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Deliver report

(option for non-playas so they can see votes too ;v)

[GiglameshDespair]

Well, I feel reasonably secure in saying that me and sword are aiming for Chapter 3 slots.

[Criptfeind]

I dunno, swordstars character already has "is a spy" in her background, and there's a "is a spy" slot. That seems like a pretty natural fit. Heh heh, of course, is up to you guys wat to aim for, but the coincidence seems fortuitous.

[Akroma]

well, I can adjust for anything but the slot in chapter 5

[Haspen]

I dunno, swordstars character already has "is a spy" in her background, and there's a "is a spy" slot. That seems like a pretty natural fit. Heh heh, of course, is up to you guys wat to aim for, but the coincidence seems fortuitous.

dun worry the stabwoman has always 3 extra sheets ready accompanied by at least 6 mugs she made in her free time cuz she was bored ;v

[Swordstar]

Chap 3 is tempting yeah. So are 4&5 though, so I need to talk with some peeps and figure some stuff out. Also nope dun have any extra sheets or mugs this time around.

[Akroma]

so far, nobody has made any claim for chapter 5, so maybe go for that?

[Swordstar]

Nobody has made claim for anything really yet. So I just need to figure some details out.

[Swordstar]

Ok, yeah, leaning towards doing a split entrance with Gig where he goes for Ch3 and I go for Ch4. That may change based on other people's signups but that's basic idea right now.

[Haspen]

There are no claims, Akroma. People can talk stuff and 'claim' but I will still flip them the bird if I feel like it V:

All will be decided tomorrows.

[GiglameshDespair]

Aiming for chapter 3, but to be honest any chapter would probably work.

Alchemist sprite?
"Only the finest ingredients."

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Flora Brandt
Class: Priest Trainee -> Alchemist -> Heisenberg
Character Specific Skill: Fortune
Age: 23
Affinity:
Personal Fault: Negative Energy: -2 mag when using heal subcat
Personal Skill: Stimulant Herbs: When over 50% HP, +15 eva
Personal Skill:
 
Preferred stats: RES, LCK
 
Weapon profs: Staff (E)
 
Level: 1
Total Level: 1
 
Progression spent:
 
Base stats:

HP 15 (60%)
STR 2  (50%)
MAG 3 (50%)
SKL 1 (50%)
CON 3 (+2=5)
AID 2 (+2=4)
LUK 4 (10%)
DEF 1 (30%) (+2=3)
RES 6 (20%)
SPD 5 (60%)
MOV 4

Current Stats:


HP 15
STR 2
MAG 3
SKL 1
CON 5
AID 4
LUK 4
DEF 3
RES 6
SPD 5
MOV 4

Inv:

Bio:
The older daughter of a healer and military man, Flora was raised in a family that was rich in love but never wealthy. When she and her sister were 8 and 6 respectively, her mother was struck by an illness that rapidly took her life. In the span of a month, they went from a happy family to two lonely girls that barely saw their father. As they grew up, Flora viewed her sister as too pessimistic, and too willing to just... give up and let their mother be dead. Flora threw herself, despite her young age, into learning healing magic, only to find she didn't have the greatest of gifts for it, instead more capable of inflicting hexes.

Unwilling to back down, she supplemented the sisters' income gathering herbs, and researched the art of alchemy. Still, no luck; nothing she has found has been capable of bringing life to the dead. She has, however, heard of a mysterious substance called "dragonstone", rumoured to exist or have existed somewhere in the Overseasland. She has no real idea what it is, where to find it, or what it can do, but surely, if it exists, it might be the answer she is seeking.

When her sister was assigned to move to Overseasland, Flora came along with her, as the alternate option of leaving her little sister all alone in a foreign country - and one Flora wanted to go to, anyway - was abhorrent to her. With her sister's help, she obtained a position in the office of the Governor-General and Chief Advisor, making sure to keep an eye out as she fufilled her duties for information on new kinds of healing and stories on how to bring back the dead.

_{The sister of Iris Brandt}

[Swordstar]

Ok, going for Ch4.

Iris the fencer

Fencer sprite!

mug!

[Furtuka]

"I hate everything"

Altha Etlern

Resubmitting. Chapter 3 slots would work best.

[Gaterhyme]

Different thief, going for Chapter 3 or 5.


Sheet

[F.O.E.]

Archer Man

Goin' for either 3 or 5.

