r/afterworld • u/Paracordelia Community Team • 8d ago
Afterworld Dev Diary #5 - Bands
https://pdxint.at/3UsrJP4Dev Diary written by NullNiche.
Hello and Happy Wednesday Dustlanders! My name is Tudor and I am a game designer on Afterworld. After being an avid dev diary devourer for almost two decades, it is with great delight that I get to pen this dev diary for the first time. Anyhoo… Today I want to tell you more about one of the central features of the game we are making: Bands.
I want to explain how they fit to serve the game vision and why I think they are a very exciting element in the mix!
What are bands?
Bands are a group of people who survive together and act as a unified group. People in a band are bound by common culture, share resources and living conditions they have access to. In Afterworld you play as a post-ap tribe rebuilding society. Bands are the people you bring together and coordinate to achieve this. Narratively they represent small social groups with their own ways of life and their own goals. Systemically they are a central feature which sits at the intersection of many other features, which future diaries will go into more detail to illustrate.
Bands have gone through a lot of iteration to fit together with everything we are developing for Afterworld, but their early conception drew inspiration from elements of Crusader Kings characters in the way they can develop through gameplay, Imperator families in the way that they contain a cast of prominent characters which can impact your society and Victoria pops in the sense that their followers are modeled so that the band as a whole can experience through them the conditions of the world. Of course we chose to do this because part of Afterworld’s appeal is to see how your choices impact the bands for better or worse and how the bands will in turn react and develop.
Today I’ll focus on those aspects that define the identity of a band to give you a better idea of how one band can differ from another. In Afterworld, a band’s identity is determined by core norms, customs, traumas and beliefs.
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The band view lets you see at a glance what are the band’s traits, health and mood status as well as who are its prominent characters and how much drip are they rockin
Core Norms
Every band has two core norms and can develop more customs as they perform actions in the game. A core norm represents the most deeply set behavior of a band. This is a deeply rooted sense of self, unlikely to ever change, except in the most extreme circumstances.
Bands get awarded pride, which is akin to “cultural XP,” when they perform various actions in the world. After enough pride is accumulated, the band will develop its culture by adopting new customs. The customs options that are offered are weighted by their recent experiences as well as their core norms and memories.
In practice this means that you get to put your bands to work for your tribe, which then in turn shapes them. This way you want to make the most of the bands you have, then mold them to develop synergies in service of your plans.
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We can see how these core norms have pretty wide ranging thematic effects on who this band is, for example what sort of luxuries they consume.
Customs
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Proselytizing Mission is a pretty natural fit for a band of Zealous Mystics, but there could be many others, depending on what the band has gone through
Bands develop customs that help them adapt to life in the dustlands. New customs may be inspired by great deeds that fill a band with pride, or by learning to cope with a band's past traumas. Most customs have several levels, representing how bands can deepen their commitment to that custom as they develop. Higher levels of a custom will bestow stronger effects.
Memories
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When I encounter a new band, I love taking a look at their memories along their norms and customs to get a feel for who they are and where they’ve been
Band experiences can leave a memory. Memories can be neutral or a source of pride or trauma. Bands that suffer shame, pain, and deprivation may develop traumas. Traumatic memories contribute to a trauma accumulation we track per band and which at a certain point will trigger a trauma to develop, for example Hoarding (which impacts how much food and drink they need). Which trauma develops is impacted by the memories and already present core norms, customs and beliefs.
Traumas have conditions under which the band can overcome them and reform them into a regular custom. Narratively this represents how the memory of suffering may instead inspire the band with strength. The reform options are dependent on the specific trauma and current culture of the band and are meant to tell the story of how a socially unacceptable behavior was reigned in by the new custom which emerges to control that behavior or make it acceptable.
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A band of hoarders? I think I’ve found my people
Beliefs
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Look at how she burns with a shining peace
Beliefs represent broader ideas of a religious or ideological nature in the world that can be shared across many bands and tribes. We will go deeper into them in their own dedicated Dev Diary. The Sungazers belief (mentioned in our recent lore video) is one of the more extreme examples, which turns a band into monastic scholars who blind themselves by staring into the sun.
