Orc Quest; or, A Critical Examination of Agency Through in Interactive Fiction (Warcraft)

Doesn't surprise me...
I feel like the problem is, we were too ambitious in Chargen.
Like what was WANTED was a conflicted orc, but uhh. well.
Looking back in hindsight I feel like we bit off WAY more then we could chew and the horde suffered dearly for our hubris.
Like, Our perks got eaten by the maluses consuming them.
1. We're a Blademaster-in training...
But we're Puny by Orc Standards
- meaning it's hard to take us seriously until we go start DOING things. Not so much that we can't be a good fighter, it just seems like someone else being a warrior would be better. Like we're wasting our time trying to be a Blademaster.
2. We've a Strong Connection to the Elements...
But our Clan hides Warlocks
- so all that potential to be a Shaman does is get noted and redirected towards Dark Shamanism, which makes us unpopular to the rest of the Horde, because they can SMELL the Evil wafting from us.
3. We're an Honorable Heir to the Clan who means well...
But the Burning Blade only cares for Power
- and all the little flaws in our strength gets magnified on the social level, forcing us into conceding either utilizing upright methods, our good standing with the rest of the Horde, or our Honor itself.

In short...I feel like the plan maker was thinking some sort of inheirent Protagonist privilege would let us win out despite our maluses...And instead we ended up in Zuko's shoes. Just enough power to lead us to making bad choices that screw us, and liable to end up in a place where we either loose out on much of our perks purchased in Chargen...Or we finally hit the apex choice of this Quest, where we have to choose between the Power to make a difference, and the Freedom to do as we please, either of which leaves us all to painfully vulnerable to the forces arrayed against us.
It almost feels like the next time Jubei'thos comes for us, he won't be cutting Grok's life tragically short.
He'll be simply assisting us in our seppuku.
 
Like what was WANTED was a conflicted orc, but uhh. well.
As I recall what that plan called for was wandering samurai magic ork :p

Not really a joke as it was the wandering bladesmaster with nascent spell blade later on.

But yeah, just enough rope to hang ourselves, too young, too weak, too unskilled, too honourable, too impressionable and too unable.

If I were to guess our only real snowball's chance in hells are going to either be like you said the power to make a difference, likely by taking feldad's offer of a power up (which for me at least is completely off the table) or trying to make our own path and try to succeed before we die.

For example despite the whole spellblade thing and Grok having a fairly massive capacity for arcane magic we've yet to have the opportunity to try and investigate it.

However, being kicked out is a death sentence, while remaining likely means defacto enslavement.
 
I feel like the problem is, we were too ambitious in Chargen.
Like what was WANTED was a conflicted orc, but uhh. well.
Looking back in hindsight I feel like we bit off WAY more then we could chew and the horde suffered dearly for our hubris.
Like, Our perks got eaten by the maluses consuming them.
This was noted by the winning vote back in chargen 3. You got a better weapon and the Tome, both of which have been essential to your successes, and this was balanced by your honourbound nature and the hunter that's been following you about. I compared the later to a lich ganking you and although at the time I didn't have any particular idea of what it would be it was always going to come up.

Also conflict, especially of a social nature, has always been baked into the quest as an exploration of the themes. Someone had the idea of being a druid which would have been equally conflicted, and when it looked like @Doomed Wombat 's vote was winning I was thinking of ways to play on the shaman conflict with Angrais wanting to serve the elements etc but then finding out the Elements of Azeroth are largely hostile, especially Wind, Fire and Earth.

As for the specific points you bring up, although I don't consider them as important as I was during the chargen I think they've still been an excellent source of conflict and more importantly narrative. Grok's moping because he's small and his feelings of inadequacy provide character, which is exactly as I wanted it because I hated the quests where the MC is just a cardboard box for 60 people to drive about, never really caring about anything and just sort of motoring along. Keep in mind you are an excellent swordsman, and pretty decent in some other areas. Yes you can't do everything, but again this is by design because of the Batman problem I mentioned at the start, I want you to have to choose between (sometimes) mutually exclusive issues, against because I dislike particular quests where the MC is good at everything. I also recall commenting when the chargen was going on that none of the choices which would have allowed greater ability to navigate social situations were chosen such as diplomatic, devious or something else that was there, so yes Grok hasn't had the ability or inclination to be able to balance the conflicting demands on his time and abilities.

It's the same with Dark Shamanism and Honour, these provide massive narrative possibilities for me as the author and have evidently provided an interesting (although perhaps frustrating at times) narrative given people are continuing to comment on it etc. Having said all that I've been watching the numbers on the first page and evidently some people have been so frustrated they've stopped following the quest which is sad but oh well.

In general I take it as a reflection somewhat. Some things from chargen are of greater importance to my writing now and some things are of lesser consequence. The low physical roll has been greatly influential, the elemental affinity stuff is still sort of important but that's been channelled into the stuff around shamanism. Some of that is me adapting to the questing format and specifically the interactivity with audiences. Previously I've had fics where people have come along and so on but my most popular one previously was a harry potter crossover and frankly a lot of the reviews were of the usual sort for that fandom, a lot of 'make him bang X' to which I tended to react with confusion.

However, being kicked out is a death sentence, while remaining likely means defacto enslavement.
This will become more relevant in like 2 updates but it depends who exactly is exiling you...
 
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especially Wind, Fire and Earth.
Lets be honest water probably hates us too.

That said, it should be unsurprising the elements over all are hostile or at the very least aggressively give few shits, even before factoring the Old Gods.

Grok's moping because he's small and his feelings of inadequacy provide character, which is exactly as I wanted it because I hated the quests where the MC is just a cardboard box for 60 people to drive about, never really caring about anything and just sort of motoring along.
Thing is I do find it hard to find quests (at least long-running ones) that are like that.* The reason you hate em is the same reason people tend to stop playing them after all so either there's something else that keeps people coming back or they die off. A feeling of empowerment will only keep ya coming back for so long then it becomes le snore fest.

(With one category of quest able to be an exception, but I'm pretty sure that is universal to that particular sub-genre of any medium) :p

Keep in mind you are an excellent swordsman, and pretty decent in some other areas
Yeah, but our blood-brother is likely a better one (well axeman, but the point stands) and we've managed to lock the only magic we really had developed.

