(NOTE: These devlogs usually lag behind our official updates. The latest up-to-date information about the game can be found on our team's Patreon page!)

Hello adventurers, we're back with another development blog! :)

This time we'll be talking about the party's Morale!

We're very excited about this special mechanic that we'll be implementing, because a lot of thought went into its design! All three of us on the core dev team are life-long gamers,  and we've played more RPGs than we can count. As with most games, some stuff you can't help but enjoy, while others make you gnash your teeth in frustration while playing. ToLLA's unique Morale mechanic is our attempt at blending together narrative immersion, character believability, and responsive event design!

Mechanically, Morale is a global variable that reacts to your decisions, and influences various outcomes, some visible and others not.

Narratively, however, Morale is the measure of your troops' happiness and trust in your decision-making as their Captain... or lack thereof. The people who follow Captain Hale (retinue soldiers, recruitable companions, hireable followers/mercenaries, etc.) measure and judge how successful the Captain is within his appointed leadership role. Or simply put, do his decisions and command help the group as a whole move forward with their objectives, or do they cause unwanted miseries to the people following him? Morale, then, is used to track how (dis)pleased your entourage is with outcomes that occur under your command.

To give a few concrete example:

Morale is gained for winning battles, killing an enemy in combat, various positive map events, using specific building services for your Retinue (Tavern, Brothel, Infirmary, Barracks, etc.), successfully completing Deployments and Expeditions, successfully completing Text Adventures and Perilous Undertakings, praying at Shrines, uncovering benevolent Oddities!

Morale is lost for losing battles, losing a companion in combat, various negative map events, using specific building services for your Retinue (Gaol, Mortuary, Interrogation Pit, Graveyard, etc.), unsuccessfully completing Deployments and Expeditions, unsuccessfully completing Text Adventures and Perilous Undertakings, robbing the Shrines, uncovering malevolent Oddities!

Morale ranges from -3 (minimum) to +3 (maximum), and is gained/lost during the actions, situations, and events mentioned above. It can never drop below -3, or climb above +3, and will naturally drift towards 0 on its own very slowly over time as the party comes to travel the World Map (or instantly after camping/resting).

The various Morale stages (and their impacts) are:

• Euphoric (+3)
• Optimistic (+2)
• Pleased (+1)
• Content (0)
• Morose (-1)
• Dejected (-2)
• Seething (-3)

Another important and plentiful source of Morale are Captain Hale's personal decisions that he'll have to make when handling various quests, moral dilemmas, problems, and NPCs. We always want to give our players as many role-playing opportunities as possible (within reason, obviously), and having those choices carry Morale consequences adds another layer of organic verisimilitude to the game world! When you, as Captain Hale, make decisions through dialogues and events, your party's automatic Morale adjustments will reflect and be influenced by Hale's current Karma rating!

For example, if an evil Captain (negative Karma) commits an evil deed (like beating a defenseless prisoner of war), it results in a Morale gain, and vice-versa for a good deed (Morale loss). This makes sense, as an evil Captain would surround himself with equally-tempered individuals and followers, and would further corrupt and negatively influence the few remaining ones that hadn't started out so... and all of these cruel people would look upon Hale's benevolent actions as weakness, and malevolent ones as strength, losing and gaining Morale respectively.

Basically, Morale gains awarded via convos/events/storybooks which offer Captain Hale multiple choices, are then multiplied by -1 for evil Karma (below 0), and by +1 for good Karma (above 0). This kind of approach ensures an evil Captain committing an evil deed results in a net positive Morale gain (-1 * -N), and an evil Captain doing a good deed ends with a net negative Morale gain (-1 * +N). Similarly, a good Captain committing an evil deed would lose Morale (+1 * -N), whereas a good Captain doing a good deed would gain Morale (+1 * +N).

For example, executing an innocent woman accused of witchcraft (-6 action):

Good Captain: +1 * (-6) = - 6 added to the party's current Morale rating!

Evil Captain: -1 * (-6) = +6 added to the party's current Morale rating! 

