Apologies about the triple post. It seemed appropriate to do it that way.
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YBD just let me know they won’t have internet until the weekend, so posting should resume at the beginning of next week.
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@Rysky: Thanks a bunch for keeping everyone updated. It kept me from stressing about gaming until all the necessary RL stuff was done. XD
Np :3
(Don’t forget to remove me from those other games though please hehe)
Are Percy or Sigrun doing anything this round?
sorry schedule flipped around for a couple weeks, training for work. Back to my normal schedule next week.
Sorry for not posting in, 2 weeks now.
Just checking in. Based on the Gameplay posts, I assume people are completely confused? How can I help?
Anastasia is doing something and Silence is doing something and ???
Silence has a magic snowglobe that lets him spy on Greta. He let Anastasia look at it, and it appears to have restored her psyche (she's basically been a whimpering cowering child until now). That's pretty much it, I think. If her recent infodump is confusing, that's likely because you're from another planet and not up to speed with Earth's current historical events. XD
That wasn’t confusing, we pretty much knew must of that from the boy, reading it over I understand what Silence meant when he phrased the question that way now.
I'm not sure where we should be heading... I just say "move on" and hope we'll eventually get there. Are we still in that camp?
You're in a building in the camp. There should be a map on my profile header.
Sorry about that confusion, yeah i was going with the whole, wait huh who? sort of vibe when are are at a place and people throw lofty, but titles not nknow at you.
I'm sensing some player fatigue, so I'm going to start cutting out stuff. Like the guard patrols that are supposed to be a near-constant threat, and the majority of the nonessential baddies.
I approve.
I'm good with that.
I'm good with that too. I think part of the fatigue comes from the sort of foreign openness of the current setting.
The thing I'm concerned about is that we've been having these problems since Book Three of the campaign. Ever since Vashti left and the party started working through Artrosa, it's felt to me that the game's lost its soul. We've had frequent slowdowns where people don't post unless I nudge them. We have almost no interaction between players OR characters. Very little happens unless we're fighting something. I'm just feeling like there's a distinct lack of interest from the entire party. That was understandable way back in Book Three: megadungeons don't work well in PbP. Book Four's extreme roughness could be explained by its generally-negative reviews, but it's still a planet full of warring dragonriders. That's pretty cool, in my opinion, but I was forced to essentially handwave all but like three scenes. Now we're in Book Five, what's generally acknowledged as one of Paizo's best modules, and nobody seems to care. Even if it doesn't mean anything to the PCs, we're in Russia! Rescuing Anastasia Romanov! Trying to stop Rasputin! ... And I'm still having to actively push people along. In all honesty, I don't know what else I can do here. Book One was utterly fantastic and one of the best modules I've ever participated in. Book Two was a bit rough for a portion due to some out-of-game drama, but overall it was really fun. Since then, however, it's becoming more and more of a chore. This also isn't the first time I've made a post like this, but there's been no lasting improvement. Please tell me what's going on. Is it me? The campaign? The party? Where's the magic gone?
My own lack of posting is pretty much me, this section was what I was most looking forward to, it’s why I applied to this game in the first place, this campaign is what made me get so into Pathfinder and PBP. I see new posts... and I just can’t bring myself to post anything. I leave the tab open, refreshing when I see a new post, but still not posting. Telling myself to respond, but I don’t. That’s on me.
My own f&%! ups and bad experiences (and real life stuff) in this campaign have been building and eating at me, but that’s on me.
As for very little happening unless we fight something, that’s because we don’t do anything but fight something now. We’re just moving from encounter to encounter (which take a month or more to get through), none of us are talking with each other, just Point A to Poknt B to Point C, or at least that’s what it feels like. Book 3 was a megadungeon, book 4 and 5 are warzones. There’s no peaceful traveling or interactions or exploring it seems.
Skipping over book 3 and 4 did kill a bunch of my interest, but I thought it would be worth it when we got here.
I had far too many emotional things occur over the last year. Im working to get back involved now that my mind works. Im with this is a great campaign. Ill work harder to get more juices pumping.
In regards to the game.
I think I feel a severe disconnect between what we're doing and the main plot of the AP overall. I joined up to stop Baba Yaga's daughter. The past few books have felt like chasing smoke. I just want to find the old crone and get back to Silence's girl so we can go kick some witches in the nose.
We went to another planet. Why? To get stuff for the chicken house. Because we have to?
Then we come to Russia. Cool. I can dig it. Where's the witch? How does this help us defeat the upstart in Whitethrone?
*crickets*
Great.
