Ah, the last day of the christmas time period, referring to the specific rite of bringing gift; also, a comedy from William Shakespeare centered around misunderstandings, separation, fake identities and deception. I think this pretty much nails the theme of what we've got ahead of us in the game right now! ^_^

And on that note, to encourage some discussion, I want to point out a worldbuilding aspect of our game which has grown in relevance lately, despite always having been more influential on the way I planned this game than people might have realized. I'm talking about Lorecircles.

Everybody who has read the books would know, but Dusk Rat hasn't, so I'll remark that the original LW series Lorecircles weren't the same as the ones we have in this game - some were similars, but others were not. I'm sure most of you thought that I restructured them merely for balance, but while that played a factor for sure, it wasn't the whole story. In fact, restructuring the Lorecircles was the very first thing I did when planning this game, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the way I shaped the plot was an evolution of the setting assumptions that my restructuring of the Lorecircles (something I did mostly as a fun worldbuilding exercise) lead me to make. It was the spark from which Rebirth sprung.

So, to make it clear, it is my promise as GM that I did not assigned Lorecircles to characters randomly; there is a reason why some lorecircles (Spirit, Fire, and to a lesser extent Moon) are more diffused among the Magnakai NPC, while others are rare (White Mantis and Shining Peacock are currently the only two Light Loremasters). Only seven currently living Kai (Starfire, Moon Shadow, Black Beaver, Shining Peacock, White Mantis, Golden Sparrow, Sun Fox) have more than one Lorecircles; this is not by chance either, and nor is which ones of them they all have. There is a plan and a reason about how I went assigning them.

In fact, I think I managed to even get you PC to conform to my expectations on this point - of you all, the only two who are Loremasters are the two Second Batch members, Sun Snake and Sabre Fox. And it does says things about their characters that they are - I expected them both to get there given the way they ran their characters. It gives even more depth and relevance to the concepts I've tied to the Lorecircles themselves.

So, it's been a relevant plot point that the Lorecircle of Spirit is a necessary requirement for using the Seeing Stones. Shining Peacock himself offered you all his opinion of what that Lorecircle is about, and others NPC have discussed the matter with some of you at various points. In fact, I can safely state that, in setting, it is a commonly accepted point among Magnakai that mastering a Lorecircle means the user mastered a specific aspect of their own Kai powers, although even Loremasters of the same circle often disagree on what that precise aspect is about.

But they're NPC, and so they're only as smart as I allow them to be. You're all PC - you're way smarter than that, since each one of you is way smarter than me. And thus, I am curious: what do you think the Lorecircles stand for? What does each one represents, and why do they exist in the first place? What is the point behind them?

Please discuss it at lenght - I'm looking forward to seeing what you will make of it! ^_^
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:37, Tue 04 July 2017.

I dunno. I just figured it was a way of grouping related skills together and giving some extra bonuses to people who managed to take all the relevant skills. So, looking at the list in the skills post, Fire seems mostly physically combat-related, Spirit looks like it covers mental combat, Moon looks kind of generic with something of a mixture of utility and combat, Solaris is for us Nature-walkers (:D), and Light is like Solaris but with a bit more biologically-related crafty-type stuff.

I notice there is some crossover in that a couple of the skills are featured in more than one Lorecircle (eg Divination is in both Spirit and Light). I hadn't ever considered that there might be any specific GM-created reason why certain skills would be grouped together, but then I didn't know how much of this was made by the GM and how much was in these adventure books that I've never read ;).

I think I'm pretty close to achieving one of the Lorecircles (think I only need one more skill) but I don't imagine we've got any more level-ups left to go, since it's been said for a while now that we're apparently very close to the end of the campaign.

The original Lore Circles were set up like:

Fire = Weaponmastery + Huntmastery. (+1 CS, +2 EP)

Light = Animal Control + Curing. (+3 EP)

Solaris = Invisibility + Huntmastery + Pathsmanship. (+1 CS, +3 EP)

Spirit = Psi-Surge + Psi-Screen + Nexus + Divination. (+3 CS, +3 EP)

Not too sure what significance the new setup has though.
Doubt it'll be too relevant to Swift, whose path has been forged more by her own development than consideration for the Lore Circles.  Kind of fits her in a way, since she's not necessarily one to stick to the rules ;)

Yeah, same - I didn't build Dusk Rat around trying to achieve these Circle things, I just picked skills that seemed like they suited her character and it's turned out that most of them have fit into Solaris. But I didn't plan that.

If I'd continued to play as "Rogue Swift", I'd probably have aimed for the Lore Circle of Fire.
But "Redemption Path Swift" was guided onto learning crafting from Silver Raven, so becoming more of a creator than a destroyer :)
Wasn't a convenient Lore Circle that fit all the skills I wanted though, so she forged her own path in a way.
If there had been time, I might have had her eventually aim for the Lore Circle of Moon.  Might be her future path beyond this game if she survives whatever awaits us at the end :)

I think Sun Snake, and so I, already gave my analysis of the lore circles a while ago. The idea that if you think of the Kai Disciplines as one whole thing (a globe) then the circle is one slice. I suppose each understanding would be the same as studying a part of the world :) And so by focusing on one part, a person is biasing away form another part - which is no bad thing.

I think Sun Snake terms it like the gift being the sun (and the god Kai), and each lorecircle being an espect of that. Light being understanding, fire being the ability to act, the spirit being the ability to use more divine senses, and solaris being the balance of all those. I guess they are all about connections to the world.

I believe the moon then became the echo of the kai disciplines but throug hthe lense of Ishir and other champions.

It should be noted that I as a player pitched a new Lorecircle to our GM, so I would be more interested to see if that pitch fit in with both the idea of the lorecircles and their nature?


Anyway, that's interesting that the NPC lorecircles are very deliberate, rather than a result of just what disciplines they would be likely to have.


Oh, I thought I'd replied to the OOC thread regarding Water Hornet - I'll edit the post with the Shining Peacock farewell.

That's good to hear. :)

As for this:



That really depends on your presentation of it, and how you think it should fit in the greater design, and why. If you are capable of selling it to me well enough as a necessary expansion, I'm not against letting it go in.

And in a sense, the characters do have the Lorecircles that match the Disciplines which fit them - but it's not like "the disciplines which fit them" was ever random, either. All of you developed the characters the way you wanted to, and as a result, some of you moved towards some Lorecircles, and some reached it, and some went for a more diverse selection. It works in making things very organic, I think.

My expansion of the Lorecircles, and which disciplines were added, and which ones are shared by some, and which ones are exclusive, all has a reason - I'm just curious to hear what you all think the reasons are. This isn't a test or a guessing game: I'm not looking for "correct" answers, I just want to know what you think, to engage each of you with this aspect of the game's worldbuilding.

I mean, I did mentioned that Peacock offered his own interpretation of what possessing the Lorecircle of the Spirit means. Do you agree with it? If so, why? And otherwise, why not?

I just want to see what the brilliant minds of you all, a group of very creative people and players, can come up with regarding this matter. I'm very curious! ^_^

I never really thought about it in much detail - I mean, like I said, I didn't know these were put together specifically by the GM, I just thought they were already like that as part of this particular system. And it would hardly be the first to have a skill system that groups things together and offers bonuses to those who manage to effectively "collect the whole set" ;).

Well, as Swift Fox said, there were originally Lorecircles in the gamebooks, and they did indeed offer bonuses to those who did collect one of the whole sets. However, as you can see from Swift Fox's explanation, they were really unbalanced:

Fire and Light were very small, with two disciplines each; this made them "easy access" options. However, their bonuses are different - in the LW system, 1 point of CS is worth a lot more than 1 point of END (as I'm sure you can tell by now), and the original system didn't have WP, that was an addition.

Also, due to Huntmastery being in two Lorecircles, completing Fire and Solaris would take four disciplines, while Spirit would take four different ones on its own. However, to compensate for this, the Spirit bonus is much better - it is, in fact, superior to that of Fire and Solaris combined.

In practice, what this did in the gamebooks was make some choices much superior to others, and the Lorecircle of Light in particular was so inferior that a player choosing the disciplines within it was essentially handicapping themselves in their playthrought.

So, to avoid this, when I considered the idea of starting a game of my own, restructuring the Lorecircles so that they were balanced with each other was something that was necessary. It's one of the reason why your fellow players probably weren't much surprised I reworked them the way they did - moreso because I imported disciplines (Kai-Alchemy, Herbmastery, Battle Magic and Craftsmanship) which were introduced in later LW books, ones where the Lorecircles idea had been abandoned.

However, I already was interested in how the idea of the Lorecircles contributed to the worldbuilding, and had been thinkering with the in-setting reason for their existence for some time. This lead to me actually putting a lot of thought into how I wanted them structured for the game, and how they related to the NPCs; I used the themes I had decided gave the Lorecircles their meaning - what I choose as the in-setting justification for their existence - and used those as my guidelines on who'd have what when assigning it to characters.

Mechanically, I also tried to mirror the way the Lorecircles were normally selected by players, so Fire and Spirit are the ones which are picked up first by in-setting NPCs, and I specifically let them one Discipline shorter to make them easier to gain. The lorecircle of Moon follows a similar idea in that the disciplines that makes it up are those considered more useful in the later LW books. On the other hand, the Lorecircle of Light is now the largest one, with the disciplines making it up being handpicked so that one would be needing to go for it specifically to get them all - that suddenly justifies people not picking it up frequently. And it also works very well with the meaning I decided that Lorecircle to have.

So, everything has a reason, which I worked hard to intertwine with the NPCs' personalities and with the plot. And the questions I have now is, does that comes through? But I don't have the answer - the only way to get it is to ask you all what you think, and see if your ideas and thoughts on the matter match what I think.

Thus, the question: what do you think? Try to get into the setting for a moment, look things from the point of view of your characters, and ask yourself: why are the powers of the Kai suddivided in this manner? And what does mastering a Lorecircle means, why is it different from simply having four or five disciplines picked at random? I hope that some good conversation can come out of this (which hopefully would be fun for you players to have), and it's also the only way for me to get your ideas. I love analysis, so analyze, and tell me (and each other!) your results! ^_^

I hadn't really thought of the personalities of the NPCs to do with their lorecircles, I suppose I can retcon it now - thought in a way we've only encountered a couple each. I suppose once all the hidden threads are revealed, and we see how each NPC intereacted with their own students and friends behind the scenes, then these aspects will be more obvious.


I can only speak for Sun Snake really in that I think his 'lorecircle' and lorecircle progression eerily shows his character progression.


At first he had Divination because he is connected to things, using it passively but not intrusively. And he has Invisibility becauae he tended to just seek not being in the limelight, andjust being a silent part of the order.

While he was actively seeking to gain Psi-screen, because once on the mission he felt he needed to be able to defend himself and be strong for the order, it was actually a surprise Pathsmanship that Shadow offered up as an alternative. And it seemed logical that Sun Snake's connection to the world that was growing as the limits of Divination were being pushed, together with perhaps him looking for purpose internally, matched.

Also, his original character progression should have been to Solaris, and he was basically standing in his own way over that. So it was intersting to have his subconscious slip in to that as the mission put pressure on him, as it did all the characters.


Because Pathsmanship had been a logical extention of Divination in terms of Sun Snake actively trying to read the world and people's intentions that way (rather than just people, which is a more active Psi-surge like use), and because Pathsmanship and Invisibility are already nicely tied together through Solaris as a sort of 'navigate throgu hthe world and understand it / use it' sort of way, having the three disciplines work together as if they were an uber-disicpline isn't really a far stretch.

Add to it Sun Snake then gaining Psi-screen more because he's mind was sort of broken when he realised Lone Wolf was dead / people were big lying liars, then his mental defenses were more a case of him either being disconnected or simply finding a means to push onwards - but still defensively and passively.

And so that's why I pitched a 'Lorecircle of the Shadow' idea, because all the main lorecircles seemd very aspects of the sun, and I liked the idea of Sun Snake's disciplines and they way they all blended together showing how Sun Snake was acting from the shadow,s but rather than in a stealthy/evil way, more in a 'you have the spotlight/ you go be Kai's champion, I'll help back here' sort of way. So the idea that between the four disicplines working together, you can either know your place in the world so perfectly that you can hide yourself to see it clearly and not have an ego, or vice versa use that sense of place and ability to actually emphasis yourself in the world and be certain.

Which describes Sun Snake's two modes :)

So there you have it, my understanding of the lorecricles, and why I liked this new one that seemed to have unwittingly formed in Sun Snake's understanding.


However, I sort of liked the idea that despite being a very mental disiplines user, that Sun Snake probably would not complete the Lorecircle of the Spirit. That his understanding of the physical world and using it aggressively (Nexus) and using his mental energies aggressively (Psi-surge) weren't there, and he was more likely to keep going on a path probably towards Solaris after the game was finished (and that might still be something he has if he lives to be a much older Kai :D )

So I think in my mind if anything 'broke' Sun Snake, he might become a very avenging figure, with Psi-surge, but otherwise he wouldn't keep going towards a Lorecircle. However, instead with Shining Peacock's challenge, I think Sun Snake worked out how to use Psi-surge more in line with simply being more active in his dicipline use, and finally getting passed the mental barriers that he was hitting trying to use Divination actively. And funnily, by getting a sense of the world and seeking connections to everyone, and even seeing the Vashna's prison, and speaking with Sun Fox, I think he finally understood how the spirit disciplines were powered, and so actually gained Nexus. So he came back fromthe dark side, did become more reserved ut active, and connected spiritually to everyone, and so learned the Lorecircle of the Spirit. Rather than maybe being detached but learning to rely on his instincts and disciplines and going to Solaris.

I can agree that the reasoning you went through to pick Psy-Surge, and how then Sun Snake the character proceeded to implement it as less of a tool for offense, and more a means of projecting his ideas outside, was the real key to Sun Snake's Lorecircle achievement. In my eyes, his lack of it was always due to a misplaced sense of what it was about, seeing Psy-Surge as a weapon, whereas what it's really about is projecting one's mind outside of one self, which can be used as a weapon, but doesn't means to be. Instead, it's about growing one's ego to the point where one is willing to impose it on others, although in Sun Snake's case, this was mostly a natural extention of his constant need for communication and speechs. :)

Anyway, the point I was making is that breaking past that block to learn Psy-Surge was the crucial step of Sun Snake moving toward learning the Lorecircle, even if Nexus came after. Which I suppose sheds some light on how I see the Lorecircles as a whole, in the context of the narrative and how all your characters can shape it.

Kind of similar path there, in that initially I wasn't too sure if Swift's evolution would affect her abilities or not.
The only ones I was sure about at the start were the ones I already envisioned her as having "awakened" in her past.
(I'm not too sure if Dusk has already heard about Swift's past from Peacock, since he clearly knows it, so I won't spoil it just in case) :)

Suffice to say that her disciplines were awakened in a traumatic way at a young age, and they were the ones which she naturally rediscovered during her training as a result of that (to the point where she once wondered how her powers would have developed if she'd had to discover them on her own).

The abilities she had as the "Ghost of Anskaven" were enhanced speed, agility and balance (represented by Huntmastery), the ability to see hidden traps clearly (represented by a Pathsmanship Improvement), and the ability to fade from sight and blur her form to make her difficult to target effectively (Invisibility and an Improvement for it).
There was also an ability with weapons that had weakened over time as she fought against that dark side of herself (hence why she only had Weaponskill, rather than the more advanced Weaponmastery).
The damage her mind suffered during that time also inhibited her ability to shield herself psychically, causing her to have difficulty in learning Psi-Screen.  (And her inability to fully control her emotions sometimes caused her to "project" traumatic flashbacks at moments where she felt particularly intense anger, fear, etc.  She didn't actually realise she was doing that until someone mentioned they picked up something like that).
It also gave her an intense phobia of mental contact, first hinted at by her reaction to being Mind Charmed by the Brotherhood mage early on.  As well as her apparent fear of Blue Snake and his habit of searching the minds of those near him.  (Another thing that made it harder for her to learn Psi-Screen, as someone would have to try to infiltrate her mind to let her practice it).

Regaining all of those abilities (as I gained them during the game) was a part of her development, symbolised by learning to exert her own control over the "Ghost".  Something that was made far easier by the forest dragon teaching her how to shield her mind properly, making her feel much safer and more confident in exploring her abilities as she could also shut out unwelcome intrusions.

