PSA: Looking for input on calibrating the 'fun / simulationism' spectrum
@eaglejarl @Velorien @Paperclipped
Just want to preface that I'm glad the dialogue has been opened. Kinda hopeful these kinds of exchanges can be a lil more frequent so we're not just unleashing a tidal wave of ideas accumulated over a big stretch of time
I think a lot of good points have been raised on both ends, but I haven't really seen too much of my own concerns raised just yet (I think, in part, because players do not want to drown everything out in the noise of a flood of random things). I also want to float some solutions of my own, so guess I'll do a writeup
. This is just some random scattershot stuff so sorry in advance for that. I'll break things up into 'Gameplay' and 'Narrative' since IMO different people care more about one of these or the other even if they appreciate both. And these aren't all necessarily criticisms, or even addressed solely at the QMs, just issues I have noticed with the machine as a whole.
Gameplay
Simulation Lag specifically for creating things for the players
Noumero brought this up partially already, but I just wanted to provide some other insight. As he said it's frankly just impossible to provide all of the things that should probably be available and I think we all sympathize with that. Even offloading some of the work to players only helps a little bit, as it means you still have to go through and vet the suggestions. However, I think rather than letting these issues build over literal years, QMs probably should've sounded the alarm far in advance, something like "Hey there should be X seals in here but there's frankly just too many to design." I am a supporter of workload minimization, and you will probably see that come up a few other times.
I would suggest, for similar future challenges, being up front about the high demand of something like Jiraiya's Hoard, suggesting some options for simplifying it, and asking players how they would like it to be represented. IMO being forthright about it is only going to be met with sympathy/understanding, not anger. Something like:
"The QMs would like to make Jiraiya's hoard available to you now that he's passed, but this is logistically challenging due to the sheer number of seals present. Therefore we offer the following options as ways to represent it mechanically while making things easier on ourselves. Let us know what you think:
- A: We will design only the seals Hazoupilot finds to be particularly useful. The others will be written off as something he already has a better/comparable version of.
- B: Here are some Sealing Stunts Hazou can spend time learning (representing him 'researching' the 'seals' that enable the stunts) and these will enable Research Bonuses, Battlefield Manuevers, skill bonuses, etc. depending on what flavor of seals they are representing. You could have a Sealing Stunt that gives a raw bonus to his Examination or enables Examination rolls where otherwise impossible, reflecting a suite of sensory seals or something, rather than designing 10 sensory seals. You can have a stunt that lets Hazou block certain types of rolls with Sealing instead of Ath, representing knowledge of various barrier seals. Perhaps a stunt where Hazou can roll Sealing against a fixed TN to see if he has a seal relevant to the situation at hand for a small bonus or ordinarily impossible roll. I think @Emstar was considering something similar to represent Kakashi having downloaded a plethora of ninjutsu that would be a major pain to spec for. Maybe these seals need to be infused on-the-spot if you don't want to worry about sharing the stunts with others.
- C: We will spec them out over time, but this means you will have to wait quite a while to get them all.
- D: You may add bonuses to other seal types representing 'improved' versions, a la your explosives are now TN 45 instead of 40.
- E: Some combination of these.
- F: Other suggestions?"
And let's just have a dialogue about this kind of stuff. I know that the QMs have a preference for only putting forward 'complete' stuff, but IMO this is actually what directly leads to some of what players receieve feeling undercooked. It's like the videos of the companies advertising unbreakable TVs where the customers walk up and immediately break them - sometimes stuff just needs feedback and a little more time in the oven. Players can't reasonably complain about not having X seal for a situation due to simulation lag if they're agreeing in advance that this might happen and being okay with it. I'm hoping the QMs will be willing to do this a bit more, and I'm hoping the players are willing to be patient about it.
Battle Workload
Admittedly, this point is hard to make when I don't know how you design fights on your end, so I could be spouting total BS right now
Making encounters frankly just sucks sometimes, and is sometimes one of the most time intensive parts of QMing/GMing. In FTD especially, if there's more than ~6 combatants it quickly becomes a major pain. I am encouraging the QMs to take shortcuts here, even 'low-res' ones. I say this because I have noticed occasional shortcuts regardless, but the type of shortcuts that lead to the encounters just not happening at all or being glossed over. This is a mindset I sympathize with, workload minimization just makes sense for something already so time consuming, but I think it's a shame to just gloss over a challenge rather than try to simplify it in some other way.
