Heroica RPG General Discussion

[samurai-turtle]

On 8/30/2018 at 8:50 PM, Sir Orion said:

P.S I really liked how your character looked in Heroica!

Thanks, I was trying to make him darkly dressed, but at the same time put in some color to break it up. 

 

Not to get to personal, but is @Asphalt going to be OK? He list his location as North Carolina and wasn't Hurricane Florence going to hit that area? 

[samurai-turtle]

6 minutes ago, Lord Duvors said:

(I don't have time to complete this tonight, so I'll be editing this post tomorrow to add the rest. Please try not to create ten new pages full of text walls while I'm gone okay? Bye.)

Don't worry it won't be ten pages, it will be twenty to thirty pages.  

7 minutes ago, Lind Whisperer said:

OoC: But I like text walls...  

You know I think some of your comments should be in a different thread(s).  If you tap the + next to the quote button, you can easily quote something in another thread (i.e. like I am doing here). Maybe you should try it and see what happens. 

[Duvors]

18 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

Don't worry it won't be ten pages, it will be twenty to thirty pages.  

Well, I suppose I was tempting fate there.

[Palathadric]

So...I don't get it. Should Petaldan go ahead and use his Smoke Bomb or is everyone else going to hang around anyway?

[Flipz]

1 hour ago, Palathadric said:

So...I don't get it. Should Petaldan go ahead and use his Smoke Bomb or is everyone else going to hang around anyway?

I'm...not sure, actually.

Oh, and speaking of the Tiger Balm thing, it 100% should work on Lady Luck; the Tiger Balm doesn't *remove* the effect in the sense that a Neutralizer would, it grants her immunity to all effects positive and negative.  To put it another way, it doesn't take the *Permanently Lucky* away, it just prevents her from being affected by it, just like a permanently-Hastened Hero would be unable to be Hastened while wielding that one high-WP axe Brickdoctor dropped that makes the wielder *Immune to Hastened*.

EDIT: found the quote:

On 4/4/2018 at 11:51 AM, Waterbrick Down said:

QM Note: Just so there is no confusion, Tiger Balming Lady Luck will not get rid of Lucky or Nimble. They are permanent effects as long as she has those artifacts equipped, just like Dyric's Lucky Die. You'll be able to get rid of the Encouraged effect, but that's all. Also, just so no one unnecessarily worries, if anyone dies, they're not out of the quest, I do have something planned out. 

 

Yeah, this is a definite misinterpretation of the way permanent effects work.  Using a Tiger Balm on Dyric would 100% prevent his Lucky Die from making him Lucky, so the same would 100% hold true for Lady Luck.

 

EDIT 2: ...also I have some serious concerns about myself that I instantly recognized that rules error as such, despite not having actively obsessed over Heroica the way I used to in almost two years...

Edited September 15, 2018 by Flipz

[Waterbrick Down]

1 hour ago, Flipz said:

Yeah, this is a definite misinterpretation of the way permanent effects work.  Using a Tiger Balm on Dyric would 100% prevent his Lucky Die from making him Lucky, so the same would 100% hold true for Lady Luck.

 

EDIT 2: ...also I have some serious concerns about myself that I instantly recognized that rules error as such, despite not having actively obsessed over Heroica the way I used to in almost two years...

I'd agree it's a definite misinterpretation on my part. The intention is that she is inherently lucky no matter the circumstance, consumable or not, I can go modify her stats so that it's clear that a Tiger Balm won't work on her if you'd like.

[Flipz]

58 minutes ago, Waterbrick Down said:

I'd agree it's a definite misinterpretation on my part. The intention is that she is inherently lucky no matter the circumstance, consumable or not, I can go modify her stats so that it's clear that a Tiger Balm won't work on her if you'd like.

I mean, the whole point of the Tiger Balm is it being a dual-edged sword; on Heroes it's fantastic protection against negative effects at the cost of not being able to use positive ones as a crutch, while using it on enemies nullifies their positive effects at the cost of not being able to inflict negative effects on them.  Making her immune to that honestly just seems cheap, considering that the counterbalance to Tiger Balm is already built into the item itself.

[Lind Whisperer]

4 hours ago, Palathadric said:

So...I don't get it. Should Petaldan go ahead and use his Smoke Bomb or is everyone else going to hang around anyway?

