Aranfan
Team Plasma Grunt
Considering that most of the crowd here also frequents Marked for Death, I don't think you'll have to worry about that.
Dragon Ball: After the End
Considering that most of the crowd here also frequents Marked for Death, I don't think you'll have to worry about that.
KnightDisciple
Love God. Do Right. Fear No Man.
- Location
- Midwest, USA
I'm kind of with you, @PoptartProdigy , I like the granularity of the skill/character sheet system. I'm not sure what I'd like to see replace it, but a much-condensed, binary system would not be it; right now, for instance, we can have 6 FPSSJs but a 3v3 fight between them can go wildly different ways depending on skills, etc.
A more binary system might "flatten" those differences out to effectively nothing, which begs the question of how we differentiate? Do we just fiat the differences in styles and skills?
As well, I'm concerned that a simplified system would to back to heavily rewarding people willing to sit and craft essay-answer-level plans, which risks drowning out a lot of the rest of us.
A more binary system might "flatten" those differences out to effectively nothing, which begs the question of how we differentiate? Do we just fiat the differences in styles and skills?
As well, I'm concerned that a simplified system would to back to heavily rewarding people willing to sit and craft essay-answer-level plans, which risks drowning out a lot of the rest of us.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
The thing is, with the rules as thwy are, I don't see them affecting voter turnout or accessibility? I'm trying to think of a single vote where having the system rules available to me would have affected how I voted, or planned to vote. It's not like To Boldly Go where votes are shaped by the rules. We already know we aren't as good at Deceit as we are at Communication. Can you think of a situation where we'd be better off calculating our bonuses exactly, that was different to just saying "well we have Exceptional in X and these traits apply" which we're already doing (if barely)?
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- Location
- canada
there is another option, you could condense the system a bit and turn many of the current minor skills throw them together and chance them into middling skills.
Basically some examples would be to turn all ki techniques into categorical techniques. So like, Physical Ki attacks for all the ones based on enhancing physical attacks like in the games Vegeta's double blow or Trunks's sword. Elemental Ki attacks for attacks like the Flame Kamehameha, Dodon ray (I think it is heat based) and the like. Penetrating Ki attacks for things like the Special beam cannon or Destructo Disk. Blunt Ki attacks for things like the Kamehameha wave and Gatling gun. Explosive Ki attacks for things like the Big bang attack or Masenko Ha. Special Ki attacks for things like the Spirit Bomb or the Kaio-ken.
This would let you lower the number of things to keep track of while still allowing some in-depth strategizing. All you would need to add are which techniques the character has underneath to keep track for yourself but it would still make things MUCH easier I think.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I love Marked for Death. I read every single update.
I do not want to be Marked for Death, though. There's nothing at all wrong with it, in my opinion, but it's inescapable that they're very different quests. I want to be as inclusive as possible, and while I, again, love MfD, the plans can get intimidating for newcomers.
No. I did say that I don't think this is mechanically needful. This is solely because of the explosion that just occurred, not because I have a problem with the system as it stands. And a big part of the explosion that just occurred was people claiming, with varying degrees of subtlety, that the system's obscurity was the root cause of the loss.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
If calculating bonuses exactly isn't actually helpful, then people won't do it. People do that to optimise their plans - if it offers no relative advantage then all that will happen is the odd comment that we'll have a bonus of X for Y. It won't be a barrier to entry.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
I mean, personally, I think it's worth a shot, lay out your concerns for the future as you are doing, and then see if the feared outcome actually happens.
Or, really, just post the rules and ask if anyone thinks they are too complicated/obtuse/whatever. If noone says anything against it, we can certainly assume at least most of the players like the rules as is and would rather they not change.
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Well, as a sort of test, could you try providing us with the full rules as they currently stand and get people's opinions on how comprehensible they are?
EDIT:
- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
I think the important part is to make it that:
-the quest can function on a low work vote, balance wise and mechanics wise
-a more nuanced vote gives an advantage, without breaking the balance in the opposite direction
-The work put in is granular to an extent, and can allow for extra work on votecrafters without requiring it.
0All the information a votecrafter needs that they have available is easy to locate, without jumping through hoops, to the extent that is reasonably possible given spoons priorities etc etc
If you don't think the current complexity fits that, one possibility would be to make approximate "overskills" to have. Maybe we have +40 to hand to hand, and a +30 to ranged, and a +35 in group fighting, +30 in hand to hand vs goku style, etc which you abstract to a +~40 in combat. This lets a casual votecrafter make an informed decision about what is possible in combat, while leaving the info available for those willing to put in the extra work.
