A Game FAQ And Overview
The page provides an overview of the game. For rules of gameplay and character creation, see the game rules.
What is Elven Academy? Elven Academy is a retro fantasy role-playing game, a mature (R-rated) RPG with storylines, dungeons, and romance. Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones. The twist is the academy setting, which introduces a real educational aspect, a space where you can become more like an elf, witch, or a wizard in real life.
The game writing tries to include themes of philosophy, occult, witchcraft, mythology, literature, poetry, nature, art, and other elven things. There is a library where you can read real mini-books on real topics (as well as in-game books that are pure fiction).
The design goal at this time is: 25% Story/Roleplay, 25% Education, 25% Dungeons/Adventures, 25% Romance/Companionship. This is a rough goal. Education is a goal throughout, and there are possibilities for romantic encounters in the stories, as well as terms of endearment implemented in dialogue text.
Educational? How does that work? To justify the time spent on the game, I try to use the development for personal growth. So I research real things like witchcraft, paganism, mythology, lore of fairies and elves, botany, and so on while writing the game, and then I encode that research into the game.
This is especially true when I write books for the school library, such as books on crystals or mushrooms. The translation of the entire game into Spanish, as well as the French class module, are self-studies in my second and third languages for example. While playing the game, the hope is that the player can also learn things.
What are the influences on the game? In terms of gameplay and design inspiration, the main influences are the solitaire modules for the Tunnels and Trolls pen and paper RPG, which were mostly published from 1976-1985. These modules in turn were influenced by Choose Your Own Adventure books at the time, as well as the Sword and Sorcery genre by such authors as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock.
Other influences are of course J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, the Harry Potter books and movies, the Magicians series maybe, and various modern pen and paper RPG’s such as World of Darkness and D&D.
What is the setting, and who are the characters? The game takes place in the ancient Underworld, where the elves and fairies fled towards the end of the 19th Earth century. It’s a dark fantasy setting with elves, fairies, goblins, pirates, succubi, incubi, devils, demons, and even a dragon or two. Most humans in the Underworld are owned slaves, but as a witch or wizard with a bit of Fey heritage, you have a unique privilege to travel freely amongst the Seelie Fey. The game primarily takes place in the Blessed Isles, home of the Seelie Court, although you will travel elsewhere in the Underworld for adventures.
The Blessed Isles are ruled by Lord Oberon and Queen Titania, and their faithful Court wizard, Puck. The Seelie Court is separated from the Unseelie Court by the Sea of Desire, a vast and treacherous sea formed from the river that was known in older days as the Styx, flowing around the region known to angels as Purgatory, or to the Greeks as Elysium. You arrive as a student at Owl River academy, a school for human Fey-friends on Warbler Island, the southernmost isle in the Blessed Isles, off the coast of Elysium.
Warbler Island has a reputation as a pirate haven on elven lands. The elves there are suspected pirate sympathizers, and have therefore received particular attention from the Hell’s army occupation of the isles. Pirates are the only openly operating rebels against the Dark Lord in the Underworld. They are mostly escaped human slaves, along with a fair number of Unseelie Fey. The setting of the game is largely an extension to the setting from the trilogy of dark fantasy novels, Down Deep Inside by Jacquotte Fox Kline.
What is the current story?
Some years ago, the Seelie Court failed to pay its traditional annual tithe to the Underworld monarchy. Lord Oberon, king of the Seelie Fey, hoped to achieve a diplomatic solution to their increasing difficulty in paying the Tithe, while the Dark Lord and Lady Lilith were distracted by their battles against Heaven and Earth. These battles soon resolved, however, and Hell’s army turned its attention towards the elves in their far southern fastnesses.
Hell’s army now holds the primary port towns of the Blessed Isles in occupation, much to the dismay of the Seelie Fey. As a wizard or witch of Owl River Academy, you are called upon to help resist the insidious corruption that is spreading through the peaceful villages and vales of these paradisiacal elven islands.
What is the game rated? The game has mature themes, and is not intended for children. The intention is an ‘R rated’, old-school fantasy experience, inspired by old school fantasy aesthetics such Heavy Metal magazine from 1977-1992. From wikipedia: “The magazine is known primarily for its blend of dark fantasy/science fiction and erotica and steampunk comics.”
There are wizards, monsters, battles, and also amorous encounters in an old world where sexism, slavery, conquest, kings, and queens are still a thing.
