The Valley of Immel – Conclusion
The blog has been dead for quite some time. I don’t think it’s ever been this dead before and it need to be revitalized. Now when we’ve returned from Japan I got this idea that maybe have some of the players help me write interesting and intriguing post to not only rise the quality but also give a different perspective on things. PB, as always, was willing to do this and so he’s written the conclusion of Immel that he himself has been asking for.
Remember everyone that I would appreciate if someone else would like to do this. So don’t hesitate to ask if you have an idea or request.
Now to PB’s conclusion;
So now that we are back from Japan, I thought it would be nice to write a review and some thoughts about the ending of Immel and how this mini-campaign were as a whole.
Well, I think the start of Immel were interesting enough and it felt good that we actually would get some time to act out our characters more than just making some choices here and there and skipping alot of in-game time. And I dont really have much to comment on at the start except it was a good feeling to actually play some with your character.
Now after the “big bang” is where things went a bit out of hand in my opinion…
The setting was very cleverly made and it put us all in different positions without any real clue as what had happened. But I would also like to point out that in the end this was something that took to much time to “repair/fix” to really get back to the purpose of being here. Atleast I felt that some parts of this became to complex and somethings didnt feel planned as well as the start was, there was too much to do and too little time to get everything done, which of course might have been the plan from the beginning.
I guess that the thing that was missing was something that tied it all together in a smooth way, maybe with more session we could have gotten it to work out smoothly but then again, who knows how many sessions that would have become and I dont think anyone was willing to sit and play in immel for another 10-15 session or so.
So, what really happened? Well basically we decided to speed things up and the last three session were the only sessions in my opinion that something really happened. These session though, didnt feel that planned because of the race against the time before Japan so sure they were sped up but it still felt we didnt get that much done before the last session when things got really speedy because I think all of us wanted to make it to the “final” ending.
Now if im gonna sum up the ending it pretty much went like this:
The group(the ones who had their memory back) convinced and managed to get some of the tutors from Cornwalds to join them and form a party to restore the balance of this valley and also in the same time accomplishing most of the soon to be youth mages goals in the progress, since these two objectives kind of went hand in hand(note: this all happened after the second big bang which brought Youlan here to try and stop octal I suppose).
In the end and after a lot of deaths(civilians, mages, fathers etc.) this party stood triumphant against Lord timmel( Davfire, also one of the new members of octal) who escaped, with the rest of Octal and the triquerta that sided with them, plus Kailar the Black who started it all!
Well, thats pretty much it, anyone is welcome to fill in blanks or whatever they feel they want to say.
Now for some more thoughts and questions.
I still feel that Immel turned out as a bit of a disappointment in overall both in planning as well as in development of some characters. I think in the end was too much things and events to cover in that short amount of time and it felt like it would have been better actually this time with some more restrictions to easier guide people toward the end goal instead of letting people run around searching for stuff and mostly just ending up doing nothing and feeling a bit helpless.
I would give Immel around 4/10 because I liked the setting and as I mentioned earlier the plot was pretty interesting but I felt the execution was slow and didnt really get anywhere until the last three sessions.
On a more personal note I guess im a bit more disappointed seeing as it felt once again that the animst got the least to do, less dice rolls etc than the others, and I know for a fact that around 3 sessions or so I mostly sat there doing nothing, and I really mean nothing, mostly listening to the others, and I cant say it feels that fun to be part of an interactive rpg and just listening although I do find enjoyment in that as well, but still.
I also had hoped you would reconsider the bonuses I got from the sacrifice of Rivadiana, I felt they were quite…meager? I mean sure property boosts are never bad and such but it just felt like it should have been more for such a thing. I actually was expecting something more unique out of it, like a benefit or whatever. Well im not gonna go into that more, except I hope you reconsider it. And what you said at the end of the session that “this is what happens when you speed things up” felt more like a lame excuse I mean, wasnt this a planned event from the beginning? So it just felt like a cheap way out…
As for my plant symbiosis i am wondering if the things I did actually has some impact on it, and then im mostly talking about all the baby stone things I “ate”. Since you mentioned they were a bonus or something, what im talking about here is that if it even mattered if I ate them or not, if the only thing I got out from it was basically to speed up the evolution, since if thats the only thing well… then I suppose it didnt matter much since I guess we will be jumping in in-game time abit now anyhow?
