Hey guys! Finally caught up again after what feels like a year. Congratz on beating Tiamat, that was a thrilling read.
Few odds and ends I feel like speaking about, feel free to ignore if you think it'll re-trigger a salt boil or something.
@DragonParadox Maybe it's because I became desensitized to your style due to the long hiatus, but looking at it with fresh eyes really drove home for me how noticeably your writing has improved DP. From characterizations to descriptions to flow you've really become a better writer this past year. Nice!
-I wanted to lean in on the pacing discussion and add my 2 cents, though I'm wary of opening old salt wounds, but heck here goes nothing: the narrative is still dragging a loooot (I read up on that bit of salt recently). I stopped following about a year ago around the Oldtown arc for unrelated reasons, but it really feels as if a lot more stuff should've happened in that OOC time. I was convinced I'd missed the Reconquest of Westeros, but I overestimated the thread's speed. I honestly don't know how to fix it entirely, but making actions last longer and pruning our narrative enemies might be a good idea. Make 3 or 6 month turn plans that are a lot more abstracted, so that DP doesn't have to narrate every single day in Viserys' schedule and instead narrates the choisest/more interesting bits. Would go a long way to making our research, nation, and naval building a lot more believable. The current setup, even through DP's insane update schedule, is just not enough to propel the quest to a speed faster than a snail's. I really,
really want to reconquer Westeros before 2021.
Prune the narrative focus around our enemies too, as someone else mentioned. Keeping it to Westeros and the Deep Ones (for example) would go a long way to breathing some life into the epic wars and intrigues those enemies/challenges are supposed to represent. IMHO we don't belong in the interplanar war right now, we're America in 1914, with years of military-industrial buildup and social growth ahead of us to build before poking our noses into that conveniently stalemated mess, though perhaps a more appropriate date would be 1812. Crazy heaps of potential, but still ultimately a gnat at the feet of titans in the grander scheme of things. The plan to raid the City of Brass and draw a target on our backs by the Sultan within the next 6 months is craaazy, and not just IC. It will inexorably draw us deeper into the conflicts of the Spheres as retaliations, counter-retaliations, and targets of opportunity slow the narrative to an even further crawl; the Quest as a story will grow further fragmented, and unlike Tiamat's PoB forces this is an enemy we can't conveniently kill-off in the short term so it stops bothering us, at least not without breaking Suspension of Disbelief (Brass ritual/fortress be damned). A few volunteer corps to bloody the Imperial Navy should be our contribution to that war for the foreseeable future, keeping it short and sweet (maybe off-screen mostly and reading about it like reports from volunteer brigades in the Spanish Civil War). Interesting and with vested interests, but not as active a combatant.... because currently the narrative is growing frayed from so much stuff pulling it from all directions. On that note, I'm of the proably unpopular opinion we let Asmodeus have Slaver's Bay. Adding another companion/narrative-sponge at this juncture will fray the narrative even further, just as we finally got Tiamat/Faegon off our backs for the foreseeable future. Let's free some of DP's much needed RAM for stuff closer to home to be developed in much richer detail. Plus, Asmodeus' bound to turn that cesspit into an interesting nation to beat up post Westeros, and people
have been complaining about pushover enemies. Having a hell-backed slaver's bay pulling a north korea would certainly be a way of adding some spice into the story without threatening companions with true death.
Someone touched this during that discussion, but it really rung a bell in me and it can't be stated enough: delegate more! The entire Plane of Water arc, for example, could've been delegated to an underling. As fun as it always is to see DP flesh out some world building, that really shouldn't have soaked up (heh) so much oxygen. The Thread is naturally inquisitive, so those ultimately secondary actions also tend to spiral fractally into further time sponges as we chase every plot-hook (or piece of scenery at this point) DP dangles over our heads. Thus 'simple' relatively self contained diplomatic missions end up spiraling into dragon-hunts, Anvil/mcguffin chasing, the inevitable interplanar bazaar interlude, and the inevitable interesting character recruitment... each update of course carrying further fractal spiral risks. Just a thing to keep in mind, though it's not only a player thing.
I've noticed DP is usually averse to narrating timeskips during an actual update, so almost all updates have this same chronological speed/feeling (usually that of a single day) that really ends up feeding into the whole sensation of time crawling by. More updates that take up the span of a month or heck at least a week, would perhaps lessen the feel that we're trapped in a perpetual Time Stop. I think the Warhammer Advisor Quest is an example that manages to strike this balance, where the MC still has intimate moments but the narrative can carry the reader across months without seeming heavy handed or cutting off the flow of the update. I'm told JK Rowling does this all the time and does it well for HP but honestly it's been a long time since I've read it.
... Also, The Ferryman is indeed a
way better name than the Merling King. The more I think about it the more I like the first and the more ridiculous I think the latter is.
Just my 2 pesos from the peanut gallery. Anyway, it's good to be back...
