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Deep Red (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

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Just read through this in one sitting. Sorry that apparently there is drama atm though. Hope you feel better after a break.

I really like the premise, writing and choices offered in this quest. Sadly voters often chose stuff I disagreed with but I am used to being in the minority.

The issue now seems to be that voters chose the worst possible decision multiple times in a row, repeatedly digging themselves deeper into shit. I appreciate your explanation of the consequences of each vote. And I think that if voters choose to do really stupid shit they should suffer the consequences. The only alternative is to forbid them voting for bad or dangerous choices.

So basically I think you are in the right. You warned the voters that diving off a cliff face first would have consequences and they did it anyway.
 
Chiming in with my two cents, the arc you have planned Kosm would probably work out pretty well, you just need to make sure that the voters have a target.

There have been quests, some that I've played through even, where the main character got shit on hard, and where things looked like there was no hope. But players grit their teeth and pulled through because there was a goal to aim for at the end of it, even if that goal seemed absolutely minuscule in sight.

So long as you give them the ability to succeed, even in a minor way, and show them that growth is happening then it will work. The main problem being of course that you have to show them that the Akane in their minds, the perfect princess, or as I mentally liked to call her "Amaterasu's rookie form" never died.

Buried under trauma yes, temporarily locked away due to Ozai's manipulations yes, but not unattainable, not gone.

What they seem to fear, at least from what I've read, is that Akane "died" back there, that her will is permanently broken and that she can't even think of fighting Ozai.

They don't want to be locked into playing Darth Vader, they want to play Anakin. You just have to show them that Anakin is still there and fighting and that Darth Vader isn't a locked in route due to this series of events.

Throw us in the pit boss, just be sure to give us a light so we know where to start climbing.
 
GrimTheMad said:
Speaking personally I'd much prefer 'Akane, Mitsuko, and Iroh on the run' to the current trajectory. There's a lot of fun plot points to be had with that, and it wouldn't all be happy fun times what with the manhunts and the possible resentment from her companions over basically uprooting their entire lives.

But it would overall be far less restrictive that the current path, which I feel is very important in quests.
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I feel that would be fun, but it'd be the least interesting path for me personally.

Not because cool stuff couldn't happen - but because it's just been done so much already. Sure, we don't have Akane in particular on the run in those stories - but works like Morality Chain show what happen when you put a Fire Nation indoctrinated person on the "good guys" team after losing their title, and do it well. It'd mean we'll have to hit certain stations of canon from the same perspective.

The resolution to Ozai will be an external force, as it was in canon, instead of the Fire Nation itself realizing there is a better way with Akane shanking him (the scene would be SO much better if he doesn't expect it). It'd have to focus on adventure rather than politics and securing a power base/military force. It removes the greatest source of potential conflict from the story - a showdown with the avatar over differing visions of the world. Not to mention it decreases the likelihood of really awesome fights against Toph, Katara, Iroh, reformed Zuko, with real stakes on the line.

All of these are things I find pretty unique in an Avatar story.

Ultimately, I feel it will turn the story into one of good versus evil instead of the shades of grey we seem to be leaning to now.

I'd still read, participate, and enjoy it - but it'd lose a lot of what I find to be the most interesting.
 
Adding my two cents to the ever growing pile of change, I love the current direction! In no particular order:
  • It adds a sense of danger and stakes.
  • It feels like a character arc worthy of the show. This is a really, really good low point. Nearly everything about Akane either ties into why it happened or ties into the consequences. Her love for Azula, less love for Zuko, and fear of Ozai set up the fall. Her firebending, nationalism, and perfectionism were all hurt by the consequences. Now her relationship with Mitsuko is the only thing left to help her pick up the pieces.
  • It makes the character arcs of Zuko and Azula more interesting.
  • It makes Ozai's character more interesting. Heck, I think this even gives me more insight into cannon Ozai.

Honestly, with how good a story it seems will come out of this, I might have voted for the same options just to have this exact outcome.
 
Graham said:
I'm honestly confused right now

I was saying that they do count and consider votes.
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Did you read the my sentence or the whole context?
In response to ay(Large number here) saying that picking the coolest vote was the traditional 4chan method. I mentioned that I think even on 4 chan, modern quests have abandoned that method.
 
Again, I deliberately didn't read the "next arc" spoiler, so I don't know what kosm has shown of her plans.

It's just an idea, but...
kosm said:
There is no scar. (22)
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"I do not," you say levelly, voice completely calm, "Have a scar."
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For years, Akane has hidden behind the mask of the perfect princess. I think she would apply "there is no scar" to the emotional scar Ozai dealt.