More general questions and thoughts from me to the gamemaster is:
1. What will happen now?
2. How much time will we move forward?
3. Are we rogue mages or not?
4. Will we still have ties to the rest of the surviving Cornwald mages?
5. Do we get cookies?
Now thats all folks, and I hope everyone will at least comment and ask abit of questions to get some sort of dialogue started as to what happens now.
And in case people hasnt noticed this wasnt written by our dear gamemaster…no it was me.. Don PB!
And finally…..when the f**k will we play again =(?
I must agree that it took too much time. It even took more time than I expected it to take but then again I’m quite bad in calculating your social moves and how fast you deduce things. It’s sometimes easy to forget that as Game Master.
It indeed became too complex and that is entirely my fault, again. As I’ve told you myself, I have started to implement some of the old depth into the game and when I start doing this I set myself in a mindset that kind of makes things complex most of the time just to achieve my goal; realism. But what I should have learned by now is that too much realism makes things too complex and also, hard to get a grip of and handle from a RPG-perspective. This was bad of me, especially since I was aware of the limited time we had to solve Immel.
About the planning, I can’t really say that all that happened was planned. It was more a setting kind of decision-consequence action. When I achieve this mindset it often roles on its own and my planning is implemented.
More time would have solved most of this, but I should have known it was to short time to do that on. I’m sorry for that.
Well, well, this is an expected effect of the choices we made I think. When you speed things up the planning falters since you can’t really plan when people are meant to make their decisions in fast pace. I could have limited the freedom of choice even further if I liked but then it would be too linear for my tastes. Even so in set campaigns like “A Dark Sea” I do things like that. But in campaigns like this it would limit too much. Even so I should use it more to get things going in the right direction. But in this moment I refrained from doing so since Immel was the first part in this campaign with freedom.
First, I must say I hear your disappointment and I understand it. I can also go as far as to say that I share some of it.
For me it’s mostly because I didn’t reach the end I wanted the way I wanted it and that with the speeding up the sacrificing moments went by without the dramatical impact I wanted it to have.
But yes, all in all I understand it and I’m sorry for your loss.
Yes, Rivadiana was a meager bonus in the end. But to be quite frank. It was planned the whole event, but, precisely the outcome I hadn’t really thought out in detail. But I can though assure you that I’ve already fixed this. Not long after you complained about this I thought over it and I’ve “fixed” it. How you’ll see later.
It will matter in game. Out of game too, depending on how you see it. But well, that’s also one thing you’ll see. And soon, since that will most likely be in the recap in the beginning of the next arc.
1. How do you mean?
2. A couple of months. Enough to explain why things have changed as they have. I’m also not sure since you need to make some choices and I need to go over some alternatives for the campaign. Thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.
3. You are more like delinquent mages on the wrong side of the law. In other case, you have a minor rouge mage status. But not officially. You could have been coursed, tricked, or just young and stupid. Until you’ve committed a serious crime. Like murder, or being an active participant in a large unlawful scheme you are still not too late to be vindicated for your actions. More of this will be explained later, but I can explain more if you like.
4. Yes you will. Cornwald will be in kind of heat for his actions. This though. I will not explain until later. Some suspense must be saved.
5. From Octal, yes =).
And about when we’ll start playing… well, I must fix some things first. And I’m thinking about having a series of Rule Forums to finalize the changes I’ve spoken to you and Daniel about. When the changes is almost done, we can start. Even so I’m thinking about a period without Character Sheets and only story-telling to get more flow in the new arc. Just for a short period of time.
Well, well, must say it was a good post. Nice and neat.
Hope you like my answers, if you want more… ask.
Your answers were great, and I kind of understand now how you feel when people answer on your posts.. its fun and encouraging.
Anyway, what I meant with number one was just a more general sense, like what will happen in the next few months in-game if thats something you want to share at the moment, and also where we go from here? do we continue being on magicka or wherever we are now since the teleport or will we see the world abit?.. mostly a general question what happens in the next arc I suppose or whatever you want to call it.
Playing without character sheets might be an interesting thing.
Exactly what will happen is not determined yet. I have a few things to look over and a few choices to present to y’all after we’ve discussed it somehow. And since the changes will have a major role in how things are to play out we first need to look over them.
Yeah, I think that a Sheetless period will do fine for the beginning of things.
Good read, I especially enjoyed the part about Rogarks great victory.
I liked immel, it was nice to have a map and some background history( from the previous visit ) to play from.
