A bit of a background post to shed light and be transparent about what I like/dislike about the hodge-podge system I'm growing with help from all of you guys. Many of the points I've jotted down literally months ago by now, but mostly I think I know what I meant when I did... mostly. Lots of speculation, empty air and numbers to follow.
This serves as part review, part design document and part roadmap (and significant amounts of rambling). A chance to gather feedback and come to a mutually agreeable patching in time for - at the latest - the winter holidays (in universe). I know I've promised to make changes at the end of summer previously, but I think this way will work better for the moment.
Anyways, enough preamble. In no particular order:
Falling thresholds
Multiply dice system further
Alternative approaches
As I think I noted somewhere earlier, the first iteration of the pool was rolled on a d10, with the first threshold to beat being 8. For every level of cultivation the player would gain, this would drop by one. There is something satisfying to the idea that as you complete your Earthly journey at the end of year 7, you will have literally become incapable of failure. Of course, this was a naïve approach and obviously flawed even before any publicity, as the subjects themselves took shape.
At the time of first publication, the techniques/potions/charms/(insert mechanic here) were much less fleshed out, and not nearly as central to the skill identity as they've since grown to be. This can especially be seen in earlier chapters' transfiguration. The techniques were entirely bereft of mechanical benefit, they were simply cool-sounding blurbs you could pick up, and only a hint of "-???" signified any further development. This is a trick I've used before and in all likelihood will continue to abuse - make vague promises and force myself to deliver on them in the future. It's more or less worked out so far (of course, in my subjective opinion).
Instead, the main focus of skills was their intrinsic benefit, so bonuses for transfig, pool dice upgrades for charms and most importantly for this point, threshold reductions spread across different disciplines. Where I think I made the biggest mistake was frontloading 4 levels of reduction into year 1. Well, not like I didn't see that happening at all, but it's still an issue now. That issue being that there's nowhere to go. Unlike charms and transfiguration which scale up and offer diminishing returns, threshold reductions scale down, and at some point going down stops making sense.
A bonus going from 0 to 10 offers about a 20% increase in expected result. The actual number depends on your other stats, but with year 1 numbers, it's 10, with year 2 numbers, it's 40 total progress gained. On the other hand, going from 240 to 250 bonus is only a 3-4% increase in relative gain. This holds true regardless of your other stats. Charms falls off even faster. There's barely 1% difference between d39 and d40.
Whether this is fair and good or not is a different question, but both numbers are manageable and indefinitely scalable. I don't have to worry about you running out of integers to add. Not so for thresholds. The relative change per level is still anywhere between 10%-5%, right until the threshold becomes 1, after which further reductions do nothing.
This leads to confusion and complications - already you can see that levels in potions no longer grant threshold reductions at every level. You'll be down to 8 by the end of apprentice (3/7). The simplest fix is to upscale pool dice. And since the longer I put this off, the more techniques there will be, and the more work it'll be to change things, so I'd like to do so in one swoop. Which is complicated by the fact that I don't have a clear number for the total amount of milestones set in stone.
Surprisingly, the jade chit system greatly alleviates a pressure stemming from that last fact. It sets a precedent for gaining extra milestone rewards, and doesn't lock you into (for example) 40 total skills. To be fair, that number is not picked completely at random. If basic was a single milestone as an exception, the follow-ups of beginner and apprentice are 4 and 5 respectively. It just so happens that 1+4+5+6+7+8+9 = 40.
So, hypothetically, if the base pool die became a d50, with a starting threshold of 40, we should be golden (pending a buff to charms in that case, as a +1 to the die type becomes comparatively weaker). Not everything needs to scale infinitely. This quest is meant to be finished, rather than simply get abandoned as my interest wanes.
Of course, I remain open to alternative suggestions and ideas. The d20 is a classic for a reason, and maybe this is a case of the cure being worse than the disease, i.e. just having less and less frequent threshold reductions is fine?
Such speculation segues neatly into the next point.
Uneven gains
Normalize transfiguration
Increase cost
Not a problem
As people have rightly noticed, and as the numbers above reveal, transfiguration bonuses are the most potent ones, and the ones that come up most often in story. This could lead to min-maxing of the boring and anti-fun kind, where it's objectively wrong to pick anything other than that for training.
There are already systems in place to prevent that, most notably the end-of-year requirements. The negative side of such requirements however is that it could feel bad to be forced to make sub-optimal choices, i.e. 'I have to pick up some potions, even though it sucks, just because some faceless author wants to tout around his own Goldberg-esque junk.' This might be reminiscent of real world academia, but I think that's verisimilitude we can all do without.
Not all skills strictly have to have equal cost scaling. It could be that although each level of transfig is worth more when comparing the rewards, it also costs more to achieve, giving you equivalent gain per point of progress made/spent. It's an option, but a clunky one, and one that makes simulating future requirements a nightmare (maybe, at least it feels like it could be a headache).
The next option is to scale the bonus amount. I could come up with some formula that sees the bonus you gain per level drop logarithmically. On the one hand, this is quite possibly the neatest option, as it requires no retconning, Rei would just discover that as her toolbox grows, each new gadget helps her less, and it'd mean that I don't need to rework the currently planned numeric requirements. On the other hand, people don't read a quest on a free forum to solve differential equations just to figure out how much the next increase gets them - a bonus of +10 is a bonus of +10, anyone can grasp that with minimal effort. If a bonus is
where x is the number of milestones and the result is rounded to the nearest integer, 99% of people would go glassy-eyed and disengage from the system entirely.
Oh, and none of the above (or below) numbers take into consideration skill based modifications, just the intrinsic numbers, but that's not a can of worms I want to open. Rather the opposite in fact.
Alternatively, lets call it option 2-b, the scaling could be a simple flat amount. Going from +10 per level to +5 per level would more or less bring it in line with the other skills. It'd still be just a smidge stronger, but honestly not by more than a percent or so. However, this would force me to very carefully pick the right spot for making the change and adjusting the end-of-year goal numbers accordingly. Which in turn means adjusting the milestones, and then figuring out how to handle things if that adjustment triggers you gaining one, etc.
And of course, there is the very real possibility that I'm making mountains out of molehills and transfig being the strongest option is perfectly fine. I do my best to remind myself that this is creative writing, not competitive writing. It doesn't have to be perfectly balanced.
Monotone training actions
Diminishing returns
Caps
Not a problem
Honestly, I don't think this has really proven to be an issue, and upon deeper reflection, nor do I think it will be. Still, it's here because at some point it was a consideration.
Namely, that the house point system incentivizes picking a single training action for the month and sticking with it. Effectively this means that the creation of training plans boils down from a clever and desirable combination to choosing just the subject.
The counterpoints are that from a writing perspective, single-action-type plans make for a more cohesive narrative and a shorter update that can be finished much, much faster. Then the fact that there's an aversion to overshooting a target too massively, which means taking some risks. Also, being a bit spread out makes you more future proof, rather than going all in on one subject at a time.
It's a very minor and distant issue still worth monitoring, but I don't think that any adjustments need to be made at this stage.
The point system
House Cup
Gambling
Abstracting usage
Hoo boy, this is the big one. I'll try to summarize my own earlier posts on the subject.
Points were meant to serve as a way for questers to indicate which storylines they'd like to pursue further. Maybe there's a world where spending time with Neville is a fan favorite, and rather than risk bad rolls putting Rei's foot in her mouth, you'd like to make sure that Lord Longbottom rises above his timid self and grows into a confident man we all know he could be.
But if you have enough points to pursue every social option, then they might as well not exist and I'd have to cut the slice-of-life content out in favor of yet more plotting and scheming.
Then there's what actually happens. I have no idea what I would have done if you dumped your leftover 8 points in June for a boon. If one is good, and two is better, and three is even more amazing, think of how mind-blowing eight must be, right? But then, how do I come back down from that? The next time you spend points will either feel much worse, and people will hoard points until they have enough to out-do the previous best, or get disappointed if the big payout didn't materialize in an impactful enough way.
The idea of gambling points (trading points for completing challenges) only exacerbates the issue of too many points. No player is stupid, no one wants to take a losing bet, and there's always the fact that the author can cheat if they really want to, which makes both losses and wins feel hollow (not that I've done so). The only other option is to outsmart the reader into making a losing bet, which is a lose-lose situation. It'll feel bad if I succeed at that, which is not the goal. And since no player is stupid, then collectively they'll be smarter than even the most diabolical of authors, let alone me, so outsmarting them is doomed from the get-go.
The quest has also gone in a more wholesome direction than your typical xian-xia fanfare. Students don't duel each other in abandoned corridors for points. They bet on quidditch matches. Maybe you could stalk your prey, find out their weaknesses and come up with an unbeatable counter, then challenge them to a duel you'll have worked to know that most likely shall end in your victory. You'll have stacked the deck in your favor, laid out a killer strategy and all that's left is to hope the dice don't give you the middle finger on 1% odds. I think something like that could be a pretty darn cool quest, but as it turns out, it's not this one. And that's fine.
