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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.
Because grandstanding is politics.
Okay, fair. Dunking on Nobles does sound like a protag course of action.
- Location
- PA
Okay, what precisely do you wish to accomplish...And is it just regrets of past decisions or an actual plan going forward?
I ask because an agenda known only to you makes you another voice adding to the discord and confusion, instead of helping us sort out the correct course of action.
Okay, you're right. Sorry.
To be clear I now think this event is probably a wash in terms of addressing our political problems, at this point. So far, we only socialized with one person, and our demonstration of prowess was largely out of sight and shared credit with another, established personality in the group(remember that one of the big complaints against Ling Qi is that she "fraudulently" leans on/benefits from her betters; it's not a stretch for the concensus to give Alingge credit for the "real" work). It's not a great foundation for cultivating an improved reputation in the time remaining.
My suggestion moving forwards is to consider our poor socialization a problem that needs to be taken seriously, that it's not a problem we can simply outgrow, it will have serious consequences if ignored, and that we can't work around it by purely associating 1-on-1 with important people.
I'll also suggest that it's too late to play it safe. To succeed at this point, we will need to take risks with the unfriendly crowd. There's no shying from it anymore, and Ling Qi shouldn't even want to to be the person she's decided she is.
My last proposal is for the people who think noble speak is boring and lame: you are right, but the only credible way around it is for Ling Qi to increase her public speaking skills and comfort. If you pay attention, a lot of the silly stiff formality is coming from Ling Qi herself. She needs to get better so she can know when she needs it and when she doesn't, as well as improving her reputation so that she needs it less. Her Meizhen act is a stopgap, it's only ever been superficially effective, it doesn't fit her that well, and it's past embarrassing at this point.
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Mmm, I think a non-trivial issue here is that generic socialising with randoms is literally a background action. It isn't something you really do on screen or spend meaningful time on. Narrative focus should be on interactions with characters that actually have names and matter - and our preference for engaging with interesting named characters with descriptions and prefering to develop existing characters and relationships fits narrative convention well.
The problem, of course, is that without us actually taking action to get Ling Qi to learn to socialise she'll never get to doing the kind of background socialisation with randoms that, say, Xiulan or Renxiang do.
The skills Ling Qi needs to pick up here are in many ways at odds with how we interact with stories.
Oh man, this is hilarious now that I think about it.
"Let's choose the option where it says where we probably won't breed resentment!"
"Okay, now let's grandstand!"
I wonder if it's possible for anyone in this world to just be a random solo cultivator that's strong. Like, be a disciple, serve their time in the army, be an unlanded noble, then just go around pretending to be a mortal traveller.
I don't strictly agree re: characters. An environment can also be engaged with or combatted by a character, including a social setting itself, and the opposite is true. I think the scene with Alingge actually shows where that falls apart. There wasn't any "action" to it. No friction, challenge, or really insight. It was a mutual info dump, which while important for the characters, could have been summarised in Ling Qi's narrative trivially. "I learned X. She asked X, seemed pleased. It was fine." Dialogue isn't necessarily necessary for an engaging and evocative social scene, any more than Ling Qi need to shout at a dangerous storm she's traversing. (Let's just put aside Zeqing for the moment.)
We might even get more/broader engagement with the social scene to have such a somewhat zoomed out approach from time to time.
I agree on the awkwardness of story interface in general though. For instance, at some point after this event, we have the archive dive. General consensus has been a social art. No matter how this social event turns out, it makes narrative sense for that result to inform Ling Qi's prioritizing going to the archive for a social art.
Then she won't actually touch it for 2 or 3 months, minimum. Which makes no goddamn sense at all. This is half our fault. We could choose to do otherwise. The other half of fault lies with the fact, as you point out, other people get to just figure out their shit in the background. Only Ling Qi suffers from desperately optimization-inducing, inherently unbalancing crunch. Other people have the former, but not the latter. We seesaw all over the place and out of tune with narrative requirements.
Still half our fault tho.
I'm pretty sure there's a strong lobby for training it next month.
- Location
- the internet
Gosh, I hope so. She seriously needs it.
My point stands despite the facts!
It's hard for us to plan or prepare for stuff, and when we can and should we struggle. Stealth prior to scouting exercise we had months of notice/multiple arts sitting around for and social in general are the obvious examples.
Partly it's due to unpredictable art development though. Good argument HDW was a strong preparatory choice. And still don't know what PLR thinks it's doing.
Edit: I should be clear that actual socializing in the necessary contexts is way more important than any social art though. Narrative/character > Arts.
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That was neither what was said nor what was chosen.
The options were:
-Competitive
--Main Event: Ling Qi needs to win, but not win in such a way that it humiliates the other participants, nor lose in such a way that she's humiliated. In other words, the hunt is less about our actual hunting skills and more how we present the prize...of course, Ling Qi's hunting skills are decidedly average for her tier, which is a bit of an issue if it demonstrates that she can't perform when on her own.