How might one take shortcuts when designing encounters? Here are just some scattershot ideas several of which I know are used already, but that I would like to see more of in lieu of skipping them or minimizing number of encounters in general:
- Don't bother fully statting out or building pyramids for most enemies, just worry about their primary 3 combat skills, Physique/Resolve, and anything the party can reasonably attack (so Deceit for Roki, for example.) Maybe one or two cool tricks. Don't even stat out the whole jutsu if you want! (So long as it's something players could also plausibly access given sufficient effort, and which isn't demonstrably worse for having been fully statted out.) Once you know what the relevant stats are they should be the same every encounter, so never need to worry about tuning stats that won't be used regardless.
- Use more TNs instead of stat vs. stat rolls. TNs are very easy to come up with off the cuff. "Yeah he shoots a fireball here's the TN. Yeah some rocks fall on you here's the TN." I think these admittedly less-simulationist off-the-cuff numbers are well suited to the less important fights, and the fact of the matter is most fights are not equally important. So long as the numbers are still based on some reasoning, it's cool with me personally. Ballparking chakra usage falls in a similar boat here for enemies. Just round up to an even 10 and save yourself the annoying math. You can always do more detailed fighting if it's an important battle or you just want to do it for fun, but don't fall in the trap of feeling like they all have to be. The outcomes of the fight can still matter even if they were lesser simmed (a la, did we achieve some secondary objective, how much chakra did we use, etc.)
- Don't have the whole party in the same 'encounter' space. The jounin are over there handling the jounin stuff in their own fight. Resolve that however you wish, run their fight separately, just do some basic dice rolls, hell just fiat who wins and how much damage/chakra use happened if you prefer. And Hazou/Kei/Nobs are over here on this side of the battlefield handling their level-appropriate guys. If you still want to include everyone you can maybe have occasional pop-ins from allies, like "1d3 where 1 is good, 2 is neutral, 3 is bad. Rolled a 1. Mari had a brief reprieve to hit one of your enemies with an illusion. They have a -5 for the next turn. Rolled a 2, a stray earthquake ninjutsu is hitting you and your opponents and you need to get to a safespot." Etc. I think this also helps prevent the jounin from solving every encounter for us. Staying near them is a bad idea if they're actively engaging their on-level threats, it just means Hazou is getting smushed by the stray hits. Minimizing number of combatants in the rolls also doesn't mean you can't still include the allies in the narrative. You can do whatever you want with it, really. I just think lowering combatant # in the rolls will save you a ton of grief without needing to ruin immersion.
Plot Hooks for Getting Hazou Involved in Adventures
The usual concern is 'why send Hazou if X person is way more relevant and better and more expendable?' My response to that would be to just literally contrive scenarios that require him. It's cool with me so long as it's plausible and it will lead to something that both QMs and players will enjoy. Example - the spider showing up in Dog meaning Hazou himself needed to journey to Arachnid. This was dope and I think we pretty much all liked it. Did I stop and ask 'what are the odds this Arachnid showed up in Dog at this exact time?' No, because I didn't give a shit about that, I gave a shit about what the QMs were cooking up. Getting to Arachnid was kinda hard. Did this make me mad that we were 'forced' into it because it had to be Hazou himself going, even while he was extremely busy with other stuff? Not really, because it was fun, it was cool, it was plausible, and it made Hazou the relevant guy instead of an NPC going in his stead.
In that vein, here's a bunch of other ideas, a mix of Socials/Combat, that I've had for future arcs that necessitate his presence if you want to pull from them:
- Grandmaster F opened her mail. She wants to meet Hazou for tea, wherever the hell she is. She leaves it up to him to find her. And she wants to talk to him specifically, not whatever diplomats Leaf sends her way.
- There's an important noble/Clan Head in Sand/Mist/Waterfall/some Minor village that really resonates with Hazou's message and she's heard many things about him. This is huge inroads for Leaf to make closer ties with one of its allies/chance to make a new ally. She'd be very interested in meeting him. But Rock and Cloud will seek to undermine any diplomacy efforts.