But whether she learned Weaponmastery or not was uncertain at first.  I had planned on giving her that one, but at the same time, her evolution might have continued to fight against her "killer" side, which it did.  So she never really attained the level of lethal skill with a dagger that she was truly capable of if she was still fighting "angry".  It's kind of delayed development though.  She will regain that ability eventually, just not during the time remaining in this game, and now it'll be a more "controlled" form of the ability, no longer "fighting angry" as she would have done if she'd learned it earlier.

There were two main elements I had intended as being able to influence her development from the start.

The first being the other players and their treatment of her (although I quickly realised that might not have as much of an effect as I'd intended, since we seemed to be a group of sullen loners who didn't talk much, hehe.  So the idea of her projecting flashbacks was kind of a way of shaking things up a little there.  Looking back, I feel like I was playing it a bit too heavy though, not so sure it was the right thing to do after all).
Though the final test for that was whether or not they still accepted her as one of them after finding out about her past.  Getting over a hurdle she was actually afraid of from the start, really opening up about herself and not having to hide any more.

The second influential element was whether or not she managed to rescue Silver Raven.
If she hadn't been assigned to the team sent to find him, there was a distinct possibility that she would try to sneak away and either join the other team or follow them at a distance, possibly helping them out or simply eavesdropping to find out everything they learned.
With her mind occasionally "leaking" weird images, it's probable she would have been detected eventually, if not immediately.  But she wouldn't have given up on that attempt easily.
If Silver Raven had died, it's likely she might have snapped, becoming driven by the desire to kill the ones responsible.

So the choice between recovering her full ability to stab things repeatedly until they stop moving, or learning stuff from Silver Raven, became a symbolic representation of the changes in her mind.
Creation replaces destruction.
In the end, Silver Raven's influence on her, and a combination of god-sent hints in the form of items, and the fact that the Sommerswerd recognised her as a Kai, and the other characters accepting her as one of them, as well as a few personal revelations, locked her onto her "Redemption Path".
So she's now about as stable as she's likely to get in the time remaining.  Strong enough to face her own inner demons of her past and conquer them.  (Something that will most likely be visited in an epilogue if she survives all the way to the end).

Phew, that ended up being longer than I expected...  :)

TL:DR - Lore Circles just didn't fit with how she grew over time.  If she had failed to rescue Silver Raven and gone looking for gruesome murderous vengeance, I would have aimed for the Lore Circle of Fire (for Weaponmastery, and since my original vision of this version of Swift had her fight with dual-wielded daggers).
This message was last edited by the player at 00:21, Fri 07 July 2017.

It fits if someone was trying to abandon one path for the other, that they might not have a lorecircle, which seems to indicate a dedicated focus. Swift Fox has dropped the drive that would have put her in the lorecircle of fire, and is instead simply learning what she can - it would eventually lead to another lorecircle, but the longer way around. Which is basically what's happened to Sun Snake, he's a second batch Kai but he's taken this long and gone a weird way to get to a different path (the original Kai character strongly suggested solaris as a destination)


And it was Sun Snake that picked up on thw Swift Fox flashes, but at the time assumed it was Rain Feather and spoke to her privately about it later! And then discovered the mistake and that it was either Alyne or Swift Fox instead :)

Ah yeah, I remember that caused some confusion at the time, hehe :)

Pretty sure there was someone else who actually mentioned it to her though, might have been Dusk Rat or Laughing Shark.  That's when she first realised that her own inner hell wasn't quite as "inner" as she'd thought.

Also, something that struck me as interesting was the character of Sylon.
The way he seemed to really tick Swift off so much was because he reminded her of herself as she once was.  Just a mindless puppet, except he had no desire to escape that situation, something that she couldn't understand, as she had already lived that and would have quite happily chosen death over a return to that situation.
So in a way, she would probably have considered killing him as an act of mercy more than just removing a possible dangerous enemy.
But at the same time, she pitied him for it.  Thinking he just didn't know any better, that his mind had completely broken and he had accepted he only existed for that purpose.  In the end, that's why she chose to let him live, even though leaving the situation unchecked continued to bother her for some time.
(At the time I wasn't sure if Shadow had created him that way on purpose just to act as a sharp poke to Swift's character evolution.  It was a very interesting coincidence if not) :)

As it tends to be the case for these things in this game, it was a bit of both - the character always existed as Colin's chief enforcer, and always had that general personality, but when I realized the existing parallels with Swift Fox, I tweaked him a bit to make them more striking. :)

Yeah, Dusk Rat picked one or two of Swifty's accidental projections ;). Can't remember if she mentioned it to her but it's possible she would have done, especially if it was apparent to Dusk Rat that Swifty didn't know she was doing it.

Since it seems unlikely to come up before the game is done, I'll tell everyone Dusk Rat's backstory afterwards and you can see how she ended up so fed up with humans all the time ;). As to her forward movement, I figure she has one of two paths she may follow as a result of current/upcoming events. Both are kind of similar but one is rather more preferable to me than the other ;).

So Dusk Rat will be the final boss for the rest of us to fight? ;)

Special ability:  Summon Animal Army!  :D

Regarding Lorecircles, I also thought of those as grouping of disciplines that represent some aspect of Kai powers: L. of Fire as the offensive specialization, L. of Solaris as the scout/infiltrator specialization; L. of Spirit as the psychic specialization; L. of Light as the life force specialization.

As for you extension of the original composition:
General notes:
- I like that you made them more balanced - definitely in terms of number of disciplines needed for each Lorecircle. :) That's not the only thing, of course, although an important one.
- In the books it was difficult to achieve the balance, since in terms of keeping things simple, only CS and EP bonuses were the direct result of achieving a specific Lorecircle. Of course, there are situations when the player is asked if he achieved a specific Lorecircle (or the whole Lorecircle gives a bonus to a dice roll/RNT), but there are too few, I feel. Otherwise, L. of Spirit and L. of Solaris seem quite balanced, but as I say: more situations where the whole Lorecircle would allow a player to achieve something, would be nice (then again, in a book, with a strict limit of number of sections, that's hard to achieve). In case of L. of Fire and Light, it'd be nice if they could be use more freauently, but with lesser effects - that way the quick achievement of these would be both rewarding but not obvious picks.
- [SPOILER ALERT for Dusk Rat] By the way, I always strived to complete the L. of Light, despite it not being the most "cost-effective" choice :) and then prayed to Kai and Ishir (and even Naar :D )for really good luck. And once I even managed to beat both the Chaos-master and Zhenga - since I failed to hide from that dragon without L. of Solaris :D (if my mind is not failing me)
- I like that there are far broader ways how to benefit from Lorecircles in this game; and not to mention we can always try to do something that's not explicitly stated in the rules thread (as long as it make sense)

as for the composition...
L. of Fire:
- Battle Magic addition feels like a natural choice
- Nexus is also something, I imagine, fits in because of the offensive potential (throwing objects/people around; manipulating elements, especially fire; a number of improvements related to battle)
- allowing double-wielding is a really cool bonus, which can only be achieved with this Lorecircle

L. of Spirit:
- actually, I think it was a good choice to leave it as in the books :) (the) four disciplines feel about right

L. of Moon:
- it's good to see the magic-related disciplines to have their own "family"
- I see Craftsmanship to fit in, because it allows a Kai to work with material's supernatural/magical properties when creating items
- Curing is an intriguing addition to me; I'm not saying it does not fit in, it is interesting; I can probably see it as a way to connect energies of living organism (and perhaps soul) with the magic in the surrounding world.
Say, Shadow, did you consider including Herbmastery instead of Curing? Or would it then feel like too much "new" disciplines would be a part of it?

L. of Solaris:
- seems like just exactly the combination of abilities(=disciplines) one would need to gain a deeper understanding of the "outdoors' world" and be in a harmony/sync with it
- I also understand Animal Control (and Herbmastery in regards to plants) to give a Kai Master the ability to adapt the mindset of "the law of the jungle"/"the fittest survive" and become a more skilled hunter

L. of Light:
- I understand it exactly as said in the Lorecircle's description, with the four disciplines representing the different aspects of life force: Divination = soul, Curing = body, Animal Control = animals, Herbmastery = plants, but also Herbmastery+Curing = effects of various substances on life
- what is intriguing for me, is the addition of Kai-Alchemy; again, not disputing it, I guess it's like the "fifth element" to the four I mention above; or to say in a different manner: a reflection of the material world - the world of energy (Cur.+AC+Herbm. being in the material world, K.-Alchemy being in the world of energy, and Divin., as the representation of soul, linking the two worlds)

Phew, sorry for the long post, sometimes I can really get broad when asked for an analysis. :) (as for the connection between important NPCs and their Disciplines' choice, I'll probably get into that in an another post)
This message was last edited by the player at 19:28, Fri 07 July 2017.

Well, I liked the long post, Hornet, so feel free to get 1 FP for it - it might not be very useful as the game is near its end, but you never know, right? ;)

As for why Herbmastery isn't part of the Lorecircle of the Moon, is because it would not fit at all with the concept I picked to build the Lorecircle; same reason why Craftsmanship isn't part of the Lorecircle of Fire, really - it would seem to fit, but if one knows what the Lorecircle is actually about, it really doesn't.

But your analysis of the Lorecircle of Solaris and Light were very good and close to what I was thinking when I envisioned them - Light in particular. The reason Kai-Alchemy is part of it is, in a sense, the same why Battle Magic is part of Fire; because their mechanics (not the effects) tie in with the key concept behind each Lorecircle.

Ooh, thanks for the FP! Who knows, maybe after all I will enact my secret plan to pounce at Shining Peacock's back with dagger in Hornet's hands (Swift will surely not mind stealing her trick, will you, Swift? ;) ).

Hmm, I think I can see what you mean.

You guys surely don't mind if I pick up some popcorn and take a seat to watch the ending, do you?

Sorry for the giant flake-off.  Things have been rather, well... blah and crap for the last few years.  Hasn't really been a lot of time for fun and everything, but I'm happy to be back to be able to watch the ending.  Let's make it great, yeah?  :)

We'll try our best, and I for one am very happy to have you back, Rain! ^_^

Welcome back Rain Feather!

Hope we can entertain you now you're back - and sorry we seem to keep breaking your characters :( We're remarkably not killing each other now the ending is starting to come about - well, except Swift Fox is ready to stab us in the back no doubt out of habit, and Water Hornet wandered off most likely to plot our demise. But otherwis,e all good!

Ooh, hello Rain! :D
Don't worry, the story hasn't forgotten you - you came up in a recent IC conversation and caused a bit of a stir between a couple of people ;).

You should know that Fox went on a small brutal killing spree after Rains demise 0.0

I don't know - does killing one single person counts as a killing spree?

I mean, sure, that was one pretty brutal kill - bisected from the head down, if I remember correctly? - and the one he killed was the High Priest of Vashna, so it certainly counts as revenge, but I'm not sure if it should qualify as a killing spree.

Although I freely admit that my English isn't the best, what with not being native and all. Anybody can clear up for me if Sabre's definition is appropriate or not on this?

:)

Hence why I used the word small lol.

I see. :)

Swift Fox, Sun Snake, I'm giving you two the chance to comment/answer Sabre Fox declaration in the main thread before I make White Mantis speak again - I'm very curious to see the interactions between you all on it all.

Only because he couldn't bring him back to life and kill him again several more times :)

I saw!

But to get on the bandwagon, well...

Rain, well... her powerset and evolution could have gone one of two ways.  Originally, she was going to end up just focusing on those Disciplines that would have involved keeping people at a distance and using her strengths- her mental powers- to wreak havoc from a distance.  Starting out with Psi-Surge, Psi-Shield, and Kai-Alchemy, being ready to take Divination at some point because, well, tie in Divination with Psi-Surge and it's pretty much the mental version of a smash-and-grab as far as getting details out of someone's mind- they might know something is up, but at the same time, are they going to be in any condition to do anything about it?

From there, it would have been simple to grab Nexus as a fifth to get the Lore-Circle of Solaris and turn her into a mental terror on the battlefield.  I mean, free multi-target P.T.A.s?  Yes, please!

Then she had to go all dark and everything, and for a while there, it was almost like she was going to go as close to the edge as possible without falling- maybe even over if there'd been a good enough reason for her to.  With all of her mental baggage, enough distrust and hatred of her might have sent her off with the Drakkarim to simply live and work with them.  She didn't think she had a choice- the Order would have hated her, and as soon as her secret was out, that would have been it- she would have left the Maaken team and gone as far as she could.

But once the acceptance started, well... it was enough to get her to look at herself and to do some deep thinking- and to finally admit that her goal wasn't what she'd been seeking at all- in the end, she didn't want power- Rain just didn't want to be alone and feared any more.  She craved people, friends, the light- to spread her wings and to seek out the sun, you might say.

That brought about Curing as her next discipline instead- realizing the light inside instead of darkening even further.  After that... I imagine the sky would have been the limit.  Her CS really didn't lend to a physical build- someone who trained enough to keep in practice, but would be hard-pressed to hold her own in a physical fight.  But as a caster-type, striking from the back row with spell and mind, but able to heal as needed- playing a mix of damage and support, as it were- could have been very effective had she gotten enough in the way of WP support.

WP was really Rain's downfall- if she runs out of WP, well, she doesn't have much to fall back on besides her weak physical skills.

Clearly Sabre Fox killed each body part individually in height order. And it was one one part after another, so that would make him a serial killer... *runs*


I think WP is everyone's downfall! At least Swift Fox has advanced so much she can start making WP generating shinies for everyone! Pity Rain Feather wasn't around to get one of those goodies and become scarily powerful with no limits. No, wait, that doens't sound as good when I say it out loud...

Ah! You have no idea how much irony is there in that statement, Sun Snake... I think I'll let it up to Swift Fox to explain why I say that, though. If she wants to, that is! ^_^

Swift Fox seems worryingly silent on that one...

Trying to figure it out.
I'm a bit too thick to get irony, hehe :)

Think back for a second, if you will.  Wasn't someone sneaking off to 'meditate' a bit in the beginning of the thread and managing to pull WP from somewhere when by all means she ought to have been out for everything she used?

It's not hard if you know what to look for! :)

Ohhh, you mean...  That?  Ah ok :)

*smiles cheerfully at Sun Snake*
Don't worry, everything is going to be fine.  There's nothing to fear.

*checks Swift's WP count and giggles maniacally...*

I mean there was that necklace thingie that used Vordak gems as fuel, but then that got pruified, didn't is, when Rain Feather sort of mad a step away from black magic. Umm... does it now run on something less finite like puppies or smiles or Kais named Sun? :(

Also, what happend to the chalice that we had - wasn't thjere some talk of it potentially being turned in to a WP engine like Shining Peacock possesses?

Actually I wanted to make one of them, since she already found that mug that transmutes any liquid into Laumspur Potion, so wondered if she could make one that transmutes liquid into Hildun instead, paired with that refilling chalice.

Lacking Herbmastery though, she doesn't know how to make Hildun, so we settled for just making a chalice that could create a near-infinite water supply to use in the Laumspur transmuting mug instead :)
This message was last edited by the player at 12:45, Thu 10 Aug 2017.

Yep, yep, the Water Summoning Chalice and Transmutation Mug are in good, safe hands. Hands of Water Hornet, that is. ^_^
I wasn't aware the Chalice was of Swift's making. I thought it was High Priest's possession. But I very well might be misremembering. :)

Also, Rain, I didn't have a chance to interact with your main/original character, but I did enjoyed the ice cold relationship between Renora and Hornet.


In other news, I'll be away from this Saturday till next Sunday and won't be able to post (well, I should be able to sneak in a lonely post until Wednesday, but after that I will be completely off the grid). I know my posting wasn't frequent recently anyway, but just so you know that the next week is a planned absence. :)

We'll make sure to burn the Skyrider down in your absense! :p

Thanks for letting me know, Hornet - I'll keep your meal of fish in the oven so it's ready to be cooked when you get back. ;)

And yeah, I believe the chalice was something Swift Fox and Silver Raven made together, to work with the Laumpspur transmutation mug - but I might be misremembering. The mug itself though was most definitely found among the High Priest's stash.

Just peeking in. Seems the Skyrider is still afloat (is that the right term?) :)

Shadow, thanks I like freshly cooked fish. ^_^

And you're probably right about the chalice.