[Mopsy]

I don't know whether anyone still remembers or cares about this, but I want to at least try to clarify my position on the plans-vs-improv issue. I've grouped your quoted responses by their primary argument or question, as I understand it.

Why ever not keep people standing?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

• Are we going to be nice little automatons, making sure that no-one ever dies or even gets KO'ed if we can help it?

Why would we ever not want the bolded part?

making sure that no-one ever dies or even gets KO'ed if we can help it?

I don't know what being an automation has to do with it, but yes this is absolutely one of our top priorities.

Of course it's an important priority. What I'm saying is that it is not the only thing that matters. Players should be given leeway to "act their characters", too. A valorous knight should be allowed to make daring, somewhat reckless attacks, a cynical bandit should be allowed to put their own interests first, and so on. I don't know about you, but for me the game is about the interactions between characters and situations, not two blobs of grey goo (the Hatkittypenguin Masterbrain and the IRC Hivemind) systematically attempting to devour and assimilate each other.

How are PC deaths making the game more fun?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Or should we be allowed to play fast and loose, within reason, to keep things flowing and create a richer story?

I'm not sure what you mean by a richer story, the story isn't going to be enriched by us dying and failing, and afaik fire emblem games are pretty 'on rails' anyway.

• Are we going to be nice little automatons, making sure that no-one ever dies or even gets KO'ed if we can help it?

1. Because people living is such a terrible thing, right? Everyone needs to roleplay death drama, not to mention experience possible OOC drama as a result.

It's not that PC's getting battered is an end in itself. My point is that if we commit to always doing everything in our power to keep the PC's standing, then we severly limit the interaction between roleplay and gameplay. To strictly minimize the probabilities of KO's (and deaths), we need to carefully analyse and plan most turns OOC, then require all players to follow the plans we develop. That makes our roleplaying merely a veneer on predetermined actions.

What were you trying to do back there, anyway?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

When you decided not to heal the tank in the middle of the battle, I had assumed that it was because of priorities. If you're saying now that it wasn't a decision weighed by actual worth, but rather an effort to make the game harder for us or to kill Sieg too in some way that I can not understand make the story 'richer'. I have to say that idea is unpleasant to me. I don't agree that our healer refusing to heal or a character dying because of their allies selfish choices in battle make for a good story, at least in a vacuum.

Arnold was concerned about his healing staff QL IC. I think people assumed the reason you chose not to heal Sieg was due to this IC concern, but also that the IC concern originated from an OOC concern about staff QL. BMM clearly intended to address the OOC concern specifically by saying that staff QL was not a problem. It was assumed that Arnold would probably then no longer have IC concerns about it, either. Would he? For example, has Captain Astleich suggested that replacements will be hard to come by? If you can reason this out, then by all means have a friendly debate about whether it makes sense for him to not heal Sieg due to IC reasons.

Anyway, without having IC concerns, it was assumed that Arnold would then heal, since it would be unfathomable for him (being a healer) not to heal for no reason. So you were told to heal. Yes, it could probably have been phrased differently, such as the difference between "you can go ahead and heal Sieg since staff QL isn't an issue" and "heal Sieg, staff QL isn't an issue." Still the same general point, though.

First of all, let me make clear that I wasn't trying to get Siegfried killed, or even KO'ed. He still had more than 50% HP, and it would take at least two hits to knock him out. I was concerned about staff quality, because Swordstar had told me that it was kind of a big deal. I also saw it as a good opportunity to do something that reflected the stress that Arnold was under, being in his first, entirely unexpected, battle.

Well, sometimes OOC planning and coordination is good.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

As far as choosing how planning should go right now, that's not really a feasible idea to decide right now. A perfect example is fef5 right now. At the start, difficulty seemed not terrible to the point where super ultra planning wasn't needed. This rapidly changed. Even now this last map started out seeming like a simple flee map, but very rapidly turned into murder fest. So saying now "Do we want to plan every move out or just do whatever we want or maybe just plan occasionally?" isn't too helpful since it will rapidly change depending on the situation in the moment.

However, other people have already made better points than after-work me can, but the "paranoid micromanagement" comes from difficult to deal with situations that leave people either dead or reeeeeally pushing the death clock. As a GM, my FEF isn't overly difficult and as such hardly requires planning; but if there is planning, it's usually when there's risk of people dying.

• Or is there some third way that is the best of both worlds?

3. Play it by ear. If things look sticky, make a plan, discuss the plan, etc. If someone does something that probably isn't in their, or the group's (FEF is a group game after all) best interests, tell them about your concerns, create a discussion.

