rpanons | Found the token ace

Found the token ace

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Okay, but the issue is that there has been very very very little in the way of mod involvement lately. This isn't asking for an event every single day, nor is it sitting on my hands. I've played plenty of fun threads here, even in the last few months.

AND I'm itching for some good mod plot, too. There's a middle ground between "make absolutely all your own fun by yourself" and "expect the mods to spoonfeed you". Most people want a mix of mod-led plot and players plotting together, and we're not getting it. As for why it has to impact the game: well, because shaking up the status quo is fun! Having a strong ongoing plot is fun! Having the entire game involved in something is fun!

And mods events can do things that players can't, anyways. It's not as simple as "get creative and do whatever strikes your fancy" because we the regular players simply don't have the power to put all of our ideas into action. I could say "hmmm, I want to thread out my character and character X being spontaneously fused together at the waist!" but the mods would definitely step in because that'd require some extra power our characters don't have. Same with being forced to group together and eat a virgin heart or any of the other events we've had. A player couldn't just play anything of that sort; they'd have to make it an event suggestion (which might not be used for a while if at all). If there's going to be some major, regular mod plot, the amount of freedom we have right now is fine. If it's mostly going to "players make their own fun" we need a bit more or else it'll be party log after party log. The slice of life players are the ones having a blast because they're the ones that can actually play what they want whenever they want.

Fair enough, and as I said, I do agree that entire game wide plots are fun.

I know we've had a dry spell of events, but it hasn't been nearly as long as people think, only November and December. The October monster swap event was very hit or miss, but a large chunk of the game participated regardless. During times like those, it's important for players to come up with their own personal plots and not depend on events. Sometimes mods hit road bumps, and I hardly see why it's cause for alarm.

Anyway, to your point about players being limited, I think that should be brought up to the mods. There's no harm in asking if you can run a personal mini plot that involves more outlandish stuff than we usually have access to(such as monster fusion, though that's a stretch), things you can do immediately and not plan for game wide situations, if that makes sense. Just drop a quick line of "Hey if my cr and I explore X can Y happen?" And see what the mods say.

I don't mean to slam your frustration, but Ryslig has never struck me as a game that will always be plot point after plot point. It's a very casual game, and any events and juicy story we get seem to be bonus. It will be nice if that changes, but it's not entirely essential, and I don't feel like the game is stagnating at all.

Yeah, I guess I just didn't assume that a non-slice of life game would be casual. I love the premise but unless the next few months have more interesting events it might not be the game for me, I guess.

Maybe it's because I come from a tabletop background, but I can't help but roll my eyes at "make your own fun!"

DWRP mods in general are far lazier than GMs. They like to hide behind "make your own fun!" to avoid actually working on settings and storylines. Sure we have segments where the GMs like "okay, you've arrived in X town/returned to X town, do what you want", but those are brief and we're back to the plot soon enough.

The GM provides some sort of structure. I'm not saying that they have to or should spoonfeed you everything, but at least give you something to work off and take it from there. What's that called again? Oh, right. A storyline. A plot. A breadcrumb that leads to something bigger even.

You know what would happen in a tabletop game if we had months on end of just slice-of-lifeing around town? We'd all fucking leave, that's what.

If you're expecting tabletop-level mod investment from the DWRP format, you're doomed to disappointment.

1) Tabletop, unlike forum/online gaming, happens at specified times for a specified duration. DWRP is 24/7. Trying to keep a GM level of active participation 24/7 instead of for 6 hours once or twice a week is a quick road to burnout.

2) Storylines and hooks are most effective when they're tailored to appeal to individuals. You really can't do that when your player pool gets much bigger than 10 - 15 characters, so gamewide events will inevitably be weak on individually meaningful content or will rely on the players to provide it, as in the "your character dreams of their greatest fear!" type events. You can do a much better event for a small group, which is why splitting characters into small groups for events is such a popular DWRP tactic.

3) We expect mods to have at least one if not more than one PC in their game, and to put a lot of effort into playing NPCs as well-rounded, appealing characters who respond to all their tags; that takes a lot of time all on its own.

4) The idea that players have veto control over what happens to their character is deeply enshrined in DWRP. People expect to always be able to opt out of any potentially negative event, and to have the final say on whether their character lives, dies, or is hurt, and how badly. If you've got a player base that enjoys SOL, no matter what you do with the plot you'll have a heavy SOL component to your game, and trying to force unwilling players into plot participation is deeply unrewarding.

So yeah, basically, forum gaming is always going to be more up to you to make your own fun than tabletop is. On the other hand, that means you have a lot more creative authority over events than you would in a tabletop campaign, which is why I still enjoy both formats.

What anon above said. Also reiterating that tabletop RP doesn't usually cater to more than a half a dozen players at a time, and DWRP games that show up here frequently often break 100. That's a huge disparity in player needs and plot capabilities.

Ditto the anons above. And "lazy?" Yeah, organizing hundreds of players, checking AC, looking over apps, handling dozens of player problems...yeah, so lazy. I'm always amazed mods even have time to play their own characters and live their lives outside of RP. This is why I give the mods slack if they miss an event or two, let alone trying to monitor a game over the holidays.

Also, as barebones as it is, they have given the players a storyline. "The Fog Goddess has turned you into monsters, and now you must adapt to life as such, okay go."

Tabletop is fun and all, but you can absolutely not compare the two. The only trait they share are the fact that they are forms of roleplaying.

I totally agree that DWRP mods aren't lazy in the slightest.

