- Location
- The Star Kingdom of Manticore
First thought, I think you might be missing commas in our insight page for our concepts. As dope as the concept of "Ending Creation" seems, I don't think Ling Qi is strong enough to have something like that.
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
- California
So would this be a situation where we pick one path to develop down, or do we take all of these projects to deepen our understanding and mastery of the Art?
NoxOfUmbra
Shadow of the night
- Location
- Colombia, South América
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I think that to advance the art we need to complete all parts of it, meaning advance in all our 3 patrons.
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Well, this is all very fascinating. The concept system seems to formalize aspects of characterization that we were paying attention to anyway, now we just have hard numbers.
Also, I can't help but notice that Community appears unable to advance at the moment - it's listed as (-/5) - is that LQ's Heart Demon having an effect? Do we need to resolve that before Community can advance further?
Also, I can't help but notice that Community appears unable to advance at the moment - it's listed as (-/5) - is that LQ's Heart Demon having an effect? Do we need to resolve that before Community can advance further?
- Location
- California
That would make sense. Our Heart Demon is all about Ling Qi having to figure out how to handle keeping her family safe while also letting them help her and live their own lives, even if that puts them in danger. So it's good for us to finally get some hard numbers and mechanics about how it's affecting us, and hopefully give us a path to sorting it out.
- Location
- New Brunswick, NJ
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
This looks extremely cool and interesting. Quick thing I noticed, though:
This says that insights add concepts to our domain.
This lists the concepts Truth, Community, and Home.
However, Home doesn't show up in our concept list at all, even at level 0. Is this an error? If so, is the error that Home should appear in our concepts list or that Home is a concept you originally meant to include but decided to drop?
Tangentially, if Home is a concept, it feels a little strange that this insight doesn't touch on it while Mirror does.
Tentative traits list
Sable Grace(G): 8
Motion without motion. A flickering dance of uncertainty, never in only one place, dancing as the wind and the shadows do. Primary Movement
Flute Mastery(G): 10
Absolute mastery of the flute in all of its variations. Even without a physical instrument, you may play to perfection. Your melodies are beyond mere sound and can be heard even by the deaf and in places where no physical sound can exist.
Unbroken Will(G): 6
A stubborn resilience which does not end, allowing you to weather punishment which should break you. You may be damaged, wounded, even crippled, but never will you stop in battle so long as breath remains. Primary Armor
Vanishing(G): 8
The art of dispersal, of scattering, rendering oneself into no more than dust on the wind, the shadow of leaves on the forest floor. Hidden from sight and spirit, less than even a ghost. No mundane means can track your scattered presence.
Dreamwalker(G): 1
The first tentative steps into the shallows of the unconscious, tiptoeing across the border between the material world and the realm of thought and dream. With great effort you can even carry a few comrades along on the journey.
Master Musician(G): 6
Near perfect knowledge of the mechanics of composition and instruments, such that even a wholly foreign or unknown piece could be learned in an hour or two.
Inquisitive Eyes(G): 7
Silver eyes, always seeking. Analyze swiftly and efficiently. A gaze that penetrates illusion and falsehood, breaking down cipher and security. Primary Perception
Winter's Heart(G): 2
Aspect of Winter carved into flesh and soul by Mastery of a spirit inherited art. You walk unafraid of winter's chill, and your voice raised in fury cuts like the coldest wind.
---
Argent Disciple(Y): 6
Knowledge of the common etiquette of imperial society, government and bureaucracy. Education sufficient to pass as an educated adult in Imperial Society.
Wilderness Survival(Y): 6
Knowledge of tracking and survival in the wilderness of the Empire and its near environs. Sufficient to survive alone and unsupplied for some time in the less dangerous parts of the world.
Imperial Weapons Training(Y): 5
Minimal knowledge of hand to hand and weapons combat in the imperial style. Near mastery for any mortal, but the bare minimum among cultivator nobility.
Formations Dabbler(Y): 10
Basic knowledge of Imperial Formations sufficient to identify the functions of talismans and arrays of lower complexity, Some advanced knowledge of construct and security formations based on oldert efforts.
