- Location
- the internet
Yeah before, people on discord were telling me it wasn't interesting enough so I changed it and now its too OP to be a C Rank tech. Shouldn't have listened.
😢
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
😢
- Location
- scrabbling
This last vote was rather hard to parse, and to be honest I don't really understand most of the differences and intents behind these techs that are ostensibly about making things easier to understand. 
- Location
- United States of America
This last vote was rather hard to parse, and to be honest I don't really understand most of the differences and intents behind these techs that are ostensibly about making things easier to understand.
Lol dont feel bad , its actually pretty telling that less then 20+voted this time , these types of mechanics heavy votes are kind of built for a small select vocal reader base. The rest of us will just have to wait till the story gets back on track to a more narrative focus.
- Location
- Finland
Eh, fuck it.
[X]South Wind Blows Unerringly: C
Duration: Long
Just as crisp southern winds bring clarity and clear skies, this technique allows the user and any number of willing participants to communicate clearly through concepts, impressions and intent, bypassing the need for words and language.* Any participants attempting to lie or deceive whilst communicating in this manner suffer a full rank penalty to their Speech, as the winds of intent and concept blow crossways.
*Creator's note: This technique does not eliminate confusion due to usage of cultural metaphors and associated concepts, or loss of nuance or subtlety. The creator of the technique bears no responsibility for mishaps incurred through usage of the technique. Use at your own discretion.
I like the disclaimer.
[X] (Alternative) Hidden Wind's Breath: C
Duration: Long
The wind connects all beneath the sky, mastery of wind and music allows the singer to weave a connection between two souls into the tapestry that may go unnoticed by all save their target.
Upon use, the user establishes a connection with an ally within Very Far range across which senses and thoughts may be shared, familiarity with the target increases the clarity of communication. Once the connection is established, it may be maintained over greater distances dependent on how close the two are - up to 500m + 500m*SL. While a connection is active, either side may use the other's combat perception <at a half-rank penalty> if it is higher than their own.
The connection requires perception rank equal to the user's stealth to identify it's presence, and a rank above to identify the user and target's locations. Duration may be refreshed instantly at D cost upon the effect's end.
Seems to have the best range, i think, honestly not sure.
I like the name best so that's good atleast.
[X]South Wind Blows Unerringly: C
Duration: Long
Just as crisp southern winds bring clarity and clear skies, this technique allows the user and any number of willing participants to communicate clearly through concepts, impressions and intent, bypassing the need for words and language.* Any participants attempting to lie or deceive whilst communicating in this manner suffer a full rank penalty to their Speech, as the winds of intent and concept blow crossways.
*Creator's note: This technique does not eliminate confusion due to usage of cultural metaphors and associated concepts, or loss of nuance or subtlety. The creator of the technique bears no responsibility for mishaps incurred through usage of the technique. Use at your own discretion.
I like the disclaimer.
[X] (Alternative) Hidden Wind's Breath: C
Duration: Long
The wind connects all beneath the sky, mastery of wind and music allows the singer to weave a connection between two souls into the tapestry that may go unnoticed by all save their target.
Upon use, the user establishes a connection with an ally within Very Far range across which senses and thoughts may be shared, familiarity with the target increases the clarity of communication. Once the connection is established, it may be maintained over greater distances dependent on how close the two are - up to 500m + 500m*SL. While a connection is active, either side may use the other's combat perception <at a half-rank penalty> if it is higher than their own.
The connection requires perception rank equal to the user's stealth to identify it's presence, and a rank above to identify the user and target's locations. Duration may be refreshed instantly at D cost upon the effect's end.
Seems to have the best range, i think, honestly not sure.
I like the name best so that's good atleast.
People inserting a random "TR" in the South Winds Blows vote are really screwing up the count.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
Should probably vote
[X] (Alternative) Hidden Wind's Breath: C
[X] [TR] South Wind Blows Unerring: C
[X] (Alternative) Hidden Wind's Breath: C
[X] [TR] South Wind Blows Unerring: C
Super same. I dont understand why this is going on.This last vote was rather hard to parse, and to be honest I don't really understand most of the differences and intents behind these techs that are ostensibly about making things easier to understand.
