AAR 2

After Action Review 2 (AAR 2)

Yo, Players' Club. It has been a LLOOOOOOOONGGG time coming - THE END of Dark Thrones: Remnants of the Ancients Episode 2.

That monster had to be chained up and locked down and caged out!

Setting this line up, following tradition of last time, for some specialized review, reflection, housekeeping, future planning, etc.

I'll get back here at some point to post up a few things. It's open to you guys of course to send thoughts.

Admin is also open too for hanging out and socializing.

Eventually in the long run we will transition to Interim 2, but that will be another story for another day.

Big thing to close it out and kick it off: THANKS FOR EVERYTHING.
I appreciate you sticking with it.

I'll catch up soon.

Hope you guys are doing well.

J-Shift

So..... Maeriks. Dead? Or just mostly dead? Can Mr. Chanty-Flame-Spear do anything?

Thanks to yourself, J. Looking forward to interim 2, big time. Got caught in another 16 hour shift yesterday, missed my chance to post there fellas. Dropped the ball on that.

No sweat, Ez.

Those endings are kind of designed to be a "fade out" style anyway.

Interim 2 I just opened up, to give space for story-related ideas.

It's not really meant to be an actual Episode 2 Continuation and Prologue exactly, but I'm all for it if any of you guys want to throw up any last entries that are in and around the final scene or shortly thereafter.

Sort of like end credit scenes in Marvel movies maybe?

We'll def jam be getting some expansion going in Interim 2 in the longer run.

Reflecting:

Had envisioned Ep 2 in roughly 3 Sections:

1) Getting to the city, experiencing the backdrop of the culture, see which NPCs and sub-stories would catch
2) Zero in, by one route or another, to find that the Cursed Palace was the focus. Enter the Palace and encounter 1 or both of the two Cambion Factions
3) Deal with the complexity of the 2 Factions, see what happens

Beyond that, I tried to keep it as sandbox as possible. Had a lot of ideas about side plots, a good collection of locations, a pretty good dose of tension and history already built into the NPC influences, and a pressurized timeline with a couple of things (religious festival, Korvarans and the upcoming news of Valates' death, and the coming Séance with Bushyasta by Suter-Set). So I tried not to have too many opinions or preferences on which way it would all go.

When I think back through it, I had a blast seeing how you guys decided to steer the whole thing. It was pretty fascinating to me.

As a re-read now, I think it works fine. As a game though, I think it hit some hard spots. Here are some things that I could have done better.

Mainly...Section 1 was just too long. Too slow. Too imprecise. To you guys, I suspect it was rather unclear if I had to guess.

The build up on setting, of the forest, the city, exploring the urban locations, experiencing the city factions, gradually getting connections with NPCs that would build meaning for story later - I probably let that go with too loose of a rope.

My intent was to really explore the idea of going "full sandbox" and being willing to experience a really "setting tour" as a group, directed by you guys. I thought it would be fun because it was your choice - that you would get to pick what you were interested in - got to discover things by your route and not mine.

I don't know. It just felt sort of aimless and adrift at times. Not your guys' fault at all. Instead mine. Just not the right pacing.

It started killing off loads of RL time, and I think it cost participation - with players dropping out, whether by lack of interest or by overload of confusing information.

In a live setting, if we had been showing up together around a table every week or so, it surely would have worked better. But still, some of the drift would have probably still been there.

In PBP, I think it came close to crashing the game.

Oh well, lesson learned.

Maybe it was a good experiment on the much-debated Sandbox v. Railroad dichotomy. An illustration on the dangers of the former when unchecked.

That's my thoughts on that anyway. Would love to hear any feedback, similar opposite or otherwise.

The Palace:

It was intended to be the most brutal and most confusing setting we had ever faced. Check. Accomplished.
Maybe it was too hard. But oh well. Once that engine cranked up, it felt like it couldn't be shut down or you guys would have called me out on it for cheating on your behalf. So I just let it run.

Like I said, I really did not have any hard expectations of how it would go.

I did not know how you would enter.
Did not know under what circumstances.
Did not know with any allies or none.
Did not know how much or how little you would know in advance.

Below will list some of the biggest surprises from my vantage point, some alternate pathways that seem interesting now, biggest game changers rated, a few secrets and "What if...?" exposures.

* The Seetan Advisor Conspiracy turned out to be really cool when Hyp joined the group and introduced us to Trece. That was a lot of fun for me, because Palla Ba, Lok, and Ra u nak were already staged up. I couldn't resist weaving Trece's story into theirs. So great. Those guys wanted to save the Sar from his own bad judgment and stop the corrupt traitorous Nasi who were trying to use him to bolster their own power.