Two years ago, in a single day Akane heard of Lu Ten's death, killed Azulon in self-defense, had to wait while Ozai considered killing her as the last witness... and she decided to hide all of it.

Now? Hide your broken will, resolve, and self behind your facade, behind the perfect princess. Don't let Azula see her strong sister broken. Conceal don't feel, until even Mitsuko can barely coax out the real you from behind the mask to help.

Recovery would be just as hard if not harder compared to if she openly showed her broken state. It's not an easier route, just a different one kosm could choose if she wants. But to me it feels more in line with the character she and the voters built.
 
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So, I thought that the way the story went was heartbreaking, but in all the right ways. It was completely in character for Ozai to make Akane do this, and it was really impossible for no consequences to come of having Akane threaten him to his face.

Kosm's post about possible paths made a lot of sense to me, and although I do love me a power fantasy, character progression is where it's really at. I'd love to see Akane work her way back to who she really wants to be, and travel the Earth kingdom to find out who that is. I want that sweet Zuko Alone angst, and I think Kosm can deliver.

While you rest, I'll go figure out how Fiction.live works so I can vote next time around. Long live Firelord Akane!
 
Ugolino said:
Players are collectively incompetent, bungling, short-sighted fools who will actively undermine any internal attempts at competence, miss the obvious due to a total lack of reading comprehension, and then complain about obvious results for their actions when the GM applies any sort of logic or telegraphed consequences rather than being able to learn from their mistakes or have any insight or planning worth a damn. And that's before you take into account the sort of players that can wishlist long term goals without any understanding of what sorts of goals fit the story being told, if their approach actually fits those goals, or the characters involved. Expect absolutely nothing from your- any- playerbase and you'll rarely be disappointed.
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You can cultivate an extremely competent, far-sighted, high-comprehension playerbase that will pick themselves back up after a bomb gets dropped on them and forge on with what they have. This is elitist questing.

However, pure elitist questing essentially relies on systematically excluding a large number of players, whether through mechanics or through thread culture, and only allowing those who comprehend the issues to have a voice. I don't think I completely understand how fiction.live works, but short-window, live, anonymous voting is definitely the opposite of this. There are hybrid forms, where the mob is welcome to make the majority of decisions, but a certain slice is too complex for all but a handful to get into. I'm not sure how that works in a single-character game though, as I have only seen it in faction games where a "design" or "economics" section is partitioned off for the elitists to play with in order to keep them interested.
 
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Red Flag said:
You can cultivate an extremely competent, far-sighted, high-comprehension playerbase that will pick themselves back up after a bomb gets dropped on them and forge on with what they have. This is elitist questing.

However, pure elitist questing essentially relies on systematically excluding a large number of players, whether through mechanics or through thread culture, and only allowing those who comprehend the issues to have a voice. I don't think I completely understand how fiction.live works, but short-window, live, anonymous voting is definitely the opposite of this. There are hybrid forms, where the mob is welcome to make the majority of decisions, but a certain slice is too complex for all but a handful to get into. I'm not sure how that works in a single-character game though, as I have only seen it in faction games where a "design" or "economics" section is partitioned off for the elitists to play with.
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Never mind the format issues, the sort of competent, self-selecting playerbase you refer to- one that knows what it's doing- will eventually be drowned out by a tide of fools absolutely convinced they know better, all evidence to the contrary, and with a sort of malicious low cunning to their groupthink- almost a cancer methodology where a few damaging randoms drive off more and more of the competent players/change the environment to their liking, more of the same likes what they see, and adds to the problem... The tide of fools has just enough competence to destroy a quest group but not enough to replace it, and the damage they cause takes a long time to repair.

At the end of the day, any given quest community alone can't keep a story readable.
 
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Ugolino said:
Never mind the format issues, the sort of competent, self-selecting playerbase you refer to, one that knows what it's doing will eventually be drowned out by a tide of fools absolutely convinced they know better, all evidence to the contrary, and with a sort of malicious low cunning to their groupthink.
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My method is to purposely create mechanics with a certain degree of difficulty, which the players absolutely must interact with in order to play the game. This removes the mob, or at least limits them to voting for the plans of a handful of core players, but it also selects for a certain type of player that may not be appropriate for all games.

There may be ways to do this without the assistance of mechanics, but despite huge amounts of time spent examining Facehugger's game, I still have no idea how he has done it. I can't tell whether he's managed to build his self-selecting playerbase because he is lucky, or whether he is employing some sort of reproducible technique.
 
