Why no Keeper Knockoffs?

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

If I was ever gonna get into making FM's, I'd want to start with remaking Thief Deadly Shadows as closely as possible within copyright constraints. 
My goal would be to start with faithfully recreating the base missions 1 at a time, then adding the city sections and binding everything into a cohesive campaign.
Eventually I'd want to expand the original missions in a different version, accounting for rope arrows and swimmable water.
I wouldn't recreate mission briefings, instead I'd include instructions on how to rip them from TDS and install them in TDM, for people who own the game.
It appears that TDM lends itself almost perfectly to the task, but I don't see any sort keeper like faction.
Are mission authors free to invent new factions for their own missions, or is it a top down decision? I wouldn't mind crowdsourcing some ideas from the community on what a keeper like faction should be called. I've got a few ideas myself, "The Collectors", "The Curators" "The Analysts"...
What does the keeper faction mean to you, and what alternative name do you think best captures their motivations?

Edited July 21, 2025 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[chakkman]

Good question. One of the most interesting factions. I guess it simply had no room in the lore the people created for TDM.

30 minutes ago, OnlyTaffingCowardsHide said:

Are mission authors free to invent new factions for their own missions, or is it a top down decision?

You're free to do anything with your mission. But, the problems will be that there are no models, and no other assets for that faction, so, someone who wants to implement a new faction has to do all that himself. Which means that the mission will take much longer, maybe years.

[chakkman]

If you ask me, the two factions which are most missing in TDM from the original games are the pagans and the keepers. Yes, TDM has pagans, but, only very few models, assets, and missions which thematize pagans. And, a keeper like faction has been totally missing so far, as far as I know.

I frankly don't even like the pagans in TDM that much. They're more like some warrior tribe than the pagans in the original Thief games.

Edited July 21, 2025 by chakkman

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

20 minutes ago, chakkman said:

Good question. One of the most interesting factions. I guess it simply had no room in the lore the people created for TDM.

You're free to do anything with your mission. But, the problems will be that there are no models, and no other assets for that faction, so, someone who wants to implement a new faction has to do all that himself. Which means that the mission will take much longer, maybe years.

Yeah, I'd just use whatever basic models are available, maybe with a texture swap on the clothing. 
I don't see any point in starting from scratch when there are plenty of models and assets already available that could be repurposed. The idea is to get things going that people can actually enjoy sometime in the near future, ideally pulling in voice and video assets from TDS to avoid having to redo it all, though for copyright reasons it will have to be done by end users following basic instructions/using freely available tools. 
Checking Inn seems like an obvious place to start, and the most straightforward for a newb in Dark Radiant.

[OnlyTaffingCowardsHide]

I mean how complicated are keeper robes really? Could probably just grab any robed figure from the builder faction and edit the texture to black instead of red.
Most of the additional work would be in the library itself, adding the symbols and wall hangings.


And there's the keeper enforcer weapon, but there's a clever bit of lore there that can alleviate that problem. The keepers aren't meant to be seen, a feature that has been added to the Sneaky Upgrade already. So I'll probably follow that bit of lore rather than modeling them with that weapon.
And in any case, they don't have to be exactly the same as the Keepers, just generally in the ball park.

Edited July 21, 2025 by OnlyTaffingCowardsHide

[BoilerDunce]

The real question, since we have to avoid copyright, is what would you call them?

I don't have a final name in the story I was writing but what worked well enough for current purposes was "the Scribes."
It sounds like perhaps a lower station than a keeper's true purpose. But if I kept it, the justification would be that its not very easy to know who's being talked about if you eavesdropped on a conversation about them. They just sound like some record keepers in some stuffy room who probably hate their jobs. So in that sense the name could fit their secretive nature, if its just a codeword like that. If we're going with codewords outright, though, might be more effective to just call them "the fellas"

Funnily enough, I've been trying to write a sequel to TDS.

[chakkman]

The more I read about this, the more interesting I find the idea to have some Keeper like order in the game. Maybe "Order of the Balance", but, no idea how to call the members then.

Edited July 23, 2025 by chakkman

[New Horizon]

55 minutes ago, chakkman said:

The more I read about this, the more interesting I find the idea to have some Keeper like order in the game. Maybe "Order of the Balance", but, no idea how to call the members then.

Don't we have characters in robes?  They were definitely modeled.

 

[wesp5]

How about "The Recorders" :)?

