Heroica RPG General Discussion

[samurai-turtle]

On 10/9/2017 at 1:52 AM, KotZ said:

I remember there being talk of a sci-fi version, and I definitely will participate in whatever comes after Heroica, but man, the fatigue is no joke.

I believe it was mostly from @Lind Whisperer plus a few others. (Odd thing I think he was around a few days ago snooping around and seen how quiet and said nothing.) 

On 10/9/2017 at 10:04 AM, Waterbrick Down said:

Yeah, QMing really is demanding. Unlike a traditional RPG where there are resources for DM's to use, Heroica QM's are required to come up with and balance custom monsters, abilities, treasure, on top of the story. There are no pre-written modules in this game. 

I thought this game was a simplified D&D game. I would think it would be easy to modify an "app" I seen in the Google play store. 

On 10/9/2017 at 11:55 AM, Waterbrick Down said:

All comes down to system, because there is so much customization of builds within Heroica, it is difficult to prescribe a system for encounter design. The closest thing we have to that is the Fields of Glory and even then with predefined monsters, it can still be difficult trying to figure out how many to send against a party.

I thought most of that stuff was done at random with dice rolls. 

23 hours ago, UsernameMDM said:

I know you and a couple other QMs had actual formulas for this, but the main problem with encounter design was the OP PCs.  I think that is the problem that needs to be focused on.  I couldn't imagine trying to QM for Hoke.

It kinda makes me wonder if you ever done any sort of Dungeon Master(ing). 

20 hours ago, Kintobor said:

When Immune to All Negative Effects started to roll out, I know a lot of people were miffed, particularly debuff spell casters like myself.

That sort of stuff should only be used for the "final boss". But it makes me think maybe the effects should be sub-categorize like for mental & physical. Heck we could do that for the elements to, like energy & physical. 

[Rider Raider]

3 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

I thought most of that stuff was done at random with dice rolls. 

Where the hell did you get that idea? No.

3 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

It kinda makes me wonder if you ever done any sort of Dungeon Master(ing). 

Seriously? He's been here way longer than you, he has better knowledge of the rules of this game than you. You have no right to insult his understanding of the way encounter design, or how an op pc wrecks encounters. (Hell, he plays an op pc! He should know that way better than you!)

3 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

That sort of stuff should only be used for the "final boss". But it makes me think maybe the effects should be sub-categorize like for mental & physical. Heck we could do that for the elements to, like energy & physical. 

I agree with the first part, but I think the rest would make the game too complex, which is definitely something we should avoid.

[samurai-turtle]

3 hours ago, Rider Raider said:

Where the hell did you get that idea? No.

Seriously? He's been here way longer than you, he has better knowledge of the rules of this game than you. You have no right to insult his understanding of the way encounter design, or how an op pc wrecks encounters. (Hell, he plays an op pc! He should know that way better than you!)

@Rider Raider I don't know what your problem is with me. Is it you just don't get my "tone" some times?  

For the first part, I am sure you definitely don't know. But someone who actually run the Fields of Glory tell us better. Now where I got the idea for the FoG is from my runs threw the dungeon. I will use the dire wolves (I am not sure of the spelling) for an example, now I am thinking they can appears three or four areas but they are not always at said areas. 

As for @UsernameMDM or Hoke I actually quested with the guy. And he was at level 50 where my character is at level 20. Besides I only asked him that question because I thought he was like @Asphalt where he did quest mastering out side of here before he started in this game or something similar. 

[Rider Raider]

Alright, thanks for clearing that up. You are exactly right, I got your tone wrong. I apologize.

Just for the record, I have no problem with you, it's just a combination of my grammar naziism and me assuming the worst in people (I thought that instead of asking @UsernameMDM a legitimate question, you were making a remark, implying that he is wrong and inexperienced about OP PCs because he may not have DM'd before. It's obvious to me now, but it wasn't at the time. Thank you for clearing that up.)

[UsernameMDM]

8 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

It kinda makes me wonder if you ever done any sort of Dungeon Master(ing). 

Yes, and I still can't imagine running a quest for Hoke.

[Flipz]

Guess I'll throw my own two cents in.

For me, personally, a lot of my leaving came down to bad timing and fatigue.  Heroica is a lot of work to run, and even if I stepped back and tried to just be a player (which I honestly felt guilty about due to the lack of quests), that took a lot of work, too, between trying to juggle compelling story and character development with not hijacking the QM's quest AND maintaining mechanical competence (which in retrospect was most definitely not helped by my minmaxing, oops :blush:).  It got to a point where playing the game felt like work AND never really paid off anymore, and at that point why play?

