A Dream in Progress
Well, now we’ve had our first run-through of this epic castle. And it was very needed and very appreciated and now though I’ll need some views and want to know your opinions. In exchange you’ll now hear some thoughts from my side. I trust I will get the feedback I want.
To begin with, translating a movie or a dream is a incredibly hard thing to do. Sometimes it’s not easy – read impossible – to catch the mood, suspense and the pure sense of something which you yourself already have experienced. This makes ones expectations be so high that you tend to have a hard time being satisfied with what you can get at manage to do with something you try to translate from one of these mediums.
I myself must say that I think I am pretty good at envisioning things and make it into ‘reality’ by pushing it into scenarios. Even though they have some flaws and glitches afterwards it often works out well in the beginning as long as I try and don’t keep pushing too much to precisely duplicate my original vision. In the end though this is precisely what I get, my vision by not striving for it I often get what I want.
Anyhow, this first play was good. I now see things I need to do differently and to change to the next session. Some of the elements which you saw today did not appear in my dream. The contract for instance, is something I put there to make this place more meaningful and less random. Also I wanted that contract to direct and focus everything. I tried this last night when I tried to find solutions to how to play this. It’s also when I came up with the idea of ultra-personal rooms. The statues however were in the original.
I see now that I need to create more “groups” of people as a general thing for this scenario. In the end I want it to have three difficulties. The easiest being below what you played today. The difficulties will differ with number of people, size of the castle and the powers of the people. On the easiest level everyone will be simpletons even though they in their real life were powerful. This way everyone will be almost equal in power and ability. You will be really normal all of you. The one you played now will have normalized you a little but still have you powerful, and the hardest step will be where every one has individual powers and strengths which range from Farmer Joe to a Demigod. Anyway I’ll find some ways to change that later. But what I know now that will probably be it. The scenario should also have some replay value so I will have some flexible factors like the odd man, and so on.
I think though that the personal rooms will be almost completely removed of stuff next time there will be only superficial stuff there. The location of the contracts will also change from time to time. But always be one of six places most likely. This place though will most likely change reason for being and existing. I have a few alternatives to this place as a reason for being and location and so on but I will work that out. One of them is to make this the most magical dungeon of all times. A dungeon which is epic in proportion and will give you exactly what you want but also a dungeon which suspends you in time until enough people have signed the contract. So you’ll never know how long it takes or if you get your reward. If you die your soul will be fuel to transform the other person. You will most likely not be reborn if you go through this dungeon in any way. But I don’t know yet.
Well, I thought it went fine today even though without dices it felt like you stood no chance against me in combat. It was too bad since you only went in combat to badasses with pretty awesome powers.
Well, well… my head is spinning and I can’t think of anything more to write right now.
Well, first of all I just wanted to say that I found this “adventure” very interesting actually and a pretty cool concept thing aswell.
I also thought that the castle really gave an immense feel to it and also that it felt empty and cold, abit spooky so to say. However I think that some things felt abit rushed and not so much in details but maybe that was abit of the point especially when it was somewhat detective work to be done.
As for this dungeon reappearing sometime in a real group I dont know if that would be such a good idea, maybe if just one person from the group decided to participate, considering that basically only one can be the winner, maybe more can win aswell but I guess that makes it much harder.
Still I found this dungeon to be interesting and something you could play sometime with some changes in the scenario of course, and maybe sometimes use it as a “bonus” session where you could have a chance to collect stones or gain something even if you arent the winner.
As for the difficulty I dunno, to me it felt like Katherine was totally out of league with most, everyone else having X:s or magical items and stuff although they didnt have much impact this time when we didnt play with character sheets I think that would have been a bigger difference with.
All in all I think it was a fun whole-day and it was fun to hear that Ankan is joining us in the Eye again.(even though its an starcrossed!1!1!1 =)
First of I’ll say that I enjoyed this quite a bit, which was slightly unexpected given my mood since yesterday (which might not have been obvious).
