The Fifteen Strangers Mods (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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notasstrange2018-08-20 11:23 am
strangerpeople) wrote in notasstrange2018-08-20 11:23 am
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HOW'S MY DRIVING
It's time for an HMD! As it is the end of the game, we welcome everyone to come and give feedback to the mods as to how we did/are doing/what we could do better next time. We are proud with how round 3 came out, but we know there's always room for improvement, and we always strive to make the player experience an excellent one, both in and out of character. We also welcome players to post here, if they would like some feedback from their fellow players!
And, last but not least: thank you! You guys are amazing players, and we are so glad we got to have you guys this round. You are what made this round so amazing, and we can't wait to see what else you guys do next time.
With that, round 3 has ended, but players are still welcome to backtag to their hearts' content! We'll see you in December, for mock week 2, and spring 2019 (with details forthcoming!) for round 4, of 15 Strangers!
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The setting was honestly my favorite part of the game, which proves how well thought out it was, because how often can you say that? But it was really good! The qualities of the base were mysterious and very unique, which encouraged investigation of it. And I don't think anyone would have ever guessed we were all tiny and inside a woman, but the clues made it all come together, and they unraveled at a very reasonable pace! Bravo!
The murder cases were also very good and well put together. The mod's input when we were crafting the second case were helpful and more than sufficient - you even helped us come up with a good method of murder when we were puzzled, which is what a mod should endeavor to do!
I was especially impressed with the third case. I know the decision to run another NPC case was probably a difficult one after the mixed reviews over the ones from R1, but I can genuinely say that you improved on it a lot. The ways you hinted that Marie was the killer were really solid - you probably didn't even have to have her act as suspicious as she did, I think they could still have figured it out.
The only thing I could say is that the investigation portions could have been improved on in terms of the level of detail. For example in the second case, no one realized Rosenkreuz' corpse was naked until I told everyone in Discord, which is a pretty huge detail to miss, especially when the evidence document even mentioned where his clothes and weapons were being stored. You also said the TV was in the onsen when it was actually just supposed to be the stripped wire. These misconceptions had shaped a very different impression of the case by the players, so please make sure when you do these, you are being really careful and not missing ANY details! It's super important! Even if you need to make a "cleaned up" version of the murder document, you need to actually stick to it or the mystery doesn't work right.
The graveyard was excellent. A strong setting, a beloved NPC, and what was basically a plot of its own. It was really good work and I'm proud of Lita for pulling it all off. I'm just sad I couldn't participate in it more because of my vacation. Great job.
If I had to pick a failing of the game, I'd say it was the final trial. Maybe that's not for me to say since I wasn't a member of the survivor pool and they all seemed to have fun. But from my perspective, it was, well.... really boring and anticlimactic. Halley was always a cute nerd and all, and I liked her as a character, but she was also supposed to be the personification of a deadly super virus! I really didn't expect or enjoy that she was COMPLETELY guileless and woobie. The first wave of clues make it clear that these are two viruses working together to kill Ivy, they want the virus to succeed, Marie is hype for the destruction of the universe- revealing that actually Marie was abusing Halley and Halley wouldn't hurt anyone if she could help it, just really pulled the rug out from under all of that.
And I honestly have no idea why this was a writing decision you made. As far as I can tell, Halley was your Mastermind OC, and for some reason you made her .... the opposite of a mastermind? Letty said in chat that this wasn't a trial, it was an adoption, and while I respect that people enjoyed adopting the cute virus-tan, in my opinion I don't think that's really a good thing. The mastermind trial SHOULD be a confrontation, like if nothing else a clash of values should be present (R2 Yotsuyu wanting everyone to become Composerguca vs. everyone wanting to live, while ultimately they all became friends and worked together, there was still a conflict, you know?) The graveyard showed up in a mecha primed for a fight and there was nothing to do! There wasn't even any kind of good or bad dilemma to chew on, like saving Halley had a risk of spreading the virus! Instead Halley cured Ivy! ....Why? Where is the tension in that? It came off like you wrote yourself into a corner and had no idea how to give people the happy ending they wanted so you just made each good outcome into something inevitable. I also think that it's obvious that you missed the mark and the ending was unsatisfying in how everyone just had their characters turn on the poor dumb Star Wars doctors - like, it really didn't come off like their supposed malevolence was an intentional writing decision on your part, but where ELSE are people supposed to let out their anger at being in a killing game if """"The Mastermind""""" is a sad nine year old..... there has to be some kind of catharsis at the end, and I'm sorry to say that I don't think this ending provided any. I understand, though, that a mastermind trial is really difficult to write, and it can be super hard to tell how people will react to your content. I certainly respect the effort into creating a character like Halley, who was at least fun to read and play off even if imo she was placed in the wrong role.