[grodenglaive]

How about "The Sentinels" 

[Bergante]

" The Circle " 
a secret group needs aliases :  a circle is an 0 , 0´s = zero,zeros -> the row/s ->the roe/s -> the rose -> Searose
perhaps you find other phonetics 
as 0´s one could give nummbers like oo7 (but attention Copyright) 

22 hours ago, BoilerDunce said:

But if I kept it, the justification would be that its not very easy to know who's being talked about if you eavesdropped on a conversation about them.

 

Edited July 24, 2025 by Bergante

[BoilerDunce]

12 minutes ago, Bergante said:

" The Circle " 
a secret group needs aliases :  a circle is an 0 , 0´s = zero,zeros -> the row/s ->the roe/s -> the rose -> Searose
perhaps you find other phonetics 
as 0´s one could give nummbers like oo7 (but attention Copyright) 

CoSaS love!

[JackFarmer]

Yes, a new faction like that would be something, but using models from the existing mages is maybe not a good idea when it comes to visible differentiation.

In fact, it would also be a good thing (or even better) for the existing factions (Builders, guards) to get new characters and new vocal sets, because the old ones are simply worn out and you can't vary them endlessly in larger missions.I'm not talking about one or two new sets per faction, but at least 3 or 4 new sets for certain factions, because there's actually nothing (or way too little) for the pagans/inventors/mages.

For vocal sets, however, we would need native speakers to write the texts for new vocal sets...and of course we would also have to find suitable voice actors and have them recorded. Just finding suitable (and willing) speakers who are prepared to take the necessary time is not exactly easy.

For new characters, we need someone who has the artistic skills, because simply putting material on existing models will probably not be enough.

However, both are very time-consuming and I'm afraid there's no one left who could do it.

Also, NPC AI in general would benefit from an overhaul, especially when it comes to behavior in alarm mode. But I'm afraid there won't be anyone to do this either, because this seems anything but trivial.

 

[datiswous]

(To be honest: I rather not have a keepers faction)

Off topic: A mages faction would be cool.

[demagogue]

TDM has its own kind of mystery cult in the Inventors, although FMs haven't really developed them in that direction. When I scripted my campaign, portraying them as a mystery cult was an important theme in my story anyway, which my released FM just hints at as a prequel. 

[BoilerDunce]

On 7/28/2025 at 5:28 PM, demagogue said:

TDM has its own kind of mystery cult in the Inventors, although FMs haven't really developed them in that direction. When I scripted my campaign, portraying them as a mystery cult was an important theme in my story anyway, which my released FM just hints at as a prequel. 

I didn't know that. I just imagined them as a diverse group of inventors united by inventing. Guess I have homework to do now. I'll have to play it.

[JackFarmer]

On 7/29/2025 at 2:28 AM, demagogue said:

TDM has its own kind of mystery cult in the Inventors, although FMs haven't really developed them in that direction.

For my part, that is definitely correct. The temptation to use the inventors as a humorous element was simply too great for me. But I would do it again!

[chakkman]

On 7/29/2025 at 2:28 AM, demagogue said:

TDM has its own kind of mystery cult in the Inventors, although FMs haven't really developed them in that direction. 

TBH, I think that kind of describes the "problem". The Keepers are a major faction in the Thief universe, the balance between good and evil and prophets of past and future. The Inventors rather have smaller potential.

Unless there pops up some Karras like megalomaniac character, who wants to take over the world.

[demagogue]

Well in the campaign I scripted, Inventors are pulling a lot of strings behind the scenes and they have a very old lineage, Keeper-like. I think of them like the Illuminati or maybe Masons or Templars in real world history, or anyway the mythic version, not necessarily the real version, or a public face of a group like that for Bridgeport.

I'm just saying, like everything we have for mappers to work with, or like comic book characters, they can be whatever a mapper want to make them within a kind of boundary of people buying it, which depends on how well the mapper can sell the story. I think their potential is bigger than one might think at first.

Well the main point is that they're the best placed faction that could play that role, compared to any of the other factions. You work with what you've got. Okay, you can come up with your own faction and throw it in too, but it'll probably hit harder to work with what we've already got.

[wesp5]

I agree. The Inventors are similar enough to the Keepers, the rest is up to the mission authors!

[chakkman]

1 hour ago, demagogue said:

I'm just saying, like everything we have for mappers to work with, or like comic book characters, they can be whatever a mapper want to make them within a kind of boundary of people buying it, which depends on how well the mapper can sell the story. I think their potential is bigger than one might think at first.

Good point.

I also think that it's way too much work for a mapper to implement a whole new faction. Using existing models, and just repainting them isn't optimal too. I guess.

Edited August 4, 2025 by chakkman