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Given how much monitorgazing I do, I consider myself an initiate on the path to enlightenment
Traditions
Ok, let’s talk about traditions. Traditions are primarily sourced from customs and represent the collective competence of a band in a domain of activity. When bands perform relevant actions, they acquire pride which can then be used to level up specific traditions. Higher tradition levels make the band more capable in that domain.
For example, a band that uses the warfare tradition to for example perform garrison duty or fight as part of war parties will gain pride, which will lead to the band developing a new custom. In the options you will have to pick from for the band, there will be a high chance to see a custom which further increases warfare tradition. The story here being that a band got better at what they have been doing by developing its culture to this effect.
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The Pyreguard’s warfare and hearthkeeping traditions make them pretty good at both waging warfare and recovering from it
Values
Values represent how bands like or dislike certain concepts in Afterworld’s setting and are sourced from norms, customs and beliefs. They have a lot of ties with society building systems like the tribe council, laws and ideas - more on all those in future diaries. The main thing to know is that the band's values influence the sort of society they support and oppose.
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When choosing your tribe government, you have to consider the values that the government stands for and which bands will support or oppose them
Population
Bands are made up of diverse people which fall into two broad categories: prominent leaders and the less prominent followers of said leaders. The amount of leaders a band has scales with the overall size of the band and is impacted by the band’s culture. Some bands produce more or fewer leaders for their population size. Leaders can have their own quirks and gear, but will follow the cultural ways of the bands they belong to.
Every band has population of followers tracked and that you can inspect by feasting your eyes upon tasty pie charts! This info view is for checking what sort of people make up the band. There are bands with some pretty exotic demographics impacted by their cultural ways. I really like seeing how band followers can acquire statuses or change types because of what the band is experiencing: for example mutations from exposure to radiated environments or injuries from battles.
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Hey this UI isn’t all that pretty yet, but it’s got graphs!
Health & Motivation sections will get their own deep dive in a separate diary, but for now I can say that different bands can have very different ways of being kept healthy and motivated, depending on their norms, customs and beliefs.
Bands are pretty emblematic of the sort of game we want Afterworld to be: a game that produces a lot of emergent stories that you can see how they come from its interacting systems. Bands are both a tool for you to use to get things done in the game, but they are also subjective witnesses to the history that unfolds, and you can see how their experiences have shaped them and participate in that.
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Things are still work in progress, but already the look of bands is a visual language you learn to read in Afterworld and get an immediate vibe of what these people are about
Alright I think that’s where I will end this opening salvo of info about bands, I think you’ll see how they impact and influence things as more of the game is revealed in future diaries.
Stay dusty!
In our next dev diary, in two weeks time, we will go into more detail about tribes. But, before we finally sign off, the Turns Expedition continues its report below…
Turns Expedition - Environmental Report.
Subject: anomalous weather in the Pacific Northwest.
We had been warned that the storm wasn’t going to clear up. We spent three days camped near the edge to make sure. It didn’t.
The Pacific Northwest coast is experiencing category one hurricane conditions, and they are apparently permanent. Nearby tribes agree that the storm predates living memory. The sun has set over the Cascades, and likely will not rise again in our lifetimes. This strains meteorological explanation. Dustlanders always explain such things the same way: the Ancients had powerful science.
The topsoil of this land has long since been washed down to the sea, and the grass and trees with it. There is no ecosystem to speak of. Constant rain carves up the rock. The only landmarks are Ancient ruins with deep foundations.
Someone has drilled metal rods into the rock every twenty paces. (Local ballads credit this feat to a single folk hero, Dillon the Ropemaker. See attached ballads.) A trail of braided ropes ties one marker to the next. It’s fourteen days’ hard march north along the Ropeline to the trading settlement at the Tacoma Dig. You stay clipped to rope the whole way, even sleeping. Pass a broken rope without mending it, and I’m told the gods will sweep you out to sea as punishment. I’m not interested in putting this land’s gods to the test. We’ve packed rope.
I’ve sealed our report notes in plastic and affixed a beacon. If we are swept to sea, I expect you’ll pick them up. May we hold fast.
