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Elle

[Feedback] Keeper Events

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So, I've noticed that player's characters have been acting... nonchalant and snappy, or ya' know 'oh lovely this shit again'. As someone whose been a player far more then a DM, it felt familiar seeing such things from a character. So, I've asked around in the community a little bit to see if it was just my perception, or rather that maybe the current Keeper team(myself included) have gone a tad overboard with the amount of big magical and bad things happening.

 

So, my question is rather simple do players feel that the amount of magical/'BBEG'/combat focused or such events is too much? Please, feel free to leave any feedback here. If the community thinks there is a problem, we should hear about it so we can adjust. I know myself that actually having Keeper powers, you can lose the perspective of a player and go crazy.

 

Again, this specific thread isn't about event -quality- but -quantity- and -diversity- of types of events keepers have been doing.

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there are too many antagonists (or villainous protagonists, i guess technically) which spring out of nowhere, have unrelatable or unestablished motivations, and possess incontestable power until it's time to fight them, and then vanish again with little consequence. i'd like to see more mundane adversaries, and adversaries who are more 'human' and relatable. like, there's a reason that superman's most iconic villain is lex luthor, instead of doomsday.

i'd like to see storylines which are less about 'big bad appears, everything threatened, band together and fight,' but by the same token, part of that is on the players to instigate. like for instance, mel and tim are trying to start up a coalition of all the crafters and gatherers among the playerbase and haytham's uncle's faction, to start a 'trade war' with silver-eye to end their monopoly and force them to deal fairly with everyone or starve. there's a wealth of interesting yet 'mundane' and personal conflict and narrative to be found there if a GM wants to, from intrigue to diplomacy to battle and so on, and it's player-instigated, if not necessarily player-driven entirely.

the best stand-offs aren't the ones where you're literally powerless to destroy the villain, they're the ones where you're figuratively powerless to do so. an invincible enemy is boring; an enemy who has you in 'moral checkmate' is compelling.

(copypasted from earlier discord convo)

edit (adding another thought):
to be fair, i'd also like to see storylines which are inverted from the normal power structure. instead of 'what do we do against X powerful/important thing,' it might be interesting to see storylines about 'what do we do with X powerful/important thing?' though that can take some serious consideration to keep reined in. the thing with the various crystal shards with minor powers was a neat example of this.

Edited by aprettybigdeal
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I'm currently in the progress of sorta kick-starting some more player initiative stuff but I think at the moment there is (as APBD put it) too much going on:

 

1.) Kolai

2.) Twilight's Hammer

3.) Eredar demoness

4.) Volcano going overload

 

And thats not to mention the defunct / dead / dying storylines that could really do with a wrap up:

 

1.) Blood of Opej Gems (I know quite a lot of players still have these in their inventories, the Black Golem is supposely powered by one)

2.) The Nightmare (Still got a fragment of it on Gruk)

3.) Sotoras (What have they been doing in the meantime?)

4.) Kolai (Not much happening bar that recent thing posted by Ingired)

 

I think what folks need to realize is that there is -still- only a small number of players on US with a great many having not returned / not interested. A brief chat with a decent few has led me to realize that the talk of 'Ice Island' is fairly common knowledge now and quite a lot of folks are simply waiting for this change in scenery.

In addition when you have the player base more or less split between Opej and Menhirs you basically have two 'sets' of storylines going on.

Further to this, I think the eternal tie in with the 'Old Gods' still needs to tone down a bit. I get that in retail they are ultimately the 'BBEG' and 99% of bad shit happening can be led back to them but it doesn't have to be that way. I'm sincirely hoping that this 'four horseman' stuff happening now is something unrelated and completely it's own separate entity in terms of 'evildoer'. That having been said whilst I do like the look of the four horsemen as a 'standalone' threat, APBD has got a good point in highlighting the lack of 'mundane' villains.

The one reason I liked the Opej Crystals storyline is because it put the threat of them in the hands of players: they were only really problematic when players started using them recklessly (which they usually do, a lot of us play careless characters!) and that is where the threat came from: players.

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I wholeheartedly agree with the aforementioned posts. To add to them, I feel like there's too much "world ending band together now to fight this powerful person/being" threat thing going on to the point where it actually becomes kind of annoying when you're trying to do something else like hold a simple conversation. At often times I find myself with far too many plots to pursue and none of them deliver satisfying conclusions, only lead to more of the same thing - as if they are purposefully meant to be done that way.

Either way, you can only see so much spooky crap before it loses its value and just becomes a regular thing, which is kinda what it has become right now on the Doldrums. I'm not sure if that's supposed to be intentional, I personally would rather have meaningful interactions as opposed to something that becomes a regular occurrence e.g different hallows end horsemen popping up every day as opposed to maybe once every so often.

Why not introduce more 'regular' threats? Kind of like I don't know murlocs blocking the road to x/y or maybe refugees becoming tired of being pushed around band together and make their own settlement somewhere in the jungle which collapses into a crazy sacrificial cannibalistic society or something. You can't tell me all refugees are a waste of space and dumbasses, there has to be at least one person amongst them willing to be proactive in their own survival.

TL;DR less world ending stuff, more 'normal' threats like bandits etc; I did like the whole slavery thing going on in Silver-Eye we were investigating before all the other world ending stuff overtook it all and ever since then it's been left under the shelf because there's too much "big evil stronk villain that wants to kill you and everything you own" going on.

Edited by Scorpio
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^------- Scorpio's hit the nail on the head here.

There's been quite a few times i've been wanting to do other events however because there's been a 'world ending' sort of apocalypse around the corner, everything else has naturally had to go on hold because it makes no sense ICly to go do minor tasks when there's something so big about to occur.

It would be nice to see more common stuff happen. I believe there was mention a while ago of more self-determination amongst NPCs whereby they start springing up their own settlements and stuff?

 

I mean take for example Tent Town and Egtown? How do the two communicate / exchange goods at all? I wouldn't mind betting now with the Sand Reaver threat gone there would be trials of refugees taking the beach (safest rout) to go between these two towns either to trade goods or simply to communicate with friends & family. As a natural and organic result of this perhaps have a small refugee 'outpost' appear half-way between the two that starts to ask players for help dealing with local issues? (IE: they are next to the sea but have little drinking water, bring them X10 fresh water and X other goods to make a water filtration system?)

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