Before we had something going for us because we had something unique in the seer stuff and while we were basically crap compared to the other two impressive members of our crop we could do some shamanism and fighting/commanding.

So now we're left in the position of not as good of a fighter or commander compared to him and his advantages are pretty much innate unless we take feldad's offer of demon steroids, and flat out not a shaman anymore compared to her.

No matter how you cut it we're not back at square one, but we are back a lot, no matter what we do whether its fel (eurgh), arcane, shamanism, or hell even monk stuff its going to be arduous to even start getting back to what we once had and the rest of the world sure as hell isn't going to forget that.

In short yes I do keep it in mind, I just also keep it in context, especially since trying to thread the needle once again has failed us.

We've tried to walk the fine line between "tradition and progress" with it backfiring massively, again with "honour vs pragmatism" and its backfired horribly, and on an IC and meta level trying to multi-class has also proven to be a terrible decision with the benefit of hindsight. Kinda just reinforces that story of my friend and the assassin, don't try to be both things it means you end up failing at both and getting your ass kicked for it.

Essentially if this is meant as placating, then it really isn't its more a reminder of how poorly thought out making Grok the way he is was.

Edit:
You got a better weapon and the Tome, both of which have been essential to your successes
To add to this, neither feel like they contributed much to our success, if anything they did more to our major **** ups. Before we managed to destroy it the first time I did not feel the sword added much to our success at all and our destruction of it taught us...what? A technique that was worse on all possible levels and made a worse weapon we've also destroyed?

Another good sign for when we're exiled.

Its very hard to mark the sword as in anyway important when our major allied character did more with a mundane axe muscles and actual ****ing skill than we could with a literal magic sword and the supposed super skills of a "blade master." So yeah not really contributing to our "success" certainly contributing a lot to our hubris.

As for the tome, it got us started on shamanism, but seemingly turned every other shaman in our life against us either subtly like Angris, or overtly like the Trolls sans the Dark Shaman that eventually became our teacher.

Another thing that has both been entirely stripped away now and provided fuck all in terms of success, because fundamentally our practical use of any of this has been exceedingly limited, seeing as the Darkstorm was apparently a set up and well we lost the plateau.

It frankly feels rather overly charitable to say that either of those things helped Grok significantly beyond letting him make more rope for his hanging.

diplomatic, devious or something else that was there
I will note that in orcish society both of those are effectively maluses. Doesn't matter if you have the inclination if it makes you look weak in the eyes of others, or in Grok's case doubles down and compounds what they see as his inherent weakness.

Would likely be great if we could try to change things, but good luck convincing them that they need to.

Irregardless yes you did comment on it, which is why I believe someone (did I? Can't recall) swapped stuff out to try and compensate. Hey ho.

This will become more relevant in like 2 updates but it depends who exactly is exiling you...
Basically does Feldad kick us out, does Thrall kick us out, or do we kick ourselves out.

Those are the main three, frankly I imagine most of the orcish population is lining up for the opportunity to get their own kicks in.
 
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At this point, I say we embrace it. We've already burnt all the other bridges to study and it'd at least get us an in with the rest of the Clan (if we're not exiled that is). Honestly, at this point, I'd be surprised if we get any other options beyond being an exile, unless something particularly out of the usual happens.

I mean, out of everything that happens, we're basically the primary ones at fault for the rise of the elemental, and all our attempts to stop it failed miserably. If anyone is going to be pinned with the overall blame for what happened, it's probably us.
 
At this point, I say we embrace it. We've already burnt all the other bridges to study and it'd at least get us an in with the rest of the Clan (if we're not exiled that is). Honestly, at this point, I'd be surprised if we get any other options beyond being an exile, unless something particularly out of the usual happens.

I mean, out of everything that happens, we're basically the primary ones at fault for the rise of the elemental, and all our attempts to stop it failed miserably. If anyone is going to be pinned with the overall blame for what happened, it's probably us.
I'd rather not. That way lies damnation.

If anything, we've seen the tampering and blind eye turned to it has led to shit getting really bad as it is. Elementals don't like us and took it out on the capital because of it, we saw it pulling an abomination together out of corpses, plus the not so great history of it leading to two bloody wars and the damnation of our race.

After all that, I don't think Grok's going to want anything to do with it.
 
I'd rather not. That way lies damnation.

If anything, we've seen the tampering and blind eye turned to it has led to shit getting really bad as it is. Elementals don't like us and took it out on the capital because of it, we saw it pulling an abomination together out of corpses, plus the not so great history of it leading to two bloody wars and the damnation of our race.

After all that, I don't think Grok's going to want anything to do with it.
Yeah, if anything this would probably be the breaking point of Fel for Grok. We saw what happens with Fel, no matter the reason at the time it'll always lead to Bad End.

Personally I feel like this is a great point for Grok to go all in with the Anti Fel mindset, commit wholly to trying to do Shamanism right this time and begin penitence.

Basically does Feldad kick us out, does Thrall kick us out, or do we kick ourselves out.
Thrall or Feldad not kicking us out might sting even more. Especially if Grok sees it as a pity stay of judgement. Then again, if they explicitly say that it's Grok's way of making things right it could lead to a better way.
 
Thrall or Feldad not kicking us out might sting even more. Especially if Grok sees it as a pity stay of judgement. Then again, if they explicitly say that it's Grok's way of making things right it could lead to a better way.
There are implications Grok can pick up on no matter how its done.

And although I speak of kicking ourself out, the fact remains for Grok's depression this may not be the way to go about it. It could be remove yourself from the toxic enviroment and all, but Grok's already got a lot of self loathing.

Personally I feel like this is a great point for Grok to go all in with the Anti Fel mindset, commit wholly to trying to do Shamanism right this time and begin penitence.
After all that, I don't think Grok's going to want anything to do with it.
At this point, I say we embrace it. We've already burnt all the other bridges to study and it'd at least get us an in with the rest of the Clan (if we're not exiled that is). Honestly, at this point, I'd be surprised if we get any other options beyond being an exile, unless something particularly out of the usual happens.
I mean I can see perfectly IC reasons for why we'd go for the full fel option, particularly in light of fel dad pulling a Gul'dan. There's a reason that worked in canon, although IC Grok hopefully realises that with the history fel has its a poisoned chalice. OOC I'd be slighly more interested if it wasn't essentially Dhar and there was even a single important warlock character who wasn't also a near embodiment of pure evil.