I think the that the whole concept of this mysterious castle is very cool as I mentioned during the session. It’s an interesting scenario with all the mystery and suspicion although I’m afraid I don’t have much constructive criticism to offer. The castle seemed pretty fun to explore in itself, and the sense of danger and suspicion really contributed to this, aswell as the developements as people explore and discover more about the situation. Frankly just having the whole thing degenerate into battle royale is pretty interesting in itself, however, with all the possibilities of alliances, ‘rule breaking’ and general social/survival situations gives it alot of potential in my opinion.
I do have a few points that might be worth thinking over about this scenario. The first and biggest one is the stakes involved in participiating in this event. As an individual this is a very high risk, high reward endeavor which some power-hungry and/or reckless individuals might be willing to take.
However from a group perspective things are very grim indeed, both from a meta-game perspective and from a social in-character one. On the one hand you may have social advantages of having personal bonds going into this, at face value though the toll of souls will be taken out. With this in mind I don’t see how a reasonable group of friends would willingly go into this together. Beyond that, if people find themselves in this situation it will be an interesting situation that tests loyalties beyond the other exciting aspects of the scenario.
Also there’s the metagame aspect of this being such a high stakes ‘game’ which I tend think makes it undesireable as the untimely end of one character that has been slowly growing and building up a history is quite the bet, let alone a whole party.
Of course I’m aware that with great risks the rewards are usually equally great, however, obviously the more you’re invested in a character the less appealing big risks become.
The joy was indeed great on my side(I had fun).
I enjoyed the personal rooms, because if you die you at least feel like you accomplished something in your miserable excuse of a life.
As for combat I do prefer it with sheets and dices.
Well… It seems like it will get greatly complicated if you where to do this with a “real” group. But it would be a funny end or something to do if things are getting slow.
We should do this again sometime.
Was quite fun, but I got a bit tired there with a bit of an head ache. I think the cats got to me.
A bit too high mortality rate to send a normal group there I think, but it sure was different. The things mentioned about sending a real group there got me thinking. Maybe some less focus on battle royal and make it a little bit more obvious that you can get out together, but it may not be in your own best interest. You may still want your friends to get out of there.
The mages were working in this direction and if you know some stuff, a group could also do it like that. So it might actually be better to leave it as an hidden fact.
Now I need to get some sleep.
Well, as earlier stated, I’m actually meaning for this to be a big scenario with the size equal to or greater than Shangri La. And indeed I needed to rush things a bit. Thdngs would have taken a longer time to find out and other shorter time to find out if we were to compare it to my dream. Well, well, but for a whole-day session this is what you can get I think.
Yes, I spoke with Daniel about this alternative. And most likely the others in the group just play temporary characters in this place so I don’t need to play it in a single session. Anyhow, replaying this would be interesting anyhow with some real time effects.
I wouldn’t say that. She had skilled and in most cases she was precisely like Kion. Nothing much special, but only need confidence and determination in ones own skills.
As earlier mentioned I know about this. But sometimes a group might take this risk to try to “beat the system” and so on. They might even be forced to sign the contract or even worse even not be aware of this. Then again the challange for the group will become so much greater if their actual goal is not only to find one exit, but to find an exit for all of them and to prevent everyone else from going out the regular way thus making all their souls forfeit.
Few characters all of you play have an miserable excuse for a life. With exceptions for one-sessions characters and other half-played characters of Foppa and Henriksson.
Yes, battle might be easier this way. Even so I think you would have lost to Kion even worse with Sheets. You need to make right choices and also counter his Keen Eyes at the same time. This is not easy, especially not the way I’ve envisioned Kions Keen Eyes which so far is the greatest Keen Eyes in Nianze except for TX’s Keen Eyes.
I was deadly tired after the session I must admit. It might had have to do with all the thinking and memory exertion I had to do but I’ve not been so tired in a long while. And even so, the session began quite late and ended quite early. I’m seldom so tired under these circumstances.
Well, the “second” exit is something which I still will not say exists or not for simple reasons I do not yet know how to make such a thing and I’m not sure it will be something other than a vague glimmer of hope to mislead people. This place though is meant to be corrupting and turn everyone against each other in the end so it will also be quite hard to do something like this but the hints will always be there and maybe I’ll add a second gateway out where more than one can exit the place and I might even do it so the exit isn’t constant thus making it one of the flexible parts of this Castle.