Heroica RPG - Quest Masters' Lounge

[Flare]

Hey fellow QMs! I added a page in the Wiki for Weather Types, so it will be a lot easier to access than having to search through the Rules & Discussion thread. Just letting y'all know, in case anyone might be interested in using it in their quest.

Edited October 8, 2014 by Flare

[Zepher]

As I post the side quests, I will also be writing up my running thoughts on Quest 107. I have a lot of them, and as always, I will just sort of ramble - read what interests you, ignore what doesn't!

As I said, I'm very proud of the story. I don't know if it was a perfect quest, but I think it is a story I was proud of. Just the same as some things are better movies than books, or books than movies. So this may have not been the best quest, but the underlying story is one I'm proud of. It's ambiguous, yes, and it was more thematic than plot, but I'd like to push the envelope of Heroica a little, and sometimes that means getting weird and seeing what works.

I'll discuss a few of the issues raised first:

-The Library: I understand the objections, and I know it felt a little slow. I'm sorry that Skrall felt like a NPC at that point, WBD, but really I think that's a little bit both of our faults. Nyx didn't have to find anything down there, but she tried. Even more successfully, however, Ellaria refused to find knowledge. Though it apparently wasn't liked by the PCs, this was the moment that made me most proud of the quest. I try not to discuss the central theme of quests too much, but I think 107 was confusing and needs to be discussed, so I'll say a major theme of it was "is there such a thing as too much knowledge/should old knowledge be left behind". And the PCs here, without any guidance from myself, had the following exchange:

Ellaria frowned with concern. "No, this is not right. Darkness led us to this library, and my every sense is warning me about this place. I do not want anything to do with any of these books. They must have gotten lost from the memories of mankind for a very good reason."

"Only a few? Could we not come back down here from the way we came and bring them all up?" Nonetheless, Hybros began trawling anxiously through the books, looking for one that would indicate anything about his people. "Erm, Doctor, I could use a little help with the letters, eheh..."

Hybros paused his search momentarily to squint his eyes at Ellaria. "You knew we were coming down here for answers. Here they are. Why have you changed your mind so suddenly? You sound like those Imperial Order people..."

"Please don't misunderstand me, Hybros", Ellaria begged, feeling increasingly uneasy. "I'm not stopping any of you from getting whatever books you want. I just don't want them. I only came on this quest for the reward, but I ended up finding out the answer to the one question that has been troubling me for years now. That in itself is more than I could've dared to ask for."

She motioned around her. "But can't you feel it, too? This library is not natural. These tomes should be nothing but dust by now, if this place predates even the Moon Elven Kingdom. I'm no scholar, but even I know that much."

Hybros shrugged. "I am glad you found answers then. But is it much to doubt? Daneeka is right; we must choose to believe. I have seen ancient civilizations like these, and the Moon Elf Kingdom and the Temple of Zoot were preserved. Here we stand in another ancient ruin that could hold the secrets to many things. You are willing to forgo that?"

"You have to remember what happened to the Moon Elves and the worshippers of Zoot. If that's the price of knowledge, I really am ready to forgo that."

"If we are not willing to stand for what we want, then this world belongs to those already in power. I do not know where my people are, but I deserve to at least know what happened to them. I have defeated many that have gotten in my way to get to this point, including the Imperial Order and others who wish to keep this knowledge buried. They are not the ones who will determine the fate of my people or anyone else! We must make our own choices free of fear..."

"If your mind is made, then so be it. But I will not let this chance slip past me." Hybros returned to his search.

"Hope you find what you are looking for", Ellaria muttered at Hybros' back. "And not something else..."

She then settled down at the entrance of the library, waiting for the others to get ready.

I quoted the whole thing, because I thought it was so awesome. The PCs took what had happened in the quest and embodied the idea I wanted to get across. It was in character, it was strong, and we did it together. That was a moment where I really felt we had told a story together, and I think that's the greatest strengths of Heroica.

-The Side Quests: I am glad I included them. They told a theme I don't think I could have told otherwise, which is really: "how much do we know?" and "where the hell are we in history?". As I publish all the side quests, I would like people to do this exercise: what order should they take place in? Is there overlap? I don't have a exact answer. I wanted to let players decide for themselves. I will discuss them a little bit down the line, but I think if Skrall needs to consider them insanity or dismiss them, that's what his character does. I think that by offering people different realities (on a large or small scale) you also offer them the choice of which ones they choose to except and reject, and I think that's what makes a person. After all, our lens of the world is what makes us us.

-The NPCs: Deborah is an NPC I like. I think she did not have any "defining moments" this quest, as in she did no great actions. But I think I gave her a flavor, and laying down that line will allow her to be stronger when she returns (and she will). Read the first Wren quest - you only get a flavor of her there, and she doesn't do much but talk. But that laid down the pipes to a greater character. I think I'm a subtler writer than I was then, so perhaps it's less apparent. Conversely, perhaps I didn't do enough! As for why Heweyrt didn't just trust heroes... I don't know? What do you know about Heweyrt and Deborah and Gocklo so far?

The Minoid was supposed to be a fun inclusion, but you're right, he came at a bad time and wasn't developed enough because of it. That's totally on me. I'll go into my reasoning about including him, but it's kind of negligible because it really didn't work out.