- Location
- the internet
'Cause we're modding an art. It was part of the turn plan we voted for. It's intended to be practice for when we really get into modding arts later. Yrsillar needs to work out a system for art modding and art creation. We, the voters, need to know what to expect and how to use that system to obtain a result we like. So its kinda a test drive, which HDW is perfect for b/c it was a old stop-gap archive art that was never that good and would've been phased out anyway.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
Hopefully more narrative driven structure because unlike hdw where we mostly knew what we wanted, people have fairly different visions for FSS+ which I can see leading to quite a bit of salt depending on how the process and voting get structured.
I found it fun!
- Location
- ?
[] Four Winds Messengers: C
Thank you. That was very clarifying.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
And to think, we almost didn't mod an art this turn (the turn vote was super hotly contested). Imagine if we were working out all the kinks in the system on our first successor art!
(I ended up not voting for the first time in a while, because I've been busy moving, but I am fine with the results.)
(I ended up not voting for the first time in a while, because I've been busy moving, but I am fine with the results.)
Alright, so reflections upon the process here @yrsillar :
- Overall I think things worked reasonably well here. The detailed control was particularly good in this instance, where the purpose was specifically to address a gap in our skillset and we had clear goals in mind. That being said, some of the execution I think only worked because the art was so simple, and we had such clear goals.
- Detailed I think shines best when our goal with the art is specifically to manage gaps in our build or refine things. Otoh, for something like FSS+ a vaguer approach might be fine instead.
- As @Black Noise noted, it'll be important to manage narrative and how that informs choices - particularly for arts like FSS+. There are sort of multiple levels of vote here. At the highest level we have broad direction. In this case this was focusing on reducing buffs, and adding communication. For FSS+ I believe our current ideas are leaning into [The End], or leaning into endings -> new beginnings following our Domain Insight (and we could add more to this). For RME/HDW+ the big choices rn are whether we make an individual successor, or try to merge them. These are all kind of different, and their votes could manifest in the quest in different ways. FSS is strongly narrative driven for instance, while the RME/HDW choice could easily occur in the plan vote itself.
- On that note, the Keyword system continues to be very limited, and I would again implore you to allow more flexible voting when we're looking at thematic direction there. Sometimes there are simple substitutions that work, yes - but other times, primarily with themes, the keywords are just too simplistic or limited to cover intent and fluff well.
- On the subject of pacing, moving rapidly here was the correct decision I think - dragging things out would have been ergh. However, as we've discussed a bit this does have the downside of not giving enough time to manage tech balance and details, and once the voting is started it's obviously difficult for you to change them.
- Ideally then for that problem we would be working on ideas far in advance so they have time to be refined and balanced.... the problem there though is that appropriate balance depends on power level (which changes) and gets in the way of us responding to the narrative of the art development as it unfolds. The costs may be greater than the gains tbh.
- I would strongly advise using plan votes in the future for the techs. We got away with it here because the art was very simple with only two techs being voted on, with goals that were focused on acquiring disparate utility and simple categories for the techs. If we had more techs to vote on though this would break down rapidly. Consider a situation where we actually wanted multiple different perception techs for instance, or art ideas like my suggestions for FSS+ and RME/HDW+ where synergy and interaction are huge components. This may also have the advantage of reducing the vote options to clearer directions that allow people to make easier comparisons. Having seven very similar translation techs here for instance wasn't wildly helpful for people trying to vote imo - especially when there's a lot of uncertainty around what exactly is "reasonable" to put in a tech and the suggestions haven't really been given a moderation pass to reduce them to distinct options with different trade-offs.
More thoughts:
The dropping of the point-buy system meant that our decisions on how many meridians to have were retrospectively undermined. The general idea of "minimal heart, mostly head" was maintained, but the translation of more heads = more power on some things was lost. Not sure how to handle this. On one hand, that general direction informed the new Canto. Otoh, the logical way to handle this in the absence of that would be yrs working out meridian requirements afterwards or something... which might work better if we had complete art options really...