In the sweeping arc of stories, this just doesn't seem to be building drama and suspense like a rising story should. We almost got Rasputin, then he turned out to be an illusion and Alexi was a three headed dragon? Weird, but ok. Now, our info on the witch seems to have been eaten.
*le sigh*
It shouldn't be easy. I get that. But the middle of this entire campaign feels like it's been pointless wandering about hoping the hut will fumble itself into the right place.
I really look forward to getting back to Golarion and actually making a difference, in other words, instead of derping my way through the cosmos.
In regards to players.
Vashti... ya, Mamma was the soul of this group to a certain extent. She was the singular thread that we all connected with. It's been a little less-than since she rode off into the sunset with her reformed elven lover (so to speak).
That said, not forging new connections is kinda on us, guys. Just being honest. When we lost people the focus, for me, shifted to keeping the storyline going instead of telling a story with the characters.
Again, my bad.
I also dislike the Hut. Not sure why, but it changing like it does and having to re-explore the place every time isn't something I look forward to, but that's more me personally than anything else so it should probably not be generalized.
But the middle of this entire campaign feels like it's been pointless wandering about hoping the hut will fumble itself into the right place.Curious, it’s felt the opposite to me. Instead of exploring and enjoying the alien worlds it’s felt like there’s more and more pressure, I don’t want to say rushed, but to get this done as soon as possible, no time to interact with anything. This isn’t directed at you or YBD or anyone or anything in this campaign, my mind just has this sense of urgency and dread about how all this is playing out. I’d prefer pointless wandering to that.
That said, not forging new connections is kinda on us, guys. Just being honest. When we lost people the focus, for me, shifted to keeping the storyline going instead of telling a story with the characters.
*nods*
But the middle of this entire campaign feels like it's been pointless wandering about hoping the hut will fumble itself into the right place.Curious, it’s felt the opposite to me. Instead of exploring and enjoying the alien worlds it’s felt like there’s more and more pressure, I don’t want to say rushed, but to get this done as soon as possible, no time to interact with anything. This isn’t directed at you or YBD or anyone or anything in this campaign, my mind just has this sense of urgency and dread about how all this is playing out. I’d prefer pointless wandering to that.
Now that right there is fascinating. I can't think of why two of us would have opposite reactions to the same events!
Now that right there is fascinating. I can't think of why two of us would have opposite reactions to the same events!But the middle of this entire campaign feels like it's been pointless wandering about hoping the hut will fumble itself into the right place.Curious, it’s felt the opposite to me. Instead of exploring and enjoying the alien worlds it’s felt like there’s more and more pressure, I don’t want to say rushed, but to get this done as soon as possible, no time to interact with anything. This isn’t directed at you or YBD or anyone or anything in this campaign, my mind just has this sense of urgency and dread about how all this is playing out. I’d prefer pointless wandering to that.
*nods*
The only thing I can think of is because of all the cut content and only really interacting with the encounters, it just feels more like something to get done, than to enjoy. But I don’t know.
Percy's thoughts are pretty much what I've thought the problem was: differing expectations regarding the AP itself. Stopping Queen Elvanna is crucial (she's the BBEG, after all), the the primary goal of the campaign is actually to rescue Baba Yaga. And in order to do that, we need to understand her, so we've spent the last 2.5 Books traveling to places that are important to her.
I'm not particularly familiar with Dr Who, but the analogy would be if bad things are happening because the Doctor has vanished, so the party's traveling around in the Tardis. We might visit Rose's birthplace, discover how Jack Harkness got his ability, and stop the Master from breaking out of prison. The goal, though, is to find the Doctor. And that can only be done by attaining an intimate understanding of the Doctor.
Part of the problem, honestly, is the fact that I've been forced to skip so much of the non-Irrisen stuff in order to keep the campaign from dying. You've missed massive amounts of lore in Books Three and Four, so those portions of the AP seem completely pointless. The same thing is happening now that you're in Book Five. There's mystery/puzzle elements (hence the confusion Percy mentioned), but it's also a rather large sandbox. The issue is that nobody's interacting with it - just like Books Three and Four. For example, you find a pair of children hiding in a closet. "Who are you? Oh, you're friends with Grigori. Know where he is? Okay, whatever." Then nobody posts until I nudge. And when people start moving on, it's like the kids don't even exist. I think Silence is the only person who's even mentioned them since then. Or the fact that in the last fight, nobody even acknowledged the fact that one of the 'ghosts' looked exactly like Alexei. I even had a unique icon for it on the battlemap.