SO, the quest itself:

The Ji Pei errand was awkward, what with Ellaria and Hybros having just done a similar thing, but JimBee asked for them to be included and I was more than happy to oblige, because they let me wedge in Order Imperial as well. Earlier drafts of this quest had Jun descend with the heroes, which would have been cooler, I think, but too much perhaps, which is why it was cut. I also don't think I would have done Jun justice - I don't fully understand him yet, and I want to let Sandy take him where he ought to go before I mess with him. I had fun with the doctors, though, they're fun little side characters who I hope never end up doing too much, but stay around, like a certain pair of ex-paladins we all know.

The Imperial Order is also fun. I think they're a cool paranoid society, and I'm always thankful that Kinto lets me borrow them. They are a joy to flesh out, and hopefully they aren't too unreasonable ever. Ser Abel is fun too. I'm sure you can tell why they were there - they were to plant the ideas that Ellaria articulated later. Some secrets are perhaps left buried.

Zylstra was for JimBee. He wanted the assassins included, and the gnomish city made sense due to his recent exploits. I'll let CMP comment if he wants to. I asked CMP if Posco could be killed off, and he agreed, so that was that.

The Witch and side quests were already discussed a bit above. But I will say one more thing: I am also glad that I included it because I think it utilized a strength of this forum. I have tried to present multiple realities at once in other mediums, and can't figure it out. In a book/movie/video game, you'd HAVE to experience them one at a time, and would be inclined to believe them in the order you read them. In this one, you really did receive all the input at once. Its an idea I want to utilize in my story telling in real life, so I was a little selfish in work shopping it here, but I really wanted to try it and I'm not unhappy with the results, as I said above. THANK YOU for letting me test some stuff out here.

The end... I was again happy with. I think it's clear why, as I stated above. It wasn't perfect, but I had a great time. The void was hopefully fun for everyone. I wasn't originally going to have Wren in it, but I think she and Skrall have an intriguing relationship, and I wanted to give him something for his hard work this quest. I hope everyone felt serviced in the void.

Would love to hear more thoughts - PC critiques are coming up soon, but again it is a great great joy playing with all of you. These four are some of the strongest PCs in the game, in my opinion, and I think/hope this quest made them stronger.

[Waterbrick Down]

Lots of stuff...

Thank you for explaining the concept behind the side-quests. It helps to know what you were going after, while in them it felt really disjointed and I wasn't sure what you were aiming at. I understand Heroica RPG can be an interesting medium to explore themes and concepts, but the balance has to be struck between letting themes write a story and letting a story write the themes, this quest felt like it swayed more to the former, but that's just my own observation. Again, I thought it was a good quest and we definitely saw some intriguing plot points and story-telling mechanics. Thanks for including the bit between Wren and Skrall I really did like it and it was fitting. I'm torn at the moment which way Skrall is going and was hoping this quest would put him on a solid path, but he seems just as despondent after this quest as before it.

[Zepher]

I really think that's the strength of Skrall, actually! I will be writing a long article on this post-102, but I think it's really interesting that Heroica has grown more amoral with time... and Skrall really stands out because he isn't exactly moral, but he's a rare hero because he questions his own actions and the world around him. It's a really beautiful trait, and makes for a wise character, even when he's lost path wise. I think it makes him one of the most admirable characters because of it.

[Zepher]

With all the side quests finally posted I will now be able to respond to one final thing, though I really would love the hear from more people! Flare has asked me in private to elaborate on something, but I'm bringing it to the public, because it highlights once more what I tried to do with the side quests.

Anyways, I was wondering if you had any explanation for the first "lost child" sidequest, after reading it it really kept bugging me and I finally decided i just had to ask

I don't know if you mean bugging you in that it made you unhappy or if it nagged you - if it's the second, I'm glad, first one, less so, but I'll still explain it.

Like I said, the side quests were meant to present some ideas, and allow the heroes to play with them. The ideas were really the new supplanting the old (which in turn CREATES lost information, which was the other theme of the quest) and where we ("we" being Heroica) may be in the span of history.

My example would be this. Hybros' people WERE supplanted by the Paladins. The Old was killed by the New, and forgotten. And Hybros thinks that was bad. Yet when he was presented with BOTH the Lost Child and the Great Paladin, he supported the new and young. It's an interesting irony, and one that may prove a lot about the character v. his past.

I also wanted to play with the cycle of the universe, and how nations rise and fall, and peoples do the same. How do we know that, though visually different, "The Darkness" from End of Times with Bonesy Jones is not "The Child" from the Lost Child? Yet Ellaria defended the Old in one case, and defended the Child in the other. Was she working against herself?

Finally, what order should those quests have been in? They were presented all at once, mind you. Does it go like this:

Lost Child

Great Paladin

Home Sweet Home

Bonesy Jones

OR maybe like this:

Bonesy Jones

Lost Child

Great Paladin

Home Sweet Home

OR:

Lost Child

Our Eubric

Bonesy Jones

UNSEEN: Eubric Falls, Becomes Demons, Land Shifts

Great Paladin

Home Sweet Home (using the name Eubric from ancient texts)

And on and on. They can really go in any order. So is there a way to prevent the fall, or is it natural? Should the new replace the old? Should Hybros' people been genocided (not a word) so that the new could rise, or was that wrong, or is it neither: just natural. Who knows.

