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An Analysis of Original Quests on SV (Draft, under discussion and revision)

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Avalanche said:
This is a message that all new writers should be shown afore they start.
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I don't think it would matter if they were or weren't.

It's a lesson you really have to experience for yourself to get. xD

veekie said:
To be fair when the muse first grabs you, I suspect theres a sense of unlimited power and ambition. Especially when it first takes off and you have a horde of adoring fans.
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That's pretty much how my first quest went, yep. Was Dragon Ball Z, caught on really fast and I ended up pushing way too far with it because I didn't know my own limits yet. Burned myself out over that game multiple times before it finally went down for good. It was not a lesson learned easily.
 
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Itaywex said:
Also, the first few updates always have more voters
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I don't think it's actually always, but it is really common. Probably in part because the quest either becomes something they weren't interested in (eg character creation settling on something they don't care for) or because it becomes apparent that the quest isn't anything they are interested in (merely superficially similar to such).
 
The Laurent said:
...sometimes even without that. Take it from me, someone who is never going to be one of the cool kids. :V
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But you are cool?

You're a really insightful poster who's seriously dedicated and hardworking. When I saw that you would have ordered history books specifically for a quest, it really amazed me that somebody would be willing to put in that level of work into their writing.
 
Vindictus said:
So, it's been almost two weeks now since the survey closed... I'm guessing from the way that @Cetashwayo immediately started churning out updates to the point of burnout in STTS and his statements about that, there were a lot of comments about maintaining momentum and keeping the quest alive, but I'm curious as to whether there were any other general trends in the responses that weren't as immediately obvious from an observer's viewpoint?
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Stuff's piling up at uni so I haven't actually looked at responses. It'll be interesting to see what people said when I have time, though.
 
Cetashwayo said:
Stuff's piling up at uni so I haven't actually looked at responses. It'll be interesting to see what people said when I have time, though.
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Aww. =/

Would it be possible to at least make public the responses of survey-responders who said that would be ok? I think at least several dozen posted in the thread to say it would be ok for their response to be released.

Basically, for the same reasons I mentioned several minutes after the survey was first posted:
Oh I am slain! said:
For me, I'd be very curious to read the responses regarding quests that I have followed. I might find that more informative about QMing than a broader analysis.

Or at the least, other SVers would be able to do their own analyses of the survey responses. It would seem suboptimal if QMs put in lots of time into answering the survey, with only a few staff members having the access to conduct full analyses. :)
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Maybe I'll work out a way to post it as anonymous and people can own up their own responses. We'll see.
 
The Laurent said:
...sometimes even without that. Take it from me, someone who is never going to be one of the cool kids. :V
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You got a small group of diehards at least. It's a different resource situation.

Terrabrand said:
I don't think it's actually always, but it is really common. Probably in part because the quest either becomes something they weren't interested in (eg character creation settling on something they don't care for) or because it becomes apparent that the quest isn't anything they are interested in (merely superficially similar to such).
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Almost always you lose players when a decision is made that they find unacceptable/unplayable, regardless of the truth of the matter.
Happens more dramatically if the chargen vote is fast paced, as well as when the chargen decides a lot of items at once. Because the truth of plan voting on chargen is that most people will never get to vote for what they want. They want a single specific subvote and don't care much about the rest, and it gets left out of the winning plans. They want a single specific plan which they posted, but it's too late and they're competing against a 10-20 vote lead. Etc.

Same thing with tempo, but I've seen decent player retention when chargen is performed over about a week real time, with some plot in between and about a day between each vote. Take a D&D-esque PC creation, you vote for your race, then either play through the prologue or childhood, then vote for your class(of which several have been already dropped due to compatibility), then vote for specialization, then on gender, etc.

People get a lot less salty when they don't see the options they are missing out on.
Something that SV's general inclination towards maximum freedom of choice, maximum infodump, no railroading is pretty counterproductive to.
 
I usually run like one serious quest which eventually peters out due to lack of votes (literally, one of the updates had no votes after two weeks and then I called it quits. Ironically someone voted after I posted something calling it quits. There's probably a huge thing where people don't bother to vote but read the updates because they figure 'eh someone will vote for me, right?' but if everyone thinks that nobody votes, but anyway this is getting off topic.) despite large amounts of setting planning put into them, and then in post quest-failure depression start up like 5 shitty quests with no planning and then abandon them sequentially because no planning.

And then I start another serious quest.

It's a vicious cycle that leads to me losing more and more questing motivation everytime it happens, and every time I consider dropping the SV questing scene and going back to SB to start a quest because they were quite successful there.