As the system currently limps along, gambling most likely won't be making an appearance. Thankfully it doesn't even need much retconning or railroading. Maybe it turns out that Rei isn't someone who would greatly enjoy gambling - boom, she doesn't gamble, problem solved.
The third point covers the double-dipping of rolling high on a social action. The recent bank scene is a good example of the original intent. Rei wasn't meant to be fabulously wealthy. In fact, you might notice that she's rather the opposite; careful with money and frugal in her dealings. Thanks to a high roll however, she now learns that she has quite a bit more means than she really knows what to do with. In the writing world, I'd call that an opportunity for character growth. Just like that, we have a slow-burn side plot, spiced up by the dubious origin of her wealth, and a deus-ex-machina justification should it ever prove necessary to have some ancient spirit appear and dump some exposition because he's late on his interest payments.
Could it sometimes flop and is it hard to come up with compelling narratives? Of course, but that's the fun part, and it's incredibly satisfying for me when pieces fall into place; a challenge because it's the dice that determine which threads should receive the attention, based purely on a one-two sentence summary of events. Restrictions breed creativity.
Instead, not only do you receive the benefit, which I've foolishly attached mechanics to, but you also get a banked one down the line.
On the flipside, it's just plain fun to receive rewards. The more the better, especially when there's an element of challenge involved in the long-term exam requirements. And the points are an ideal solution as a delivery vehicle for such things.
Rather than discuss the ramifications of the above here, let's move on to the next point, as it is very much closely related.
Reward system
A table to roll on
Skill point purchase
Continue as is
Another problem with the current boon rewards is that they're a one-time deal. Unlike skills which go into the library, and which can be a bit worse than the best options because maybe they're second best instead, and that's fine; if one of the three options for a boon is significantly stronger, people will feel compelled to pick that one instead of what might sound more appealing to them on the narrative side. Making optimal choices isn't the same as making fun choices, and since fun is subjective, it's impossible to optimize for on the development side. What I can do, is carefully balance the numbers so that while there are slight differences for those for whom fun and optimal are the same thing, it's also not too big of a tradeoff for those who don't think so.
It's not up to me to say if I've been successful in that, but what I can say is that balancing the options and coming up with the right twists takes major time and effort. Time and effort that is at best one third useful in the end.
On the one hand, perhaps it's time well spent. If people derive enjoyment from the process of choosing itself, then it doesn't matter that two of the three effects are never applied. They've already served their purpose.
On the other, I think I have a way of streamlining the process, making it much more transparent and only sacrificing a small amount of meshing between story and numbers.
Introducing (not really, yet) the training aide table. A collection of publicly visible traits which form the basis of potential benefits granted by a single house point. Buying a boon means rolling a die per point, and building up a collection of benefits that the artefact you choose gives you. Repeat three times, come up with something that at least tries to match the situation and benefits by yours truly, and voila, boons generated. One option significantly better than the others because of synergies? Not my fault, blame the dice. No good choices? Them's the breaks. All good choices? Behold my genius design at work.
Want to dump 10 points at a time? Go right ahead, you'll have a rough idea of what you're getting, the mystery box expectation element is neatly eliminated, and so is the pressure on me to deliver a bombastic reward.
I think I've said somewhere previously that I aimed for an increase of 20 progress per action per point spent, which seems about right for some stages, but for the life of me I can't recall what stats I used to calculate that number. I really hope it wasn't the year 1 default, because that would suggest a 50% increase per point. Translating that back to a well-rounded year 2 student gives us a bit over 200 progress per action at the moment, or a 1000 progress per turn. Per point. I think a more reasonable interpretation would be 20 progress per point overall, not per action, with the starting stats, which would be about 15% of the total yield. Or in other words, we should be looking at about 60 points per action/300 points total per point spent in the present day.
Of course, I'd reserve both the right to add to the list as well as make my own options if I get inspired by something.
In summary. Step 1: you vote to spend some points. Step 2: I roll a d(however many options there are) per point spent. Step 3: I interpret the results/pull the descriptions out of thin air for each artefact. Step 4: Rei visits the appropriate elder/alternate source and gets the choice. Step 5: you vote for the final result. Step 6: boon is applied to the next turn.
Circling back to the idea of double dipping 90+ social rolls for a moment. The more I look at it the more I want it gone. It might happen for some actions that you'd get to choose not to pursue a plot, and involve an elder instead, netting you a point and little else. For example think of the ice-fishing incident. A 90+ would still see you fish up a strange lake spirit, but in that instance, Rei decided that she had enough on her plate already, and rather than devote more effort to studying her catch, fobbed it off on Elder Kettleburn. In return, he'd give her a point and she could go on with her life. Alternatively, she could stick it in her cauldron for the time being and spend some time from the next month studying up with Mandy. Or, she could assume it works like a magical goldfish and let it go, only to receive a tiny golden egg wrapped in a slimy patch of seaweed that whispers horrible screams in your ear when you open it above water.
This would mean that your points come from progression rewards and quidditch first and foremost. Which... is already mostly the case.
Last, but certainly not least is the idea that some system could exist for you to purchase access to techniques (aka the library threadmark). I enjoyed the jade chit system, not even so much the way they work in-universe, but as a means to make sure you can pick up that one potion/charm/skill that you just don't want to spend training actions on right this moment. That said, I have no idea how I'd go about balancing something like that. Been drawing a blank on it for a few weeks now, in fact, so I'll put a pin in it as something to return to for sure, but not currently part of the immediate plans.
The social system
Mechanical benefits for interacting with characters
Reputation
Unnecessary
A lot of Rei's social life happens off-screen. In part, it's obviously necessary, with only hints and throwaway lines indicating her interactions with her peers. We're looking at 120k words for year 1 alone, which is more than half again the Philosopher's Stone, and that number isn't inflated by repeating option blocks by more than a few thousand. This can and does lead to confusion and disconnect. Who does Rei get along with, who does she regard as merely an acquaintance? With the fixed timeframe of one turn per month, it can be several months between on-screen conversations, which need to pick up where the last one left off. This severely strains any suspension of disbelief and kills momentum. While the crux of the issue is the fixed action economy per unit of in-game time, that's not going to change, it's the foundation of progression quests such as this one.
Many other authors switch between 'economic' turns for training/construction/etc. and arcs/mini-turns/socials for character development. While this isn't strictly off the table, I'm extremely skeptical about it working for me or for this quest. A significant draw for it is the training, and that's my own view as well. I often find myself losing interest during the social arcs that drag on forever, with months of real time covering barely days of in-verse time. Hence, I wouldn't trust myself to pull it off in anything approaching a satisfactory manner.
Returning to the bullet-points above - I don't want to tie cultivation mechanics to characters. It would certainly incentivize a logical progression of Rei becoming closer to those she shares interests with, but there's also great value in explicitly not having such things happen, and the characters you choose to interact with are the ones you actually want to interact with. Thus, while I have at times been tempted to throw a choice of some bonuses your way for following through with some character's I might want you to continue interacting with, that's not the point of collaborative writing like this.
Then there could be a completely separate reputation system, which perhaps offered strictly narrative benefits (as it in some ways already does), but quantified. But I think this kind of a system works better in quests with a wider scope and more adversarial settings, i.e. empire management and politicking. If the viewpoint was an omniscient narrator rather than second person limited, interludes and side-chapters could work to explore relations between characters, but it's not, so Rei shouldn't act on info she doesn't have. It'd also be a whole load of extra work to flesh out the actual relationships, rather than have vague notes about who might get along with whom.
So in summary, while it's something to ruminate on, I think we'll be fine to continue as is on this front. Sure it strains verisimilitude a bit, but I think people are generally accepting of time passing at unrealistic rates in the genre of quests as a whole.
Summer holidays
More confusion than it's worth
Just use a 12 month cycle
This point was included before the actual holidays took place. The difference between exams in August and in June is - from a mechanical standpoint - completely arbitrary. Characters in a story are not real people who want to rest, Rei will simply continue to improve towards the next goal over the summer. How it does mesh, is that the numbers for progress required were calculated with the assumption that you spend 10 months training. Which really doesn't make much sense - so why do it at all. I'd be loathe to adjust the currently known values, but year 3 will be using all 12 months for the estimates.
There was a brief period where I considered simply removing the summer holidays. Like during the winter break, Rei'd visit London for a social action's worth of time, then return to Hogwarts. But that would probably bring with it its own confusion and questions. Having actually gone through one summer, I think it got handled quite well and with precedent set, there's no need to make major changes.