- Another Sage-made 3D seal has been spotted in a dungeon somewhere, Hazou is needed to personally inspect it (and secure it from Leaf's enemies). But unfortunately the inquisitive discoverers have already activated the defenses.
- A major sealing failure has happened nearby. A jonin level sealmaster is needed to examine the failure and research a patch for it after personally inspecting the site of the failure - if they can reach it alive.
- Another 3D seal has been discovered on the 7th Path and some Clans want Hazou to investigate it. If the local clan gets out of the way, that is.
- The Dogs are getting attacked by more than just the leopards now. They'll need the offensive, logistics, scouting, and diplomatic support of the Summoner who can be across the path in an instant to avoid being overrun.
- There's another clan on the 7th Path that wants to personally meet the famed Dog Summoner and the dogs want the support of that clan for their war.
- Literally just some kind of lead about Akane's attackers. No way Hazou wouldn't join that mission.
- One of the three ANBU that witnessed EM nuke notify Hazou that Isan's survivors have a lead, and as he is one of the only people who knows about it he is one of the only people who can know about the mission, and go as the tracker.
- Jashin does more than speak to Hazou in dreams - he can send nightmare tests his way too, and if he fails, there are consequences for his real body.
- Hazou is suspicious that if he sends anyone but himself to recover certain Lore, they will ultimately choose not to share it. Or maybe it's literally unshareable if you don't witness it yourself, so he must go to see it firsthand.
- Hazou is afflicted by some kind of esoteric malady or curse and must personally visit a location with the cure.
- Hazou needs to personally explore the Rift because it requires Resolve 60+/Minatoseals/Iron Nerve/Out exposure/Jashin letting you enter the Rift at all/on-site rune infusion/TYS 10 or better/your body needs 3 years to adjust to its effects and no one else has ever entered/etc.
- Pulling people from the Afterlife has also caused other things to escape. The more people are rescued, the worse the problem gets. What's worse, only people with significant Out exposure seem to be able to see them at all. Hazou is one of the only combatants that can reasonably contribute.
- Really just anything else that interacts with Hazou's "Out-dar" in a similar vein to the above point.
- "We specifically need your tracking dogs" / "We specifically need someone who is already read in to our conspiracy and can't afford to loop in other people" / "We specifically need a jonin level sealmaster and the others aren't available or are already working to contain the thing" / "We specifically need someone with the iron nerve" / "We specifically need the creator of the Uplift philosophy to go get us some allies" / "We specifically need a runesmith"
"Okay, but why send Hazou
Prime instead of a Hazou Shadow Clone into the dungeon/dangerous thing?"
- The miasma was a good one. I think you could do something similar with like, acid mist, or even just an effect that disrupts chakra constructs as a whole (whether natural environment, monster power, seal based, etc), so SCs can only last a few minutes. Maybe connive a way to make it a SC roll so Snowflake can still go
. This 'genre' of obstacle has a lot of ways to play out, and if anywhere is going to have them it'll be the super dense chakra locations.
- Make the dangerous region larger than SC range. Much as we want to turtle up, it might not be practical to be sending out SCs and staying somewhere else, if prime is in equal danger to the SC.
- Souldrinkers. If Hazou is shaving off bits of soul by having his SCs eaten, he can't just send SCs or Summons risk free.
- Seal downloading/bloodline interactions. If we stumble across info that there's a rune or seal array of some kind affixed inside the dungeon, Prime has to go to download it.
- Summons calling him a bitch. Maybe they just say they won't go in unless prime comes along.
You can always try to have Snowflake guilt him about SC meatgrinder again
- Have a low-chakra region where you can't hold more than 150 chakra at a time and he can't afford to cast SC.
- Physiology difference. SCs mimic biology but are not biological. Maybe the chakra field of an area is really intense and it blinds chakra constructs so you need real, biological eyes to see properly. Maybe the air is really chakra spicy and it doesn't agree with construct lungs, but biological lungs can handle it. Maybe there's an esoteric blood door that requires you cut your hand on it to pass (stored blood doesn't count.)
- Voice in Prime's head. He was talking to the cave, maybe something similar could happen and the dungeon entity talks to prime only, necessitating that he be the one to enter for one reason or another.