That's my explanation for the "Lost Child".

[JimBee]

My example would be this. Hybros' people WERE supplanted by the Paladins. The Old was killed by the New, and forgotten. And Hybros thinks that was bad. Yet when he was presented with BOTH the Lost Child and the Great Paladin, he supported the new and young. It's an interesting irony, and one that may prove a lot about the character v. his past.

That's my explanation for the "Lost Child".

Well, Hybros didn't exactly agree with the Paladin because he suspected that he was in the vision from Quest #7, and that the Paladins were the ones who would fight his people. But he "knew" that it wasn't real, and instead decided to seek the reasons rather than stop the Paladins.

Also I don't think Hybros chose the new/young because they were new/young (as shown in The Lost Child), but because the child was innocent in his eyes. But yes, Hybros is more utilitarian than perhaps is appropriate for one who is so determined to find his people despite the consequences. Like when Skrall warned him before opening the void. It is an irony, and I think it will have some significance later in Hybros' development.

The theme of new vs. old was definitely interesting in this quest. This theme has also been touched on in several of the other quests I've been on, which also makes it interesting for Hybros. Also the broader theme of right vs. wrong, and who's to decide that, are derived from that.

Oh, and, Hewyert isn't Crimson Crown? Did I get him confused with someone else in the Baltarok trilogy? I did read all three quests, but I'm still confused about Gocklo and Hewyert. Who are they? If this information is withheld on purpose then that's different, but I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

[Flare]

Very interesting concepts, Zepher, thanks for the detailed explanation :thumbsup:

[Zepher]

There was Crimson Crown - one of Pie's NPCs - and I think he actually dressed in similar colors to Heweyrt. There's so many characters, it's easy to confuse them, so I don't worry about it too much anymore.

But yes, Gocklo and Heweyrt and Deborah have not announced an allegiance. I will tell you that their organization has appeared in 5 quests total in some shape or form, and two of their other associates have made an appearance. But like I said, maybe I've been getting too subtle recently.

[Flipz]

My thoughts on 107:

107 really embodies the "new" style of Heroica, beginning (roughly) with 100 and extending through many of the current Quests since then: the style of continuity. There were ties to the Assassins, ties to Zylstra, ties to Guffington, to the Syndicate, to the Order Imperial, to Wren and Zoot and Chaos.

Personally, I love it.

Heroica has always had strong ties to continuity and callbacks to previous events in the game, but only now are we reaching such high levels of it, where so many threads begin to intersect at the same time, and without necessarily "wrapping up" or permanently joining together as they all weave together towards a single destination. I like that the Heroes visited Zylstra because they happened to be a convenient place to start drilling instead of them all being descended from the imps or something, I like that the Heroes were working with Daneeka and the Ji Pei because they happened to be convenient financial backers instead of them having secret ties to the witches or some such nonsense. It gives the effect that the world goes on without Heroes present, and that events in the world interact with each other, but don't necessarily end up all in the same place. Sometimes they do, which is where we get the Dastan Trilogy, but sometimes things just happen, and they aren't good or bad or portents of impending dooooooom, they're just things that happen.

The concept of double-split PM side-quests was pure genius, and a perfect example of mechanics as metaphor. Not only is the situation weird and confusing and ultimately impossible for the characters to fully understand, the same holds true for the players as well. An even better example, though, was Death. I LOVE how you handled him--his attacks instantly kill, and they cannot be avoided. Death is inevitable and unstoppable--but rather than spell that out in text (at least at first), you used mechanical details to express this concept, and gave your players the opportunity to make this realization on their own. Really, really well done.

I also appreciate how much space you gave the players to tell the story themselves--many times you provided an empty space, and the players themselves grew to fill it. Probably both the best and worst example of this was the Library--on the one hand, Hybros and Ellaria expanded to fill that space you gave them, and (as you yourself said) ended up perfectly nutshelling the core theme of the story for you, but on the other hand Skrall sort of...I guess faded would be the best term to describe what happened to him. And that's the risk of that kind of freedom--sometimes your players will expand, other times they'll shrink and fade. It's completely worth it if it succeeds, but it is a gamble--it just comes with the territory.

This brings us into the negatives--the pace was definitely a hair slow. Part of that, of course, is unavoidable when you're dealing with an IRL schedule like yours, but I also think a little too much time was spent on setup towards the beginning of the Quest. I get why it was there, and the mechanic you came up with for device-delivery was a great one (risk of self-harm instead of the tired and overused "this big heavy thing slows you down" mechanic we've seen fifty times already), but ultimately they didn't seem to advance the theme of the overall Quest very much. I can tell what you were going for, it just didn't actually come through for me.

I'm also left a bit underwhelmed with regard to the reveal of the Imps. It felt both a bit rushed and a little too vague--I understand part of that to be intentionally mysterious, and part of that to be leaving things open for JimBee to expand upon, but it just felt slightly too much so. I really wish some of the extra time spent near the beginning could have been moved here instead.

To the players: I love all of your characters (one day, Pandora, WBD, I really want to host Nyx, Skrall, and Boomingham, but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be in the cards right now ), and I want to see more. JimBee, it's always exciting to learn more about the Imps, and by extenstion to watch Hybros learn about them in the process; Sandy, it's great to see Elpis being brought back into play again, and I hope to see more; Pandora, I'm REALLY intrigued by some of the hints Nyx has been dropping lately, I can't wait to see some of them start coming to fruition.