Charms
Confusing
Wands
Evolving artifacts
This is a good example of the evolving narrative providing the answer by itself. At first, I was clinging to the idea of transfiguration spells and charm spells, which was confusing and arbitrarily complicated. It works for the much softer magic system of original Harry Potter, but not so well when you need to explore both sides in depth. Even Rei herself notes in the very first chapter that she can't really tell the difference between the two. That isn't by chance, it exists so that I could expand on it with future exposition as I myself figure out how it should work. Over time however, the distinction has become apparent along different lines.
Charms is the art of creating magical artefacts. Transfiguration is just another name for techniques (aka spells) in general. If History can cover spiritual cultivation, then Transfiguration can stand for casting. Sure, there's some situations where Rei creates charms in-situ so to speak, but I think that actually only serves to enforce the difference - she didn't know a technique to make a brick attack a troll, rather she told the Qi of the brick that it should be attacking the troll, and let the brick do what it wants to.
On the subject of wands, I've claimed earlier somewhere that as an iconic symbol, the wand should serve as a prominent prop. However, I've come to accept that that won't be the case. It's an important tool to channel Qi and observe its intricacies, but most immortals can make do without one for months at a time. It's a device for fine arts, not the much more martial world of xian-xia-ified HP.
Having accepted all of the above, one last problem remains: in stories where crafting is the focus, all sorts of links and attributes exist for the items. From rarity to resources required to craft something to set bonuses to hidden powers. If I included all such facets, it'd end up taking over completely. Not to say that things like that can't get introduced at a later date as Rei's Charms level grows, but not right away and all at the same time. Perhaps deserving special mention is the materials section: the freedom to choose any action right from the start means there's going to be friction down the line regarding the availability of components. Rei has so far been perfectly capable of crafting her potions, because you chose to pursue that route first. In-universe, that means that the characters must know that it's viable to do so, therefore ingredients aren't hard to get a hold of. How that meshes with... oh, say, Herbology is an issue I suspect I'll need to tackle very soon.
But back to charms for a moment - I think my method of -??? has worked once again. I haven't forgotten that 4 turns have gone by for the Little Towel That Could. I believe I have an excellent explanation narratively, but whether the mechanical side is engaging remains to be seen. Still, it accomplishes what I want charms to be and do - long-term projects you can build on. The counter is missing from the Rainbow Brush as a misguided attempt at balancing (more on that way below), but I'd expect it to make an appearance starting next turn, at a significant level of progress already.
Overflow
Always apply every training action to a single law
Overflows go towards further techniques in that skill
Pick after achieving milestones
This point comes back to the ideas of picking what you get as a reward versus picking what you're working towards. It's the reason your skills come with the secondary line of '-- which x (see library)'. At first it wasn't an issue because you were working towards a singular milestone with no choices in the matter - if you failed, you simply had a bit more to go. Later, it hasn't been an issue because you haven't failed to hit a milestone. What happens when you say... roll less than 900 for total potions gain? At the time of writing this, you're at 1572, and the next milestone (and a potion) would be at 2500. Should that lock you in for the potion you signed up for, or should Rei faff about for most of the level, only to come up with a completely different potion the next time she does some brewing?
This comes all the way back to the talk about falling thresholds. Skills have a theoretical side behind them, which provides the intrinsic benefit of threshold/bonus/dice/etc. If you fail to hit a milestone, you'll be spending time studying theory. If you hit a target, the training for the turn will be split in two, with the first part having you pick your reward and the second part being a description of Rei actually getting that reward for herself. This has more or less become the norm as you naturally gain astronomically more progress than you would have when you were just starting out (the absolute best case for turn 1 progress would have been 900 points, whereas pretty soon you'll be looking at over 2000 progress on average per turn), and sink that progress into 0-progress skills.
I think the way it's been handled works for me, and hopefully for you as well. At first I was reluctant to have you choosing a reward, as a bit more of a gamified mechanic than I'd have liked, but I think we've come to a happy compromise with the current system. I'll withhold removing the '-- which x' lines until it actually happens once, just to see what goes wrong and needs adjustment, but that's the plan for now.
Quidditch stats and planning
Stat update as the years progress
Scaling up lower year students as necessary (if/when)
As I figure out where I want an average student to be for a respective year, this happens, with Harry and (barring something unexpected happening) Draco making Gryffindor and Slytherin tougher opponents. And since that kind of sounds mean, maybe someone from your year will join Hufflepuff too, down the line.
As a very long term thing, I could be rolling appropriate stats for lower year students as teams get cycled out, and placing them into the teams as actual characters rather than approximate stat-blocks. We'll see if that ends up being a thing or not. I don't plan to do this to older students, because that would greatly diminish your effect on the team, which I still want to be significant. That won't be a problem if the ones getting replaced are (in theory) younger and weaker than you are. Rather the opposite in fact. But again, this is an extremely long term thing.
Complicated systems - aspects
Are the complex-for-the-sake-of-complexity systems fun for others?
Can they be glazed over or do they detract from the experience?
Once this quest is finished (being optimistic here and not saying if), I'll have this enormous and tested system ready for recycling. I'm already keeping documents of world-building for all sorts of ideas that I'd like to pursue, but don't have the time for. How does all that align with the above bullet point? I'm not sure if the aspect system really does enhance the experience. It's not going anywhere, and maybe it'll grow on me (and hopefully you), but maybe it's complexity for the sake of complexity more than utility. It is of course also possible that I simply failed to explain it well enough.
I would, however, still defend its validity and inclusion in this iteration. Because of the nature of subjects as skills, there's a greater need for abstraction and distinction between them, and the elements help do what they're meant to do: provide variety within the limited scope. An argument could be made that there are too many skills, which I'd agree with in principle, but it took development to see that, and who knows what we'll find out down the line. It's also definitely a place for feedback: do you feel like the element-roll system is a net positive? Has/does it prevent(ed) you from engaging with the quest, from making plans? To be fair, if you're actually reading this post, chances are you're pretty darn engaged, so this might not be the most representative of samples, but still.
Aspect order of operation
In some cases, the order in which effects apply can make a significant difference
Can I keep track of what's the theoretical best for the player?
Random order?
Let players dictate the order by vote?
Keeping this point in for posterity, but the issue is solved by the inclusion of meridians. I like it both for its effect as well as its simplicity. The only uncomfortable bit about meridians is the formula for the cost of the next one, but when placed into a table, the numbers don't look too scary, and if people want to know where they came from, they can.
Chapter length and posting rate
I have a bad tendency to try and one-up myself. The first chapters (combining multi-parters together) are somewhere in the ballpark of 5-8k words, give or take. This crept up to 9k+ in spring, and now we're looking at 12k (or more) per chapter. This shouldn't be the case. It's better to post shorter chapters more often. Some bloat can't be avoided: there's more to reference, more details that can be included as callbacks, there's just plain more actions given to the player, but it should be kept to a bare minimum... I think; everything is subjective, of course.
So, in an ideal world, a chapter (turn) is composed of ~2-3k words for training and progression (unless we're dealing with more significant milestones, which may require more exposition or philosophy), around 1-1.5k per non-crucial social (and they can't all be crucial) and up to 2.5k for more developed ones. So on average, something like 6-9k words per chapter (given current action counts), split in two parts. Hopefully those numbers sound reasonable to you, and set some expectations. And hopefully I'll be able to stick to them.
Canon plots
Voldy
Railroading
Laws of magic
If the first year of Harry Potter very much has the characters happen to the plot, then the next year, the plot happens to the characters. Barring issues that are easily overlooked in a children's book, the Philosopher's Stone plot is fine to have running in the background. In this story, it remained there - there's no curfews, so Harry isn't afraid of Filch, the castle is literally infinite, so the odds of running into Fluffy beggar belief, no one jinxes Harry's broom, because there are no teachers, there are elders who's job isn't strictly to teach, but to safeguard and know things. Rei doesn't know what happened to Quirrel, and she has no reason to, either. Harry didn't get involved, because again, plot fine for a children's book, but not a text for which the average reading level is supposedly 11-12th grade. Different stories.
So, you don't know what happened to the philosopher's stone (which may or may not have been involved at all) - hell, I don't know what happened to it (or do I?), until and if it should become relevant down the line. As noted before however, this can't be the case for the second year.
How much Rei chooses to engage with the various events is of course still up to you, but there will be things happening much more publicly than last year. Whether it's a teeny-tiny basilisk that Lockhart would take care of in his sleep, or... well, no spoilers.
Then there is the over-arching plot of the Harry Potter series as a whole. What's a Voldemort? How is someone so clearly powerful not long ascended? Isn't his whole schtick a fear of death in a world of immortals? Does he exist at all? The answer to the last question is a definite yes. Why does no one mention him? He's called He-Who-Must-No-Be-Named, for crying out loud, people don't want to talk about him, doubly so in a world where names have power. Most people also don't know anything more than the rumors from supposedly dark days, especially people Rei interacts with. I really do hope I'll have a chance somewhere down the line to have you listen in on Dumbledore discussing Tom. I think he fits very well into the over-arching plot of this story as well (at least one of them), but arranging that will be tricky, especially for now. Thankfully, there's no rush.