I mean, out of everything that happens, we're basically the primary ones at fault for the rise of the elemental, and all our attempts to stop it failed miserably. If anyone is going to be pinned with the overall blame for what happened, it's probably us.
mmm...

At risk of being a bit too easy on Grok one has to remember that it was the Kolkar that summoned him and while they may have done it earlier than anticipated I believe they'd always intended too. The difference is that they'd wanted to do it while also attacking Orgrimmar. Furthermore despite impressions Forneaus seemed to give zero shits about Proudpeak, so Grok's personal contribution is that he allowed the fel ritual to go forwards which demonstrably did piss him off.

As for stop it, well no. For all that I am harsh it does do well to remember that stopping Forneaus was never realistically in the cards and despite my own first impression we did manage to delay him for half an hour, which given that he was very slow is quite a lot. The issue was that Thrall subsequently stuffed his roll.

As far as the chain of causation goes, unfairly or not, Grok is the one to be blamed, as we kicked this chain of events into motion by following Nazgrel's orders, specifically
"Set yourself against the Kolkar. Of all the centaur tribes they are the ones who've menaced us the most, sending raiding parties against us and even crossing the river, they stream through the passes and although we kill hundreds of them more slip past us. They congregate around the various oases, find them and kill them if you can."

That Grok (and indeed no one else) could not have known how riled up the Kolkar were, that they were either willing or able to employ an elemental as powerful as Forneas and that they'd launch such an assault does not matter.
 
Especially if Grok sees it as a pity stay of judgement
Like Harry Dresden, Grok'mash could get a grumpy Wizard Orc named Don'ald Mor'gan watching our every move. But there is no reason to go that way, exile is more likely.
However, the blame should not be put on us, since:
At risk of being a bit too easy on Grok one has to remember that it was the Kolkar that summoned him and while they may have done it earlier than anticipated I believe they'd always intended too. The difference is that they'd wanted to do it while also attacking Orgrimmar. Furthermore despite impressions Forneaus seemed to give zero shits about Proudpeak
They wanted to summon him while attacking Orgrimmar. Unfortunately it worked out the same way, but the tragedy of hundreds of centaurs sacrificing themselves to erase the Orcs from Azeroth was not something that could be predicted.
There is not much else we could have done, this was already in motion. Maybe the Fel summoning (by the Elders, not us. "Should I have stopped them, father?" is a nice question to ask him) made it happen faster, but it was still going to happen.
Frankly, I scarcely find reasons for punishment or exile, lol. Forneus didn't give a crap about Proudpeak, so we were just at the wrong place at the wrong time.
 
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Frankly, I scarcely find reasons for punishment or exile, lol. Forneus didn't give a crap about Proudpeak, so we were just at the wrong place at the wrong time
I mean who knows. Maybe if we were a better shaman we might have known, but well...we're not.

Anyway this is where we get into the "wot ifs" the issue is if we do that then there's no one to blame.

Arguably the only people to blame are the Kolkar and well they're all dead by our hands our their own, then its Nazgrim but he gave us the orders, if not him its Thrall (maybe? Nazgrim didn't exactly consult him to order us to do it.)

Anyhow, a large chunk of it may boil down to not what we're actually at fault for (the truth has always been one of the least important things in these trials), but the impressions/reasons we gave for our actions.

Hell a lot of it may just be public opinion when it boils down to it. We're the son of the next Gul'dan after all, the Kolkar are dead and did the "heroic" thing of trying to distract Forneas. Combine that with the fact we are a blood brother to the one of the Warsong who I'm pretty sure are amongst the largest (or at least more influential) of the clans and have done the trolls solids in the past then its good...the thing is we're also the easiest person to blame for the mess (who is also alive) whether it is fair and truthful or not. Thrall likely cares about what actually happened, but random orc on the street who lost their family, friends and home to the rampaging earth elemental and is wracked with grief likely gives zero shits.

In which case what it'll come down too is...PR.

Unfortunately near as I can tell the ball is in fel dad's court, if he wants he can probably use his influence to shape the narrative in the horde at the moment, either in our favour or to our detriment and I've no indication he doesn't dislike us enough to do the latter rather than the former just because he can. Either way he likely determines if we're exiled by official authorities or not, either by himself or by Thrall, but that does not preclude us doing it to ourselves as I've said.

Anyway, side note.

One thing I've been a bit curfufled by is the shamen thing on learning from other people. Kinda feels like it should be a more personal thing with much less rote learning from books or mentors.
 
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water probably hates us too.
Neptulon seems pretty chill overall. He doesn't join the old gods against during Cata and he's also somewhat of a moderating influence. Thematically you could probably say he relies on the other elements to create tides etc like wind blowing water around
our blood-brother is likely a better one
Partly, but the main thing he's got going for him is just being really big. He's foolhardy and not massively innovative. For example at the tower he was wandering about outside cutting Kul Tirans in two but you were the one who came up with the idea to get on top of the tower and so on. As for being a 'better' fighter, you're better with technique now, Vark comparably has never really bothered doing it any other way than just charging in and starting swinging his axe as that's worked really well for him before.

To add to this, neither feel like they contributed much to our success,
They both have significantly. I know I don't put '+10 to this particular roll because youve got a magic sword', but for example you'd have been defeated and captured in the tower if you didn't have it, you'd probably not have been able to fight the elementals if you didn't have a magic weapon, and you also wouldn't have done nearly as well in the previous battle if you didn't have it. It functions as a limited use lightsaber basically and although you 'broke' it you were steadily improving such as in the battle where you didn't need to turn it off.

