Heroica RPG - Quest Masters' Lounge

[Lind Whisperer]

I swear, it's starting to look as if Sandy is just railroading the entire game.

...The game he started and has faithfully tended and hosted for four years?

[Waterbrick Down]

I swear, it's starting to look as if Sandy is just railroading the entire game.

It's been stated from the very beginning that the main story is Sandy's, as the inventor of the game he has the right to dictate such. Thankfully he has graciously allowed players and other QM's to have a significant impact on the way the stories have played out. You can look at a wide variety of past Sandy quests and see how he has allowed others to change the world. We're allowed to make suggestions and bring up concerns, but in the end the game is to some extent Sandy's.

Edited September 4, 2015 by Waterbrick Down

[K-Nut]

This would be the first case of railroading, if even. All of the Sandy quests that have failed have been by player choice, after all.

[Lind Whisperer]

It's Sandy's game, at heart. If he needs to nudge the plot-line towards a particular track, I think he has the full and complete right to do that.

[Duvors]

I'm not certain that a mind controlling brain slug that came all the way from out of left field counts as a nudge.

[Lind Whisperer]

...that came all the way from out of left field...

It looks like it was actually a side-quest - there was probably a chance for Pretzel to not be Mind-flayed, but he lost/failed the side-quest. Either way, not left field, more "so that's what happened".

Johon and Monk Pretzel stayed up for the first night watch shift while the others crawled into their bedrolls to get some rest after a long day in the forests of Spesialia.

QM Note: This quest will switch into private messaging for a while. Stay tuned...

OoC: I haven't received a PM...

Apparently I did, but it never notified me...

The heroes woke up to the ominous sound of a bell tolling. Their rest was interrupted, so they had only recovered a fourth of their health and ether. They found Monk Pretzel half-dazed on the ground and Johon high up on the tree. The Crystal Titan had awakened, and it was gazing down at the heroes with fury in its eyes. Suddenly odd moving lumps of rock rolled to the square. They turned out to be rocklings, all in awe of the colossus.

...Wait a sec - is Johon possibly Mind-Flayed as well? :look:

[Quarryman]

If Pala's been playing a traitor all quest then that's just good gameplay on his part. If he was doing this of his whole volition would we criticize him?

I certainly wouldn't criticise him for it, and with hindsight being 20/20 and all there are strange things about many of his posts in the quest, but without knowing he was a traitor I would have just written those off as good roleplaying on Pala's part, several of those posts struck me as his typical style. So if we were supposed to figure out he was a traitor I'd say there was a design flaw, if this is just about whether he got to succeed in his personal traitor's quest and this is all part of the plot for the rest of us it's all good. We'll just have to wait and see I suppose.. and Sandy's trip doesn't start until Sunday, so there's hope for some kind of resolving of this particular situation before that.

This would be the first case of railroading, if even. All of the Sandy quests that have failed have been by player choice, after all.

Not to nitpick (too much), but I do think #50 failed because it was unwinnable due to lack of necessary consumables being dropped. That's all water under the bridge though, and us failing #50 did set the stage in a good way for #75, which was a very nice quest.

[Palathadric]

The party had no knowledge of a traitor? I don't know where I got the impression that they did.

I have a lot to say about this quest, but I will save it for the end. Of course, my muddled brain will probably only put out one or two paragraphs anyway.

[Chromeknight]

If Pala's been playing a traitor all quest then that's just good gameplay on his part. If he was doing this of his whole volition would we criticize him?

I'm not sure this is what you're asking, but,

If pala had decided to mess the quest up without any prompting from the qm, too right we'd criticise him. And likely some players would never play with him again. Parties are a team effort, having one play off on their own for purposes of their own strikes at the core set up of the game.

If the game becomes PvP as a regular feature, we'll see a dramatic shift in the tone of the game, where strong characters lord it over weaker/lower levelled ones. New players won't join and newish players will leave.

