Esoteric Ebb - Disco-like using 5e ruleset where you are cleric uncovering political conspiracy with goblin sidekick

[Camel]

The homebrew setting is quite weird and hard to sell to be honest. I think I pitched it to my players as something like, 'what if we skipped the industrial revolution with magic, and then had a world war.' (or Low-tech Eberron maybe?) The general tone of modernism came to when I actually started playtesting it a lot. Since, you know, unless you have some damn fine roleplayers in your group, most D&D play is kind of ridiculously anachronistic. At least when it's not focused on being a 'serious' campaign. So when I wanted the players' tone to match the setting, the setting became really weird. That worked for me and my players, and was very fun to play. So now I'm just trying to translate that into the digital space.

My early marketing has kind of failed to convey that at all. So that's one thing I'm focusing on for the future.

Golden standard of Medieval fantasy dialogue in RPGs is Baldur's Gate 2 for me. But now modern RPG dialogue is always anachronistic which grates on me. Wish you luck with the game anyway!

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[rusty_shackleford]

getting caught means you press the f9 key

 

[lukaszek]

getting caught means you press the f9 key

ahh, the deterministic stealing

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Infinitron]

Updated trailer:

 

[Christoffer Bodegård]

Hey, I'm looking for playtesters! Sign up on the steam page to gain access: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2057760

This is the First Draft Playtest, which means I'm looking for as much critique as I can get. Especially on the writing and design. I want to use this opportunity to see what works and what doesn't, so I know where I should take it.
If you run into any problems, don't hesitate to post here, DM me, or go to the steam forum. I'm certain there's a lot of bugs to be found, but it should be somewhat playable at this point.

Here's the official announcement.

 

[Salvo]

I would change the font / UI, it's almost plagiarism as it is now

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Gave it a try. First impressions:

- Oh god no more politics PLEASE for the love of g*d. One of the first questions the game asks you is "what are your political preferences?". In this heavily politicized world gone to shit, can't we do without this just once?

- Heavily derivative of Disco. Not just inspired by it, but derivative.

- Tries to be too cute with its own thoughts and "humor". Too normie. I'd tone it down, get it to take itself slightly more seriously.

- Terrible shader that looks like vomit. Really distracting.

UI:
- No idea what the 3 buttons do at the bottom of the dialogue. They say "+2 to smth", but when and how is this going to apply? No idea.

 

[Christoffer Bodegård]

I would change the font / UI, it's almost plagiarism as it is now

I've gotten this a lot (obviously), and I've been slowly moving away from it. Both aesthetically and in the mechanics. Still got a ways to go.

Gave it a try. First impressions:

- Oh god no more politics PLEASE for the love of g*d. One of the first questions the game asks you is "what are your political preferences?". In this heavily politicized world gone to shit, can't we do without this just once?

- Heavily derivative of Disco. Not just inspired by it, but derivative.

- Tries to be too cute with its own thoughts and "humor". Too normie. I'd tone it down, get it to take itself slightly more seriously.

- Terrible shader that looks like vomit. Really distracting.

UI:
- No idea what the 3 buttons do at the bottom of the dialogue. They say "+2 to smth", but when and how is this going to apply? No idea.

Sadly it is POLITICS again! The playtest demo doesn't handle it as well as I want, but I've gotten a lot of feedback that might lead me in the right direction. That including what you're saying about taking itself a little more seriously. I'm clearly not going for anything grimdark, but just like when I run my campaigns I want the world to feel real so the (attempt at) comedy has space to breathe. We'll see if I can manage it.

The artstyle is a big divider. Some hate it, some love it. I think I can make it more tolerable by handling the colors better, and focusing more on contrast in the environment designs.

The three buttons-thing is my experiment in trying to make cantrips a type of passive bonus in dialogs. Apart from being confusing I'm not entirely sure it works at all. In fact I've gotten a lot of feedback on how the whole spellsystem is just confusing as hell, so I've already planned up a revamp that should make it much better.

Thank you very much for trying it out! Really need a lot of feedback, so this is invaluable!

 

[huskarls]

Too derivative of DE. There could be an audience where your copying the VN style of DE, switching it to DND and adding more gameplay like spells, stealth, encounters, but you're copying the plot, writing style, amnesia, talking to yourself, dialogue, opening, even the fucking thought catalogue. I know you already wrote a textbook worth of knock off DE style thoughts talking, but you need to trash all that and have the protagonist only talk to people and not act like pickle rick. Simple good, evil, smartass, neutral, dialogue options

The plagiarism is so strong it tensed my facial muscles from cringe. You need to take a scalpel to it instead of coping that changing the font and cure light wounds is going to fix it.