- Jashin dream. If Jashin offers a boon for Hazou to not be a bitch (or threatens him with a Hidan visit for being a bitch) it could change the calculus.
- Drain effects. SCs don't regen chakra. If they try to explore a region where prime can only barely break even, they will run out of chakra and pop.
- Space warping and non Euclidean geometry. The jutsu only has a range of a couple miles. If the space gets weird chakra might get confused and think they're too far away, popping them.
- Authority manipulation. SCs have to do whatever their creator says, but what if a chakra dense region messed with this? What if other creatures could give them orders instead? Or they go haywire and act randomly?
- Mutation field. What if there were something a la Annihilation where your body was constantly exposed to tiny changes and fractures (that you could plausibly heal afterwards), but the changes are sufficient to pop SCs?
- Ninjutsu/molding disruption. What if there's a region that's dangerous because ninjutsu don't function at all? We've seen Noburi can already do this to some degree.
- The Ascent. Maybe upon approaching a certain region, prime is transported or otherwise trapped inside the dungeon and has to work his way back out rather than trying to get in?
- psychic creature that's stronger the more chakra based sentience is around
- some kinda voltron Sealing failure esque horror that can absorb chakra constructs into itself
- entity that can see out of everyone's eyes, the more clones etc you have out the more knowledge it gains
- light element dungeon, clearly the SCs kryptonite
- loot that must be consumed by prime direct from the source. Gotta eat the fruit off the vine, prime
- copycat monsters. If we use SC they start using SCs.
Also they can fly and teleport through barriers
- chakra Repulsion field. The closer you get the more chakra is repelled. SCs can't approach at all and tire out resisting it.
- Psychic resonance voodoo whatever. In this place, physical stress taken by the SC is transferred to prime the way mental stress already is
- System shock. When SCs are popped by these attacks, the chakra damaging effect carries over to prime, similar to a TH failure.
- Bloodlines only. The Sage built a
racist genetic key, only those with the right bloodlines may enter.
- ninjutsu amping field. Ninjutsu are actually stronger here, and so are your shadow clones... as well as the psychic backlash if they die.
Adventure Incentives
I think this has already been discussed a bit as well, but - as it stands right now, Sealing research is way too rewarding compared to going out and doing things. Personally I don't need a big S-Rank thingy to be in every dungeon to want to explore it, but what I would like is a sense of progression for having bothered to do it. The Cavern of Mild Peril got us substrate. That's dope, it had meaningful and ongoing impact for the rest of the story. Fire Cave even mattered in some ways. It was good characterization, we saved Yuuta's life, it had some interesting lore implications, and ultimately we failed to clear it due to the difficulty level so it's hard to say how 'worth' it the reward would've been.
Compare that to the Chakra Water Cave, where IMO there was not really any particularly strong character impact nor ongoing impact due to its temporary nature. This feature was mentioned in advance so it wasn't a rug pull or anything, but I think it took me some time to crystallize why it ended up underwhelming. Hazou might be able to imitate it later once he's all medic'd up, but... it honestly probably still won't matter that much, if Leaf's chakra is still available. Consider why we were originally interested: We were missing-nin without access to Leaf, and here's a tool that might enable us to better FOOM, fight, and beat Akatsuki. And then it... didn't really do that much. It helped a little bit, for a little while, but by nature of the mission we couldn't stay for long and it took too long to try and replicate it in the time we had. It doesn't really matter that much that we can maybe replicate it later, it didn't matter for the thing we originally pursued it for, imitating it would've been too slow at the pace Akatsuki was moving at, and it will probably end up irrelevant or a mild novelty later, if I had to guess. Maybe useful veterancy for a more permanent bioseal or minatoseal, idk.
I think this is ultimately how you can make rewards feel meaningful - they expand Hazou's/the team's knowledge, capabilities, characterization, or otherwise have a lasting effect from then on for having done it. It doesn't need to be crazy OP, it just needs to give that sense of progression. If you want to tie this back into research, just make Hazou's future cool research require observing/studying it in the field, like we tried to do with the cave water (but yknow, make it work instead ). The Sannin went out and did this shit on the daily for one reason or another, probably because they felt like they were actively gaining something from it instead of spamming their misc research skill back home.
If you'd like, I may go back here and edit in some ideas for this, I don't have any to copy + paste at the moment.
