Divinity - First reveal trailer and first official controversy

Okay, now this is pretty damn amazing looking. Being a horror fan my interest has been caught.

However there is now a lot of talk about how the company is going with using more and more AI for it's development. Most links I find lead to a Bloomberg article behind a paywall. But hopefully this one here should work. Personally I don't see why a team of that caliber, who just blew the gates wide open with Baldur's Gate 3, would need to use AI. But evidently the Larian CEO is demanding it. 

Guess we'll just wait and see how this pans out. Currently a lot of folks aren't happy about this and are now balking at wanting to pick this up whenever it comes out. If we see Larian doing layoffs and getting rid of developers that amount may get even larger. So far we haven't seen that, they've actually hired a few more. But we don't know how deep into the AI rabbit hole the person in charge wants to dive.

They built up so much goodwill with fans through BG3, it's a pity to watch a CEO throw it all away for the techbro money pit that is AI. 

Members of the Guard webpage

 

Well I've started work on trying to get one of my old homebrew ideas up and fully running into a stand alone game. So to do so I've decided to go with a route that brings me joy and nostalgia and sat up an old fashioned webpage over on NeoCities. Learning HTML again was actually kind of fun surprisingly. 

I'm taking my old 'Question of Faith' setting and morphing it into a more defining title of "Members of the Guard". Then slowly pulling bits and pieces I have scattered all over into that one central location. You can find that webpage RIGHT HERE if you are interested. 

Also threw a Ko-Fi link at the bottom and a link to my Truly Rural Productions facebook page on there as well. Hopefully this will gain a little bit of momentum once I get to set down with my group and do some actual playtesting. 

Any questions feel free to drop them into the comments here. 

Members of the Guard basic setting overview

 

Members of the Guard

Setting overview

The setting is that of a fantasy world where humans are the only dominant race. There are no elves, dwarfs or anything like that. Most of the land that the PC's will be in is part of a sprawling kingdom under religious rule. Their main mission will be to travel among townships and cities fighting back against the very real demons that exist and their influence among the populace. These traveling protectors are known as the Guard to most common folk and as Chevaliers by the more educated.

At the base level the Guard are made up of three general types of members. The Cavaliers, who are those skilled mainly in fighting. They make up the bulk of the members. Then there the Clerics, who are gifted in the ability to perform minor graces of God. They are also skilled in fighting as well but not as much as the Cavaliers. Then there are the Priests, the ones who are the most knowledgeable of the faith and can perform powerful graces. Most characters will be either Cavaliers or Clerics as most Priests are NPC's that may be in charge of multiple groups of the Guard. Basically they are the ones giving the orders such as “Go to this town and find out why their crops are being blighted”.

More on the basic world. The entire kingdom is ruled by the church, there is no other secondary form of municipality. Everything major decision is made by them and carried out by their devoted followers. The next closest thing is the various guilds sat up among the merchant and artisan classes of the society. While they have no actual say in governance they can attempt to sway their local leaders or attempt to set the markets how they want. Land ownership is a very gray area, all the farmland is owned by the church and the workers are given a very basic rate of payment for their work. While individual homes and businesses are considered to be owned by specific people. However at anytime a high ranking church member can order the property to be seized with very little the occupants can do about it.

I'll flesh out the details more as I go along in future posts.