Kayten fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Aug 31, 2022 |
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Aug 31, 2022 18:20
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| # ? May 4, 2024 21:03 |
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1B, gently caress Grandpa dude sucks.
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Aug 31, 2022 18:30
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