To go into a few more specifics, update speed was a HUGE problem on both sides of the coin.  For players, it's infuriating--in this kind of system, you can do pretty much nothing without the QM hopping in to respond, and QM response times were globally getting longer and longer and longer.  Back in the day, we as players managed to fill that blank space with compelling character interaction, but after six years most of the surviving characters knew pretty much everything there was to know about each other, or if the characters didn't we as players did and were running out of new ways to re-explore those same character components in interesting ways with new character combinations.  On the QM side, however, it's incredibly stressful to try and build enough content fast enough to satisfy a party of ravenous players, particularly ones as meaty and plot-throwing as ours tended to be.  Most notably, the requirement to provide visual sets made it very hard to improvise, even when we genuinely liked the direction the players are taking our plot and would like to rework.

There was also some bad timing in terms of story events that hit me in particular way too hard.  I think the phrase "2016 sucked" and a vague gesture at the faction event is all that needs to be said on that subject.

If I were to offer suggestions--well, I offered a few in private at the time, but it's been almost a year since I've been around (and definitely more than a year since I've been invested), so my perspective may have shifted.

1.) More generic sets.  Hear me out, one of the things that tore me apart when I was working on my planed duology was how few set images were reusable.  I combed through the Baltarok trilogy looking for pics that only showed scenery and possibly a few generic NPCs, but the vast majority included characters who would be either not present in my own Quest or even worse outright dead.  While the photography of the characters in those scenes was amazing and cinematic and definitely improved the storytelling of the trilogy, it also left me up a creek for trying to revisit those locations and recreate those sets; even just a dedicated set of "sets only" pics uploaded to the wiki after the Quest's conclusion would have helped me so much as a QM who's not good at setbuilding.

2.) Deliberate plot hooks left to other QMs.  While I greatly appreciate the respect we all showed each other in terms of not messing with each other's plots and characters and ideas without permission, unfortunately I don't think we did enough asking, so as a result when a QM left or went on hiatus in between Quests, there were tons of dangling plot hooks and characters and stories left completely hanging outside of the odd non-consequential cameo.  The best example of this is Sandy; we all used his characters and settings as springboards for our own, but it wasn't until near the end of the game that he started handing out "major" developments to other QMs, and so once he left we were all left with...basically nothing, because no one was willing to risk trying to build off of those only to produce an inferior successor.  I think if we as QMs had more consciously created plot threads and then deliberately handed them off to our peers to develop and share back with us, it would have created a much better environment for being able to handle absences and hiatuses, where if one person vanishes (as is wont to happen on the internet), another is there to pick up the slack.  Heck, even just having collaborations of multiple QMs on a single Quest would work wonders in reducing the QM workload.

3.) QM rewards.  Plain and simple, QMing is a ton of work for little real benefit other than admiration and praise for the art you've produced.  The one quantifiable QM reward, a second character slot, is literally just more work piled on top for you to deal with (see: playing is hard work too).  That's not a viable system; implementing some sort of rewards program, allowing QMs' PCs to advance even just somewhat while they're too busy QM-ing to play, would go a long way towards freeing up QMs to QM.  (Pathfinder and D&D both do this with their organized play programs, and to great success from what I can tell, so it's definitely possible to do without overdoing it.)

4.) Character slots.  I get why we were limited to a single character at first.  It didn't really work out.  The permanence and finality of such a limit made even considering making a new character a huge burden to consider, having to weigh the risks of future potential for a character versus the fatigue you have from writing them continuously for half a freaking decade with no break.  Have I really squeezed the last ounce of blood from this stone?  Is a future Quest going to pop up where I'm going to regret no longer having my original character to play for a returning relationship?  How annoying and tedious is it going to be to build up a new character to even a fraction of the mechanical playability I have now?  Is this idea for a new character even going to be worth playing in a couple of months, or am I just trying to blow off creative steam while I try to get over character 1's writer's block--oh wait, shoot, character 1 is gone now even though playing this new character gave me a ton of ideas for my first one, oh well, guess I'm boned.   For a sequel I'd suggest at least two characters per player to start, possibly up to four.  Still have a max cap (I'd say no more than six even with expansions), and still have that cap expand with progression (so maybe start with one slot and then earn a new one every ten levels?), but let players have room to try something different; this might also help deal with the way that power tended to concentrate in the hands of a few key characters (*cough*Arthur*cough*) since now players will want to distribute some of those absurd spoils across their roster and, because of their diverse roster, will now have a diversified set of mechanical interests to be on the hunt for.