It's early days yet! :p

Early days for what?

Also, in case anybody needed to be informed, I'm waiting for Swift's and Sabre's decision about Sun Fox's request to leave before making my next post - I feel like it's important to know who'll be around for that discussion before I have White Mantis react any further.

Speaking of which, Sun Snake, am I remembering right that neither you nor Sun Fox have yet revealed the full import of what she did to the others, right? As in, I remember she shared some of how she was tricked by Valador, but I remember that the most important details were known only to you. Is that correct, or am I remembering wrongly?

I thought she'd said most of it, even if she hadn't given the gory explicit details (understandably). Maybe it's easiest if Swift Fox and Sabre Fox say what they understand Sun Fox did?

Oh! That would be a good idea.

Swift, Sabre? Could you give me an idea what you think/remember Sun Fox did, which she's feeling so guilty about?

I recall something about her being responsible for the deaths of the rest of her team.  Can't recall if she actually killed them herself or just led them into a lethal situation though.

It would also be interesting if everyone remembers the reason Sun Snake gave for forgivening her, or at least why didn't try to plant an axe in her head and is trying to move on from it :p

I think the only person Sun Fox ever told the truth to on everything that happened was Rain, one night on watch back at the Maakengorge.  Granted, Rain was also afraid at the time Sun was going to kill her- and the crazy thing was, well...

if Sun had thought Rain too far gone to save, she might not have put up a fight if she'd wanted to kill her.  There aren't more than a few people she ever really respected apart from everybody sent on the mission, but Sun was one of them.

Well, she did eventually confess to Sun Snake, and then to the others, but you wouldn't have known, Rain, because you weren't around then. But yes, Sun Fox did confide in Rain Feather much longer before she did to anybody else - and you did an exceptional job in keeping that knowledge secret, I must say; Sun Snake in particular was very shocked when Sun Fox finally told the truth to him as well. Which she did, in part, due to how unjudjmental Rain was about the whole thing. :)

Sun Fox was the first character I created when I was plotting this game, and was always meant as an archetypal fallen paragon, but the way she resonated so well with several of the characters you PCs created wasn't something I was expecting, and it added a lot of dept to the game; in my original conception, I thought you were going to react badly, push her into Valador's arms, and make into the deadliest opponent in the game. I'm really glad, and proud of your roleplaying skills, for managing to turn her around like you did. It was great for me to see it happen! ^_^

Yeah, neither I nor Sun Snake had any clue that Sun Fox wasn't simply the goodie two shoes NPC that was sort of being set up as the one to get on side in politicking because she was an obvious figurehead / popular with the lower orders.

I'll take that as a compliment! ^_^

It was :)

Dedinitely an unexpectd dramatic moment with Sabre Fox there! Let's see how it continues...

Does this mean no fight?
I had some popcorn ready and all...  :(

Who knows, depends upon Sabre and how much he knew. He might be satisfied with the push to Sun Fox or he might be readyto re-enact the High Priest fight!

I admit, I too am curious to see what Sabre will do next! ^_^

Separate thread for Snake and Fox please Shadow?

I'm ok with that... just everyone note which way Sun Snake went and who he was with when he 'accidentally' falls from the Skyrider with multiple holes in him innexplicitly shaped like the Sommerswerd.

Shining Peacock arrived early then? ;)

Someone with huntmastery level eyesight might wanna check what Sabre Fox was carrying...

A sign reading "Seagulls are Evil!"? :)
This message had punctuation tweaked by the player at 15:29, Sun 03 Sept 2017.

That's the one. In small letters is also mentions how seagull beaks are shaped remarkably like Sommerswerd blades.

I used to think seagulls were all okay... and then I went out to the lakeshore and came back to a speckled car.

The love was kind of over right then and there.

Yeah, I remember someone being kept awake from early in the morning by the constant seagull calls in Aberdeen, and I was all 'huh, what seagull calls - oh, yeah, I suppose they do make a lot of noise' Just completely immune to it from having lived there :D

Kind of like living next to train tracks, or in Chicago in a building with an attached elevated train track.  You just stop noticing it after a while, I guess.

...but a speckled car is kind of hard to ignore, especially when the wash is ten bucks a shot.

And not washing risks your paintwork being corroded!


I also used to sleep with my head right beside the window on a ground level - right beside a busy street amd near a bus stop. You get used to sleeping through drunks walking and yelling right at your head pretty quickly too :p

*gasp!*  So Sabre Fox was right.  The seagulls were evil all along!  I bet it was a seagull who murdered Blue Snake too.  It all makes sense now!

On another note, I couldn't have slept through that.  I'd have been paranoid that some drunken idiot would have broken the window and I'd have woken up to a faceful of glass and probably also drunk-idiot puke!
(O.o)'

Welcome to life on a college campus, where you live above a bunch of party animals.  One of them even managed to mistake the accelerator for the brake pedal once and put a hole in the front of the building when I still lived there.

I can still smell the stale beer and vomit and it's been years...

Stop going on about seagulls you lot or you shalt be murdered :)

And just for that, I should really find a way to introduce a Kai with "Seagull" as part of his name - I'm sure the meeting with Sabre Fox would be interesting! ^_^

Don't you dare! 0.0

Why not? In fact, I should make it a girl who's one of Sabre Fox's fans! That'd make it all fit even better! :D

The adventures of Severed Seagull were short but colourful*


*Red is a colour, after all...
This message was last edited by the player at 17:29, Mon 04 Sept 2017.

Your all being very mean :(

Did someone say seagulls? :D

In other news, I have so far avoided reading the main thread (since Hornet's been absent), but I'll probably head there and read everything from the beginning of the conversation with White Mantis (for technical ease of pushing the game when we all gather up)...so, looking forward to all the bombshells ;)

Bombshells indeed! Sun Snake might have suggested someone go get Water Hornet (and Frost Ferret) but he was a little distracted with his appointment with being pushed off of the Skyrider.

Maybe Sun Fox can think about grabbing Water Hornet back to the group!

Should you all reconvene and you wanted to share your discoveries with everybody, Sun Snake (read: if Sabre Fox doesn't decide to kill you first), then Sun Fox will most certainly remember about Water Hornet should the rest of you forget; after all, she considers him a good and capable friend, even if not really a close one.

Is it wrong that part of me thinks we could hit 30K posts before this is all over?

...I admit I'm going to save everything to my hard drive.  It'll be something for me to read in the future and to have the memories.

I might even print the whole blasted thing just because.

That weight of paper might be classified as a dangerous weapon!

It's entertainment and home defense!

Was tempted to write it up in the form of a novel actually.  Part of this year's, or a future, NaNoWriMo event possibly.
Not thinking of publishing it or anything, what with potential copyright issues on the Lone Wolf world and canon characters.  Just something to pass around those of us from this game, as kind of a souvenir.

Though not too sure how to handle the shifting viewpoints, with each character having their own internal thoughts and so on.  Also the parts where the story was left as loose ends, like wherever Laughing Shark's own story was heading.  Not to mention incorporating stuff from all the private messages I don't have access to.

So, yeah, I like that idea, but if someone's going to try that, better make it someone else who can actually make it work :)
This message was last edited by the player at 21:09, Sat 09 Sept 2017.

Do it like the GRRM novels- skip around perspectives and the like.  get multiple perspectives for important events, but if they're just travelling, stick with one and let people experience through the eyes of that character.

I suspect I'm the only person left on Earth who hasn't read them yet.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:24, Sat 09 Sept 2017.

Or you could do books from everyone's viewpoint, but that would be, what, seven different books?

Yeah, going with multiple volumes wouldn't really work; long as it is, the game is just one single story with an equally important ensemble cast. :)

That said, I also considered working on translating the whole game into fiction once it's over, with help from you all - and i'm pretty sure that, even once we finish the game and I share everything with you all, doing it without my coordination/knowledge of the behind the scenes details just wouldn't work. And I agree with Swift Fox's point that trying to somehow change the setting for a non-copyright-infringing version would be impossible and way too ambitious, but simply streamlinging it into fanction shouldn't be too hard; and one of the sites I'm into (sufficient velocity) is a den of critics for all things fanfictiony of every fandom, which means that, unlike posting on FFnet, if we put it there we could have a chance of getting actual feedback on how good it is.

But that's just an idea - I think we really ought to finish the game before we can work on anything like that, since there's so much behind-the-scenes and secrete message stuff you all wouldn't believe. I'm really looking forward to it! ^_^

And anyway, I'm glad that you're willing to save the game so you can keep it - it is really the most significant accomplishment of my life, and while it was only possible with the incredible contribution from you all, I'm happy it struck such a chord with so many of you.

SV?  I usually check that about once a week to see if there's a new chapter of Overlady up!  Small net, huh?

Well, I'd think it's more the case of people with similar interests gravitating towards the same kind of places. ;)

I would have thought that Shadow has played it so that there is almost always an NPC to bounce the PCs off of. If the stories actually centred around those NPCs - Valador, Sun Fox, Alyne, Silver Raven, etc, then it serves the three headed purpose of being easier to fill in the critial back story and plot beats earlier when needed, it gives you more freedom to write the thoughts and reactions of those characters (or not) without needing as much input form the players, and also ensures you have people who are driving the story always avaialble (players are driving the game, but are on the back foot a lot of the time driving the stories, and as you point out Swift Fox if a character leaves the game their plotline from their point of view ends abriptly). Also, it then makes it interesting to read the game as a separate entity, seeing the story from the players' point of view having seen it far more from the characters on the 'sidelines' and the villains / 'villains'.

Just a thought :p

Sorry if my posts are a bit short, or if I go inactive for a day or two.
There's a close friend in Florida I'm really concerned for right now, so not too focused on much at the moment.

That's perfectly understandable; take all the time you need, and you have my best well wishes for your friend, in the hope things go as smoothly as possible for them.

I'm also going to able to post less this week (less sad reason, just have a wedding to at the end of thr week in to the weekend). I'll definitely be unavailable from Thursday to Tuesday. Since that seems to be when Sabre has been free to post, then sorry if that causes more of a delay. If Sabre seems happy to be finished, I don't mind being auto-piloted back ot the gorup as an excuse to round up Frost Ferret and Water Hornet ready for next week.

That's assuming Sun Snake is still alive and this isn't just me pretending he is, of course!

Just heard back from the aforementioned friend now, and seems she's fine.  Apparently the worst of it missed her, so happy now :D

Can come back just in time to solve Sun Snake's murder be friends with everyone :)

Yay!

Very happy to hear that, Swift Fox! I'm glad everything's fine with your friend. :)

And Sun Snake, to get back to the discussion over fictionalization, while it's true that I've given you lot a big number of NPCs to bounce off of, Sun Fox is the only one of those who I think could possibly handle the protagonist role in a story. Silver Raven is more of a supporting character with a strong "damsel in distress" vibe, Alyne's identity is much better suited as a reveal than as something people know from the start and her conversion is much more satisfying as a result of the heroes' actions, I feel. As for Valador... well, to paraphrase a comment from one of my favortie webcomics, while he has the "-tagonist" part down path, he's much more suited to be "an-" than to be "pro-". Not really main character material.

So, unless I was going for an "Ismael" approach (and I don't really like those all that much, to be honest, including the example from which the name originated), I rather think that this story fits much better as the story of Dusk Rat, Frost Fetter, Laughing Shark, Rain Feather, Sabre Fox, Sun Snake, Swift Fox and Water Hornet than that of anybody else. They're such exceptional protagonists, I can't imagine how anybody would be able to tell this story without giving them centre stage! ^_^

I think Sun Snake would make a good protagonist actually.  He's got all the stages there, starting off as a lowly storeman (as Valador likes to remind him, every time they talk!) then being sent off on a quest, during which he rises to overcome self doubts and eventually (with the help of his murderous loyal allies) discovers his true strength and overcomes a powerful evil :)
He even has a nemesis, well sort of...  *points at Fall Lobster*

I think you're forgetting Sabre Fox's original bio line :p

Right back on lol didn't want to hold up Snake on deck much lol

And which bio line? Lol

"Leading Man" if I recall correctly? :D

You do remember correctly, Sun Snake - and not just "Leading Man", but "Celebrity Leading Man", at that. So, you're fully spot on. :)

And Swift Fox, while I applaud you on having so perfectly prsented Sun Snake's story in a manner that makes it clear he's protagonist material, let me offer you a different one.

It's the tale of a girl with a dark past and crippled by insecurity, but which, through a challenging jouney, by taking on the responsibilities of a leader and with the help of her team, manages to comes to terms with her own self-doubts, finds new friends, realize her own potential and uses the abilites she once feared in order to save the day and slay the greatest evil in the land, in the process finding some peace within herself, and a hopeful future to look forward to.

Does that sounds any less like a protagonist's story to you? ;D

And clearly said protagnists's stabbing of the noble hearted storeman later is because he's secretly a Nadziranim or a Helghast or something. She has proof - he even said he was a Helghast when he was with the evil Vashnite priests! And his student is like the head Vashnite now! So evil!

Wow, that sounds cool.  Which character was that? :)

...and now Swift has me imagining an alternate Magnamund, where the world is in danger, and the Kai who are supposed to save the world all took straight jobs.  So she and a partner have to go around and try to convince them to come back and save the world, even if they don't really want to.

I'm still laughing.

In reply to Rain Feather (msg # 104):

That could make for a very entertaining story (the inspiration certainly is), but who'd be the partner, and who'd be the one to be recruited? Depending on the people involved, it'd change how the story beats would go, I think. :)

And the band is back together! :)

I have to read through the main thread, but let that not stop us from planning the world's doom ;)

Hey all, about 30 minutes before I headed off for the wedding my router died. Now I'm back and checking everything out (rather than getting the sleep I haven't had yet due to overnight bus) it turns out it's my bt line being at fault. So if the can fix it remotely it might be a day or two, if it's weirder or they need access to the flat it will be much longer. I can check on on the phone but typing is too much of a pain for more than short messages. Work's really busy before catch up, so can't do amything from work. Hope it won't hold things up too much!

Thannks for letting us know! That's obviously not your fault, so I'm sure everybody'll be fine with waiting for your situation to get better before you can post again - as the one aware of what your character is about to reveal, I can promise them all it'll be worth the wait. Let us know when things are fixed up, and stay well in the maintime! ^_^

And Shadow still loves to play the waiting game.  I remember waiting back for the first Helghast fight, and how that went on over the winter break back in the old days. :)  Now I'm going to be waiting to hear what it is, and it's going to drive me nuts thinking about it.

And I don't even play the main threads any more, sheesh.

In reply to Rain Feather (msg # 109):

I can tell you in a PM if you want, Rain - you just have to promise not to tell to the other players; I am really looking forward to their reaction when Sun Snake reveals what he's discovered. Yeah, I truly do love my hyper-shocking revelations... but hopefully I'm not yet to the point where I lose track of the necessity of making the revelations actually make internal sense within the narrative, like some directorsI won't name. Wouldn't want to go down that route.

Also, I'm glad the Helghast fight stuck so deeply with you - to be honest, when I imprinted Zahira on your character, I was really hoping on having a reversal of that, with Rain having moved from against an Helghast to fighting alongside one. It was meant to be an interesting parallel/reversal of the whole situation for your character, to see things from the other side.

You really surprised me with your decision not to tackle things that way, and as it was revealed eventually, it was a very setting-defining decision, seeing how much impact it had ono Vyctar's character development; I just couldn't hint to that at the time, but now that we're past the reveal of Vyctar's plan, I really should take the time to compliment you on derailing that particular plotine so completely. I have my most fun when you players surprise me, after all. :)

When Sabre Fox gives his reaction when more information is given, expect it to be controversial! ;)

Funnily I had written more originally, but realised I should probably let everyone actually react first :) Unless Water Hornet or one of the NPCs are going to get stabby, I guess Sun Snake has weathered the initial reactions of the more violent PCs!


Be intersting to see that reaction once more information is forthcoming.

Aww, you're not including Swift in that category are you?
She just wants to give you a nice warm hug.  Not her fault she keeps forgetting she tends to carry sharp things hidden up her sleeve.  Accidents happen after all ;)

Well it's most likely going to be a very character  reaction that you might need to bear in mind lol

Remind me who can operate the seeing stone? Could Snake initiate contact with it and Sparrow on the other end keep the channel open if Snake left the room?

