Summer Camp Petoskey Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
petoskeymods) wrote2018-07-28 05:52 pm
petoskeymods) wrote2018-07-28 05:52 pm
Post-round crit post
Please place any crit or comments you have on how this round was run and how things turned out. This has been a first time running a murdergame for both mods, so we're still learning the ropes and any crit is greatly appreciated. Also, we tried out some different mechanics this time around, and opinions on what worked and what didn't will help us with deciding on what to use in future rounds.
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Also, as a murdergame vet, I think it would be much more organized to have toplevels for each day of the week in the weekly posts.
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Still, as with any game that tests new mechanics, there were some things that I feel could have been improved upon. I'm going to start with those to get the negative out of the way and then follow up with listing the things I liked the very most about the game. Hopefully it will be helpful feedback!
- I think power-nerfing might have needed a bit more attention. While it is absolutely amazing to play in a game that lets you go wild with canon powers, I felt it soon became very clear that some characters' powers were better suited for the setting than others. Between Ren's third eye ability and his metaverse adventures, it kind of felt like everyone else had far less chances at being useful. In future rounds, I'd keep in mind which powers are particularly useful for the game and nerf according to that in order to level the playing field.
- We've already talked about the issue of keeping up with both Mod PCs and NPCs so I am not going to repeat much here. I'll just reiterate that I think a good self-check on the 'can I still play my PC' front would be to do AC and treat the own PC accordingly. On a side note, a less interaction-heavy store system would probably help both mods and players with item purchases in the long run. Not that haggling with Stan wasn't an amazing idea (it was!), I just noticed that it took you guys a lot of extra effort to keep up with.
- I think the expectations for the graveyard in this game were very mixed between players totally disregarding it and others playing it on full activity force and that caused some awkwardness. I think the latter party (which I am among) expected a more involved GY experience over-all and I'd love a more interactive graveyard for later rounds, but I also understand that this may not be doable.
- That said, if there is any area I could choose to direct more mod energy towards that would be cases. Being a culprit myself I can't say I am blamefree in this area, but it did stick out that the cases were a lot less difficult and elaborate than the rest of the game lore. We had a lot of fun in trials, but I think we could maximize that fun if mods and players worked closer together for more detailed casework. Maybe getting a case mod specifically for this on board is a good idea?
- And while I'm on cases I think the motives were great for being very novel, but not necessarily for being conductive to actual murdering... which makes sense given Sol's IC involvement, of course. But in a trust sheet system the motives should hit in such a way that they really make characters kill, avoiding all the distrust/distrust solutions. I also can't help but notice that the sickness motive and the sensory deprivation motive both just ended in different kinds of disability and impending death, which didn't make them feel very different. My issue with the sensory deprivation motive is very personal of course, but I'm still not fully comfortable with using irl-related disability as a murder motive specifically. I think an event without this motive element attached would have made this more comfortable. But this is in the end a minor gripe, body horror was advertised and all.
-Also I'd advertise the Discord as mandatory next time, since that is what it pretty much ended up being anyway.
And that's it for critique points that jumped out at me, NOW TO THE PRAISE.
- The lore in this game was absolutely fantastic. We had such a rich world to discover with more and more backstory that fit wonderfully together. It really was an amazing story to be part of and it felt more like an open exploration game than working down a checklist of info. I cannot wait to explore this universe more in R2. Seriously, I have been in awe about the writing of this game since week 1. Absolutely superb. Special shout-out again to Sol's room in the final investigation - absolutely my favourite scene from this game.
- I loved how interactive you made the game as well. It really felt like we could all go and shape the story with our actions. We introduced the raccoon, we changed your ending plans, our CR with Red affected outcomes majorly... That was great.
- The zombie mechanic was SUCH A GOOD IDEA. I loved this tie-in to make graveyard characters stay relevant and grayeyard players able to still play in the living realm. I sincerely hope something like this stays around for future rounds, it was a blast and worked out PERFECTLY. Absolutely the best idea. Loved it. Loveloveloved it.
