literally sitting here sizzling with excitement for the plot reveals coming in the follow up to the follow up to a game we released in 2019
i keep discovering things which link up stuff that was already there with other stuff that was already there in ways that make more sense than the existing explanation, while going broader. It's hard to explain without direct spoilers, but it's... (a) fluke, and (b) doesn't look like fluke
May 15, 2025 11:50I think it's a consequence of a very early world-building decision, tho, which was to have *as few kinds of magic as possible*.
The counterexample is Star Trek. They make new magic weekly, so after a few years there's a huge weight of complexity. You can't retrofit things because it's stacked
That's fine, and it's fun! but it spirals outwards, and gets vaguer and vaguer.
The contrasting design - which I'm struggling to think of good examples of - is one where there's one kind of magic, manifested everywhere in different ways. So you can reveal connections as you go
but also, everything is thematically in the same space, so things that aren't designed to be linked can often be bridged because they're in the same space.
(It's like that bit in Who where Matt Smith is #13, because DT got half-renegerated. Pure luck! But, unlike most of Who, in a confined space)
anyway, i literally just realised that this thing - connects to that thing - connects to that thing - which was a typo in 2017 I didn't notice until it was too late - which resolves how book 4 of Heaven's Vault is going to end. And next year, I'm going to claim I planned it all.