5.) "Day Zero" sessions.  This is sort of a weird thing to suggest, and not exactly the most practical thing for the format used here, but remember how awesome Zepher and Endgame quests were in terms of grabbing players' plot hooks and hooking them directly into the Quest's own plot?  Having a dedicated period of time between Hall departure and Quest start to work stuff like that out would be awesome, and doing it early would help give QMs/QM teams more time to adjust future plans to make use of them.

6.) Roleplaying sections in the character profile blocks.  I know, weird suggestion, but it would work wonders in indicating to players that the game is about roleplaying just as much as it is stats and inventory management.  (Personally I'm also a fan of 5e's flaws and motives system and how it grants mechanical advantage to good roleplaying, but I'm not sure it would function properly in this environment.)

 

All right, that's everything that was big enough it managed to stick with me even after deliberately (mostly) ignoring Heroica for nearly a year.  Now let me go find my old complaints and see if I still agree with them.

(*Reads PM* ...oh cute, I was still presenting as male. Lemme just fix that... xD)

On 12/18/2016 at 3:38 PM, Flipz said:

Problems:

One BIG problem has been the emphasis on presentation over actually presenting stuff.  As the quality of builds/renders/Photoshop has increased exponentially, it's put tremendous pressure on those of us QMing to try and live up to this standard, resulting in more and more time spent on prep instead of on Questing.

This leads in to the next biggest problem, inflexibility.  Previously, we had something of a "yes, and" approach to worldbuilding, which resulted in players building lore off of Quests which in turn resulted in Quests built off of player lore which resulted in more player lore built off of those Quests...you see the cycle of expansion.  If a player chose to do something, the QM would have to improvise, and often the improvisation produced better results than the planned Quest elements they replaced--there was respect both ways.  Over time, however, we've moved to a more video game-y setup, where players are basically ferried between cutscenes and battles, and deviation from the railroad tracks is met with a hasty redirect back to The Plan at best or an outright "no you don't" at worst.  Quests are no longer collaborative storytelling, where the players' choices and responses mean as much to the story as the QM's contributions, and are more about showing off a pre-planned cinematic story experience to a small audience that has numbers attached.  (Heck, part of the reason I worked to hard to become so overpowered was so that I can blow through the battles without really paying attention and get back to the actual meat of roleplaying, though obviously that's backfired massively and resulted in me being The Stats Guy Gal.)

Update speed is the other deadly sin.  Back in the day, I could go to a 2-3 hour college class and come back to 2-3 pages of conversations and interactions.  Now that I have (well, had) more free time to interact with the game, I was lucky to see a post a day in the game.  The 24-hour rule was meant to be an upper limit to stimulate QM and player activity; instead, it's now the bare minimum.  It kills the pace of the story, and it's killing the game.

*snipping situational whining*

 

Improvements:

Honestly, one thing that would help a LOT is bringing in builders.  I have no doubts that a lot of players in Heroica have plenty of stories to tell, but without builders who can work to the standards of, say, Pie or Sandy, or even Endgame in the LDD realm, their ability to tell stories has been heavily hampered.  Run a couple of building contests to bring in new building blood, and I think Heroica might find itself back in business.

Another possible idea is bringing in something that both D&D and Pathfinder do for their public play organizations: QM rewards programs.  Basically, people who QM earn reward points they can spend on various rewards, resources, and services for their personal player characters, as sort of a compensation for not being able to play their characters as often as the players do.  We sort-of have that with the 5-Quests-to-Character-2 system, but IMO it should be expanded; even something as simple as "hosting a Quest earns you X amount of Glory Points for the PC of your choice" would do wonders (or well, it would if the Fields shop was freely open without having to finish a Fields run first, but you get the idea).

And again, an emphasis on improvisation.  One thing that might help is a reduction in scale; right now, almost all Quests are these massive, epic affairs.  That's untenable for hosts and players alike; a return to the shorter, sweeter Quests would help a lot in boosting activity, and in reducing QM burnout.