You can ask Sun Snake in character for the options, but basically you can't directly speak to Golden Sparrow using Sun Fox and Sun Snake and have them leave. They both need to be physically contacting the stone. Shadow can correct me if I'm wrong.

As I said, there's other options if you want Sun Snake and Sun Fox not to be around, but combined with not surrendering the Sommerswerd to Sun Snake when you said you would, it's starting to look a little bit suspicious... :p


Edit: I forget if Sun Snake officially made the offer to Sun Fox, and if it was out in the open, but if she had wanted privacy with White Mantis he would have offered to keep the link open but try to shield himself from listening in as much as possible. Perhaps the same thing can be donewith the two of them providing the link, but it's up to you if you trust them of course!
This message was last edited by the player at 21:08, Sun 24 Sept 2017.

Actually Fox would have insisted Snake be there even if he didn't say anything so nothing was miss communicated. It was more I was thinking Snake would leave them alone so it didn't look like he was imposing lol

Lol, I see. I added more details in an edit, but I guess that's not needed :D

Yup, as Sun Snake said, he and Sun Fox both need to be touching the Seeing Stone to run the connection; the alternative, naturally, would be to have someone else, a person on Sparrow's side of the line, to run the connection instead. Assuming he has somebody there with the capability, that is.

Or you could always call Peacock and ask him to run the connection instead, if that's more to your liking. :)

I'm always around, by the way, checking everytime new posts are made and everything, I just wanted to let you all handle the in-character reactions to this information without interference from the NPCs. But I'm here, and following eagerly, and curious to see what you all are going to make of it.

And also intrigued at how Sun Snake and Sabre Fox seem to take it for granted that Sparrow will act as they want, rather than in the way that would most benefit himself, once he has the information... it's a shame Laughing Shark isn't around - she'd not have been of the same opinion, I'm pretty certain of that. ^_^

Sun Snake isn't assuming anything, he's just acting in the way where he's not provoking anything further. He did mention how terrible the plan was at least once or twice, right? :)

That he did, I agree. :D

Well I'm waiting on Sun snakes response first before I ask any of that lol

I am more worried about the prince's reaction in all of this.

Well, don't forget, you have a friend who knows a few tricks in the field of untraceable assassinations...  ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 16:28, Mon 25 Sept 2017.

Basically, all of the NPCs could really mess us up, and I think the sooner we all find the common ground to work together once more and murder persuade them all the better.

Regarding current IC situation: I am good to go. :)

Were the rest of us supposed to clear out of the room for this conversation?

No, just be outside of the link - you can still stand around and hear what Sabre Fox and Sun Snake say.

Maybe Golden Sparrow's first reactions won't be exactly diplomatic, and Sabre Fox wants to make sure delicate ears don't hear them :p

Yep, Swift's ears are very delicate ;)  hehe.

Okies, was just checking :)

Actually, I intended for Water Hornet to be leave the room altogether; but it'll probably be easier if we're just out of the conversatoin / mind link, as Snake says (and originally Sabre suggested).

Alright, then I think we're good to go; post incoming shortly.

Really wish I could hear the other side of this conversation too now :)

That was just a standard greeting with how Fox knows he is lol

Nothing like telling someone to be calm in order to make sure they start off calm!

Indeed! :)

Speaking of reactions, what of your opinion on the proceedings, Rain Feather? Would you have suggested a different course of action from the one the team has chosen to go with?

It Fox didn't know who he was speaking to then fair point, but he does 0.0

In Sabre We Trust :D

Well giving time for Sparrow to react will prevent a massive outburst than telling him Everything st once ;)

Your all supposed to react between posts lol

Well Swift can only hear one side of the conversation.  And besides, she prefers to lurk unnoticed and learn by listening to others.  Easiest way to work out things like potential enemy weaknesses, worst fears, secrets given away by accidental slips of the tongue, favourite ice cream flavours! ;)

Well I was meaning here. I just didn't want this ad no one talking about it lol

I must also add, the tale fox tells is his own interpretation based on what he heard. So inconsistencies from what Snake said may be there. It's just how he sees it. Which is of course the reason he is telling Sparrow

Hah, Water Hornet was all 'I was going to wait outside' and now he's all 'must listen more...'

How much did we actually fill Water Hornet in about regarding Blue Snake's death again? :p

Fox did want a chat with Sparrow in private. But I forget, can Sparrow now keep the call open without Snake and Sun Fox being there?

I do not believe so. The call itself needs someone to able to create the connection, not just initiate it. Obvuously Red Dawn can be asked to be that connection instead.

Or Sun Snake could try to use some form of Mind Fort and Invisibility to see if he can mask Sun Fox and Sun Snake's minds from the call while still being able to create and maintain it. Not sure if that would work, but it was what I mentioned as a possibility before.

@Snake: I think Water Hornet knows just as much as others regarding Blue Snake's death. Actually, Hornet was one of those who supported Dusk Rat's suggestion about a possible suicide - or rather he held the opinion that no possibility should've been ruled out (until a proper investigation was conducted).

Sun Snake seems to have forgotten that fact in line with his player :p

Edit: To be fait that's possibly because I think Water Hornet was one of the people who was also pushing the Kai murderer angle aswell, in the spirit of keeping all options open.
This message was last edited by the player at 19:47, Thu 12 Oct 2017.

Indeed, Sabre Fox, it is as Sun Snake said, you need somebody there to run the connection, and said person needs to be a Spirit Loremaster with a specific set of improvements; right now Sun and Sun Fox are hacking the thing because they have the required improvements between the two of them, but neither has the full setup.

Red Dawn and Shining Peacock both have the full setup, so if you want either one of them to run the connection instead, they could, but to have a fully private conversation involving only you and Golden Sparrow, one of you two should have the powers to run the thing yourselves, and neither of you currently does.

And no, Sun Snake, you cannot exclude yourself or Sun Fox from the connection - it is running through your mind, so if you block your mind in some fashion, that'd be like putting a roadblock on the connection, meaning it can't run back and forward anymore.

Also, Water Hornet indeed suggested to keep all options in mind - but it did was Dusk Rat, and not him, who first sugested the suicide option. So in that sense, it's understandable that you'd forget... after all, nobody remembers the silver medalist, right? Story of Water Hornet's (the character, not the player) life, really. ;P

Sun Snake can teach Water Hornet Nexus if you like. You know, so he can avoid getting burned quite so badly in future :p

LOL! :D
Touché, Shadow and Snake.

(BTW, Snake, Hornet does know Nexus, but nice pun there. As for the silver medailist - Shadow's spot on, but maybe he'll become the first one in the race of losing sanity and going berserk, after all ;) )

Curiously enough, that was one of Swift's possible character evolution paths if things went badly wrong.

Glad someone is around to pick up where she left off! :)

Or perhaps it's the other way around? And the sane and sensible are in a minority. ;)
(I just hope Sabre doesn't go furious and hack Hornet to bits after his last suggestion.)

Just so everybody knows, I'm waiting to make a post with Peacock's answer until everybody has had a chance to comment on his (and Dusk Rat's!) position on the matter; it feels moreappropriate to let everybody raise their objections, so that I can have him answer all concerns at once. :)

Yeah, I thought it best to let others react too rather than engage in a dueling wall of text :)

That's thoughtful of you, Sun Snake. :)

As for Sabre Fox, Swift Fox and Water Hornet - if your character isn't interested in the conversation, could you at least let me know here in the OOC? You don't have to make an in-character post if you don't want to, but if you just want to watch the others speak and stay out of the conversation, it'd be useful for me to know, so I can pace the dialogue properly.

I need to warn everybody, my connectivity might be a bit touch and go in these upcoming two months, starting fromtoday; I should still be able to make at least one post a day as usual, but in case some time seems like my answers will be slower in coming than normal, that'd be why.

Don't worry, this should slow down the game at all, and be sure that I'm not going to stop putting my effort into it - I really want to give you all the awesome ending you all deserve for sticking with me so long! ^_^

Guys, I'm terribly sorry for the past week's absence - we had a killer week at work (some audit going on and stuff), so I was mostly 'dead' all the time.

I'll catch up at the weekend and resume posting today/tomorrow.

I'm sorry to hear that, Water Hornet - but I'm glad to know that your absence wasn't a result to health-related issue, due to stuff out of your control, and now it's over. I hope everything went well with this audit, and I also look forward greatly to how you'll answer to the current situation in the game! ^_^

Good to know you're still around!

Plus I haven’t murdered anyone in thier abscence :)

Phew! Sorry, for letting you all wait!

Don't let the last IC post fool you - there's more hidden under the surface than might seem at first glance. :) But definitely nothing to worry about - just  Hornet musing what he will have for dinner. O:-)

Uh-oh, Water Hornet is being all mysterious and plotting with the GM behind our back! Stab him! Stab him now! I'll just be here behind you all with a knife...in case...it's needed...

I think Peacock might be quicker at stabbing him. ;)

BTW, are you all other aware of what Swift and Peacock are talking about? (Since Hornet doesn't know, I'm not aiming to uncover what that is, just curious how many people know/don't know; although, from the hints, it is easy to guess what kind of doing is being discussed.)
This message was last edited by the player at 18:03, Sun 12 Nov 2017.

In character no, and I don't think as a plaer either. Of course Shining Peacock hinted at something else that hadn't been revealed whenhe was speaking about Moon Shadow, and maaaaaybe Sun Snake knows about that one but can't say :p Even though he did try!

Do people know about the Drakkar nick name for a famed ruthless Kai, how Sun Snake was mistaken for potentially being them, and how Sun Snake actually thinks it was Shining Peacock? I think that one might have come up at the Maakengorge, but can't remember.

I think Swift Fox mentioned it, either when she reunited with the group (so Sabre and Sun Snake would know, ut Hornet wouldn't), or when Peacock met with you all (so everybody would know), but I'm ot certain, and either way she likely wouldn't have gone in details about it; also, she wasn't certain that Peacock was the involved person at that time.

But mostly, yeah, this conversation is full of hidden meanings, which is something I quite enjoy, to be fully honest; it makes the gmae that much more fun for me to tease you all with this stuff! ^_^

I'm sure there are a few things Swift is keeping to herself for now.
What she thinks Peacock did.
What Peacock thinks might turn people off Moon Shadow.
Where Swift just happened to pick up a leaf of Oede and a Pure Shrueberry potion from.
Who's planning on stabbing who...

I'm not saying anyone's been up to no good here or anything.  Dunno who would think that...
*whistles innocently* :)

Yup, everything's open and above board here! ^_^

Clearly everyoene is stunned in to silence by how suitable he's finally revealed himself to be, and distracted wondering where their ballot paper is...

Is that so? And here I was, expecting each of you would find a lot to say about why you disagree with Peacock's position... :P

Oh, I meant the players. Having an almost godlike complex about how good you are and also entirely convinced that you are going to solve all the world's ills is definitely the PC mentality. I mean, I believe all of our characters might have something contrary to say :D It just shows how good RPers we all are to have our characters disagree with something quite so reasonable sounding!

*Sun Snake settles back with popcorn, jamming handfuls in to his mouth*

Don't get too comfortable, Swift just likes to poke at his ego occasionally, in between you building Walls of Text to hit him with ;)

I notice a certain lack of clarification there as to exactly what you're poking him with... ;)

Something pointed I have no doubt!

You two are so suspicious.  Can't imagine why everyone thinks Swift is up to no good...
*adjusts halo*  o:)

That halo seems to have suspiciously sharp edges and looks very throwable...

"Information: You are going to die."

:D

Hah, I didn't even consciously think of that! :D

I’ll get caught up and post tomorrow evening :) if I don’t get waylaid again lol d

Hornet has nothing to add at the moment. But it's interesting that the conversation took a path I didn't quite expect, or to be precise: I imagined several other ways which the conversation might have followed. :)

Oh? You have me curious now. May ask which path you expected the conversation would actually take? And how far it veered from that expectation?

After all, I can only keep surprising you all if I know what's surprising in the first place! ;)

Only thing that was a bit surprising for Swift was that she was half-expecting him to want to keep the Deathstaff for himself, or possibly get Black Beaver to "reverse-engineer" it into some less suspicious form (given that Beaver is probably the only one knowledgeable (and plain crazy!) enough to even attempt that!)

Announcing her own plan was partly a way to see if he was willing to take the risk of someone else getting hold of it and possibly succeeding in destroying it, or at least damaging it.

But yeah, just like Vyctar, Swift suspected from the start that Peacock was too devoted to his own plan to ever be completely talked down from it, so no real surprises there ;)
This message was last edited by the player at 13:00, Thu 07 Dec 2017.

Well, Peacock seems pretty arrogant, really, and evidently figures that anyone who disagrees with him just hasn't thought things through properly or whatever ;).

Yep, imagine a character who acts like that :D

...I feel like I'm missing a reference here.

That aside though, you think that he's been too unbending here?

I think Wuffy was referring to "himself" (Sun Snake) ;).

Indeed, I'm not saying Sun Snake is, but given the words 'seems' and 'evidentally' were used, then I'm sure Dusk Rat could argue the same would apply to Sun Snake from at least her point of view :D

As Obi Wan Kenobi once pointed out, a great many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our point of view :)

In-character, Swift probably thinks he is too unbending.  She also has reason to believe that the Order would be a much darker force with him in control.

From the player point of view though, I'm not sure what to make of him.
Could also be he's just distracting us from an even more dangerous character lurking in the background somewhere.  Summer Wasp has been oddly silent so far, and some of those other Kai we spoke to through the Seeing Stone could have been a little suspicious...
*puts on tinfoil hat and stares nervously at everyone!*

Come on now, why would you expect a person as patient and careful as Summer Wasp to be anything but silent, making no waves or undertaking unexpected actions? That's mightly suspicious of you, Swift Fox. :P

And speaking of suspicious, who would you say was suspicious among the people you spoke to? As usual, I'm very curious to hear what you're thining! ^_^

I didn't expect Shining Peacock to be so open about his plans, or rather about what arguments he'd be using to support his claim for leadership. Hornet genuinely thought of it to be a little unfair (to want Peacock to defend his point of view prior to the proper vote); but I/he also expected Peacock to be more secretive about it.

Also, I thought there would be far more disagreement around the Deathstaff. Swift has good point in that regard (Peacock trying to utilize the thing), but actually I rather expected him to be more "it's too dangerous, I have to keep it and study it. And no way, I'm giving it back to you, Hornet" (not that Hornet wants it back that much, but I still live in the image that it was lent to Peacock to carry out the mission in Bhanar, and technically he should be handing it back to Hornet; or at least offering this, no matter if that would be the best solution).

Also, I wouldn't call Sun Snake arrogant. Rather stubborn. :)

He hasn't said he would give the Deathstaff to you though, Hornet - he said he'll give it to Black Beaver. Not too big a difference, but with Peacock, which words he actually use do matter a great deal.

Of course, if you want to press for him to give you the Deathstaff, you could... but I should warn you, if you re-read the whole passage with him getting it from you, I think it'd be pretty obvious that there is a counterargument ready about why he should do that. ;)

In the end, Peacock isn't actually that complicated of a character in conception - he has a few guiding principles he'll stuck to through hell and high water, a couple goals derived from those principles that he's thus determined to see accomplished, and a unshakeable belief that he's the best suited person for pretty much any task you could name, if not necessarily by handling that task personally. What makes him complex is that he's powerful, resourceful and creative enough to be able to resort to a wide array of methods to accomplish those goals of his, which makes him somewhat harder to accurately predict in detail.

But, if you stick to just the broad strokes, once you have a full understanding of the type of person he is, predicting what he'd do in a determined situation is really, really easy. It's just that he tends to obfuscate what his guiding principles are, most of the time. But I'm sure that, if Dusk Rat wanted, she'd be able to predict Peacock's reactions and plans in advance of him making them, most of the time.

Yeah. The operative part there being "if she wanted to" ;). For now she's basically been sat there through the whole conversation trying to pay attention (since the subject matter is pretty important, after all) whilst not looking too bored/fed up :D. I mean, she probably figures the conversation should go "Peacock wants to do a thing. Peacock tells the others about the thing. Peacock does the thing.", when of course it ends up being "Peacock wants to do a thing. Peacock tells the others about the thing. The others all start arguing and asking questions for ages. Peacock answers all the questions. They ask more questions. Repeat the last two steps several times. Peacock does the thing." :D.