Uninteractable Plots
This is a shorter one, but... man, from a game standpoint I just hate the feeling that we get stonewalled by certain things. The prime example in my mind is the Bank Run, or maybe Akane's Death Investigation. It's hard for me to tell if something is intended to be this way or not, and tbh I would just really appreciate a heads-up from the QMs that they find it unlikely we will make progress on a particular plot point even if due to reasons unknown to the players. I know this is info they don't tend to like to share but it is IMMENSELY frustrating to read 10 straight updates of "you didn't find anything or make any progress or get any kind of plot hook." And then just go back to what we were doing before whatever uninteractable thing happened. This is just killer for pacing and immersion for me. To be completely honest, it kind of made me not really care about Akane disappearing at all, it felt like a scripted event due to her being too strong so I just shrugged and thought about other stuff instead. Sometimes things just happen that you will not get explanations for - that's fine, if I realize that's what's going on. But from a gameplay and even narrative standpoint I strongly dislike wasting weeks of time on, essentially, nothing. Alternatively, allowing players to solve the immediate question but finding another might make it feel like what we tried mattered, without necessarily giving away the whole answer.
Narrative
Arc Planning
Once again I could be talking out of my ass here since I have no idea how these things are planned, but I have been feeling something very strongly for the past loooong while: On a chapter-by-chapter basis, MfD is still quite phenomenal most of the time, but when reading them as a cohesive story the arcs feel a bit disjointed. Some of this will inevitably be due to player action and there's not too much the QMs can do there besides limit player options (which they don't usually like doing.) However, I would say as a recent example look to the Chakra Water Cave arc. Idk how much the QMs reread stuff, but if you go through and read that whole arc, it is very... weird. We want to do X, X is a bad idea so we won't do it, then we do X anyways for some reason, there's no resistance getting to the pool, but now there's a bunch of monsters in the cave so we clear those out first, they're a threat and then they're not a threat really, monsters are dead, we hang out for a bit, and then leave having gained... not much.
What this speaks to me is that, at least for that arc, it wasn't really talked about in advance what the QMs wanted out of that whole ordeal. They had differing ideas on what to expect in there, and sort of just decided on update day what's going on with the cave. I know a big part of this is that communication across the timezones is really challenging, and I know that makes things tough. I honestly don't have any suggestions there, I'm genuinely sorry you have to struggle with it, and I wish it were less of a problem so the QMs could communicate more easily. But I think the consequences of it are evident. It just really seemed like there wasn't enough behind the scenes discussion going on there to have a very cohesive arc, even if the individual chapters were written fine.
Broader picture, let's talk about the Akatsuki Rift War arc. Some of yall may remember that I decided to stop playing when we were railroaded into the Sealing mines, and was excited to come back at the prospect of being a missing nin going around looking for ways to get strong enough in time to contest Akatsuki. But then it kinda ended up being Sealing mines for the most part anyways. The only real deviation was at the start, with the chakra water cave that we already discussed ultimately not contributing much to the greater arc.
I'd be a little curious about what the QMs were expecting out of this arc, and what they wanted out of it. Was 'players bunker up and research for 9 months' not the expected outcome, all else equal? Or was this more or less what you had in mind? At least to me, this ended up feeling like a case of squandered opportunity for all parties. Was there any discussion on "How can we incentivize or encourage players to do things we are all interested in" before kicking things off or were you more or less content to just see how it played out? To me, with the hindsight we have now, the 'being missing' thing almost barely mattered narratively, besides NPCs occasionally lamenting the loss of their luxurious lifestyle. What I might have liked to see out of this arc:
- Training from the 7th Path without the distractions of Clan hustle and bustle, get the crew up to at least specjo combat skills in boot camp.
- Needing to explore and find esoteric effects to imitate with runes
- Needing to acquire intel on progress, on hunters, on weaknesses, on Akatsuki movement, etc. Mari and Kei walking up and saying 'we need this stuff' probably would've convinced the players we needed it (and also would've made them feel a bit more involved in helping deal with Akatsuki if they're bringing their own solutions to the table.)
- Getting boons out of dungeons, maybe not even S-Rank but just something that contributes.
