Brilliant suggestion! Let me talk with Brian about that... ;)

I tell you, this is one of the great things about crowdfunding. It is so refreshing to not have to think about such tactics. To be directly accountable to our players.

1: Some of the people of the Ninth World "know" the truth about the technology, while others believe in the supernatural. In Torment, We want to embrace these differences of opinion and sense of the unknown. We want Torment to feel like a high fantasy game to those who want it. One of our ideas for approaching this is to have some of the skills affect how much and what type of information you receive when, say, examine items and the environment. For example, if you are skilled in numenera, then you would get insights that reflect more of the science-fantasy feel.

While we are game designers and as players know the role of technology, the characters we role-play do not. This ambiguity is one of the elements that sets Numenera apart and we want to capture it within both the story and gameplay features.

3: That question for Torment (what does one life matter?) is to frame what the game's about. We don't plan to be heavy-handed about this throughout the game. There was a somewhat tricky line we felt we had to walk here -- we wanted to convey enough of our story and themes to convey that we "get" what PS:T was about, but without revealing too much. The game will be more subtle and have its own explorations and deeper questions.

That is, "what does one life matter?" doesn't play the equivalent role of "what can change the nature of a man?" from PS:T.

We will focus on the characters and narrative. We want rich, deep characters and they will be involved in situations that arise through the story. What relationships develop will arise organically through the writers developing the characters in believable ways. Given this emphasis on the narrative, and what we're envisioning thus far for our characters, it seems unlikely that sexual encounters will find an appropriate place in the story.

That said, love is very relevant to the theme of ones legacy. How many of us are motivated by love, do things for love? And look at all of the kinds of love there are. So love is certainly a concept that we will explore -- though how much of it you encounter during your play through will depend upon the choices you make. (Because for some, love plays only a peripheral role.) The theme of abandonment (and mystery, for that matter) is also very relevant to love. So we will explore relationships, but only so far as they naturally develop given our themes and characters.

To be a bit more explicit: we don't expect there to be any sexual encounters in Torment, though we do foresee affection and love (independent of gender) to be explored.

3: Ah, good question! I wouldn't rule it out that we'd find the best use of some of the funding would include spending extra time developing and polishing the game. We expect that most backers feel as you do and would prefer the game later and better. We want to create Torment as efficiently as possible (and more time is more efficient than having more people at a certain point) to make the best use of the backer's contributions and to provide the best final game.