It's clear that overall, this round was a major improvement from R1 and R2. I think you adjusted to the scapegoat system very nicely and as a result you were able to have a game with much more entertaining cases. Everything was immensely fun and I'm grateful to both the mods and the players for being so awesome! And I look forward to working with you on R4 and jumping toward this high bar I am stupidly setting for myself '-' It was very educational to see things from the player side again, that's for sure. Thanks again for everything, guys!
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I expected there to be this big moral fight, but it turned out the doctors were really kind of wimpy, and we didn't really get much. I think there should have been more planned there, something post-Halley to do with all that to help tie it all together to have the characters kind of go after the people that roped them into all this, so to speak. Would have been nice.
Edit: Actually, I thought of something else I really want to talk about. From the perspective of someone who made survivorpool, we had a brand-new NPC show up I was really excited about. I want you guys to understand my perspective on this. I was in the middle of mobile, in the car, when this was all happening. Everyone was meeting, the NPC was cute, I read some stuff. I was really excited to get to meet this Deadlands NPC and get to know her. And then everyone left the base, and all of a sudden, the NPC was dying. It felt like she was introduced just to immediately kick the bucket. We got zero time to get to know Kerri from the aliveland perspective, and it was really frustrating. I wanted to know this NPC. I wanted to see more about her. I was honestly really upset when she died, because it felt unfair and made me expect Halley to die, too. Why did Halley get to live and Kerri didn't? It didn't make any sense to me. I get on an OOC level someone had to die, and Kerri was different, but... it really could have been handled better.
From our perspective, this NPC was introduced just to kill them off. It was... really saddening and upsetting. I completely respect you guys' decision to do what you did and I'm not saying it was wrong or anything, I just wish we could have had more time to talk to her. You could make the argument we did have time to talk to Kerri, but honestly, we didn't in aliveland. We had like, one thread and were then railroaded elsewhere into leaving, basically. There was hardly anything happening with her in the post, and then all of a sudden she was dead. It felt like, "hey, we brought in this NPC and waved her face around so you knew her JUST BARELY ENOUGH to get A LITTLE ATTACHED when we kill her off!"
I know this is different for deadland folks. They had actual time with this NPC. But we didn't, and deadland was locked to us and was only recently unlocked. From the perspective of someone with zero idea of what went on there, it's just... kind of rough.
Overall, however, this round was amazing. It was a huge improvement from the other round I was in. I loved Marie, she was a bombastic NPC with so much personality, and killing her felt amazing and satisfying. Her death felt enjoyable and earned, like we worked hard for it and it was a nail-biting trial to get there. Halley is sweet and I love her. I like the setting a lot, and never would have guessed many aspects of it! It's so unique!
I'm really glad you guys did this round, it was amazing. Thank you so much for letting me participate in it. You guys rock.
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Otherwise, everything was superb and I had a ton of fun. The modding was great and the story was a fun ride. I enjoyed being a non-redeemed asshole whose only real breakdown was a lack of control, and the only reason he ever decided to join in on things was to ensure his own survival and win enough points with the people in charge to not get in trouble. And I'm glad you all let me do that. It was a fun game.
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Setting was great, large number of new rooms on each floor, consistent with a theme and still varied. You gotta love the lasers. Practically every room had a prewritten clue with a good IC reason for its presence and that was amazing. Roommates worked out better than I thought they would in this type of game and inspired interesting CR.