We're hanging around/making a last stand. Our surviving is a longshot, but survive or KO, it's the last quest. It's more fun to make a heroic 'last stance' against one of the two main "enemies" of the quest, than to just play it safe in the background.

Lind, Ezeran, and Torald are all confirmed as staying, and Heckz hasn't logged on since August.

(Since it's buried two pages back, I'm going to repost the proposed Battle Order, so everyone can see what's supposed to be going on.)

[Waterbrick Down]

1 hour ago, Flipz said:

I mean, the whole point of the Tiger Balm is it being a dual-edged sword; on Heroes it's fantastic protection against negative effects at the cost of not being able to use positive ones as a crutch, while using it on enemies nullifies their positive effects at the cost of not being able to inflict negative effects on them.  Making her immune to that honestly just seems cheap, considering that the counterbalance to Tiger Balm is already built into the item itself.

And its counterbalance is not needed given her other specials so it ends up being an out of balance item for an enemy like her. In my opinion its a cheap move by the heroes.

[Flipz]

5 hours ago, Waterbrick Down said:

And its counterbalance is not needed given her other specials so it ends up being an out of balance item for an enemy like her. In my opinion its a cheap move by the heroes.

I mean...given her other specials, pot, meet kettle, really.  Heroes don't get to just ignore the effects of items/consumables/Specials/other game rules just because it's not on-brand for them, so why should the enemies?

I get what you're going for, the whole "living embodiment of the idea of luck" thing, it makes sense for her.  But if the "no build is or should be untouchable" concept is in place for Heroes, it damn well should go both ways; if she gets that luckiness from the "Lucky" effect, then it should be subject to the rules of either temporary or permanent Luck, however it's being applied to her, or if she's getting it by, say "all Heroes who target Lady Luck become Jinxed before their attack", then that ability needs to respect Jinxed immunities, and so on and so forth for other solutions to the dilemma.  Whatever mechanic grants or affects a character's abilities, it becomes mechanical when it's set into place and then becomes subject to game rules, and in turn becomes vulnerable to exploitation.  It's the same basic root as the age-old GM's complaint "my party killed/seduced/magically brainwashed the campaign's final boss in the second session with a lucky roll"; if you don't want a character affected by the players before a given point, don't let the party interact with them via game mechanics at all prior to that point.

If you really want to force every player targeting Lady Luck to have to roll twice and take the worse result, regardless of anything else in the game, then that should be her skill, point-blank, word-for-word rules-as-written.  It's cheap as hell, and maybe that's the point (i.e. forcing all the players who've been abusing Lucky all this time to feel what it's like to go against it or whatever), but at least it's not co-opting existing game terms to mean different things than usual and twisting the game's mechanics into knots to do it.  However, that also applies as a larger concept; if what you want from the fight is "even taking an action against these untouchable gods requires sacrifice and character death", then don't bother with Levels and HP and Specials, just give them a Passive that says "all characters that target [X] will be tallied at the end of the Round and [#] of them will instantly die from [X]'s retaliation, bypassing all immunities", and replace the HP meter with "dies only when it's thematically appropriate".  And before someone responds to the latter with "okay, you're being clearly ridiculous and exaggerating to make your point," no, Pie literally did that already and it was awesome and we all praised Pie for it.

I'm sorry if I sound enraged in text, I'm really not that upset really, I'm more just a bit put off at getting complaints from the QM about how the players are playing the Quest when the QM's expectations of how the party is supposed to play aren't being made clear.  Are we supposed to lose?  Are we supposed to fight the "Founders" but only win at massive cost?  Are we supposed to be ineffectual and useless against them despite the abilities we have at our disposal?  Are we supposed to quaver in fear or respect and just give up?  Or are we supposed to throw everything in our considerable arsenal at them in a last-ditch series-finale-tier display of heroism and badassery because at the end of the day the "Founders" are mortal and together we're a match for them?  At the end of the day, despite my mechanical nitpickery and admittedly overpowered build, I am a roleplayer here to tell a cooperative story; communicate to me the story you want to tell and I'll do what I can to help tell it to the best of my ability.  If I seem exasperated, it's because we've already had this discussion after the last "Founder" fight, at considerable length, and apparently improved little to nothing of the underlying communication issues as a result.  The closest I got to a solid answer then was something along the lines of "the Founders are supposed to be larger than life, and aren't your average adversaries", and...yeah.  They're well beyond average, and definitely larger than life.  But they don't have to break the game's rules to be larger than life; we've got a good couple dozen Heroes who've already proven that.