If you are a fair, sweet, and gentle elf or fairy, however, please do not weep. The Seelie elves are the best, beautiful, and noble people in the Underworld. In Elven Academy, you can also elect ‘light game’ mode when you create your character (see below), and thereby remove most bad language and other unsavory content from your playing experience, still within the context of the dark storyline. If you choose ‘dark game’ mode when you create your character, you’ll see all of the content.
Also, while there may be opportunities to engage in decadent pleasures during your adventures (see below), you don’t have to choose them (and in many cases you maybe shouldn’t!) If you paid attention to the game description above, gratuitous sex and violence are not the development raison d’être, although these themes are everywhere when dealing with the incubi, succubi, devils, and darker fey of the Underworld.
Sex? Love? Romance? There are occasional opportunities for romantic encounters, flirting, and even simulated dating, but there is little explicit sex or frontal nudity, if any. It many cases gratuitous nudity seems forced, but in other cases gratuitous covering of body parts also seems forced.
The goal is to be tasteful, artistic, consistent, and to let the game setting and characters dictate what happens. That said, romantic encounters generally follow a script of a few sexy drawings before a cut screen with a non-explicit summary of what happened.
Importantly, development is dedicated to equal opportunity romance options between male, female, gay and lesbian. Equal opportunity romance sounds like a lot of work for one developer. It is. There are a fair number of bisexual characters, but there are strong straight characters as well.
‘Light game’? ‘Dark game’?At the start of character creation module (A1), depending on your choices, you will choose a light or dark game mode. ‘Light game’ is indicated by a ‘lawful’ heritage on your character sheet. Your mother was a good, kind witch, and the elves expect you to follow in her footsteps. ‘Light game’ tries to change bad language to euphemisms, removes ‘F bombs’, and lessens mature themes and drug references in some cases.
‘Dark game’ is indicated by a ‘chaotic’ heritage on your character sheet. Your mother was not a good witch. She explored sex magic, black magic, and necromancy. She was connected to the more rebellious factions at the academy.
Languages?
The elves are master linguists. This game is bilingual and intended to serve as possible reading practice for a student of English or Spanish. You can toggle different language display options by clicking the language option button at the top right of the game panel.
How do I play? Click on a provided link on the hosting website or in your download. You always start the game in your room in the school, where you choose activities. Elven Academy has a main story line, but you can also read bilingual texts in the library to learn about elven lore and literature. You can play romance modules and learning modules, etc.
How do I create a new character? Select ‘adventure’ from the options in your room, then choose the first story adventure, module A1: Death and Rebirth. To save your character, you will want to save the code generated at the end of a module, or as shown in the settings panel.
Do my choices matter? In module A1, you can choose your gender, make choices that influence your starting character attributes, and choose whether you want to play a “Light Game”, or “Dark Game”. This latter choice also influences the story. Your dialog choices and actions also determine affection and reputation with your companions and factions in the game. Your personal attributes also grow when you use them.
The game is loading slowly, or not loading. This could be due to a number of things. The first thing to try is to clear your cache. The game receives frequent updates, which may break the game if your game files are version mis-matched, or … if a developer mistake was made. Elven Academy is designed to ultimately be a download to your device, to play without any internet connection. There is not yet a download package offered with expansion packs, etc. to play on your hard drive, but there will be.
Can I play on Mobile/PC/Etc. The game is designed to be playable on a tablet size screen, through a browser. There is no app at this time.
How do I save my game? Your game is saved with a ‘save code’ in local browser storage. The code should persist unless you delete your local data, or your browser is set to auto-delete files. Your code is shown in the settings (gear tab) panel, and is editable in browser dev tools (F12, Application tab, Storage, Local Storage). The save code is the most difficult coding in the game, and the thing most likely to break. It is recommended that you copy and paste a save code if you value it. If you lose your code completely, you will have to start a new game to start progress again (play module A1, Death and Rebirth.) This is annoying, but the reason is security. The game runs in a browser just like any other webpage, so it can only use cookies and browser storage. It is unable to write its own files to your local hard drive.
The End
That’s all for the game rules! TLDR: a mature story, a character with 18 attributes, and lots of challenge rolls on those attributes, modified by your gear, which modify the story. Easy! This document will be updated with any changes made to the game. I hope you enjoy playing Elven Academy as much as I enjoyed making it. If this guide has a glaring ommission, please contact me on a blog, or on Twitter. Thanks for reading ~ Jacquotte Fox Kline.