Social Traits:
(Some may have noticed your social arts no longer listed under meridians, that is because social arts now function as a way to learn and advance social traits, since writing art use into conversations is terrible.)
Dreaming Muse's Rapport(G) 5:
You understand well the value of presenting empathy and consideration, and recognize when it is being done with sincerity or deceptive intent. Your honest words are able to better convince and put others at ease, and people are more likely to take your intentions at face value.
Spirit Speaker(G): 6
You understand something of the alien ways of spirits, and they in turn may understand humanity through you. When you speak, most spirits listen at least long enough to hear you out. When speaking to other humans your experience makes you more able to wield honesty as a knife, never speaking a direct falsehood without intent.
Hidden Smile(G): 3
In professional venues, you are well able to keep your composure despite needling or provocation subtle or otherwise. In turn, you have some skill at detecting the cracks in your peers' facades.
Motion without motion. A flickering dance of uncertainty, never in only one place, dancing as the wind and the shadows do. Primary Movement
Flute Mastery(G): 10
Absolute mastery of the flute in all of its variations. Even without a physical instrument, you may play to perfection. Your melodies are beyond mere sound and can be heard even by the deaf and in places where no physical sound can exist.
Unbroken Will(G): 6
A stubborn resilience which does not end, allowing you to weather punishment which should break you. You may be damaged, wounded, even crippled, but never will you stop in battle so long as breath remains. Primary Armor
Vanishing(G): 8
The art of dispersal, of scattering, rendering oneself into no more than dust on the wind, the shadow of leaves on the forest floor. Hidden from sight and spirit, less than even a ghost. No mundane means can track your scattered presence.
Dreamwalker(G): 1
The first tentative steps into the shallows of the unconscious, tiptoeing across the border between the material world and the realm of thought and dream. With great effort you can even carry a few comrades along on the journey.
Master Musician(G): 6
Near perfect knowledge of the mechanics of composition and instruments, such that even a wholly foreign or unknown piece could be learned in an hour or two.
Inquisitive Eyes(G): 7
Silver eyes, always seeking. Analyze swiftly and efficiently. A gaze that penetrates illusion and falsehood, breaking down cipher and security. Primary Perception
Winter's Heart(G): 2
Aspect of Winter carved into flesh and soul by Mastery of a spirit inherited art. You walk unafraid of winter's chill, and your voice raised in fury cuts like the coldest wind.
---
Argent Disciple(Y): 6
Knowledge of the common etiquette of imperial society, government and bureaucracy. Education sufficient to pass as an educated adult in Imperial Society.
Wilderness Survival(Y): 6
Knowledge of tracking and survival in the wilderness of the Empire and its near environs. Sufficient to survive alone and unsupplied for some time in the less dangerous parts of the world.
Imperial Weapons Training(Y): 5
Minimal knowledge of hand to hand and weapons combat in the imperial style. Near mastery for any mortal, but the bare minimum among cultivator nobility.
Formations Dabbler(Y): 10
Basic knowledge of Imperial Formations sufficient to identify the functions of talismans and arrays of lower complexity, Some advanced knowledge of construct and security formations based on oldert efforts.
Social Traits:
(Some may have noticed your social arts no longer listed under meridians, that is because social arts now function as a way to learn and advance social traits, since writing art use into conversations is terrible.)
Dreaming Muse's Rapport(G) 5:
You understand well the value of presenting empathy and consideration, and recognize when it is being done with sincerity or deceptive intent. Your honest words are able to better convince and put others at ease, and people are more likely to take your intentions at face value.
Spirit Speaker(G): 6
You understand something of the alien ways of spirits, and they in turn may understand humanity through you. When you speak, most spirits listen at least long enough to hear you out. When speaking to other humans your experience makes you more able to wield honesty as a knife, never speaking a direct falsehood without intent.
Hidden Smile(G): 3
In professional venues, you are well able to keep your composure despite needling or provocation subtle or otherwise. In turn, you have some skill at detecting the cracks in your peers' facades.