This is the final battle of the final Quest.  Now isn't the time to play games and try to subtly influence the players to fit within the loose outlines of the Quest that's been written; now is the time to point-blank communicate how we want this game to end, and then work together to make it happen.  I don't want anyone involved in this Quest to go out with regrets; now is the time to leave everything on the field, cards on the table, say what you need to say.  If the story we're building in trying to take down the "Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "the Heroes used every sneaky trick in the book, a book they've written over literal years, to take down the false Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "against all odds, the Heroes put themselves in harm's way to protect each other's backs again and again and again and made sure everyone made it out alive" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that.  Are you trying to tell A New Hope, or Rogue One, or something else entirely?  We're all telling this story, but at the end of the day, you're the QM, you're the one running this nightmare of a hosting responsibility, your voice is arguably as important as all the rest of ours combined.  Share that voice with us, so that the rest of our voices can be harmonious rather than discordant.

...that went way longer than I intended it to, and even after editing sounds way angrier than I'm intending it to be.  (This is why we don't let Flipz think about games and storytelling and "True Art" and nonsense like that when it's 4 am and she's tired; she's liable to go off on a wall-of-text rant with tons of tangents and side-points despite the base issue being a minuscule rules disagreement. )  Clearly, though, I've had more pent up about this than I myself even realized, so it's probably a good thing to get it all out. xD

[Palathadric]

2 hours ago, Flipz said:

Are you trying to tell A New Hope, or Rogue One, or something else entirely?

Oh, please! Did we need to mention that.

Ruined a perfectly good day for me.

[samurai-turtle]

24 minutes ago, Palathadric said:

Oh, please! Did we need to mention that.

Ruined a perfectly good day for me.

 

I kinda want to ask what is wrong with Rogue One? I think it is better than some of the other Star Wars movies that has come out recently. (If it is just going to turn into a be-itch fest, then maybe we shouldn't talk about it.) 

[Waterbrick Down]

4 hours ago, Flipz said:

I mean...given her other specials, pot, meet kettle, really.  Heroes don't get to just ignore the effects of items/consumables/Specials/other game rules just because it's not on-brand for them, so why should the enemies?

I get what you're going for, the whole "living embodiment of the idea of luck" thing, it makes sense for her.  But if the "no build is or should be untouchable" concept is in place for Heroes, it damn well should go both ways; if she gets that luckiness from the "Lucky" effect, then it should be subject to the rules of either temporary or permanent Luck, however it's being applied to her, or if she's getting it by, say "all Heroes who target Lady Luck become Jinxed before their attack", then that ability needs to respect Jinxed immunities, and so on and so forth for other solutions to the dilemma.  Whatever mechanic grants or affects a character's abilities, it becomes mechanical when it's set into place and then becomes subject to game rules, and in turn becomes vulnerable to exploitation.

The point is that a rule shouldn't require exploitation in order to win. There have been very few times in this quest in which any characters have been in danger, yet this whole battle has everyone worried that things are too tough and they need to look for loopholes and exploitation. I care about all or your characters, do you think I'm really intentionally sitting here trying to figure out ways to kill them all? I despise the total GM vs Players concept which is why I've never enjoyed the battle aspect of this game and have tried to telegraph when a fights mechanics are meant to be very difficult and its OK to not fight at this given time.

4 hours ago, Flipz said:

If you really want to force every player targeting Lady Luck to have to roll twice and take the worse result, regardless of anything else in the game, then that should be her skill, point-blank, word-for-word rules-as-written.  It's cheap as hell, and maybe that's the point (i.e. forcing all the players who've been abusing Lucky all this time to feel what it's like to go against it or whatever), but at least it's not co-opting existing game terms to mean different things than usual and twisting the game's mechanics into knots to do it.  However, that also applies as a larger concept; if what you want from the fight is "even taking an action against these untouchable gods requires sacrifice and character death", then don't bother with Levels and HP and Specials, just give them a Passive that says "all characters that target [X] will be tallied at the end of the Round and [#] of them will instantly die from [X]'s retaliation, bypassing all immunities", and replace the HP meter with "dies only when it's thematically appropriate".  And before someone responds to the latter with "okay, you're being clearly ridiculous and exaggerating to make your point," no, Pie literally did that already and it was awesome and we all praised Pie for it.