* Nasi Talel was the big bad guy. He was trying to work with the Korvarans, pull the Armsmen in either to compliance or vulnerability, and then usurp power. He was part of a secret society of devil worshipers among the wealthy and the merchant class. All that said, I thought you guys might have ended up connecting with him and even working with/for him in some way. Might have gotten more insight on the devil factions. He was in comms with Naram and Uburatu.

* I thought that you guys would do more hardcore surveillance of the site. The Red Bastion of Midrad was more like the Red Herring of Distraction. The Palace was the real center. Once that could be exposed, I suspected you would do research. Stake the joint out. Had high suspicion that you would go through that back balcony entrance, the one you left through in the end. Also, as crazy as it sounds, the Small Irons Gate was definitely an entry way. It would have involved learning more about the ancient Devotion of the Small Irons to open it, but it was possible within the story. How different would that have been?! Going to the Pit Chamber DIRECTLY, as the FIRST PLACE that you visit beneath the Palace? Likely meet Suter-Set first - who would have tried to get control of you guys and take on Elam and the Twins? Totally different movie!

* Once you guys routed through the Trap Room, I was like - ooohh gaaahd.... at that point, I thought there was high likelihood that you would fall unconscious and be taken prisoner by Eumash and Nabua. That was the design of that room. It actually wasn't designed by the Cambions to be a fatality chamber - not necessarily at least. The stirges were really just a nuclear option if things went really bad for them. Holy shit - that is just NOT the way it turned out. It all changed when Ez rolled that Natural 20 for Kray to discover the ceiling shudder to the upper stirge room and the rope pull mechanism. EXPLOSION. It became an escape route. It let the team avoid capture. But holy shit it was costly. NEVER saw that coming. That has to go down, for me, as one of the - if not THE - biggest game changers.

* Really wild possibility, Iasu's sister Siris and a couple of her doped lovers (including smith Hod) were NPCs that could have been discovered and exploited to get intel and even enter the palace. Another one of her lovers was a dog breeder, provided all of the hounds to Naram for the fire dog program. How different would that be?

* The big thing that was true - either one of the cambion factions that you encountered first, they were going to try to see if they could exploit you guys against the other team. It totally could have been that you guys would link up first with Naram or Uburatu initially. They would try to get you to help them raid the Fallen HQ for the stolen gold and crush the Twins' magic resources. So when Ivor died, I did let the cambion option out to Jabes, but I pretty much guaranteed that he would be with the first team of guys that the other PCs met.

* Suter-Set was always going to try to capture Bryn under his control. The Twins were always going to be going after The Black Book. Bryn was going to get hit by a lot of stress in the Pit Chamber if he ever went there. Since Bryn went NPC in the timing of it all, I just floored it in that idea and let it go to total fruition. Or failure. Whatever.

* I had so many other visions of other NPCs in the later scenes. All of the cambions were always going to be gradually destroying one another and wreaking havoc. First destroying the opposite faction, and then turning on their compatriots within their own faction. Iasu was the odd-man-out coming in late to the story there in the palace. My effort to let him be embedded, but not hold all the cards - still act as a PC. In the end - fucking ELAM RAN THE TABLES!!! That just got out of hand, but I couldn't stop it. Still was awesome that the Twins got to exploit one of the embedded fail-safes with the fake ceremony that they tricked him into learning. the one that called the Harvester. I really would have liked it if one of them Akkeen or Adar-Malic would have been there to see it, and then they would have been the final bad-guy maybe. Also really weird to me - Naram was around in the background, but a nonfactor face to face.

* Naram was the leader of the group out in the Jara Hili originally. The one who put the foul organ in Koral that eventually busted out as a new edimmu in the Hechesi cabin. Out there that night was Naram, Eumash, and Nabua (with the bow in the woods). Maeriks encountered Naram briefly, with the floating skull mask, when he was solo and saved Namtur. Namtur counter-saved Maeriks from Naram later. Naram was also the one that kept summoning the oozes and gels. In the end, he got killed by one. He got scared of Suter-Set and tried to get a powerful patron. It was an Oblex. Killed him. Then when Namtur showed up, the Oblex took Naram's form to deceive and then kill the vengeful Namtur. Those were some scenes that we could have seen, but they just didn't end up happening.

Treasure:

There was the pre-stolen gold in backpacks that Elam and the Twins knew about. You guys got that.

There was also more treasure that Elam and the Twins had stashed away out in Jara Hili. That was in play, but its not now. A secret cache that I guess will remain lost. No one who knows about it now survived.