I think you guys did a fantastic job at creating a rich, active and engaging world to play in. While I was initially a little :/ at not getting Golden End on account of the whole cast being children who really deserved better... I did end up loving how we now immortalized our characters as permanent parts of the setting for this and future rounds. All sequel-bait was well executed.
The experience of playing here is rivaled by only one other murdergame I've ever been in, otherwise this is beyond compare. It's one of my favourite times playing in a game period and I will be thinking about it for a long time - and hopefully museboxing it too.
I'll absolutely be back for round 2. Thank you guys so much!
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- for mod npc/pc parts, that's absolutely on me - I overestimated my energy to play multiple NPC's AND a player character, even though Ichigo was supposed to die fairly early on and ended up not dying due to player interaction, which was great for interactivity but bad for my overall energy in keeping up with mod stuff AND doing pc things. I'm only playing an NPC in round 2, and I've generally learned from it. The store was also meant as an incentive, but we dropped it pretty quickly as a mechanic due to the load that it put on us, which is something we'll definitely keep into account for later rounds.
- In regards to the graveyard, it's normally a slower-paced part of the game due to no AC being required. We were trying out something new with how we handled the GY in this game (what with handing out info the dead had to give to the living), and I understand it's a bit mixed in hindsight, what with activity being an issue. We have some ideas about how to pull off r2's gy, but generally the GY will always be a little slower paced in comparison to the living side of the game, which is just a side-effect of how murdergames are run.
- As for cases, we wanted to give players the opportunity to do what they wanted without limiting their opportunities or ideas, if that makes sense? We didn't want to impose on people for what they wanted to do re: cases in the least, because that's not fun for players and it's unfair if the mods push for a specific conclusion. That being said, we have taken some crit from this round to heart (more detailed kill docs and doublechecking with players, especially) to go forward with in future rounds, and we'd be willing to assist with cases more if players request us to.
- as you mentioned, we were a little hamstrung on motives due to general plot issues (what with Sol not really wanting to do them). One of the things we did plan for were distrust/distrust murders and the accidental deaths that occurred from them, because we based this game so heavily off of Higurashi, which had plenty of accidental or paranoia fueled deaths not related to actual 'motives' in the story itself. THAT BEING SAID, we are taking this into account for future rounds and definitely giving motives after trust sheets are due! Motives won't be an issue in R2, due to it being a mafia based round.
- We absolutely hear you on the discord thing and will definitely be advertising that from here on.
Moving onto the praise:
- Thank you for enjoying the lore so much! This was genuinely a labor of love on me and maple's parts, due to really wanting to bring something special to the players that took a chance on us despite us never having modded a murdergame before. Personally, I wanted players to have that feeling I got when reading/watching a good mystery - that feeling of not knowing what's coming next but excitedly formulating theories and looking ahead for any clues on what the bigger picture is. Blame my mom for raising me basically on a diet of Matlock and Murder She Wrote, ahaha. And thank you for the praise on the basement! I was like 'I GOT IT MAPLE', due to having such a strong image in my head for what was down there and what would be the most disturbing to the living, because despite Sol being friendly and wanting the best, they are still in many respects something beyond humanity, and their efforts to help ended up often making things worse due to that disconnect.
- Interactivity was always our goal with this game - Maple has been a longtime murdergame veteran, and I've been a longtime spectator, and we constantly kept noticing that often players didn't have much agency in the plot or how it ended up. We felt that a lot of games didn't let player actions effect the general outcome beyond preplanned events and that players ended up kind of being pieces in an overall story - which isn't really rewarding from the player side. So with that in mind, we designed the game to purposefully allow for as much player interaction as possible. We have the mystery in plan, yes, but we're also (not to toot my own horn) pretty good improvisers, and a lot of the time we went with what you guys threw out because they were great ideas. I said on plurk I was so proud when you guys figured out a way to end on a better note than we had planned, and I meant it - because it meant that not only were all of you committed to the game, but that our system was working.
- The dead among the living was another thing we worked in, due to wanting to give dead players more options to interact instead of just passively watching. We do have things we're discussing for r2 (the zombie thing won't be possible, but there are other methods of communication and interaction that CAN), so I hope that r2 will be just as good in regards to that!
Thank you for playing with us! We've loved having you.