- Some of the above enabling us to slow down their progress in some way. Maybe the intel lets us ambush some guys bringing Sasori important esoteric materials for his field lab or whatever. Maybe we find a spatial scrambler effect that could slow down his rift research. This would even allow for us to be meaningfully contesting Akatsuki without needing to literally fight a bunch of S-Rankers as chuunin.
We did try some of these a bit, others we did not. I know the QMs want to try not to provide answers, but with how overwhelmingly rewarding Sealing research is, I think for the future we will need to put in a bit more thought into how to convince players other things are worth doing. I found all the research every bit as grating as the QMs did but there was no real reason on hand not to do it besides 'I just don't want to.' If we're legitimately trying to win, then we need things that we do to be likely to pay back dividends. The chakra water ended up being too weak and too difficult to reproduce to justify the time spent on it, so we shrugged and didn't pursue the other Oro locations provided - how would they have helped with the challenges presented?
For future arcs, I think it might be worth discussing amongst yourselves "What do we really want out of this, and how can we get to it?" I want you guys to be able to write about the stuff you care about too. I want to read something that was clearly written with passion and enjoyment rather than some kind of obligation to check the box for the week because what the players want to do is fucking boring but highly practical, so here's another monotonous meeting you won't remember in a week.
NPC Agency
Dun dun dun.
Idk, the thesis here for me is "All NPCs have agency and you must respect that" is fundamentally at odds with "We cannot provide any solutions for you." This just means everyone who works with us comes across as a do-nothing skinwaste and all our opponents as cunning machiavellian gigachads.
Simulating Kagome and Mari and Noburi and idk who else all doing their own research and projects is a lot, I understand that. I would even be satisfied with them not really accomplishing huge mechanical strides on their own, but narratively this is a massive L for our comrades. If you need to invent some fluff for them to have accomplished then so be it, but it is a really bad look for them to just be hanging out, not providing any real ideas or even moral support or whatever, and at the same time criticizing Hazou for trying anything. It just feels weird and bad and reminds me of annoying college group project teammates who didn't do anything but complain about what you did.
We had 9 months in the woods cooking up stuff to handle Akatsuki, and so far as I can tell no one really generated any original ideas or strategies, just commentary on whatever Hazou was doing at the time. Here's some of the things they could've contributed, purely narratively:
- Kagome could've been drafting strategies for dealing with Deidara's explosions, as an explosion expert, or espousing questionably-accurate lore about their weaknesses.
- Mari and Kei/Snow could've been suggesting intelligence ops for Mari to go and get intel for the team, disrupt Akatsuki's flow of info, or even just suggesting what intel would've been useful to us.
- Mari and Yuno are both highly experienced combatants, they could've at least been floating tactics around the campfire that the mere chuunin fighters haven't quite been exposed to.
- Tenten🗿
- Noburi could've been spending his time team-momming everyone or whatever, if he didn't think his skills as a fighter or medic contributed to the Akatsuki threat. He's become proud of being moral support but he was the one who ended up needing most of it this time around.
Any of these may not have contributed anything mechanically to the upcoming conflict but it would at least make it feel like they care about winning too and are contributing their thoughts, ideas, and determination narratively, rather than just doing whatever Hazou says. The way they come across to me atm is that they care more about doing what Hazou says than actually trying to beat Akatsuki. I thought Uplift was beyond just Hazou, they should care about this as much as he does. Are the stakes high? Of course they are and it's easy to be concerned about that. Expressing fear is normal, even Hazou did. But dammit they're the Clan of Guts, not the clan of hope Hazou figures something out and be nervous until he does. Scared or not, I'd expect them to be just as determined to try anyways. I would like to believe that if something happened to Hazou they'd keep trying just as hard to accomplish the goals we supposedly all care about.
Please for the Love of God Players & QMs, No More Nothing-Happens Meetings
I think we all dislike these in great detail, but they're easy to vote in and easy to write. And sure, they get info across even if it harms the story to do so. This is like the movie exposition dump trope of quests or something. Can we just start asking:
- Does this progress anyone's characterization
- Does this progress the plot
- Will we give a shit about this two weeks from now
And if the answer to these is no, it should default to 'QM writes whatever they want' instead of restricting them to conveying this mundane info. I'm damn serious, I'm prepared to vote in a plan SOP to that effect just so we collectively stop tripping over the same rock.