Something that should probably at some point come up in the story, but is hard to organically work in is the statute of secrecy and under-age magic use. You may have noticed that Rei does magic all the time - there is no under-age magic use laws, hence why it's hard to bring up in-universe in a natural manner. "Hey, you know that thing we don't have? Isn't it nice that we don't have that thing, unlike if we had that thing. That would be different, and totally life altering, and completely at odds with the wider culture surrounding us. So yeah, we don't have that thing."
The statute of secrecy however does exist, even if it's enforced much less harshly than canon casting laws. I believe Tracey, as the most convenient immortal high class world explaining device, has briefly mentioned it. Basically, it's more like an unspoken agreement, enforced by Qi that immortals should stay out of mortal business. If you've ever read the Dresden Files, it's sort of like that. In it, the titular character Harry Dresden has an ad in the phone book as professional wizard, but the general public just doesn't believe in magic, and all sorts of weirdness simply gets explained away. It goes much deeper than that, but for a comparison, that's all you need to know.
Also-also, just as a reminder to myself: there's nothing wrong or bad about readers figuring things out beforehand; it means the breadcrumbs have been laid correctly, not that I need to create convolutions and ass-pulls. It's not really railroading if events play out as planned and expected.
Rolls for NPC-s
Transparency is good
Not all that important
Despite automating a huge majority of it, rolling for the 31 first year disciples is a pretty big chore. Since I quite like numbers and the stories they can tell, it's not a drag for me, but it does take more than an hour to properly document everything. And because the roller program existed before things like techniques, aspects, or breaking through, I'm coming clean and admitting to it here. The AI doesn't struggle with breakthrough attempts - if they reach the numbers required, they're good to go. The ambitious rewrite of the program will see that fixed, but it hasn't happened yet.
Think of it as their answer to you having techniques. They don't (see lofty promises about a rewrite). The same holds for their house points. All wasted and gone like the wind
The second confession involves their actions once they finish guaranteeing their exam passes.
Each student starts with 2 subjects chosen either at random, or in some cases I picked one for them... I think. To be perfectly honest, I can't remember anymore. Pretty sure I did not pick more than one. The still remaining documentation of that process simply tells me which single subject they started with. So for example Neville was always going to have Herbology (char = person.Person("Neville Longbottom", specialty=["herbs"])) whereas someone completely unknown like Sue Li was initialized with (char = person.Person("Sue Li", specialty=[])).
Once they reach 900 or more points in Defense and History, and 750 points in their two assigned subjects, they're off the leash, so to speak, meaning they won't pick another subject until those goals are met, and then they're free to pick whatever. For the sake of completeness and testing, the electives are were also programmed to exist already. Those two facts combined means that the AI was able to select those electives, once free of the exam pressure. In other words, don't panic if at some point it becomes evident that Hermione technically had 274 points in arithmancy by the end of June.
The only character who was pre-rolled to make sure they'd pass was Daphne. Don't hold it against her, I take full responsibility. Her role as an initial plot hook hasn't hopefully been too heavy-handed, but I did want Rei to have some connection to the world at large, and I think it has added to the character overall. As such, I made sure that she'd finish with mostly mediocre stats by the end of June. She did, and as of the end of August, this is her entry: char = person.Person("Daphne Greengrass", specialty=['astronomy', 'herbs'], spirit=1639, phys=925, herbs=1081, potions=330, charms=0, transfig=372, astronomy=972, runes=0, arith=0, comc=308, divination=0). She's now a big girl and can make her own way, no pre-rolling necessary.
And a bit of a side-note. The only difference between you and Draco is that he started out with 75 points in spiritual cultivation (char = person.Person("Draco Malfoy", specialty=[], spirit=75)). I gave him a bit of an edge in case I needed an antagonist. I haven't really, and I'm glad for it. He's had a chance to raise above cartoonish villainy and his competence absolutely serves to create a more compelling story, but other than the aforementioned boost, it's been all him.
The difference between you and Harry? None, nada, zip. The little bugger clawed his way to the top all on his own, completely destroying my credibility in the process. Do I stick with the unbelievable truth or break my integrity for the sake of believability? I don't regret going with the former one bit, but it is equal parts hilarious and insufferable.
As a peek behind the scenes for how things look like on my end, this is his journey until Qi Condensation realm:
End of turn 6 ("Of potions and potion-master's students") - technically ready to break through (see above explanation regarding AI breakthrough): char = person.Person("Harry Potter", specialty=['transfig', 'astronomy'], spirit=1072, phys=1115, herbs=0, potions=0, charms=0, transfig=764, astronomy=239, runes=0, arith=0, comc=0, divination=0)
Balance
Base stats
Changes
I've mentioned the idea of base stats a few times. It's the set of numbers I use to determine what the size of the effect of any of your milestone rewards should be.
For year 1, everyone started at 0, so 3 actions, 3d20 in a pool, threshold 15, 0 bonus.
For year 2 stats, which I've been using to balance the impact of techniques since you broke through, every skill is considered to be at apprentice level, i.e. 5 x 7d24 t11 +50. At those numbers, Miss Anony Mouse with no techniques rolls about 4 successes per action, and makes around 410 progress per action spent, for a total of 2050-ish progress per turn. Any single technique/charm/etc. is roughly designed to bump the 410 progress per action to 420 progress per action.
Why do I bring this up? Because charms were the first test rabbits of the new system. The Rainbow Brush is significantly stronger, boosting you up to 435 progress per action. Unfortunately, there are very few conveniently adjustable features. The one thing that would bring it in line is somewhat clunky, but doesn't completely break the bank: the die it adds isn't your usual type, but smaller by 5. I.e. at the moment you have a d23, but dice gained from the Rainbow brush would be d18-s. It still remains quite a bit stronger than the average like that, but I like the charm, and so does Rei, so it can stay strong.
On to the good news: the Little Towel That Could brings your average from 410 to 415. That's slightly below par, and the fix is simple. Instead of increasing earth pool die by 1, it does so by 2! Problem solved.
The detailed changes will go into effect at the end of September, so this coming turn is unaffected, but the next will have the new mods. As has become pretty clear, I've covered most of the issues I wished to document, and the last bits are mostly rambling and details I simply find amusing enough to maybe be worth sharing.
Given the base stats detailed above, each modification gives a boost of about 10. Most give a little more, so lets be extremely generous and call it a boost of 15 per action. Any bets on how Rei does with those base stats and her current techniques? Using her 2 meridians, Rex's base effect and spring ball II, and an average of your rune thrown in for good measure. 5x15 for an increase of 75 points?
She gains an extra average success per action, i.e. about 5, and makes about 550 progress per action. Per turn, she goes from 2050 to 2752. While the rune is truly a best guess estimate at best, the rest is rigorous simulation. Without counting the rune, she's still at 2656 progress per month.
Note that the above stats are a smidge higher than your actual current skills. Your real averages depend on which skills you pick as the threshold fluctuates.
This played some role in determining how your year 2 numbers-to-reach looked like, but the simulation there was a bit more detailed. Each instance of a character rolling started with their three chosen skills (because year 2 requires 3 intermediate skills) at 750 and the rest at 0 (cultivation at 900). Those would be the top two graphs of the below picture. Two, because I wanted to have repeat series.
The bottom two graphs are what happens when electives are still at 0, but the rest of the skills are all at 750.
I think the humps are correct. Clearly, there are some winning and some losing combinations of skills. On the other hand, I fear that there could just be a bug in my program, because I've at some point also saved this graph (you can tell that this is older because prospective year 2 students could have their chosen skills at the 2nd milestone).
That seems more in line with what I used to analyze the first year requirements. Unfortunately this was significantly before publishing, so I don't remember what the difference between top and bottom is. Could just be repeated series.
And lastly, if you've stuck around for this long, have a sneak peek at the approximate plans for year 3 with the same starting conditions, but going for 2 years (so starting where we are now) and access to electives. Subject to change, not including techniques, jadda-jadda. The vertical line is at 128 300.
Wow, that post was certainly a lot to chew through, but it was fascinating catching a glimpse behind the curtain. I have some Thoughts that I'm going to share, despite being pretty unqualified by dint of the fact I only discovered this quest recently (discovered/got current inbetween the two halves of Gilded Days), and have only posted in the thread since the most recent chapter. Anyways, here we go.
Of course, I remain open to alternative suggestions and ideas. The d20 is a classic for a reason, and maybe this is a case of the cure being worse than the disease, i.e. just having less and less frequent threshold reductions is fine?
For me at least, I'm perfectly fine with the frequency of threshold reductions drastically decreasing, with more of the relative power of each branch of study being put into their unique benefits rather than generic reductions in check difficulty. Honestly, it also makes sense to me - if you're taking what you've learned in one subject to make another easier to study, most of those benefits are going to come relatively early in your course of study.