The Vault. What was in that?
The Vault was really a route to the Red Bastion of Midrad. A door within that could be cracked that was a secret tunnel under ground that led to the corresponding underground chambers beneath the fortress.
There was ONE important piece of treasure there. The Shrine of Ninsunnu. Ancient famous icon woman from the past culture. A true legend in the entire region.

Elam and the Twins had plenty of loot, but they wanted to get more. The Twins wanted claim over the Séance Chamber, the Pit Chamber, Naram's lab. They wanted the Palace. Elam wanted the Garments of Ninsunnu. For one thing, he thought it would allow him to have children. Cambions are usually sterile, but with the magical garments, he was convinced because of legend, that he could clothe his wives in these artifacts and they would become pregnant and carry his children. So that was what was in the backpack - that was his plan to grab and go.

Here's a drawing that Elam was carrying, that could have been found on his person...



And yes, this would have been a big bag of magic items. A real rarity in DT world. They didn't make it out though.

Player-versus-Player

Wanted to talk about the end scene, when Jabes had Simush start shooting at the party.

Technically no shots were fired at PCs - that's worth remembering. But Iasu/Simush had turned into an antagonist set against the rest of the group.

It was controversial. Not just PC v. Rest of Party, but the idea of how the antagonist PC was placed and allowed with the opportunity.

Here I won't be picking apart the entire set of circumstances and making a defense of them. If you want to talk to me about it to greater depth, I can - so let me know if there more explanation that you need.

But I do want to post up with transparency to highlight two points:

1) For me, that whole scene was framed out to answer two last questions: Was Iasu going to move forward with the group or not? And if so, under what circumstances? Jabes had free will to decide that. Either way he chose, I welcomed one last explosion of drama, mystery, shock, and chaos. As it turned out, he chose a definite maximum "No." and it was dramatic. It made a final bold influence on the storyline. Maeriks' death. Simush's death. The impact offscreen of Simush's exposure as Iasu. The dramatic intro of the Hechesi in their own element (well that was going to be done to some degree otherwise - but not with this level of action and proclamation).

2) Once Jabes had answered the question in #1, the lights were going to come on - last call and the bar was going to close down for the night. DM takeover was going to happen after a short allowance of the whole crowd to have an active experience of the scene. So Simush gets to be an influencer (kill Maeriks, make final tone of interaction with Hechesi, reveal more character background about Simush, stay true to character), but he was not going to be permitted to go down the roster of active players and slaughter them. There was never going to be a long term cat-and-mouse chase through the woods, with Simush doing guerilla warfare, taking out PCs one by one. Or the PCs somehow outwitting him to turn the tables. I did not explicitly tell Jabes this before hand. Didn't tell any other PCs that either. If I had, it would have ruined the intensity and emotion of the scene. Also, I have no idea of Jabes longer term intentions one way or another if he had been allowed to continue in active control- that was never important for me to know.

All of this left plenty of room for disagreement. Was it fair for me to allow Jabes, even give him a great chance, to stage up his PC in max advantage against the party and turncoat against them? Was it fair, after the choice was made, for me to then close down Jabes' active control of his PC and kill the character in narrative with no dice, like an NPC?

To that, I might answer: meh...I don't know...

It's meant to be a dramatic game. It's meant to be emotional. Sometimes I'm trying to push the envelope, build the highest stakes, and even take on controversy - all an effort to frame out the most intense choices. Because I think that is what makes the best scenes and the best story and the best game.
That being said, another rule of thumb is that if your character starts acting like an antagonist set against the other players, like an NPC Detrimental Encounter, he is probably en route to being treated like one. It's not a fully written House Rule, but PVP is pretty much going to lead to the world and the story turning on the aggressor and closing him down.

So I've gone on about it enough. Just wanted to clear the air between us all and not let it be some 800 lb gorilla in the room if it was.

I'll go on record with no qualifiers: I was perfectly happy with the final scene.
I pretty much loved it actually. One last big pop of drama and craziness. One last dose of stress and strain.
Classic DT.

Also I have absolutely no hard feelings in any direction. Not to Jabes nor to anyone else. I hope the feeling is mutual all around, but if not, let me know if we need to talk about it more.

Peace, Love, Understanding,

J-Talk

Final Deep Thoughts:

Things I want to have out in the open amongst us and for myself to have as reference if I need to reread before developing future Episodes.....


Episode 2 had a HIGH amount of attrition. 2 legacy Player drop outs and 2 newcomer drop outs. Besides that, there were considerable time of low participation among most or all players.