I know that Percy and Neverhome have stated that it feels like we're just bouncing between combat encounters with no interactions or RP, but that's the only avenue you've left me. Neverhome's last statement perfectly describes how I'm feeling: the campaign's not something to enjoy; only something to get done.
Oh. Well. I completely missed that memo. I had no idea we were supposed to be Learning about Baba Yaga. I thought we just had to Find her. Well poo. Not sure where that miscommunication happened, but it must have been over a year ago.
That informs my attitude, too. I thought the goal was to stop the daughter and that Baba Yaga was just a vehicle to get there, not the Main Point of this whole thing.
(I'm notoriously bad a puzzles, so that doesn't help either.)
Man. Talk about missing the point. Goodness me...
Holy crap.
Sorry guys. If I'd realized that earlier (and I blame none save myself for that fault) it might have changed things.
Wow, Choon. Way to go, buddy.
That’s definitely a failure of mine I’m fully aware of, from meeting the children I’ve wanted to talk more with them, when we met Grigiri I wanted to talk then, and between ghost Alexi and Dragon Alexi, and then after... but I haven’t. It’s not that I’m lacking in time, cause I’m not, I’m in front of a computer all day too. I open the RoW campaign Page everyday when I clock in and... nothing, until my shift ends and I close out the page. I can’t even force myself to post, the only reason I do in combat is so I don’t hold everything up. I’ve wanted to interact, I want to. But I haven’t.
I think another thing, and this is probably just a difference of perception, is stopping Elvanna isn’t crucial to this story, stopping her is the end result. The main goal/driving force is finding Baba Yaga, Elvanna is just an afterthought since we haven’t really dealt with the witches except in the end of book 2, we skipped most of book 3 so we didn’t find anything there to reaffirm that, and 4 and 5 have nothing to do with her, being on different planets. So I’m not really interested or concerned with rushing to get to her when I don’t feel like she has anything to do with this story.
Skipping parts of book 3 hurt my interest in this game, but getting rid of book 4 pretty much killed any interest I had in this game. I wouldn’t be able to answer anything if someone asked about that book. We fought a hydra and a dragon, I think we did anyway, and that’s all I know from that entire book. I held on, if you could even call it that, cause we were so close to this point, we were going to save Anastasia. And now we’re here... and nothing’s changed.
@Percy: to be fair, that fact isn't the most obvious thing. It's what the Black Rider tells you way back in Book One but isn't mentioned again.
@Neverhome: we did a total of four things in Book Four: meet the good dragonriders, fight a siege tower, watch Silence duel a martial artist, and fight the evil boss dragon. Everyone had already disengaged from everything, so all of you had me just do the setpieces so we wouldn't have to jump multiple levels.
*nods*
I don’t remember half of that (the siege tower and duel) but it’s starting to come back now.
Going back to look over Book 4, I think the crash happened when we met the council, and instead of interacting with them or anyone or anything in city we were supposed to make diplomacy checks at them, or one person was cause we all couldn’t, or weren’t supposed to, interact with them.
I think that happened because of the disengagement, actually. I remember people not knowing or caring who anyone was or why they needed to help fight their war. Same as what just happened with Anastasia, actually: NPC starts an infodump, PCs don't recognize any of the buzzwords, and interest is lost.
I know we were talking with the side we were wanting to help cause they were being attacked, but you’re right, we didn’t know anything really about anyone.
As for the current situation that’s an issue with me I know, I haven’t been able to force myself to post anything. As for what Anastasia just told us after touching the orb, isn’t that what she and Alexi told us when we met them?
Probably something pretty similar. She's not going to be able to help with anything specific, but she's obviously very familiar with both the planet and the current time period. In relation to what we're discussing: the party isn't engaged because they don't know anything about where they are, but they're also not interacting with any of the native NPCs. As a GM, it's incredibly demoralizing.
*nods*
We talked a lot with Cousin Coffin Man.
We’re here to find Grigori cause he knows something about Baba.
We’ve met the children (killed one) whose family have been killed by soldiers.
We met a Rusalka (and Ragadahn) but not much plot wise came of that.
Who else is there to interact with? To my knowledge everything else has been trying to kill us.
Well, Anastasia has a good bit of info about the setting AND about Grigori specifically. Evil notAlexei can always be interrogated. You can chat up the Corpse Fairy some more. You could try to capture one of the hundred+ Russian soldiers guarding the complex. You also completely ignored the rest of the rooms in the house where illusory Rasputin was. Like I mentioned earlier, this module is about information-gathering.