((P.S. @Nevill and other voters, Katyusha is still alive I just got caught up in schoolwork))
Swordomatic said:
I have no doubt that the CKII system has contributed to the problem with the addition of the five stats - Martial, Stewardship, Learning, Intrigue, and Diplomacy (often converted to Piety) - and made things more mechanised on a base level.
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I hate this system as an actual CK2 player, THAT'S NOT HOW THE FUCKING STATS WORK; STOP CALLING IT THE CKII SYSTEM.

Cetashwayo said:
crilltic is a garbo writer, i seen better on wattpad
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wow, calm it dude, that's overly brutal

at least tone it down to deviantart levels
 
Jemnite said:
There's probably a huge thing where people don't bother to vote but read the updates because they figure 'eh someone will vote for me, right?' but if everyone thinks that nobody votes, but anyway this is getting off topic.)
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This happens sometimes, and for some reason some quests are more afflicted than others. Usually - when there is still a clear interest in a quest, I mean - it does because the situation seems complicated, and people wait for someone to come up with the plan... and then they forget that the update is there, leading to them missing the vote. Normally this can be mitigated by the GM coming to the thread once more and reminding people of his existence, as it prompts an alert and people go 'Oh, right!'

I know Chandagnac got a bad case of this, when his quest got complex enough that no one trusted themselves to vote at first, leading for the first couple of days to get no votes even though the average voting pool was ~15 voters, give or take. It frustrated him to no end as he thought he had to ask for votes, but it really wasn't anyone's fault.

I often forget to vote if I read something on the phone (it is cumbersome to vote or comment there) and don't get any more alerts. I guess the point is... don't be too shy to remind people of yourself. :) Granted, it might be not good for one's self-confidence.

Jemnite said:
((P.S. @Nevill and other voters, Katyusha is still alive I just got caught up in schoolwork))
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For quite some time I've been toying with the idea what would a magical girl story in a modern setting that is NOT Japan look like. We mostly get those, or fantasy ones on SV. In a way, your quest is a dream come true, so I wanted to give you props where props are due. It's a bold undertaking. o7
 
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Nevill said:
For quite some time I've been toying with the idea what would a magical girl story in a modern setting that is NOT Japan look like. We mostly get those, or fantasy ones on SV. In a way, your quest is a dream come true, so I wanted to give you props where props are due. It's a bold undertaking. o7
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Haha, thanks I actually got on it because I was doing a lot of research on the basic principles of Deep Battle and Airland Battle and all that other fancy operational level strategy during the Cold War for another setting (long story), and I got to Kursk and these ideas of massive tanks clashes spearheaded by literally shining magical girls filled with national spirit of their countries stuck in my mind and by the time I had gotten to Operation Bagration, the image had stuck and I gave up on the other quest setting in favor of Katyusha's. It's actually a bit harder, considering I'm not actually a renowned ww2 scholar and Katyusha is very much an alt-history thing, but I manage.

That said, Katyusha is intended to be rather gritty and grim; there will be glorious scenes of triumph over the enemy, but there's also going to be the underpinnings of the horror of war and the depths that it will drive man to. It's not going to be pretty and it's not going to be easy. It's a war that must be fought and is worth being fought, but it's not a good war.

No war is.

Interestingly enough Katyusha is the first quest format where I have votes where there's not really much happening. If you look at the cycle of voting in Katyusha, you can delineate a clear split between action votes, where things actually happen, and reaction votes, where it's a change in posture or emotion but not direct input on Tanya's next actions. I call these characterization votes, where after ever major milestone, you get a chance to develop Tanya's character further, and personalize how she might react to future stimulai. They can affect minor actions which I don't give votes for, and even influence what sort of voting options I give in the future.
 
Jemnite said:
There's probably a huge thing where people don't bother to vote but read the updates because they figure 'eh someone will vote for me, right?' but if everyone thinks that nobody votes, but anyway this is getting off topic
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It's entirely on topic, since if it happens systematically, something is wrong with the votes you're offering intersecting with your playerbase.
 
veekie said:
It's entirely on topic, since if it happens systematically, something is wrong with the votes you're offering intersecting with your playerbase.
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Yeah, I tend to favor write in options, which players are usually too lazy to do. Write in efforts take actual thought and effort, something a lot of people aren't willing to invest in a forum game.
 
Jemnite said:
Yeah, I tend to favor write in options, which players are usually too lazy to do. Write in efforts take actual thought and effort, something a lot of people aren't willing to invest in a forum game.
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I've seen that kind of thought expressed before, but my observation is that people are perfectly willing to invest the effort if they have an idea, but without some idea of where to start most voters flounder.