I want to leave a more in-depth note for Skrall, though: WBD, I don't know what's going on with Skrall at the moment, and based on your comments here and in general discussion it seems you might not know, either. In one way, that's interesting--Skrall spent so much of his life hunting Wren, and now that she's gone he hasn't found something new to chase after--but in another, it's worrying. I'm dealing with it too, with Arthur, so it's doubly worrying--if you're having trouble with Skrall, one of the best-written characters written by one of our most thoughtful and intelligent player/QMs, then how on earth am I supposed to handle the disorganized, overloaded mess that is my own character? I wish I could offer some advice, but at least I can offer empathy: I understand what you're going through, and I sincerely hope you can puzzle out a solution.

But let's not end on a sad note; I've saved two last thoughts to end us off, both related to the final posted side-Quest.

I how otherworldly alter-Eubric was. All of the other Quests were otherworldly to a degree, but the one in Uland even more so. From the "Powder Poet" to the leaf-creature to the freaking dragon strolling nonchalantly through the street, all of it left me salivating for more. Was it the past? Was it the future? Was it even real at all? Who the f*ck knows?! (Not you, apparently! ) That side-Quest was phenomenal, probably my favorite bit of the Quest. As someone who's wanted to explore Eubric in a similar way myself for some time now, really well done, and congratulations for another fantastic Quest overall.

[Waterbrick Down]

I want to leave a more in-depth note for Skrall, though: WBD, I don't know what's going on with Skrall at the moment, and based on your comments here and in general discussion it seems you might not know, either. In one way, that's interesting--Skrall spent so much of his life hunting Wren, and now that she's gone he hasn't found something new to chase after--but in another, it's worrying. I'm dealing with it too, with Arthur, so it's doubly worrying--if you're having trouble with Skrall, one of the best-written characters written by one of our most thoughtful and intelligent player/QMs, then how on earth am I supposed to handle the disorganized, overloaded mess that is my own character? I wish I could offer some advice, but at least I can offer empathy: I understand what you're going through, and I sincerely hope you can puzzle out a solution.

I think it's natural actually. I originally intended Skrall to be big on the orc liberation movement, but when that quieted down very early in the game he needed something more to do. Wren gave him that motivation, something to strive after, once she was gone it left him empty, he felt he had failed. Strivii rekindled a little of his adventurous spirit, but when the quest stopped it left him back where he had started from. I'm not too worried about it, just like in real life we hit our lows, points in our lives where nothing seems to be going right, or life is just boring, Skrall just may at that point. Some aspects of our characters should be normal, dull, unexciting. Sort of like the library scene, the point of having Skrall fade into the background was somewhat intentional. There were really only 3 options, first be excited about all this knowledge (Hybros & Nyx), second rebel against the knowledge (Ellaria), and finally remain neutral about it (Skrall), granted the last of those was a rather dull option but it was true to his character. While the Dastan architecture and other clues would have been familiar to Skrall, he was in Dastan because of Wren, not the culture so running into it down below wasn't a really big deal to him. We'll see where he goes, Arthur too.

[Sandy]

I originally intended Skrall to be big on the orc liberation movement, but when that quieted down very early in the game he needed something more to do.

I intended to make it a bigger plot-point, but somehow slavery just didn't fit the Eubrican way of life as it began to take shape. There are still some orcish slaves left in the city, and I'm going to make a quest about them at some point. Hope Skrall is on board when the time comes!

[Flipz]

All right. You knew this was coming.

*ream* *ream* *ream*

I'm going to save the most obvious criticism for last, because it's by far the most important to remember for the future. So for now, smaller problems with the Quest itself:

First of all, Quest 103's biggest problem was that it lacked focus. It tried to be sort-of roleplay-y, sort-of hardcore battle-y, sort-of survival-y, sort-of mystery-y, etc, with the end result being that it ended up as a whole lot of nothing--it lacked flavor, it lacked direction, it lacked involvement (from players and QM alike), and that's just not fun for anyone involved.

One of the bigger design mistakes was including Lind. Somewhat like Benji in 110, he didn't fit in with the rest of us mechanically, with the end result being that he basically ended up with nothing to do except sit around power-leveling. Here's a little of what happened, from our group PM thread:

Here's what happened, back when I signed up:

I had read all of the Arsène Lupin novels available on Gutenberg previously, and had always enjoyed them. When I saw that there was a quest featuring a character based on him, I signed up instantly, and Kintobar let me join because I was so excited.

The books always featured twists and plots that were always carefully being laid out throughout the story, and you always knew they were being laid out, but you could never quite figure it out until the end. I was thinking that 103# was going to be more along those lines, and less along the lines of a well-written dungeon crawl.

That was why I was investigating almost everything back when 103# started - I was sure that even the smallest plot details were going to be of major importance. (That, and a good rogue checks out everything that isn't nailed down.)

