Great feedback everyone! Thank you for the kind words. I'll address a few points:
soises says:
* Len; This summer I was sitting at an Indian airport and reading chapter one again. And there were lots of videos and pictures and I thought: this is missing now, Hither is so much more bland than the carnival has been. But shortly there after - you had read my mind - you included videos again. Good job at mind reading. ;) I really appreciate the extra mile with maps, portraits, videos and soundbits.
Yeah, I definitely sagged a bit in the image posting. In my defence, it seems like 2/3 of the book's art budget was put into the Carnival chapter, so it was a lot easier to get images, etc. in chapter 1. But, now that the book has been out for a year, I'm seeing a lot more fan art to supplement the other chapters.
Another aspect was that I was going through a rough patch during the Hither chapter somewhere. It was all I could do to put out posts sometimes. The visuals are particularly hard to do from a phone, but as I embrace some of the site's new features like snippets and the NPC tag, it is becoming easier. As usual, a little bit of hard work at the start saves a lot of hard work later.
If you find the posts are becoming bland again, maybe check in with me to make sure I'm doing okay :D
Quote:
The summary you gave as on our open tasks at the end of this summer helped a lot. For my taste the soggy court and the swamp town could have been better presented, this part felt a little lackluster and "meh" to me.
I also struggled with Downfall. I presented all the hooks as-is, but they're fairly weak, so players resorted to grabbing at all the hooks in hopes of finding some story thread. Compare that to in the Carnival, where players ignored most of the hooks and focused on just two or three interesting threads. Downfall's hooks didn't really amount to a main story, whereas the Carnival did. Yet, after playing through the Carnival you might have been expecting there to be more of a central theme or conspiracy going on. Instead, it probably felt like there were a lot of NPCs with exclamation marks above their heads that lead to fetch quests.
So, instead of presenting things as-is, I could have read between the lines and created more of a story in Downfall even though none existed in the text. Rescuing Morgort was a good example. She just slunk away, rather than demand revolution or reveal a conspiracy. To be honest, by that time I was sensing a dissatisfaction with Downfall's many weak threads, so instead of leaning into them to make them stronger, I leaned away from them so they didn't take up much time. I guess I worry about leading players by the nose rather than giving them a space to let their creativity shine (like in KCC's frog escapade!), but there's a middle ground there. There has to be a strong enough of a hook to hang ideas on.
I'll think some more on this!
Verrain says:
I can't believe none of us have found our lost thing yet. That was a "your princess is in another castle" moment that I was not expecting. I guess we all picked things more associated with the past and future.
The book instructs the DM to randomly the location of each person's lost thing. This is true with a bunch of plot-specific things, actually. So, by random chance, we haven't gotten to those places yet. I think in general, they might be skewed to be later in the game, because they don't want to resolve character motivations before the game is half over. But, we see a few players' lost things have pinged their attention in Thither, so your wish is in the process of being granted.
If the "lost things" thread has become a bit frayed, we will work to repair it.
Okay, for my stars and wishes:
Stars: completely agree with everyones' comments about how awesome the characters are being portrayed! I'll give a shout-out to KCC's froggy escapade, since nobody has mentioned it yet. It was one of my favourite things in Chapter 2, a great use of the materials at hand. Totally disarmed Bavlorna's alarm systems that would have triggered earlier battles without the knowledge of her allergy to running widdershins!
I also like players' battle tactics! Characters aren't necessarily combat-optimized, so it is fun to see some different spells and types of actions being put to use. I feel like everyone can handle and enjoy a hearty challenge.
Wishes: Yeah, same for me about maintaining momentum. I feel pretty good about things on my end; if I managed to keep posting through the 2021/22 school year, which was a rough one, I'll be able to handle whatever comes my way in the next year. I can't guarantee that the game always feels like it is humming rather than struggling, but I'm with you to the end of line.