Not contesting that Write-in only often has trouble getting votes, just saying I don't think the idea (not willing to invest effort) I see people use to try to explain it is actually accurate. At least not fully accurate.

*Flashbacks to when I provided prebuilts for what to do next and everyone bandwagonned the write-in of trying to heal their allies*
 
On the write-ins thing; If you give players some pre-generated options they'll often throw out a write-in, if they are invested enough, to try and do better. If you don't give them pre-generated options then more often then not they'll flounder about with no idea what to do and just not vote at all.

Personally unless I'm invested enough to be willing to put in the time to come up with a well written and reasoned write-in, which can often take more then an hour, or there is an existing good one I'll just not vote on a pure write-in vote.
 
Pure write-in votes, to my experience, usually experience a period of no votes, until someone comes along to actually make it, and that vote gets bandwagoned on.

Lacking a base to vote from is precisely the bane of most players except the dedicated, creative ones.

Generally, it's best to avoid those in an original quest unless you know you have players who will make them.

(On the other hand, Ive seen too many people use the write in option to combine multiple other given options, cheating just a bit and then that one gets bandwagoned on while I'm asleep. That is a pain.)
 
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Jemnite said:
Yeah, I tend to favor write in options, which players are usually too lazy to do. Write in efforts take actual thought and effort, something a lot of people aren't willing to invest in a forum game.
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It is useless to blame the players for this. When measuring against players as a whole, the players are the environment, and the GM is the organism that needs to adapt to it. If the players are not engaged, it is because the GM failed to engage them. If the players don't understand the mechanics, that is because the GM failed to make mechanics that were understandable or failed to make them understood. Some things are always the GM's fault so to speak.

Military operations are particularly troublesome because they require some depth of knowledge. If you expect people to write in operational planning from a blank sheet, then what you will get is inconsistent results even if you yourself are consistent in resolution, because people lacking the backing knowledge will not be able to connect the results with the inputs, possibly even if you explain it. Since you have been reading about Deep Battle then you may know of the method that the Soviets used to ensure fast action by even poor quality soldiers: breaking everything down into simple drills that could be trained by rote, while the higher officers had the job of combining these like Legos into successful operations. That's a way to structure a vote: break an operation down into simple chunks to be mixed and matched, perhaps with the inclusion of a supplemental write-in section to flavor it with exceptional feats and such.
 
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As a voter, making a good write in from scratch can often be a full hour or more of effort for something that you still have to promote and adjust after it's ready. I've spent as many as 4 to 6 hours, although those were exceptions. And that's without any guarantee it will become popular or be successful in practice. Easing a quest into a habit of write ins requires dozens of updates where the base options can be improved, without major punishment for lack of improvement, while also having or developing a userbase where the people who are invested have several users who will actually put in the effort.

Ideally the quest develops into cooperatively discussing and developing write in options. But that takes a lot, multiple voters willing to share the load and enough low pressure situations that they become comfortable working together in high pressure votes, plus the rest of your voter base willing to engage with the process to a smaller degree. Alternately, you can lean hard on one or two very dedicated write-in makers, but this can collapse very quickly if they decrease activity or simply don't have ideas.


There are a few ways I've seen to ease a thread into the habit of write ins. Just as examples:

Offering a set of options that are good but can be improved, then listing Write-in at the end. This can get you there eventually, but the temptation of your voters to go with "why not both" needs to be discouraged. This is a long process and if you don't have multiple votes to develop over you won't see results. You're basically hoping that an interesting, active quest will attract two or three of those quality Write-in makers over time, which means they have to want to participate, they have to see that their effort can bring results, and they have to see that the work of their peers could use their improvements.

As another example, I have also seen quest writers ask for write-in detail on an existing option, what's known as Stunting in some systems, where the default actions are fine but are explicitly improved or gain bonuses by writing in detail. This over multiple updates becomes a habit and eventually asking for it is just a formality. It requires a fairly permissive approach and usually works best the more mechanics heavy you are.

Naturally there are other methods than these two. Cetashwayo has his IC direct democracy, for example.


Three pitfalls to note. First, developing a playerbase that is even capable of regular write-ins takes time, and by time I mean updates. Second, write-ins take a lot of effort, and are discouraged by imposing deadlines, early vote locks, or by structuring in a way that produces fast bandwagons. By contrast, they thrive on organic discussion, GM participation, and positive incentive. Third, expecting or presenting a situation to be solved by write-in alone and then not getting one will just murder the quest, so ideally you would offer some acceptable albeit not-100%-optimal defaults and you have to be ready to just accept them if your discussion dies. What I'm saying is that if you get discussion, you will probably get a write-in, but if your discussion is fleeting or low, you need to accept that you don't have one and move on with what you do have.