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And re: cases, I think more double-checking on the kill logs to really make players add full detail into it would help a lot. In my experience with other cases in MGs, that was usually what helped us out in writing; to have the mods there questioning the logic of the evidence that we were leaving in the scenario we worked out.
And that's all I have to add for your commentary, overall I'm just -w- at the prospect of seeing how all of this changes and updates in R2!
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- In regards to the power nerfing, that's a thing we're definitely planning on fine-tuning as we go on. We want to nerf as little as possible, just because the setting of the game has a lot of possibilities in terms of what to do with said powers. The Foundation especially would not nerf a lot of powers, since they use said powers all the time in the name of 'protecting humanity'. And honestly, given how like 99% percent of games completely nerf powers all together, we wanted a setting where characters can have a bit more fun with them.
I think to strike a balance between 'having fun' and 'fairness', we might use a 'one time only' policy going forward. So like, something like Ren's third eye ability would work the first time, but after that the powers that be would go 'nu-uh' and not let him use it again to find clues. Something like that would allow us to better fit the game to what the players decide to do, since we can roll with the punches and go "awesome use of your power. Now don't do it again" instead of just saying 'no' to everything. That's our thought for now, at least. We're going to try that out in Round 2 and see how it works.
- In terms of endings, Eski and I had a very specific plan for this round (and will have similar plans for future rounds). Basically, we don't want 'golden end' to feel like a given. We don't want the best ending to become expected, because we feel like that cheapens the game as a whole.
So when Eski and I planned this round, we specifically did not plan for a 'golden end'. The absolute best ending we had planned for this game still involved sacrificing at least one character to Sol to allow the dead to come back to life. And honestly? That worked out amazingly. Because everyone in the graveyard saw what we had to offer, and they went "nu-uh, we're finding our own answer." Which is, honestly, what a golden end should be! It should be the players completely upending the game and finding an answer that even the mods didn't plan on.
Given how well it worked this time, we're likely going to stick to it in future rounds. The 'good end' we plan will still be relatively positive, but also bittersweet. But the players won't have to just settle for that ending, they can make their own, better ending if they come up with a way to do it. That way you guys are earning that happy ending. I feel like that's a much more satisfactory way to do it than planning out a 'golden ending' and having a list of boxes to check off to get there.
- Finally, thank you for playing with us, and thank you for the crit you've given us here. We're going to be taking it into account as we do our planning for round 2 (and, for the stuff that doesn't apply to mafia-style games, round 3), so it really helps us a lot.
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And I feel you on being fed up with Golden Ending (tm), haha. I was rooting for getting a worse ending in quite a few of my past murdergames. In this one it just really hit me how young and largely innocent our characters were so I was just going 'must. wrap them. in blankets'. Overall I am very happy with the end though now that we're all working with it. It leaves exciting postgame perspectives and the continuity aspect is also really cool.
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I think Luna actually covered a lot of what I had thought to leave for this post game crit, and after reading your responses I have to say I'm really excited about R2. Thanks again for creating such a great setting and for all the hard work you guys put into it. It's so obvious that a lot of thought and love went into it and I'm really happy to have been a part of this game.
Here were some of the things I'd noticed and I know some of these were already brought to your attention.
Fabricator Role -- First and foremost, I genuinely do not recall seeing anywhere in the FAQ prior to the start of the game that cases would be staged. I've actually never played in a game with this mechanic before and I still have some mixed feelings about the execution of it in this game. I think this mechanic probably could use some tweaking (and perhaps rotating this role from PC to PC rather than giving it to NPCs) might have been helpful? I know ICly it was explained that Red / Archer had staged the evidence to try and increase the difficulty of cases, but especially in the earlier cases (before it was established that Archer was a lying liar who lies) that seemed a little incongruent with how easily Red just told everyone "yeah I did that." In the end, it may just be that I'm not really a fan of NPCs playing prominent roles in player written cases, so this may be a difference in preference rather than a particularly helpful criticism re: execution so hrm :/
Trust Sheets -- I know you guys were talking in chat about doing an overhaul of the trust sheets, so I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with for R2. It'd be nice to see more cold blooded murders rather than distrust-distrust accidents for the majority of cases and I think re-tooling the kill sheets so that distrust-trust pairs actually can lead to kills would be helpful especially if modifications are made to the motives.