I've stated my intention behind the mechanic and there are multiple ways for the heroes to even this out their own through positive effects without going the exploitation route. Perhaps a better solution may be your earlier one concerning inflicting Jinxed, that way her whole "shtick" is completely disgarded by the uses of a neutralizer or Tiger Balm, but it at least gives some heroes something to strategize with immunities.

4 hours ago, Flipz said:

I'm sorry if I sound enraged in text, I'm really not that upset really, I'm more just a bit put off at getting complaints from the QM about how the players are playing the Quest when the QM's expectations of how the party is supposed to play aren't being made clear.  Are we supposed to lose?  Are we supposed to fight the "Founders" but only win at massive cost?  Are we supposed to be ineffectual and useless against them despite the abilities we have at our disposal?  Are we supposed to quaver in fear or respect and just give up?  Or are we supposed to throw everything in our considerable arsenal at them in a last-ditch series-finale-tier display of heroism and badassery because at the end of the day the "Founders" are mortal and together we're a match for them?  At the end of the day, despite my mechanical nitpickery and admittedly overpowered build, I am a roleplayer here to tell a cooperative story; communicate to me the story you want to tell and I'll do what I can to help tell it to the best of my ability.  If I seem exasperated, it's because we've already had this discussion after the last "Founder" fight, at considerable length, and apparently improved little to nothing of the underlying communication issues as a result.  The closest I got to a solid answer then was something along the lines of "the Founders are supposed to be larger than life, and aren't your average adversaries", and...yeah.  They're well beyond average, and definitely larger than life.  But they don't have to break the game's rules to be larger than life; we've got a good couple dozen Heroes who've already proven that.

This is the final battle of the final Quest.  Now isn't the time to play games and try to subtly influence the players to fit within the loose outlines of the Quest that's been written; now is the time to point-blank communicate how we want this game to end, and then work together to make it happen.  I don't want anyone involved in this Quest to go out with regrets; now is the time to leave everything on the field, cards on the table, say what you need to say.  If the story we're building in trying to take down the "Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "the Heroes used every sneaky trick in the book, a book they've written over literal years, to take down the false Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "against all odds, the Heroes put themselves in harm's way to protect each other's backs again and again and again and made sure everyone made it out alive" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that.  Are you trying to tell A New Hope, or Rogue One, or something else entirely?  We're all telling this story, but at the end of the day, you're the QM, you're the one running this nightmare of a hosting responsibility, your voice is arguably as important as all the rest of ours combined.  Share that voice with us, so that the rest of our voices can be harmonious rather than discordant.

...that went way longer than I intended it to, and even after editing sounds way angrier than I'm intending it to be.  (This is why we don't let Flipz think about games and storytelling and "True Art" and nonsense like that when it's 4 am and she's tired; she's liable to go off on a wall-of-text rant with tons of tangents and side-points despite the base issue being a minuscule rules disagreement. )  Clearly, though, I've had more pent up about this than I myself even realized, so it's probably a good thing to get it all out. xD

Expectations are a two way street, imagine being in my shoes of having to figure out how to make this last quest memorable. How to make it so that isn't a cake walk that everyone thought was pandering. How to make it "epic" but not have the characters feel helpless or useless. I know you're not angry and I hope you know that I'm not as well, just frustrated about what everyone wants. It's like directing the next Avengers movie, you know everyone wants a satisfying conclusion, but you're not quite sure how to get there and make everyone happy and you know that if you screw it up you'll be completely ruining something everyone's enjoyed for the last handful of years. While I do have a say in how I'd like Heroica to finish, there's 20 something more people who combined deserve more than that. 

I know this has blown up based on one little rules interpretation. Lady's Luck stats will stay the same, the Tiger Balm will work as intended. My intention with this fight is for the heroes to probably win it (part of why I had the Founders come out alone as opposed to having paladin/town watch back-ups), my intention is that it won't be an easy battle that can easily be exploited or tanked, or one-shotted, I know the heroes have a lot of means for revival, so I know that the stats of the enemies can be higher than a typical battle. There's also a diplomatic option to this whole thing, but only a few heroes have picked up on it.