 

Just some loose thoughts, and I'm not even sure how effective they'd be.  If I thought I could fix this game, I'd be staying, but frankly when I have to force myself to even look at the game, when I dread opening LDD or picking up a camera and some bricks, when I can't even bring myself to care about my characters and the situations they're in because they're just going to get dragged along a prearranged plotline anyway, I know it's time for me to move on.  I might check in in a year or two, see how things are working out, but for me Heroica's already dead within my heart, and with how stressful real life has been for me for all of 2016 and will continue to be in 2017 and beyond, I just can't afford to drag it along with me in hopes that it'll revive.

 

--Flipz

I guess the only thing I'd add after this is a personal failing as a QM.  For all the Quest ideas and plans I had built up, I tried really, really hard to keep things a surprise from even my fellow QMs because I wanted to take their PCs on Quests and show off what cool things I could do.  The problem that comes from that, of course, is that I ended up cutting myself off from a lot of advice and support that could have reduced the strain of QM-ing.  In the RPGs I've played since, I've found that we've been a lot more chill about respecting spoilers and sort of working together to build up for big payoffs, and I think if I'd been a little more open in my plotting with the folks here, I might not have burned out quite so badly.  I still don't think I would have avoided the burnout entirely, or even have managed to push out the Quest I was working on (I'll happily spill all the details in the QM Lounge at some point if enough folks are interested), but I think my leaving might have been on happier terms.

If folks want to pick up my plot threads to use in the finale, I've already passed "ownership" of Arthur as an NPC on to Zepher, and since Endgame seems to be around I'll go ahead and publicly hand Miirym to him.  Diana belongs to KotZ now (or WBD if you'd rather keep potential for Kiray-Diana interaction), and I think with that all the characters of mine who had any significant potential now have new homes.  Best of luck with the finale, and do drop me a PM once it starts--I'll happily read along in silence, even if I'm no longer actively participating.

P.S. still hate the new post editor, playing RotR in the old editor on BZP has spoiled me. xD

[Waterbrick Down]

3 hours ago, Flipz said:

...Great Post...

Thanks Flipz and yes, you along with others have shared many of the things that I think led to wrapping up of this enterprise. I've got a lot more to add, but I'm going to save it for when this thing really wraps up, Zepher, JimBee, and I discussed all of the issues quite a bit of how to potentially bring Heroica back, but I think we all were of the same opinion privately that there wasn't much hope in that and that the least we could do was offer some fun for those who were still with that. That all being said, I do want to give this a proper ending, if nothing else this thing that we all created is deserving of that, hence why I am taking my good time in making sure it's done right.

[KotZ]

4 hours ago, Flipz said:

Extensive, in depth well thought post

You're back! Kind of! Great to see some thoughts from you as well. I think you've made some great points that I don't disagree with for the most part. I think going forward, be it just in the finale or another game, we should take a look at the criticism of Heroica and try to fix them.

[Palathadric]

Hey, Flipz! Nice to see that you're still somewhat around.  

Yeah, I think the faction event really didn't work out well, unfortunately.

[Waterbrick Down]

3 hours ago, Palathadric said:

Hey, Flipz! Nice to see that you're still somewhat around.  

Yeah, I think the faction event really didn't work out well, unfortunately.

There was potential, I think the way the game developed though, the characters had greater loyalties to other Heroica members than to the factions.

[samurai-turtle]

8 hours ago, Palathadric said:

Yeah, I think the faction event really didn't work out well, unfortunately.

I think the problem with it was @Sandy started it out but then left. And no one know what to do with it. All he ever did with it was have a "king" vote. You could say the same thing about the Decimon-card stuff only one event was ever held and then nothing else happens. 

5 hours ago, Waterbrick Down said:

There was potential, I think the way the game developed though, the characters had greater loyalties to other Heroica members than to the factions.

Not surprising, you guys tried. But then people seem to be leaving at that time. But if I had  describe the "houses" they are like the Corp Bosses. They say they care about you but, deep down (you know) they only care about making money. 

[Zepher]

Yeah quests take way too long to update. As for me, it got to the point where the battles were nearly impossible to calculate in under an hour, and I just didn't want to/have the time in my life to spend an hour every day doing math. I also moved and do not have the space, currently, for my LEGO. Which is sad, but also makes running quests near impossible.

 

I would love to see some finale and would be happy to try to contribute. I'm also not opposed to some 2.0 game. I have some mechanics kicking around both of how to make leveling up fun but not game breaking too fast, and how to make it so the burden of the story doesn't fall on any one person. But first we wrap this up, and then see where we go from there. 

[Waterbrick Down]

Coming soon!