It was interesting( as it always is ) to see how it goes from bad to worse. But I felt like we( triquetra and Kailar x) were separated too much.We were almost never on the same side or in the same place. And I think it would be nice( and time saveing) if we the group were put in more situations together, if not out of necessity then by force!
I to think a shirtless session sounds like a good idea. 😛
BTW: Välkommen tillbaka! Tack för tändaren PB och Herid!
Good that you enjoyed the read.
I do agree that the separation of the group was part of the trouble to get anywhere but at the same time it was also one of the things that made it interesting, I think with a bit more planning and focus how to get towards the end, it woulda worked just fine.
Shirtless session ftw?
Glad you liked the lighter!
You know, he is in his homoerotic phase. Show him some rotten abs!
Immel felt like a very well planned event, though as stated earlier it got a bit too sped up in the end.
The greatest problems I can see with it is that, as stated earlier, we were a bit too split up most of the time. There were also quite a bit of mind-wrangling plot-devices embedded which made it quite hard to play. All players were told different things and since we didn’t have that interaction with each other the information didn’t spread to the rest of the group like it mostly does otherwise (if there is not a special reason for it, which is the clue needed for our minds to separate the knowledge.) Then add all the memory-loss here and there and it all got a bit jumbled up. This made it a lot harder to play.
Sheetless is fine by the way, though I do have some objections with shirtless unless you have a good reason for it.
I can see that a lot of planning went into this, though I really can’t see the logic in some of it. Either the people who planned the event (in-game) were complete bastards, or the hidden agenda was that we were supposed to realize that we had to cooperate even though we were rivals (and they were slightly less bastardy.)
None of these really makes sense. Okay, the world is not fair but for some things to work out pretty much all of the other students had to have already completed their quests. In some sense the solution to it all felt a bit too linear. Not that it was too simple, but all things fit together in a big cogwheel in (almost) one single way. If one cog breaks it all falls apart.
There were also ways that one student could inadvertently completely sabotage for another student. Take the teleportation to forest of Cheull(?) for example. Only three people could be teleported there, otherwise it was really hard to get there.
The solution was set up in such a way that it would be efficient to solve if we broke the spell and everyone worked together in a big quest to complete everything. It felt like it was created to be solved like that, even though from an in-game perspective I don’t think it should have been. We weren’t supposed to break the spell (from an in-game perspective), right?
Oh, by the way. I guess my future shining armor have to be completely black now. Nothing else will do.
Hum. If we are shirtless our power and mind can be completely focused on the interaction of the other players by this freedom of muscle… or not.
The only good reason would be heat, or that of the distraction when we all feel sick by seeing PB’s rotten flesh.
The last of the two is more what was thought. But it was secondary. Let me explain.
Octal’s primary objective was to enhance and give the Triquerta power, status, experience (practical and rough) and push them to moral dilemmas. This leading to a development making them (in their perspective) better Mages.
Their secondary objective were to put you outside the box. Make it harder for you – and by you I mean the Triquerta but actually mainly Kailar – to work. You need to convince and achieve things that are hard working against the odds. This would have been the ultimate proof that you deserve to be Cornwald Status (or above) Mages and it would have added to your reputation and by that, power.
This is true and false.
First, it was designed to work like a cogwheel. And with proper time it would have been the only good solution possible. This is an embodiment of weakness from balance. Everything must have a weakness, thus the spell was like a keyhole. With only one key able to fit.
BUT
That was only to get the most out of it. There were several other ways to go about things and have things develop. In my inital planning I had planned a more outdrawn chase and where the moral dilemmas would have been more evident. That part was completely merged into the final pieces instead.
Anyhow, you also need to know that Octal didn’t plan for the Vortex to appear. This… made everything more urgent and other methods disappeared. If it weren’t for the imperfection (due to balance and the nature of Kailar) things would have gone more smoothly. I as Game Master though, made that as a big Player Trap. To put things in fast motion. I didn’t forsee everything though must I admit now in hindsight.
I’m not really sure what you are speaking about when it comes to Kailars shining armour. He’s made one fatal mistake. But other than that he’s cleaner than most in the Triquerta. Or have I forgotten something?
I think this was a joke on my statement “Kailar the Black” but I dont know.
One question popped into my mind, are we “certified” Cornwald mages now or?
And no, I wasn’t completely serious.
There is also the issue with a certain transformations and such.
Ah, the transformation…
I thought you joked about something else.
No. More to this later.