 

[Waterbrick Down]

7 hours ago, Flipz said:

This is the final battle of the final Quest.  Now isn't the time to play games and try to subtly influence the players to fit within the loose outlines of the Quest that's been written; now is the time to point-blank communicate how we want this game to end, and then work together to make it happen.  I don't want anyone involved in this Quest to go out with regrets; now is the time to leave everything on the field, cards on the table, say what you need to say.  If the story we're building in trying to take down the "Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "the Heroes used every sneaky trick in the book, a book they've written over literal years, to take down the false Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "against all odds, the Heroes put themselves in harm's way to protect each other's backs again and again and again and made sure everyone made it out alive" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that.  Are you trying to tell A New Hope, or Rogue One, or something else entirely?  We're all telling this story, but at the end of the day, you're the QM, you're the one running this nightmare of a hosting responsibility, your voice is arguably as important as all the rest of ours combined.  Share that voice with us, so that the rest of our voices can be harmonious rather than discordant.

Some further thoughts now that I've got my own rant out of my system. I guess I'm not looking for either a New Hope (victory by exploitation) or Rogue One (victory by sacrifice), I'm looking for victory through growth. Victory achieved by working together and utilizing the skills that each of the characters have gained over the years, not by deploying a McaGuffin or act of Deus Ex Machina, but the simple fact that lv 1 heroes could never have hoped to face off against this challenge and expected to survive. An ending that shows just how far everyone has come from the moment they walked through the doors of Heroica. It's the fact that Benji two rounds ago just dealt 1400 damage to all enemies, when he could only manage 10 damage when he first started. It's the fact that Arthur, Hoke, and Pretzel, can completely tank any hit except from one of the enemies and only one of them started this game with a shield. It's the fact that Germ has managed to steal some of the enemies most vital equipment in this quest. You've all grown and that's what I want to highlight and showcase. It's the final scene of the first Avengers movie or when the Defenders finally get together after all of their seasons collide, it's a bunch of people who have become heroes throughout all of their history and are now showing why they deserve that title.

[samurai-turtle]

36 minutes ago, Waterbrick Down said:

It's the fact that Germ has managed to steal some of the enemies most vital equipment in this quest.

He has?  This is news to me. Are you sure you're not thinking of another quest, or a different Player. 

[Waterbrick Down]

13 minutes ago, samurai-turtle said:

He has?  This is news to me. Are you sure you're not thinking of another quest, or a different Player. 

Whoops, sorry wrong black knight, I mean Lind. 

[Asphalt]

On 9/13/2018 at 10:26 PM, samurai-turtle said:

Thanks, I was trying to make him darkly dressed, but at the same time put in some color to break it up. 

 

Not to get to personal, but is @Asphalt going to be OK? He list his location as North Carolina and wasn't Hurricane Florence going to hit that area? 

Surviving so far. Internet is spotty though. 

and I am totally lost after being computerless for two+ weeks.  could someone PM me a recap of what is going on in Vind's sector.

[samurai-turtle]

12 minutes ago, Asphalt said:

Surviving so far. Internet is spotty though. 

and I am totally lost after being computerless for two+ weeks.  could someone PM me a recap of what is going on in Vind's sector.

I could imagine, it sounds like the entire state is flooded. 

As for what is going, it seems like Lind has some sort of plan.  I am a little confused myself, I think if you start at page 60, you should be able to get some what caught up. 

[Asphalt]

34 minutes ago, samurai-turtle said:

I could imagine, it sounds like the entire state is flooded. 

As for what is going, it seems like Lind has some sort of plan.  I am a little confused myself, I think if you start at page 60, you should be able to get some what caught up. 

That is part of the problem, I cant get a connection stable enough to let me read for that long.  Tech cant figure out what is wrong.  Another appt. for Monday.

So far we have only had a steady light rain, it is supposed to hit the fan later tonight.  I expect to be much deeper come tomorrow morning.

 

[Lind Whisperer]

2 hours ago, Asphalt said:

Surviving so far. Internet is spotty though. 

and I am totally lost after being computerless for two+ weeks.  could someone PM me a recap of what is going on in Vind's sector.

Will do! Glad you're okay!

