Fantasy SSAWTMTTTI OOC

[Gaius Danius Griinia]

Gaius Danius Griinia righty then, well, saying this from the start would have been a good step.
GMing is a pretty intensive part of a game to do right, no two ways around it. You're telling a story with but also for other people, you need to lay down a world and other characters and paths for people to interact with while at the same time accomodating the players, letting them do the things they want to do and give those things tangible effects, you have to roll with and adapt to what they do. It's difficult and it's, ideally, not a position you take to glorify your own characters because then you render the other players secondary and no one likes that. If it's happened to you, then you know how bad it is when you can't actually do anything you'd like to do.

It's not about being bad or good at these things so much as making the effort to change them and take them into account. Instead of just using a picture of a place, think of where it is in the world you want to lay down, what is it connected to, how far away is it from other things, why is it significant. Location and distance are important portions of real life, aren't they? A lot of the times, just asking yourself questions about the stuff you're writing leads to excellent development if you actually work to answer them, then the picture becomes a bonus to your writing.

Character interactions is iffy, but my honest advice would be to take less inspiration from bogstandard, popular anime and manga. Read more good books, watch more good movies, hell just go outside and watch people interact when you're in the bus or whatever, you'll see just how bad a lot of anime interaction is and how it uses poor writing to justify itself in an attempt to add drama or look cool. You don't need to do that, sometimes just asking yourself "okay but how would people take this?" helps. Would you be okay if your leader dragged you to fight a dangerous creature then carelessly friendly-fired out of the blue to try and get the kill credit? Probably not.

If you shove all responsibility on co-GMs, who btw don't even seem particularly into being official co-GMs, then they are effectively the GMs rather than just helping. By the same token, if the GM doesn't have anything planned and doesn't share the plans and plots and ways to go about developing the game world with the co-GMs then the co-GMs have nothing to work with. They're effectively left to either do everything themselves or do nothing effectively, the first is doing everything for you and the second makes them meaningless.

Do you understand these things?

Yeah I do....

 

[Zerohex]

Well, then you should probably take it all at least a little more seriously. Trying to ease tension by posting memecenter images isn't really achieving anything, in fact it can be pretty grating when people have legitimate issues or things they're bringing up and it feels like you brush it off and move right on. It makes it feel like you're not really committing to even trying to be a GM, which has been an issue and especially since people, myself included, have been trying to offer help and advice and things to work on.

 

[Gaius Danius Griinia]

Well, then you should probably take it all at least a little more seriously. Trying to ease tension by posting memecenter images isn't really achieving anything, in fact it can be pretty grating when people have legitimate issues or things they're bringing up and it feels like you brush it off and move right on. It makes it feel like you're not really committing to even trying to be a GM, which has been an issue and especially since people, myself included, have been trying to offer help and advice and things to work on.

I just don't know how to respond to some of these...
So I use memes to....pour oil on the issue?

 

[Freshet]

Which is something you shouldn't do. If I had to give a recommendation, it'd just be listen to your players. We are trying to help you here. You going with pretty pictures doesn't help anyone.

 

[Gaius Danius Griinia]

Okay I'll ask now
What would YOU all want to happen
Since Izuru's off the board and there isn't an Emperor
How would you all like for the direction of this plot to go?

 

[KnightOfNight]

Okay I'll ask now
What would YOU all want to happen
Since Izuru's off the board and there isn't an Emperor
How would you all like for the direction of this plot to go?

Somewhere rather than the nowhere it's been going.

 

[Ixacise]

I think the question would be how can we go about it without being so reliant on the GMPCS for everything important happening.

 

[Zerohex]

I just don't know how to respond to some of these...
So I use memes to....pour oil on the issue?

It just comes across as deflecting and trying to avoid the issue. Joking about and trying to keep a light air is fine but not in the middle of receiving a complaint. Say your net service dies, you call your provider's tech support and because he doesn't know how to deal with the issue he plays a funny sound on the line, you're gonna want to strangle him. If you don't know how to respond to complaints, say so and talk it out with the person rather than close out ways of communication.

Okay I'll ask now
What would YOU all want to happen
Since Izuru's off the board and there isn't an Emperor
How would you all like for the direction of this plot to go?

For the moment? Actually commit to the Stormageddon thing. We beat up a big, smart ventus and now it's free and knows it can get mauled. How does this affect the other venti? Where are they, what are they doing, what does the party have to do to get to them and solve/deal with the issues to conclude the storyline? Not asking for a big overarching story connected to everything here, just a natural, self-contained adventure with a beginning, middle and end where folks can do their things.