So are we waiting for Sabre Fox to confirm he's done with the link too?

I think so, yeah - unless, that is, anybody has anything else they'd like to ask Peacock about.

All done for Foxy for now :)

Alright, then I'll be moving Sun Snake and Dusk Rat to their own thread; meanwhile, the rest of you wil be free to discuss what has been said among yourselves... if you want to, that is. :)

Sun Snake has maybe hinted enough what it could be... Be interesting to see how suspicious people still are, despite everything Sun Snake has already shared :p

Oh, Hornet is perfectly fine with this solution. :) He doesn't really want the Deathstaff returned back to him personally. It's just that when he handed it to Peacock, he saw it as a lease - so, on a "technical" level, he expected Peacock to give it back into Hornet's very hands. But his own plan was to guard it and bring back to the Monastery where it would end up in Beaver's custody, eventually. So Hornet has no objections about Peacock delivering it himself. He only wanted see (and perhaps expected to some degree) whether Peacock wouldn't try to take advantage of the situation and postpone the moment when he would part with the Deathstaff (explaining it needed to be studied by him or something like that).

I see; I can see the logic in that.

Of course, there is to consider the matter that Peacock is one of the few people who're actually on speaking terms with Black Beaver, but I suppose that was never going to be something that could really be handled in any particular way.

So, Swift and Hornet and Sabre, while I'm here, are any of you going to continue the conversation in the main thread any further? It is your one chance to reach any sort of agreement over wether you agree with the direction Sun Snake's leading the team or not - not saying you need to disagree, necessarily, but I do want whatever you end up doing next to be a decision of everybody, since you're all the players and protagonists of this story, and thus all equally free to choose how the game should develop.

Happy holydays to everybody - I whish these to be fun and happy days for all of you! ^_^
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:00, Mon 25 Dec 2017.

And to you!

Yaaay, Christmas happy fun times for everyone :D.

Happy holidays to all of you, too! :)



[Private to Swift, Sabre: Hey, guys, this seems like our best chance to plan Snake's murder, if I read Shadow's words correctly. ;) And we can put blame on Peacock. And Dusk Rat. And Frost Ferret. Killing spree, wheeheeee!

Hornet actually does agree with Sun Snake; most of the time and in most matters. O:-) I kind of waited if anyone would pick up on Hornet's last IC question, but we can change subject, as Shadow suggests. :)

Happy Christmas all :)

Hopefully I can keep up now lol

Hopefully Water Hornet does not agree too strongly with Sun Snake, since Sun Snake is sort of positioning it to be the decision of the main NPCs, and OOC we all know that won't end well / be an acceptable solution :D


[Private to Water Hornet: Psst, Water Hornet, embarrassingly enough I think you made a tiny mistake with the private line... you forgot to include the GM :p How are you supposed to plot and scheme if you don't include Shadow too!


Seems like Hornet's last question and Sabre's comments to Swift Fox are all good things to be answered. :)

Ha! I have learnt from Shadow that there aren't really that much bad decisions. Rather, every decision has its consequences. ;) So, every solution will be acceptable in its specific way. ;) After all, dooming the entire Kai Order would be quite a feat - one, that even the best champions of Naar haven't  been able to achieve. :D

[Private to Water Hornet: Thanks for pointing out, but GM can always see private lines. ;) Except for ScratchPads, GM sees everything *insert fateful music*

Happy New Year!


Here's to decisions that aren't bad from a certain point of view :p

Now that's a remarkably interesting statement, isn't it?

Anyway, I wish the best possible new year to everybody - try your best to be happy! :D

Happy New Year from Scotland! :D

And I join in to the wishes: all the best in the new year! :)

Yaay, happy new year and all that :D. I suppose this thread is relatively short so far but imagine if it ran out on the 5th - Twelfth Night! :D

Yeah, that'd be funny, but considering that we've barely made 200 posts since this thread was opened, eight months ago, I'm doubtful we'll be able to make 800 posts in the two days remaining. Still, the idea is at least somewhat amusing. :)

We must post more, we're so close to 30,000 posts! I mean, sure, just over a thousand, but I'm sure we can do it by the end of the game :)

That'd be an entire other thread... or, more likely, about 600 main thread post, about 250 or so in separated side-threads for individual plotting, and another 150 or so of OOC posts. It's possible we'll reach it, although I don't think it actually higly likely - it might not seems like it, but we're very near to the conclusion, and if Sun Snake's plan works, that'd be basically solving two of the main hurdles you have to get past (Shining Peacock's plans and Golden Sparrow's plan, to be specific) at the same time.

So... getting to 30'000 posts is a possibility, but not one I think very likely.

Still, you lot are an amazing group of creative players, and so very often end up surprising me, so by all mean, if you want to reach 30'000 posts, give it your all! ^_^

We just need to have as many long rambling conversations or long drawn out arguments as possible.
I'm sure Sun Snake will find some way to poke at Swift's Berserk Button again ;)

Or we could all have another chat with Peacock, he can talk plenty!  hehe.

I think you are underestimating how much discussion will need to go on once all the side threads are revealed :D

I mean it seems absolutely no time ago we were creeping up on 28,000 after all!

Hm, fair point - once the game is over and I open all the threads for public reading, there'll likely be an explosion of OOC posts. Then again, at that point the game will be over, so the OOC thread will be the only one active... I'm not sure how many posts that will be able to generate on its own. We'll see, I guess. :)

Well, there will likely be a fair few discussing all the stuff that each of us knew that the others didn't, some more about any backstories that never got revealed (if people want to see them), the obligatory load of tangents and non-related sidetracks that we will inevitably find ourselves in on numerous occasions, plus anything else that happens to come up ;).

And don't forget, I'll be fielding any questions you will have about anything in the game you're curious about. So it's really likely there'll be a lot of back and forth on the whole. I'm just not sure wether that'll be enough to crack 30'000 posts or not.

Well, you never know. We basically have a little over a thousand posts to go, which is one full thread. And some of us can be quite prolific, when we're not putting everything into great big enormous gigantic Walls of Text that therefore only take up one post ;).

That's true! I guess we'll just have to wait and see, right? ^_^

So... it's been nearly a week since the last time anybody posted, and that was me answering a post from Sabre that itself was three day after the latest active post. And while that's just the latest in a series of slowdowns, I don't think anybody will deny that there's been a lot of those lately. I know I've relaxed the standards a bit, and that everybody is busy, but you all did agree upon signing up that you could get at least one post a day going.

Now, I'm more than willing to be understanding (at least, I hope I proved that to you all so far), and real life problems should always take precedence over a game, that's fine with me. And if we want a less demanding schedule, I'm sure we could all reach an agreement on it together. But the level of activity has really dropped a lot. So, I guess what I'm asking everybody is, are you all still interested in the game?

Because, let's make this fully clear, I am. I am very invested, I think what's left of the story will be fun to play through and an interesting experience, and I really look forward to seeing it unfold. So, as far as I'm concerned, this game is as live as ever, and I want to see it through to the end.

However, if any of you doesn't like it anymore, or feel bored, or is otherwise uninterested in continuing to play, then I need you to let me know. It'd be pointless to keep the game up if people don't want to play in it, and the last thing I want is people posting out of obligation while loathing that they have to do so - that's not a recipe for fun, and if the game's not fun, why play it?

Now, if people are unhappy with how the game is going, or find it boring/think that the current section has been going on for too long/have any other complaint, please let me know. You can even use PM if you want to inform me without bothering the other players, that's what they're for. I want you people to have fun, and if some of the decision I made in handling the development of the game have been making this more difficult, I'm more than open to change the way I operate - you just need to tell me. I'm merely human, and as such mistakes are a daily thing for me; if I have made some in running this game, point them out to me, and I'll do my best to get better about them.

I hope this didn't feel too agressive to any of you - it's not meant to be, I just want the game to be fun for everybody, but that's only possible if everybody partecipates, and partecipation means posting more frequently than once a month, and most of all, being involved in what's happening, and wanting to contribute to it. That's what matter most to me; that requires that I catch your interest, but I cannot do it if you don't tell me why I'm failing to. That's all I'm asking here, really.

Thank you all for reading this, and please, let me know your opinions and feelings about it - I'll be waiting for your answers! ^_^

I was just waiting for others to indicate if they want to do anything else first, otherwise it sounds like checking in with Golden Sparrow was the next order of business.

Swift doesn't have anything more to add, was waiting to see if anyone else was going to say anything.

I'm still here, of course. There's just not much for me to do till we all meet up again ;).

I was also waiting for others' reactions (especially, whether Swift had any response regarding Hornet's comment); and didn't want to spam too many posts in a successive manner.

However, I agree that the game slowed down visibly. In no small part it was due to my lack of posting some time ago (especially during autumn months). And although it was because of real-life stuff, I wasn't happy that it impacted my participation in the game. Eventually, though, I was able to sort out all my time-lack issues (doing some sort of a 'mental reboot' :) ), so regarding me: I am and will be around and happy to post (and will probably state more explicitly OOC if I'm waiting for others' reactions). :)

@Swift (considering Hornet's last IC post): don't saying Swift should've said anything, just Hornet expected it (but is rather happy that Swift hasn't responded ;) )

Alright, so I'm obviously interested into hearing Sabre Fox's opinion as well, but as far as the rest of you is concerned, it seems to me that lack of posting is a result of waiting for other people to act / stuff to happen, in a majority of case.

If that's the key problem here, I think one thing I could try would be to push you all more directly - I though I already was, but I can double down and make sure that waiting around isn't an option any of you can easily resort to going forward. It's not like I lack NPC to create situation that requires a response from you all with, I'll just need to use them more actively instead of leaving you free rein to direct them as I mostly have so far.

Would going in that direction help you all with the "waiting around for something to happen" problem? I can easily do it, I just don't want you all, as players, to feel like I'm removing your ability to direct the story development by going down this route.

Opinions, everybody?

I'm not sure this applies to me quite as much, given that I'm not posting really because I seem to have exhausted all the options of things to do/talk about where I am right now. Otherwise I'd try and come up with something ;).

In reply to Dusk Rat (msg # 229):

I'm aware that you not being in the same place as the others is the main problem for you, Dusk Rat, don't worry - and that's something I can fix much more simply by just pushing the timeline along. It shouldn't remain a problem for much longer.

Yeah, I mean if we can agree on a length of time before we're moved forwards by a GM post - like a week maybe (or perhaps the Monday after a weekend if some people can only post reliably at weekends) then that ensures if there is a stall we know the story will keep going.

Lack of response doesn't necessarily mean she's agreeing with you though ;)

In reply to Sun Snake (msg # 231):

That'd be perfectly fine for me - in fact, Monday is currently my one free day in the week (not that my current job eats too much of my daily time, but still, Monday it eats none at all) so it being the deadline for "reply before this day, or don't" would make things simpler on my end. That said, I have plenty of time to post everyday (as I said, my current job isn't particularly time-consuming), so I'll adapt to what works best for you all as players. :)

Yeah, that sounds like a good idea! Let's make it a deadline-Monday :)


Not for a moment would I think otherwise. :)

Agreed :)  (I mean definitely agreeing this time, not just silently disagreeing!)

Swift only tends to speak up when she has something to say, usually when she has some particularly strong opinion on something that everyone else is talking about.
So if she stays silent for too long, it either means I haven't had time to reply (been an insanely busy year so far!) or she doesn't have anything to say and is just lurking in the background silently judging you all ;)
One of the hazards of playing uncommunicative loner characters there perhaps...

Haha yeah, same here. It's also tricky to play silent/rarely-speaking characters in a forum-based game, I've found. Dusk Rat was originally envisioned as being the kind of person to give the briefest answers possible to any question asked, but that went out the window fairly early on when I realised that could easily end up with a simple conversation taking many posts over many days before it was finished. So she got a bit more loquacious. But if this was tabletop she'd be irritatingly taciturn, I'm sure :D.

I can say that you still managed to convey your intent even with longer speeches, Dusk Rat - she's not irritatingly taciturn, or at least I don't think she is, but I'd say she comes across as very uninterested in social interactions and long conversation nonetheless. :)

Yeah. But I mean, if this was at tabletop, you'd be lucky to get more than a one-word answer most of the time ;).

Noiced his announcemen regarding possible server migration soon - just to warn everyone before we have some unexpected downtime!

link to a message in another game

Yeah, that's good to know, Sun Snake - I'd probably have noticed, but now I don't need to, and that's helpful. So thanks for sharing the information. :)

Speaking of which, while I wait for somebody to reply in the main thread (because that last post ended with a questions, and that seems like enough of a prompt to me), does any of you have anything else your characters need to do before the in-game day is over? If I am to push things forward, then I need to be sure I'm not cutting any of you out of something you wanted to do.

Can't think of anything off the top of my head.  Although I have a bad feeling I'm forgetting something.
(With memory problems like mine, I get that feeling a lot though)
This message was last edited by the player at 22:02, Tue 30 Jan 2018.

Sun Snake wanted to speak with White Mantis / Summer Wasp at some point soon, but after speaking with Golden Sparrow again regarding his talk with the Prince. So whatever the timetable with that would be.

Sparrow will actually be unable to recall you before the day is up, due to complications on his own side of the link. After all, getting people to go against their own interests isn't easy, and while Sparrow is a charismatic person, that only goes so far - and royals especially dislike having to hurry their own decision for anybody. So if, in character, Sun Snake would wait for Sparrow to call again, then he'd wait all day and get no call. Without further interference, Sparrow will be able to work out a deal of sorts - if with a few concessions on his part - during the in-game tomorrow, and call you back in what, to your characters, would be tomorrow evening. That'd still leave one further day before you reach the Monastery.

OOC, this will give me the chance to have Dusk Rat reunite with you, as she and Peacock will reach the Skyrider in the morning, before Sparrow can call back; also, it'll allow me to do a bit of setup work with other characters during the wait, as some things will take a bit of time. Your call will have consequences, and push certain NPCs to act sooner and/or differently than they otherwise would have.

So, taking all that into account, what is it that you all are planning to do?

Also, it seems that, with Sabre Fox's latest, we've made it to 29'000 posts, so once again, thanks everybody for remaining with the game so far! I've been enjoying running it for you so far, and we never could have achieved such an high postcount if you all hadn't been enjoying posting in it at least a bit as well.

Everybody can get 1 FP for that, and thanks to you all for being such wonderful players! ^_^
This message was last edited by the GM at 12:48, Sun 04 Feb 2018.

Cool :). I now seem to have a worryingly large stockpile of these things, just as we're approaching the end-game...

I think that's because you hoard them - I don't think you've used any since the game began, have you?

Just under 1000 posts to go to end on a nice round number.

Everyone start breaking up the Walls of Text into multiple posts! ;)

I dunno, I'm sure I'ver used one or two here and there, surely? I haven't had to make too many rolls, really, since I haven't got involved in a lot of combat - managed to make the closest possible thing to a non-combat character in a setting where we're all basically psychic-powered child soldiers tasked with saving the world from giant big gribbly monsters and stuff :D.

I've also got a one-use special bonus thing that I haven't used up yet. Can't remember what I got that for.

Everybody got it for the game's 20'000 (or maybe 25'000th - an especially round number either way) post of the game. :)

Ahh okay, I thought maybe I did a thing and got it as a reward, but I can't think what thing I might've done that would've been considered cool enough to earn that kind of super-special one-use bonus thingy. But I wrote it in bold at the top of my character sheet so I (hopefully) won't forget to use it :D.

I know I have quite a few FPs left, we'll see if we need them at the end. But yay for 29,000!

I’m good to move on, Foxy doesn’t really have anything else he wants to do

Happy to move along too :)

Alright! Then I'm ready to open up a private thread for each of you; the assumption here will be that the threads are taking place late in the evening or after sunset, whichever seems more appropriate for the events at hand. I'll probably need all of you to confirm to me how we're going to do about things in the opening post of your individual threads.

Well aren’t we having a nice time separate?

Anything interesting happening? Lol
This message was last edited by the player at 23:36, Sun 25 Feb 2018.

I deny everything!


I mean... yup, just having a nice time with no plotting going on. Nor engaging in mental duels with other NPC Kai in a life or death struggle.

