Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Tomcost]

I have a question for the GM, which is pretty metagame, so he is free to answer it or not:

Are we having so many terrible rolls? Or it is just a case of a high probability of somebody dying in any kind of mission?

[griffinpup]

So... Interesting suggestion.  What if we diversify.  Magic in this world has a ridiculously expensive entry cost.  Let's maybe utilize some of what we've accomplished, make magic lamps or something, and focus on earning money and going into mundane trade.  Come back to sacrificing dozens of people on the alter of magic when we have the ability to maybe stop some of them from dying.

[Nirur Torir]

I have a question for the GM, which is pretty metagame, so he is free to answer it or not:

Are we having so many terrible rolls? Or it is just a case of a high probability of somebody dying in any kind of mission?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You've been getting some horrifying survival rolls. (That mission did have a higher mortality rate, due to a bad general event roll, but the other annual survival rolls were bad enough that all it did was bring Phyreli to the point of injury.)

[Tomcost]

Well, considering all the things, this is my suggestion:

Stavros for next guild leader. I guess that the guild will probably take a dark turn, but who cares. All for the narrative.

Financial decisions:

With that news, we could do a credit to villager and guild loyalty each and then pay the merchants to keep an eye out for mages.

+1

Other decisions:

Expand the mushroom field. Everybody helps a little

Experiment with new crops to make something edible.

Set training intensity to low. We need to regroup, secure our non-magical holdings, which is a more secure bet, and then expand from there.

Have a meeting between all the mages of the guild, and discuss the nature of magical failures, just the theory part, don't do actual magic for this. We need to start building theory about magic in general, in hopes of getting a better sense of how to prevent those explosions from happening. The average life expectancy of our recruits is too low for them to get to level 2, which means that we are doing horribly. We need to change that, and to do that we need knowledge. And that is only created from the collective experiences and theories of everybody.

Ask the merchants if they know mushroom recipes. Because I still think that we can do something good out of these mushrooms.

Also, I have ideas for our guild policies from now on:

-Only level 2 mages are allowed to teach aspirants their magic.
-In their initiation ritual, besides the aspirant and the teacher, other senior members of the guild will observe at a safe distance to register any data pertaining their deaths, if that happens.
-(Secretly): Stavros will try to bind the souls of those who fail. Screw it, at least he is doing something useful our of their failures.
-(Tentative): initiates must have at least a year's worth experience in magic before trying to discover a new magic shool. They will do this without direct company of any senior members, but they will still observe from afar.
-If someone becomes a thing (it has happened once), then, if not dangerous, it is to be made so that it doesn't emit any sound (like, putting a mouth gag) and studied. We have to understand what happens in these cases too.

I have a question for the GM, which is pretty metagame, so he is free to answer it or not:

Are we having so many terrible rolls? Or it is just a case of a high probability of somebody dying in any kind of mission?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You've been getting some horrifying survival rolls. (That mission did have a higher mortality rate, due to a bad general event roll, but the other annual survival rolls were bad enough that all it did was bring Phyreli to the point of injury.)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Oh, I see. I just wanted to see if the dice were so stacked against us that we were being forced to be conservative and not take risks. So far, this has been interesting, but in the long term so many failures could just become tedious. I'm glad that it is just plain and old bad luck.

[Nirur Torir]

((Even level 1s will record what they learn in their field. Things will go faster over time, even if everyone in field X keeps dying before they become level 2.))

Ask the merchants if they know mushroom recipes. Because I still think that we can do something good out of these mushrooms.

One of the merchants expresses an interest in buying dried mushrooms in bulk, and gives Basel tips on how to set-up a room for drying. It won't take long. You'll need to expand the fields before there is enough to be worth selling.
For 1.5 credits, he will bring in a chef who could figure out some good recipes for your mushrooms. (You could also wait and slowly figure it out yourselves.)

(Secretly): Stavros will try to bind the souls of those who fail. Screw it, at least he is doing something useful our of their failures.

Currently, he would need to be touching them when they die to have a chance of playing with their souls.

If someone becomes a thing (it has happened once), then, if not dangerous, it is to be made so that it doesn't emit any sound (like, putting a mouth gag) and studied. We have to understand what happens in these cases too.

Huh. I somehow hadn't considered that sort of thing.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

Would we need another room for the mushroom prep room? How much bigger wpuld the field need to be in comparison to how large it is now? What pricing is the merchant offering?

I'm thinking next turn we see what crops we're able to make and then we bring in the chef.

Formally +1ing Tomcost's suggestions.