There's a very large qualitative difference between knowing nothing and knowing even a little about a subject compared to knowing a lot, and knowing a ton. Mastery of a skill being more about refining and powering up the unique stuff that skill does, rather than being about making learing other skills easier seems on-point for flavor, and has the benefits of not having to re-do the dice, as well as keeping nice low digestible numbers.
On the one hand, perhaps it's time well spent. If people derive enjoyment from the process of choosing itself, then it doesn't matter that two of the three effects are never applied. They've already served their purpose.
Introducing (not really, yet) the training aide table. A collection of publicly visible traits which form the basis of potential benefits granted by a single house point.
Taking this with a grain of salt, since I haven't yet been in the trenches voting on a boon personally, but I'm personally against boons being generated by random roll on a table. I don't like the innate variance this introduces for such a precious commodity, since I fear that it'll just lead to spending points feeling bad. Either your rolls are shit/average and you're unhappy because you didn't get one of the broken combos, or you do have a broken combo and then you feel like you're being 'forced' to take it due to being so much better, or they're all broken and there's annoyance about why all your good luck had to come at once, rather than being better spread out. Especially now that I know that you're doing so much number-crunching behind the scenes to make sure stuff's balanced, it feels freeing to be able to potentially vote for flavor, rather than pure mechanical optimization.
However, I wouldn't be too upset if not every single boon is perfectly mathematically equal. Certain boons just being flat-out better depending on our character build I could see working - being rewarded for specializing in a certain school of magic is cool, and it makes sense that a boon wouldn't be equally useful to all wizards. However, this introduces the same problems as above of having only one 'correct' boon choice. Maybe when trying to scale boons to be more powerful, they're more powerful because they synergize with our build, versus just being generic power-ups? That's a lot more work on your part however, for questionable gain.
Definitely a thorny problem to be sure. If I had to choose though, I'd go for continuing the boons as-is, with them being relatively balanced rather than decided by random roll.
Rei has so far been perfectly capable of crafting her potions, because you chose to pursue that route first. In-universe, that means that the characters must know that it's viable to do so, therefore ingredients aren't hard to get a hold of. How that meshes with... oh, say, Herbology is an issue I suspect I'll need to tackle very soon.
Honestly, I always figured Herbology was the difference betwen having to work with cheapest techincally functional ingredients versus going out and actually getting the good high-quality stuff, potentially allowing for modification or enhancement of potion effects. We have free access to the bare minimum of quality to make a standard potion, anything more we're on our own for.
I thought of it like the difference between using McCormick vanilla extract and hand-picked imported Madagascan vanilla beans when baking. They techincally fufill the same role in a recipe, but one works a lot better than the other, and is correspondingly harder/more expensive to acquire. How exactly numbers-wise these effects would work, if far, far beyond me. In the great words of Dael Kingsmill, I deal in vague and evocative only.
It's also definitely a place for feedback: do you feel like the element-roll system is a net positive? Has/does it prevent(ed) you from engaging with the quest, from making plans?
It's definitely a cool bit of flavor, but for me at least it's made it nearly impossible to personally have any real grasp on the actual impact of a lot of the choices made in the quest. The double layer of both the elements of dice being random, and the often really specific conditions that need to be met is just beyond my personal ability to effectively evaluate, or even right some sort of script to evaluate (but I'm a pretty shit coder).
I think if the elements of the dice were more fixed, like 'Charms, as a discipline of Creation is Wood-alinged, and thus half/three-quarters/whatever of all dice rolled for it are Wood dice, with the rest random' could've made evaluations easier, and by associating activities with element, would allow for greater specialization in activities of interest as we picked up bonuses for the elements of activities we were interested in. This could also be resolved without retcons by maybe by finding a way to better fix the elements of our dice (Astronomy, as per me earlier pet theory?).
It also might be easier if instead of fixing the elements of our dice, the ways our Techniques added/modified our results were more straightforward i.e. something along the lines of 'A quarter of the value of all wood dice is added again as progress' might be easier to grasp. As it is, the situations are so specific that combined with the random elemental affinities of the dice, I just have no good sense of how often any particular bonus's condition will be met. So while the bonus is straightforward enough, I have no idea how often that bonus is going to be applied. Is it something that's likely to occur ever 10 rolls? Every 100? Ever other roll? I just have no sense of how relavent any upgrade will be. Simplifying the technique bonuses does lose some of that mystic/convoluted technique of Ultimate Power vibe Xiaxia often has, though. From a flavor level, I kinda like all the bonuses just being super weird. Makes it impossible for me to actually evaluate their worth, but great flavor.
For a sense of the level of complexity that really worked for me, I really liked the most recent divination bonuses, especially that one about swapping the digits of the rolls. It was weird, out there and evocative, without being impossible to grasp. I may not have an intuition about how exactly it'll affect the average expected value of a divination roll, but I can at least feel like I know/can expect how it's going to alter the results.
I will say though, that when catching up on the quest there was a distinct shift of me thinking about what the best option might be/what I'd pick, to just reading each for flavor and thinking about where it would take Rei's character, completely disregarding what it actually does on a mechanical level. Going forward, I can't really see that changing, either relying on the thread to figure out what the 'real'/statiscally average value of each bonus would actually be, or just voting based on flavor alone. So while it doesn't really impact my overall engagement, it does impact my ability to feel like any votes I cast will be based upon anything concrete at all.
I mean, is this in any way surprising? She obviously just picked up a couple DiffEq+thermodynamics textbooks over the summer for a spot of light reading. Honestly, I wouldn't have blinked at Hermoine just being Like That.
I mean, while the little bugger being interested in Transfiguration fits for lore reasons, it also made sure he'd be focusing on gaining proficiency in what we've all discovered to be basically the mathemematically most OP class. It's no wonder his progress spiked all of a sudden - he started getting all those juicy Transfiguration bonuses. Our progress spiked in a similar fashion once we got a couple levels of Transfiguration under our belts. Entirely on the dice however was him also landing one of the subjects that lowered the success thresholds for a core subject. That the subject also was the one for more pool dice, meaning more successes, meaning more Transfiguration bonuses was just icing on the cake. And of course, can't discount that his dice were on fire the entire year as well. That certainly helps things along, just a little.
Whew, that was certainly a bit of a long-winded response, but I hope the feedback is helpful, even if it's from someone who hasn't been around for very long at all!
The difference between you and Harry? None, nada, zip. The little bugger clawed his way to the top all on his own, completely destroying my credibility in the process. Do I stick with the unbelievable truth or break my integrity for the sake of believability? I don't regret going with the former one bit, but it is equal parts hilarious and insufferable.
Honestly? Whilst I was definitely assuming that you were giving him bonuses out the wazoo, him having done it himself by pure luck just makes everything better.
He really is the Child of Prophecy, and the Dark Lord's Equal
The only character who was pre-rolled to make sure they'd pass was Daphne. Don't hold it against her, I take full responsibility. Her role as an initial plot hook hasn't hopefully been too heavy-handed, but I did want Rei to have some connection to the world at large, and I think it has added to the character overall. As such, I made sure that she'd finish with mostly mediocre stats by the end of June. She did, and as of the end of August, this is her entry:char = person.Person("Daphne Greengrass", specialty=['astronomy', 'herbs'], spirit=1639, phys=925, herbs=1081, potions=330, charms=0, transfig=372, astronomy=972, runes=0, arith=0, comc=308, divination=0). She's now a big girl and can make her own way, no pre-rolling necessary.
Something that should probably at some point come up in the story, but is hard to organically work in is the statute of secrecy and under-age magic use. You may have noticed that Rei does magic all the time - there is no under-age magic use laws, hence why it's hard to bring up in-universe in a natural manner. "Hey, you know that thing we don't have? Isn't it nice that we don't have that thing, unlike if we had that thing.
This is something I've noticed is a staple of your writing, and something I've been trying to emulate for my personal creative writing. You're excellent at showing, rather than telling, what the contrasts with RL or canon are.
It's also definitely a place for feedback: do you feel like the element-roll system is a net positive? Has/does it prevent(ed) you from engaging with the quest, from making plans? To be fair, if you're actually reading this post, chances are you're pretty darn engaged, so this might not be the most representative of samples, but still.
Ok, so my thoughts on the elemental aspects are kinda mixed. On one hand l really like the idea of it, but the randomness is really off putting and makes it really hard for me to get my head around. At the moment it just feels like complexity for complexity's sake because we don't have a way to influence it.
If we had a way to influence what the elemental aspects of pool/result dice are I think it would add a lot to the system as it would let us try to create more synergistic Technique/Charm combos. I have a couple of suggestions for how this could be done:
1) Instead of being random chance have the probabilities for which elements end up in our dice be determined by our meridians. Say we have 10 meridians and have slotted 5 fire aspect, 2 wood, 2 metal and 1 water things into our meridians then we'd have a 50% chance of rolling a fire aspect dice, 20% for wood and metal, 10% for water and 0% for Earth.