When I saw that Lind had been chosen alongside the rest of us, I thought to myself, "Huh, okay, this is going to be perfect; Kinto's making a variation on Four's Company so that Level won't really matter that much. Cool, I really liked that Quest, and I'm kind of burnt out from constant strategizing from 99 anyway; besides, what person in their right mind would assemble a team of Arthur, Thormanil, Hoke, and Guts, four of the most overpowered Heroes of all time, for a combat-heavy Quest--it's obvious that we've been put together in a situation where the stats don't really matter, beyond maybe one or two quick curbstomps for funsies."

Instead, we got a re-hash of Quest 50 with a less interesting environment and all of the same problems: lack of clarity, lack of updates, and general fatigue ruining the ending.

One thing that really hurt both us and the Quest was the utter lack of clarity. While the biggest example was lack of clarity as to whether or not our QM would actually update, other important points that got little to no clarification until far too late include (but are not limited to):

*The location of the Wine Cellar in relation to the rest of the house

*The existence of the Storage Room (I was literally the only person in the party who knew about the place prior to the rest of the party joining me in there for the Broker fight)

*The amount of Gold we got for each untouched room

*Why we were having to be so weirdly specific about moving from room to room in the beginning (it was clarified later with the revelation of Continuous Battle rules, but handling it that way at the beginning was needlessly confusing and unintuitive).

*Why exactly we weren't getting updates.

*What exactly we were supposed to be doing.

That last one is pretty major; usually on a Quest, within the first couple of days the players have some idea of what the mission entails; here, we honestly had no clue. We were told "defend the wine", and that's it. There's a lot of ways to "defend objective X", however, whether it's fighting off assassins (Q30 and many others), protecting the target while in battle (Quest 44, 53, 73 and many others), or defending a location against progressively stronger waves of enemies (Q17 and a few others); having some idea of how we were supposed to defend the wine beforehand would have saved us a lot of time and pointless flailing. Instead, we were basically left in an empty space and told "do stuff" without any sort of hint as to what Kinto wanted us to do.

Speaking of not being given important information, Sally Akrone was by far the most useless NPC I have seen in Heroica; she didn't tell us anything useful, and after days of fruitless questioning, she didn't even have the decency to throw us a bone with regards to how we were supposed to accomplish our mission. Now, I could have accepted this from someone willful and uncooperative like one of Pie or Zephers NPCs, provided they weren't the ones who hired us for the job in the first place. Between her inability to be forthcoming and the lack of QM guidance, those first few days felt almost like there was no plan for the Quest and it was being made up as we went. (To be fair, I never believed that was actually the case; I'm just saying that's how it felt.)

OK, time to go through my jumbled notes...ah, I promised I would address this statement you made in the PM side-Quest:

QM Note: One last change to Cindy, I've lowered her health and her level to perhaps make it a bit less overkill. With Guts, I want to ensure this doesn't turn into another normal dance routine for him of one hit KOs. Sorry, carry on!

Remind me to talk about this statement in the QM Lounge once the Quest is over.

NO. Bad. *squirts water bottle sprayer at Kinto* The solution to having one character that hits really hard is not to buff all the enemies to the point where no one but them can contribute meaningfully to the battle--this is something I felt a lot in this Quest and saw happen to Grimwald in 99. Guts is going to hit really hard and kill things really quickly. Period. Taking that away from him for the sake of taking that away from him is a knee-jerk response that hurts the other players as well as him. (What do you do with a wild Guts, you ask? Simple: take away his AoE (he himself has graciously done so by swapping to Alchemist), and then give him lots of medium-large sized things to instantly kill. Bam: Guts/Scuba gets to feel powerful, which is the ENTIRE POINT of upgrading weapons/power I might add, while he's also not ending the entire battle in one Round. )

(The same goes for tanks, by the way. Don't kill them outright, because that's frustrating for the squishy non-tanks; let them soak up damage, but chip away at them over time--Damage Over Time (DoT) such as Poison/Bleeding/Burning/Cursed, Specials that deal damage in proportion to SP, and Specials that cause enemies to focus on the tank (or a combination of the above) are great ways to accrue said chip damage. This makes the tank feel strong (because they're easily tanking a hit that would demolish someone else), while also making healers feel useful (because they end up with a target to heal that won't instantly drop if the healing die turns on them). Just throw in a couple of enemies for the other Heroes to deal with and now everyone's engaged. )

Something I said to my Questmates in a moment of frustration applies:

It really sucks for the rest of us that Kinto's balancing everything specifically for Raider Guts and Mystic Knight Hoke. I really think if the HP amounts (to prevent "another normal dance routine for him of one hit KOs" from Guts) and the Levels (presumably to make Hoke and my SP useless) weren't so nuts, we could handle a lot of these just fine.

Looking back, that's not entirely fair (I actually think the problem was a little more on the side of lacking ideas on how to make things fun for everyone at once), but nonetheless, it illustrates my point quite well. People tend to get frustrated when one character outshines all the others storyline-wise (Karie in 70, Arthur in 99, etc.), and that goes double when it's happening consistently in battle, when it feels like you're useless because the QM was balancing for a stacked party member.

Speaking of engagement, Kinto, allow me to assign this as homework: in the next few Quests, plot out your engagement curve (how much you're enjoying the Quest at any given point), and see if the QM tweaks the formula to try and improve it when your engagement curve starts to dip. The better QMs (i.e. Zepher, Pie, Sandy, WBD, among others and in no particular order of course) tend to do so. Unfortunately, though you accurately identified when we weren't having fun anymore, you didn't seem to tweak the Quest to try to make it more fun; in fact, the tweaks you did do seemed to go in the opposite direction.