The Tome meanwhile taught you several new skills like Flameseeing, as well as teaching you how to do shamanism, which I'll come to later in this response.
At this point, I say we embrace it. We've already burnt all the other bridges to study and it'd at least get us an in with the rest of the Clan (if we're not exiled that is). Honestly, at this point, I'd be surprised if we get any other options beyond being an exile, unless something particularly out of the usual happens.
After all that, I don't think Grok's going to want anything to do with it.
Feldad will offer it but it'll be put to a vote. I think Grok could go either way.
As far as the chain of causation goes, unfairly or not, Grok is the one to be blamed, as we kicked this chain of events into motion by following Nazgrel's orders
Yea I've mentioned it before but the allocation of 'blame' is nebulous at best. You the questers are responsible because you chose the Hunted option at the start but the characters don't know that.
flat out not a shaman anymore
One thing I've been a bit curfufled by is the shamen thing on learning from other people. Kinda feels like it should be a more personal thing with much less rote learning from books or mentors.
Very important to note here is that you never were a shaman to start with. You picked warrior in chargen and got fighty abilities, tactics and leadership. Angrais has been training basically from birth because she would have been identified very early on as spiritually sensitive, so yes of course she's a better shaman.

You're also not barred from shamanism forever, see Thrall after he cheated in his Mak'gora for an example.

On the learning of shamanism, I think this varies. Angrais did advise you to be patient. You could have taken actions to go sit under a tree for 10 years and discover it that way as an individual on their own vision quest or whatever and do a lot of meditation. That's what Angrais has been doing, whereas you've been playing with swords etc. The Flamebender's Tome was a legitimate way of learning a particular tradition of shamanism, and as for all the shaman you meet disapproving of it that's because you haven't met that many shaman, for example I had Sorek the Blackrock guy specifically mention one of their shaman who I think I took out of canon called 'Orebreaker', which, like 'Flamebender' implies Dark Shamanism. It's really just the Frostwolf-aligned clans who'd disapprove of Dark Shamanism, to many others its a permissible interpretation.


Oh and someone had a point about there being no good warlocks but I don't seem to have quoted it, my response would be that there are some fel-users who are less bad, like some demon hunters who practice more restraint, but that yes it's an inherently destructive and corrupting magic, the sterotypical 'evil' magic. I might also point to Blizz writing and note that other magics that are equally corrupting are rarely written 'properly' as such, for example you could have some sort of militant order of druids who try and prevent the general industrialisation of Azeroth as time goes on by sabotaging stuff and attacking lumber camps etc, except that doesn't happen. The Order of the Black Harvest are alright as time goes on, but yes several of them become corrupted.
 
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Partly, but the main thing he's got going for him is just being really big. He's foolhardy and not massively innovative. For example at the tower he was wandering about outside cutting Kul Tirans in two but you were the one who came up with the idea to get on top of the tower and so on. As for being a 'better' fighter, you're better with technique now, Vark comparably has never really bothered doing it any other way than just charging in and starting swinging his axe as that's worked really well for him before.
He's innovative enough to have discovered the joys of gunpowder.

Anyway his physique is important on a meta and narrative level. It is in fact a significantly bigger deal. Our technique translates to a measly +4 to rolls, assuming he rolled even averagely for his physique he beats that easily, and presumably he got near max on it. So +9-10. Skill fundamentally does not equate to a big enough deal to really matter in the face of that until we are significantly outside of our current level. Especially since "he's never really bothered" just means that he won't until something forces him too, where upon he will prove that he does have immense skill for weapons he just doesn't do it because its less fun.

They both have significantly. I know I don't put '+10 to this particular roll because youve got a magic sword', but for example you'd have been defeated and captured in the tower if you didn't have it, you'd probably not have been able to fight the elementals if you didn't have a magic weapon, and you also wouldn't have done nearly as well in the previous battle if you didn't have it. It functions as a limited use lightsaber basically and although you 'broke' it you were steadily improving such as in the battle where you didn't need to turn it off.
Really? Due to how the rolls came out at least, the knights explicitly managed to nullify it. Indeed they not only nullified it, they nullified it the exact same way they would have nullified a normal ****ing sword.

The argument would have more weight if (inspite of) the roll, they'd tried that tactic and it hadn't worked, because the sword was on fire it went through the wood. Instead the fight played out in such a way that if the sword was on fire or not it made no practical difference, we have seemingly bypassed no armour because of it, its reacted to shields the same way and seems to have functionally done the same amount of damage.

The +10 to the rolls matters to readers, because its not really been communicated otherwise that there is in fact a difference and the narrative plays out in essentially the exact same way near as I can read it.

In fact it rather compounds the issue, if in a situation with opposed rolls is happening and no matter what the guy with the higher dice roll wins, then if gear provides no bonuses it is effectively meaningless.

As you said you don't add that +10, but as what happens is dicated by the dice that +10 ****ing matters. A +10 would have likely if not won us that fight (the tower) at least made it much easier. The first roll would have gone from a near success to a victory for us, and the second (assuming their bonuses wouldn't have lowered because they were injured or Grok was less outnumbered) would have been near even.

This is what Alcatrai was talking about, either the narrative bends to the dice or the dice bends to the narrative and currently the narrative bends to the dice. If we have a flaming sword and its meant to be a big deal then it shouldn't be entirely invalidated cause the enemy got a better result on the random number generator. The benefits of it are completely irrelevant in the face of them only appearing when we're already winning without it! All it becomes is fluff, neither compounding the success already generated or making the difference when our rolls and innate bonuses were not enough.

The Tome meanwhile taught you several new skills like Flameseeing,
Which we have used exactly once and it was a colossal failure.

In fact considering that there are no less than five rolls associated with using it, with seemingly zero control over what we see, major risks if we roll poorly on most of them, more risks of we roll too well on some of them since we get to see people who are too powerful and the information obtained seems rather lacking in utility you'll forgive me if I don't think its especially great.

Even just on an information gathering level we have gotten more useful stuff from a muddled vision using our regular ****ing war sight. At the very least we discovered that Zalazane had his zombie boat from that, so again how on earth is flameseeing helpful? Its a skill that's more liable to either waste time or get us killed.