1a) You could count compound elements like life as either it's own thing or as a point for both of the constituent elements.
1b) this is potentially unbalanced at low meridian numbers, so you could maybe have it kick in at the 10 meridians required for passing second year.
2) have the results dice aspect be the same as the pool die aspect that spawned it, this lets us play games with Charms to help pick results pool aspects for our transfigurations
Last, but certainly not least is the idea that some system could exist for you to purchase access to techniques (aka the library threadmark). I enjoyed the jade chit system, not even so much the way they work in-universe, but as a means to make sure you can pick up that one potion/charm/skill that you just don't want to spend training actions on right this moment. That said, I have no idea how I'd go about balancing something like that.
I really like this idea - and honestly would be down for moving towards it for the whole of the points system. My suggestion would be to pick a cost that feels fair, for example if you assume that a point is worth 300 progress. Well a level in a skill at Apprentice is ~1.125k progress, so scaling a little to make it a choice between long term and short term benefits, maybe have it cost 5 Sect points (so, at 1.5k progress it would cost a little more than a skill level). If you feel that is still too cheap, well 7 is a magical number.
You'll have stacked the deck in your favor, laid out a killer strategy and all that's left is to hope the dice don't give you the middle finger on 1% odds. I think something like that could be a pretty darn cool quest, but as it turns out, it's not this one. And that's fine
We could still potentially do this, though without the cutthroat nature of classic Xianxia duels (and potentially without the gambling). Lockhart canonically created a duelling club in second year after all - and he's exactly the sort of wet blanket to hand out points to people who win their duels. It could be a neat side event that happens a couple of times a year, like quidditch is.
And of course, there is the very real possibility that I'm making mountains out of molehills and transfig being the strongest option is perfectly fine. I do my best to remind myself that this is creative writing, not competitive writing. It doesn't have to be perfectly balanced
Ok, so the first thing to say is that I'm obviously biased here - as a reader I like having overpowered skills. But I don't think it's an issue from either a meta or in universe perspective that Transfiguration is overpowered.
From a meta perspective, I'd agree that it would be an issue if people didn't like Transfiguration, but were picking it because it's overpowered. But that's not actually the case. People like transfiguration anyway because it's cool and evocative and magical, and it's made even better by how strong it is mechanically. For example, with our Chit votes the first thing we took was a transfiguration technique - the only other thing that got support was a familiar upgrade and we've been obsessing about having a familiar since the start of first year.
From an in universe perspective, it feels fitting that Transfiguration is a bit overpowered in comparison to the other skills when I think about what the equivalent is in both Harry Potter and Xianxia. From a Harry Potter perspective Transfig is a stand in for all casting, which is basically the core form of magic in the setting. From a Xianxia standpoint it's our Arts, which again is the core of any Xianxia. It's to your massive credit that you've created so many interesting forms of magic, but it does feel fitting that Transfig edges the others out (but not to the degree where it's not worth investing in the others, given how the costs between realms step up exponentially).
Overall, I really like Transfig and would keep it as is, but if you feel like you need to nerf it slightly for balance reasons I'd understand. It won't get less cool and evocative after all.
So, hypothetically, if the base pool die became a d50, with a starting threshold of 40, we should be golden (pending a buff to charms in that case, as a +1 to the die type becomes comparatively weaker). Not everything needs to scale infinitely. This quest is meant to be finished, rather than simply get abandoned as my interest wanes.
Of course, I remain open to alternative suggestions and ideas. The d20 is a classic for a reason, and maybe this is a case of the cure being worse than the disease, i.e. just having less and less frequent threshold reductions is fine?
Either of these paths looks fine to me, although I'd lean more towards the first, because more rewards always feel better (even if/knowing that we'd technically be better off with the system that has less frequent rewards).
Alternatively, lets call it option 2-b, the scaling could be a simple flat amount. Going from +10 per level to +5 per level would more or less bring it in line with the other skills. It'd still be just a smidge stronger, but honestly not by more than a percent or so. However, this would force me to very carefully pick the right spot for making the change and adjusting the end-of-year goal numbers accordingly. Which in turn means adjusting the milestones, and then figuring out how to handle things if that adjustment triggers you gaining one, etc.
And of course, there is the very real possibility that I'm making mountains out of molehills and transfig being the strongest option is perfectly fine. I do my best to remind myself that this is creative writing, not competitive writing. It doesn't have to be perfectly balanced.
Ditto here: either of these would be fine by me, though I'd once again give the edge to the first. I prefer a more balanced system, if and when the balancing is relatively easy to do (which is not something I can properly evaluate myself).
Introducing (not really, yet) the training aide table. A collection of publicly visible traits which form the basis of potential benefits granted by a single house point. Buying a boon means rolling a die per point, and building up a collection of benefits that the artefact you choose gives you. Repeat three times, come up with something that at least tries to match the situation and benefits by yours truly, and voila, boons generated. One option significantly better than the others because of synergies? Not my fault, blame the dice. No good choices? Them's the breaks. All good choices? Behold my genius design at work.
Want to dump 10 points at a time? Go right ahead, you'll have a rough idea of what you're getting, the mystery box expectation element is neatly eliminated, and so is the pressure on me to deliver a bombastic reward.
I'm not too sure about this. I don't like the idea of getting three wildly different options in terms of quality, because that would make the most optimal choice obvious, at which point, it's gonna be hard for me not to vote for it regardless of everything else. And if I understand this system correctly the way you've explained it, that's basically what could happen all the time. But if all items in this table are pretty balanced among themselves and the only qualitative differences would come up when mixing them together (so on multiple sect point expenditures), then maybe it will not be so bad? I guess it all comes down to the kind of traits/benefits available and their synergies.
Or alternatively, as long as these traits/benefits are vague enough to allow it, you could still have a table with more or less wildly varying quality, but you'd only roll once on it (Edit - Once per sect point), with all the resulting boon options being virtually balanced interpretations of whatever you get. That's probably more restrictive and harder to set up, but it might be another mean to solve the problem of expectations/delivery without affecting Boon Votes in (what I perceive to be) a bad way.
Rereading the whole section about this, though, I don't know if I understand what exactly your system does and how it works, and once again, a lot depends on the kind of traits/benefits in this table.
Circling back to the idea of double dipping 90+ social rolls for a moment. The more I look at it the more I want it gone. It might happen for some actions that you'd get to choose not to pursue a plot, and involve an elder instead, netting you a point and little else. For example think of the ice-fishing incident. A 90+ would still see you fish up a strange lake spirit, but in that instance, Rei decided that she had enough on her plate already, and rather than devote more effort to studying her catch, fobbed it off on Elder Kettleburn. In return, he'd give her a point and she could go on with her life. Alternatively, she could stick it in her cauldron for the time being and spend some time from the next month studying up with Mandy. Or, she could assume it works like a magical goldfish and let it go, only to receive a tiny golden egg wrapped in a slimy patch of seaweed that whispers horrible screams in your ear when you open it above water.
This would mean that your points come from progression rewards and quidditch first and foremost. Which... is already mostly the case.
Couldn't you replace "points" with "social rolls of 90+", maybe, and make it so that getting them would give us an additional social action for next turn? Or something along those lines.
It's also definitely a place for feedback: do you feel like the element-roll system is a net positive? Has/does it prevent(ed) you from engaging with the quest, from making plans? To be fair, if you're actually reading this post, chances are you're pretty darn engaged, so this might not be the most representative of samples, but still.
I will say though, that when catching up on the quest there was a distinct shift of me thinking about what the best option might be/what I'd pick, to just reading each for flavor and thinking about where it would take Rei's character, completely disregarding what it actually does on a mechanical level.
Ditto, but I'm a fan of this. Knowing there are numbers in the background and having the thread not able to concretely nail down how big an impact something will have is a positive to me. A little bit of unknown is healthy for a quest. I wouldn't want every choice we have to require a crazy calculation to ballpark but it seems @Karf is doing a great job of mixing personal actions (+quest chain unlocks), relatively straightforward boosts (classes), and complex result interactions (technique, charms, etc.).
As far as the thresholds go I had kind of assumed that as we got to higher levels of different subject mastery the thresholds would creep back up (+2 or +3 maybe) and each student had like 1-2 subjects they showed talent (~ -1 from the boosted check in that category). That way we were dealing with needing to pass harder checks but we'd get more chances to pass them and when we did we'd see more progress per success. Earlier stuff would become extremely easy with our advanced senses, mind, and body. Not surprising at all that the real system is much more complex, all the work on the back end to support the writing seems to be tremendous and growing so I'm glad some of it is automated.