--Socials: High, with a weaker prey, there is more time for 1 to 1 conversations with Wujing and his clique. How well it'd work depends on our social skills and on well...how they react, considering he's spent the whole event so far needling at Ling Qi's faults even to his own detriment.
-Cooperative
--Main Event: Ling Qi needs to above all, demonstrate she's an effective team player. She did it with Alingge in picking out the prey and faster than Alingge would have alone, but this is out of sight. Part 2:
---Ling Qi can showcase her lesser Archery skill and arts in the backrow
---Ling Qi can showcase her high tier(even for a Count) group defense and evasion skills as bait in the front row where everyone can see.
--Socials: Ling Qi got some quality 1 to 1 time with a Count level peer in the region, and won Alingge's personal respect and interest. Part 2:
---Ling Qi would be able to have more 1 to 1 conversations in the archery row, having already proven herself somewhat.
---Ling Qi isn't going to be getting much talking done when dodging an angry lion.
The Cooperative route essentially lets Ling Qi win respect points from being herself very well, with a limited toe dipping in the politicking. This is good for getting Traditionalist support(as we've seen repeatedly, the traditionalists value martial prowess and teamwork), but less so for the Imperials emulating Heavenly Peaks culture, who value being cultured and respectability.
I think the problems though continue to lie with the entire quest structure with regards to our socials. Everyone is seperated! All our interactions are individual!
It might be realistic, but this just doesn't work within the cotext of a story with limited screen time and nareative focus to go around.
This isn't to say that the odd arc focused on a single person can't be valuable - of course it can! But such things need to be rationed carefully. Husbanded for major character development. They cannot be the entire framework that we use to interact with everyone in. This "choose to give one friend narrative presence each month" system doesn't serve the story well, and doesn't facilitate us actually engaging with society.
If we look at our adventures here, some really did much more work than others. Zeqing? Obviously a huge deal for Ling Qi and her story. King of the Forest? Significant character moment for Ling Qi and did a aolid amount of work on Shen Hu and their relationship despite spending minimal time on him. Xuan Shi otoh? Temple adventure was honestly tangential. Had nothing to do with the main story. No real development for Ling Qi, and minimal development for Xuan Shi and their relationship. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but it was also kinda just a sidestory. I might be being unfair, but It feels like a lot of those character adventures are there to allow us to vote on doing something withbour friends rather than them being important to the story. And yes, I know this is a quest and people want to spend time with their favorite characters... But scenes need to do more work than that.
It might be realistic, but this just doesn't work within the cotext of a story with limited screen time and nareative focus to go around.
This isn't to say that the odd arc focused on a single person can't be valuable - of course it can! But such things need to be rationed carefully. Husbanded for major character development. They cannot be the entire framework that we use to interact with everyone in. This "choose to give one friend narrative presence each month" system doesn't serve the story well, and doesn't facilitate us actually engaging with society.
If we look at our adventures here, some really did much more work than others. Zeqing? Obviously a huge deal for Ling Qi and her story. King of the Forest? Significant character moment for Ling Qi and did a aolid amount of work on Shen Hu and their relationship despite spending minimal time on him. Xuan Shi otoh? Temple adventure was honestly tangential. Had nothing to do with the main story. No real development for Ling Qi, and minimal development for Xuan Shi and their relationship. It was fun, don't get me wrong, but it was also kinda just a sidestory. I might be being unfair, but It feels like a lot of those character adventures are there to allow us to vote on doing something withbour friends rather than them being important to the story. And yes, I know this is a quest and people want to spend time with their favorite characters... But scenes need to do more work than that.
You're wrong on three points:
-The competitive hunt did not require Ling Qi to "win", only not embarass herself; there's no hint towards her needing to win anywhere in the text
-Alingge is from a Viscount-equivalent family
-The cooperative hunt was not about showing off teamwork, it was about showing off abilities in general; the cooperative aspect was there to make it not a competition to blunt sour grapes over competing; casting it as the "teamwork" option misses the point of the cooperative aspect of the exercise, and pushing it as the "herself very well" choice because of her alleged teamwork prowess is a huge stretch because of that.
Just because the options are "competitive" and "cooperative" doesn't mean that either choice was significantly rooted in those concepts so far as what it was trying to accomplish. The goal of Competitive was explicitly hanging out with people, not competing. The goal of Cooperative was explicitly creating a low-risk environment to distinguish oneself, not to make friends by being a great teammate. Yes, the first could be screwed up by totally bombing the hunt, and the second could be screwed up by acting like a huge glory hog, but those are (unlikely) fail conditions, not the objectives. Again, the choices of hunt were tools not goals or win conditions.