On that note, I think all of us were extremely frustrated when, instead of adjusting to us, you seemed to just bulldoze on with your initial plan. I've gone back and read something I said during the enormous gap before you instituted downtime pay, and I don't think there was any point where it didn't seem true:

One of the cardinal rules of being a Game Master in any system is: you are not more important than your players. That also means your concept is not more important than your players' enjoyment. Yes, players have to be willing to play ball with the GM (i.e. not trying to deliberately wreck their storyline, not just Fleeing all the fights, etc.), but that goes both ways. RPGs are a form of collaborative storytelling, so if someone is playing to "win" or isn't doing their part in sending the ball back when it's in their court, the whole thing falls apart. Sandy put his concept above Kinto and Endgame in 93, Endgame put his concept above me and the others in 99, and I feel like now Kinto's doing the same thing to us.

Or similarly, this exchange from the final fight:

Only negates rolls of 5, not of 6, and Kinto's picked up Endgame's nasty habit of making all his bosses immune to Sealed.

This is why I hate full-party AoE Specials, incidentally, especially among mixed-Level parties--it punishes everyone for one player's unluckiness.

I'm just done with it. It's a difficult special strictly for difficulty's sake. There's nothing we can particularly do about it, it punishes anyone who buffed up, just because another party member wasn't as buffed and rolled the special. What's the flavor on it? He skillfully aims his hits.. what's he do, punch us in the gut and make us puke up the nostrums we chugged? Heh.

I was looking forward to those Halloween quests, but I'll be surprised if we make it back by this time next week.

(To Endgame's credit, he's getting better about that, but there's still a lot of room for improvement. ) "Difficult for difficulty's sake" seems to be the most accurate description of the battles in this Quest, and that disappointed me.

Anyway, Kinto, I'm also disappointed that, even after I approached you and told you that no one was having fun, you never asked any of us what would make the Quest more fun for us. Endgame did in 99, to his credit, and I was both surprised and saddened that you didn't. It really reinforced the notion that you just didn't care about us.

Ultimately, I think that was one of the most hurtful aspects of what happened: we entrusted our time and our characters to you, and we got...nothing. Lots and lots of nothing. We ended up walking out with a lot of Gold, but a lot of that ended up coming from my Overkill Gloves. (There was a little good loot--the Macabre Collar and Fur Leggings, for example--but the rest of it was incredibly random and niche, and not really practical for anyone--Mr. Snuggles, for example? Who is actually going to use that? What was even the point of making it impossible to imbue with Scrolls?) We all came in expecting great things. We got about a quarter of a QM.

...Aaaaand now for the elephant in the room. Kinto's already seen this, but this is the conversation we had when we all decided to voice our opinions that we weren't having any fun:

Normally I only rules lawyer for the sake of fun, but in this case it feels more like self-defense. At least now we have the rules easily accessible by copy-paste, so all of us can keep an eye on them.

Just so we're all on the same page, I'm not the only one who is having zero fun, right?

Just so we're all on the same page, I'm not the only one who is having zero fun, right?

2nd'd. Don't feel like this quest is getting even a decent amount of QM involvement.

Just so we're all on the same page, I'm not the only one who is having zero fun, right?

As a new player, I'm having fun in just being part of a quest for the first time, but it's kind of felt like it's been dragging on for a little while.

Especially when at least one quest that left after ours is nearly over...Of course, some quests do take longer than others, but when the the main bulk of the quest is supposed to take place in a single night...

There should be at least some type of update every 24 hrs. This quest really hasn't seen that. Not much to ask for either.

Ya me too. I've been scared to come out and say cause I don't want to sound like an inpatient jerk, but this is atrocious. 11 days without update, and many delays before and after that.

(strategy stuff)

I seriously thought this quest would have lasted a week or two. Seriously.

We have put in MANY actions that were simple overlooked or ignored.

Normally, I won't update from mobile as it's rather PITA to format from my phone (I do it manually, the brackets and slashes are annoying!). You may have noticed I've forfeit that grievance.

I definitely think I'll have some strong words at the end of the quest. From what I've seen, this isn't prime Kinto. I honestly expected better, and I'm not sure why we have such a night-and-day change.

Yeah, two actions not being in is not a reason to not update, especially when the Party Leader has posted suggested actions and the overall plan has been in place for several Rounds.

I mean, granted, real life happens, but it's nice to have SOME kind of information about what's going on. From what's been said, though, I get the impression that our QM just got bored with us and the Quest.

This? This should never have happened. When a QM posts their chosen Heroes list and starts their Quest topic, they are making a commitment with the players on that list: the players promise to provide a character that regularly interacts with the world and the NPCs in a manner that is respectful to the QM and their fellow players; the QM, in turn, promises to provide a world in which those characters can act and to provide reactions to those characters actions in a timely and fair manner. The latter has the harder job by far, but that makes it even more important that the QM gives it their all. Kinto, you...didn't. We were clearly not your first priority, Kint, not by a long shot. I'm not saying Heroica needs to be the most important thing in the QM's life (real life happens), but it should at least be among their top ten--and among their online activities, it should be top priority. We were relying on you (me even more than the rest, as this lack of commitment negatively affected both me as a player AND me as a QM for Quests 104 and 118), and you let us down big time--and then you signed up for Mafia, even though you were already having serious trouble getting ONE update to us per day. At that point, it honestly felt like you didn't care--and that crushed us.