At least, that's a ramblely general overview. I'll note that it's perfectly acceptable to just write, ask for votes in whatever way you like, and just take what you get and keep on going. This goes for anything, not just write-ins. But the moment you start to measure yourself by participation past metrics like story quality, interesting writing, and so on, is the moment that all of this becomes relevant. There is nothing wrong with a writer just making the quest they want to make. But if the measure of success is popularity in some way - that's when you have to think about how your quest relates to your readers and voters.
 
SWB is pretty much spot on there with how write ins develop. Players often produce write ins unasked.

Much of the time, this is Why Not Both, or something based on "this will be fucking hilarious"
It takes a lot of time to have a mature write in base to use, where your presented options provide the framing for what's acceptable, and they work within it.

Or you could just go write in off the bat and then be outraged/surprised when the quest doesn't attract Quality Write In Player. Who are fairly rare, since most of these are QMs themselves, or already investing multiple hours of their day into another quest. You need to lure them in, rather than try to upgrade your existing players to their point.
 
I got suckered into doing quest write-ins via Havocfett's Ravana Quest, when I saw a few other people doing Stunt write-ins. So I started doing them too, since I was naïve and thought that's how Quests worked.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
At least, that's a ramblely general overview. I'll note that it's perfectly acceptable to just write, ask for votes in whatever way you like, and just take what you get and keep on going. This goes for anything, not just write-ins. But the moment you start to measure yourself by participation past metrics like story quality, interesting writing, and so on, is the moment that all of this becomes relevant. There is nothing wrong with a writer just making the quest they want to make. But if the measure of success is popularity in some way - that's when you have to think about how your quest relates to your readers and voters.
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I agree to some extent, but at the same time, if you're basically going to write regardless of the fact that nobody is reading or responding, you might as well write your stuff on your own without posting it. Part of the nice thing about quests is when the audience participates, and you get feedback.

Of course, Original quests are pretty garbage for heavy audience participation, unless you've got a strong brand as an author. One of the few authors I've seen able to pull an original setting out of his ass and get strong participation immediately is my brother- And he's been building a following via fanfiction and such for literally half his life. Usually, it's much easier to build interest- At least initial interest- by using an established setting.

Just to compare the last two quests I wrote, 'Best Game Ever' (A crossover between HP/The Gamer, both fairly popular on this forum) and oM&M (An original fantasy setting), in the first week of Best Game Ever the thread had hit 20 pages... Meanwhile, M&M was only 4 pages after a week.

I don't believe this leads from a difference in quality or quantity of writing- I doubt I somehow lost skill at writing in the time between, and the updates were only slightly more consistent in the fanfic quest.

So, from this (Admittedly limited) case study, I think it's pretty clear that the most significant factor in popularity- At least initially- Is to abandon your original settings, and write in established ones instead.

The problem is, I want to skip the 15 years of writing fanfic, and go straight to the 'Actually have a decent sized audience' part :(
 
Vindictus said:
I agree to some extent, but at the same time, if you're basically going to write regardless of the fact that nobody is reading or responding, you might as well write your stuff on your own without posting it. Part of the nice thing about quests is when the audience participates, and you get feedback.

Of course, Original quests are pretty garbage for heavy audience participation, unless you've got a strong brand as an author. One of the few authors I've seen able to pull an original setting out of his ass and get strong participation immediately is my brother- And he's been building a following via fanfiction and such for literally half his life. Usually, it's much easier to build interest- At least initial interest- by using an established setting.

Just to compare the last two quests I wrote, 'Best Game Ever' (A crossover between HP/The Gamer, both fairly popular on this forum) and oM&M (An original fantasy setting), in the first week of Best Game Ever the thread had hit 20 pages... Meanwhile, M&M was only 4 pages after a week.

I don't believe this leads from a difference in quality or quantity of writing- I doubt I somehow lost skill at writing in the time between, and the updates were only slightly more consistent in the fanfic quest.

So, from this (Admittedly limited) case study, I think it's pretty clear that the most significant factor in popularity- At least initially- Is to abandon your original settings, and write in established ones instead.

The problem is, I want to skip the 15 years of writing fanfic, and go straight to the 'Actually have a decent sized audience' part :(
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Nothing says that your first quest has to be an original quest. :V

Start your 'brand' with a fanfic quest and have consistent, quality updates. Then slowly get more and more obscure.

Suddenly you'rd in original quest territory and you don't know how you got there.
 
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