Maybe those were unavoidable, but I'm always trying to reflect on what I could have done better to keep more interest in the game and elicit participation.

Things that I want to consider as solutions that I can control:
* The length of the game. Ep 2 was too long. I think too ambitious and too complicated. As a read-through now, it's great. As a game to actively play, it was cumbersome at time. Fine-tune more control over scope and time investment.
* Consider setting up calendar breaks or intermissions. Not sure about this, but maybe planned vacations would help people stick with it in known timespans. Thoughts?
* DM and Players may need to accept some increase on the streamlining of the story. Some things might need to be more direct. Most people are resistant to the idea of "train tracking", but we almost drowned in the "sandbox". No final decisions on future design yet, but the possibility of a shift towards more obvious adventure packages may be on the table.

On the other end of the spectrum, I think there is some room for at least some increase on Player accountability:
* If I set up a pattern of smoothly controlling and managing a PC as an NPC when players are absent, does that actually invite a lack of participation, or at least a comfort of intermittent participation? Maybe, maybe not. Moving PCs through a week or two during a player absence always needs to be part of the PBP culture. No problem there. At the same time, that coverage isn't meant to set up long term options for coming and going in and out of the game. I don't want to run more NPCs than the ones I design (don't even want to run those sometimes). Also I don't want unrealistic "zombie PCs", turning on again and then off again, lumbering around with the active Player group. I want to keep this topic open-ended and definitely not turn into a Nazi about it - that's no fun at all. And I'm sensitive to our relationships as fellow players, so I'm going to stay flexible and try to always favor figuring out a way to keep people in the game. But the overall trend of change for the future will be towards me making an earlier decision to close down PCs whose Players aren't actively controlling them. It's not meant to be mean-spirited or judgmental, instead just a bit more willingness to recognize and face it if Players are fading out, and then to adjust accordingly.


Here's a couple of questions that I want to throw out there, either for comment and response or to just linger unanswered:

Is Dark Thrones a proselytizing game? Should we seek more players? Are we trying to convince more people to join?
If so, how do we do that successfully? We don't have a great track record.
How do you screen players to see if they fit the style and obligation, and are in it for the long haul (long, tough quagmire slog? - ha!) ?

Here's a dramatic one, if we do want more players:
Should GP remain the home platform for DT?

I ask that because there are some other platforms that I know about. One in particular. It is WAY more active. Has a lot more gamers, and more gamers who at least SEEM to be consistent and devoted to playing PBP. And also more experienced at successfully contributing to complex, long term games.

I'll leave it at that. The questions are out there. We'll have to address them at some point. Any comments or thoughts are much appreciated.

That's kind of all I have for AAR 2. All of my proposed entries anyway.

I won't be closing it down, because I'd love to hear any comments from you guys. I'll gladly respond here to any more of this reflection or housekeeping topics.

This game we have to build and keep alive together, if we even want to. That's clear to me and that's the reason I put this thread out there.

Here's my thoughts on the immediate future of the boards and the game...

I'll move over to Interim 2 to start framing up some "off camera" story entries.

That will be a gradual casual pace. But I do want to make a time investment in it for maybe a week or so and then bring it the whole DT truck to a complete stop.

I don't know about you guys, but I need not only a downshift but a real break to walk away from gaming for a while. In full disclosure, I definitely intend to go completely dark relatively soon, let the "ZZZ's" post up over the DMJ avatar, and take the summer off.

After that, I would be up for getting back in comms with anyone willing, and trying to figure out the future of the franchise amid whatever circumstances that we are in at that time.

Fellas, again...thanks for everything.

Huge download there. And thanks, J. Yours is the largest investment of time and energy, no doubt.

Quick thoughts:

I love the open ended sandbox style, but perhaps there is some value in trimming the scope of it down. Or, as you suggested, breaks be involved. Episode 2 may have flowed better by having Acts within the Episode, with breaks in between. Like a game at a table, we plays for hours then meet again next weekend. So, for PbP, when an Act comes to an end (e.g., the party arrives in Gelshemish, the party ends the scene in the ghetto, the party stages up to enter the Cursed Palace, etc) we take a break for a couple of weeks.

I don't want to lose the sandbox aspect of the game at all. It's the major draw of DT, the freedom of it, not being on rails.

Regarding player participation, they should be encouraged to read past episodes, see if it's for them. Be straight and tell them that ghosting is for bitches... tactfully. Also, I'm of the opinion we don't need a large group. I'm fine with 3 to 5. If we roll out with who we have now, that's perfectly fine with me. It would also facilitate moving scenes along. Less PC's actually streamlines the narrative AND action, less moving parts so to speak. I'm actually in favor of keeping who we have. Waiting on players, even actively participating ones, can dramatically slow the game down.

