05-22-2019, 04:54 AM
Now that I’ve given myself to calm down a bit from the constant adrenaline I’ve been running on since Friday I’m going to give this a go. I’m just going to go point by point, because a lot of things gave me very mixed feelings: somethings had good and bad that kind of blur together. Warning: this is a bit of a monster.
I’ll start by acknowledging one of my own flaws, which has since made it to me from two sources, both, I think, starting from new players. Due to a combination of factors, including pre-game discord and email mods, Cata came into this game very angry, and this continued for a lot of this weekend due to the various events. I promise guys, I’m not a rude or mean person OOG, and I apologise if anyone thought that I meant to exclude anyone from things or that they thought there was bleed into real life. I will admit that my sleeping disorder in addition to poor sleep and being off my sleep schedule, caused the irritation to be much easier for me to play, but if you are ever feeling that your OOG feelings are being hurt, please just tell me. I would never want anyone to feel uncomfortable by my roleplay, especially just because the big scary Elemental caster is just having a bad day.
Now with that out of the way, the actual review:
• Starting Friday night with two different mods for which the plot lines had a lot of development on discord gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I really like that it makes it feel like town has things going on all the time, and we can see the progress of events more evenly than in bits and spurts all at once. On the other hand, I worry that these plot lines exclude those who don’t participate in online roleplay, be it email mods or discord. For example, while I know all about the progression of the Tooth Monster due to interacting with that plot for two weeks or so, someone coming into game won’t have any idea what is going on. I tried to negate this on this mod by pretty much running after the monster and shouting information I had gathered, but I’m not sure if that helped at all.
• On the other hand, looking at the Tooth Monster mod with context, it was really cool. The mechanics made sense given the previous descriptions, the costuming was pretty good, and the monster was appropriately scary. Other than my criticism before, I will say that it wasn’t clear, given the story, if the monster was coming back or not, so I waited all weekend for that plot to further. That it was just over felt a tad bit anti-climatic after the two weeks of build up, but that’s something I can live with.
• Something I did notice all weekend was that Shapers were doing their best to handle the consequences of player choice, only to be caught flatfooted again and again as we did things they didn’t expect. My only advice there is to spend a bit more time thinking about what options players have at their disposal, perhaps play a bit more devil’s advocate with each other in Shaper meetings to find possibilities. Even if you don’t flesh out these possibilities, you’ll a least have something to go off the next time I do something you didn’t think was an option. Making it up as you go along makes sense when PCs mess things up, but that is a slippery slope into letting things get out of control, like the demon gate a few years ago.
• Balancing for this game was mostly good, given what NPC camp had at their disposal, but given the numbers in town being in flux, sometimes thing got rolled quickly, and sometimes things were way too difficult. This isn’t really something that NPC camp can help, especially as you don’t always know when people have left site. What I will say is that difficulty is fun for some, but it scares newer players into hanging back. I’ve seen a bunch of new player mods go out, and the occasional new player monster on the regular mods, but I hope we as PCs can encourage new players to help us with town mods and more complicated plots too, so they can feel involved and make friends with more people.
• I did like that we got to run a ritual this game, especially as it was directly caused by PC involvement. I love the solution that has been offered by NPC camp to the problem of lack of ritual casters in being able to hire ritualists to help run rituals, and I love that it allows PC ritualists to participate and use our skills. Showing more rituals in game showcases that part of the game to people who haven’t seen it before much, or haven’t considered it as an option, and gives casters a goal to work for. And hey, if I take a death or a weird RP effect in an attempt to help my friend get a cool thing, I’m cool with it. I would also like to say that Yoshi’s reminder between rituals about loose clothing was a good idea, I haven’t done a ritual since Warcry and it’s easy to forget. Related: when a marshal gives you an important tip, please listen.
• Others have mentioned that loot problem, but that has been a problem for ages. I don’t think there’s anyway for NPC camp to deal with it. On the mods that I have some control over, I try to make sure everyone comes away with something, but on town mods that’s impossible from what I can see. Rogues are gonna rogue. I dunno. Just please keep in mind that even though you were the one to killing blow a monster, casters and archers exist. I’m constantly seeing monsters which I took down from range being looted right after I take them down. I get it, it just sucks sometimes, and while I can totally handle it I can see where others get really discouraged.
• The storytelling on many of the mods of this event was really, really good. The emotional pull caused by the various events was really well done, creating highs and lows of emotion all weekend. This kind of storytelling feeds the best roleplay in my opinion, because when people are emotionally invested in their character’s lives they can understand them better. I can honestly say that this kind of storytelling has probably gave me the best roleplay I’ve yet had as Cata.