As for #135, plot twists, sure. Ambushes where players are put on the back foot hard, cool. Situations where the quest is failed by fiat with no recourse? Not good. Quest failures should always be the decision of the party or the result of a badly handled battle (that was in principle winnable).

[Flipz]

Quest failures should always be the decision of the party or the result of a badly handled battle (that was in principle winnable).

Quoted For Truth.

[Asphalt]

Personally I have a hard time believing that this is "The END" for 135. I say let it play out.

[Lind Whisperer]

Personally I have a hard time believing that this is "The END" for 135. I say let it play out.

^Same.

That being said, I call first dibs on the sign-up sheet for #142 Let's Just Pretend That Didn't Just Happen.

*Alternate Title: #142 Let's Just Pretend This Is the Second Party, and That We Aren't Having to Send A Third &*#87$78*&)*@)#()*#@)*0$80$* Group of *$(*#$*(94 Heroes After This Witch, Okay?

Edited September 4, 2015 by Lind Whisperer

[Waterbrick Down]

I'm not sure this is what you're asking, but,

If pala had decided to mess the quest up without any prompting from the qm, too right we'd criticise him. And likely some players would never play with him again. Parties are a team effort, having one play off on their own for purposes of their own strikes at the core set up of the game.

If the game becomes PvP as a regular feature, we'll see a dramatic shift in the tone of the game, where strong characters lord it over weaker/lower levelled ones. New players won't join and newish players will leave.

As for #135, plot twists, sure. Ambushes where players are put on the back foot hard, cool. Situations where the quest is failed by fiat with no recourse? Not good. Quest failures should always be the decision of the party or the result of a badly handled battle (that was in principle winnable).

At what point however does a party member or member(s) actions become not allowable in a quest? What if part way through the quest a definitive split does occur and half the party wants to go one way and half the party wants to go the other and they are set at odds? Whose actions are allowed to matter? The majority? The party leader? Or none and the QM forces the situation?

We still don't know what's going on behind the scenes in the current quest, but I'm sure we're going to have a lot to talk about once we do.

[Endgame]

Personally I have a hard time believing that this is "The END" for 135. I say let it play out.

The battle was clearly structured to be winnable, though.

[Lind Whisperer]

The battle was clearly structured to be winnable, though.

^This too.

I think it would have worked better - not necessarily best, just better - if Sandy had added some sort of timer count-down to a ??? event. Or something like that.

[swils]

I think we really should just let this play out before commenting further. We haven't even seen the next round of combat, yet.

[Flipz]

At what point however does a party member or member(s) actions become not allowable in a quest? What if part way through the quest a definitive split does occur and half the party wants to go one way and half the party wants to go the other and they are set at odds? Whose actions are allowed to matter? The majority? The party leader? Or none and the QM forces the situation?

We still don't know what's going on behind the scenes in the current quest, but I'm sure we're going to have a lot to talk about once we do.

As the guy who did 104, I think I'm in a good place to answer that.

It depends on the situation. In 104's case, there were options such that the party could successfully side with any of the three combatants (Diana, Darius, Sirone), so when they came to a split, I allowed them to come to blows on an individual level. However, as someone (you or Pie, I think?) said about Arthur's betrayal in Quest 53, "if you're going to betray the party, make sure the people you're betraying them for will actually accept you"; if the people the players are trying to defect to legitimately don't want the help of the traitors (Arthur in 53, Mhinak in 136), then as a QM I'm going to have the enemies respond accordingly (i.e. "'You want to join me?!? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA' *stab* QM Note: Congratulations, you have now failed the Quest, unless your fellow players decide to rescue you.").

On a more general level, it depends on the viability of the sides. If just one Hero wants to go off against their own party, I'm not going to go through all the effort to completely change my Quest to accommodate their attempt unless I'm DAMN certain it will make for an interesting experience (since, after all, it is a LOT harder to construct a satisfying experience for only one Hero than it is to balance for even just two)--and even then, odds are good that the other Heroes will catch up to and dispose of the outlier. In the case of a more even split (or a split where most of the party wants to betray the party NPCs while the minority want to stay with them), I'm more likely to rearrange my plans to let them duke it out, with the losers having to deal with the consequences of their loss. Again, that's just me, though--I'm a lot more willing to flex than most QMs.