I guess one issue I have with this game in particular though is that the longer you have a character around, the less there is to do with them. I feel like characters who are done with their changes kind of start getting a little boring to play. Especially if they've adjusted to the monster way of life and thus don't have much psychological conflict. It can start to feel like you're just playing slice of life once you get to that point unless you have something going on to shake it up. Especially because change logs and feeding logs tend to get a little repetitive after a while.

That's where good CR comes into play, anon.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I too want more events. I really, truly do. But at the same time I'm glad Ryslig isn't intensely event heavy. It is clearly not meant to be a short term large scale PSL. But characters would also eventually become numb to event body horror if it were. Ho-hum growing extra heads, oh no, another NPC of the week has risen that we must destroy to get normalcy back.

You can shake up the game as much as you want, but characters will always eventually adapt to it in the long term. But if you have good, solid CR, that's what keeps players, well, playing. They want to continue to react to their CR and play out their angst against both change logs and events. If Ryslig was working at a rate of two events a month, there would be little time to establish those bonds.

If you're stagnating, it more likely means you've burnt out on the game , and more events isn't going to fix that. It might perk you up for a while, but it's only a bandaid. It's a transformation theme game, and that can only be wrapped up and presented in so many ways. I do hope they find some creative ways however, as once more I must express more events are welcome imo, but I feel like people are assuming MORE EVENTS is the way to "fix" Ryslig when there isn't actually a problem.

Oh, I don't need two events per month, the pace lately has just been way too slow (and yeah I know it's the holidays and if it was just December I would have let it slide, but both November and December was a little much). One event a month with one event every few months being actively plot advancing would be fine with me. We've mostly had events that were nothing but temporary effects that were never mentioned again and those are fun to play too but a bit more plot would be nice.

I actually don't care for angst (small doses is fine but I really don't like playing 'lost control and attacked a friend' type of hurt/comfort plots) so that might be part of the problem, but I feel like just CR isn't always enough to go on either and that doesn't necessarily mean you're burnt out on the game. You can get awesome CR in SoL games, but I'd never app to them because SoL just plain doesn't interest me. I love my CR, but I also strongly prefer certain types of threads and scenarios over others. No matter how awesome my CR is I'm not going to be terribly interested in threading them dancing at a party or doing hurt/comfort things.

I think this is where playing up the PvP aspects could be really great, because I'd love to get involved in some real conflict and camaraderie that didn't require and event and wasn't angst-ridden (and get the resulting CR), so I hope the mods do something with the PvP elements. I'll definitely bring it up to the mods as a suggestion.

Has anyone done a subversion of 'lost control and hurt a friend' by leading the monster losing control on a chase into a human village or something?

Not too many human villages around considering Rota's toast and Kulen hasn't even had any plot significance yet. Unless you're leading them on a chase through sections of Bavan or Vandare, no.

Why have a game full of monsters who need humans to survive without planting populations of humans to sustain them?! This can only lead to anarchy.

Also nauseating amounts of h/c.

while I am okay with how things are, I too would love some more pvp. I'd adore some legitimate negative cr and it growing from that, or having alike monsters form instinctual rivalries with others. like a gang of harpies swooping people or manticores in the park, or werewolves cooperating to take down groups of campers or bigger monsters.

Yeah, me too! I know there are plenty of villains in game, but I'd love some more nuanced negative CR that isn't just "the big jerks vs. the normal people".

I have to admit, when I apped here I figured there'd be more genuine conflict and less "we're all in this together" angsting. I'd be totally interested in the monster clans idea and I've seen it brought up a few times. It'd require a lot of cooperation between players but maybe it's doable.

I don't even go here, just passing through, but speaking as both a tabletop GM and a former mod of a large game, you have some really skewed expectations.

It's not laziness that keeps a lot of DWRP mods from running very tight player-focused plots, it's that there are usually just too many players with too many wants and needs to juggle, let alone juggle while handling all the massive work with apps and lists. Honestly, the only chance you really have of providing heavy structure in a game anymore is instating a player or character cap from the getgo and a lot of players balk at that because they're afraid of not being able to get into games or afraid their buddies won't get in.

If people want games run like tabletops it seems like there are more coming out now that are meant to be smaller and plot-focused like that space superhero game or Interstellar (although who wants to be at a quix game) but a game as big as Ryslig would be very hard to run that way.

That isn't to say that your mods are doing enough for you. Like I said, I don't even go here, maybe there's more they should be doing. But what you posted was a little ridiculous. One thing I'd suggest is rather than tolerating all SOL or expecting tabletop style GMing you should maybe consider asking your mods for something that strikes a better middle ground in between. Maybe plots where significant things can happen but they're set up in a way where players are informed of multiple options and the players themselves can npc or shift the events in them so the mods don't have to npc it for everyone.

I think the problem is that you're assuming mods won't work with you to make a player plot happen if you suggest it and ask for it. See: Street to Nowhere. Didn't that involve "things players don't normally have the power to do?"

Proposing a player plot is about the same as suggesting an event, though. It's something that requires writing up a proposal, submitting it to the mods, waiting for a response, giving extra details if need be, and then trying to fit it into the schedule which might not happen for a month or two.

I think player plots are neat and wish more people did them but it's not really something you can just do if you're bored or the current month has no event or something because it'll take a while to work it out. Unless you have a backlog of approved player plots stored up, you're still going to have dead time waiting for one to happen even if it's your own. My comment was more about what we could do without any mod involvement whatsoever (between events and mod approved player plots).

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Found the token ace

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