• I did have a bit of an issue with NPCs a couple of times. I think a few of those were just inexperienced, but please, please, please, if you don’t know what something does, just ask. New players, for sure, but vets too. Hey, everyone forgets sometimes, I know for a fact that I don’t know every ability in the rulebook. It’s better you ask and know the effects than ignore something and make someone upset.
• I have also noticed that there have been more and more reasons for the big bad type monsters to ignore a PC’s Big Thing, the kind of skills which PCs save for the scary monster. I get it, I do. You want the Big Bad to last a while so that it’s actually scary, and so that the mod lasts longer. But negating someone’s skill just upsets people, making it feel like they wasted their time and CP on skills that they can never use. Maybe, soft resists? Especially if it allows the PC to know that you want this thing to last longer but allows them to use the skill on something else. I’m not quite sure on the solution to this one, especially because I may be more understanding than others. I can say that twice in the last two months I’ve had a level 9 spell wasted on a something that the NPC team wanted to last, and it seriously stings.
• There was also a lot of really creative mod ideas, and those are the ones I enjoyed the most. These included, but weren’t limited to: wizard battle chess, the escape room, the citadel mod, the two-pronged attack, the tooth monster, the four statues mod and the elemental balance mod. Cool ideas like these make people actually think. I may be a nerd and love puzzles.
• The PC interaction I’ve done this weekend was also really good for the most part. I’m really excited to see so many new faces this year and tried to go out of my way when I could to include people. I’m so happy we got a chance to actually collect as many wild elves as we did for our meeting, giving new players, new characters on returning players and vets the opportunity to speak evenly. Everyone in the game world is equally important, and in the two IG factions I’m currently involved in running I’m trying to give everyone equal say in decisions. Given that, feel free to approach me about either of these groups in game or out of game even if you are ineligible for them, Cata loves to explain things. Note, as I stated above, approaching me IG limits what I can explain to you to what Cata knows about things, which may or may not be what I know about things. I’m doing all I can to stay in character IG, sometimes to my own detriment.
TL;DR: Overall a really good game, but with a few problems which can be addressed. Keep working on improving your skills as shapers, but I, at least, can really see you all coming into your own. I tried to keep things a bit vague when I could, but Shapers can feel free to message or email me if they would like more specific examples.
I’ll start by acknowledging one of my own flaws, which has since made it to me from two sources, both, I think, starting from new players. Due to a combination of factors, including pre-game discord and email mods, Cata came into this game very angry, and this continued for a lot of this weekend due to the various events. I promise guys, I’m not a rude or mean person OOG, and I apologise if anyone thought that I meant to exclude anyone from things or that they thought there was bleed into real life. I will admit that my sleeping disorder in addition to poor sleep and being off my sleep schedule, caused the irritation to be much easier for me to play, but if you are ever feeling that your OOG feelings are being hurt, please just tell me. I would never want anyone to feel uncomfortable by my roleplay, especially just because the big scary Elemental caster is just having a bad day.
Now with that out of the way, the actual review:
• Starting Friday night with two different mods for which the plot lines had a lot of development on discord gives me mixed feelings. On the one hand, I really like that it makes it feel like town has things going on all the time, and we can see the progress of events more evenly than in bits and spurts all at once. On the other hand, I worry that these plot lines exclude those who don’t participate in online roleplay, be it email mods or discord. For example, while I know all about the progression of the Tooth Monster due to interacting with that plot for two weeks or so, someone coming into game won’t have any idea what is going on. I tried to negate this on this mod by pretty much running after the monster and shouting information I had gathered, but I’m not sure if that helped at all.
• On the other hand, looking at the Tooth Monster mod with context, it was really cool. The mechanics made sense given the previous descriptions, the costuming was pretty good, and the monster was appropriately scary. Other than my criticism before, I will say that it wasn’t clear, given the story, if the monster was coming back or not, so I waited all weekend for that plot to further. That it was just over felt a tad bit anti-climatic after the two weeks of build up, but that’s something I can live with.
• Something I did notice all weekend was that Shapers were doing their best to handle the consequences of player choice, only to be caught flatfooted again and again as we did things they didn’t expect. My only advice there is to spend a bit more time thinking about what options players have at their disposal, perhaps play a bit more devil’s advocate with each other in Shaper meetings to find possibilities. Even if you don’t flesh out these possibilities, you’ll a least have something to go off the next time I do something you didn’t think was an option. Making it up as you go along makes sense when PCs mess things up, but that is a slippery slope into letting things get out of control, like the demon gate a few years ago.
