Opening with a GENERAL assessment that this was one of my favorite missions. I think my next fave was, like, Perdition's Rest, and then Zeta-12. I felt like the mods consistently brought us ample opportunity to engage directly, and I at no point was left floundering feeling like I was missing the secret to get engaged or that my character's behavior was railroaded.
I think that's important to talk about because this was a direct result of things you guys implemented like the Bounty Board and the Explorations; sometimes in past missions, I was left feeling like either the CYA elements didn't ultimately impact the big picture or like I'd have to reach out to the mods directly if I wanted to interact with anything too directly. These set-ups eliminated that need, which was really nice because I have social anxiety related to contacting anonymous mods EVEN THOUGH Y'ALL ARE ALWAYS VERY SWEET.
Anyway. What I'm getting at here is on the whole this mission was super solid and I'm really really hyped for the new season. A great opener, really.
I spent a lot of time this mission utilizing the BOUNTY BOARD, and I found it a really fun way to engage in the game mechanics. I really appreciated the way it wound up tying into the effectiveness of our arguments at the end by gaining a "rep" among the Hanabira nobility, so thank you a bunch for that. It was a really nice encouragement to continue pursuing the special bounties, and made me feel better about the fact that they can't be used as plot AC (i.e., they still have a strong associated reward, even if they can't be our plot thread). I liked the variable element (Rey getting an ogre tooth necklace) on the ogre bounty a lot. I agree that lower level bounties should have lower requirements, but I could see a strong argument for 7 instead of 5 so they were still higher than a regular AC thread. The bounty board is probably my favorite new feature; as someone who was at times left with individual plot logs on previous missions not having prompts I was necessarily interested in, it's nice to have a mission-long alternative.
Personally, I think we just need time to feel out the EXPLORATION system and figure out OOCly how to guide our questions to best elicit information. I also think the limited number & deadline made it so some people rushed to get their questions in instead of thinking as much on them as possible because it required coordinating with other players. I don't have a good solution for that, but it's a factor to consider in fine-tuning. I preferred it to the search system from S1. I also, personally, had no problem with the fact that some searches didn't turn up anything ground-breaking and new; that's the way the cookie crumbles when there's so many of them.
That said, I think the explorations are a great vehicle to give room to alternate SOLUTIONS (which I agree felt coerced towards marriage). Those were definitely the place I was looking for something to give us a stronger sense of political climate, but a lot of them felt sort of dead-ended instead unless they were hints about marriage-related pieces. I think the argument post's set-up was really awesome and effective; it was super fun for me personally. This is because I didn't mind that my character didn't have a legitimate suggestion that was better than the marriage (Rey is naive and romantic and inexperienced; this is IC for her, and did not stymie my involvement in contradicting the option). I think the perceived lack of valid alternatives just translated to un-fun in the argument, but the set-up/system itself was really stellar. I definitely felt like we had to work to win, and in that way, I was super engaged in this.
Regarding the DOSSIERS, I felt like this one gave a strong concept of general tone/cultural setting, but I often found myself wishing there were more specifics about common log location (i.e., Doro's Castle). Not necessarily like a floor plan, but maybe more specifics of places PCs are likely to spend a lot of time.
OOC NOTES were really helpful and spared me clicks back to the calendar, yes!
this is so long i'm sorry i wanted to be thorough
I think that's important to talk about because this was a direct result of things you guys implemented like the Bounty Board and the Explorations; sometimes in past missions, I was left feeling like either the CYA elements didn't ultimately impact the big picture or like I'd have to reach out to the mods directly if I wanted to interact with anything too directly. These set-ups eliminated that need, which was really nice because I have social anxiety related to contacting anonymous mods EVEN THOUGH Y'ALL ARE ALWAYS VERY SWEET.
Anyway. What I'm getting at here is on the whole this mission was super solid and I'm really really hyped for the new season. A great opener, really.
I spent a lot of time this mission utilizing the BOUNTY BOARD, and I found it a really fun way to engage in the game mechanics. I really appreciated the way it wound up tying into the effectiveness of our arguments at the end by gaining a "rep" among the Hanabira nobility, so thank you a bunch for that. It was a really nice encouragement to continue pursuing the special bounties, and made me feel better about the fact that they can't be used as plot AC (i.e., they still have a strong associated reward, even if they can't be our plot thread). I liked the variable element (Rey getting an ogre tooth necklace) on the ogre bounty a lot. I agree that lower level bounties should have lower requirements, but I could see a strong argument for 7 instead of 5 so they were still higher than a regular AC thread. The bounty board is probably my favorite new feature; as someone who was at times left with individual plot logs on previous missions not having prompts I was necessarily interested in, it's nice to have a mission-long alternative.
Personally, I think we just need time to feel out the EXPLORATION system and figure out OOCly how to guide our questions to best elicit information. I also think the limited number & deadline made it so some people rushed to get their questions in instead of thinking as much on them as possible because it required coordinating with other players. I don't have a good solution for that, but it's a factor to consider in fine-tuning. I preferred it to the search system from S1. I also, personally, had no problem with the fact that some searches didn't turn up anything ground-breaking and new; that's the way the cookie crumbles when there's so many of them.
That said, I think the explorations are a great vehicle to give room to alternate SOLUTIONS (which I agree felt coerced towards marriage). Those were definitely the place I was looking for something to give us a stronger sense of political climate, but a lot of them felt sort of dead-ended instead unless they were hints about marriage-related pieces. I think the argument post's set-up was really awesome and effective; it was super fun for me personally. This is because I didn't mind that my character didn't have a legitimate suggestion that was better than the marriage (Rey is naive and romantic and inexperienced; this is IC for her, and did not stymie my involvement in contradicting the option). I think the perceived lack of valid alternatives just translated to un-fun in the argument, but the set-up/system itself was really stellar. I definitely felt like we had to work to win, and in that way, I was super engaged in this.
Regarding the DOSSIERS, I felt like this one gave a strong concept of general tone/cultural setting, but I often found myself wishing there were more specifics about common log location (i.e., Doro's Castle). Not necessarily like a floor plan, but maybe more specifics of places PCs are likely to spend a lot of time.
OOC NOTES were really helpful and spared me clicks back to the calendar, yes!