Like you didn't want us going for the classic 'power gaming!' Strategy, but then hand us an action menu much like the quests that feature the questers doing that power-gaming.
As an addition, and in fairness this isn't entirely on you, but you seem to be more for active inventory management. I feel certain there HAVE been Quests that DO feature an inventory that requires active management and use versus 'the character will act on their own to avoid paragraphs of if/and' statements…
Interesting comments, so thanks for them, indeed I didn't want you going for such things but I also think I made it difficult for you to do so. You couldn't pick honourable and devious for example, which in other quests is sometimes the case. I also implemented a chargen of my own design to start making you think about agency rather than about how many shinies you could acquire. As for power gaming, again that's explicitly designed out. I'm not big on rolls anyway (well in this quest), but I really don't like it in other quests where the martial score of some ck2 guy + something else + another thing all make the actions auto crits. As for inventory management, I suppose so, y'all forgot about the magic amulet which turned out to be bloodstone and not massively evil or anything, but as soon as Grok took a basic look at it you never brought it up again. In my research before starting this about GMing one of the tips was that players forgetting magic items should mean the character does to prevent item bloat and stuff. I don't list the inventory so I don't require you to actively manage it, and I certainly done keep track of currency or things like that, but considering stuff like Proudpeak I can certainly imagine that greater and more active consideration of stuff by players would be good. Dark Shamanism is one thing, there are other certainly and sure maybe I could have presented stuff better, but the point stands that there's a reason I encourage discussion. Having said that, I'll also certainly admit that this remains my first quest and theefore the thing with significant audience input so at some places I can certainly say my comms mighthave been better
I do think you're a bit harsh on some of the quests that lean more towards player freedom
True no doubt, if others want to write such things then sure, great. If such things are deliberate I've nothing to say really, its just I think a lot of its unconscious by authors who've not really thought about it and are just replicating previous stuff.
Even if we've no intent on becoming war chief it'd still cause fireworks, even if we only intend to lead them for as long as is needed to get them to Kalimdore, which is in and of itself, a nightmare considering the old horde has a sizeable population, a lot of them are war criminals
iffy on the war criminals bit, from the orcs perspective, the majority of them anyway, they accepted their actions and dont regret them. I think you can credible argue they were doing good actually in the draenei genocide, they were piously and respectfully following the desires of their spiritiual leaders and ancestors. That these desires were false is irrelevant for the most part.
Around giving up the position of warchief after you've gotten them there, this will indeed be coming up at some point, unless of course you choose some very strange options. I don't think it would be culturally possible for Grok to do such a thing, to assume the mantle of warchief and then give it up after. Even if he did, I think the blackrock would just sidle up and wink and ask for orders from their totally not warchief.
Spinning off from that it is perhaps one thing I would critique @FractiousDay , but equally I've no real idea of how to fix the issue. Its one that another QM (torroar may his stress levels come down to a reasonable level) has had problems with, that doing sneaky stuff to players is hard to manage. Its hard to slip it into the narrative in a way that we'd have a chance to notice, without it being obvious and no matter what people have a tendency to complain no matter what.
Its one thing that Sparks at Midnight actually manages to handle fairly well because the players have an absurd level of info gathering via a diviner. He relies on us using our heads to remember things we need to check up on, and has given us a chance to find out about intrigue stuff through cleverly worded prophecies that we have a chance to really duff up and often play on fundamental assumptions we hold.
Not really an option here though, like maybe if we had the connection back we could get random prophecies, but still. You've informed us that there are plots around us (as suspected) which creates the opposite problem of frustration at knowing there there, but lacking the agency to do anything about it. Its not a bad thing really and until he's aware I can't really think of a reason why Grok would try and investigate, but it is a note.
Interesting point and I think worthy of a longer response tomorrow.
Want to ask you about this. Obviously with both the mightstone and training Grok will be like figuratively Ghost of Tsushima in killing enemies with one swordstroke? I don't mean literally but he will be much stronger than with just the mightstone if the Forsaken are left alone and never to bother us again?
But with the mightstone he will still be strong but not as strong and so instead must get his sword competency the old fashioned way by killing his enemies?
The Fireblade can already go through most things, it's a very old and as such very powerful weapon. Over time you might be able to do some more cool things with it (eg, 'pushing' the power into other swords like the Blades of Fire action). I'm pretty open to various things but yea its from the spine of a titan created elemental so yes, quite powerful.
On training etc,
To advance to master level swording you need expert level physical conditition, represeting 'better than professional' level conditioning. This would mean better than a professional runner for example, eg, what we'd class as the top runners of endurance races or similar. Master is the highest level, almost supernaturally good. The Mightstone will artificially advance you to expert conditioning, and if you have that it will artificially unlock your swording.
Currently you're only on Advanced conditioning with no +x% to next level type bonus, meaning you'd hvae a whole level's worth of training to do (which would take, probably at least 10 actions) if you wanted to get to expert naturally.
Note this is firmly 'a wizard did it' type stuff, this isn't magic steriods, its very much artificial, if you take it off (for example to train), then it won't affect you.
I'm open to some sort of write in action if you want to take 1 physical training action to get used to teh mightstone once youve attuned to it, rather than doing the current training action which costs 2 actions to advance your conditioning.
However, I can't really see how we can get master without doing the training. The mightstone is one use only for a few minutes (5 in game, possibly longer here?) In theory we could get to level 5 in the battle, but we'd probably end up pulling something if we tried after the fight was over.
So at least for that pathosy scene it feels like we need training + mightstone.
Keep in mind the blade reborn action is physical conditioning, not sword training, as per Sesk's requirement that you get fitter before you can advance the sword stuff.
