Continuous CYOA: The Road to Free Roller
- Thread starter Easy
- Start date
You people aren't understanding: You get one choice now. You'll get another choice after this one, and the available options will be determined based on what choice you go with this time. Specifying separate conditionals for glass-inward vs glass-outward is sheer foolishness.
(This dude was sitting by the door all along; why the hell would the glass be broken outward?)
(This dude was sitting by the door all along; why the hell would the glass be broken outward?)
See, what I'm reading from this is: "If the readers are allowed to make their own choices, then they can't possibly make stupid choices. Any totally baseless and unjustifiable decisions they make cannot possibly be the result of them making stupid decisions, but rather must have been brought about by some other factor."
That's ridiculous.
Upstairs!
"In a world where magic exists and life-eating abominations roam the land as kings, how could something not conform to logic which doesn't take magic into account?"
Whatever. Go upstairs.
I like your writing, Easy, don't listen to the haters
It's not that fantasy doesn't have to make sense, its that it's beholden to internal logic rather than external; you posited the latter. If fantasy was entirely subject to "normal" logic, it would no longer be fantasy. Get that uppity bullshit outta my face.
When I loaded this page I only saw the top line of this post, and my response was
They can make stupid choices, of course that'll still happen. Getting mad at two of your readers who are actively getting involved in the process of actually playing the game is what's actually ridiculous. They both came to the assumption that it would be best to check and see from which direction the glass had been broken. Rather than saying that they're dumb and that they shouldn't have considered that factor at all, it would be best to acknowledge that the way you wrote it originally made them believe they should check the direction in which the glass was broken. Since that's not the case, all you could have said was, "Nah, the glass is actually broken this way, sorry you guys thought that was a meaningful variable."
It's not like you could be wrong or needed to make a slight edit though. That's not possible at aaaall. Anyways, it's not even a big deal, it just seems dumb to me to call your players foolish when they're basing their decisions and choices on the writing you provided for them. Reading it back myself, I can see why they would suggest checking to see which way the glass broke. If you hear glass breaking and then hear the sound of footsteps outside, it's not such a leap in logic to think "shit, maybe they broke the window from the inside and jumped out." Is that the most logical conclusion to come to? Not really, but it's not so far-fetched.
If you have to explain otherwise to your players, then that means the writing for the game is at fault. Keep doing your thing, this is cool stuff, all I'm saying is that it's possible for you to make a writing decision that leads players to think something you otherwise would not have meant for them to do so and that blaming the players for that isn't really the right way to go.
No bullshit, I was planning to only drop this for a couple of weeks while prepping for an exam. By the time that exam was over, however, that couple of weeks was enough time for me to literally have forgotten that it existed. It only came to mind again when I wrote about how very not Free Rollin' it would be for me to join the USAF, earlier today.
Granted, the fact that I was not particularly hyped about options for the next one or two posts was easily the greatest contributing factor to my complete failure to even think about this CYOA since then. Would've preyed on my mind, otherwise. But, that's beside the point! The point is that I will continue this CYOA! The point is that this is great work! The point is that the road to Free Roller is without end!* Im'a be back soon with the TO BE CONTINUED VERY SHORTLY.(!)
(Not today, though. Next week or two, on the long end? Absolutely.)
*Although not necessarily without conclusion. See?
Granted, the fact that I was not particularly hyped about options for the next one or two posts was easily the greatest contributing factor to my complete failure to even think about this CYOA since then. Would've preyed on my mind, otherwise. But, that's beside the point! The point is that I will continue this CYOA! The point is that this is great work! The point is that the road to Free Roller is without end!* Im'a be back soon with the TO BE CONTINUED VERY SHORTLY.(!)
(Not today, though. Next week or two, on the long end? Absolutely.)
*Although not necessarily without conclusion. See?
Also, about this. It kinda just confused me that you thought I was acting mad, because I wasn't even mildly upset or annoyed. As you said, I didn't even have any reason to be mad. I kinda now see how you might've figured I was, based on that I was arguing with my readers in the first place. That's just cause I'm argumentative, though.