The scheduling was great throughout the game with very few rescheduling incidents. Although it's kind of a shame there were no riots or intentional punishment plotlines, they're kind of a tradition. Intra-moderator discipline has also improved dramatically with only one public contradiction incident the whole game as far as I observed. Inter-player discipline was good. There were a few instances of player aggression (some on my part) that all got handled smoothly in some way as far as I observed. #chat_dark is a GODSEND. (Though I think you need to decide where dark spoilery content should go, since lots of dark content is spoilery by definition. I personally think spoilers should just be one more type of potentially undesirable content that's shoved into darkchat but that's just me.)
The minigames were better than before with a very consistent theme and reasonable IC rewards. Though it was a little odd that Peace Week had no motive and Week 2 had motive as well as minigame. I do not think a peace week improves the game.
I request you please leave AC the way it was of two unrelated threads each with five comments from yourself. Especially with meetings and minigames, tagging a single thread ten times is really hard! There's already enough pressure to make long threads for the vending machine.
All the murder cases were really good. I kind of admire the guts of an "altruistic" murderer confessing before the case was solved for once... Once. Now we've all gotten it out of our systems and we can have culprits who try to get away with it for the rest of time. Speaking of which, Naoya! Naoya's trial was the first time in almost three years that I have gotten to feel the suspense of waiting for votes to get counted and it was GREAT! I missed that feeling! Thank you! Marie's trial was the BEST NPC culprit trial I have ever seen, and I have seen quite a few.
This round the Fabricator role really came into its own. R1 had no premediated PC culprits, so the distinction of the Fabricator and culprit was limited. R2 had the evidence not change the course of the trial very much, partly for IC reasons but also just still trying to come up with ideas. R3 though, oh man. Everyone was genuinely wondering where the culprit got ALL those KNIVES.
A question. Is Fabricator intended to be a free pass to survivor pool? Because that's fine, 15S is pretty short so getting to survive that long isn't super unfair, but you should make that clear from the beginning. There's also room for the Fabricator to, you know, die for committing a "major transgression" or for defying the rules of their initial contract with the facilitator.
What follows is my concern about the premise of the game. You will notice I have discussed the NPCs very little so far in this glowing review. To be clear, the NPCs were consistent, interesting, well foreshadowed, and engaged with the player characters fairly. This was also the first 15S round with a reasonable number of them (4). Criticism of the premise might seem like a matter of personal taste. MARIE WAS A CONSISTENTLY WRITTEN REDHEAD, BUT SHE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BLONDE! I just wanted to be honest about my feelings because I really love this game.
Halley did nothing wrong. She was trapped in the universe and had only nine years of mental information to observe. Dozens of lore items reinforced her limited decision making ability, like the belief a raccoon could be a good spouse, or her limited ability to draw, or her dependence on a large toy to snuggle. She is not eligible to be tried for crimes. Every misdeed she executed was a direct result of her abuse by Marie or her preexisting biological commands from her other creators. Whenever Halley had a choice different from what those people said, she reduced harm, such as by refusing to hurt the unborn Cheol-min. Bottson literally said Halley wouldn't approve of the killing game or Marie's participation therein. She isn't even physiologically destined to risk harming people. The opposite! She physiologically singlehandedly saves Ivy!
The reason Marie made such a splash is that she antagonized the Strangers. She was multifaceted and funny and a great hate sink. Again and again, she alluded to a powerful boss, and the characters looked forward to kicking the stuffing out of the even more evil person who heartlessly confined both Marie and the strangers in the base. Halley and Marie seriously were not working together. I mean, why not have it be like this? "Due to their antibody properties, Marie and Halley find it very difficult to directly murder the Strangers. To prevent them from realizing their true mission, Marie is removing their memories and monitoring them to goad them into killing each other for several inside-weeks while they're distracted from working together and finding a way out. Halley is TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THIS DISTRACTION TO KILL IVY, WHICH SHE INTENDS TO DO"...