Now, I don't want to leave things off on a bad note, so I've saved the good bits of the Quest for last:

*Lady Perin. She wasn't around enough for me to learn her name, but she was interesting. Ditch Sally, keep her.

*The Macabre Collar and Fur Leggings. Small items, not overpowered by any means (I'd even label them "mundane"), but still useful. More like these, please.

*The Broker. He was doomed (ironically ) as soon as I saw that collar in his inventory, but he was interesting as well. Unfortunately, you (like Endgame) made the assumption that The Regret is the most important thing in Arthur's life, but still, I commend you for the concept.

*Shorty as an enemy concept. His numbers were (again) a little too high, but he came closer than most, and I'm always a fan of loot that reflects the enemy's abilities (and vice versa).

*That bit with Thormy scaring the pants off of Lind. I don't know which of you came up with the idea, but well, well done. I would have been more than happy to have played a Quest more about silliness than standoffs.

Overall: LOTS of mistakes, but not irredeemable. Take some time, take a really hard look at what went wrong here, and do everything in your power to make your next Quest better. If you take nothing else away from this: the Quests you host need to be your priority. Don't let your players think you don't care about them--if you're not going to be able to update, take five minutes to tell them so, and have the decency to tell them why they're not getting an update. (Don't be afraid to bring in help, either--plenty of QMs do, and the game as a whole is better for it. ) Do that, and you'll be on your way to starting the process of rebuilding player trust.

Edited October 14, 2014 by Flipz

[JimBee]

One other thing that I'm still confused about 107 is how we weren't able to just go back down there. Why was there an urgency to carry just one or two books? Isn't there a whole treasure trove of knowledge down there than Daneeka and others could just visit whenever they wanted to? Because there is still that hole in the ground under Zylstra... Or were we transported there by the witch and whatever other force, and now the tunnel that was dug just leads to a wall?

[Zepher]

Yeah, I guess I didn't make that clear enough, but you found the witch in one cavern, and then went on the side quests. When you returned you were outside the city... but not where you were previously. I should have written that more clearly, I suppose.

So yes, the tunnel you dug ends in a Cavern A, and you were in Cavern B after the side quests. Maybe they're the same cavern, maybe they're different ones, maybe they're adjacent and maybe their worlds apart. You can go back to Cavern A if you want - at the very least you can go deep into Olegia still.

[Emjajoas]

Just going to reiterate in here that I'm looking for someone willing to build sets for my quest! PM me if you'd like some details. Thanks!

[Comrade Commander]

Just wanted to add my thoughts on Quest #106

Provisionary, thank you very much for hosting this quest! To be honest I wouldn't say it was my favorite, but I had a decent time overall.

Sets:

I think there were some nice sets in this quest with some interesting building techniques! That being said, I felt there wasn't much story wise in them. No major crates or anything we could search and/or hidden secrets (that I knew of). The first few we tried looking around but we were pretty much shot down.

Plot:

The plot was pretty straight forward. Get package from point A to point B, and avoid the bad guys in the middle. That being said, I felt we didn't have an opportunity to really flush it out. For example, the first stop had the break in (which hindsight was the elves) but we couldn't really do any investigating. In my opinion we didn't have very many opportunities to ask questions (I will get into that a bit below). I also wish we had the opporunity to learn more about the elves. Having the final boss just teleport away gave us no opportunity to interrogate him, and left a hole in the story. I would recommend having the NPCs respond to questions with more than just one liners in an effort to flush things out a little more.

Battles:

Every battle but the last I think was a good battle. We survived the last battle, but it really could have gone the wrong way too. I would be fine with instant death, but then you threw in the negative effects and made him OP as well. Without downing a bunch of consumables, it was a very difficult battle and even still Deus was KO'd in one hit twice. I don't mind a challenge, but I felt that was a bit much. Just me though

Pacing:

This is where the quest struggled I think. Like I mentioned, the NPCs responded with one liners that gave us little to work with. At one point we had to wait 12+ hrs for one NPC to respond to another NPC because the one liner we were given wasn't directed at any of the players. Had the dialogue flowed better I think I would have enjoyed it more. Along these lines, I felt we were kind of along for the ride. In the first stop in particular I had this thing where I was holding onto the info about the break in to get the owners un-biased opinion first and then reveal it to him to see his change. However it was like we were given one or two chances to talk and then just auto moved on. A couple of times I felt it was a time limit verses the natural flow of the round. I also don't think the quest should have taken as long as it did, but I am still new enough to not know for sure.

Players:

We all prefered to interact more with the NPCs rather than carry on roleplay with each other, but that is fine. I liked all of your characters, so I cannot say much negative here.

LordoftheNoobs: I like you play style as I think it is very similar to mine. Grimwald is a good character, but didn't really seem to take advantage of the leadership role.

Lego Spy: Deus is a good player as well, but I would love to see more roleplay from you. Flush out posts a little more, even if it is just to add a few descriptive flairs. Just helps paint a better picture in my mind.