Plus, not planning in a strategy game based on a demonically hard strategy game with a GM infamous for murdering the fuck out of us is just ASKING for our whole party to be wiped and for us to have to pull a Genealogy and start over again with the kids we totally had before we all got murdered the fuck out of.

I agree that OOC planning has its uses. I've been engaging in quite a lot of it myself. However, I don't think players who choose to do their own thing should be treated as fools or saboteurs (unless their moves are clearly disruptive) and I don't think the GM should ramp up the difficulty to the point where players are forced to micromanage or be wiped out. There's lots of give-and-take needed there, of course, both player-to-player and player-to-GM. I recognize that it's not always easy to get it right. We should still try, though.

Well, sometimes character-based moves are good, but not always.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Or is there some third way that is the best of both worlds?

If you're talking about the idea of chaos and individualism vs a thought out mathematical group agreement I think that is a spectrum anyway that we're clearly going to fall somewhere in the middle of no matter how we play it.

Re: paranoid micromanagement, characters would likely tend to band together when things get tough and try to figure out a solution that gets the most allies out alive anyway. In an ideal world I imagine you'd RP this out - shouting out to each other and forming a battle plan. Given time constraints and players' busy lives, OOC plans are often the closest you're likely to get. If a character would refuse to follow part of an "optimal" plan because of roleplaying reasons... I'd personally be all for that, with the IC consequences that might follow. Perhaps they're hot-headed and they rush into the battle before a plan is even put together. But even that is less likely in a tough situation since lives would be on the line and they'd probably tend to be more aware of the consequences of just rushing in. In most cases, if you're doing something without specific RP reasons and times are tough enough to warrant somebody having put together a plan in the first place, I don't see why you would object to following the plan.

• Or should we be allowed to play fast and loose, within reason, to keep things flowing and create a richer story?

2. You're clearly glorifying this option as if it's the end-all-be-all and it really irks me for some reason. Probably because you're acting as if it isn't situational and people are free to discuss plans. Don't deal in absolutes, dude.

As stated in my answers above, I agree with you. I might have come off as pushing for complete FEF anarchy, but that's because I thought a dissenting voice was needed. It seemed to me that people were starting to treat total compliance with The Plan in all situations as a requirement for playing.

Why were you making digs at BMM?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Not sure if I'm even gonna be a player in this FEF but I definitely think you're overreacting. Also, nice shot at BMM, stay classy.

I wasn't trying to insult or blame anything on BMM. I was referring to other FEF's that BMM is in (FEF5 in particular) as examples of the consequences of excessive micromanagement (and the underlying refusal to accept any kind of failure or loss), without saying it was his, or anybody's, fault.

If we plan too much, the GM will retaliate with impossible maps.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

However, Haspen's FEFs are notoriously difficult and one fuck up can lead to a whole slew of problems that result in death and (i'd like to believe) that FEF as a community likes to keep people alive and in the game as opposed to dead and sitting in the OOC for a year, maybe longer, so they tend to get more management. Or, as you call it, "paranoid micromanagement". (Not really sure why it being "paranoid" is a bad thing when stuff like FEF5's current situation is a thing).

However, that leads to stuff like the current chapter in FEF5 where he throws basically the impossible at us and expects us to overcome it because of planning being a thing. Or, at least, that's what it feels like to me.

Yes! That is an important part of the issue. Like I said in my first reply to BMM, I've been concerned about this arms race between FEF players and GM for some time now. There are many ways to play a game, but personally I'd rather take part in an engaging interactive story than come up with far-fetched plans to get out of unavoidable traps.

For example, compare the first six chapters of FEF1 to the first six chapters of FEF5. Which of them tell the more compelling story? I say that FEF1 is more interesting, at least partially because it is a little chaotic and gives more space for characterization and side-stories. And this chaos does not make rules and gameplay irrelevant. It doesn't degenerate into freeform roleplay.

The GM is running the show, so we have to play their way.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Then we'll know what kind of game people actually want to play.

Not to like, discredit this, but that won't really change anything, IMO. Mainly because I feel like GMs will run their game how they want regardless.

In the end they will, yes. I'm still hoping that productive dialogue is possible. Perhaps this thread is not the best place, though. If I return to these issues, I'll probably try bringing them up for general debate in the hub thread.

Edit: Added forgotten "in".
Edit 2: Spoilered all the big quotes and answers.