~~~~~
There is also I feel an inherent tension between the needs of good Art design - which is holistic - and the needs of the sense of exploration via quest narrative. I don't know how @yrsillar is thinking about running FSS+'s design, but it's supposed to be a lengthy narrative arc, presumably with lots of choices and exploration along the way. This is good! We want this! The problem is though that building an Art piecemeal like that is kinda not the best way of designing an art - a good Art should be designed as a strong coherent whole. However if you start with a clear art design then it might be easier to write a story around it (since you know where you're going) - but you could also lose quest engagement and gameplay, which is undesirable.
One way of handling that would be to have a narrative arc exploring ideas and making decisions that shape the direction of the art, and then getting 2 or 3 final art results to vote on at the end. The downside with this though is that the less you pin things down, the harder it is to shown LQ actually working on the details of the Art like specific techs. Working on specific techs though can potentially pin down way too much, either in a way that basically assumes you already know the outcome (for example, my FSS+ idea revolves around the Frozen Soul's Heart technique being used to gather and build up qi from attacks to do stuff - once you've started on that you've sort of decided on the overall Art), or in a way that potentially leaves you with a bunch of fragmented tech pieces that don't fit together well. There's also the question of how context shapes voting. I'll again use my FSS+ idea because I have it available and it's convenient (I'd really like to see more ideas here tbh), but it focuses on upgrading qi drain more in the base techs with the idea of then using that qi to fuel bigger moves based on the endings -> new beginnings theme. One could potentially have a vote somewhere in the art development about whether or not to try to develop qi drain more - but absent those broader ideas about how it's supposed to be used in the Art, would it be as appealing? Or would it just be at a base level clearly suboptimal compared to moar dps plz.
It's tricky really. Another idea could be a staggered approach where one first votes on direction, then on a general framework/shape of the art, and then on refining individual details... but how easy would it be to decide on whether or not we should work on one tech first or something without thinking about how everything else fits together, and how we're distributing power? The holistic nature of Art design is hard to avoid.
The dropping of the point-buy system meant that our decisions on how many meridians to have were retrospectively undermined. The general idea of "minimal heart, mostly head" was maintained, but the translation of more heads = more power on some things was lost. Not sure how to handle this. On one hand, that general direction informed the new Canto. Otoh, the logical way to handle this in the absence of that would be yrs working out meridian requirements afterwards or something... which might work better if we had complete art options really...
~~~~~
There is also I feel an inherent tension between the needs of good Art design - which is holistic - and the needs of the sense of exploration via quest narrative. I don't know how @yrsillar is thinking about running FSS+'s design, but it's supposed to be a lengthy narrative arc, presumably with lots of choices and exploration along the way. This is good! We want this! The problem is though that building an Art piecemeal like that is kinda not the best way of designing an art - a good Art should be designed as a strong coherent whole. However if you start with a clear art design then it might be easier to write a story around it (since you know where you're going) - but you could also lose quest engagement and gameplay, which is undesirable.
One way of handling that would be to have a narrative arc exploring ideas and making decisions that shape the direction of the art, and then getting 2 or 3 final art results to vote on at the end. The downside with this though is that the less you pin things down, the harder it is to shown LQ actually working on the details of the Art like specific techs. Working on specific techs though can potentially pin down way too much, either in a way that basically assumes you already know the outcome (for example, my FSS+ idea revolves around the Frozen Soul's Heart technique being used to gather and build up qi from attacks to do stuff - once you've started on that you've sort of decided on the overall Art), or in a way that potentially leaves you with a bunch of fragmented tech pieces that don't fit together well. There's also the question of how context shapes voting. I'll again use my FSS+ idea because I have it available and it's convenient (I'd really like to see more ideas here tbh
), but it focuses on upgrading qi drain more in the base techs with the idea of then using that qi to fuel bigger moves based on the endings -> new beginnings theme. One could potentially have a vote somewhere in the art development about whether or not to try to develop qi drain more - but absent those broader ideas about how it's supposed to be used in the Art, would it be as appealing? Or would it just be at a base level clearly suboptimal compared to moar dps plz.It's tricky really. Another idea could be a staggered approach where one first votes on direction, then on a general framework/shape of the art, and then on refining individual details... but how easy would it be to decide on whether or not we should work on one tech first or something without thinking about how everything else fits together, and how we're distributing power? The holistic nature of Art design is hard to avoid.