Dealing with the emperor dying is a mess. A big one, especially because there doesn't seem to be much detail to anything else beyond how it tied to Izuru's magical adventures. We have to establish different political forces, potential lines of succession, lines of command, what happens to the army, dealt with in detail it could be a big story but that's complicated and you yourself said you don't feel like a good GM. So why get into that deep water? Commit to completing one arc well and succesfully and then we'll see.

 

[ColdCash]

Gaius Danius Griinia Well, for one thing, he isn't actually out of the picture we all know that. Like, seriously, you even had him teleport away at low health like a tactics RPG boss.

But regardless of that I've got a thing I'm working on with Knight, sorry Knight I'm working on it, but first thing would be, you know, getting off the mountain. After that probably word of Izuru's apparent death spreading and then the most logical next step would be a war of succession possibly with the knights fragmenting into factions supporting various nobles with strong claims to the throne and, see, then you can have Izuru returning to reconquer his lands once this is all established and the pot boils over as knights are torn between being Izuru's vassals and the new successors, and we go from there.

This, however, would hinge on you not just having Otonashi/Izuru instantly steamroll absolutely everyone with his army of ten thousand magical ultra demon wizards and bring us completely back to The Izuru Show status quo, which I realize sounds mean but you... kinda have a track record of this exact kind of mistake.

Really, we have a bunch of capable people who can show initiative, I think we'd be able to figure out something if you'd just, you know, actually listen to people and do some proper timeskips and similar when everyone asks you to? Like, Izuru's entire arc of killing a bunch of his men and then grinding XP until his army was full of super badasses and then getting killed by said super badasses took place over a day.

Izuru's reign, from coronation to (apparent) death, was a single day.

Does that put the main issues in perspective a little?

 

[Gaius Danius Griinia]

Gaius Danius Griinia Well, for one thing, he isn't actually out of the picture we all know that. Like, seriously, you even had him teleport away at low health like a tactics RPG boss.

But regardless of that I've got a thing I'm working on with Knight, sorry Knight I'm working on it, but first thing would be, you know, getting off the mountain. After that probably word of Izuru's apparent death spreading and then the most logical next step would be a war of succession possibly with the knights fragmenting into factions supporting various nobles with strong claims to the throne and, see, then you can have Izuru returning to reconquer his lands once this is all established and the pot boils over as knights are torn between being Izuru's vassals and the new successors, and we go from there.

This, however, would hinge on you not just having Otonashi/Izuru instantly steamroll absolutely everyone with his army of ten thousand magical ultra demon wizards and bring us completely back to The Izuru Show status quo, which I realize sounds mean but you... kinda have a track record of this exact kind of mistake.

Really, we have a bunch of capable people who can show initiative, I think we'd be able to figure out something if you'd just, you know, actually listen to people and do some proper timeskips and similar when everyone asks you to? Like, Izuru's entire arc of killing a bunch of his men and then grinding XP until his army was full of super badasses and then getting killed by said super badasses took place over a day.

Izuru's reign, from coronation to (apparent) death, was a single day.

Does that put the main issues in perspective a little?

It just comes across as deflecting and trying to avoid the issue. Joking about and trying to keep a light air is fine but not in the middle of receiving a complaint. Say your net service dies, you call your provider's tech support and because he doesn't know how to deal with the issue he plays a funny sound on the line, you're gonna want to strangle him. If you don't know how to respond to complaints, say so and talk it out with the person rather than close out ways of communication.



For the moment? Actually commit to the Stormageddon thing. We beat up a big, smart ventus and now it's free and knows it can get mauled. How does this affect the other venti? Where are they, what are they doing, what does the party have to do to get to them and solve/deal with the issues to conclude the storyline? Not asking for a big overarching story connected to everything here, just a natural, self-contained adventure with a beginning, middle and end where folks can do their things.

Dealing with the emperor dying is a mess. A big one, especially because there doesn't seem to be much detail to anything else beyond how it tied to Izuru's magical adventures. We have to establish different political forces, potential lines of succession, lines of command, what happens to the army, dealt with in detail it could be a big story but that's complicated and you yourself said you don't feel like a good GM. So why get into that deep water? Commit to completing one arc well and succesfully and then we'll see.

All I can think of is splitting the knights up to go on group quests with each one having one goal each?

 

[Gaius Danius Griinia]

I mean
The other Venti are just causing chaos
Send in just the Knights on self contained adventures?