A bunch of general reactions:
- Art projects - really cool. Great for art/narrative integration, and making cultivation choices feel meaningful. I love it.
- Number of concept levels seems quite high? Especially if they've also individually got XP? If you want to be able to have partial progress on concept levels, I'd be inclined to make us need far fewer of them. With this number it can maybe work if we're basically getting a level a vote I think? The XP generally seems a bit rendundent though, as granular progress on a concept is already addressed by the concept having multiple development levels.
- Passives - liking these, nice, streamlined, and evocative.
- Techniques - I like how they're written, again very evocative. Though of course I'm also an anti-technique radical who thinks they should largely be removed - though obviously there are also challenges in maintaining narrative continuity here during the systems adjustment. Some arts are easier to compress than others - e.g. SNR is super compressible, basically just being shadow armor + shadow block. PLR slightly trickier, though I'd argue EDD could probably just be crushed into IPF.
- Traits are great I love them.
- Qi slots I'm all for, but numbers need to be refined to maintain current continuity. It's challenging since we really want to bring down the number of effects we're trying to stack into a scene, but we also have to handle the fact that right now we can and do stack like 8 or 9 things at once. Bringing that number down needs to be a long term project to retain verisimilitude.
- Domain - this still seems way too complicated imo. So many little bonuses to add up, so many little effects to track. I feel like this stems from starting with our current domain, and then working backwards to try to edit things? My experience is that that kind of process tends to leave you feeling that you can't remove anything because it's all important, and so significant changes don't tend to get made. I'd suggest it might be better to instead throw all that away, and then go and describe [The Mist] like PLR's passives there? And then look at what needs to be added to that. Depends what you want to do ofc, but rn it feels like some of the numbers have been tweaked, but other than that the complexity is basically the same.
- Meridians - I need to think about this more, but it feels that all this change really does is make bookkeeping simpler by reducing the numbers and stopping arts interlocking since they're now only one type? Swapping is facilitated within a category, which may have some very limited value, but the issue of meridian decisions constraining future choices remains. Though that can be addressed by allowing us to adjust our meridian slots once we're further into green I guess. Could work decently I think? I assume that our arts will grow to use more slots over time, with LFWT taking over ENM's slot, and SNR/our next armor art filling up our other slot there. HDW + RME merge successor using both our perception slots etc.
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An important question imo.
Personally, I'd like it if the number of points required for mastery is actually less than the total possible number. It makes the choices more meaningful, and creates decisions around whether or not we specialise in a particular part of the Art, or go wider. It would also help represent LQ coming to her personal interpretation of the Art and how it fits her, which may not be the same as another cultivator using the same art.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
I really like the Concepts, Art Project, and Trait system. This makes me really excited on what to prioritize in the future
- Location
- United States of America
So, I'm particularly interested to know if these art projects are going to be replacing art modification, or if art modification will still be a thing in the new system, maybe just handled a bit differently.
If art modification is no longer a thing, being replaced with the art projects, how much flexibility will we have in changing the nature of arts like SNR away from things we don't like and replacing elements that we do like?
If art modification is no longer a thing, being replaced with the art projects, how much flexibility will we have in changing the nature of arts like SNR away from things we don't like and replacing elements that we do like?
Keep in mind that most art projects will also advance several concepts, so it will go faster than you think. And we already have 19 levels
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Right, so qi slots. Firstly, I like this as a system. It's a tidy way of tying all our buffs and shit together into one thing that allows them to be managed better, and gets rid of the problems of arbitrary "equipment slots" as well. It's not as if we know what to get for our third talisman after all - and now the problem is solved! We're using that qi on spirits and arts instead!
Long term, having to make meaningful decisions about, say, whether or not we're running an offensive strategy with Glacier and Echoes up, or playing group defense focusing on things like Walls and Shroud would also be great, and this system sets that kind of thing up very well. Stacking a million effects and fields is obnoxious both narratively and balance-wise, and controlling that is something we want.
