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The Perfectly Normal High School: A Slice of Life Quest! (Defunct)

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Karnewarrior said:
Not that having things blow up in our face isn't fun, but for certain things it's probably best to consider a Wildcard as a positive, because doing otherwise would be limiting storytelling
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Nah. Best storytelling comes from perseverance through adversity, which requires the story to have an adversity in the first place.

For example, not a single character would rate Nanami's disappearance as a positive occurence were they given a choice to evaluate it, yet it became an integral part of the plot and almost a second storyline.

We do kinda lack true rivalries or meaningful complications.
 
Nevill said:
Nah. Best storytelling comes from perseverance through adversity, which requires the story to have an adversity in the first place.

We do kinda lack true rivalries or meaningful complications.
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That's only true most of the time though. Death is quite an adversity, but the game would be over if we were to die. Likewise, being captured by the Foundation and interrogated would be adversity, but barring some deus ex machina, would restrict our options too severely to be more fun than being out and about.

Having the SELF fail would be adversity, but would not be more interesting than success, because it would simply return us to the status quo, or very near to it. Whereas success would change things and if LuciD wanted could even shift the entire genre of the quest to a more turn-based-strategy mindset, although I seriously doubt that will be the case.

Good storytelling is possible without diversity, but if everything is adversity good storytelling becomes impossible. The protagonist must find success sometimes, or the show becomes boring. Puella Magi Madoka Magica would have been a flop if Homura had a misfire in episode one and shot herself dead on accident, failing her mission and leaving Madoka to simply contract under Mami's guidance and die to WPN. Because Homura found success, and less Absolute Adversity, the show was able to push in more Plot-Friendly Adversity. That's what I was referring to.
 
Karnewarrior said:
That's only true most of the time though. Death is quite an adversity, but the game would be over if we were to die. Likewise, being captured by the Foundation and interrogated would be adversity, but barring some deus ex machina, would restrict our options too severely to be more fun than being out and about.
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ARE we likely to find any situations where rolling poorly or making a mistake could get us killed? It doesn't seem like it to me.

Regardless, I agree that sometimes wildcard can be considered a good thing. How much of the time remains to be seen.
 
Karnewarrior said:
if everything is adversity good storytelling becomes impossible. The protagonist must find success sometimes
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That's what 98% of the other outcomes are for. Well, more or less.

As for PMMM, that story didn't run on dice, but I'll play along and say that Homu had absolutely failed in Episodes one to Infinity minus one... that's what allowed for the plot to be interesting in the last timeline shown... or rather, that's why the timeline shown to make the story was the successful one, and thus final.

Time travels do make for stange narrative conventions.
 
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veekie said:
Former. If he's in a harem he's not the one in the throne
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I wasn't sure which person you were referring to. It was an open modifier.
Somehow, I don't see Silas being part of a harem. I'm not sure he's romantically interested in any potential harem targets...or standing up for himself enough to be noticed by either the target, other harem-mates, or the metaphorical audience.
 
Well, that and LuciD has confirmed that harems would be a pretty poor decision. :V

But yeah, Silas probably wants a CLANNAD-style romance rather than a big harem comedy. Although it would be pretty interesting if he ended up in the center of a "harem" anyway with multiple girls squaring off against each other to win the Silasbowl. Interesting for us, at least. Probably pretty hellish for a recovering NEET who's spoken with more girls in the past month than he has in the last 16 years of his life.
 
Karnewarrior said:
Although it would be pretty interesting if he ended up in the center of a "harem" anyway with multiple girls squaring off against each other to win the Silasbowl. Interesting for us, at least.
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Alternatively - and just hear me out here - we could not treat other characters exclusively as tools for our amusement with no agency or relevance outside of the PC? Just a thought.
 
Eh, I am not a believer in fictional characters' rights.

On too many occasions I've done something ill-advised because it was an interesting route to take. Like revealing the Foundation to Yumika, because I was curious where she is going to take it. Or disregarding the global economy, which sadly didn't pass through.

Silas wants nothing more than to have a perfectly normal, boring life, but I see absolutely no reason to respect that wish as a quester. :whistle:
 
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Nevill said:
Eh, I am not a believer in fictional characters' rights.

On too many occasions I've done something ill-advised because it was an interesting route to take. Like revealing the Foundation to Yumika, because I was curious where she is going to take it. Or disregarding the global economy, which sadly didn't pass through.

Silas wants nothing more than to have a perfectly normal, boring life, but I see absolutely no reason to respect that wish as a quester. :whistle:
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I mean this in the most respectful way possible but that is one of the worst voting philosophies I have ever heard and if you really believe that then you are the antithesis of everything I stand for.

If your QM can't make a quest interesting while their voters are making optimal choices, then either the QM is shit or the Quest is shit and they either need to improve or just go find another quest. Do not deliberately sabotage a quest by making derpvotes just because "it'll be more interesting".
 