 

[StrayTheCat]

StrayTheCat Right so, first off, yes, this is obnoxious. Everything you're doing is incredibly obnoxious and makes you come off as, frankly, kind of scummy. To begin with, you are in no way qualified to just waltz in and declare you can do this better when you, yourself, have admitted to not reading the RP past page 2 which is the entire reason everyone has been upset with Dan to begin with. Secondly trying to decide on enforced storylines- sorry, "Expansions"- when everyone is already pretty much making their own fun and had said fun repeatedly fucked sideways by dumb GM "events" wouldn't solve the problem; if anything, it actively adds fuel to the fire. The same goes for deciding on how the setting functions: A bunch of people, me included, have made a big point to flesh out small but important setting details naturally via IC posts; for example, Zerohex making a point to write out how events effect the troop morale or, and this is important, the series of hospital scenes I wrote, establishing that medicine is primitive and healing magic is rare and resurrection magic is legendary-tier impossible because it's like the only way to write drama out of freeform.

And then your character came in and shit all over that while adding very little yourself good job yes I am genuinely angry over this and do not trust you as far as I can throw you to actually keep consistent lore. All you've done is bitch and moan about how the IC makes no sense and signal that "hey guess what I read character sheets". So does everyone else, genius, we just don't need to rub it in people's faces.

Finally, this entire thing feels like a power play to try and snatch the game out from under Dan while he's busy and/or flustered. While he and I don't really see eye to eye on a lot of things, that comes off as incredibly scummy and even if it's not intentional it comes off as you trying to essentially usurp him as GM which is a tremendous breach of etiquette.

You're right, and I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to act like I could have done better, but I can see that I did. I'm honestly just trying to help, and first thing I thought up was to see what everyone else thought/felt about things first. I should have communicated that correctly, that's my fault. I'm sorry for complaining regarding having to read the RP, that was childish and honestly a little pathetic.

About the expansion thing, I understand and apologize about trying to make Y'all do something you don't want to do. That isn't what I want, nor what I intended on trying to do. I've seen several RPs I was apart of die because nobody knew what was supposing to be happening or what it was the characters were supposed to do as the RP went on, with everyone slowly splitting off doing random stuff until eventually they just got bored and left. I will not intentionally do anything to limit or ruin your RPing.

On that note, I should have read the entire RP and wasn't aware of the already established things. That's my fault. I'm sorry for being a dick, and I seriously didn't mean to fucking ruin that. I know the damage is done, if there is anything I can do to fix this I'm willing to do it. I don't care what it is or what you feel like I should do, I'll do it. I hate it when people think I'm an asshole, especially when I deserve it. I wasn't at all planning, thinking, nor trying in any way to take over Dan's place. I agree that's a shitty thing to do, and if you don't believe me when I say all of this, then that's fair. I acted like an idiot, screwed things up, and didn't think about how they would effect everything else.

Regarding the character sheet thing, I was pointing things out that were interesting that I found regarding various characters. Sometimes people miss stuff when they read the character sheets, and I wasn't trying to brag about having read them. I don't like it when people brag, and I'm sorry for all this. Really. I'm not great when it comes to explaining what I'm meaning in a way that others get what it is I'm trying to say. I'm not using that as an excuse, I'm not trying to say this is all one big misunderstanding. I'm trying to say I'm sorry, and how can I fix this, or if its beyond something that can be fixed, how would you like me to prevent from doing this again.

Side note: Until I've read everything, I will not be posting in the RP. If this in any way causes anyone to be RP-locked, then say so and I'll make a post so your character is no longer stuck in place with mine, but otherwise I won't be active in the RP until I've read through everything. If I don't understand something, I'll just write my questions down somewhere and ask once I've caught up to everyone.

 

[Zerohex]

I mean
The other Venti are just causing chaos
Send in just the Knights on self contained adventures?

Righty, then think: where exactly are the venti causing trouble? Why is that place important, both to us and to the venti? The venti don't necessarily need a reason to attack the place but having one helps, the players do kind of need a reason to go stop the venti because if they're just storming nowhere then there's no real issue, is there? How will this connect to the greater overarching plot of the weather wizard? What happens when we go fight the venti and win, what'd happen if we lost? What happens if we don't go fast enough or even don't go at all for whatever reason?

Also consider: splitting the party means more workload for you. You need to manage each group's stories, set them apart in some way, craft an adventure for each taking each character into account. It can be an excellent tool but it's also more difficult. If you don't feel confident you can just send the entire set of Knights to one adventure, nothing wrong with keeping the party together and organized so everyone interacts with everyone, but you still have to take the characters and what has happened into account. Set up something working off of the fact that we just beat up a big ventus, keep every character and their abilities in mind and give them all some spotlight.