That being said, we also have to acknowledge that the current state of affairs is that LQ can, and does, actually run like up to 10 different buffs at once, and so even if long term we want to bring that down and be more focused, the system at the moment needs to support what she currently does. If we suddenly say the Caldera fight was impossible then there would be problems
With that in mind, I think we should also note that we are actually starting to run into the limitations of what we can support with our current qi while staying efficient. With our new more expensive upkeep techs in SNR and LFWT, we're barely able to keep ourselves above A-rank qi, and with UGM and WHR reaching level 5 and likely increasing their qi requirements, it's quite likely that we would actually drop down to B qi now if we tried to maintain all our upkeep at once - which would tank our efficiency and we don't want to do that. Thus, we might reasonably describe the state of affairs as following: LQ, due to sable light pills, has a qi pool that is larger than normal for her level - in fact extremely large for a low green. This has allowed her to run far more buffs and fields etc. than a low green would normally be able to do. However, as she moves into mid green, she's starting to find that her qi pool is not, in fact, endless, and that she's not actually supposed to be running like 10 different things at once. As we get deeper into mid green, and our arts also go up to G5 and G6, we should expect their qi costs to go up, and our ability to maintain multiple effects at once should start to fall. I'd suggest that running something like 5 level appropriate effects at once would probably be more normal, and that as we get closer to late green, and our qi pool stops being so overlevelled, that we should start to drop down to something closer to that.
I would suggest something like this for our current qi slots, with the expectation that, yes, as we level arts (and that could potentially already be happening with WHR/UGM as we haven't seen their fully upgraded forms yet!) the qi costs of the techs will likely increase, and we'll have to start making decisions.
notes:
- our flute is currently pretty weak, and really shouldn't be using 2 qi slots
- I don't think [upkeep] techs should cost more than [scene] techs. If you do that it creates problematic incentive structures where we start not using things on upkeep in order to get more effects up, and part of the point of this system is to control effect stacking. Just let [upkeep] be a straight upgrade for appropriate things.
- Big fields and buffs like IPF, Shroud, Primal War Calling etc. I think should probably cost more than things like our perception buffs.
- Shroud I'd kinda be inclined to split in two, making the personal armor be either upkeep or passive, and the group defense being an active scene buff (and also try to make it more exciting and visible etc. as I've discussed before)
Long term, having to make meaningful decisions about, say, whether or not we're running an offensive strategy with Glacier and Echoes up, or playing group defense focusing on things like Walls and Shroud would also be great, and this system sets that kind of thing up very well. Stacking a million effects and fields is obnoxious both narratively and balance-wise, and controlling that is something we want.
That being said, we also have to acknowledge that the current state of affairs is that LQ can, and does, actually run like up to 10 different buffs at once, and so even if long term we want to bring that down and be more focused, the system at the moment needs to support what she currently does. If we suddenly say the Caldera fight was impossible then there would be problems
With that in mind, I think we should also note that we are actually starting to run into the limitations of what we can support with our current qi while staying efficient. With our new more expensive upkeep techs in SNR and LFWT, we're barely able to keep ourselves above A-rank qi, and with UGM and WHR reaching level 5 and likely increasing their qi requirements, it's quite likely that we would actually drop down to B qi now if we tried to maintain all our upkeep at once - which would tank our efficiency and we don't want to do that. Thus, we might reasonably describe the state of affairs as following: LQ, due to sable light pills, has a qi pool that is larger than normal for her level - in fact extremely large for a low green. This has allowed her to run far more buffs and fields etc. than a low green would normally be able to do. However, as she moves into mid green, she's starting to find that her qi pool is not, in fact, endless, and that she's not actually supposed to be running like 10 different things at once. As we get deeper into mid green, and our arts also go up to G5 and G6, we should expect their qi costs to go up, and our ability to maintain multiple effects at once should start to fall. I'd suggest that running something like 5 level appropriate effects at once would probably be more normal, and that as we get closer to late green, and our qi pool stops being so overlevelled, that we should start to drop down to something closer to that.