Hey, you’d be surprised what sort of mental duels I’m having! Lol

Hahaha, haha, ha...

<_<

>_>

O_O

Everything is fine on my side; just peacefully chatting.

^_^

Chatting to whom? 0.o

-.-

It depends. Each one of you is spending their time chatting with one of the NPCs, but guessing who's speaking with whom... that'd be pretty hard, since a couple of those aren't the ones you'd be expecting those characters to be chatting with.

It's a very "strange bedfellows" situation, really... which is why it's so interesting to follow along for whomever is lucky enough to be able to see all the threads at once. ;)

Is everyone having a good time plotting each others doom? :)

Plotting doom?  Who's plotting doom?  Swift isn't plotting anyone's doom, she's just making friends and giving friendly hugs :)

*opens arms for a hug, only for daggers to fall out of both sleeves...*  (o.o)'

That's true, death by a thousand cuts you go for lol

Sun Snake would be plotting doom, but he's got this really odd tickle in the small of his back, and he's also feeling a little lightheaded, so he's going to lie down and sleep for a while...

Odd, he'll have to sleep on his front as it's a little painfully and awkward to sleep on his back. Like there's something lumpy there....


Zzzzzzzzzzzz *gasp gasp choke it was Swift avenger me cough*

Water Hornet is plotting everyone's salvation!

Kind of... o_O

Alright, since it's been a few days without activity and I'm physically incapable of letting this game go that long without a new post showing up, I just want to make sure: is any of you waiting for a post from me before you continue in your respective threads? Or are you all just very occupied? Because if it's the latter, I'll understand, and try to be less of a bother, but if it's the former, knowing you're waiting for me would be something I can fix. :)

I'm the one, who haven't posted for a long time, but I'm working on resolving my busy-ness and will hopefully post shortly (and keep up the pace, once again). So, regarding Hornet's thread, the ball is on my side, so to speak. :)

I'm going to be away for the rest of the week, which will presumably only effect two of the people who would read this :)

Oh! I am one of those, aren't I? :)

Take your time, Sun Snake, and thanks for letting us know!

I'm still here, just so you know ;).

And I'm very happy to know! ^_^

I know you must have forgotten half of what's going on in the game by now, Dusk Rat, and I can only apologize for the wait - and for it not being over yet, although if everything goes smoothly, I think I should have you rejoin the others in about two months or so (real-life months, I mean; in game, it'd be just a few hours at this point).

Thank you for holding out - I'm very grateful that you are, and I'm looking forward to finally having you be back with the group for good for the final act! :)
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:17, Wed 23 May 2018.

Since we are all busy in other threads, and after thinking about it, thought I best put an announcement out....... its not bad in a way so don't worry lol.

Once Rebirth is finished, I was going to resume Dragons Legacy. However, since there have been many changes in circumstances, I realise the plot would no longer be feasible if existing watches replaced characters in the game knowing too much. So I was considering scrapping Legacy altogether and start a new game from scratch.

This is where you all come in. Volunteers of course would be welcome for when that would be of course, however for the setting, I was thinking about going for something that we haven't covered before, where the players would be Grand Masters in the New Kai Order.

As I recall, during the new Kai Order in the books, aside from Lone Wolf, there were a further five Grand Masters, with one of them being the playable character, leaving a scope of four others to work with.

I was going to have them run a campaign alongside one of the books. Most likely the Voyage of the Moonstone, so that they would not interfere with an established timeline. It would be completely separate and original story of course, but would be in that established world.

So tell me what you think! Id be very interested in hearing it :)

So a campaign happening at the same time as the events in the New Order books, rather than getting involved in them?

Hmmm, consider my curiosity piqued...  :)

I had a feeling this may interest you Swift lol.

The initial thought would have been to take part in the Kai Seige of Eldonora during Rune War, but I realised this would be a very short and combat orientated game only.

However it did make me think that there's no reason it cant be included. The campaign can easily take part starting in the time of the Voyage of the Moonstone, all the way to the Hunger of Sejanoz with the various missions tying together. One could easily be the Seige of Eldonora.

Since the last four books need to be finished, I couldn't go beyond that but it gives reasonable scope over an eight book timeline

My personal opinion is that this might be too ambitious a project - Rebirth is roughly the amount of narrative that could be contained in three LW books, if that, and in november it'll be seven years since we've started it; going through a six books long adventure would be a titatic endeavour. Not saying you wouldn't be able to run it all, Sabre Fox, just... it'd be a pretty long haul.

Also, as I think I made abundantly clear in the way I structured this game, I don't really like the idea of the Grand Mastery disciplines as a step above Magnakai (hence why I dragged down the few interesting/additional GM disciplines to be Magnakai ones in this game, and why I expanded the range of effectiveness and power of the Magnakai disciplines as far as I did), so the idea of having five (or more) Grand Masters running around feels a bit silly to me.

Having said all that, I still wish you the best of luck in your endeavour - it might be a titatic project and not one I would undertake myself, but I'm sure you'll be able to make it fun and interesting. Just offering my own opinion as constructive criticism here, nothing more! ^_^

I didn't mean it would be the length of six books on here, but would take place over the time period. I don't think I could run it otherwise! Lol

For example, the Kai Seige could easily be one thread, since its combat orientated and could take place rather quickly, that was more what I meant if that helps.

Well I was going to take the time to examine the Grand Master and New Order Disciplines accordingly to see if it would be feasible to have a maximum of four player characters at that level. I'm mainly in the idea stage at this moment. So there's no reason to say that the players would not actually be Magnakai if it would not be feasible.

Would you be interested as a player Shadow? Systems aside, I quite like the idea of the campaign taking place during the New Order books era.

I couldn't say right now - I'd need to see where you're going with it to see if I'd feel like playing in it. I can't really make any promies at this point; maybe I'll be able to give you an answer later on.

That's a fair comment, I think I may start building the blocks so I can review and revise them accordingly in advance.

For example, I like the idea of the Kai Weapon that was introduced. It is akin like to the weapons we have on here, where there is something special attached to them. The +5CS they grant can easily be removed in order to assure the special effect is relevant.

Would you mind if I adopted some ideas from here Shadow? Even if they are just a starting step to be altered accordingly, it will be good to have a fresh perspective that you have created here to ensure game balance and enjoyment.

Feel free to take everything you want and carry it away with you - don't worry, there's isn't anything nailed down, so you can strip the whole game bare of any idea you like. ^_^

Really, I own nothing - you all know the setting and key concepts come from the gamebooks, and I myself just built and added upon the basis of what Zipp did with Culling; somebody else taking what I have here and building upon it some more is only going to make me happy. :)

Hm, hm, that sounds interesting, Sabre. :) I'm not that much opposed to the idea of Grand Master disciplines (although I did feel they caused some 'inflation' regarding the obstacles' difficulty and adversaries' combat prowess), but I also prefer to play the lower ranks of Kai - perhaps because then fighting "mundane" Giaks is still fun and you don't need to come up with extra adverse conditions to make things intense. (Yeah, @Shadow, I remember that part when me and Sabre - two Magnakai - couldn't get past a simple magic door. But that was a special simple magic door and we were currently out of magical lock-picks we usually carry with us. :D)

I like the idea of removing the +5CS bonus form the Kai Weapons, instead making them special through their extra abilities (possibly expanding them).

So we might be able to get something like a dagger that can one-shot-kill someone under the right circumstances?  ;)

Well I would feel impolite to not ask you Shadow :)

More than likely, the Kai Weapon will be done how Shadow did, with a weapon that is specialised based on your character history. So it all depends on how you build your character :)

I've created the game board so I can get all the ideas down, and I'm currently working the disciplines. I'm going to try and balance them out so everything has at least some use.

The timeline is actually more closer than I anticipated. Voyage of the Moonstone takes place just under a year from The Curse of Naar, Mydnights Hero is straight after Buccaneer's, although there is a time discrepancy. The time it takes to get there, and two months on the isle of Lorn per the time displacement. Then as soon as you finish Mydnights Hero and sail home, its Rune War followed by Trail of the wolf!

So planning needs to be done lol.

I actually do have a premise to start already, so that you wont all feel overpowered if there is a potential four Grand Masters together. But ill keep working as we go :)

As Shadow said, its going to take around two months before we even get to the meeting with Peacock roughly, so its something I can work on in my spare time

Preparing a game takes a good deal of work anyway, so it's good you can take your time. :)

Also, since Sabre Fox raised the argument, I was curious to hear what you all think would have been the best way to run the LW Gamebook if you were running them in a quest format - which means, having a group of people decide the action of Lone Wolf thorughout the books in a more interactive manner. Basically, something like what Zipp did with Laughing Shark way back when, only instead of being one-on-one, you have multiple people voting on what Lone Wolf would do, and most importantly, instead of simply running it "by the book", so to speak, try to go at it with the same amount of interactivity that it's available in a normal RPG, with all that entails.

What's everybody's thoughts on that? How best would such a thing be run, which changes to the gamebooks' structure and narrative would be more effective, and how would you all account for the inability to simply steer your player along a predetermined path due to the innate freedom of action that a good RPG experience needs to offer?

This is totally a hypotetical question, by the way - I'm not at all considering to run such a quest thing on the only other site ohter than this one and P. Aon I'm registered onto, which is a site focused on running quests. Really.

^_^

Depending on the number it might be a tad troublesome to execute, since there may be different opinion's on how to proceed lol. Provided its based on free running through a book a to b point, it could be done provided there isn't much arguments lol.

Or perhaps everyone takes a turn each? With the others giving their thoughts? Then that way one person has the say in the matter each time

Just as a check in also, I'm trying to think of a starting CS for the Grand Master storyline. How do we feel like a starting CS of 20? This would assume that the lore circles, weaponmastery, psi surge, etc are built into the character as it were.
This message was last edited by the player at 10:22, Tue 29 May 2018.

I feel that CS being above 20 for everybody makes fights with normal enemies either impossible to have or completely divorced from the power curve established in the first book series, but that might just be my distaste for post-Magnakai progression showing up again.

As for my idea, I probably misrepresented my question- I wasn't asking for technical or mechanical pointers, I know how to handle those on my own; I was looking more for narrative, characterization and structural help. :)
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 10:36, Tue 29 May 2018.

Well I may have to make them Magnakai after all in the New Order era, as I'm struggling to essentially water down the disciplines to not make a group so overpowered. It wasn't too bad when it was just Lone Wolf, since he was only one Kai despite his strength, so he couldn't do fifty things at once lol.

But if nothing else I do want to make the New Order Grand Master new disciplines into Magnakai disciplines. Since this would increase the amount of disciplines available and I know Swift wouldn't forgive me if I don't include Elementalism lol

Well in terms of structure, I do think that free running it is the best way to go. Since using an established book would give us too much advance knowledge on how to proceed, even if things were altered. Perhaps a completely new adventure? There can be plenty of scenarios that are created that Lone Wolf could tackle easily enough.

...I'm really not getting my idea across, I think.

The idea is to run through the same general plot as the gamebooks, but with the flexibility of a reactive GM at the helm rather than a set of limited choices, and hopefully a more cohesive and well-structured plot as a result of already knowing what the main thrust of the story is, instead of having to make it all up on the fly. However, this is gonna require expansion of the setting (a lot of one-off NPCs actually need fleshed out backstories to ensure their positioning make sense), more depth to the worldbuilding, and some extra ideas on the best way to handle those which were roadblocks in the books but would not be so for active players.

For example, Book 3 always has you finding a underground secret route to Ikaya's backdoor, but if a group of players were running through the adventure, it'd be unfair to make it impossible to get to the fortress directly, and if they do make it to the front door, what's the best way to handle what would happen?

And that's just one example of a number of problems; since the whole point of running it as a RPG/Quest instead of a Gamebook is to allow as much meaningful choice as possible, some things that made sense in the Gamebook narrative wouldn't really be fair in that context, like the way each Lorestone point you to the next one instead of letting the player choose the order in which to tackle their retrieval, or how many forced chokepoints are scattered across the story (looking at book 2 and the Magic Spear dilemma here, for example).

I hope that makes it clearer what kind of help I'm looking for?

Its probably just me being sleep deprived that didn't get it lol

One the subject of a book, do you have one in mind? Just so that we could use examples that you may have already been thinking about.

My goal would be to run the entire story from book 1 to book 12 - the story of how Lone Wolf raised from the sole survivor of the Darklords' extermination of the Kai to the one Kai who finished exterminating the Darklords. It's a perfectly complete narrative arc that doesn't require any of the extra worldbuilding and complication and, yes, the power creep I so greatly dislike from the Grand master series.

I'd also be using the very system we are in this game, complete with the extra disciplines (like Herbmastery and Craftsmanship), the altered Lorecircles composition, and so on. I think it offers a perfectly solid foundation for the narrative, and I'm curious to see how the availability of stuff like Kai-Alchemy or Battle Magic will influence the narrative of the Magnakai series.

Or that'd be the goal if I did eventually ran this - right now it's no more than an idea I'm considering, nothing more definite than that.

Would book one be the updated version In the collectors edition? Or the original plot after the massacre?

Well it would be a lot easier to do, since no doubt the scores of certain enemies may be made more fair. Chaos Master springs to mind. Kai Alchemy and Battle Magic might need to be toned more to this games mechanics though, since the majority were insta kills when used in the books lol

It could be done very easily. Its probably going to be best doing it in bursts of a book each at a time to allow a break lol. Since I imagine one book even if its relatively shortly may take quite some time.

Eh, the format I'm thinking of would see me making about one post a week or so - there'd be no need to break things up or anything, and small timeskips would be all that's needed to keep the pace moving between different books. And indeed, I'd be using the Kai-Alchemy that is in this game, and the same applies to everything else - one of the main motivations behind my willigness to try a project this big would be to see how well the system as I designed it can handle the stress test of being used to run an entire campaign the lenght of the entire Kai + Magnakai series.

As for the book 1 collector's version, I don't think I've ever played it, but I believe it's the one with Lone Wolf partecipating to the original battle yet somehow surviving it, right? Honestly, even without having read it, I'm against ever considering such a thing canon, no matter that the author did, because of thematic reasons.

See, in the original version, the Darklords' plan to obliterate the Kai Order worked perfectly. There was no itch, no mistake, no planning oversight, and most importantly of all, no incompetence on the villain's attack. No "no-one could survive that", no calling people dead without seeing the body, none of the classic villain mistakes of underestimating their greatest enemy. Every single Kai ever is killed and confirmed so... except for one apprentice who was on the woods on punishment duty, something that no amount of planning and noting short of a complete list of all the members of the Order could have accomplished. It's a serendipitous strike of luck that turns out to be the saving grace of the Kai and thought them the whole of Magnamund - which is at once awe-inspiringly providential, and a perfect encapsulation of how great the threat really is - because, since his survival was only due to luck, Lone Wolf knows that his enemy isn't going to make stupid mistakes, and he can only count on his own strenght and wits to win, not on the enemy failings keeping him alive.

If instead Lone Wolf was at the battle and survived it, no matter what, that just makes out the Darklords to be horribly sloppy villains, and that immediately puts a huge dent in their threat level; it also strains credulity (why only he survived the fight, and none of the other, more capable Kai did, if they were all in the same place?), while also suggesting the existence of a plot shield around Lone Wolf that the stroke of luck of his original survival completely lacked.

So... yeah, that's my take on it - Lone Wolf's survival being the result of an irrepeatable strike of good luck is way too thematically important to jettison it just to add another fight-scene to the book... and besides, fight-scenes aren't really were the LW shine anyway  - that's the traps and tricky choices, in my opinion.

Well, there are two characters I might use for another Kai game, and neither of them would use Elementalism (though one might explore that path actually, would depend on whether the available spells would fit with her 'theme' so to speak).

Also I have been tinkering with my own version of the 'Female Lone Wolf' game, inspired by Zipp's version, but running it for a friend outside of Project Aon, so more of a personal project there to help distract us both from some RL issues by letting her take her frustrations out on Darkspawn, and hopefully give me a little practice at GMing by expanding on an already-established story, fleshing out NPCs and unexplored locations.