On the learning of shamanism, I think this varies. Angrais did advise you to be patient. You could have taken actions to go sit under a tree for 10 years and discover it that way as an individual on their own vision quest or whatever and do a lot of meditation. That's what Angrais has been doing, whereas you've been playing with swords etc. The Flamebender's Tome was a legitimate way of learning a particular tradition of shamanism, and as for all the shaman you meet disapproving of it that's because you haven't met that many shaman, for example I had Sorek the Blackrock guy specifically mention one of their shaman who I think I took out of canon called 'Orebreaker', which, like 'Flamebender' implies Dark Shamanism. It's really just the Frostwolf-aligned clans who'd disapprove of Dark Shamanism, to many others its a permissible interpretation.


Oh and someone had a point about there being no good warlocks but I don't seem to have quoted it, my response would be that there are some fel-users who are less bad, like some demon hunters who practice more restraint, but that yes it's an inherently destructive and corrupting magic, the sterotypical 'evil' magic. I might also point to Blizz writing and note that other magics that are equally corrupting are rarely written 'properly' as such, for example you could have some sort of militant order of druids who try and prevent the general industrialisation of Azeroth as time goes on by sabotaging stuff and attacking lumber camps etc, except that doesn't happen. The Order of the Black Harvest are alright as time goes on, but yes several of them become corrupted.
And I'd argue that approach works for learning earth, and whilest flamebending maybe "legitimate" so far its proven to be a pretty objectively useless one.

Anyway, if nothing else hopefully being cut loose will let Grok have a chance to explore the elements his own way instead of relying on everyone else. Also cheating his Mak'gora? Oh you mean vs Garrosh? Eh this guy summarises it better than I could r/wow - The Lore does not say Thrall Cheated in Mak'gora - an Explanation and (non-hostile) Call-Out on Bellular

TL;DR: Nothing in the lore says Thrall cheated in Mak'gora. His lost connection with the elements is better explained by his guilt of making Garrosh warchief of the Horde and all that that led to than the elements arbitrarily taking interest in orcish tradition that has nothing to do with them based on rules that we don't understand well enough to definitively say Thrall cheated on.

If you want to believe Thrall cheated, you do you. Just please don't phrase or present it as canonical.

Anyway permissible yes, but still evil. There's a big difference between being a door mat for the elements and actively enslaving them. Slavery not good, hot take I know.

And yeah that was me, and "practise more restraint" equates to rather little when we look at what they do with said restraint. Illidan was still a monster, a bastard and a butcher (even before the fel stuff really) he just happened to be on the same side at the very very end and as far as fel and canon characters go, he is legitimately the closest thing the fel has to a "good" character who uses it.

As for other corruptive traditions...well are they? I legit cannot find anything indicating that say drudaism makes one go even half as crazy as fel, cept maybe by deciding you want to return to monke, which if you want to go for that. Meanwhile the order of the black harvest, that really just makes the point clear. Blizzard's writers for the first time pretty much ever wanted to make a group of warlocks that were not just evil power hungry lunatics for once. Instead they're merely power hungry lunatics with enough common sense to not want to destroy the world.
 
They both have significantly. I know I don't put '+10 to this particular roll because you've got a magic sword', but for example you'd have been defeated and captured in the tower if you didn't have it
The +10 to the rolls matters to readers, because its not really been communicated otherwise that there is in fact a difference
Yeah, showing that the bonus is there is a good way to tell people "the skills the MC has do matter", and addresses the complaint that nothing we do ever matters.

It functions as a limited use lightsaber basically and although you 'broke' it you were steadily improving such as in the battle where you didn't need to turn it off.
Yep, I couldn't have been the only one to notice this. Too bad it is probably broken. Can we replicate the feat with another blade?

Unrelated: I keep thinking that information and evasion > swordsmanship for personal defense > leadership because we can't do everything well ourselves > wildcard elements. Imagine knowing in advance what the Centaurs are planning. Or being able to lose Jubei'thos in a chase.
Every time there is a failure the dilemma is: either the instrument was wrong, or we didn't have enough of it. I don't know where Flameseeing falls.
 
Yeah, showing that the bonus is there is a good way to tell people "the skills the MC has do matter", and addresses the complaint that nothing we do ever matters.
I look to say Dynasty of Dynamic Alcoholism for examples here.

After all Brainwounder provides (inherently) no dice bonuses because its power is very simple, it is a legitimate lightsabre. Its effect means that it can cut through just about everything not explicitly magical like a hot knife through butter and even against magical stuff it'll damage it in a clash unless its incredibly powerful. Never once has it been shown to be something that can be redirected in this narrative power, so whenever the rolls fail Freddy or who ever is using it, its because of a personal failure on their part. In essence it does what I know Fractiousday is trying to accomplish here, the issue is that just does not come across at all.

To use the tower example again, its the difference between the knight using their shield to redirect the sword so that Grok over extended themselves (AKA the failure is on Grok's part for lacking in skills/over confidence), but what happened was that they treated it like a bog standard sword wielded by a strong human and punished Grok for it by letting him use his strength to get the sword stuck in the shield (the failure is still on Grok to an extent, but a large chunk of that is also because he explicitly thought that the sword being on fire would mean that such tactics would not work.)

To go back to Brainwounder, it has given numeric bonuses in the past, but those come out of the narrative. For example when it was being wielded by someone else who was trying to convince the army of Ostland to follow them, it gave a pretty big bonus to that diplomacy roll because it was the runefang, a cultural touchstone, holy relic and symbol of authority of the ruling families of the entire empire, to the point that the statement "has a runefang" essentially equates to "is in charge" in the people's minds with good reason.

Yep, I couldn't have been the only one to notice this. Too bad it is probably broken. Can we replicate the feat with another blade?
No. Not because we can't do it with another sword (it wasn't inherant to it, we learned how to do it breaking it the first time), but because its a shamanistic ability and we can't do any shamanism anymore.

I don't know where Flameseeing falls.
Its simply unuseable.

Even if we could use it, the risks involved in trying make it such a bad option that there are basically no circumstances I'd want to try and use it in.