[Lind Whisperer]

13 hours ago, Flipz said:

I'm sorry if I sound enraged in text, I'm really not that upset really, I'm more just a bit put off at getting complaints from the QM about how the players are playing the Quest when the QM's expectations of how the party is supposed to play aren't being made clear.  Are we supposed to lose?  Are we supposed to fight the "Founders" but only win at massive cost?  Are we supposed to be ineffectual and useless against them despite the abilities we have at our disposal?  Are we supposed to quaver in fear or respect and just give up?  Or are we supposed to throw everything in our considerable arsenal at them in a last-ditch series-finale-tier display of heroism and badassery because at the end of the day the "Founders" are mortal and together we're a match for them?  At the end of the day, despite my mechanical nitpickery and admittedly overpowered build, I am a roleplayer here to tell a cooperative story; communicate to me the story you want to tell and I'll do what I can to help tell it to the best of my ability.

This is the final battle of the final Quest.  Now isn't the time to play games and try to subtly influence the players to fit within the loose outlines of the Quest that's been written; now is the time to point-blank communicate how we want this game to end, and then work together to make it happen.  I don't want anyone involved in this Quest to go out with regrets; now is the time to leave everything on the field, cards on the table, say what you need to say.  If the story we're building in trying to take down the "Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "the Heroes used every sneaky trick in the book, a book they've written over literal years, to take down the false Founders" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that; if the story of "against all odds, the Heroes put themselves in harm's way to protect each other's backs again and again and again and made sure everyone made it out alive" is not the story you want to tell, then we need to know that.

Hmm...but one piece of good advice I got while I was trying to write my first quest was, "Don't tell (a pre-conceived narrative), set out a structure and react to how the players react." Don't try and force people to follow a strict story-line."

I do hear what you're saying, though, about it being a "shared experience".

 

One thing I've been kind of annoyed about is how the higher-level heroes are kind of acting like battle rounds don't exist for this fight. 

From my perspective, we're on the ground. We were left there because all of the rest of the party assumed that the battle would go traditionally. WBD threw us all a massive curveball by having the Founders walk out unexpectedly.

It's our choice what we do - do we run? Or do we make a heroic last stand?

But that's not how people are playing it. You have multiple high-level heroes saying "He leaps down from the wall, and then gives his advice about what to do next, and politely addressed the Founders like the battle hasn't even started.". But that's not how it works. By the timeline, the timeline we've always used for battles, all of these people are still crossing the field towards us. The battle has already started - or not - a full round before anyone arrives. But everyone's acting like they're on the scene at the start of the battle. And they're not.

It was at this point that I realized that, since the Outer Wall rounds get run first, you could argue that they do arrive before our battle starts...but no. These events are happening simultaneously. By the time you've arrived to give advice, we've already had to take action. We've already acted, by the time you arrive. The battle has already started - or not - before you get there to tell us to retreat.

I'm not asking you to not give us advice about how to play, certainly. Given the number of attack proposals I've given out, that would be ridiculous. Feel free to shout all the advice across the field you want, like how Lind is presumably shouting his requests for people on the Walls to take actions.

But I would appreciate it if people would play things in order. This battle wasn't standard, it was unexpected. We play things differently in this battle - by the timeline* - because it's different, it's a different situation.

 

*Normally, people ignore the battle timeline as is convenient. But it's gotten kind of ridiculous at this point, since several players are acting like it doesn't even exist. I get that your standard method would be to try and be diplomatic about things. But you're not on the scene. We are on the scene. And it's not a standard scenario, so standard methods may not work as well - and when they blatantly disagree with the timeline, they really don't work from an RP standpoint!

 

(Apologies if I'm coming off as angry, I'm really not trying to. I'm just trying to take advantage of a cool, unexpected plot twist for the RP - and it kind of feels like some people are trying to bend it back into "normal," "expected," territory, rather than have fun letting it ride out and see where it could go.)

11 hours ago, samurai-turtle said:

I kinda want to ask what is wrong with Rogue One? I think it is better than some of the other Star Wars movies that has come out recently.

Full agreement.

Spoiler

I think one of the main criticisms is that certain parts of the plot are a little too set in stone(with ANH happening right after), and there's not enough room to maneuver? But even so, from the clips I've seen, I think it did a fair job given what it had to work with. (Though the ending seems a bit downhearted, albeit unexpected.)