[KotZ]

Oooh fun!

[Kintobor]

 

I can't believe it's almost over. 

[UsernameMDM]

On 10/19/2017 at 12:46 AM, Kintobor said:

 

I can't believe it's almost over. 

Bittersweet for sure.

Hoke will be there, if he is chosen.

[Palathadric]

Same for Pretzel.

...Though Petaldan is already on a quest, so I wouldn't want to take somebody else's spot.

[StickFig]

On 10/20/2017 at 6:43 PM, UsernameMDM said:

Hoke will be there, if he is chosen.

On 10/21/2017 at 1:37 PM, Palathadric said:

Same for Pretzel.

...Though Petaldan is already on a quest, so I wouldn't want to take somebody else's spot.

Matthias, well, he's on a quest already, but it will be sad to miss out.

Something else I think we should all realize though: a lot of us have gained a few years in real life while we've played this game together. I'm a relative newcomer compared to not just a few of you, and Matthias will mark four years in November (truiy, thanks to you all for making it wonderful)! But all things come to an end; when I started Matthias I was a young man with too much free time; I'm a dad now, and kiddo two is only a few months away - I'm far from the only one whose life has changed so radically. We have grown up. I raise a glass of cider (Matthias' favorite) to you all.

[Palathadric]

Wow! Just checked and in February it will be 6 years of Pretzel's presence in Heroica.  

Combined, Pretzel and Petaldan have participated in 20 quests and 3 Fields of Glory runs.

...And I have only hosted one quest. 

[Waterbrick Down]

21 hours ago, StickFig said:

Matthias, well, he's on a quest already, but it will be sad to miss out.

Something else I think we should all realize though: a lot of us have gained a few years in real life while we've played this game together. I'm a relative newcomer compared to not just a few of you, and Matthias will mark four years in November (truiy, thanks to you all for making it wonderful)! But all things come to an end; when I started Matthias I was a young man with too much free time; I'm a dad now, and kiddo two is only a few months away - I'm far from the only one whose life has changed so radically. We have grown up. I raise a glass of cider (Matthias' favorite) to you all.

Right there with you. Since I started in Heroica, I started dating my wife, graduated college, got a job in my field, married my wife, and have had my first kid. Lots have happened in the lives of our membership and I'm not surprised how things have changed. 

[Flipz]

...where was this back when I was trying to host Quests???

So yeah, if Heroica ever gets a successor, try making sets in chunks like those and pop a bunch of LDD builds of 'em on a communal file-hosting site, ideally with links to them indexed on the wiki.  Would save future QMs a *ton* of time and energy.

*vanishes again*

[wiz]

Damn it, I just had an idea for a quest that uses pieces that I actually have, but it's too late to host it.  

[samurai-turtle]

12 hours ago, Asphalt said:

OOC:  Vindsval earns tripple experience, did the loot list include the loot not handed out in the last battle in our rush to leave?

 

Call me crazy but I don't think you handed it out. I guess that "gold chalice" was to dam distracting. 

On 10/28/2017 at 2:44 PM, wiz said:

Damn it, I just had an idea for a quest that uses pieces that I actually have, but it's too late to host it.  

You could still set it up, even if you don't use it for for this game...

I am a little confused is this game going to continue, or is it going to be a version 2 for Heroica. 

On 10/27/2017 at 6:43 AM, Flipz said:

...where was this back when I was trying to host Quests???

So yeah, if Heroica ever gets a successor, try making sets in chunks like those and pop a bunch of LDD builds of 'em on a communal file-hosting site, ideally with links to them indexed on the wiki.  Would save future QMs a *ton* of time and energy.

*vanishes again*

I would like to add something to this, how about a bunch generic characters for each faction, like guards or thieves (you know like Stormtroopers). 

[wiz]

4 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

I am a little confused is this game going to continue, or is it going to be a version 2 for Heroica. 

I think the finale (which was teased by waterbrick down a few posts ago) will be the last quest for 1.0, but I could be wrong.

[Waterbrick Down]

10 hours ago, wiz said:

I think the finale (which was teased by waterbrick down a few posts ago) will be the last quest for 1.0, but I could be wrong.

That is kind of the intention. We're limping along at this stage and I figured I'd give it something of a wrap up for those who have stuck with it for this long. I'm not sure what the plan is afterward. I know all new games need the approval of the Games Moderator and if something were to replace Heroica I'd like to see a good amount of time spent in development to build on the learnings of Heroica.