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Humble Beginnings, a Cultivation Quest

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Blademaster said:
- [X] Grab the firelance and fire it at the leader.

this probably won't end the fight though, we probably some idea of what we do after we fire that shot. @Ubiquitouch can we write in a short plan for what we do once we fire?
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you need proper formatting of your vote
[X] Assist the cultivators, they'll be overrun before the guards can arrive.
- [X] Grab the firelance and fire it at the leader.
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like this, else it won't count in a Block tally and will show weird results in a normal tally.

[X] Run away - you have no business getting involved in this fight, and guards will arrive soon anyway.
-[X] Just focus on getting to safety with Wen Jianyu.
 
[X] Run away - you have no business getting involved in this fight, and guards will arrive soon anyway.
-[X] Just focus on getting to safety with Wen Jianyu.
 
[X] Assist the cultivators, they'll be overrun before the guards can arrive.
- [X] Grab the firelance and fire it at the leader.
-[x]bolt into the alleys before they realize what happened

there are times to be cautious but here, what do we have to lose?
 
[X] Assist the cultivators, they'll be overrun before the guards can arrive.
- [X] Grab the firelance and fire it at the leader.

I'm flipping the vote last minute. Hope this goes well.
 
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  • Voting
    • Scheduled vote count started by Ubiquitouch on Dec 27, 2023 at 2:11 PM, finished with 53 posts and 32 votes.
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  • Voting
    • Ubiquitouch said:
    Alright then, could I please get a roll of 7d10? That's Dex (1)+Ranged Combat (1)+Firearms (1)+Overwhelm (4).
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    Hey QM, do you mind explaining what Overwhelm is?

    So that's 2 normal successes, and a critical success. Let's hope it's enough.
     
    Yatr said:
    Hey QM, do you mind explaining what Overwhelm is?
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    Unless you're looking for something more in depth, or perhaps from a narrative standpoint, the explanation is in the Mechanics informational. It's the amount of extra attacking dice that the weapon used provides. The default value for each type is in the weapon chart, but keep in mind that a 0-10 Quality Rating can improve it (as well as the Damage value), which was not the case this time (Firearms have Overwhelm 4 and that's the extra dice we got).
     
    Epic Bygones said:
    Unless you're looking for something more in depth, or perhaps from a narrative standpoint, the explanation is in the Mechanics informational. It's the amount of extra attacking dice that the weapon used provides. The default value for each type is in the weapon chart, but keep in mind that a 0-10 Quality Rating can improve it (as well as the Damage value), which was not the case this time (Firearms have Overwhelm 4 and that's the extra dice we got).
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    Cheers! I had a read but I missed that part somehow.

    Inb4 we just killed that sweet guy who gave us our first string of coins.
     
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    Hiatus/Possibly Cancelled
  • Informational
    • Hey all - I just wanted to give yall an update and apology. Personal life stuff has prevented me from working on this as much as I want.

    In addition to that, though, the more I considered the future of this quest, the more I've grown dissatisfied with the system as I've crafted it, and the somewhat nebulous nature of cultivation itself in this setting, and have come to the conclusion that I was too eager, and launched this quest way before it was ready.

    As such, I'm reworking the system pretty much wholecloth, and additionally laying out a far more in-depth look at what standard Cultivation looks like - I don't intend these 'standard' paths to be binding, but rather simply be the ground work that can be branched off from.

    Anyway, all this to say, sorry once again, but I am placing this quest on hiatus at the moment. It'll probably be a good while before I've finished all my reworks, as again my time to work on this stuff is now pretty limited, so I might actually just do an entire restart once it's ready. Either way, I wanted to give yall a heads up about this.
     
  • Informational
    • No worries QM! From one hopeful writer to another, beware the trap of perfectionism! Thanks for what we got :)
     
    Mechanics are hard, I don't think any of the longterm cultivation quests I've ever read have been able to stick to a single one for the whole story. Many game systems also seems to have the same issues (balance for multiple build types) and half of those are effectively on rails. Add in a quest format where consistent long term planning isn't usually possible and any system can easily end up too punishing or quickly exploited. With cultivation stories having such large power differentials almost anything purely mechanical seems like a near death sentence for the MC. Each stage seeming to make the previous stage fairly easy and now backfilling to cheese possible growth modifiers could be a threat.

    As a selfish person I'd recommend playtesting and letting folk break it, maybe speedrun style so you're not dumping a ton of time into writing or like riot quest format (if you're hiding all the math). Then you can see how it breaks so you've got a better idea where to spend your time on fixes (mechanical or using narrative).

    That being said definitely put your personal life stuff first. The stuff here is less urgent than texts :D. Whatever you decide thanks for the interesting bits we've seen so far, good luck with anything you choose to do, and hope the real world eases up for you.
     
    Mechanics are at least a solvable problem. If you write a few scripts (or ugh, a spreadsheet), you can automate that ... keeping user attention when complicated calculations are involved is an issue, but there's nothing that says you actually have to reveal the mechanics.

    The hard part is generating a balanced world (which especially is tricky for exponential-scaling systems like Xianxia) and filling it with sufficient people/objects/events. You can't simulate all of them but it's blatantly apparent when the people the MC encounters aren't fleshed out (okay, it's a classic trope for the MC to be an orphan, but it's a problem when everybody you meet doesn't have siblings, or has many uncles but there hasn't been an inheritance struggle, or ...)

    If you can get all the simulation worked out then running the quest is merely a Small Matter of Writing. (in case you can't tell, I've spent all my time working on simulations and never actually written a quest for real)
     
    That's valid and normal! My quest didn't get past, like, the first update, so you've already done better than I did. I wish you the best in your future endeavors, and look forward to any other cultivation quest you might someday attempt.
     
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    I wanna speak up in support of KarmA's comment. Of course day to day personal real life is the priority, but if you want to run A quest, I think it's a great idea to just stress test it by seeing how/if/where it breaks in play. As you can see from all these lovely comments from voters there's very little expectations of anything in particular, so you can feel free to run it as long as you like, even if the system isn't everything you want it to be. Gotta crawl before you can walk/run/etc. right?

    Anyway, no pressure at all obviously, just want to be an encouraging voice if that's helpful.
     
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