 

9 hours ago, Waterbrick Down said:

Expectations are a two way street, imagine being in my shoes of having to figure out how to make this last quest memorable. How to make it so that isn't a cake walk that everyone thought was pandering. How to make it "epic" but not have the characters feel helpless or useless. I know you're not angry and I hope you know that I'm not as well, just frustrated about what everyone wants. It's like directing the next Avengers movie, you know everyone wants a satisfying conclusion, but you're not quite sure how to get there and make everyone happy and you know that if you screw it up you'll be completely ruining something everyone's enjoyed for the last handful of years. While I do have a say in how I'd like Heroica to finish, there's 20 something more people who combined deserve more than that. 

Well, from my perspective, you've done a bang-up job of it.  This is as satisfying a conclusion as anyone could ask for.

Quote

 

(part of why I had the Founders come out alone as opposed to having paladin/town watch back-ups)

 

Oh! That explains why the Mountain was alone when we fought him! I wondered a bit, but I didn't want to ask in case we suddenly had a horde of paladins show up as well. 

[Lind Whisperer]

6 hours ago, Waterbrick Down said:

Some further thoughts now that I've got my own rant out of my system. I guess I'm not looking for either a New Hope (victory by exploitation) or Rogue One (victory by sacrifice), I'm looking for victory through growth. Victory achieved by working together and utilizing the skills that each of the characters have gained over the years, not by deploying a McaGuffin or act of Deus Ex Machina, but the simple fact that lv 1 heroes could never have hoped to face off against this challenge and expected to survive. An ending that shows just how far everyone has come from the moment they walked through the doors of Heroica. It's the fact that Benji two rounds ago just dealt 1400 damage to all enemies, when he could only manage 10 damage when he first started. It's the fact that Arthur, Hoke, and Pretzel, can completely tank any hit except from one of the enemies and only one of them started this game with a shield. It's the fact that Germ has managed to steal some of the enemies most vital equipment in this quest. You've all grown and that's what I want to highlight and showcase. It's the final scene of the first Avengers movie or when the Defenders finally get together after all of their seasons collide, it's a bunch of people who have become heroes throughout all of their history and are now showing why they deserve that title.

And that's kind of one of the reasons why I was/am pushing for us to stick together down on the ground, instead of just fleeing and letting the higher-levels take care of the problem. 

Quote

It's the fact that Lind has managed to steal some of the enemies most vital equipment in this quest.

 

This...this just brings a real smile to my face.

Thanks, WBD.  

 

[samurai-turtle]

I do have a little piece of advice on role playing, that was told to me: it is like improv. And one of main "rules" of improv is the willness to say yes. Maybe this advice might help some of you out (for any future role playing). 

[CMP]

12 hours ago, Waterbrick Down said:

 I despise the total GM vs Players concept which is why I've never enjoyed the battle aspect of this game and have tried to telegraph when a fights mechanics are meant to be very difficult and its OK to not fight at this given time.

Yep. Biggest problem with the system. When enemies are purely reactive it boils down to how well-crafted they are by the GM and how out-of-the-box players can think. Sometimes it's really amusing or fascinating but the majority of the time it's just work, for both parties.

I forget when, but at some point I started looking at battles like their own puzzles. I really dislike looking at it that way, but that's what the mechanics encourage. Hopefully one of many things that wouldn't be a problem in whatever follow-up there is.

It was actually this line of thinking that lead to the unfinished (again, sorry questers ) boss battle of my last quest: an enemy that can act for themselves.

[Palathadric]

12 hours ago, Lind Whisperer said:

But I would appreciate it if people would play things in order. This battle wasn't standard, it was unexpected. We play things differently in this battle - by the timeline* - because it's different, it's a different situation.

*Normally, people ignore the battle timeline as is convenient. But it's gotten kind of ridiculous at this point, since several players are acting like it doesn't even exist. I get that your standard method would be to try and be diplomatic about things. But you're not on the scene. We are on the scene. And it's not a standard scenario, so standard methods may not work as well - and when they blatantly disagree with the timeline, they really don't work from an RP standpoint!

I'm not sure I agree. While I'm grateful to WBD for putting so much into this battle. These are the founders of Heroica we are debating with (even if they are just Pixie dust versions of them). If we don't talk to them now, then when are we going to get a chance to talk to them? If it's when they're already beaten, then it's a very different scenario and doesn't have the same tension. While just getting into the battle is great, I don't think most of us play this game to be able to say I attack so-and-so from the Front Row, etc.