Flameseeing
Base roll = 35 (25+10 for Fire Affinity)
Targeting = 98
Power = 24
Understanding the vision = 34
Detection? = 24

We have one roll just to try in the first place, one roll to not scry the wrong thing, one roll to see things, another to actually understand what it is we see in the first place and a final roll to not be spotted while doing it (yes that one presumably can be discounted if they've no means of detection, but the chances of us divining someone who won't have some form of detection is practically zero), to which only the first gets any bonuses.

These are (bluntly put) kinda crappy odds, and failing any one of those invalidates practically the entire action.

Fail the base roll you don't do anything.

Fail the targeting roll you see the wrong thing.

Fail the power roll and you're extremely vulnerable.

Fail the understanding roll you get nothing despite succeeding on everything else.

And of course fail the detection roll and you could get strangled by your angry father from inside of a ****ing fire.

There's risk and reward, but the reward is requires us to essentially beat the odds a minumum of five times where a single failure either invalidates the action or could put Grok's life at risk. Say we divine the Kolkar and we get Jub stabbing us in the face with a shadow blade.

Essentially it goes beyond "something you have to master" into, "actively too dangerous to be worth even a fraction of the effort" particularly as you're stuck in people's fire places.
 
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Really? Due to how the rolls came out at least, the knights explicitly managed to nullify it. Indeed they not only nullified it, they nullified it the exact same way they would have nullified a normal ****ing sword.
[Flameseeing] we have used exactly once and it was a colossal failure.
I'll first make the point that I've changed some of this and to an extent its to do with how I use dice in this quest and also it being my first quest. In the other one I'm running I'm using a much more structured approach with clearly defined ways of showing the degrees of success and failure etc. I remember someone saying that I was rolling too much and it felt back so I've been doing it less, now you have 1 roll for a particular action (usually) rather than the whole 'roll for availability of instructor' etc. It's the same with the bonuses I was providing for the character sheet skills etc which I eventually took off.

One point though is that we're getting to the end of an arc so I'm thinking this could be a good time to make some changes to the system, including rolls, which will provide greater clarity, so while I think the specific points like the rolling 5 times are less relevant now, it's still good feedback so thanks.

As for those specific examples, I think both you and the knights in the tower got like 87 or thereabouts. The roll then looked at their competence in context. They are professional soldiers, have encountered magic before and know how to fight it, they're armoured and they're in an enclosed space. Now yes you had a lightsaber, that's the only thing that kept you alive really, you managed to kill 3 and wound the fourth before Vark carried you away wounded. Within the context of being outnumbered 4 to 1, not having any armour yourself, being restricted in your movements and so on you did really well to survive and though yes their armour was more difficult for your sword to cut through it still allowed you to actually get through their armour. That's how armour works, it protects you, if you'd just had a normal sword you wouldn't have been able to do much because they're much better equipped than you.

On Flameseeing it's somewhat different, though I'd note a couple of general points. Firstly, there seems to be a general inclination in quests to have instant gratification. People want to see the rolls and the alchemy the GM uses to determine events, they want to see the bolded text at the end with the summary and the list of loot and so on. Yea that's cool I'll admit, but you didn't pick a shaman character you picked a warrior. If you have instant success in trying to learn a tradition that takes years that would be ridiculous. Yes you didn't get much use out of flameseeing, that's because you tried to learn it out a book and never took an action to just go and learn it from Feldad for example, who you know is good at it. It can have great utility but you don't have the experience to do such things yet. I've found the same thing in the other quest, people might ask why the MC isn't a better wizard and I'll reply that in chargen the choice of profession was scholar being the MC has no education in magic.
TL;DR: Nothing in the lore says Thrall cheated in Mak'gora. His lost connection with the elements is better explained by his guilt of making Garrosh warchief of the Horde and all that that led to than the elements arbitrarily taking interest in orcish tradition that has nothing to do with them based on rules that we don't understand well enough to definitively say Thrall cheated on.
Ah sorry, I think I address this in the infopost on it, but yes there's no judicial arbiter, I more meant that that like Thrall was sad because he felt depressed and therefore lost his elemental connection, so too is Grok depressed and therefore feels empty, has ptsd, that sort of thing. Having said that though everyone yells at Guldan for using magic in the film and although they're in different continuities that pretty clearly indicates to me that it's considered cheating, but yea, mentioned that it's a complex thing in the info post so not really anything else to say on it.
I legit cannot find anything indicating that say drudaism makes one go even half as crazy as fel,
Druidism makes you grow horns and wings, turns your skin mossy and stuff, makes you fall asleep and get trapped in metaphysical dreams etc, which could potentially be seen as corruption, eg Narelex and others. Shamanism can also have extremes, for example ' His mind roams freely and countless personalities invade his memories and his thoughts. When speaking to a spirit walker, one can never be entirely certain that only the spirit walker replies. He speaks with the voices of the ancients. Elderly spirit walkers sometimes lose all memories of their original selves, slipping from one spirit to the next without warning or control. ', so schizophrenia rather than the egomania of warlocks, again a source of corruption.
Every time there is a failure the dilemma is: either the instrument was wrong, or we didn't have enough of it. I don't know where Flameseeing falls.
Well clearly it works for Feldad, but as you say whenever you fail you could change your mind, did you lose because you couldn't predict the battle, because you lacked the equipment, because you didn't have something else, that sort of thing.
 
One point though is that we're getting to the end of an arc so I'm thinking this could be a good time to make some changes to the system, including rolls, which will provide greater clarity, so while I think the specific points like the rolling 5 times are less relevant now, it's still good feedback so thanks.
I mean the thing with rolling in general is that the more you do it, the more the law of big numbers kicks into effect.

There's no real good answer as a quester, I suppose hence why you tend to focus on trying to obtain "solid" bonuses.

While that specific instance was indeed a failure, I am talking much more generally on its utility, because as it was originally used shown I flat out would not want to use it for meta reasons, even if we were 100% trained in it. Its playing russian roulette five times with Schodinger's hand gun.

Anyway I go into quests with expectations of instant gratification, else my willingness to wait real-life years for the opportunity to do something with a titan may start to come across as somewhat machosistic. I've also got (hopefully) enough common sense to know that it takes time "git gud" at something*, but I'm still not going to use a skill that's essentially a death trap.

that's because you tried to learn it out a book and never took an action to just go and learn it from Feldad for example, who you know is good at it.
@Netos I have a better question where was this option before?