I'd first like to point out that we are currently in a SL-voted event where we literally just had the opportunity to spend time socializing with and learning about, like, a dozen characters. As many as half of them might have had actual names, based on 3 definitely doing so, and there being yet other notable presences when we stared at them awkwardly from a distance. We chose not to engage.
You're right though that the SL votes are using up a bit too much oxygen in a turn, and they're too atomized. We need events that are more related to events of consequence, that also incorporate characters. One, we can actually have events of consequence(!). The second, a bit subtle but important, is that it gives opportunities for returns of significance on the relationships that we've cultivated. Advancing relationships by doing something important together, and being able to accomplish those things because of the interplay of their characteristics, is rewarding. More introspective and intimate events have their place too, of course. It's just that since it is a quest/game, these bums need to be justifying our investment in them. If they're not helping us when shit gets real (or failing to/having other priorities, that's interesting too!) then they don't have much actual place in the actual story.
Really, more stuff needs to be happening to us. Complete with AP penalties, of course. And I realize the scout test was something like this and we kinda bungled it but. Welp. No but seriously, fuck our schedule up. I'd rather be forced to fall behind which forces us to do something interesting to achieve our goals than cruise along on a narratively unresponsive cultivation schedule.
Back to my main point though, group social event right here lol.
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- Location
- UK
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I felt this was something we needed to do but not something I cared about excelling in. Pretty much just figured we needed to show we'd make some time for the peers of our province. Would be more interested if we could combine seeing them with seeing people I currently care about though.
Also generally like the idea of more combined socials. Social link event type stuff we're doing now works but it'd be cool to be able to invite other friends to tag-along. Would be an interesting way to spice things up, having to be aware of who best interacts with who. Things happening to us so we have to react to events is always fun too.
Also generally like the idea of more combined socials. Social link event type stuff we're doing now works but it'd be cool to be able to invite other friends to tag-along. Would be an interesting way to spice things up, having to be aware of who best interacts with who. Things happening to us so we have to react to events is always fun too.
- Location
- Required Location
Not quite, we have both WoG and IIRC some in story mentions, that point out that the empire is really not big on unaffiliated cultivators. Or, to be honest, they have an entire ministry, the Ministry of Integrity, who have among other duties, the job of seeking out these independants and either get them to join up with the system or kill them.
Apparently some high talent cultivator sitting in a prime cultivation sight for a few hundred years before going to town on a province or something was not something the empire wanted to deal with.
Oh god no. Voting on which combos of SLs to take into events sounds like a complete shitfest, both for thread sanity and Yrsillar's narrative control. Bad enough we throw cultivation plans at him that ill-fit short-term narrative objectives half the time.
Diomedea
A piece of the continent
- Location
- The interblag
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Social Art is pretty high priority for our free AP next turn. The issue, as it always is, is one of meridians and how we're currently stuck in AP crunch because we just hit Green 3 and are trying to rapidly master our cultivation arts.
However, with the small amount of free AP (3 again, until things finally open up again when we make it to turn 8), our choices are pretty much going to be a smorgasbord of "raise this art one level." Given that we're at a comfortable place combat wise, and a single level in any combat art isn't really going to be game changing against our current suite, the social art has the advantage there in that it isn't competing against the effectiveness of our current suite. It's a straight up boost to something that we know is a weakness Ling Qi is struggling with. The other big advantage comes in via keywords.
While we train cultivation arts, we're really limited in skill training related keywords. Our social art will (presumably) be stuffed full of keywords we've wanted for quite some time now, and they wont have to compete with anything else. So between the skill training and the comparative advantage of training the social art, it's fairly likely to make it.
However, with the small amount of free AP (3 again, until things finally open up again when we make it to turn 8), our choices are pretty much going to be a smorgasbord of "raise this art one level." Given that we're at a comfortable place combat wise, and a single level in any combat art isn't really going to be game changing against our current suite, the social art has the advantage there in that it isn't competing against the effectiveness of our current suite. It's a straight up boost to something that we know is a weakness Ling Qi is struggling with. The other big advantage comes in via keywords.
While we train cultivation arts, we're really limited in skill training related keywords. Our social art will (presumably) be stuffed full of keywords we've wanted for quite some time now, and they wont have to compete with anything else. So between the skill training and the comparative advantage of training the social art, it's fairly likely to make it.
Makes sense. I wonder if other countries have these systems in place though. Would be interesting to meet a wandering cultivator sometime in the uture.
same reason that LQ got picked up really. The MoI got some way of finding people with high talented commoners and roping them in. Because those types tend to attract attention (like the Moon's with LQ) and having them run around doing shit tends to make people twitchy.
Better a baron than a cultivator gangboss, eh?
- Location
- Finland
Baron is a cultivator gangboss.
Except even more so.
Except educated with administration for dummies.