I would suggest something like this for our current qi slots, with the expectation that, yes, as we level arts (and that could potentially already be happening with WHR/UGM as we haven't seen their fully upgraded forms yet!) the qi costs of the techs will likely increase, and we'll have to start making decisions.
notes:
- our flute is currently pretty weak, and really shouldn't be using 2 qi slots
- I don't think [upkeep] techs should cost more than [scene] techs. If you do that it creates problematic incentive structures where we start not using things on upkeep in order to get more effects up, and part of the point of this system is to control effect stacking. Just let [upkeep] be a straight upgrade for appropriate things.
- Big fields and buffs like IPF, Shroud, Primal War Calling etc. I think should probably cost more than things like our perception buffs.
- Shroud I'd kinda be inclined to split in two, making the personal armor be either upkeep or passive, and the group defense being an active scene buff (and also try to make it more exciting and visible etc. as I've discussed before)
- Location
- scrabbling
I'm broadly a fan of these changes. For the most part, any trepidation comes from mere uncertainty about how it'll play out in practice, and from the eternal knowledge that I usually lose votes in this quest, especially when it comes to pressing for such Concepts as are now labeled as Want, Power, Isolation, Endings, and so on. I know I'm a bit of an edgelord but the voting public tries to pretend those things don't exist even though they are important for contrast to the bits they prefer.
I'm a little sad that it seems individual pills wouldn't potentially become a thing of importance again: the Sable Light Pills and their effects, now that they've been mentioned, were actually very exciting. Other pills were nice but those were the most standout and narratively important ones. Especially so when we looted some off of Yan Renshu! And that's a kind of granular moment that disappeared with Threads, and which this new system makes seem further away. Pills that provide Concept or art development progress is probably too much, unless they're very potent pills...to a degree resources somewhat lose some power when on the path of Absolute Resource Advantage, but this system in general is less friendly to pills, so sayonara I suppose. There might still be some room for pills that are especially significant from special events, perhaps. But that's up to the Great Spirits and yrsillar.
I'm a little sad that it seems individual pills wouldn't potentially become a thing of importance again: the Sable Light Pills and their effects, now that they've been mentioned, were actually very exciting. Other pills were nice but those were the most standout and narratively important ones. Especially so when we looted some off of Yan Renshu! And that's a kind of granular moment that disappeared with Threads, and which this new system makes seem further away. Pills that provide Concept or art development progress is probably too much, unless they're very potent pills...to a degree resources somewhat lose some power when on the path of Absolute Resource Advantage, but this system in general is less friendly to pills, so sayonara I suppose. There might still be some room for pills that are especially significant from special events, perhaps. But that's up to the Great Spirits and yrsillar.
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- Location
- United States of America
If the numbers are meant to correlate to a cultivation grade, then skip the numbers and just use the cultivation grade.
I think cultivation coding is much better, and fits better with the narrative.
Also, can you provide a scale of the level of proficiency in a trait each number represents? (E.G 1 is someone you start to explore, 5 is profiecncy, 8 is mastery, 10 is extreme mastery)
Also, can you provide a scale of the level of proficiency in a trait each number represents? (E.G 1 is someone you start to explore, 5 is profiecncy, 8 is mastery, 10 is extreme mastery)
Potency is this number in the brackets
so
1 = Early Red
2 = Mid Red
...
10 = Green 4
and thats it.
under the old system 'potency' sets the limit on how far we can train an art (a Green 4 cultivator can train arts until Green 4 potency)
and a higher potency art/tech wins a direct competition vs an otherwise evenly matched tech of lower potency.
I talked about trait levels, I.e we have vanishing level 8, and flute mastery 10. Not potency
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you mean this?
Edit: to be clear:
the Y next to the number stands for Yellow and G for Green. So the trait system should progress like this:
Red1, Red2, ... Red10 -> Yellow1, ... Yellow10 -> Green1, Green2... and so on
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Direct Numbers work better.Thanks for the feedback guys.
One question for you regarding Potency numbers, do you think its more quester legible to render them as a straight number eg. 9 or with cultivation coding eg. G3