*nods*
We needed to actually explore and investigate then, rather than jumping from point A to point B to...
I tried to tell everyone. More than once.
This deserves its own post:
I'll also mention that this is by far the most the Discussion tab's been used in I don't know how long. Nobody talks to each other unless I initiate something. That's a problem.
Everyone here echoes my thoughts on things. I especially like the Dr. Who analogy from YBD. As a player, I love this portion of the AP. Hobbes though, as a character only cares about getting the job done. This strange world makes no sense and he doesn't really care about the specifics and has no reason to believe that they matter to the mission. When he hears the infodump, he doesn't understand why it's important to what is going on so he just moves on. He is also under the assumption that stopping Elvanna is the main goal and is looking for stuff to that end. He doesn't know what kind of monster Grigori is and why it matters. I also missed that there was a puzzle for us to figure out here as well.
P.S. I am really sorry that you are demoralized about this, I literally went through this same situation about a month ago. I should know better than to do it to someone else. :(
It's come to a head right now, but I've actually been feeling this way since partly through Book Three. Then I bring it up, we talk about it, and continue on with the game. But nothing really changes. I haven't gone back through Discussion to check, but I want to say this is the third or fourth time we've had this conversation. I'm rather tired of it.
I appreciate hearing that you like this portion of the AP as a player, but this is literally the first time anyone's told me this. In any capacity. Like I said in my last post, nobody's talking to anybody. We're all just slowly slogging through Gameplay with no engagement, enjoyment, or interest.
The players in my other games are constantly talking to each other out-of-character. Strategizing, commenting on people's actions, sharing art, etc. We've been virtual table-mates for about five years at this point. Why don't we seem to have any kind of connection to each other? I remember when we used to, back when this was fun.
I know some of this is just me venting, but I believe there has to be some truth to what I'm saying. Otherwise I don't think I'd be feeling so strongly about this right now.
You are completely right and I'd rather you vent then just quit the game/disappear. I was honest when I said that as a player, I love this part of the AP. I just find it hard to express that in my character. If you have any suggestions, I'm open to them. I agree that we used to be much more involved and that has dropped to near zero.
I can honestly say I wasnt entirely sure what the point of what we were doing. Now that well the curtains pulled back and we see the wizard so to speak, I get where we are and what we should be doing. I can up my game so to speak from this point.
I also understand where you could be botherd by things. Its seems like a lot of us were experting one thing and getting another and it threw us some. Non quiet felinerai reporting back in for duty!
Here's how things look from my perspective: I'm not having fun. There's no player interaction. There's no character interaction. Nobody has any apparent connection or rapport. Nobody in-character cares about what's going on. Everyone's completely disengaged out-of-character. We've skipped over 30% of the plot. We've had identical discussions multiple times, but nothing's changed.
Why should I think things are even salvageable at this point?
That's the main thing I've been worried about.
Not only "how can we fix this" but after all this, "can it be fixed"?
I don't know what to do, I don't want this story to fall apart, especially like this.
Extreme option: reset to a certain point and try again from there? No clue if that would work or if anyone else would be interested.
Here's how things look from my perspective: I'm not having fun. There's no player interaction. There's no character interaction. Nobody has any apparent connection or rapport. Nobody in-character cares about what's going on. Everyone's completely disengaged out-of-character. We've skipped over 30% of the plot. We've had identical discussions multiple times, but nothing's changed.
Why should I think things are even salvageable at this point?
To further emphasize, this has been pretty much how I've felt about the game for awhile.
Neverhome and Sigrun interact with each other.
Percy and Hobbes interact with each other.
Silence and mule interact with each other.
But that's it. We're not a group. We're strangers who just so happen to be going to the same destination on a conveyor.
Here's how things look from my perspective: I'm not having fun. There's no player interaction. There's no character interaction. Nobody has any apparent connection or rapport. Nobody in-character cares about what's going on. Everyone's completely disengaged out-of-character. We've skipped over 30% of the plot. We've had identical discussions multiple times, but nothing's changed.
Why should I think things are even salvageable at this point?
To further emphasize, this has been pretty much how I've felt about the game for awhile.
Neverhome and Sigrun interact with each other.
Percy and Hobbes interact with each other.
Silence and mule interact with each other.
But that's it. We're not a group. We're strangers who just so happen to be going to the same destination on a conveyor.
I can't disagree. Outside of our individual pairings, we stopped interacting with each other. If YBD isn't having fun, I don't know what can be done honestly. I want to try, but I don't know how.
same here, I want everyone envolved to have a great time.