Ie, I can make a vote for "Engage hand to hand with yammar," and kakara executes it as per normal. I could also vote to "Engage hand to hand with yammar, focus on xyz." Both would be valid votes, the second one takes extra time to plan, but in exchange gives better odds of victory*.
*Predicated on it being a better strategy than the one Kakara came up with.
- Location
- canada
ya actually, thats a large part of why I never got very far into it. (Well that and how big it was when I tried.... same for a sword without a hilt... WAY too freaking big.... I got halfway through that at about 700k words, lost my progress thanks to my computer crashing then internet failing to load back up properly, cried for a little bit and gave up.)
ehhh I think it was less that and more you didn't give enough hints to make Dandeer out to be ANYWHERE NEAR as dangerous a villain as she turned out to be.
I could tell along the way via being able to read all the chapters one after the other that something was wrong but even then it was VERY hard to tell... The primary problem with the fic is that you do not show, as an QM, enough hints of how dangerous the enemies will be in the future.
The level you have would be perfect for a regular fic/story but for a quest? nobody had any clue she could be even CLOSE to this dangerous at any time until the whole sorcerer slaughter thing which you then pulled 'we can't remember it' and even then it sounded like she needed a shitton of time to set it up and still was not enough of a hint especially that late into things where we already have everything 80% set up. Truthfully it looked like a bit of a railroad into this situation with the lack of the hints throughout the fic.
EDIT: In the future you should add a LOT more hints on how dangerous future enemies could be because from what you showed up until the last few chapters it made sorcery (at least our version) look like a pathetic joke at best in terms of combat or anything other than Utility. in other words useless to help directly in fights, even for the purposes of turning enemies into allies for future battles. At least thats what I had gained from everything. From what I could tell the only real enemy in the future was the big enemy and possibly off planet threats like the dragon or the fleet. I figured Dandeera was going to be a minor little joke of a fight that would have been dealt with easily and a way to get reputation fast. Not something worse than the freaking dragon.
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- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Look, I know that this is an easy fix, and I know that if it doesn't work I can always change it later, but I do not want to have to change it later.
Like, the massive thread blowups are anti-fun in and of themselves. By the time it starts, it's too late to head off and the quest is effectively dead for the duration. Add in the fact that many people feel entitled to take shots at me personally, and the result is that, in the aftermath, I am greatly more inclined towards prevention than cure. Cure sucks. It draws out the already-unpleasant event and means that in addition to dealing with the salt, I'm changing rules which, generally, I like.
And frankly, after this last explosion and the means by which many chose to express their dissatisfaction, I don't really have any faith that people will accept the next big loss with grace just because the framework is visible.
Gah, I'm too tired for this right now. I'll sleep on it.
I would have loved to demonstrate how dangerous she was earlier; the issue is that Dandeer is not particularly motivated to demonstrations of that danger until she's acting against you. She wasn't going to show you something on her own initiative, and no investigative action against her ever occurred.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
While I sympathise entirely, if making the system fully transparent doesn't stop the meltdowns, I don't think a system change will fix them at all.
I think the railroading beliefs stem from different issues.
- Location
- canada
see the problem with that is that you also made SORCERY out to be a bit of a joke (in terms of danger) through most of the quest so I don't think anyone ever COULD consider her a real threat. Maybe next time instead add some hints of how dangerous sorcery actually IS? because honestly? again up until the whole slaughter we found out about it just felt like something that was useful AFTER the battle, to help PREPARE for the battle, etc. etc. It felt like at least under the area of research our people had undergone Sorcery had no dangers to us once we unlocked our full potential as a SS and the only real dangers were people who also could go SS and off planet threats. Plus this is a DBZ quest... lets be real here, how many people think of Subterfuge and intrigue as something that can be a truly significant danger before we got off world. I mean seriously who truly considers Saiyans and Intrigue to go hand in hand.... at any time? Perhaps we should have expected it but still.... coulda done with a warning at some point that "intrigue is a major part of this quest you should not ignore it!" with bolded and capital letters. Because lets be real most people would not be worried about it yet without that.
(also I think everyone believed our version of Sorcery was COMPLETELY different from Babadi's.)