I'm using a modified system though, taking the existing one from the books and expanding it, pulling in a few elements of the D&D 4th-edition rules.  It should help to give characters different strengths and weaknesses instead of having just a single Combat Skill score that remains the same whatever they're doing (whether attacking physically or mentally).  It also uses a similar fatigue mechanic to this one too, but applied more as a gradually-increasing penalty to actions rather than reducing a Combat Skill count.
Grand Master disciplines are slightly less powerful in this one, having only one improvement, and the player can only learn half of them (giving a nice means of 'specialising' their character for a particular preferred skill set and play style, rather than ending up just being ridiculously good at everything).

And yep, I was planning to have this version of Lone Wolf getting involved in the battle too.  (Or at least to provide the option to get involved in the battle or to decide "nah, I'd probably just get killed if I went in there!" and hold back, at which point they'd end up knocked out like in the books.
The idea that Lone Wolf's survival was a bit too 'perfect' an event was touched on in the Legends series, where it's hinted that Alyss interfered to save him.  So I had planned on using something similar (creating my own less-irritating version of Alyss for this purpose!)
I haven't actually read the Collector's Edition books, so mostly guessing at what might happen during that battle.
This message was last edited by the player at 18:09, Tue 29 May 2018.

In reply to Swift Fox (msg # 292):

Well, if you've had any idea in your one-on-one game with your friend that you'd like to share with me to help, feel free! You're really quite a brilliant person, so I'm sure any original idea you came up with would be quite interesting. :)

And I never liked Alyss either - just another one of the many things that I am unhappy about regarding the Grandmaster series.

By the way, speaking of something completely different that popped into my mind, how many of you have been following the MCU films? Because, after rewatching Infinity Wars yesterday, I got to thinking that there a ton of similarities between our team and some of the biggest characters there; it was interesting to me in a "uh, I guess good characters are often built along similar lines" way, and I was curious if anybody had picked up on that.
This message was last edited by the GM at 19:43, Tue 29 May 2018.

So I've sort of been skimming through this conversation since it mostly seems to concern stuff I know pretty much nothing about (I think I'm the only one here who's never read any of these Lone Wolf books, right?), but it sounds like you want to run an existing book series, with a predefined storyline and conclusion and all that, as an RPG? Not sure if I'm understanding that right but if you use players who've read the books (which seems like what you're going for, since you're asking here) then they'll already know what's "supposed" to happen and stuff, but if you use people who don't know the books then I can foresee a whole load of enforced railroading to ensure they don't go wandering off away from said predefined plot. Either way, I'm not sure I see the point? Why not make up your own story, like this one we're already playing in? Only, you know, maybe with a better combat system (and no NPC insta-kills :P) ;).

That's the idea, the friend I mean has never even heard of the original books, so is going in blind so to speak.  Learning about the world as their character does :)

I'm tinkering with some aspects too.  The core storyline is the same, but I'm expanding on some NPCs and their roles a little, throwing in some new side-quests, and trying to develop areas that went unexplored in the books to make it a bit less railroady.

It just seems like going in as a GM with a pre-set plot already in mind is just asking for it to become a disaster. I mean, it's pretty much Rule One of GMing that the players will do stuff you don't expect. Unless you want to try and force them down your path and in doing so hurt their fun (and therefore remove the reason anyone even plays games in the first place), it's generally good GMing to allow the players to explore stuff of their own volition, follow random pathways, make a big deal out of that random NPC you added in as a bit of extra fluff and now they're obsessed with for some reason...I mean, all that stuff is pretty much what makes a tabletop RPG. If you want everyone to follow a specific path that you've already laid out for them and which has nothing beyond the edges, write a book. Well, in this case, obviously, someone's already done that, but you know what I mean ;). No point in having players if the story's already written. It's their story too.

I'm not quite sure I understood your original question, Shadow, so I'll re-read the posts one more time, before trying to provide my point of view ^_^

But I'll share my view on the Book 1 events - original vs. collector's ed versions:
Basically, I think along the same lines, as you do, Shadow (and you summed it up perfectly, far better than I could). One more thing that I really liked about Lone Wolf being the lone survivor by pure luck is that it shows one trait (possibly even weakness) that Darklords inherently possess: their total lack of understanding for humanity (in the sense of "humanness"). As Shadow pointed out, their are evil masterminds who plan a perfect attack that wipes out their enemy. Except they couldn't take into account one thing and that is that humans are fallible. That way, LW's inattentiveness in class sets out the series of events that in the end put a dent into the Darklords' otherwise perfect plan.
And the second thing, that also makes the start of the story special, is that Lone Wolf doesn't get the chance to fight the enemy - which almost surely saves Sommerlund, but makes LW to carry the burden of "I wasn't there to stand alongside my kin" issue. And which also makes the ultimate revenge on the Darklords special again.

On the other hand, the alternative version, where LW does get to fight in the battle for the Kai Monastery, still has ways to explain the question 'how did LW survived the whole attack?'. Which are quite similar to those in the original version - basically a sequence of events, where LW gets to be in a special place at a special moment of time in the beginning, and remains to be in that "special positioning" till the end of the attack (thus becoming the sole, lucky survivor).

As for the Alyss, I didn't like her either. But since she appeared in the GM series of gamebooks, I came up with a different explanation and the extent of her involvement (to keep the integrity of the story, as I imagine it).


Regarding MCU: yes, I've been following all the movies closely, but no similarities popped to my mind watching them. Say, Shadow, which characters resemble who? I'm really curious about that. :)


EDIT:
@Dusk Rat: I repsectfully disagree. :)
I know, that as I played through the books, there were moments where I wished that it was an RPG instead of gamebook - because there were exactly moments when I wanted to do some stuff that wasn't in the provided options.

And I think that is the point: the story and background and fluff is very nice, so you would want to run the campaign in that setting, except you don't want to limit the possible choices for the players. And I can't really see the need to railroad the players. Most of the books have the main goal set, a goal that makes sense; sometimes more, sometimes less, but there is really no problem with the ultimate goal itself. The way players reach it - that could be left completely open and I think might very well work.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:21, Tue 29 May 2018.

Yeah, that'd be the idea. Ideally, the players would be a mix of people who know the books, and people who don't. And the two problems you're underlined are exactly the two things I'm trying to think how to fix, and what I'm asking for ideas about.

Indeed it is, and that's where the challenge I'm facing lies - in trying to preserve that while at the same time allowing the players to experience something resembling the original narrative.

You really have a gift for summarizing stuff very concisely, Dusk Rat. ^_^

As for why I'm doing that rather than trying with a story of my own, it's because I've never run a quest (ie, a cooperative RPG where multiple people direct the action of only one character) before, so it'd be a test run - if I see it works AND that I like it (both are required here, and I won't know either until I try) then I can try my hand at a fully original one. So, that's the main reason - because I'm a lazy person and before I commit to going with a fully original story, I want to make the trial run with an adaptation, as that'd be less work.

Also, I am somewhat curious to see how unknowing players would run thorugh the story (I love reading/following along on Let's Read and Let's Play of various kind), and I'm also curious to see whether the system I used for this game (which is in great part my own creation) would be a workable mean to go through the original plot.

Ah, and one final note:

Off the top of my mind, Lone Wolf teams up with NPCs who are unavoidably killed in book 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 10 out of the first twelve (I might be missing some though)... Now, obviously, much like in this game, I'm going to make it possible for them to be saved, should the players run into them, since it really should be their choice to determine the outcomes. But making the saving guaranteed, and the deaths impossible? I think you know my position on how meaningless those kind of victories would be, don't you? ^_^

Plus, it really runs counter to the whole argument you made of how the players needs to explore the stuff they want - that must necessarily include challenges that can be failed and whose failing at will have consequences, or the whole thing is just a meaningless exercise in illusionism. And I don't really much like illusionism as a GMing way to go.


I'm fairly confident we have a Black Widow and a Thor, or thereabouts, and there's a relationship in the story that really brought to mind the Thanos/Gamora situation to me; I think one of the villains also bears a striking resemblance with the Vulture, and I'd say there's ground to argue for a Captain America as well.

What of you, Hornet? Any ideas?

[tech. note: I edited my previous post with reaction to Dusk Rat ;)]


Hmm, yeah I could see Black Widow and possibly Thor. I wonder if I met the (N)PCs who resemble Thanos/Gamora to you, Shadow.
I can imagine one NPC being Iron Man, though. :)

Oh? Now you have me curious.

As for the Gamora/Thanos I had in mind, it's a PC/NPC pairing - you don't really need much more than that to figure it out, I'll expect.

Will be interesting to see who you think our characters equate to Shadow lol

Not too sure who half those MCU characters are, so can't really comment on any comparisons...

As far as I can remember (it has been a while since we first created these characters!) Swift was actually inspired by Hanna ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0993842/ ).
Hence her birth name being "Sanna" which sounds similar.  It's actually a Scandinavian name meaning "Lily".

Curiously enough, some species of lilies are known to be highly poisonous to cats, which kind of amused me when I remember Silver Raven once comparing her to a cat.  In a way, she is kind of poisonous to herself, her inner darkness being her own worst enemy at times :)
I love it when things just fit together like that.

The original version of Swift was much less dark in nature, and that particular personality has been recycled for use in another Kai character.
This message was last edited by the player at 10:20, Wed 30 May 2018.

I saw that film! It was an interesting one, and I can see the similarities there. Although I think there were also some differencies, particularly in the way the story evolved at the end.

I'm not really elaborating on my comparisons between your characters and the ones in the MCU because i don't want to spoil those films for those of you who haven't seen them yet, Swift Fox - but if you had seen them, I think you, much like Hornet, would have caught up on what similarities I was seeing realtively quickly.

Yeah, a few details of her bear no real resemblance to the character in the film.  Evolved out a bit as her backstory developed.  Her fighting style more closely matches Swift's original version, but more aggressive at times.

Her ending was probably never going to be the same as the one in the movie.

I had actually half-expected her to not make it to the end at all, either to get killed off by the Dice Roller, or, if her storyline went down a bad path, to just snap and go on a rampage until someone took her down.
So it's interesting that she made it this far.  Unsure if there are any big fights remaining that could still kill her off...

As for MCU characters. I know Iron Man, Thor, Black Widow and so on.  Only ones I've never heard of are Gamora/Thanos and Vulture.  The rest I've either seen in other movies or know who they are from previous mention of them in other things.

Sun Snake definitely makes me think of Captain America :)

I'd have thought of Sabre Fox as Iron Man actually.  In battle, he just keeps on going, soaking up the damage, and out of battle he's a bit flashy celebrity ladies' man! ;)

Thor...  Hmm, Starfire?

I should be absent for a week more often :D




I understand that reference!


As in I've wached all the MCU stuff, and most of the TV (haven't watched season 2 of Jessica Jones, sort of fell off of Agents of Shield at the end of series 3)



Interesting, I did see Hanna too - nice to see the origin of the character in that :)


As for a pre-arranged plot of Lone Wolf, there's nothing wrong with doing it that way as long as the players are up for a long story arc that's foremost. Also, the way Lone Wolf is structured as a series is good for it too. The first two books start as a war starts, so you as the last kai need to go warn the king, then do the thing to help the kingdom. If the player wants to go their own way instead, unless it's a very temporary 'scared of responsibility, comes to realise they need to step up' then really that's not the GM's fault and hey should just do a different game with that player. The 3rd book is a stand alone that follows from the first two, but you could skip it if the villain is already defeated (and set up an alternative villain at your leisure). The 4th and 5th are stand alone, one just a 'random mission that gets bigger', the other 'oh, yeah, last book happened, go here' that becomes quite epic. Book 5 even has two separate starting trees which is cool.

The 6th - 10th books are a quest you undertake for artificacts (he loresones), so the player should have the impetus to do the quests, and the fun can be having alternative distractions in the way. And then 11 - 12 follow on from the other, and you're sort of trying to escape a place then finish the war the story should be driving the players actions, even with a few paths to figure it all out.

So it's not railroady in the GM dictating actions, just a plot that flows well that the player should want to follow along with as it gets going further. I agree with Water Hornet (I believe) in that the fun of doing an RPG is doing lots of cool things the gamebooks didn't allow, and might allow for some story diversions, but the story is so could you wouldn't want to dynamite it and wander too far off its course.

I personally don't find the pre-definied structure needs shaken up. If people know the story then lowering expectations and making them appreciate the small in depth changes is the way to go. Plus, most RPGs the important thing is the character stories / development, which I think would add the difference. Having something locked in to put your back against is actually better to allow the plot to diverge for character reasons. Also, it's even more fun to majorly shake things up later (like have a Lorestone stolen by an NPC you ignored like Tipsa).



The collector's edition book 1 seemed to be to line up with a game, and feels like that. Fighting through a battle to be the lone survivior, which players of PC games think 'of course I survived, I'm me!' Might translate to gamebooks, but feels off when you know the original.

Note it also did what I think is pretty crappy, and added a Helghast at the end of the first book as the end boss. Having them in book 2 as a slow reveal / unrelenting enemy to fear was a great ramping up of tension. Having to face one as an end boss just makes book 2 seem... less.


Speaking of the Kai Grand Masters and he MCU, the overpowered disciplines/characters shouldn't really be an issue - the MCU shows it from a storytelling perspective, and game wise the Kai are still human, just with enough of a bullet shield for it not to be weird they stay alive against silly odds / powerful foes, and have enough talents for players to do all the crazy stuff they always want to do.

I think the actual thing that makes it hard to balance is two fold. Firstly, there's a logical reason fro the Grand Masters to be together. Avengers was cool as it made the 'these people would never team up' an interesting dynamic and a fragile one. The second is that to become a Grand Matser, in many ways a Kai has to have become a balanced person. They should have set aside a lot of their demons, etc. MCU characters have to fight to be the hero, and tend to have powers because of or in spite of their personality to wield them.

Two of the things that made the gamebook strong - having an organisation and focus, and having a maturing character who could be simply heroic in the higher tiers against oowerful evil foe - breaks down a little in multiplay.

Obviously flawed character and the Kai have been shown to work in this game, but even then this game had to have a major occurrence to bring the flaws out, and it seems to be a goal for the characters to overcome those flaws. It's still believable in Magnakai power level, it's believeable that Lone Wolf is not all wise, but a group of four powerful characters without external/internal flaws and differences to fight against is far harder to balance.

I mean, the fact that new Kai have advanced so quickly to power, did so during war, and don't have an established organisation to conform to does help make more flawed characters. This game shows that. Still, that would be my worry regarding Grand Master level characters, rather than the Disciplines and CS themselves.

As always, Sun Snake, you offer a lot of great insights. :)

And for the MCU comparisons, if the original movie are good enough... yeah, I was thinking that Swift Fox fits well with Black Widow (former assassing seeking redemption with help from fellow warrior) and Sun Snake as Captain America (does what he thinks is right regardless of conventions, consequences, and common sense - plus has a knack for getting people to go along with his ideas).

I would say that Sabre Fox is much more in line with Thor than Iron Man - I mean, superstrong badass warrior of laid-back attitude but who hides hidden depths and is actually quite smart when it's called for? Seems to me like it fits him better - Tony Stark would be a bit too arrogant to really be a good match, in my opinion.

Sun Snake is back in full power (of walls of text)! :D (Frankly, though, I read the post in one breath ;) )

Yeah, I also thought Swift Fox = Black Widow and Thor = Sabre Fox. :)

Oh, me too! As I said, he's really quite good at swaying people with words. :)

Why do I have the words 'unlimied power' and cackling in my head. Must be something Steve Rogers said at some point...

mmm... Unlimited power :)

Yeah, I don't know Thor as well, haven't seen any of his movies yet.
Arrogant characters would have to fit Peacock better ;)  hehe.

As for my game idea:
I did mention to her that it might get railroady in some areas, due to setting up quests and things.  She seems ok with that though.
Definitely trying to eliminate as much of that feeling as possible by developing areas that you get steered away from in the books and possibly even adding a few minor sidequests with small rewards to them to expand on the world a bit.
Also developing the NPCs a lot more, giving them more detailed personalities that'll hopefully make them more interesting to interact with (and also make it more sad if they get killed off).  Adding in a few of my own here and there, and also giving new roles to a couple of them, like Viveka in Book 2 (adapted from her role in Legends).
It is possible to save some of them that would normally get killed off depending on the player's actions.  Although some, like poor old Captain Kelman and a lot of other NPCs from the first two books, are just doomed from the start.  The first two books always seemed meant to have this atmosphere of urgency and fear and the feel of being on the verge of destruction at any moment.  Having everyone dying around you and knowing that you're not YET powerful enough to save them might drive that home.  And also spur the character on to want to recover the Epic God-Forged Weapon and become more powerful so they can stop this happening, eventually resulting in turning Zagarna into a smouldering crater feeling more satisfying.  The whole hopelessness and anger at the Big Bad can forge a true hero out of the fires of war and all that.