I hope you get what I mean here, though you don't actually have to answer all the questions above to us here. It's just things to think about as you work to set up the game. If you want to connect everything to Izuru being "dead", that'd take a fair bunch more figuring out, because again we don't really have much of a setting to work with and understand what'd happen from that. It'd be a difficult story to go into now. Any questions? Thoughts?

 

[Ixacise]

StrayTheCat
No need for the long dramatic screed filled with like excuses and whatnot about how you failed and what you meant to do. Just take the L .

The fact of the matter is you made a poorly thought out attempt at trying to play GM without doing some basic stuff like being caught up on what happened or having permission to do so. You really didn't harm anything except your own ego, so chill.

Gaius Danius Griinia

Right now do what Zero said. Commit to the stormageddon thing and let us deal with that first. Let's worry about all the repercussions of Izuru dying later. Currently it's out of your league and would create unnecessary complications in trying to handle.

Anyway here's my advice on how to continue to this.

Like Coldcash said let's get off the damn mountain and lets have a little break between the action. It's only been 2 days ingame and yet so much stuff has happened, that the army magically being ready to go off after being heavily damaged and demoralized strains belief and ignores said details which will annoy everyone. Also, getting of the mountain was being set up by like Cypher getting ready to order the army moving next day, before you decided to plop the big venti on everyone.

Secondly carefully think about your characters. Prior to like Izuru dying you have like enough named characters to rival the amount of player characters. Since you got like the three siblings and their talking swords. How about you focus on one you like and then have them actually interact with the rest of the players. This will help them be connected to everyone else and in turn help things be less disjointed since they won't be running off doing things completely detached from everyone else. And most importantly, the character interaction actually helps with development and making them a character.

Third, ask for help if you need it and don't mask your feeling of insecurity with dumb glib non-sequiturs. This only annoys everyone and does nothing to solve things.

Also zero just posted, before I finished this so I'll second his advice above me.

 

[KnightOfNight]

I mean
The other Venti are just causing chaos
Send in just the Knights on self contained adventures?

You mean the thing that was suggested to you before? Yeah, that could work.
Also the other two have really good points, I'd suggest you read and reread their posts before doing anything.

 

[Gohan510]

Damn Izuru dead, guess Kuto and Yuki better kill the rest of the legions to take the throne, but what fun would that be if Yuki can’t kill him herself. Our plan was foiled let’s transition to operation B and go full drive commander Juju!
Juju

 

[Juju]

Damn Izuru dead, guess Kuto and Yuki better kill the rest of the legions to take the throne, but what fun would that be if Yuki can’t kill him herself. Our plan was foiled let’s transition to operation B and go full drive commander Juju!
Juju

A kingdom divided will never last long! If the knights do get caught in a civil war, then it makes our job easier!

However, Yuki will be upset about the emperor's death... she wanted to kill him herself :v she needed to ask him why he did everything... if he hated her the whole time they knew eachother v_v now she will never know.

 

[RatKing]

However, Yuki will be upset about the emperor's death... she wanted to kill him herself :v she needed to ask him why he did everything... if he hated her the whole time they knew eachother v_v now she will never know.

Perhaps Yuki can try to question Izuru's ghost.

 

[Gaius Danius Griinia]

Perhaps Yuki can try to question Izuru's ghost.

Bom Chicka Wow Wow

 

[Juju]

Bom Chicka Wow Wow

more like "anger attack smite smite"

 

[Gaius Danius Griinia]

more like "anger attack smite smite"

Yuki: Do not make me smite you!
Izuru: Ooooooooh…..Kind of late for that Yuki... alternatively we could make babies?
Yuki: Okay HOW?!
Izuru: You didn't say nooooo

 

[RatKing]

more like "anger attack smite smite"

I suppose you'd be using "smite evil" then. A paladin's favorite spell aside from lay on hands.

 

[Gaius Danius Griinia]

Ghost Izuru?
I think you mean Dracula!!!

Yuki: KUTO HE'S LICKING MY NECK!!!
Izuru: Bleh Bleh...I am Dracul!!!
*Cape Flourish*

 

[Gohan510]

Ghost Izuru?
I think you mean Dracula!!!

Yuki: KUTO HE'S LICKING MY NECK!!!
Izuru: Bleh Bleh...I am Dracul!!!
*Cape Flourish*

Now that’s just disgusting

 

[Gohan510]

You lowkey threw Kuto under the bus with thay silly question. If he wants to know of the thief let him! Lmao . You had me sitting here on my phone like “uuuuhh, Whats a good excuse?” XD
Juju