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Hey guys, I just want to update you on what's going on. I think I've decided not to retcon. I know the ending of the chapter was sloppy both in writing and in QMing but I think retconning just doesn't fix anything; going back over a scene we've already painfully played through would just make things worse imo. I'll do my best to be more thoughtful in my QMing and writing as we move forward but I do think I'm going to just move forward from here. I hope that people can still be interested in the quest. I can do alternate paths as a side project occasionally as well for people who are interested in that.

I'm going to take the next week off from Deep Red and just try to focus on planning out the next arc and figure out some main paths it could take. I don't want to railroad players but I also think that with Akane at such a low point I need to make sure I have clear ideas for how to keep things moving forward one way or another so that we don't get bogged down completely. So I'm going to need some time to make a spread of plans to hopefully allow plenty of choice while still giving the story plenty of forward motion no matter what people choose. If all goes well, I'll go back to the regular schedule after this week. We'll see how it goes.

Thanks everyone for reading and giving feedback and everything! Let me know if you have questions, comments, or concerns.
 
So there's some people who think we should jump ship at the first opportunity to get out from ozai, and there's others who think it's a good idea to stay in the military and do population purges and stuff. What's the general opinion here of those ideas?
 
Antix_Shadows said:
and there's others who think it's a good idea to stay in the military and do population purges and stuff.
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A very wrong way to say it. The thing is that remaining in the military could lead to having to partake in Ozai's more merciless acts in the war campaign, whatever we decide the sentiment is that we have to get out of Ozai's shadow but under heavy suspicion and having to be the yes-man to Ozai's policies can be really annoying and impactul towards what we may want to do in the future.

The question wether we should risk Ozai's anger from refusing to proceed and if we are able to weather his wrath is one that will not have an easy answer. Thus why its suggested to flee since paranoia would certainly be at the forefront of people's minds in the military.

Though personally I'd like to subvert people towards our cause and build our powerbase to strike back at Ozai.
 
Glad to see you reached a conclusion, Kosm!

Evaunit02mark1 said:
There have been quests, some that I've played through even, where the main character got shit on hard, and where things looked like there was no hope. But players grit their teeth and pulled through because there was a goal to aim for at the end of it, even if that goal seemed absolutely minuscule in sight.

So long as you give them the ability to succeed, even in a minor way, and show them that growth is happening then it will work. The main problem being of course that you have to show them that the Akane in their minds, the perfect princess, or as I mentally liked to call her "Amaterasu's rookie form" never died.

Buried under trauma yes, temporarily locked away due to Ozai's manipulations yes, but not unattainable, not gone.
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I think this is the biggest thing - with how the last chapter ended (with literally everything going Ozai's way, and Akane 'reverting' back to her pre-terrified of Ozai self, both for in-story reasons, and that 'slip' that Ozai would have insta-killed us if we actually tried to fight him), as it currently stands, Akane's been so thoroughly emotionally destroyed that it may be hard to get the questers to see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak.

There are several outlets which can take place, but at the same time, with Akane's emotional state and the divided quest/reader response, it may be hard to get past that initial inertia and get into the swing of things.

In the grand scheme of things, I think it comes down to, either through votes or just by stating it, we need to find out what Akane actually WANTS for her future - we've danced around it some, but with the plot largely following stations of canon (at least in the big picture of things), there still really isn't any 'space' for Akane to fit into.

She's currently not anywhere near the level (either emotionally or physically) of being capable of ruling to prevent the gaang from putting her down, she doesn't (yet) have the will to become a full rebel herself, and while that leaves a whole lot of space, I think the voters (And this may just be me) need some sort of indication and/or vote on where to go next.
 
Antix_Shadows said:
So there's some people who think we should jump ship at the first opportunity to get out from ozai, and there's others who think it's a good idea to stay in the military and do population purges and stuff. What's the general opinion here of those ideas?
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The second idea just plays into Ozai's hands and would make it all but impossible to break away from him later since it would turn the rest of the population against her.

It would also all but cement Zuko eventually taking the throne since neither he nor the Avatar would be willing to let someone willing to do that be in control of the Fire Nation.

As to running away, it would work to varying degree's depending on what actions she was willing to take when doing so. Though, any attempt that includes taking Mitsuki with her is probably doomed to mind-long term failure.
 
Antix_Shadows said:
I actually think not bringing mitsuko is more likely to end in failure.
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If Akane brings Mitsuko then it locks out the best path for escaping, which would be via faking her own death.

It would also tell Ozai that Mitsuko is very important to Akane.

Which means Ozai will use Piandao as a lever to force Mitsuko, if not Akane herself to come back. Probably via a long drawn out public execution under the pretense that Piandao and his daughter were traitors who kidnapped the nations crown princess.
 
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