Fire Emblem: Last of the Manakete

[X] This is bad, this is bad, you can't afford to hold back anymore! People are getting hurt! You have to fight! Your dragon is a part of you, let her help a little!

[X] Keep holding back. Artemis trusted you to finish this without going all. You can do this, you can be brave. You are manakete, more than your dragon!

[X] Keep holding back. Artemis trusted you to finish this without going all. You can do this, you can be brave. You are manakete, more than your dragon!

[X] This is bad, this is bad, you can't afford to hold back anymore! People are getting hurt! You have to fight! Your dragon is a part of you, let her help a little!

[X] This is bad, this is bad, you can't afford to hold back anymore! People are getting hurt! You have to fight! Your dragon is a part of you, let her help a little

I just want to point out that our forces were initially at a disadvantage. Most of our allies are not trained to fight, and they are outnumbered by half. No one in our team is strong enough not to take this into account. In fact, right now it is more like a choice between "Risking people's lives in order not to stand out", "I will help the innocent, even if they fear or envy me," and "I will show these pathetic thugs the true meaning of despair!"

I like the last option, but not knowing exactly where it will lead, I prefer to leave it as a last resort.

[X] This is bad, this is bad, you can't afford to hold back anymore! People are getting hurt! You have to fight! Your dragon is a part of you, let her help a little

[X] This is bad, this is bad, you can't afford to hold back anymore! People are getting hurt! You have to fight! Your dragon is a part of you, let her help a little!

[X] This is bad, this is bad, you can't afford to hold back anymore! People are getting hurt! You have to fight! Your dragon is a part of you, let her help a little!

We only need to compensate a little for bad rolls.

[X] Your stone crackles in your pocket. You could end this nightmare in an instant, if you just let her all the way out. Fe

If dice get in the way of a good story then FUCK the dice. I'd rather you be able to spend time writing the quest than fudging around with mechanics.

First, thank you for looking at the story the dice were telling and deciding that it wasn't remotely fun, so away those results went.

SoaringHawk218 said:

The next chapter will not take any rolls into account: I'm just going to write what I feel is realistic, but the question I'm going to make a poll about is as follows: would you all prefer it if I just threw out the idea of dice entirely, making this purely a narrative quest, or if I should put in the time to come up with a better dice system and then actually use it.

Click to expand...

Click to shrink...

I personally like dice? The randomness combined with choices influencing how random the results can actually be aka "Competent play leads to bonuses and sometimes Luck happens" is generally something I enjoy.

That being said, I've heard really good things about Red Flag's ability to create mechanical systems that help tell the story that's intended to be told, so you might want to consider consulting him for help if you end up looking to design a system?

This is a Fire Emblem quest, so it would be poetic to have influential dice... but if it's getting in the way of the story you want to tell, then yeah, you either need to change the system or remove it.

Do whatever you feel is best. Personally, I like dice rng, but it glitches pretty easily imo.

Dice rolls should absolutely not govern combat unless the odds are very close to begin with. If this fight was supposed to be basically a sure thing where the question is "How much are you willing to reveal", then dice shouldn't have come into play at all.

Which seems to be the issue here.

So here's probably the best idea in my opinion, dice should be used for things that are gambles, like actually gambling and maybe some what random event goes on from a table, but if dice get in the way of the story fuck the dice.

Pure narrative is a pain in the ass to write IMo

The narrative is above the dice. Fuck the dice.

If you insist on some mechanics due to Fire Emblem theme, which I perfectly understand since I love Fire Emblem, I would tell you to give some stats to characters and make sure dice are only 10-30% of an encounter and not 80%.

Joke answer: it's a Fire Emblem quest, quit and restart the chapter because some character died on a ridiculously small chance is required.

Serious answer: I don't mind whether dice are in play or not, as long as it's consistently held to--this update getting a 'pass' on that for the reasons you shared already. If you want a hand reworking your system so it does what you want, I'm happy to try to help. If you want to go for a pure narrative quest, that's fine! Most quests I follow are mostly or entirely narrative.

As far as reworking the system, I have been working on various homebrew tabletop RPG fixes or whole systems for decades, and I like doing a little light statistical work. If you want to give that a try, hit me up in a private message and I'm more than happy to help you take it apart and see if we can make something that does what you want. If it can't be made to do what you want, well, then maybe a narrative quest is in the cards.

This being a Fire Emblem quest, I'd probably feel a little off-put if there was no inherent randomness, as that's part of the fun. But in this series specifically, a string of bad rolls usually only means you lose a character or two, not that you fail the whole mission. IMO, I support the idea of reworking the system so that the impact of the dice is minimized to the point where it stops being the difference between success or failure, and rather the deciding factor on whether or not we get a barely-squeaked-by success or an exceptional success, if that makes sense.

Unfortunately, I have precisely zero experience with building systems like that, so you'll have to ask someone else for tips on that.

Honestly... imo, dice are only a good idea in fully complex systems where competency can mitigate bad luck. 'just' dice with no system backing it will almost always be swingy and ultra restrctive. Though that might just be personal bias since, well, dice love to screw me over in general... No mechanics is going to be a hell of a lot easier than converting to a full system, anyways.

ah the joys of dice. Truth be told I do like dice as they help make sure that quest/stories aren't just power fantasy stomps (which while can be fun, don't really have any real weight or tension to them) but I have seen dice ruin quest. Both by players rolling to WELL for to long which makes the quest feel like one of those power fantasy stomps which get dull quick and then starts bleeding players or by players rolling to low to often which discourages them or forces the QM to step in and basically give the players pity victories which in turn tells the players they can't lose and, again, removes any tension or weight the quest might be striving for and makes the players question if their choices really matter if they can't fail.

But without dice, you have to decide what every action will do on your own and to actually have tension you need to introduce a chance of failure which from what I've seen is QMs having to put down trap options that are meant to make the players fail if picked in which case it turns the quest from a story driven game into a game of guessing which choice will screw us over and the story and even things like how the character's personality (as in how they would/should react to something) are tossed aside as everyone just tries to figure out what the "safe" paths are. And if everything is just a write in you have to balance out being able to tell players everything the character they are playing as knows while also hiding things she would have no idea about while still trying to keep things fair without braking the game. Like if the players suggest charging an enemy but you have it that the players are surrounded and have no idea then how much do you tell them to hint that they're in a dangerous situation without just saying it and still keeping the ambush a secret without it just being a complete surprise to the players that hurts them immensely because that's what it was meant to do?

Overall I say keep the dice but just make the rolls less for fights that we're meant to win. And by that I mean if we're engaging in a fight that we're going to win have the dice roll be to determine how well we win. For example a high roll would be a complete stomp with no issues, a med roll might give us some lightly wounded or the fight might take longer and burn through more resources then expected but still clearly goes in our favor, while a low roll would be a tough fought battle that while still ends in victory, might hurt a character or two on the team forcing them to sit out of the next fight or giving them some kind of penalty for the next fight and/or being a large drain our resources (as in broken weapons, tomes, staves, ect) but probably shouldn't have any character deaths if it's not meant to be a serious event. Speaking of deaths, I would say give important characters (as in characters that would end the quest should they die) some safety nets so it would be virtually impossible for them to die in a single turn simply do to bad rolls but still have the possibility for them to die if they continue to do poorly as again a quest with no risk of failure isn't really a quest, it's more of a chose your own adventure.

i think having dice is fine, but looking back at the system you were using the margin for failure was pretty high, yeah. re-tooling it is good.