On character driven vs character development I'll have to think about this some more. Currently I'm inclined to do more choices by the character, but I've got a couple of important ones coming up which I may now change to votes. I'm very much open to feedback on these if at some particular point you feel it necessary to tell me you don't like a particular point or thing something should be phrased differently. I'm not saying you have to write my quest for me, but I would certainly appreciate people pointing it out.
On the presentation, I'm somewhat conflicted on this. On one hand I definitely do present a lot of info which is plot relevant and I don't want to have to rely on summaries. I put a reasonable amount of work into writing stuff so if I say 'oh yea there are harpies there' there's a reason I'm saying that, the reader's question therefore might be 'can we somehow use these harpies'. I'm not trying to tut at people, though I can get that it might come across like that, but I don't want to tell everyone everything, engagement is indeed necessary to get the best results.
Similarly on throwing info at people, I was perceiving that as giving you all the freedom to do stuff, but I could in future provide a few sample plans if that's useful for everyone, so I'll have a think about that, it's a good point I think. One reason I don't plan to provide all the answers is that it's not appropriate in character, for example two of the other ways to do stuff in the Darkstorm bit would be harpies or a duel, neither of these would really occur in character because as you said they're unusual ways of resolving it. Perhaps Darkstorm would have accepted a duel, perhaps the harpies would have helped, but there were simpler ways and you took one of them. For some other stuff the character simply doesn't have skills or experience to consider such an issue, you're not massively diplomatic for example. If the diplomatic option had been chosen at the end of the first arc then sure I'd have given you more talky options but it wasn't so yea.
On being wrong, as I've mentioned I want to explore the issue of obligations. I definitely tell you stuff in narration and summary, as one example staying with the trolls means you don't obey the other set of orders you got. That's one of the big purposes of the quest so I certainly intend to have more contradictions where you do have to sacrifice something, sort of the extension of the Batman problem I've mentioned before.
On failures, I wasn't aware these were perceived as negatively as you say, so I'll think about it. Yes the only pure successes you've had have been when you've stayed safe and secure in a city and trained and y'know, yea that's going to be safe but also boring? Partly I want to incentivise going out because it's far more interesting to write about and I want to reward that.
On the above points though, I'd put a challenge to you: What is your expectation of success? This quest so far has been pitched at a fairly low level of power, with the potential to ramp up significantly. You shouldn't expect to succeed at everything, nor should you as a quester feel that you're responsible for failures unless there's something you were really stupid in doing etc. If you took a vote to mess about with some obviously fel artefact or similar then sure that would be your fault, but as mentioned in the preface I do want to explore a quest that has less automatic successes. You mentioned you wanted to munchkin and stuff earlier on in the chargen, and sure that's fine, but there's certainly a certain 'culture' of questing that is munchkining everything and sometimes the choice is about choosing between two suboptimal options. 'Perfection is the enemy of progress' or however that saying goes.
Having said that though, I was thinking about moving the timescales to 6 months rather than weeks, which would mean more success because you'd have longer to train etc, so if you think that helpful I can do that.
On dice, I'm not entirely sure what you mean as when I read it the statement seems to clash with other stuff. I'll admit I'm somewhat looser with dice as I prefer the narrative to be centre stage and therefore some degree of arbitrariness is expected, but the dice are indeed impactful, such as have a low roll for Darkstorm's strength and it being an easier battle, or those knights in the watchtower. If you're referring to me noting the difficulty of actions, I could potentially do this, but I usually express this in narrative and the different action texts. You mention 'how likely are they to talk to me' and that's something that's in narrative, like if you tried to go chat with the centaur obviously they wouldn't really be interested and might just try and kill you etc. But yea will think about including them if it's useful.
On the large amount of information that I maintain but isn't written down, I can certainly make up a Dramatis Personae if that's useful. I've previously asked people to suggest infoposts so sure that can be the next one. Specifically on the dark shaman thing, the teacher you got isn't me saying 'haha ive tricked you she was evil all along' or whatever, it's basically an easter egg and a show of how there's different traditions of shamanism among the orcs.
I'd say that its a matter of player agency. In my experience, most things can be made to work in character barring only the most egregious deviations, but if its a pivotal decision like "never use X again" then the choice should only be taken away from the players for a big reason. For example say we choose to dive head first into the fel, and then turn into a tentacle monster, we made the decision to do that we accepted that as a possibility. If it happens because the character has decided too based on just discussion around it, irregardless of our OOC commitment it still takes choice away as often enough those monumental decisions prompt much of the deeper thinking.
