Hey there everyone. It's been awhile again (7 months according to the pre-posting warning against opening the Necronomicon). I feel like I make these posts every time I try to come back, but my life has been a mess and is only starting to stabilize some.
In short: I quit my previous job, and it took a good while to get resettled, find a new place, and secure a new job while distancing myself from my previous job (which did not really respect a work/life balance at all). So while that's all mostly done now, that leaves me with my next issue in regards to continuing the quest.
The system I put in place at the start of the quest was simple, and at the beginning of the quest it worked decently well. But the more I kept going with it, the more unwieldy it started to get. We already made one change to it by doing away with resources entirely. This was fine, as there was also an in-universe justification – the DFRI had proven it was more than just a flash in the pan and therefore would never lack for resources, only time and characters who could oversee projects. But the system towards the latter parts of the quest became harder for me to keep track of, and it became less fun for me to manage despite its story telling potential. Combine this with the toxic workplace I was at until last year, and it was a constant war of wanting to continue the quest but also not being motivated enough to crunch numbers for it along with working my job.
I am still interested in writing this universe out to a conclusion – I still have plenty of ideas for it, and when writing the characters, I still have a lot of fun playing out classic Super Robot (and the occasional Real Robot) tropes. As it stands, I don't think I can continue writing it as it was in its original form, but I do still want to keep writing while keeping the players' accomplishments so far and with a format that's still engaging for you all.
Are you all still interested in continuing this quest in a different format? I have some thoughts on how this might continue. They're not fleshed out at all, and there's a lot more work and brainstorming that's going to be required to make them work, but this is the first time I've had a chance to breathe, let alone even think about Super Robot Quest at all. I see a few potential paths moving forward.
- Purely narratively driven with players' choices.
- This has the potential for some inconsistencies outside of gut feelings and plot relative power scale. But this has the potential for more reader input as well, as well as letting me freeform the scenes a lot more and lean more into some of the classic tropes. This does, however, mean that the organic storytelling beats that the dice rolls provided are lost.
- Primarily narrative with minor dice rolling.
- I'm moderately in favor of this, but I'm still unsure of how to handle this. This could range from key decisions on part of NPCs or enemies, to technology discovery and development, but these would be both a mixture of player-based rolling and behind the screens. This would give some room to keep some of the organic storytelling from the old system, but not to the same degree.
- Redo the mechanics from scratch.
- This is my least favored option, but it would let me try to make a more sensible system that can keep up with the escalating power scale the DFRI is finding itself climbing. I admit I'm not sure where I would start with this, however.
- End the quest, potentially start a new one.
- As it sounds. Just cut it now as best I can, and make an epilogue best capturing the state of the world as you left it.
If I continue this quest, I will be making a new thread and asking a moderator to lock this one to future discussions with a pinned link to the new thread. If not, as stated above, I will put together an epilogue as best I can. It's not the post I wanted to make, but I also didn't just want to leave this thread hanging either. If we conclude, I still do want to write, but I'm not sure it would be a mechanics-based quest either. I enjoy the world building and cheesy action sequences accompanied with creating fun characters that I hope you all would enjoy reading about.
I appreciate all feedback and suggestions you may have. Thanks for hearing me out, and I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years.