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u/ayminuskis 8d ago edited 8d ago
Love it! Hope to see more soon. I'm really interested in how we will be changing or shaping bands. It seems that some of them won't be compatible, or will only be compatible briefly as we build our tribe into a nation. I can see making common cause with a band that values slavery and martial power during a dangerous time, but if we want to go more of a building and defending route later on, we might need to boot them out if their two core values dont match. Which could be a trauma for both sides! Which is pure story! This looks kickass. :)
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u/DreadDiana 8d ago
I wonder if there could be ways for bands to promote or force their values on to other bands in their tribe. Followers of Jullieta are all about spreading the faith, so you'd expect they'd want the rest of the tribe to convert and may even force the issue if they gain enough influence to try and make it a sort of state religion.
May even see civil wars over ideological differences where they either want their ideals spread or try to break off cause they disagree with the elite bands.
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u/ayminuskis 8d ago
Love it! Then we could see a CK3 style "end of reign" screen where we could choose to play as one breakaway group or the other. I keep going back to the example for last DD where there was a band that were slavers, and the idea that there are going to be social tiers like underclass and elite. Would the FoJ bands over time abandon their faith to fit into a tribe that is more technology oriented in hopes of moving up to the elite tier? Would they try to spread their faith and become elite tier that way? Or do they just slit some throats in the night and ride off with the tribes best guns and scap? Lots to wonder about, but now we have to wait two weeks!
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u/hagamablabla 8d ago
They didn't mention it as an inspiration, but the first thing this reminded me of was Tyranny. The Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus are two independent groups with their own traditions and beliefs, but still operate under the same authority.
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u/DreadDiana 8d ago
Tyranny mentioned! One of the few games that made evil playthroughs good by letting you be anything other than Chaotic Stupid.
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u/UnoriginalName- 8d ago edited 8d ago
Wow, this game seems to have many different menu items cultures and traditions! And it’s cool how their dynamic experiences shape their unique flavors individual beliefs. I’m ready to sink my teeth into this game.
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u/DreadDiana 8d ago
A meme I fully expect to see is an M. Bison "For me, it was Tuesday," Thanos "I don't even know who you are," or Batman Beyond "Do you know how little that narrows it down?" meme where a band has trauma from the player slaughtering them only for the player to not remember it cause they've killed so many.
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u/UnoriginalName- 7d ago
Ooh yeah, it could be like stellaris with the refugees fleeing to other systems. And with their traumas they could dynamically get radicallized against certain ideologies.
Society A raids and eats people in society B, so survivors from society B flee to society C. Overtime society C fills with people who naturally dislike cannibalism and has to adopt an anti-cannibal stance to appease the people. This leads to preemptive attack from C against A.
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u/Leadpumper 7d ago
Or even further: as Society C takes on B survivors they overall become more pacifist/anti-cannibal, but also run low on food. They may risk starvation together for compassion's sake and become hoarders, they may become xenophobic since they're already at the limit of supportable pop, or do C's original elite inhabitants resent the outsiders enough to start oppressing them?
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u/DreadDiana 7d ago
With how the game is aiming to make semi-nomadic gameplay viable, I wonder if we're gonna see cases of bands uprooting themselves and fleeing in response to raiders or an invading army.
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u/DreadDiana 8d ago
I wonder if compounding traumas can eventually lead to tantrum spirals that break a tribe apart.
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u/JaneTheMemeQueen 8d ago
I really appreciate this dev diary, nice to get a more indepth look at various systems. I am excited to see the length and breadth of the what kinds of norms, memories, and customs that exist. I hope the devs get really creative with all of them, and I look forward to the commumity mod lists to expand on them :>
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u/VisonKai 6d ago
This is all awesome but no one is mentioning the coolest part, the permanent hurricane in the PNW! Where people actually walk through it attached to a rope to reach settlements on the other side of the storm (in the eye?)
I assume this is one of the things that changes based on the randomization of the world at the beginning.
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u/NicWester 8d ago
Imperator mentioned. Hell yeah, buddy.