Forgiving a mastermind is all well and good, but this is meeting someone and seeing they had done nothing that needed to be forgiven in the first place. Like there was no point to the vote.
Also the dead characters very specifically expected they would have to fight for their lives and armed themselves with weapons. If their services weren't needed, why not just never arm them in the first place and let them return more casually in the epilogue? Crediting their survival to Kerri and/or the doctors would have made it a lot clearer that the doctors meant well. For that matter, if the services of the strangers weren't needed to save Ivy, doesn't it make the doctors look much worse for soliciting them in the first place?
In a big picture view the climax of this entire game was telling Halley to believe in herself, and that is not a player character focused ending.
This is my point: the characters left their homes and found themselves trapped in a dying universe for a month surrounded by dangers like robots and lasers. They underwent torture. Even during her moments of sincere intention to kill, Halley NEVER intended to TORTURE anyone. There was NEVER a confrontation with the reason they were tortured. It could have been an evil Halley. It could have been a Marie who was still alive and had actually planned any of this as related to a long-term goal. It even could have been the doctors. Though I'm just putting it out there, it is clear that a confrontation with the doctors framed as antagonists would have required a way more drastic restructuring of the game than the other options. To be fair that also applies to my hope that Marie's boss would turn out to be a person who was abusing HER.
Anyway this was a REALLY REALLY REALLY good game and I'm aware that writing a mastermind trial is really HARD and I am only being this harsh because I LOVED ALL THE OTHER CONTENT IN THE GAME SO!!! MUCH!!! IT REALLY WAS CLOSE TO PERFECT... I wanna close on the note that this round was SO welcoming to newbies and we got GREAT newbie participation including three straight up first timers? IF YOU'RE READING THIS I LOVE YOU GUYS.
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I actually really hate ACs that require 10 comments in a single thread. It's harder to get than you realize. It's fine for the AC to be a total of 20 comments from our characters, but I would STRONGLY prefer if you give the option to spread them out between threads, like 4 threads of 5 comments for example. That would even encourage CR-building with a bigger group of people, which is something that I believe ought to be encouraged anyway. To ensure no AC weaseling is going on like someone tags 20 different threads once or something, a minimum eligible thread comment requirement for a total comment count seems like a better idea than requiring two rigidly long threads that may just devolve into forced interactions.
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As far as case one goes, I feel like things went pretty smoothly on the culprit and victim side of things? You guys answered my questions when I had some to toss at you all, and you were patient and thorough in helping. I definitely appreciate how you were willing to work with me on my few discomforts, when it came time for execution!
Honestly? I think my only real complaint is with final trial. Admittedly, I felt like I was losing more and more steam, as ending stuff progressed; frankly, I was bored with it, and kind of eager for it to be over. Because it really felt like there was nothing to do but yell at a pair of doctors, by the end. It was so far from how last round went, when there was an epic fight, and then tearful reunions! There was genuinely nothing... satisfying, sans getting memories back, and the basic storming of the base.
I feel like the most exciting endgame thing shouldn't have been a massive PSL on a separate comm that was made by a player - it should have been something actually in the game itself.
That aside, I do love Halley! It was a bold move to make a mastermind something like that, and I am impressed by that! And, since Des covered most of my thoughts with her, I'll leave it at that. Because, in spite of it all, I do love her as a character.
With the Discord server, I feel like things would have been a little easier if the announcement channel were actually being used to link stuff. Even when I'm not mobile, I have a hell of a time keeping up with things that are linked, when there's so much talking in the general server. On a somewhat separate note, I cannot thank you guys enough for making the dark channel; it made a huge difference!
All in all, this was a great round, and the plot was done fantastically!!! It had so many unique elements, and I can tell you guys poured a ton of thought into it all! Thank you guys for a wonderful round, and for giving me the chance to indulge in terrible ideas. :>
EDIT:
AH YES. I remembered something that did irk me, early on. While the memory regain system this round was interesting and cool, I did not like how the change felt sprung on us. I'd already set some things in stone, by the time this happened, but I would have made some changes, if I'd been given more time. It was actively painful and draining to play my character in that mental state for the entire round, which I think contributed to the burnout I'm having now.
