For being a (gentle) parody of cliche fantasy settings, a surprising amount of depth went into this one

For being a (gentle) parody of cliche fantasy settings, a surprising amount of depth went into this one.

How does Veeky Forums feel about Ardania/Majesty's setting? Would you set a game there? Which ideas would you pick from there for your game?

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I remember spending hours with the demo map of this game, but never actually played it fully.

Tell me about it.

That's the thing, because it was designed as a parody it is deliberately very cliche, you can't really point towards any one point and say "see? This is the setting's unique premise, what do you think about it?". It's a bog standard fantasy setting, just with a lot of detail that went into it that manages to straddle a fine line between being very recognizable and the occasional touch of innovation that doesn't feel like "different for the sake of being different" (e.g. the elves)

It's hard to say. When I played Majesty I always had the thought: this gameplay is great, but wouldn't it be so much better if it was in Enroth of Heroes of Might and Magic?
And the reason for that is ultimately because while the writing and worldbuilding in Majesty is... quirky, I guess, there's no plot to be invested in whatsoever. HoMM of course didn't initially start off with much of a plot either but already in HoMM 2 it created sets of events that established how everything interacted with each other and what overarching roles different hero types had in the world.
Majesty lacks that very important step in worldbuilding because other than certain lines like "Rangers like to work with Barbarians" and "Elves like to make debaucherous gambling lodges" you have to headcanon most if not all of the social and political aspects of people in the setting. So when I want to get invested in what's going on I usually just play HoMM 2 or 3.

Oh man this friggun game. If I set a game in this setting, it would be one more along the lines of one or more of the levels in the game, where the players are more akin to a council running a settlement with a mission in mind. Not quite Kingmaker, but Kingmaker.

As for the setting, I've taken quite a few ideas from it in some form or another for my games. Majesty had a very interesting setting, sprinkled with a lot of Star Wars "not quite show, but tell and move on," like with the Kessel run bit. Like says, the setting is generic fantasy, but it's still it's own generic fantasy, with just enough of it's own details and names that, if someone asked if you knew about Ardania, you might know about the unique IP they were talking about. Small details like "What is the Sixth Winters War?" and why did it upset the Worshipers of Krolm. Why are the priestesses of Krypta allowed to practice their religion that obviously involves sacrifices.

I like what Majesty did to elves. It's one of the best balances I've found so far between the conventions of "elves are beautiful and artistic", "elves are evil" and "elves are a mistreated minority, while still feeling very much like "elves".

>beautiful and artistic
Absolutely, but without the wisdom that's usually implied alongside it. They're shallow and decadent. Yeah, they make the best art, play the best music, produce the best wine and bake the best cakes, but they'd rather spend their time doing all those things than actually WORK. If they go on adventures, it's literally for more money to spend on wine and bitches. If they play music and sing for other people it's not to Share the Songs of their People, it's so they can pick up ladies (and possibly to distract the crowd while they're body pickpockets everyone). People love them since they set up the best bordellos and gambling houses everywhere they go but they don't even PRETEND they'll hesitate to drug you, kill you, rob you and dump your body in a sewer the moment you give them the chance.

>evil
Not stupidly sadistic or anything, not really "insane" or "fae" either, just selfish and infantile. They're an entire race with the mentality of lazyass douchbag frat boys who are still annoyingly successful due to natural talent and good looks.

>mistreated minority
Of course they are, their homeland is gone (and it's 99% certain this is because they blew it up somehow) and everywhere they show up immediately turns into a den of debauchery. The only reason they aren't being pogrom'd more is that for all the trouble they give authorities, the people like them too much for bringing whores and booze to town and will probably riot if they were driven off.

the best part was that you couldn't give orders to any of the units, you just built buildings produced heroes and they did their things. You could put out bounty flags for exploration or killing stuff and do some magic shit but that's all. You just watched the living breathing world you created and tried to steer it into the right direction

The game was great, but i don't remember anything outside of generic fantasy stuff from it.

I love this game. The way gnomes are portrayed in game are still my go-to for how they can be shown as different from halflings or dwarves. And also probably the reason why I somewhat associate them with goblins.

The biggest thing I take from the game is that my goddess of conquest is named Scrylia, and she's heavily associated with dragons, yuan-ti, lizardfolk, meduas, and nagas.

That plus the Marketplace's income doubles when you build your first Elven Bungalo even though the prices don't change.

Which is...kind of shady when you think about it.

>Which is...kind of shady when you think about it.
I'm fairly sure that's the point.

I haven't played this game in 15 years but I remember it taught me the word "bungalow."

At least it makes up for the lost taxes, since the bonus applies to each Marketplace, and due to a quirk of the game math it's actually more profitable to have three level 1 markets than one level 3 market (although one of them should be level 3 anyway for the neat shit your heroes can buy).

The one mission I was never able to actually beat without cheats was the Deal with the Devil. I just can't figure out how to balance things right so that I make the requisite absurd amount of gold.