Conceptualist
Best Mega Sceptile
- Location
- I'm on the internet. Duh.
This is a chicken and egg situation. Ultimately, a lot of the job of a GM is to lead your players to plot hooks that let them find, follow, and engage with the plot.
I, personally, believe that your own beliefs in the agency of NPCs has prevented you from leaving plot hooks that we, in character, can do something with. The sorcerer thing was perfect. But we failed rolls, and had no in character knowledge anything had changed. By the time we actually started doing anything new with the Plan, we just wanted to confront her and take her down with the resource we had.
- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
What he said.
Personally, I was kind of pissed off about the loss, but that was more 'Fuck, I knew this was going to happen, but I still don't like it.' because I kind of got the impression that we were essentially screwed the moment we were facing Sir Yammar of Combat-spec alone when we had built a Social-based character, than any feelings of being railroaded. In fairness, there was little we could have done to predict that a) Yammar had been subverted before we got there, and b) that the spell was efficient enough to scrub him clean effectively instantaneously, so I'm not really surprised we couldn't win there, because I still can't see a way we could have without information we simply didn't have (predicted those things or won).
Still going to assume our allies are incompetent morons in the future though.
Anyway, my point is, if people can't be bothered to read and understand the rules, and then complain about being railroaded, then they really don't have a leg to stand on.
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- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
I still disagree, though, If Dandeer was a Super Saiyan of this much skill, the only thing stopping her SSj3+ self from crushing us would be the limits on saiyan power level, and even so this kind of talent would probably put her above yammar (admittedly, sorcerer pool is smaller than fighter pool so she might not be *the rank 1* tournament fighter, just up there). The only part about magic that made her more dangerous to us than a comparable skilled Ki user is that magic benefits from the time she had before we came on the scene more and doesn't have the same power ceiling. Compare Dandelor to the second best super saiyan on our side, despite the sample size for super saiyans being 6 vs the
I disagree, though? Like, sometimes things come as a surprise. Diabolus ex Machina exists not because of authorial meddling, but because under the assumption of a real gameworld you don't know everything that will happen to you.
Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
We've actually gotten better at that recently.
We've cut down plan size from an average of two thousand words to only six hundred!
(...Only slightly joking.)
- Location
- canada
and we ALSO had no idea at all that what we had even COULD be insufficient in any way.
Again I agree with this @PoptartProdigy this is effectively your weakness as a writer. It would not be a problem outside of the quest format but in it you don't give the players enough ability to tell what is coming. You need to treat it a bit less like a story and a bit more like a Game of D&D or another RPG. Otherwise you will continue to have this problem in the future.
exactly my point, we SHOULD have known that there was even a possibility that Sorcery could do that.... from what we knew Sealing can only take something of a person away which means it is impossible to completely change their perspective into undyingly loyal slaves of the Sorcerer. Except then suddenly it wasn't and BAM we got fkd.
Honestly it felt like.... you decided halfway through you waned Dandeer to be a major threat instead of the minor threat you were gearing her up to be.... and then never tried to give us any warning of it. That is a major problem for a QM to do that is something that does piss off a lot of players.
I'm sorry what? like what? she is not a super Saiyan at ALL though, thats part of the point, no one but the people we brought with us, Jaffur, his father and our father are allowed to be super Saiyans.
nkd1325
KNIGHT OF ORANGE
- Location
- AT HIS MAJESTY'S SIDE
Yeah there were going to be accusations of railroading and a meltdown no matter what was different because, as far as I can tell, SV quests rarely experience actual losses. Sure there are bad rolls and the like but in my time reading quests I've never seen a quest take so bad a loss as we did here. It should be noted that it was so bad a loss solely because of how easily we could have prevented it both during (most obvious moment is KOing Vegeta instead of helping Jaffur but we were worried more about how Jaffur would react to essentially missing the fight) and before (Spirit Saiyin) the fight.
So yeah I'm blaming it on the culture of questing having so few big losses more than anything @PoptartProdigy did
So yeah I'm blaming it on the culture of questing having so few big losses more than anything @PoptartProdigy did
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- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
Well, yes, but there should have been some indication that intrigue and sorcery could fuck us over. I mean, the Tutorial Sealing was kinda sorta politics which could be considered intrigue, but we couldn't meaningfully contest that without ITing like crazy (at which point it was more or less a fight rather than politics), and Berra still caught up to us almost instantly once we stopped to talk with the Senzus, but from all indications, Dandeer had needed Berra's help to have any hope of keeping Jaffur contained long enough to Seal him. The massacre was the first real hint we had that hey, maybe she didn't and it was purely political, at which point it was nearly too late to change the plan.