That said, both of those situations still depend on choice based on character and roleplaying. In case of Troll Attack mid-fight, I'd probably resort to QM fiat.

That said, what are other people's thoughts on the difference between acceptable PvP and misconduct? In my view, an acceptable PvP scenario requires the consent of all sides, including the QM; initiating it without that consent is just as distasteful as a player trying to initiate their own battles or a player/QM killing another player's character without permission. That's just my own stance, though, so I'm interested in hearing other perspectives.

I think we really should just let this play out before commenting further. We haven't even seen the next round of combat, yet.

I don't want to talk about 135 specifically for that reason, but I do think we can have a conversation on PvP and the player-QM relationship without being unfair to 135. Hell, there's value in the QM knowing that their players are upset; if we hadn't spoken up about our concerns on 103, we'd probably still be on it now. On the QM side, it does hurt, but it's invaluable in telling me what I need to change for later elements of the Quest before it's too late to do so.

Edited September 5, 2015 by Flipz

[swils]

I don't want to talk about 135 specifically for that reason, but I do think we can have a conversation on PvP and the player-QM relationship without being unfair to 135. Hell, there's value in the QM knowing that their players are upset; if we hadn't spoken up about our concerns on 103, we'd probably still be on it now. On the QM side, it does hurt, but it's invaluable in telling me what I need to change for later elements of the Quest before it's too late to do so.

No worries--you were probably typing all that as I submitted, and you got much more into a general case of it, whereas some recent comments are treating 135 as a certain thing that can be reflected upon already.

[Flipz]

No worries--you were probably typing all that as I submitted, and you got much more into a general case of it, whereas some recent comments are treating 135 as a certain thing that can be reflected upon already.

Yeah. (Though I do think that part of the issue with the 135 situation is that, mechanically speaking, it is over already, and there's a certain amount of "if we're screwed anyway, just finish it already, no sense in watching us sit here and suffer" going on. But, like we've both said, that's getting a little ahead of things.)

[Lind Whisperer]

That said, what are other people's thoughts on the difference between acceptable PvP and misconduct? In my view, an acceptable PvP scenario requires the consent of all sides, including the QM; initiating it without that consent is just as distasteful as a player trying to initiate their own battles...

What should someone do when their character isn't there to parlay with the enemy, they're on a blood-quest to kill that enemy - and their character wouldn't logically stand around and let everyone else have a little chat before they charge in and attack?

Yeah. (Though I do think that part of the issue with the 135 situation is that, mechanically speaking, it is over already, and there's a certain amount of "if we're screwed anyway, just finish it already, no sense in watching us sit here and suffer" going on. But, like we've both said, that's getting a little ahead of things.)

What about the smoke bombs? Shouldn't they do something, at least?

[Flipz]

What should someone do when their character isn't there to parlay with the enemy, they're on a blood-quest to kill that enemy - and their character wouldn't logically stand around and let everyone else have a little chat before they charge in and attack?

Suck it up and accept that a little unreality is the price for fair play (i.e. making sure that everyone else gets their fair chance to enjoy the game).

It's also important to remember that one of the core rules of this game is that only the QM can initiate battles. Some QMs might give you some advantage for doing something clever beforehand, but just as many will penalize you for your impatience.

Mechanically speaking, the pause before a battle exists so that all players who want to use consumables before the fight have an opportunity to do so; trying as a player to start the fight early is like saying "Hey, fellow players who live in a different time zone but might want to make some actual preparations for battle? Yeah, f**k you, you don't matter as much as my desire to just fight already."

What about the smoke bombs? Shouldn't they do something, at least?