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Yeah, this. It's weird that you didn't come up with anything of your own while copying the DE formula.

To have internal voices and dialogues, you could've come up with a hundred different diegetic explanations:
- insanity, hallucinated voices
- possessed by various spirits with quirky personalities
- cyborg with AI
- virtual reality with some kind of "director's commentary"
- timelines' partial collapse, with you hearing the voices of others who were in your situation

In fact the entire premise of the game could be to rid you of said voices.

You would've achieved something similar, but nobody would say it's derivative. It would've been your own thing. A missed opportunity.

 

[lukaszek]

game about fighting your inner voices sounds cool. Potentially many endings where you end up in insane asylum after accepting being schizo, or going exorcism route etc...

 

[Christoffer Bodegård]

Oh yeah. I've gotten a lot of great feedback on how to develop the AbilityScore-writing to make it both more unique but also just more clear on what each voice stands for.
Originally EBB was supposed to be a lot more tabletop-oriented in the narrative. For example, a Constitution-chime would be my answer (as a DM) to a player asking, 'What's my gut feeling about this?'. I lost most of that in my attempt to cobble together a coherent product - but I feel like leaning back into that premise could improve it a lot.
Got a lot to think about here. This is nice. Should probably do a devlog or something once I've decided on which direction to take the AbilityScores.

 

[cyborgboy95]

An Esoteric Campaign - Ability Scores
Why a cleric?

I could've chosen anything. There's lots of classes in 5e to pick from. When I decided to focus on just one in particular however, the cleric was the only clear choice for me. Apart from my personal bias, cleric is the one class that stretches over, I would argue, most fantasy tropes. It has the widest class fantasy. You've got the armored melee warrior. Holy-man priest. The utility of spellcasting. All in one solid package that can be molded into various archetypes. At just a glance the Cleric in Esoteric Ebb is all of those things and more. He's an 'Arcane Cleric', so he has a spellbook. He's a healer and a member of a holy order, with much of his demeanor being more Paladin-like than anything else. But there's a problem with that. It might account for a player who wants to build INT, STR, or WIS. But what about the rest?

Early in development I remember looking at the character creation and progression of Planescape: Torment. If you've ever been recommended this game by someone, you might have heard a variation of the classic tip: 'Go INT, WIS, or CHA. Dump the rest.' It's a good tip if you want access to the most interesting choices in the game. That's not to say a STR/DEX/CON run won't be interesting, but it feels a lot more restrictive in dialogs. And since most of the game is spent in dialogs... well, I know a number of people who simply restarted the game when they realized they 'picked wrong'.

Screenshot from the First Draft Playtest.

Esoteric Ebb has almost the exact same character creator as Planescape: Torment. Six ability scores, X amount of points. Go. Make a character that you barely know anything about. Make a decision. I've found players usually build an immediate picture of what they want to play as in their heads. That picture will be heavily based on everything they've heard about the game before they fire it up. So let's look at it this way:

What ability scores would a cleric usually go with?

I DM four different campaigns right now, so it's been a while since I last got a chance to be a player. But my last character was a Tempest Cleric with a slightly above average statline. 14, 12, 16, 11, 18, 9. A cleric should run with Wisdom, since it's the casting mod. Low level I usually hit stuff with a shovel and acted like a 'tank', so CON and STR were my other focuses. And DEX is just good to have.

But what if I want to build a cleric with low Wisdom? You could make the argument that such a character should be unable to tap into divine magic with any overt success. You could also make the argument that a character could use any ability score as a casting modifier if you're creative enough (and ignore some balancing issues). I think most of that is solvable, especially in a single-player that's sold as a 'homebrew experience'. But more interesting I would say is the question of PERSONALITY.

In the playtest the ability scores often act as advertisements for their type of gameplay. Dexterity tells you to dodge, Intelligence tells you to cast a spell. Basic stuff.