Overall:

There were some highs and lows to this quest but despite what looks like a negative rant above, I did enjoy myself! It is always fun trying to think through things, and I am still getting used to this game so it was a good learning experience. I liked the blackjack experience, and I think I am going to steal some of the building techniques too. haha!

Thanks again for hosting and I would be happy to clarify and/or expand further if needed.

[Brickdoctor]

Thanks for playing Quest 112, Pie, Legonater, Quarry, and Pala! I hope you found the highly experimental XCOM: EU-inspired battle system enjoyable. (As well as the resulting purely battle-focused nature of the quest.) I had a lot of fun adapting and running it. I was worried that it would become a frustration due to its complexity, so I tried to tone down the enemies and their stats a bit, but you guys had no problem crawling through my dungeon.

[The Legonater]

Thanks for letting us join! I, personally, had a lot of fun with the quest, and if anything I think it wasn't complex enough. I enjoyed the whole idea of Atramor pulling down the statue, and this system would be really cool if there was more opportunity for that.

As you said, this was a pretty battle-focused quest so there's not a whole lot of feedback here, but it was a fun, short quest, and you guys were all great!

[Palathadric]

I was always trying to be creative when the battles came, but somehow when the time came for it, I couldn't think of anything. I had a few outlandish ideas and some simple ones like lighting the Ponganae on fire with the torch, but somehow when the time came I always ended up deciding against doing any of that. Anyway, it was a fun quest to participate in and I really did like the dungeon crawling style. I don't think I'd appreciate every quest being like it but variety is the spice of life. It was also nice have a more battle-focused quest for Pretzel since his last ones have been pretty draining on him. And I didn't find it overly-complex at all.

I'd love to go Skirmisher at some point, but Pretzel's build just doesn't really fit with it for now. I suppose the class could fit him though...don't know.

[Quarryman]

Just echoing the others here really, nice and simple battle-focused quest, just the way I like them. The battle system worked really well too, could easily have been slightly more complex actually. One thing I did miss was to have the enemies' locations listed next to them, but the colour coding did work pretty well too. As for Skirmisher I think it's a bit late for Namyrra to gain access to new expert classes, currently I'm trying to decide if Prophet is as sucky as I think or not. And I'm sorry about going all absent at the end of the quest, that was due to becoming a father this Monday so I kinda had other priorities than EB for a while.

[CMP]

I enjoyed the quest. It was fun, short, and battle-focused, and I loved all the X-COM callouts. The color-coding was unique, and it worked well. After some initial fuzziness the rules weren't hard to grasp. The story was super minimal and I kind of question the inclusion of the other characters in the first place. They never really did anything until one of them got killed.

And I'm sorry about going all absent at the end of the quest, that was due to becoming a father this Monday so I kinda had other priorities than EB for a while.

Congrats.

[Palathadric]

And I'm sorry about going all absent at the end of the quest, that was due to becoming a father this Monday so I kinda had other priorities than EB for a while.

Congratulations!

currently I'm trying to decide if Prophet is as sucky as I think or not.

Although I wouldn't say no to Prophet getting beefed up a bit.

[Flipz]

Just echoing the others here really, nice and simple battle-focused quest, just the way I like them. The battle system worked really well too, could easily have been slightly more complex actually. One thing I did miss was to have the enemies' locations listed next to them, but the colour coding did work pretty well too. As for Skirmisher I think it's a bit late for Namyrra to gain access to new expert classes, currently I'm trying to decide if Prophet is as sucky as I think or not. And I'm sorry about going all absent at the end of the quest, that was due to becoming a father this Monday so I kinda had other priorities than EB for a while.

First of all, congratulations!

Prophet is...I wouldn't say sucky, but it's definitely a heavy support class. To be sure, it's the absolute best next to Minstrel, but it's basically Sage crossed with Druid; if you're not a fan of pausing your attacks to heal people or read off scrolls, you're probably not going to enjoy Prophet. If you do enjoy the support role, however, Prophet will be very fun for you, as it takes the best of both Sage and Druid (the two most powerful Cleric classes) with none of the drawbacks. Back when I was basically married to my Scrolls, Prophet looked amazing, and it still does for that sort of player.

RE:112: It looked like a LOT of fun, and I'd love to play in something similar. I know I have plans to steal the mechanics system outright in the future, that's for sure.

[CMP]

RE:112: It looked like a LOT of fun, and I'd love to play in something similar. I know I have plans to steal the mechanics system outright in the future, that's for sure.

You'd have to build the sets yourself, though.

Pretty much what Flipz said. Prophet has greater capacity for support, but not as nearly as much for damage. You already have Mediq for emergency healing.

However, with Prophet you could also go back to your Crystal Mace.

[Zepher]

Phew. That's it!

Quite a few missteps, but over all I really enjoyed hosting 102. Thank you guys for coming along.

I have notes upon note upon notes, but really I like to let you go first. Most importantly, however, I want to thank you guys. It was an incredible quest to host, and that's almost entirely because of you. I can say confidently that this party was my favorite to host so far, and that you guys really got in-depth with the relationships between the characters. I always though that was the benefit of longer quests, and you guys took it to the extreme. Very nuanced interactions throughout. I really can't thank you enough.