Even if fleeing is possible, just one attack from Thormanil KO's Namyrra--and even if she wakes up, every single enemy she faces (Thormanil, Pretzel, Farfarello) is immune to Darkness, so she can't use her army to KO them either. She literally cannot do anything whatsoever.

Edited September 5, 2015 by Flipz

[Lind Whisperer]

Suck it up and accept that a little unreality is the price for fair play (i.e. making sure that everyone else gets their fair chance to enjoy the game).

It's also important to remember that one of the core rules of this game is that only the QM can initiate battles. Some QMs might give you some advantage for doing something clever beforehand, but just as many will penalize you for your impatience.

Mechanically speaking, the pause before a battle exists so that all players who want to use consumables before the fight have an opportunity to do so; trying as a player to start the fight early is like saying "Hey, fellow players who live in a different time zone but might want to make some actual preparations for battle? Yeah, f**k you, you don't matter as much as my desire to just fight already."

Strongly put, but well put.

We should really start a Handbook of really good quotations by QMs. I mean, we do have the Theatre, etc., but still... Too many good posts get lost in all of these pages...

Even if fleeing is possible, just one attack from Thormanil KO's Namyrra--and even if she wakes up, every single enemy she faces (Thormanil, Pretzel, Farfarello) is immune to Darkness, so she can't use her army to KO them either. She literally cannot do anything whatsoever.

Got it.

Although it burns my eyes to read the posts I made back then*, this development makes Lind's Hall remarks about the #135 away team needing to be better organized than the first one was take on an air of...something. That foresight he's always suggesting he has. Or at least, mildly less crazy.

Mildly.

Although he probably won't brag too much about it - seeing as how one of the specific heroes he approached about forming a group of "lawful goods" was, you guessed it...

Monk Pretzel.

"You there! Master Monk! Are you going to just wait around and hope you're selected for the quest, not caring about the morals of your team-mates? That's what the lawful good heroes on the last quest did - and look what happened! The Witch is still alive! Because the other heroes over-ruled the good heroes, and let her live! Are you going to sit back, and let that happen a second time?"

Well...he definitely didn't sit back and let that outcome happen a second time...

*All of...two months ago.

[Chromeknight]

That said, what are other people's thoughts on the difference between acceptable PvP and misconduct? In my view, an acceptable PvP scenario requires the consent of all sides, including the QM; initiating it without that consent is just as distasteful as a player trying to initiate their own battles or a player/QM killing another player's character without permission.

In the Zepher quest Debts (#102 I think?) Alexis sided against the party and caused quest fail. But it was a choice we were all offered and it was clear that PvP was where it would end depending on choices.

[Purpearljellyblob]

It depends on the situation. In 104's case, there were options such that the party could successfully side with any of the three combatants (Diana, Darius, Sirone), so when they came to a split, I allowed them to come to blows on an individual level. However, as someone (you or Pie, I think?) said about Arthur's betrayal in Quest 53, "if you're going to betray the party, make sure the people you're betraying them for will actually accept you"; if the people the players are trying to defect to legitimately don't want the help of the traitors (Arthur in 53, Mhinak in 136), then as a QM I'm going to have the enemies respond accordingly (i.e. "'You want to join me?!? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA' *stab* QM Note: Congratulations, you have now failed the Quest, unless your fellow players decide to rescue you.").

Just to put it out there because I think that last statement might influence the decisions that my questees might make in the future: For #136, just because one has a different opinion or has taken sides does not imply the character will fail the quest. There is a lot more going on that has yet to be revealed.

[Flipz]

Just to put it out there because I think that last statement might influence the decisions that my questees might make in the future: For #136, just because one has a different opinion or has taken sides does not imply the character will fail the quest. There is a lot more going on that has yet to be revealed.

Oh, of course, I was only describing how I would handle it, using past scenarios in 53 and 136 as an example; I didn't mean to imply I was speaking for anyone else.

Edited September 5, 2015 by Flipz