Not sure what Jabes' plans are, but if it ends up being me, Hyp and X, I'm great with that. Truly.

Episode 2 was amazing. Intense. Your outlining all of the possibilities plot-wise says a lot about what makes DT great. Perhaps Epsidoe 2 was larger in scope, but that doesn't require every episode to be the same. Some could be more localized, less grand in scale as Gelshemish was, less sandbox like yet still presenting options. And a Gelshemish scope Episode would be welcome again.

I think variability in episodes combined with an 'Acts' methodology would make for better gaming.

Gotta go, just some 'quick' (ha!) thoughts above.

My opinion dump:

J, your investment has always been paramount in making this game what it is. Having tried my hand at DMing IRL, a hearty "thank-you" for all the work you've put into this world, and a sheepish apology for all the times I as a player have not been as involved as I should. Episode 1 was (relatively) fast-paced and engaging because we were all invested.

It has hurt to see that drop off in Episode 2. The story was far more complicated. Part of being in a city, I think, which requires far more thought from players than being in a swamp. A huge number of NPCs to keep track of as well as the resulting factions. Part of the sandbox aspect of it split the party early on with Ivor being a gladiator, Thorn and Kray partying, and I can't even remember what Maeriks and Bryn were doing at that point.

I'm with Ez regarding the number of players. If it's just the three (or four) of us at this point, that might be a good thing. The fewer of us, the less time we have to wait for everyone else to get their act together. If at some point we want to bring in maybe one player at a time, and see how it goes, we can cross that bridge when we get to it.

I wouldn't mind another Gelshemish-style episode in the future again, but for me, Gamers Plane has a serious and possibly deal-breaking drawback when it comes to complicated world-building, and it's what I said at the end of Episode 1, as well as a feature request to Keleth: Searching for info on GP is painful.

Remember that bag that got dropped in the room where Thorn almost died? It took me way longer than it should have to go back and figure that stuff out. My brain is a sieve, to be honest. (The Reference and Directory section helped mitigate that a little, and thanks for creating it.)

To me, the only real draw to continuing to use GP is the dice rolling; something I haven't found anywhere else. In my IRL game, I use Obsidian Portal as a wiki for the campaign. Every once in a while we have to take a short hiatus from gaming, and then I'll get players who want to do some "down-time" gaming to do it on Gamers Plane. Once we've finish posting back and forth, I'll put the summary on Obsidian Portal, with all of the relevant links to other pages on the wiki. It takes a bit of work on my part, but in the end I'm far happier when I can easily find the things I search for!

Maybe that would be too much work for us, and if that's the case, well, it is what it is. Keep slogging away at Gamers Plane until something more user-friendly with regards to organization shows up?

If you guys know another site with a dice rolling feature, I'd be willing to check it out.

As far as the number of players, I am really good with theee to four. Keeps the pace up with less downtime across multiple variables. Smaller scale, simply stated, less is more.

These are good thoughts, guys. I’ve read and have been reflecting on what you’ve said.

Information management - Im in agreement with what others have said - searching for details on GP is difficult. Remembering names of characters is one of the most difficult things for me. I leaned heavily on Ez's journal notes in Ep. 1 and JP's Ep. 2 reference. Bits of info not included in those references or bits of past scenes were always time consuming to dig up. I'd consider it equal between dice rolling and searching as far as necessary features.

Ghosting - I'm the worst offender here. The long cycle times for a game in PBP format makes it prone to this problem. Maintaining a solid group is hard over long periods of time. My own personal failing was to not communicate well about my changing schedule. Zombie PCs aren't any fun and players should be able to commit to participating reliably for blocks of time. Maybe it would help by having shorter scenes/episodes where there are good break points for PCs to fade out. Either adapt the game for the reality of players' limited ability to fulfill their obligation to the group (shorter episodes) or live with atrition and churn until the right group of dedicated players is found. Or take a card from Adventure League where any narratives surrounding a PC that ghosts are just simply ignored - no zombie PC. One day a player is there and the next they aren't, so you just play with whom ever is at the table.

There a couple of new House Rule adjustments.

Summary:

1) Lucky Feat is no longer available (though previous possessor(s) of the Feat have grandfather clause coverage to keep it).

2) Shieldmaster Feat no longer gives the added +1 AC beyond the PHB description.

3) Max no. of Short Rests available is 3. After that, a Long Rest is required to regain any HD, HP, Class Features, Spells, Powers, etc.