Note that Morale can never go above/below +/- 3, regardless of how much it changes. In a more vanilla and static system, an evil and selfish Captain would constantly be gaining negative Morale from his actions, which would severely impact the Player's ability to get things done! In a more realistic system (like the one outlined above!), an evil/selfish Captain would indubitably surround himself with similar troops, who'd support the Captain in his villainy, thus gaining +Morale!

Ergo, Karma is plugged into the Morale changes (+/-), relative to the Captain's current karmic alignment! Any time the party gets a Morale change from the Captain's personal actions, the Captain's Karma plays into it!

This might seem a bit convoluted when reading through it all, but it's a sleek and efficient system that will quietly work under the hood to give you flexibility in your decision-making, and award you accordingly no matter how you choose to role-play and build your Captain!

But so far all we've talked about is how Morale is gained or lost...

What, then, is it actually used for?

Combat...

The combat in ToLLA will be covered in-depth in future dev blogs, but for now we'll just mention that it will consist of turn-based party battles. As the Player, you control 6 characters which you can swap in or out of your active party (Captain Hale + 5 Companions), and pit them against various monsters and enemies you'll come across. 

Morale is critical to your success, because it influences your characters' damage output (both physical and magical) by +/- 15% per level of Morale above or below 0, and their damage resistance by +/- 5%. This means that, for example, a party with their current Morale at Euphoric (+3) would do +45% more damage during combat, and take -15% less!

The game can also apply temporary combat states to your characters which (de)buff their derived stats (Accuracy, Crit Chance, Evasion, etc.) depending on the current Morale value.

Obviously these numbers and effects will be subject to fine-tuning and tweaking once we start introducing combat into the game, but Morale will always remain a major (de)buff to your group's damage output, mitigation, and overall combat performance. The reasoning behind this is that the characters you control fight harder and longer the happier they are... and vice-versa. This makes balancing Morale an important part of the game's tactical layer!

Retinue...

We've talked about the Captain's Retinue and its uses in one of the previous devlogs, so skim over that quickly if you haven't read it. The gist of it is that your Captain has an entourage of elite soldiers to help him out with group events, and can use these troops to bypass various environmental and narrative obstacles.

The Retinue's success in the many Text Adventures and Perilous Undertakings that'll be strewn throughout the game will heavily depend on the party's current Morale rating! Even simple tasks like repairing a collapsed bridge can end catastrophically with low Morale, costing you men, materiel, and supplies! Similarly, otherwise lethal undertakings like navigating a noxious bog can be completed with minimal losses of life and equipment with high Morale.

Ergo, remaining mindful of your Morale at all times (and taking steps to correct it if it falls too low!) will prove critical to your efficient use of the Retinue and its precious resources.

Dialogue...

A lot of content in ToLLA is delivered through conversations with the game's various NPCs (allies, enemies, questgivers, service providers, companions, followers/mercenaries, etc.).

Morale is just one of the many diverse options you can expect to pop up in dialogues when the game throws a problem your way. These are static D&D-esque Difficulty Checks which your current Morale rating has to meet or exceed in order to unlock a particular option or reply. 

For example, having low Morale will not let you talk your way out of an ambush by a squad of deserters, because they'll notice how miserable your own soldiers are! But a high Morale will definitely allow you to persuade a reticent Mayor to let you tackle his town's feuding noblemen problem!

Obviously you'll have many, many additional choices than just Morale checks, but unlike some of the other ones, Morale options don't cost any resources, and won't negatively impact your bottom line, which makes them ideal when you want get through an encounter with as little fuss as possible.

Exploration...

One of the game's major pillars is exploration, which takes place across custom-painted 2D maps filled with triggers, events, obstacles, enemies, and interactable objects. 

Unlike the other sections outlined above, Morale will have a more passive and indirect role during exploration segments of the game. It'll be used by area scripts to weigh certain entourage events and outcomes to the benefit or detriment of the Captain and his party, depending on their current Morale.

We'll just leave it at that, without going into too much detail and spoiling the mystery and some of the more fun aspects of ToLLA's exploration elements! ;)

And that finally brings us to the end of today's devlog!

This one was really long, but there was a lot to cover! :D

As always, we hope you've enjoyed reading, and that you'll join us for the next one as well!

Until then...

~ Crimson Delight Games