Though, in hindsight, perhaps we should have considered it strange that Yammar, who'd done very little to actively help the conspiracy, suddenly needed to beat the crap out of Dandeer right the hell now. Like, wow, that was weird looking back at it.
Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I really quite strongly disagree with this. It is not the job of the QM to spoonfeed the players all their leads about what problems do and don't deserve attention. We had every ability to investigate sorcery further, we knew we were going to be going up against Dandeer - who we knew was a powerful sorcerer - and we still opted not to. Relying on the assumption that sorcery was weak, when we did not have conclusive proof to that effect, was in retrospect a mistake. Was it an understandable one? Yes. But I don't want a quest where the QM keeps players from ever making mistakes by handing out blatant hints like "HEY LOOK AT THIS THING."
Like...the job of the QM is to tell a good story and run a good game. Neither of those things requires that the protagonist/players automatically are aware of upcoming threats. The latter requires that the option to acquire such knowledge exists, for the most part (or at least that literally unpredictable threats be answerable without prep work), but the onus can absolutely be on the players to take that option. Otherwise it just devolves into "yup, we followed the obvious breadcrumbs and now get to bask in a victory we didn't even earn."
Daecl
CURSED BY THE DICE
You didn't necessarily have to show Dandeer's skills- why not an interlude from another sorcerer's pov? I don't recall in particular whether you've made use of interludes in the past, but it's a pretty effective way of showcasing events that the mc doesn't see in person.
For example, imagine an interlude from Dandelor's pov, perhaps pushing his limits of mastery and a vague declaration of "I need to be better" would've given some indicator as to how sorcery could be used and give a bit of a push for us to investigate.
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Conceptualist
Best Mega Sceptile
- Location
- I'm on the internet. Duh.
But that's the problem! It wasn't intended to be a Diabolus ex Machina. Not only did we not know something, we have been repeatedly told that we should have know more, and if we had made better choices, it wouldn't have been a surprise. But we made decisions with the knowledge we had, and didn't know enough to know that we knew nothing. Or however that quote goes.
I wouldn't be as salty about this if it came out of complete nowhere. I've played with GMs who do that kind of thing. Ive been a GM who did that sometimes. Part of problem is that @PoptartProdigy has said and done things in story that shift the initiative for deeper investigations on the player base, when most of the story has been happening on the surface level. And with a good deal of the content being stretched across irl days, weeks, and sometimes months, players tend to lose focus on the bigger picture. And that means subtle hints go misunderstood or unnoticed.
As an example, when we have a problem like the invader prison issue during the tournament, we had an authority figure to work with. So we chose to work with him. Only, it turns out he was secretly mind controlled to not actually do anything about it because She didn't want him to. A good chunk of the story that was told before that was all about reconciliation with our Dad. He was comprised, and thus the plot hook slipped without catching.
I understand that we don't know everything. Understand we have missed plot hooks to find out more. The problem is that whenever we did ask about the tools she had, we got answers that turned out to be inaccurate or insufficient. And with that bad information, we didn't ever understand the plot hook to be connected to plot thread that needed to be followed.
It's the misinformation that we had that caused us to screw ourselves. Or, that's at least one of the reasons.
- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
To be fair, Poptart didn't have much chance to set out a trail of breadcrumbs. Like, they gave us a number of chances, but we kept either putting it off to focus on training, or got told the adults could handle it and believed them (which we should never do again, Perfect Multiform will give us the AP to do everything ourselves if we ignore Social beyond politics) and thus never bothered to follow the trail. Once again, very suspicious that they allowed us into the conspiracy but kept giving a politer version of 'Not now kiddo.' whenever we brought up that maybe we could help out there in hindsight. We literally only helped out directly when it was basically something only we could do, namely, Seer powers to visit Jaffur past the Seal.
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Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Okay, hang on, give me an example of a time we initiated serious investigation of Dandeer's capabilities and were met with credible but meaningfully incorrect information as to their limits.
I'm...not sure why this is a reply to me, since I was never claiming that Poptart should have been laying out a trail of breadcrumbs (quite the opposite).