[Nirur Torir]

Would we need another room for the mushroom prep room? How much bigger wpuld the field need to be in comparison to how large it is now? What pricing is the merchant offering?

Another room would be good to have before another large population expansion, but the storage room will work for now.
Another turn's worth of size increase.
Pricing would depend on what he can get, but it wouldn't be nearly as much as what you pay for food imports now. On the other hand, they might reduce what they're charging for food, if they can pay for the trips off of mushroom trading.

[Tomcost]

As a slight change to my imperfect suggestions, I say:

-The secret policy of binding souls only applies to things. Stavros is too valuable to risk dying in magical explosions.

-No chef right now. Better to increase our repertoire of ingredients before paying.

[somemildmanneredidiot]

It works.

We've got Stavros whatever levels he's at, Basel at probably level 1 sound, Alicia at level 2 plant, a level 1 plant, and a level 1 fire. Right now our most numerous type is plant.  If we go slow and steady while focusing on developing our agriculture (mushrooms first until we have two or three expansions larger than we need to start exporting, then experimenting with other crops) we can get safish xp while getting us more credit space to allow us to expand and develop more things. This could be what brings us back from the brink.

[VoidSlayer]

If we can dry the mushrooms for long term storage we guys should share the mushrooms with the village.  It is an emergency food supply mostly, but if mixed into dishes during the good times and dried out for the winter months it could greatly improve nutrition.  We could send a plant mage to help each family that wants it start their garden.

Also for a new crop, how about a berry or root that can grow part of the year instead of year round.  It can be used to make preserves and such that would last through the year.

Need to keep recruiting, but getting 2-3 a year would be acceptable.

[Nirur Torir]

Game is dead now, sorry. I just can't revive my interest in running it. I might run another game with similar mechanics at some point, but it would be far enough in the future that reviving this wouldn't make sense.

Spoiler: Mechanics spoilers (click to show/hide)

New people had a 20% chance of surviving alone, a 25% chance with a level 1 teacher, and only a 50% chance with a level 2. That 7-of-7 survival thing was really wierd.

Both of the apprentice fire mages sent off to war are dead, in only two turns. Their death chances were only increased by 5% over base for being in the army, for 10% total.

Medium intensity training increased annual death chance from 5% to 10%, and granted 25% extra xp, slightly more for multi-class wizards.


Training from recorded knoweldge:
Due to the way it worked, mages writing down what they knew made them learn faster on the next turn.

Skilling up from 1 to 2, on low intensity training, with no library or teacher, dedicating as much time as possible, was set to take an average of 5 years. This would have been a bit lower once they started writing down their findings. After reaching the library cap for level 1 magic, it would have averaged 1 year without a teacher.

I never figured out how much having a teacher would help. You never really had a turn with level 1s and a level 2 able to focus on training.

Spoiler: Final character skill levels (click to show/hide)

Stavros was at 1.47 necromancy and 1.79 vitamancy.
Basel was at 1.74 sound.
Phyreli was at 1.4 fire.
Alicia was at 2.05 plant.
Viusi was at 1.57 plant.

[Tomcost]

Maybe you made the game too mechanics focused, and that's why you didn't have any motivation?

I mean, doing a bunch of rolls and operations would make the game more of a chore than an enjoyable experience.

You know what? If you make something similar, I could make you a spreadsheet or something to automate most of the things, so that you can focus on writing.

[Nirur Torir]

Thanks, but I made one. The only real effort it needed was setting the library knowledge levels.

It still wasn't enough to keep me from losing interest in running a game 

[Tomcost]

I guess that then you should make characters that you can get attached to. I mean, not having such a high death chance (yes, 5% is high, I did the numbers and it averages to a 12 turns life expectancy. 12 turns is not enough for a longer game) could make you get more attached to the characters and maybe creating a story. The important part of running a forum game is actually creating a compelling story, the mechanics only help to do so.

Take for example this game. Stuff got more interesting once we knew that Basel had a girlfriend, and that we wanted to create some nice mushroom soup, which led us to ask the merchants about it, and opened for us the possibility to export them. Storytelling creates the mechanics, the GM just has to be impartial when doing the rolls.

[IronyOwl]

I'll agree that the rather grueling pace made it harder to get attached. This might or might not have been reflected in a lot of players' callous suggestion to solve our recruit issue by just meat grindering through them.

It might also be worth pointing out that sometimes death is the kind option. Having to deal with our head mage being a shambling fungal abomination might have been a reward rather than a punishment more interesting than cycling out leaders every four months. _{Say that helps with something else I've been considering...}

Still, fun game.