• Balancing for this game was mostly good, given what NPC camp had at their disposal, but given the numbers in town being in flux, sometimes thing got rolled quickly, and sometimes things were way too difficult. This isn’t really something that NPC camp can help, especially as you don’t always know when people have left site. What I will say is that difficulty is fun for some, but it scares newer players into hanging back. I’ve seen a bunch of new player mods go out, and the occasional new player monster on the regular mods, but I hope we as PCs can encourage new players to help us with town mods and more complicated plots too, so they can feel involved and make friends with more people.
• I did like that we got to run a ritual this game, especially as it was directly caused by PC involvement. I love the solution that has been offered by NPC camp to the problem of lack of ritual casters in being able to hire ritualists to help run rituals, and I love that it allows PC ritualists to participate and use our skills. Showing more rituals in game showcases that part of the game to people who haven’t seen it before much, or haven’t considered it as an option, and gives casters a goal to work for. And hey, if I take a death or a weird RP effect in an attempt to help my friend get a cool thing, I’m cool with it. I would also like to say that Yoshi’s reminder between rituals about loose clothing was a good idea, I haven’t done a ritual since Warcry and it’s easy to forget. Related: when a marshal gives you an important tip, please listen.
• Others have mentioned that loot problem, but that has been a problem for ages. I don’t think there’s anyway for NPC camp to deal with it. On the mods that I have some control over, I try to make sure everyone comes away with something, but on town mods that’s impossible from what I can see. Rogues are gonna rogue. I dunno. Just please keep in mind that even though you were the one to killing blow a monster, casters and archers exist. I’m constantly seeing monsters which I took down from range being looted right after I take them down. I get it, it just sucks sometimes, and while I can totally handle it I can see where others get really discouraged.
• The storytelling on many of the mods of this event was really, really good. The emotional pull caused by the various events was really well done, creating highs and lows of emotion all weekend. This kind of storytelling feeds the best roleplay in my opinion, because when people are emotionally invested in their character’s lives they can understand them better. I can honestly say that this kind of storytelling has probably gave me the best roleplay I’ve yet had as Cata.
• I did have a bit of an issue with NPCs a couple of times. I think a few of those were just inexperienced, but please, please, please, if you don’t know what something does, just ask. New players, for sure, but vets too. Hey, everyone forgets sometimes, I know for a fact that I don’t know every ability in the rulebook. It’s better you ask and know the effects than ignore something and make someone upset.
• I have also noticed that there have been more and more reasons for the big bad type monsters to ignore a PC’s Big Thing, the kind of skills which PCs save for the scary monster. I get it, I do. You want the Big Bad to last a while so that it’s actually scary, and so that the mod lasts longer. But negating someone’s skill just upsets people, making it feel like they wasted their time and CP on skills that they can never use. Maybe, soft resists? Especially if it allows the PC to know that you want this thing to last longer but allows them to use the skill on something else. I’m not quite sure on the solution to this one, especially because I may be more understanding than others. I can say that twice in the last two months I’ve had a level 9 spell wasted on a something that the NPC team wanted to last, and it seriously stings.
• There was also a lot of really creative mod ideas, and those are the ones I enjoyed the most. These included, but weren’t limited to: wizard battle chess, the escape room, the citadel mod, the two-pronged attack, the tooth monster, the four statues mod and the elemental balance mod. Cool ideas like these make people actually think. I may be a nerd and love puzzles.
• The PC interaction I’ve done this weekend was also really good for the most part. I’m really excited to see so many new faces this year and tried to go out of my way when I could to include people. I’m so happy we got a chance to actually collect as many wild elves as we did for our meeting, giving new players, new characters on returning players and vets the opportunity to speak evenly. Everyone in the game world is equally important, and in the two IG factions I’m currently involved in running I’m trying to give everyone equal say in decisions. Given that, feel free to approach me about either of these groups in game or out of game even if you are ineligible for them, Cata loves to explain things. Note, as I stated above, approaching me IG limits what I can explain to you to what Cata knows about things, which may or may not be what I know about things. I’m doing all I can to stay in character IG, sometimes to my own detriment.
TL;DR: Overall a really good game, but with a few problems which can be addressed. Keep working on improving your skills as shapers, but I, at least, can really see you all coming into your own. I tried to keep things a bit vague when I could, but Shapers can feel free to message or email me if they would like more specific examples.