Oh, speaking of cheats, those were a bitch to track down when I went looking for them a few months back, so here they are for Veeky Forums:

>build anything: construct any building
>cheezy towers: wizard spells cast anywhere
>fill this bag: 10,000 gold
>frame it: frame rate
>give me power: all magic spells
>grow up: selected hero gains 5 levels
>i'm a loser baby: automatically lose
>now you die: destroy any selectable target (even indestructible ones like sewers)
>planet fargo: advisor sings
>restoration: all heroes/buildings full health
>revelation: reveals map
>victory is mine: automatically win

Monster spawn cheats (entering these spawns monsters randomly across the map)
>give me action: spawns minotaurs
>goblin rush: spawns goblins
>night of the living dead: spawns skeletons, zombies, and vampires
>prepare to die: spawns rock golems and dragons
>pump up the volume: spawns medusa, evil oculi, rust spitters, and werewolves

Interesting setting, plays around well with the standard fantasy implications and preconceptions, but I've always found myself disliking the games themselves. There are always a few elements of game design that seem to misfire by just drawing things out. Even in the 4X game, Warlock (though, I haven't played the sequel which I've heard is better in general).
Nothing ever goes well, but rather than it being gratifying to overcome those obstacles it's ultimately just frustrating. There's no catharsis.

> It's one of the best balances I've found so far between the conventions of "elves are beautiful and artistic", "elves are evil" and "elves are a mistreated minority, while still feeling very much like "elves".

Elves are the literal faggots of Majesty.

Ambivalent, the game deliberately made it impossible to tell their gender as a jab at the stereotype of the effeminate elf. Hence the androgynous names, faces, voices and lack of any clear reference to them being men or women.

Majesty 2 kind of ruined that joke by giving them all giant tits.

>cheats, those were a bitch to track down when I went looking for them a few months back
Out of curiosity, I've just googled "Majesty cheats". Dozens of pages with them popped out instantly.
Were you searching for the cheats in a public library, looking through old gaming magazines or something?

But they sure are fabulous faggots.

DORF
BALLISTAS
EVERYWHERE

Majesty 2, while a valiant effort, just felt like it missed the point in a lot of minor but irritating ways.

No, I wasn't. I had to go to like a half dozen different sites to get the complete list, including the monster spawn cheats. If that's changed in the past few months...egg on my face, I guess.

How would you do a kingdom who infrastructurally supported heroes in a game? If you think about it, it does kinda make sense that a fantasy government would pay attention to and perhaps help out local heroes in a crisis. Paying mages to scry on them and send a remote lightning bolt or healing spell to get them out of a tight spot, as well as paying attention to what they needed and making sure the kingdom had it available, to get all that lovely adventurer loot into their coffers.

Have you played the downloadable quests?
There's one about the avatar of Krolm which is almost impossible.
Also did you know Warlock: Master of the arcane is set in the same universe?

I did (as are a number of other games), but I only learned it recently.

>, just selfish and infantile.

That is most fairy tale fae, to be fair. Simply add 'autistic about manners.'

You see if a game was to be set in Ardania then this looks like the honest best concept to build it around, besides just reusing the jokes, which are hilarious. Majesty was a management game, so it looks like a shoe-in for a game where you are working on behalf of the Kingdom to rebuild it and make it prosperous, but Majesty is all about motivating your heroes to do what you want, rather than ordering them. Whatever monarchy is ruling this place they really take a laisez-faire approach to the economy. So, I'd have the PC's really reliant on other entities - the different guilds - to actually make any progress against monsters by getting the guilds to participate in their missions, but whether or not they will depends on a diceroll. So the campaign would be geared towards trying to get bonuses to those rolls by motivating the other factions - like going on a dungeon run just to get gold to make a satisfying reward. It would be a decent sandbox game I think, and it might make the core goal of "build rather than save this kingdom" a little more tense.
I think the main way it fell down was in the overworld map being a fancy sequential level select screen rather than a big open ended thing. Still they were going with a more linear story that really was amusing. I think they pulled off decent humor. Got any nitpicks besides?

I love that game and still play it every once in a while, but I don't really see what one could borrow from it, forth wall breaking mushroom eating druids? seems like people are too used to that kind of humour now

Oh shit, same here

I thought I was the only one who played the demo for hours on hours

IIRC a big one was just that the 3D models really lacked the charm of the original handdrawn artstyle. It's the same annoyance I had with Heroes of Might and Magic. For that kind of game, really nice 2D artwork is sometimes better than trying to make everything fancy 3D models.

Best heroes and best girls

>Best heroes
but thats not warrior of discord, their voice lines were great

Yeah, but...objectively, the Paladins are just better in every way. The WoDs aren't BAD...but Paladins are better.

Oh yeah I get you, they did get generic looking, the elves in particular, and not in the good generic it was going for. It was cool seeing the heroes get up to Epic-tier MMO players though. Course, it also meant Ino-Co Plus got to reuse assets for three different games, so I suppose that was the downpayment of effort they put in before they started phoning it in
Pic related proves I have no right to complain about their work at all...

>that VA
youtube.com/watch?v=ZmPcKgD0dZU

yeah that much is true

Even though I haven't cheated on this game for well over a decade I remembered most of these

The monster spawn "cheats" are given in the Northern Expansion manual...

Warriors of Discord always die if you aren't babysitting them. They have lots of health, but they can't dodge and never go home to heal (or buy new equipment, for that matter).

>Oh, speaking of cheats, those were a bitch to track down when I went looking for them a few months back, so here they are for Veeky Forums:
Why didn't you check GameFAQs? That's had the cheats for years.