Since the cultivation plan seems locked in. I'm also not seeing a social that I'd feel needs the boost from divination. Maybe I'll grok it in a few threadmarks
[X][Social] Although you managed to solve your own issues with the muggle world, you feel it would be a good idea to check in with the other members of Justin's group of muggleborn disciples.
[X][Social] You remember your promises, and a Colin Creevey was in fact sorted to Gryffindor. Find him once he's had a few days to find his footing and make good on your deal.
[X][Social] Ravenclaw tower is freshly host to a new batch of first-year disciples. While the second year students in your own time mostly kept to themselves, there's no rule against being friendly. Who knows who you could meet.
Instead, you find in your mind a rather dry series of instructions and Qi-speak that would best communicate to mossballs the natural expansion of their encompassment abilities. You decide you like your name more, but what you can't deny is their effectiveness.
I was wondering why the Care names were so different - turns out it's because Rei was naming them herself. I agree Rei, your name is definitely better. Why would you want to learn Encompassment Expansion when you can learn Natural Springy Ball II!
In scant days Rex goes from being kind of soft at times to literally being able to support your weight on a single strand of fiber. Punches and kicks - once you've made sure he understands that this is only for training and only so long as he's okay with it - come to a steady halt, as if you were striking into gradually denser and denser liquid. Although your falling tests are nowhere near as thorough, you can't imagine why the same principles wouldn't hold up.
The other notable effect from your sessions is rather more strange, at least for you. Normally the little guy is still somewhere between the size of your fist or palm, depending on how puffy he's feeling, but when he wants to be bigger, he just... is. Rex can stretch out to nearly your whole height, if not quite your volume in size, without the moss part of him looking at all taut or spread thin.
With just how light and... elastic Rex can be, you do some research on the proliferation of mosses. It turns out that spores that get carried on the wind are absolutely a thing for most species, and athelas is no exception. If the symbolic link exists, and the physical capabilities seem present, perhaps your familiar can go so far as to slow himself down mid-fall, rather than on impact. Vague ideas are starting to take root in your head of moving around on a floating pillow of luxurious greenery.For every even wood aspect die (pool or result), add 4 to all result dice of the next action as bonus.
To the untrained eye, the resulting cavalcade of color could be interchangeable between your old and new approaches, but a closer examination lends credence to your initial observations. It's easier to cycle from color to color with water, to shift the light you create from one wavelength to the next, and actually a bit taxing to keep it as a steady light. Wood on the other hand has a feel to it. A warmth, although not a physical heat, or perhaps a presence to the colors that make you firmly believe that the football you conjure up is actually truly real, despite your knowing full well to the opposite. If anything, it's your third eye that's the most fooled, insofar as it can be fooled at all.
This reads as a straight upgrade to Chroma Caller for illusions (and art). Reading the description makes me feel like we're not doing enough with our illusions for combat/quidditch. If we can create a realistic illusion of a football what else can we create an illusion of?
Again, thankfully the math behind it comes to your rescue. Although there's much more work to be done, once you're finished, having truly worked through the process gives you a better grounding to understand. If metal acts as the tool which cuts, then earth is the force that can't be stopped by something as mundane as physical barriers. Rather than have a clean slice, when you push on the earth aspect, the cuts are almost ground away from the target material. Your speed suffers tremendously, anything thicker than paper taking noticeably longer to split apart, but whereas the metal natured cutter, if it cannot cut something, dissipates with little evidence to show for your efforts, the earthen version does not care.
This, in turn, reads as more of a diagonal upgrade. It's not so much a 'cut more' but rather 'cut with more force behind it'. It'll give Daphne a hell of an unpleasant surprise the next time we duel her though.
Seeing these combos makes me wonder. @Karf, some arithmancy questions if you're prepared to answer:
1) Is Water/Wood different to Wood/Water? I.e. does it matter which element we start with?
2) I assume we can't stack elements, right? So no Fire/Fire making Sun Qi or something
3) With the 3 element Qis do all the Qis have to be unique - so could be use Wood/Water/Wood (adding a further Wood to life qi), for example?
4) If 3 elemental combinations exist, do 4 and 5 elemental combinations also exist?
If the answer to the first two of those is 'no' then we have 10 different forms of 2 element Qi, of which we know 3:
Fire/Metal - Heaven
Wood/Water - Life
Metal/Earth - Mountain
What are people's guesses for the rest? I've included my best guesses below:
Fire/Water - ???
Fire/Wood - Death
Fire/Earth - ???
Water/Earth - Lake
Water/Metal - Lightning
Metal/Wood - Poison
Earth/Wood - ???
What are people's guesses for the rest? I've included my best guesses below:
Fire/Water - ???
Fire/Wood - Death
Fire/Earth - ???
Water/Earth - Lake
Water/Metal - Lightning
Metal/Wood - Poison
Earth/Wood - ???
Taking a stab at it, for Fire/Water making Steam seems logical to me, likewise Fire/Earth making Lava. Earth/Wood, Forest maybe? I'm a lot less sure about that one. However, I suspect that there's more than just these ten combinations.
It's been hinted at during the Ancient Runes segments that the next breakthrough will allow for the perception of Qi's polarity (yin vs yang), like our first breakthrough allowed us to percieve Qi's elemental alignment. Given this, I find it plausible that combinations would also vary based on the polarity of their inputs, giving a total of 45 two element/polarity combinations, and 120 three element/polarity combos, a possibility space large enough that I doubt that we'd run into the limits within the scope of this quest.
165 feels a bit large for this quest. Karf is normally careful to keep stuff achievable for us, and we only have 40 upgrades for arithmancy (assuming we don't use chits on it).
If we assume that there's no elemental polarity then and that you can't double up on elements you end up with 10 double elemental combinations, and 10 triple elemental combinations. Which gives us 20 total, so space for us to identify all the combinations and pick the ones we like to use.
Alternatively if you assume something is either Yin or Yang polarity (and presumably we've mostly been messing around with Yang up till now), but that you can't mix Yin and Yang aspected elements together, you get a neat 40 options - the number of upgrades we get in arithmancy.
Of course, I remain open to alternative suggestions and ideas. The d20 is a classic for a reason, and maybe this is a case of the cure being worse than the disease, i.e. just having less and less frequent threshold reductions is fine?
Less frequent reductions seems fine to me. It tracks that more milestones need to be reached to get each successive reduction, considering each has a correspondingly greater impact on our chance of success.
Alternatively, lets call it option 2-b, the scaling could be a simple flat amount. Going from +10 per level to +5 per level would more or less bring it in line with the other skills. It'd still be just a smidge stronger, but honestly not by more than a percent or so. However, this would force me to very carefully pick the right spot for making the change and adjusting the end-of-year goal numbers accordingly. Which in turn means adjusting the milestones, and then figuring out how to handle things if that adjustment triggers you gaining one, etc.
I wouldn't mind a reduction to +5 per milestone. Obviously if the amount of work is too much then just keep it as is, but we're also getting the technique bonus as well (once we have the meridians) so speed wise it's not as bad a reduction for us, though our peers are likely affected more if they aren't modelled with techniques.
The counterpoints are that from a writing perspective, single-action-type plans make for a more cohesive narrative and a shorter update that can be finished much, much faster. Then the fact that there's an aversion to overshooting a target too massively, which means taking some risks. Also, being a bit spread out makes you more future proof, rather than going all in on one subject at a time.
One problem I've noticed will happen with monofocusing a skill is that if we get multiple milestones, we end up needing multiple updates worth of votes if we want to vote on each technique/charm/whatever one at a time. It's up to you whether you want to do that, but I know below it sounded like you wanted to keep it to two updates per turn. If we vote for a technique to start with at the beginning of the turn that gives 2 we can vote for with that setup, but any more milestones than that and it gets iffy. It's not so much a concern with stuff like Transfiguration at this point (it needs too much progress for us to get that high without severely stacking the deck), but Astronomy and Herbology will both either need multiple milestone votes in one update or multiple updates to account for everything we get.
In some cases the former can work (like for Divination and Arithmancy this turn just gone), and I could see it for Charms, but stuff like Transfiguration we kind of need to see what gets unlocked before deciding what to go for next. You'd know better than us whether Herbs/Astro are more the former or the latter.
The third point covers the double-dipping of rolling high on a social action. The recent bank scene is a good example of the original intent. Rei wasn't meant to be fabulously wealthy. In fact, you might notice that she's rather the opposite; careful with money and frugal in her dealings. Thanks to a high roll however, she now learns that she has quite a bit more means than she really knows what to do with. In the writing world, I'd call that an opportunity for character growth. Just like that, we have a slow-burn side plot, spiced up by the dubious origin of her wealth, and a deus-ex-machina justification should it ever prove necessary to have some ancient spirit appear and dump some exposition because he's late on his interest payments.
I'm on board with 90+ rolls no longer giving actual points. Either a particularly bonding experience with the friend in question, or the equivalent of a one point boon should be fine. An actual point feels a bit generic, compared to the former two which can be personalised to whatever the social action in question was actually covering.