Well, aren't you quick to judge. Does it not sound to you like calling your opinion more important, and that your way to enjoy questing is the right one?

I've been around hundreds of quests so far, and I came to hate the notion of 'optimal choices', aka the 'proper' way to have fun. I've seen it too many times, and sometimes I just don't care to tread the same character development path for the umpteenth time (because a community can be rather predictable in its preferences, so there are only so many permutations of archetypes we see on SV). And I rather dislike it when other people start calling out and fearmongering and pointing out how this and that choice is terrible because it doesn't fit their view of the character and whatnot.

The point of voting is to vote for whatever your heart desires. If the thread has similar enough preferences, then what right do you have to call it sabotage (it's a rather loaded term, if you ask me), or demand suggest they leave the quest because they are spoiling it for you? It's a democratic process, we can choose which story is more to our liking.

But I guess you are seeing something in my words that isn't there, and projecting your experiences with some other quests on what I said. After all, I care plenty about the quest, and I wouldn't have voted if it didn't interest me in the first place, rather than vote maliciously to mess it up and see it end. The difference of opinion doesn't change that.

I don't mean to pick a fight, or start an argument. Neither have I suggested anything terrible so far to 'ruin' this story, nor have you accused me of the things I said to dislike. Just felt like crarifying my position.
 
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Yes, because one way of voting more or less deliberately fouls the efforts of other people because they think it's "more interesting". It's selfish behaviour and indicative of a lack of confidence in the QM.

Now, maybe you are just communicating poorly, because there's a difference between "deliberately voting for stupid choices because lulz" and "I don't like this particular character arc/I think I've seen this before too many times".
 
Nah, that's the part where you put words in my mouth, because I have not once implied making 'derpvotes'. A rather demeaning term meant to dismiss one's position right out of the gate, no?

And you can turn that one around. If QM isn't in the habit of putting in 'trap votes', then who lacks confidence more - me, for having voted an odd choice, or you, for trying to call the option they came up with a 'derpvote because lulz'? Good QMs never offer options that would be out of character, you know? ;)

Nevertheless, I think there could be a better topic to discuss choice designs in quests, and it probably belongs to a neighbouring subforum. Peace! :)
 
I'm with Nevill on this one. The point of playing a game is to have fun, not to win. Sometimes, winning is fun, but sometimes, losing is fun too. And the most fun one can have is when it's not clear if the strategy is win or lose.

I'm also against voting for stupid options just because they're stupid - but voting for stupid options because it's in character is fine. And there's nothing particularly wrong with voting for an option that's obviously a bad idea if it will result in hilarity and no/not much setback. Planning and strategizing is fine, but sometimes you just want to build a giant magma cannon and shoot that instead of turtling and packing the walls with crossbowdwarves, or hunt that pack of Boomalope NOW instead of waiting for rain to put out the fires. I recall some youtube game design personality putting it like this: "Given the chance, a player will optimize all the fun out of your game".
 
Nevill said:
Eh, I am not a believer in fictional characters' rights.
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Nor am I precisely, but I find that the tropes and patterns associated with the sort of harem setup Karnewarrior proposes make for actively worse stories. A bunch of otherwise solid characters being reduced to inexplicable fawning and squabbling over an ultimately mediocre protagonist (and while he may be haplessly charming, I think we can all agree that Silas is hardly a paragon of personal magnetism) is something I find to be an irritating waste of potential, not a source of humor.
 
I'm with you on the harem tropes being commonly awful. But I do like gambit pileups (Ikusaba Quest being best described as a three-way shogi match between Dumbledore, Xanatos, and Lucifer himself), and what I was saying was that it could be interesting (again, to us, not to Silas, and would be a very sociopathic action to take) if that were the case in Silas' own harem, especially since Silas is utterly unsuited to wars of intrigue.

I wasn't suggesting we actually do that, though. Just that it would be kind of fun. Equally fun would be balancing a shadow war with the Foundation and deciding who we want to take to Mihoku!Prom, which kind of seems like it might actually happen now.

Also I disagree with Silas not being a paragon of personal magnetism. Silas is adorkable.
 
For the record, I haven't been on SV for very long, and I prefer to pick the optimal choice pretty much all of the time. That being said, quests still need to be enjoyable for everyone, and sometimes the optimal choice can shut down the narrative(and the fun) pretty hard. I haven't experienced this yet, but I've heard of lighthousing being a bad thing at least, although I don't yet know of any other examples.
More to the point, this seems like a quest where we are exceedingly unlikely to die or have anyone else else die on us. That means this is probably the best kind of quest for the players to just do whatever seems interesting and in character.
As an aside, the best way to get people to vote for the vote you like is to explain to them why that vote is more interesting than the alternatives (or more optimal, if that's how they vote), and not criticizing them for wanting to vote a different way.

