Choose My Adventure: Priming up for Project Gorgon

Hi there, friends! Welcome back to Choose My Adventure, where this week I’ll be unveiling the results of last week’s poll, fine readers like you (perhaps including you) voted to select the game I’ll be diving into for the next however-many weeks, where I’ll be obeying your every command so that you can play vicariously through me.

The Division and Tree of Savior were basically out of the running from the get-go, barring a feat of divine intervention. Alas, the divines were apparently too preoccupied to bother, and the pitiful pair came out with a paltry 7% and 19% of the overall vote, respectively. The race between the two real contenders, Project Gorgon and The Elder Scrolls Online was a good bit closer, and although Project Gorgon got off to an early lead, ESO was never far behind. But, to my admittedly pleasant surprise, Project Gorgon – an underdog for sure, I’d thought – kept its lead until the very end, crossing the finish line with 42% of the total vote to ESO’s 32%.

And so, as Caesar said, the die is cast. I’m not sure that Caesar’s was a d20, but I’m going to assume it was. So without further ado, please join me as I prepare to cross the Rubicon into the world of Project Gorgon.

So let’s get this way right off the bat: Usually, the first week’s column in a new CMA series is devoted to the process of character creation, and I like to let you folks tweak the fine details of my character’s class, race, and all that fun stuff. In Project Gorgon, however, there are only two choices to make at character creation, and as far as I’m aware, they’re not particularly significant ones in the grand scheme of things.

In light of that, this column’s gonna go a little differently than normal. I’m still going to let y’all make those two character-creation decisions (they’re race and gender, if you’re just dying to know), but that would be a pretty boring column, so I’m also going to take the opportunity to do a little prep-work by laying out a quick Project Gorgon primer for those of you who are unfamiliar with the game. It may still be boring, but at least it’ll be boring and informative.

As for that primer, here’s the first thing you need to know about Project Gorgon: It’s all about the skills. Seriously, I mean it’s all about the skills. According to the front page of the game’s wiki, there are 14 different combat skills, 28 different trade skills, 9 different beast-form skills (7 of which are distinct beast forms that you can take, such as cow, pig, and spider), for a total of 51 distinct skills, each with its own set of associated abilities and attributes.

That’s a lot of skills, right? Well, to channel the late, great Billy Mays – but wait, there’s more! Yes, on top of the 51 skills listed above, there are 24 additional skills that don’t fall under the above categories; the wiki lists them under the catch-all header of “other skills.” This brings me to the second thing that you need to know about Project Gorgon: Although it is by all means a “serious” game insofar as the mechanics and game systems are concerned, it also has something of an inclination toward the absurd.

Among the “other skills” I mentioned above, we find the following: civic pride, compassion, corpse talking, poetry appreciation, iocaine resistance (Project Gorgon is clearly set in the Princess Bride universe), phrenology, and my personal favorite, dying. Yes, that’s right. In Project Gorgon, you can improve how good you are at meeting an untimely death.

And that’s all to say nothing of the previously mentioned beast forms, which recently led to a headline on this very site that delights me to no end: “Project Gorgon’s new patch buffs guilds and pigs.” Still not ridiculous enough? What if I told you that the official patch notes that led to that headline state that “In many ways, the pig feels like an ‘animal bard.’” So yeah, essentially there are pigs that are bards, as illustrated in this lovely (and/or nightmare-inducing) picture from our very own commenter schlag_sweetleaf.

Even the trade skills are sometimes oddly specific. Sure, you have your standard fare like blacksmithing, carpentry, tailoring, and the like, but alongside them are tradeskills such as calligraphy, flower arrangement, buckle artistry, art history, and cheesemaking. While some of that might seem strange or downright silly on the surface, I hope it can also be taken as an indicator that Project Gorgon is serious about providing a real variety of unique ways for players to progress and customize their characters. I suppose we’ll find out, won’t we?

There’s much more to discover in Project Gorgon, I’m sure, including the words of power feature that has so intrigued me and the game’s fabled bosses with their potentially permanent curses, but I don’t want to spoil everything for you – or myself, for that matter. But I hope that’s enough to whet your appetite and give you an idea of the choices you’ll be making for me in the coming weeks.

Now, to bring things to a close, here are your polls for the week. First off, as I said at the beginning, the only real choices to make are those of my character’s race and gender. Currently, the game features three races. The first of these is the Humans, who are described as a race of “notoriously prudish and petty” people who “value honesty and hard work, and hate lazy people.” Sounds about right.

Next up are the Elves, who are predictably described as “forest-loving” and not-so-predictably described as “sex-addicted and obsessively clean.” Apparently the Elves have a reputation for constantly speaking in innuendo, which I personally think sounds like it would be hard to keep up for very long.

Finally, we have the Rakshasa, who — like the Dungeons and Dragons race of the same name — are a race of catfolk. Rakshasa culture is said to be quite advanced, though many Rakshasa have recently “gone savage” and fled their cities in favor of the untamed wilds. They are known for their unique laws and “complex sense of justice.”

So, there we are. Short and sweet, at least by my somewhat generous standards. Go ahead and cast your votes in the polls below by Friday, June 10th, at 11:59 p.m. EDT. And while you’re at it, why don’t you go ahead and let me know in the comments which aspects of Project: Gorgon you most look forward to seeing so that I can prepare accordingly. Thanks for joining me, and be sure to stop by next week for the first steps of this new adventure.

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Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Matt each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures — and you get to decide his fate. Be gentle (or not)!