Taking inspiration from things like MMORPGs or even games like this one, I'm trying to turn the gamebook world into more of a huge sandbox that you can technically travel anywhere in ('cos everywhere is developed enough to explore), and you do have quests to do.
Some can be made optional, such as failing them (like in Book 3 where the character can actually survive and escape the area despite failing the quest), or just by refusing them if doing so doesn't have devastating consequences.
Though it will be heavily implied that doing that will change things in the world pretty dramatically.  As an example, failing and escaping in Book 3 means you can continue, but then Vonotar is still free and still doing Dark Magic experiments on the Ice Barbarians so he will likely return at a later date with the horrific results of those experiments, creating a new major sidequest that the player will have to deal with on top of everything they're probably already dealing with.

But yeah, sometimes it does have to be a case of: "This is the next quest, and you really really do have to do this one or everything will be horribly ruined!"  'cos there does come a point where so much bad stuff happens that the nice tidy sandbox world gets irreversibly trashed.
So if my player remains comfortable with that then we're running with it.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:10, Thu 31 May 2018.

Woo, this thread has been busy - forgot to check my forums yesterday (too busy catching up on the final episode of the DnD campaign series I've been watching on YouTube/Twitch) and by the time I remembered it was too late and I was going to bed :D.

Anyway, on the subject of NPC deaths...there is killing, and there is insta-killing. "Oh no, this guy has been hit too many times in combat and now he's gone down" is a bit different from "This NPC will die unless you do a thing...okay, you did a thing, but it wasn't the right thing, so they're dead now" or just the very fact that the combat system has "If they roll this number, they insta-kill you with nothing you can do to avoid it no matter how good your armour is or anything". It just lacks a lot of stuff that other combat systems have, like different weapons doing different types of damage, different types of armour providing different levels of protection, that kind of thing. It's just "Oh it doesn't matter what kind of gear you have or tactics you want to use, you just roll on this table and I'll tell you if you're dead or not".

But since I'm not exactly planning on playing any more games with this system, I suppose it doesn't matter and I can just leave you to it and stick to my DnD ;).

Yeah, that's part of the reason I'm borrowing a few mechanics from D&D to make the system a bit more realistic.  Also going by Zipp's style and giving a bonus to attacks when the player is using good tactics in fights (or a penalty for bad tactics, though some enemies might be weak/unskilled enough that they can still take them down just by charging in and swinging wildly at them).

I'm dividing NPCs between characters who suffer 'plot deaths', like someone who sacrifices themselves to save the player character, or those redshirts who get horribly massacred just to demonstrate how powerful and dangerously badass the Big Bad really is (like everyone in the first Kai Order!)
And there are NPCs who can team up with you and fight alongside you, and that second category are the ones who have stats and skills of their own and will only die if they get too beaten up in combat, but are saveable with healing/buffs/help in tough fights, that sort of thing.

Doesn't mean even those ones can't die though, there are situations like Paido in Book 10.  Don't see any way of getting him out alive.  But yeah, even the heroes can't save everyone...

Actually, I think I gave you all a lot of ways to manipulate the battle system to achieve a variety of results even within the limiting framework of the CRT; that said, I can understand you in particular, Dusk Rat, as the player of a non-combat-focused character, having had less of a chance to use those, and thus feeling more limited than you actually are.

Having said that, yeah, I'm not going to argue that the system for this game is anywhere near as well-structured or good at modeling different results as 3.5/Pathfinder is (I have no experience with other D&D systems, so that's the only one I can speak with confidence about), and in terms of tactical flexibility and versatility, it doesn't even deserve a comparison. That said, the CRT system, built as it is from a set of gamebook, has something going for it: it's very, very fast to adjudicate stuff with, and thus much more useful at keeping the game's pace going in a play-by-post environment.

I don't know how many D&D games have you played here in play-by-post, and probably none of them lasted as long as this one has, but let me offer you a bit of a comparison.

In this game, here's the fights you have gone through since it started:

Team Sun Snake: 18 Fights
Team Swift Fox: 16 Fights

We began in November 2011, so this coming November we'll be at precisely seven years; right now it's six and a half. And I think I can safely say that this isn't really an action-heavy game, in that there's a lot more time spent talking, strategizing and sneaking around than actually fighting.

And those are big, involved multiple-rounds-with-multiple-opponents fights; I didn't count the number of time you people one-shotted somebody, because those would have gone fast in a D&D variant as well.

Even so, if we go with 17 as the average number of fights the team as a whole went trough, since the game has lasted 78 months, we got through a full fight every four months without any loss of pace, at least not from combat, in my opinion - I think even the longest fights in this game were over within the span of a week at most.

Could you say that any D&D game you were into in a play-by-post environment was capable of keeping up with a similar rate of allotted time per combat without collapsing unto itself, Dusk Rat?

Because, again, I 100% agree that 3.5/Pathfinder has unfathomable depth of tactics and flexibility in combat compared to this system - but in my experience, even a fast-paced fight with only a few character can take over two weeks to get through. That's the tradeoff of using a better, more complex system - it makes adjudication a lot slower.

Or, that's what I think. Opinions, anyone?

There is no doubt the Lone Wolf system is designed for a gamebook (acually, used for wargaming first and used as the basis of the gamebook b Joe later. Just like D&D!). It does well in generaing a swingy fight that all your previous choices can have a hand in - did you have an advantage going in, better weapons and armour, etc all to boosting your CS ahead of time. But yeah, in the middle of combat you can't be expected to do anything in a gamebook, so the core system is flat there. We really just use it as our base due to nostalgia here.

That said, there are a few ways to make it more interactive, and I think Shadow has done most if not all of those things. One important one is Fate Points, which let you control combat rolls more for doing cool RP and tactical stuff earlier.

Also, an important thing to note is that D&D is just taking a long winded and granular approach to what the LW system is doing. D&D batles are battles of attrition, and your weapons and armour just affect the rate at which your damage goes down compared to your enemy. A good GM can distract you from the fact, but a lot of times especially good / poor dice rolls can highlight it anyway and minimise good tactics, etc.

So the LW system just speeds up the rate of fall of Endurance on both sides. Your tactics still let you gain CS bonuses to adjust those rates, and actually adjust them consistently compared to your opponent. Similarly weapons and armour matter, but in respect to the rate of fall of your Endurance, rather than add to the variance of the dice rolls which could screw you over anyway.


One way some of us have found to let tactics matter with the LW system is to have you decide on a tactic, then roll for combat. Sometimes your effect happens as long as you get higher 'damage' (which isn't dealt) than your enemy does, or sometimes you get to just do the effect but automatically take damage.



It definitely is a faster system for resolution (I'd definiely say D&D combat in pBp takes a few weeks easily and you tend to make fights count far more), and with some small amount of work the LW system can also be flexible enough to provide some depth.

So yeah, speed in terms of running and setting up while sacrificing depth and options, but certainly it has its benefits. It's by no means the first system I'd choose, but I didn't feel hampered running the Night to Forget game either using it and it eased certain aspects.

I dunno...I don't think any of the fights in my game have gone on horrendously long - that's something I was trying to avoid because I know they can be pretty long at tabletop so of course they'll be longer in a forum-based game. I take the players' actions via PM and then write up one single post covering an entire round's worth of actions, deciding what the enemies do and making their rolls as I go. The game has technically gone on for several years longer than I've been a member here on RPOL, since it started waaaay back on Skype with Wuffy as the only player. Then it kind of fizzled for a bit but I picked it back up again a few years later on RPOL, this time with Swifty as a second player :). We did have a third player for a little while, but he decided that DnD wasn't really his thing so we came up with a decent way for his character to depart and the rest of us have carried on :). I think we've maybe had...two fights since we started on RPOL? There was one against an ankheg (big burrowing beetle-like thingy that spits acid) and one a bit later against some goblins. I think that was it. Oh, no...there was one against some undead in a tomb as well :D. Can't remember how long any of these lasted IRL, but I'm sure they were over in a few days or so.

Anyway, the thing with a more detailed combat system is you can do all sorts of crazy shit to get extra bonuses or whatever, and get in some extra RP in the process. If you're just rolling on a table it feels rather...I dunno...flat? Like you're two figures standing face-to-face in a low-budget computer game, standing motionless except for when you mechnically raise your arms to swipe your swords at each other until one of you falls over. There is no implication of any real narrative action.

Anyway, I think Dusk Rat's only really taken part in one combat directly, and that was when she was on her own and got attacked by a big nasty monster thing (mutant snake thingy in the sewers beneath that city place...Toran, was it?). Other than that, she's sort of helped from a distance, generally by manoeuvring various creatures to help out in whatever ways she can think of, but generally tries to avoid having things smashing her in the face ;).

Oh, in completely unrelated news, after tonight I'm gonna be without Internet for...well, hopefully not too long. Maybe a week or so? Long story. Wuffy and Swifty both know about it if you want to ask them. I'm very tired and about to go to bed - been a busy day and it's rapidly heading toward 11pm. Hopefully will be back here soon!

Take your time and don't worry, Dusk Rat - we'll wait for you if it becomes necessary! ^_^

Don't worry, I'm back now - back on my computer, now with Internet as of today :D.

And we're glad to have you back. :)

So, Dusk Rat, I wanted to ask - from the way you framed your explanation of things, I guess you didn't much liked the PSX Final Fantasy games and their ilk, did you?

What's PSX? I know of the Final Fantasy series...played VII for a bit but got to a point where I got stuck because I couldn't find where to go next. And I think I briefly played IX on the Playstation at a later date but didn't really enjoy it. It was a case of "go to main map, take one step, BOOM combat, fight and kill the thing, end combat, can't figure out how to heal outside of combat, back to main map, two more stpes, BOOM random combat again, fight again, back to map, take another step, BOOM combat..." until I'm dead and have to reload and do it all again. Horribly boring and frustrating just having the game decide "you're gonna fight something now whether you feel like it or not" with no way to avoid it or anything. At least put little monster icons on the map so I can decide whether I want to fight them :P. Also tend to prefer non-turn-based combat so I can actually try and dodge and stuff, though I enjoy Heroes if Might and Magic III which is also turn-based...but that's kind of a different genre of game so I'm not sure it counts in the same way.

I liked VII.  :)
It was my first introduction to the Final Fantasy series.  Took me a while to figure out the combat system (specifically that I couldn't directly control the characters, just pick out tactics for them).  Once I figured out what tactics worked best, it was easy enough, with some time spent doing sidequests and level/resource-grinding.
(Never did get the coloured chocobos though, that bit tested my patience for resource-grinding a little too far...)

Possibly also one of the origins of the "this isn't even my final form" meme, as you have to fight the boss something like 4 times to finally put him down.  (And his "Super Nova" special attack freaked me out the first time I saw it!  Ultimate "Oh crap!" moment, hehe).

I personally started with VIII, but I did enjoy VII - I was a fan of the series until they moved on from the PS2, which is the last console I owned; I didn't heard good enough things about the newest installment to buy them, I'm strapped enough for cash as it is.

Within the framework of the PSX-PS2 games though, I would consider myself something of a fan; I reached 100% completion in IV, VII, VIII, IX, X, XII and Tactics for good measure, and I only didn't in VI because my Playstation broke down when I was halfway through and I've never really had the time to replace it. So, Swift Fox, I guess on the matter of FFVII coloured chocobo, I can say that I understand your words on it being a bit of a slog, but I did find it an entertaining one. :)

Dusk Rat, with PSX I did mean the original playstation, yeah; so if you played Final Fantasy IX long enough to reach an area with random encounters (if you could see them and avoid them, they wouldn't be very random, now would they be?), then you have an idea of what I was getting at: in the Final Fantasy games, as Swift Fox also said, you can't control the characters directly, just pick your own strategies and see wether they work or not. As such, most of the work for winning a battle is actually done in the preparation beforehand (sidenote: outside of battle in Final Fantasy IX you heal by going in the item inventory and using healing items - so your survival is based on how well you stocked up on those beforehand... or in building a team that can survive with less need for healing), and you can't really do much against enemy attacks other than be prepared and go at it until either they're dead or you are. So in that sense, it's much like this game - and some people (like, say, me) do find it fun enough.

But I guess you're more of a dynamic player rather than a strategic one - to each their own, I suppose; personally, I never quite liked action-rpg and their ilk (if I want immersive environment play, platforms are what I go for), with the exception of Kingdom Hearts. So... no surprise there, I think - just confirming for myself that, indeed, you and I just have very opposite taste on what constitutes fun. It happens! ^_^

Yeah, I don't like my combat to be based on RNG, I'd rather be able to actually run around while people are throwing things at me in order to try and dodge them, or whatever ;). I like several ARPGs and a bunch of first-person RPGs which involve combat. Generally you do more than press the "hit them now" button and then watch how the rest of the battle ensues without being given much chance to offer further input, which is how the Final Fantasy games seem to work (at least, the couple I've played). Don't know how far through VII I got since I never finished it - I was wandering around in the lab place where you get Red XIII and couldn't find anything resembling a way onward. Maybe there was some really obvious doorway I missed or something, I can't remember now, it was ages ago. And it wasn't on Playstation, it was on PC.

I dunno, I suppose I like games that offer more interactivity and choice and stuff, so it feels like I'm actually participating in the action rather than watching an extended cutscene.

That's fair; to each their own. My favourite part of RPG is the planning and strategizing and preparation before the battle is actually fought; as I said, if I want a three-dimensional spatial challenge, I go for platformers, where the whole gameplay is based on moving around, not just the fighting. Action RPG try to have it both ways, and somehow (with very few exceptions) that almost never seems to grab my attention very much. Although, as I said, occasionally I liked some - Kingdom Hearts and Vagrant Story being the more prominent in my mind.

Also, I like the exploration factor that the old Final Fantasy games had - having a full worldmap filled with secret places and hidden locales to explore outside the story makes these games more fun to me, and action RPG tend to have a lot less of that by default, for some reason.

In the end though, the whole point is that I can see why you dislike the system we're using for combat in this game - I can understand it, which is why I almost always, as you pointed out, gave you some other manner to contribute whenever a fight cropped up. I do hope that was good enough for you, and I am really grateful that, despite not really liking the system, you nevertheless stuck around for the story; tht's a kind of commitment that I appreciate deeply. :)
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:25, Sat 09 June 2018.

I LOVED Vagrant Story! :)
Being able to craft your own weapons, as well as continuing to play once you'd actually finished the game through a kind of "New Game +" option that actually unlocked new stuff you couldn't access before were nice touches.
Liked the combat system too. Had a very nice fusion of action + turn-based going there.  Surprised they didn't make more like it, both the combat system and that storyline had a lot of potential for further development...

As for the Final Fantasy system, the real skill seems to lie more in figuring out how to best equip your team for each challenge (kind of like playing Wizards in D&D where you can pick and choose the spells you think will work best for that day).
If you set your team up perfectly, you can just dish out the commands, then sit back and watch them completely obliterate anything that gets in your way.  Very tactical decision based that way. :)
This message was last edited by the player at 12:04, Sat 09 June 2018.

Yeah, that it is - although obviously, also knowing which commands to pick, and when to do so, is also a crucial part of winning there, too. Final Fantasy Tactics in particular puts a lot of emphasis on that, and it's one of the few were positioning also matters a lot.

I think the newest incarnations of Final Fantasy, XIII and XV, are more in the action-RPG mold, but as I said, I didn't hear good enough things to go picking them up.

And I agree, Vagrant Story has a really good balance of action-based command and planning-based command; it made for a pretty amusing experience. I believe that they never made a follow-up because, despite being very well recevied critically, it didn't match the Final Fantasy series in term of sales numbers, particularly in Japan, and then the creative team behind it splintered after the lead designed left Squaresoft/Squarenix. They were also the team behind Final Fantasy Tactics, and that too never got a real follow-up either - the sequels were built along completely different design phylosophies by completely different people, and had really nothing in common with the original.

I guess some things are just destined to remain as lone examples of their own excellence, sometimes.