So, yes; I would have tweaked a few things if I'd had more time to really sit and plan it that way from the start. That being such a drastic change from anything I'd ever seen done before outright blindsided me, and I was too swamped to sit and rethink my plans on the personality I needed to work with.
Also! I'd like to propose some kind of regain system for deadland folks. Going from a point system to a total lack of one kind of takes an element of fun out of playing in this game. I feel like we were left a bit... aimless. There was no goal to strive for, at all - not even a voluntary one. While deadland was still really fun and well-done, I think that something such as that could have made it much more so! Naturally, I mean something that would leave room for independence with the players, and also be low maintenance for whichever mod is managing it!
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One point I want to bring up is regarding Kerri. In our last thread regarding her in deadlands she hadn't chosen what to do yet after we got back to the base and our characters pretty much said they'd support whatever she decided on. Then all of a sudden she was with us and died. I think this could have been done a bit better because as it stands right now the characters could easily feel guilt for causing her death. It's a bit unclear if she decided on this or not and that results in a potentially interesting thread just going by the wayside. I wasn't as bothered by the final trial, but I do agree that some more of a threat could have helped. Another possible idea could have been to have the Red Army appear with her like they did with the dead. She felt like a lot more of a threat with a hundred soldiers at her command.
And another point that is really not huge, but deserves a mention is regarding regains. It seems there was a lot that was unclear about regains and I noticed that people were counting things for the same threads differently and the mods just took everyone at their word. For example, I saw one player say a thread was 10 comments and then later the other player posted the thread and said it was 20 for the same thread of the same length. Obviously this says the guidelines are unclear, but the bigger problem here is the disparity in what players got because no one was corrected and this seems to have led players to shortchange themselves. I think some examples could do a world of good, as could a willingness to correct players who either shortchange themselves or overdo. I also think the confusion led to some players not posting for regains as much as they could have because you couldn't really figure out what was right from what others did even. There were even some things I didn't know until someone tried them, like the 150 comments gives 15 items and among them is a character item, the way it reads it gave me the impression you just got the character item so I never bothered saving threads for that when I could have done that instead of a bunch of AoN (though ngl, the AoN win of the fan really made case 1 stand out a lot more).
Also I want to second, or third or whatever Lenga's suggestion about AC. I'm good with Des' idea of allowing 20 comments between multiple characters, or even among one top level. But it can be hard to get 20 comments total from one thread in time. Since the game is so short I think the idea of showing effort was great since most of the time when activity starts to drop off, the cases are all already rolled, plus you really should be using punishments for people who aren't active rather than having them in cases since cases have a more emotional impact with characters who have more CR and active players take a more active role in planning. Also allowing more than two threads can help accommodate things like a particular week being slow like weeks 2 and 4 were.
One last thing, I do think we could have benefited from one last post for the strangers to say their goodbyes to each other and go home to wherever they choose. I get the impression the last post with the doctors was meant to be that, but since everyone felt antagonistic towards them, we couldn't really do that.
Now things I loved. I really think you guys did great at helping us build cases. Ni was especially a big help and popped in to answer questions or offer suggestions as needed, but mostly left Alex and I to brainstorm on our own because we mostly needed to make sure we understood the new mechanics and room layout things we weren't sure on. I think you guys did good at seeing what we needed and if we didn't need anything just let us have it. This game definitely had the best first case I've seen and I want to also say that two weeks to plan a case is definitely a preference of mine now because it was perfect. The one time I planned in a week I felt really rushed.
I also think this round's deadlands was one of the better ones I've seen. Lita did a great job as a mod and Kerri was such an awesome NPC. Hope you guys unlock deadlands soon because the living really just didn't get to see much of Kerri and the neat setting you guys built for us and how we did have our own plot and that's the most of the stuff that took place outside the base.
But all in all I had a blast this round. You guys wove an amazing plot and all the players were amazing. I'm definitely coming back for round 4.