Last, but certainly not least is the idea that some system could exist for you to purchase access to techniques (aka the library threadmark). I enjoyed the jade chit system, not even so much the way they work in-universe, but as a means to make sure you can pick up that one potion/charm/skill that you just don't want to spend training actions on right this moment. That said, I have no idea how I'd go about balancing something like that. Been drawing a blank on it for a few weeks now, in fact, so I'll put a pin in it as something to return to for sure, but not currently part of the immediate plans.
This could work as well. No idea on the conversion rate, you'd know better than us what a good one would be, but the ability to get new abilities and techniques outside our normal skill limit that isn't reliant on winning the House Cup would definitely be neat.
I think the social system is fine as is, any actual mechanics beyond the limited amount that's already there would just make it clunky.
I'd say you've been doing a decent job so far of having Rei interact with others outside strict social actions, though I feel like there could be a bit more? I know Susan and Hannah basically didn't appear in the narrative after the first Quidditch match, which admittedly may have just been because we never picked their social actions.
There was a brief period where I considered simply removing the summer holidays. Like during the winter break, Rei'd visit London for a social action's worth of time, then return to Hogwarts. But that would probably bring with it its own confusion and questions. Having actually gone through one summer, I think it got handled quite well and with precedent set, there's no need to make major changes.
I like the summer holidays. It gives Rei a reason to actually spend time in places other than Hogwarts, for one, and as far as I can tell it should do a decent job slowing her down a bit to match the pace of everyone else who a) don't have techniques and b) aren't being min-maxed by questers (even if we do win the Cup).
I do feel like winning the House Cup should benefit everyone in the House who's not us though. As is if none of them are affected by the low Qi outside of Hogwarts during summer (mechanically speaking), and with techniques not being explicitly tracked AFAICT, the main thing left is giving them the option to train electives, which admittedly isn't nothing, but I still feel like it should help with their normal cultivation in some way?
It's also definitely a place for feedback: do you feel like the element-roll system is a net positive? Has/does it prevent(ed) you from engaging with the quest, from making plans? To be fair, if you're actually reading this post, chances are you're pretty darn engaged, so this might not be the most representative of samples, but still.
I think the element system is very cool, but it makes it hideous for anyone without knowledge of programming to actually calc it out. I think it should be kept, but it does make it harder for newcomers even to just eyeball what looks good.
I'd be a hypocrite if I said just picking what makes the most narrative sense/whatever you just like best was bad, but it does create a disconnect between those who're picking for one or the other, which I'm not sure you intended?
So, in an ideal world, a chapter (turn) is composed of ~2-3k words for training and progression (unless we're dealing with more significant milestones, which may require more exposition or philosophy), around 1-1.5k per non-crucial social (and they can't all be crucial) and up to 2.5k for more developed ones. So on average, something like 6-9k words per chapter (given current action counts), split in two parts. Hopefully those numbers sound reasonable to you, and set some expectations. And hopefully I'll be able to stick to them.
I don't mind longer or shorter turns, I'd lean towards whatever's easier for you, though as I mentioned above I am concerned about milestone selection in monofocused turns.
If the first year of Harry Potter very much has the characters happen to the plot, then the next year, the plot happens to the characters. Barring issues that are easily overlooked in a children's book, the Philosopher's Stone plot is fine to have running in the background. In this story, it remained there - there's no curfews, so Harry isn't afraid of Filch, the castle is literally infinite, so the odds of running into Fluffy beggar belief, no one jinxes Harry's broom, because there are no teachers, there are elders who's job isn't strictly to teach, but to safeguard and know things. Rei doesn't know what happened to Quirrel, and she has no reason to, either. Harry didn't get involved, because again, plot fine for a children's book, but not a text for which the average reading level is supposedly 11-12th grade. Different stories.
I had been thinking of bringing this up earlier, as it did feel a little odd that canon plotlines were appearing at all, considering how different the Xianxia-ness. Glad to see that was being taken into account, and it does help that Rei has her own plotlines and interest that she can look into.
I am wondering where you saw the quest ending? My impression of 1st year was that it was something of an extended tutorial, so my first guess would be ending at ascension/7th year, whichever comes first, but then considering you'd seemingly been putting actual effort into worldbuilding the fusion setting outside of Hogwarts I could see the potential in continuing after that?
We could still potentially do this, though without the cutthroat nature of classic Xianxia duels (and potentially without the gambling). Lockhart canonically created a duelling club in second year after all - and he's exactly the sort of wet blanket to hand out points to people who win their duels. It could be a neat side event that happens a couple of times a year, like quidditch is.
[X][Social] Lord Potter has decided to start the year off with a bang. You didn't see him at the start-of-year feast, but knowing full well that he made the cut, you were merely perplexed, not worried. Still, you were not the only one to take notice, and by the next morning, there were rumors abound of soul projections fighting the Whomping Willow to haunted monsters of steel and metal fleeing into the Forbidden Forest. You'd like to think that you have better chances than most to get the truth straight from the source.
[X][Social] You remember your promises, and a Colin Creevey was in fact sorted to Gryffindor. Find him once he's had a few days to find his footing and make good on your deal.
[X][Social] Ravenclaw tower is freshly host to a new batch of first-year disciples. While the second year students in your own time mostly kept to themselves, there's no rule against being friendly. Who knows who you could meet.
[X][Social] You remember your promises, and a Colin Creevey was in fact sorted to Gryffindor. Find him once he's had a few days to find his footing and make good on your deal.
[X][Social] Ravenclaw tower is freshly host to a new batch of first-year disciples. While the second year students in your own time mostly kept to themselves, there's no rule against being friendly. Who knows who you could meet.
[X][Social] Properly touch base with the members of your own house, see what they were up to over the summer and reestablish the erstwhile study group.
[X][Social] Although you managed to solve your own issues with the muggle world, you feel it would be a good idea to check in with the other members of Justin's group of muggleborn disciples.
[X][Social] Although neither of you has said so out loud, you're pretty sure you have not just one, but two members of your extended family in the house of Slytherin. Perhaps you could try to consolidate your on-again-off-again contact with Tracey and touch base with Daphne at the same time.
[X][Social] Quidditch season is not starting until November - or in other words, it's right around the corner. A mere mention of the idea of an early gathering would probably light a fire under Cho to get any organization taken care of, and you could see your teammates again.
[X][Social] Lord Potter has decided to start the year off with a bang. You didn't see him at the start-of-year feast, but knowing full well that he made the cut, you were merely perplexed, not worried. Still, you were not the only one to take notice, and by the next morning, there were rumors abound of soul projections fighting the Whomping Willow to haunted monsters of steel and metal fleeing into the Forbidden Forest. You'd like to think that you have better chances than most to get the truth straight from the source.
[X][Social] You have no patience to wait until you arrive at Hogwarts, you want to find out who made it through and who didn't. Give your best impression of a social butterfly and get a brief overview of where your peers stand - and which of them join you at all.
[X][Social] You're back at Hogwarts! The thought alone fills you with glee, and that replaces any fear you might have about getting lost in the twists and turns of the castle. You want to run deep inside and poke every brick just to see what would happen.
Afraid I'm not that nice. In something coming worryingly close to a trend, once again wasn't on hand for the time I set when the vote closes. May the dice speak.
Also, a huge thank you to anyone who's taken the time to provide me with feedback, it's absolutely invaluable and fills me with warmth.
I got the same count. That puts us as basically guaranteed to get the next milestone for transfiguration, 3 or 4 meridians, and before whip shear and familiar we have a 50% chance for the bonus action.
Also, it looks like the Ravenclaw study group is the winner among the tied options, and we got, and most certainly will keep, a 99 roll for our most voted social action in October.
Should the paintbrush activate twice here? 55 1 4 21 4 2
If green is the first activation, it adds the underlined 2, which creates another activation for the red numbers. It doesn't overlap, but the mechanics example in the Library doesn't specify if looping is acceptable.
It has never looped before, and it could have, multiple times, in the last two turns (ever since we've seen elements and stuff), so I've always assumed it just wasn't a feature of the Brush.
Should the paintbrush activate twice here? 55 1 4 21 4 2
If green is the first activation, it adds the underlined 2, which creates another activation for the red numbers. It doesn't overlap, but the mechanics example in the Library doesn't specify if looping is acceptable.
Should the paintbrush activate twice here? 55 1 4 21 4 2
If green is the first activation, it adds the underlined 2, which creates another activation for the red numbers. It doesn't overlap, but the mechanics example in the Library doesn't specify if looping is acceptable.
As has been pointed out, but absolutely an area where I should try to be more consistent, the default behavior is that things don't loop and I'll specify if they do. Easier for me that way. That said, it's entirely possible I've made conflicting statements in the past and if so, my apologies.