You do, problem is not every piece of information is relevant and I doubt most people are interested in spending time thinking about all the potential uses. Then to keep with the point of darkstorm, half the update was taken up with explanation of how to recruit horde people and other characters. I'm not going to be thinking about harpies who have less than a sentance dedicated to them when there's an entire paragraph talking about "how to" recruitment. One stands out as the bigger priority. + its a big disadvantage plan wise to have to check with the QM if an idea is viable, since no matter how viable one person thinks it is, they can't really build a plan around it that people will get behind.
If it had been "harpies, razor gores and centaurs who are no friends of demons" then its not much more, nor is it explict, but even that's more of neon sign that we could try something there.
And I would say that unusual is no reason for him to have it in the inner monologue. He's honourable so while he feels like Mak-gora may not be respected he thinks he
could give it a go as Darkstorm was part of the horde and his own clan and deserves that courtesy at least. Asking the harpies could come from the anti daemon knowledging giving him enough of an insight that "pretty much anyone who isn't a demon will listen if you say want to kill them." Our character doesn't have to think they're necessarily
good ideas, he just has to think of them with enough IC justification to give them a shot for whatever reason.
Which is fine, the issue is when it is basically everything. Its one thing when we get chewed out for disobeying orders, its another thing to have another chewing out for going to one quest giver over another for the same quest. Its a small thing, but it adds up over time.
Bare in mind that's my personal views I've no idea how anyone else sees it. Take funerary rites, we supposedly rolled well there, yet despite that the action that was meant to be about fostering bonds instead led to us being told "yeah no ya still a grot nobody gives a shit even if you do this." Further more if your intent was for skills to be trained best by going out and getting into stuff then the kind of obligations stuff we're doing is kinda crap for that. If its defacto EXP grinding (albeit more narratively) as it was at the start of the quest, then it turns the chains of command into anchors.
Certainly things like the Storm fight would have probably given more skill ups and the like had it been a harder fight, but it taught the lesson that "things going well = not a lot of benefits." We don't seem to have gotten any political or social clout from an easy fight, we got no skill ups, the fel artifacts are not very useful and while the potential recruits were neat we soon found that they were not exactly "high quality" if you will. At the same time one of the benefits of being leadership was meant to be resources, but those resources are not that useful for us. The clan (for the most part) sees to have always actively despised us or thought us a twit
because we're the clan heir. Presently it feels like we'd have had access to the exact same amount of help from them and same successes with far fewer impositions on our time if we'd chosen a warrior back ground. Not as much respect, but the clan itself already wants to kill the MC, so being out of the lime light makes it feel like they'd be far more likely to help.
That's the problem I have no idea what my expectations of success should be! I cannot gauge what a reasonable chance of success is because my means of grading what a success is has no consistency that I can identify. I don't even know what time scale you're operating the quest on! I'm assuming 1 turn = 1 month, or is it more we apparently spent 6 months just getting to Orgrimar. I don't expect to succeed with every action, but so many actions are entirely so swingy that actions I thought were big successes don't seem to accomplish anything of practical value, while fail actions seem to spectacularly backfire. Doesn't help too that there can be so many rolls for even a single thing that at times the law of big numbers just comes into effect. I.e. learning survival at senjen village, three good rolls in a row, then craped up by rolling a 1, because statistically they couldn't all be good.
I guess what I want from the quest is the ability to hopefully become a hero of Azeroth, but one that actually exists in the world instead of being a faceless avatar with connections and the ability to actually affect the world both by stabbing the thing
and by talking.
Irregardless as far as personal growth goes get out there was encouraged at the start, and it was a good pace its one to get back too and I'd like to remain at the current pace of seemingly 1 update = 1 month assuming we're also doing more stuff in that month due to not having to do nearly as much burning blade stuff (sans running for our life from them). To me at least wandering off gives that opportunity to balance the desire for growth with a desire to also have obligations, cause we will meet people and have to make decisions, but since growth is accomplished best by seemingly getting out and doing things and not learning from teachers (as well as loot n stuff) it can scratch that urge much better than being shackled to the clan. Its also just more interesting in many ways.
And yeah if we do something stupid then we did something stupid, and if we did something knowing the consequences then that's just all the more reason to smack us on the noggins.
What do you mean by automatic successes?