Why are only half of the ability scores relevant for social roleplaying? It's a rhetorical question in some part, because the answer is obvious. Mental stats are in the brain. Body stats are in the not-brain. Duh. But something I wanted to explore with Esoteric Ebb (and something that’s obviously already been done by thousands of other TTRPGs) was to make the entire statline explicitly impact the personality of the character. There is a major problem with this however. It's much easier to extrapolate a personality from having low or high INT. But STR? And CON? Stupid/Smart is easy to define. Or easier at least. How would STR be defined and performed by a player?

In Esoteric Ebb I tried a simple solution to this. Each stat is specifically tailored for the Cleric. If you imagine each character in this world I've created has a statline of six ability scores, then every person would have a different version of STRENGTH floating around in their head. Just like I would argue, two characters with 20 INTELLIGENCE could be defined and performed as 'smart' in very different ways.

The CLERIC's ability scores are (currently) defined as this:

• Strength is the search for meaning, religion, and masculinity.
• Dexterity is avoiding consequences, self-interest, and freedom.
• Constitution is your gut feeling, bodily truth, and stubbornness.
• Intelligence is the search for power, ego, and memorization.
• Wisdom is your esoteric understanding, empathy, and femininity.
• Charisma is social manipulation, force of personality, and the desperate need for love.

Beyond these general themes, I'm also trying to build each ability score into a real character. Each of which is of course a partial truth of the Cleric's own sense of self. It's an interesting way of writing interactive dialogs. Often the design can lean into the idea of having several different versions to play as. Are you the protagonist that kicks baby seals or the one that recycles every tuesday night? Or in Planescape: Torment's case, which type of reincarnation are you this time?

I'm not too happy with some of the DC balancing on chimes in the playtest. In this case, should the DC for Strength's harsh reply be higher or lower?

In Esoteric Ebb I'm trying to make the Cleric a protagonist that is conflicted in six different directions at once. The ability scores you choose to be higher at the start of the game are simply the dominant voices - but each dialog option is something the Cleric could do or say, if things were only slightly different. Each ability score should give both a unique narrative tone and a different mechanical experience. Here's a few examples I'm trying to hit:

• High DEX will let you steal important quest items.
• Low INT will let you debate confidently on topics you have no clue about.
• High CHA will let you say completely out-of-character things just to 'win' an argument.
• High WIS will let you attune to more magic items.
• Low STR will let you say the most insecure shit.
• High CON will spoil every secret in the game for you in a way you won't understand. (Like a slightly less wacky Malkavian.)

Apart from setting them apart story-wise, I'm planning on making sure every stat has a clear gameplay benefit. Obviously CON will get you more hit points, but what sort numbers-benefit should Charisma give? I have a few ideas I'm toying with, but a lot of it has to do with balance, so it's hard to talk about it this early. Either way I'm excited to see where it all ends up.

In the playtest Charisma often acts as a sort of social common sense.

I'm extremely grateful for all the feedback given during the playtest so far. It's especially useful that so many of you have given your thoughts on the ability scores and the writing in general. I'm currently working hard to make sure the full game will be as coherent and not-bad as I can. The inner workings of the Cleric I would say are pretty important for that.

The First Draft Playtest will be kept up, so feel free to share it around! I'm reading every survey response and all of it's invaluable. I’m eternally grateful, thank you.

 

[Gromoer]

Don’t walk away in silence…

Also, can anybody remind me what was the name of the Disco-like project that Sawer was going to make?

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Also, can anybody remind me what was the name of the Disco-like project that Sawer was going to make?

Pediment

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Infinitron]

New trailer:

 

[Christoffer Bodegård]

I've got a new demo out on Steam!

I still haven't managed to reach the level of writing and design I'm hoping for, but this should be the right direction. Last playtest I got a ton of great feedback from the codex, so if you're interested in helping me make this game better, I'd love to hear what you think. Especially if you have thoughts on the dialog design and what I should focus on to make it more unique. Thanks again!

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2057760/view/3859083885027505789

Second Draft Demo - Out Now!

It's been a while.

In February 2023 I released an early version of Esoteric Ebb here on Steam. I called it the First Draft Playtest, because it really, really was. Containing about 50k words of dialog, it was the first real attempt I made at putting together a sizable playable version of EBBRPG - a project I've tinkered with since 2018,

I had my doubts about making it a public playtest. Most dialogs were actually first drafts. The magic system was almost incomprehensible (I'm still shocked some people figured it out, well done!). The Questing Tree wasn't even close to finished.