The one time we talked to him about shamanism he was extremely harsh on it and he's a freaking warlock, where flameseeing is demonstrably not. Furthermore since we arrived in Orgrimmar we've had no option to ask him for training.

I looked through all the options of the last few turns, only once did we have the option to even talk to ask him about what it was, but I can't find any indication that we knew he himself could do it!

In fact no @FractiousDay this information comes well the hell out of no where from the man who admitted that
nor was he ever trained as a shaman

So it comes right the hell out of nowhere that the non shaman knows a shaman technique one that is now locked to us because our connection to the elements has been sealed!

So no I see no reason for why we'd have gone to learn it from fel dad we had no freaking idea feldad could do it never mind that he was good at it!

Then we went to the barrens so could not have learned from him even if he told us that "Nope actually am a super powerful dark shaman I was just hiding it sowwwy."

Ah sorry, I think I address this in the infopost on it, but yes there's no judicial arbiter, I more meant that that like Thrall was sad because he felt depressed and therefore lost his elemental connection, so too is Grok depressed and therefore feels empty, has ptsd, that sort of thing. Having said that though everyone yells at Guldan for using magic in the film and although they're in different continuities that pretty clearly indicates to me that it's considered cheating, but yea, mentioned that it's a complex thing in the info post so not really anything else to say on it.
Pretty sure the movie is this :p


(side note glad we were talking about the same thing. In the future I think its better to just say that Thrall ya know...lost his powers, cause cheating in the mak-gora sends a specific meaning as to why he lost em which isn't true.)

And given that Thrall has used shamanism in a Mak-Gora before (on Garrosh no less) I think that kinda reinforces it. Near as I can tell as long as you're winning based off of actual skills that the enemy knows about going in then its fine. Even then judging by Garrosh's reaction when he finds out Cairne died to poison it seems like poison was less illigal than Garrosh just being pissed that he didn't get a legit kill on the guy.

So frankly Mak-gora's first rule seems to be that there are no rules.

Druidism makes you grow horns and wings, turns your skin mossy and stuff, makes you fall asleep and get trapped in metaphysical dreams etc, which could potentially be seen as corruption, eg Narelex and others. Shamanism can also have extremes, for example ' His mind roams freely and countless personalities invade his memories and his thoughts. When speaking to a spirit walker, one can never be entirely certain that only the spirit walker replies. He speaks with the voices of the ancients. Elderly spirit walkers sometimes lose all memories of their original selves, slipping from one spirit to the next without warning or control. ', so schizophrenia rather than the egomania of warlocks, again a source of corruption.
And yet the point stands, that I'd rather put up with hibernation and deal with walking through doors sideways then have to keep my overwhelming desire to rip everyone to shreds because they exist in check.

Furthermore as you said those are the extremes but they are comparatively nice and controllable. But, fel starts off at the extreme and wants to pump it up by injecting nitro into your veins.

*That said unless you're really extending the time between "expansions" and events for lack of better terminology (frankly I hope you're out right tossing out most of what blizzard has done post cata) then we've not got enough time to master a lot of things. I think I commented on this waaaay back, but from the start of Wow Classic the in universe timeline is around 6ish years maybe a bit more. Its the MLP problem on steroids.
 
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@Netos I have a better question where was this option before?
While I don't remember seeing *this* specifically, we *could* have thought of it. We had the option to ask Neeru for help or look in his library. At some point I mentioned that we could ask him on how to subjugate Proudpeak, or read more on flame-seeing. But other plans were voted in, and consulting that intricate juicy library was not an option.:eyebrow:

A bit of a stretch and not easy to spot, but it *was* possible. Making this a prominent characteristic of Neeru would be a bit of a retcon, though.
 
There's no real good answer as a quester, I suppose hence why you tend to focus on trying to obtain "solid" bonuses.
I think that despite what I think, if it gets in the way of the narrative, which a couple of people have mentioned it has, it becomes problematic. Even if I maintain that I think it was good or bad or whatever, I'll still be doing something about it because it shouldn't really be taking up people's notice in the first place, and also I think some structure will probably be good.
I looked through all the options of the last few turns, only once did we have the option to even talk to ask him about what it was, but I can't find any indication that we knew he himself could do it!

In fact no @FractiousDay this information comes well the hell out of no where from the man who admitted that
I don't remember seeing *this* specifically, we *could* have thought of it.
Ah so it wasn't my intention to indicate that Neeru was an expert in it or had trained as a shaman. He's always been a warlock sure, but he's a Burning Blade warlock and he's presumably read the Tome before. No I didn't give you a specific action to learn it off him but you've had the options to socialise with him, to learn demon magic (presumably off him) and to do various other things like read his books. You've also always had the options for write ins. The first time he's introduced you look at him through a fire, he quickly senses this and thinks its an attack, recognises you and communicates with you, indicating a general level of competence at magic and specifically the ability to interact with your Flameseeing. I've always written the BB as having unique traditions of shamanism and magic generally, specifically to do with fire but also swords as their name suggests, and your father is the (public) chief of the clan and therefore has at least some knowledge in this area. Warlocks aren't generally known for their prophetic abilities but he could have given you some stories about his childhood and perceptions of the actual Flameseers etc.

In hindsight I should probably have combined the various meditation actions instead of having normal meditation, warsight and flameseeing and confusing matters, so I suppose lesson learnt on that.

Also need to go write the next chapter and stuff
 
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Within the context of being outnumbered 4 to 1, not having any armour yourself, being restricted in your movements and so on you did really well to survive and though yes their armour was more difficult for your sword to cut through it still allowed you to actually get through their armour. That's how armour works, it protects you, if you'd just had a normal sword you wouldn't have been able to do much because they're much better equipped than you.
Missed this, thing was that also didn't come across because we weren't getting through their armour thanks to the sword. Again kinda like them using real life tactics to deal with a magic sword, we used mundane tactics to get through their normal armour with a magic sword, targetting weakspots like their legs and neck, where (by virtue of it being...ya know armour) its is significantly weaker or in some cases non-existant to the point that an IRL human can inflict major damage the same way.