As for munchkinery, that's because you gave a munchkinable system so my reaction was "alright lets do that." Its the problem with the shiny system that a different QM had
it discenentivises engagement with the narrative. Instead of choosing options you're encouraging an attitude of "how can get most stuff for least pain over all" which I knew was not what you were intending to do hence why I said I was trying not too, but its essentially what ended up happening anyway. And much of the joy of questing is trying to figure out how to turn at least one of those options from "sub optimal" to at least "good." Its about having the freedom to be able to be given a tool box with X and Y as the default options and managing to come up with Z. Sometimes there really is no Z, but there often is. And yeah I know, but I'm not trying for perfection, I'm trying for "better than what is on offer" or "best I can come up with" which is a very different thing.
Nah, I think the time scale is right for a different style of game play. If we were engaged in running a clan that is part of horde politics then yes a longer time scale makes sense, if we're a wanderer then what we have now, or even smaller, is the way to go since we're only running ourselves, not engaging in a community of hundreds connected to a wider communitiy of tens of thousands.
Because it feels like you simultaneously are incredibly loose with the dice while
also slaving the narrative to them. A climactic confrontation was supposed to happen, but turned into a complete wash due to one roll. Clearly you've decided to incorporate it into a grander narrative, which is great. Again though just recently the rolls of a single character started this battle. If you want to put the narrative at centre stage, don't let the dice dictate the narrative like that.
If I may suggest two things.
1. Smaller dice.
2. If we're moving onto a more personal scale then instead of rolling for say, town guard interaction roll for town guard disposition. 1d6 1 is angry, 2 is bored, 3 is and so on, with the ability for us to try and resolve the situation if we can. It retains a randomised element, but the narrative is front and centre, we've got to convince them of X with the quality of our argument either flat out determining the outcome or giving a boost to the final roll.
Probably. Whose who tends to be one of the hardest bits of quests. Not saying you were tricking us, the information was readily available people just didn't notice it. And yes different schools of thought is one thing, problem with her analogy to a worg is that worgs can generally only bite back, not talk back. IC slavery is normal to the MC, OOC red flag.
While I think you might be aiming too high and for perfectionism that's not really possible in the quest, it's good to have this sort of deep criticism.
I think you misunderstand I'm not aiming for the character to always succeed, nor am I expecting everything to be satisfying in quest, I am however trying to get across frustrations with this current part of the quest. I did enjoy the Durotar part a lot more, it had a good (not perfect) ratio of freedom of choice to obligation, to fighty stuff, to character growth, to interpersonal relationship stuff. Then we hit Orgrimmar and everything became obligation and interpersonal relationships, with the one break of fighty stuff being cut hilariously short. The annoying part is the burning blade and horde politics is
very well done, but we spent most of our time learning about it not really engaging with it.
Now we're looking to be back on the road again possibly with the heaviest burden of all, the freedom to choose WTF you want to do (independence is terrifying, especially if you've basically never had it properly.)
In general because it would be Feldad doing it to you you'd experience a minor increase in anger, whch would be largely solved by your existing Battle Fury skill. Feldad doesn't want a mindless servitor, and he values you as his son and heir etc. Some fel orcs do indeed go mad, but some are largely unchanged apart from increased physical power.
Shit that's even worse than I thought I was just afraid of being transformed into a butt 40K style. Emotional changes just make me like it even less.
you were still in command so have responsibility there.
Actually could you clear this up for me are you refering to the fact we were in command of attacking (and thus provoking) the Kolkar, or the command of defending Dreadmist plateau where everything exploded.
I didn't explictly explain dark shamanism for example but I did note the issues of it with characters saying it etc
Its also just an issue of people hearing "dark shamanism" and not going considering the reasons its called that. There's always room for it to be an oppressed minority, but the issue with magic is that the dichotomy is rarely the orthodoxy vs the radicals, its usually "one form of magic is just neat the encourages the punch of babies."
Its the issue I have with blood magic in DA, yes I get it you can theoretically use blood magic without needing to make people garters, but I think most people have the right to be concerned that you can consider it a possibility.
This one I put on the players, because despite how well you worded it the fact remains, dark shamanism is the essential enslavement of fundamentally sentient beings no matter how you dress it up and its easy to confirm OOC what the side effects of it are and we've just had a front row demonstration of why its also
not the orcish shaman orthodoxy either, cause getting punched by a mountain is a bad bad thing.
Gotta sleep. Pologies writing while tired, hopefully, its not too blurbled, will explain WTF I'm on about tommorow.