Though I did get a bit annoyed at the point where Tirin went all herpa derp fantasy don't gotta use real-world logic in any given situation on me. It does, actually, although a few preset premises are used, which are taken as true in the hypothetical fantasy world, and known to be false in the real one. It's true that there is magic all over the place that would easily allow one or more people to get into Soren's second-story bedroom without his noticing, elect to exit said bedroom in extremely sudden and conspicuous fashion that seems to contrast harshly with the manner of entry, and yet still be apparently making noise inside the room while also running along the streets outside. In fact, that's entirely possible in a world that doesn't even have any magic in it at all. It could totally happen.
...but why would it? When Soren goes to sleep at night, is he preparing to wake up in the middle of a Sherlock Holmes story at any given moment?
Soren Lorasson is a craftsman with a shop, who's been a working dude for the past couple dozen years and a disgruntled, disloyal citizen for the past several weeks. He wakes up in the middle of the night, somewhat drunkenly, to the sound of breaking glass, toppling furniture, and running footsteps.
First impression: Clumsy burglars? Successful vandal(s)? Or mysterious and intricate clandestine operation? (Either or both of the first two assumptions could easily be natural immediate reactions, but the third one's kinda stretching it.)
With only a fraction of a second to think it over, is his first priority to immediately haul ass after the probable criminal? (Spirited, possibly rewarding, but potentially somewhat dangerous.) Run and check on his stuff? (Not very ballsy, but much safer.) Or think through the situation to account for all other possibilities, coming up with a plan for how to proceed next based on the outcome of a quick preliminary forensic analysis of the scene outside? (Thoughtful, but overly so. Whoever it is doing whatever it is, they've got a head start on Soren as it is. If he stops to think before acting, there's not gonna be any hope of catching up.)
Just don't overthink it, is what I'm getting at. Try to play the character primarily according to what the character himself should know and have reason to expect, as with the way I've worked out the background stuff that you don't know about, trying to account for everything that potentially could be happening will usually do you a lot more harm than good. This was one case where I probably should've just kept my mouth shut and went along with it, albeit a bit facetiously, but I guess I got to worrying that you'd feel disappointed with how it turned out, after having made the effort to be prepared for multiple eventualities. Ended up ruining the flow of things a lot more by speaking up about it, so my bad on that.
Anyway, I'm about ready to update. Got that coming in... a day, maybe two or three days. Pretty soon. We're coming up on the end of the Soren plotline, and your SPIRIT is still pretty low. To that end, I may end up doing a few 'lightning rounds', where the first response I get will determine what choice to run with for the next post.
It is unlikely, however, that you'll end up achieving the full 20 required for TC to blaze the Path of Spirit like a true Badass MotherFuckin' Free Roller. Not to worry, though - to that end, you'll be able to continue TC's spirit training afterwards, or send him elsewhere for a while, and come back to it later.
Time is still going to be a factor, however. With everything that's going on behind the scenes lately, things will eventually come to a point where the forums need another hero. If TC isn't ready by then, well...
That could end very badly for all the rest of us, couldn't it?
You should probably also try not to get him killed, though.
Negro you strawman me. Also fuck you, it's the evil undead godvernment who Soren could quite justifiably be paranoid of.
It's already ended pretty badly for you (I say, knowing that it hasn't ended), but shit's just beginning to end badly for Stealthy. And come on, we all wanna see that. Teal moon? Teal moon.
Naw man, the ev- that is, the arguably-neutral undead godvernment wouldn't need to be sneakin' around and shit, would they now?
Oh, worst case I just find a way to put down Tirin. I mean, I put a bomb in his liver or something, so we can start there. But yeah if I fail then the forum's fucked.
That's pretty goddamn funny. What's a not-even-king to a god?
Fucking nothing.
Oh yeah, no, you've totally got Tirin on fail-safe. And your own devious plots get foiled on, like, a regular basis, anyway. So what do the forums need something like a BAMF'n, Free Rollin' TC for?
Food for thought.