But the response was amazing. Almost two thousand players joined the playtest, and over a hundred of you sent me extensive feedback. I hope it's clear how much of that feedback has gone into the work I've done over the last nine months.

Esoteric Ebb: Second Draft Demo

• Reworked magic system
• Functional Questing Tree (with feats!)
• A new draft of all dialogs
• Redesign of turn-based encounters
• Updated character creation
• New areas
• New characters
• Controller support (and WASD!)

I officially invite you all to try out the new demo! Feel free to send any feedback you have to me, or post it here on the Steam Discussion, or join the Discord and ask me anything you want!

Thanks again for checking out Esoteric Ebb. I have a feeling the next nine months will be even more eventful.
-Christoffer Bodegård

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/i-was-alrea...s-demo-blew-my-expectations-out-of-the-water/

I was already intrigued by this Disco Elysium-inspired, D&D-based RPG where you play as the world's worst cleric, but its demo blew my expectations out of the water​

Esoteric Ebb has The Juice.

Esoteric Ebb seemed like a game tailor-made for me, and that left me nervous. An irreverent, dialogue-focused RPG proudly announcing its Disco Elysium inspirations⁠—my mind jumped to all those soulslike games I've gotten my hopes up for that just don't quite have the FromSoft magic.

After trying the game's second draft demo, I'm happy to report that my fears were unfounded: Esoteric Ebb has that spark⁠—not merely an imitation of our 2019 game of the year, but using that familiar format to go on its own RPG adventure.

You play as the world's worst cleric, already maybe the dumpiest of Dungeons & Dragons' classes. Sorry, cleric fans, but the ecclesiastical fantasy just doesn't do it for me, though their healing magic is always welcome. As Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer once quipped, echoing the great Ronnie Coleman, "everybody wants a cleric in the party, but ain't nobody want to main one."

All of which is to say I kind of appreciate being forced into that role by the game, building out and reconstructing this archetype in a new way. Even though your class is set, you still have freedom to choose the cleric's stats and play them any which way, maybe leaning into that "world's worst cleric" bit by giving them booboo Wisdom and cranked up Strength to be a bully-priest, or maxing Dexterity and Charisma for a more flashy, self-involved man of the cloth.

Esoteric Ebb adapts 5th edition D&D to Disco Elysium's style of exploratory, dialogue-focused RPG, and the retrofit works. Your attributes talk to you in the manner of Disco's skills, but you're rolling D20s now instead of Disco Elysium's bespoke system of 2d6 rolls. Even with the changes, Esoteric Ebb nails the slapstick, jittery feeling of your first run through Disco, with failed checks and ill-advised decisions leading to situations you just don't see in other RPGs.

Taking a break from a Baldur's Gate 3 where I'm playing a bard who's good at everything, it felt invigorating to be a useless dope who gave himself a tummy ache trying to tunnel through a massive pile of apples by eating them. One memorably embarrassing faux pas saw my guy reflexively bite his tongue so hard he drew blood, spewing the red stuff out of his unremovable helmet the next time he opened up his mouth to speak.

Instead of waking up to a lynching investigation with a legendary hangover, Esoteric Ebb's hapless cleric finds himself in a morgue, resurrected after having been fished out of the river. A tea shop has exploded on the eve of this fantasy city's first election, and you're charged with assisting the local goblin tribe in an investigation as to the cause.

I'm interested to see how the political angle will pan out in this vastly different setting, but Esoteric Ebb's already showing off a sense for worldbuilding that impressed me. It has that sense of "as you already know" constructed history I really loved in Disco, and this fantasy world seems like it might be a little bit grimmer and weirder than it first appears. Esoteric Ebb combines that sensibility with a cheeky, Shrek-like banality in its treatment of magic and the fantastic.

One of my favorite characters in the demo is a little imp who's taken his innate tendency toward Evil of the Lawful variety in stride by offering legal advice, including a delightful aside on the case history of resurrection magic: What does the law say about reviving someone executed for murder? If you kill someone and they're resurrected, is it murder or assault?

This small section of city in the demo already feels grungy and tactile, and the cel-shaded art style has really won me over as well⁠—its bright pastel colors and uncluttered textures remind me of 2021's Sable. Esoteric Ebb is very much a Disco Elysium-like, but it feels like it's got something cooking, and I'm excited to see more of it. Esoteric Ebb currently has no set release date, but you can check out the demo for yourself and wishlist it on Steam.