Hope this helps, and that I didn't just inflame something that was dying down anyway.
 
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Wiadi said:
A bunch of otherwise solid characters being reduced to inexplicable fawning and squabbling over an ultimately mediocre protagonist (and while he may be haplessly charming, I think we can all agree that Silas is hardly a paragon of personal magnetism)
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Irrespective to one's stance on harem comedies... can you resist mentally squeezing the virtual life out of 8bit!Silas every time he makes an appearance on-screen? I can totally see how Nanami was hanging out with him despite him being a shut-in.

And that is without mentioning his other, more confident and ruthless, side that Yumika's lessons are slowly bringing out. Silas can be a bad boy at times.

As far as school infratuations go, people can definitely do worse.

Sentient Tree said:
As an aside, the best way to get people to vote for the vote you like is to explain to them why that vote is more interesting than the alternatives
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Weeeell... One of the things I really want to do is to see what happens if Big Sister drops the ball on any of the tasks* she has to juggle... just to see if she really is so integral to the functioning of the world as she claims to be. It sounds somewhat unreasonable to have so much depend on one entity without other checks and balances. Does Big Sis have supervision?

I am not sure I would find many willing to risk plunging the world into a financial crisis just to sate my curiosity, however eloquently I may explain my reasoning. :D

* probably not the ones concerning nuclear weaponry, though. Even my YOLO has limits.
 
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Nevill said:
Weeeell... One of the things I really want to do is to see what happens if Big Sister drops the ball on any of the tasks* she has to juggle... just to see if she really is so integral to the functioning of the world as she claims to be. It sounds somewhat unreasonable to have so much depend on one entity without other checks and balances. Does Big Sis have supervision?

I am not sure I would find many willing to risk plunging the world into a financial crisis just to sate my curiosity, however eloquently I may explain my reasoning. :D

* probably not the ones concerning nuclear weaponry, though. Even my YOLO has limits.
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Alright, I'll admit I'm getting a bit of a knee jerk "Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!" reaction to that. :p
That being said, it's still certainly more likely to convince me than if someone told me that my voting philosophy was completely wrong and that taking the optimal route was by definition a terrible idea (for example).

That being said, it DOES sound quite interesting to find out just how important Big Sis is to the world, and whether she has any oversight at all (maybe Silas is supposed to be her oversight? Maybe she found a loophole that let her wipe his memories of that function or something?). Perhaps there's some way to check this out without compromising the global economy? The easiest way would probably be to just ask Big Sis.
 
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Sentient Tree said:
The easiest way would probably be to just ask Big Sis.
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Sooo... maybe initiate a conversation as a next AS action? For someone who is the main character, we do not talk very often. I have a lot to ask her!

But bear in mind that what we might not be able to get the answer to this particular question from Big Sis. After all, it wasn't Silas' decision what she should have focused on, but her own. It's she who was convinced of her indispensability... and it may be for a good reason, but we, the readers, would be unable to confirm the truth of the statement by asking for her opinion which we already know.

Speaking of choice design, it was an interesting one. I wouldn't go for it if it were Silas' choice, since I do not want Silas to be egotistical and put the world at risk just so he could live a marginally more comfortable week, but since the decision lay with Big Sister herself, it was a good way to experiment without having it weigh on Silas' conscience. We are already aware Big Sister has some strange priorities and experiences a bit of an emotional turmoil, so if an AI made the choice to put Silas before everything it wouldn't really change my opinion of her for the worse.

Plus, if the Ambernian economy crashes we can finally afford that damned phone! See, it was the optimal choice! :whistle:


On an unrelated note. Digging through the old updates, I found this bit:
LuciDreamer said:
"Ah… okay…" Silas replied. He turned back to his paper. "Do you… not like Hanamura-kun very much?"

"Hanamura-kun? No, no no," Maeda said. "He's… alright. I mean, he's a bit of a philanderer, but he's not nearly as bad as Mikado."

"As bad as Mikado…?"

"- not important," Maeda replied quickly, averting her eyes. There's a story there… Silas realized.
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Looks like someone got rejected? Playing a matchmaker for the two doesn't sound like a trivial task anymore.

Given his part in the 'Papers, please!' omake I wonder if it's a natural quality.
 
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Nevill said:
Sooo... maybe initiate a conversation as a next AS action? For someone who is the main character, we do not talk very often. I have a lot to ask her!

But bear in mind that what we might not be able to get the answer to this particular question from Big Sis. After all, it wasn't Silas' decision what she should have focused on, but her own. It's she who was convinced of her indispensability... and it may be for a good reason, but we, the readers, would be unable to confirm the truth of the statement by asking for her opinion which we already know.
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Asking Big Sis could work. Is there any other way to find out? Possibly we could find a way to confirm some things that Big Sis tells us about what she does for the economy?
 
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