Suspect lists -- I don't think these are specifically necessary and I actually liked that they didn't exist for this game. But I think for the sake of OOC communication and knowing for cases which muns will or won't be there over the weekend that there should be an additional space on the trust sheet itself where the mun can indicate their availability on the weekend. This just kinda makes planning for cases easier and makes more sense, imo?
GY Chat -- This one's minor, but I did feel sometimes that spoilers about the game / cases that weren't necessarily asked for kinda got casually dropped here a bit often and I kinda wished at times that the spoilers weren't given at all? Like I said, minor thing is minor, but there were one or two moments of "hm I wish we could just be left to work this out with the living in real time."
Mod Communication -- I already addressed my concerns about this with you guys during the game, and thanks again for being receptive to implementing changes for the future! I think one other thing that could have been helpful was having a more defined schedule for when IC events would take place just so that everyone's kind of on the same page. I know that's not always the easiest thing since RL has a way of causing last minute plan changes, but there were times where I felt a little frustrated by a lack of clear direction in terms of when certain things were supposed to happen.
Overall I think maybe what this game could have most benefitted from was a third mod to help better distribute tasks. I did feel at times that you guys were stretched pretty thin between investigations, trials, case managing, NPCs, PCs and running both the living side and the GY side of the game. it was super ambitious and in the end, you guys definitely managed to pull through between the two of you shockingly admirably all things considered, but I definitely feel like this should probably be a strong consideration for R2 so that there's less stress going on for you guys, too.
This game was a ton of fun, and honestly congratulations on running such a great R1! Thanks again for all your hard work <3
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Fabricator stuff: this was something we had seen in Nope's Peak, which is why we wanted to try it out. It didn't work out quite as we planned, which is a big part of why we're nixing it for round 2 (bodies won't be messed with at all there, beyond what players do). We might come back to it later, but if we do it's going to be changed dramatically. The suggestion of making a fabricator role is a good one that we'll keep in mind though! We are considering doing roles for round 3, so a fabricator role would fit right in.
Suspect lists: I get what you're saying here, and I do think it's important to rule out people who can't be present OOCly. But this is why we spoke up OOCly about it in chat when it happened (like the weekend Al had to be gone, or the time Jess and Sera lost power, stuff like that). We're not too keen on making a 'suspects list', because we feel like that narrows it down too much. We want the trials to be a challenge for the players, and part of the challenge is narrowing down a suspect list of your own. Eski and I try to make sure that the clues narrow the suspects down to a group of 5 or so at most, and we'll continue to do that in future rounds as well.
GY chat: We apologize for that, we didn't think getting spoilers early would be a problem. We kind of wanted that to be a reward for the dead, a sort of 'bonus' to sticking around or something. In future rounds we'll get a consensus of the dead players first to see if they want spoilers or not.
Mod communication: That definitely did break down as the weeks went on. Originally we planned on having mini-events every Wednesday, but that broke down after week 4 or so. We're going to try it again in a future round (probably not round 2, it won't fit in thematically, but possibly round 3) and stick to a stricter schedule for that stuff. We're also going to be shortening the rounds a bit (6 weeks instead of 8), so the fatigue that set in for us in later weeks shouldn't be a problem. But yeah, that's on us for messing up the schedule for events and stuff. We'll do better about that in round 2.
A third mod: Honestly, at this point Eski and I have a pretty good feel of the workload, and for round 2 we're going to split up the workload a bit differently. (Most notably, there's only going to be one living NPC and one deadland NPC, and Eski and I are going to take turns with playing PCs/running the more intensive stuff to balance out the work with fun.) Modding is definitely a lot of work, and since this was our first time running a murdergame we did expect a few hiccups. But we feel like we can split it up better now that we know which tasks are more intensive and which ones are less so. We're going to go into round 2 with just us two modding to try it out, and we'll see how it goes. (That said, if we see workload problems in round 2 as well, then we'll consider adding a third.)