It boils down to the problem I mentioned at the start, neither Grok or the knights did anything different to account for having or fighting a magic sword, the part of the fight (magic wise) that influenced the fight the most was battle sight, but the sword was essentially any sword.

Ah so it wasn't my intention to indicate that Neeru was an expert in it or had trained as a shaman. He's always been a warlock sure, but he's a Burning Blade warlock and he's presumably read the Tome before. No I didn't give you a specific action to learn it off him but you've had the options to socialise with him, to learn demon magic (presumably off him) and to do various other things like read his books. You've also always had the options for write ins. The first time he's introduced you look at him through a fire, he quickly senses this and thinks its an attack, recognises you and communicates with you, indicating a general level of competence at magic and specifically the ability to interact with your Flameseeing. I've always written the BB as having unique traditions of shamanism and magic generally, specifically to do with fire but also swords as their name suggests, and your father is the (public) chief of the clan and therefore has at least some knowledge in this area. Warlocks aren't generally known for their prophetic abilities but he could have given you some stories about his childhood and perceptions of the actual Flameseers etc.

In hindsight I should probably have combined the various meditation actions instead of having normal meditation, warsight and flameseeing and confusing matters, so I suppose lesson learnt on that.
Ya see this is where you as the creator and what we see as the players meet and clash.

You saw him as burning blade so clearly he knows this stuff, at least I player saw "he's a warlock and a magic user who is also part of the burning blade."

You expected the conclusion "he must know the technique or at least be knowledgable of it" I assume.

But I the player read his general dislike for shamanism and combine that with my knowledge of warlocking to arrive at the entirely different but I think entirely reasonable conclusion that "he can interact with someone flameseeing because he's a powerful warlock!" It did not help that you specifically drew attention to his "fel green eyes" when he spotted us in the fire which reinforced my assumption was he was using a warlock thing to give himself true sight or something.

From my perspective at least its a massive leap in logic to assume that the man who publically disses the elements and goes on endlessly about the power of fel (which is also associated with fire) knows a technique which is wrapped up in shamanism and is in a book that contains fel knowledge. Just like he didn't presumably paid little attention to shamanism 101 in it, we did not look at the fel notes jotted in the margins.

Its all very well to talk about unique tradition, but this is Mak-goraking the goblin again I think we had no real reason to assume he knew much about it or gave a damn.

Like did we know he was known for prophetic abilities was this something I missed? + We've interacted with him several times, but we had no indication "oh yeah you want training in this specific complex clan tradition ask him about his fucking childhood!"

I'm always appreciative of the write in option, but I think we had zero reasonable indicators that this was something we could ask anyone in the burning blade, never mind the man who we're not certain if he wants to use us as a sacrifice for a dreadlord!
 
The Tome meanwhile taught you several new skills like Flameseeing, as well as teaching you how to do shamanism, which I'll come to later in this response.
It's really just the Frostwolf-aligned clans who'd disapprove of Dark Shamanism, to many others its a permissible interpretation.

Anyway permissible yes, but still evil. There's a big difference between being a door mat for the elements and actively enslaving them. Slavery not good, hot take I know.

To add onto this, When asked about this earlier in the quest, IIRC, GM explained that ours was just a different way of doing shamansim, rather than as Dark Shamanism, and I think that due to players not knowing much about shamanism or its variants besides the vague idea that it deals with elements, it led us to keep choosing and siding with Dark Shamanism choices. Now, while having the agency (and maybe the ignorance) to make such a choice can be befitting of a game based on agency, I fear this also may have unfairly led players into the choice, as we didn't understand what the distinctions were, in or out of character.
 
To add onto this, When asked about this earlier in the quest, IIRC, GM explained that ours was just a different way of doing shamansim, rather than as Dark Shamanism, and I think that due to players not knowing much about shamanism or its variants besides the vague idea that it deals with elements, it led us to keep choosing and siding with Dark Shamanism choices. Now, while having the agency (and maybe the ignorance) to make such a choice can be befitting of a game based on agency, I fear this also may have unfairly led players into the choice, as we didn't understand what the distinctions were, in or out of character.
Or to simplify, Dark Shamanism is Shamanism, but we didn't put two and two together that Burning Blade Shamanism was Dark Shamanism. Likely exemplified by the fact that Flamebinding doesn't sound too bad on paper. To me at least an unbound flame is essentially a wildfire (or burning out), so in order for a shaman to harness flame in a way that is safe by any definition of the word it has to be bound. Not that we were essentially enslaving it to our will.

I don't think its quite fair to the QM to say that it was unfair per say, we were given some warning, but it also wasn't the clearest.
 
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Welp, I fell off this quest due to life things but I'm glad I caught up. Pretty rough go of things, but I do think that having this particular weapon of the centaur go off against our clan rather then the capital as a whole originally is worth something.

While the nonsense with Proudpeak also shows elementals are not our friends.

So I do hope Fel dad isnt pissed about this. He probably is, but it's a stressful situation. I hope our loredumping the Breaker stuff helped Thrall be taken serious by the big rock though. We shall see how that goes.

I would like to keep on the path of a mystical blade master. We just need to be better at breaking our elementals. Take some advice from the warlock tree on how they twist them, etc.

Sadly it might be hard to get there from here. I dont thinky fully committing to the Fel is smart, if only because if all magics are corruptible it makes sense to use two or more to ensure the least corruption in one direction.

So hey, guess that's a best case scenario. Feldad provides the juice to hunt down and break some elementals into nice loyal puppy form, right after we finish getting over our melancholy enough to make a good impression to thrall. But not to much of course. Being obviously shaken by things exploding with some general stories of heroism should keep us free of any big banishments.

Unless it's from fel dad for losing so many orcs. But not much we can do there.
 
particular weapon of the centaur go off against our clan rather then the capital as a whole originally is worth something.
You do realise Forneas walked his arse right on through Orgrimmar and presumably smashed a **** ton. He was essentially a wild raid boss kazrak and the like. The main difference is that there wasn't a centaur army following in behind him.

And no the proudpeek situation nicely demonstrates why that "break em" idea tends to backfire at the worst possible times.
 
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