Camera & Expansion

Third-person vs isometric - a real tradeoff, with a recommendation

• Third-person (embodied) favours intimacy, character attachment, reading fae glamour and NPC faces, and - crucially - the perception-loss horror. A black screen, the character stumbling blind: that only lands with an embodied camera. The deception core ("you see only what the fae let you see") is much weaker the moment the player has a god's-eye overview.
• Isometric favours tactical party play, co-op readability of multiple characters, and the sovereignty/dominion competitive layer - a "world as board" overview that suits the strategy ambitions.

Recommendation: lean third-person. The deception-and-perception system is the soul of this game and it needs an embodied camera to function. Design multiplayer to fit that (drop-in embodied co-op, invasion-style PvP) rather than compromise the central illusion for an isometric overview. If the sovereignty layer grows large enough to demand a map view, consider it a secondary mode, not the default camera.

Expansion threads worth pulling later

• The word as power. Irish myth's bardic satire (áer) could raise blisters or kill; praise conferred standing; true names bound. A speech-as-currency/weapon system sits perfectly inside a "trade in concepts, not gold" economy - and connects to the language sacrifice and the co-op keepers of memory mechanic.
• Contradictory geasa. Hand a player two vows destined to collide (Cú Chulainn: never refuse hospitality, never eat dog - then offered dog at a feast). A system that engineers such collisions is an emergent-tragedy engine.
• The festival wheel. Anchor the abstract "phase cycles" to Samhain, Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh - giving natural rhythm to when the Otherworld is near or distant, and making the world feel animistic rather than merely systemic.