The fourth Session of Feu de Joie is now online.
The Tester tries to take matters into his own hands. Meanwhile, the interceder who tries to protect him has to be more secretive. Also introduced: the story of someone long forgotten in the War–whose granddaughter might have the talisman to at last turn the tables on BUCOLIC.
This is also the first installment with a pretty substantial password blockage at one point, which will need some investigation and, perhaps, collaboration.
Shame about the password. I was enjoying the game, but I’ve always hated passwords and safe combinations. I was enjoying the work up until this point, too.
I don’t suppose you could just tell me what the password is so I can continue enjoying session 4 - and presumably future sessions?
Unless the other installments will do the same, in which case nevermind, I’ll pass.
Hey! Glad you like it otherwise. I’ll PM you the password–the discovery of the password is part of the text-sifting, but I do get it. Since we are at an early stage, there aren’t any notes online about hints or spoilers that people have come up with. Anyway, thanks for playing!
Thank you very much for it. I never would have gotten it, I don’t think. Especially since
the text suggested I’d have to go back a bit… and I thought that meant going back a few turns… as opposed to going back a few sessions! Maybe Arras was supposed to be a hint to that, but, see below…
I’ll be very honest, I’m supremely disintered in Dunsany’s actual essay. I tried reading it more thoroughly at first, but I just don’t really care. (plus, I play it on my mobile device - I play it offline in my iPod Touch using mercury - and sometimes the spacing between lines is a bit off, making the letters too close, making it not too easy to read). I’m really skimming it.
I am, however, VERY interested in the tester’s story.
Re-reading my post, I come off harsher than I had meant to. Sorry about that. I really do have quite a thing about password and safe combinations - too many authors keep using them, and unless I happen to stumble upon the exact frame of mind the author was in, I’m just not going to get it. I either underthink or overthink (usually the latter), because hey, anything and everything can be a password! It’s an automatic knee-jerk reaction now.
And the thing is, it wouldn’t have bothered me that much if I wasn’t enjoying the game. 
No worries at all! And to put on my developer’s hat on for a second, yeah, the Dunsany essays each hammer home more or less the same theme of desolation. It was in many ways a work of polemic for the aftermath of the war. What’s been the challenge is to vary the way the reader/player interacts with the text, and find a way to increase the other parts of the story (in contemporary times). I’ve built the framework/pattern but I’m not going to be 100% beholden to it. The next installment will hopefully prove another way forward.
Thanks again!
I couldn’t get the password, because I thought I had been explicitly told it in an earlier session.
When the word I had written down wasn’t it, nor was any permutation of the letters, I thought something had gone wrong and dug into the source code for it. Feeling maybe a layer too removed now from what had been a really interesting experience. Unless the passage I uncovered was a trick in itself. Monstrous.
if you still need help, just ping me. 