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Tizbiz Zeitgeist Campaign
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<blockquote data-quote="Lylandra" data-source="post: 7630916" data-attributes="member: 6816692"><p><span style="color: #008000">Since I currently don't have enough time for another recap and I promised some sort of feedback on the whole track-building challenge a few posts back, this one will be purely "mechanical" in nature.</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">As a disclaimer: We're not exactly your average D&D/PF crowd and certainly have adopted our own style and preference of play and we're also always a bit skeptical when it comes to what we call "mini-game mechanics" that deviate from the system we're playing. Carlyle's player moreso than I. Also, this is from a player's perspective and neither of us has read the source material, so we don't know how much was lost or added in our GM's adaption. So keep that in mind when it comes to my /our assessment of the second beran challenge <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> </span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">All in all, we were not too happy with the way the whole challenge was presented despite being a really funny, crazy idea on paper (I mean... railroad building race? That's cool!). It just didn't integrate well into the rest of the campaign and kept us from getting as immersed into story and characters as we're used to. At least at first. And as I cannot really lay my finger on where it kind of failed to work well for us, I'll simply point out some problems we encountered during this challenge:</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">- from the very beginning, all of us had a hard time figuring out the parameters of the mechanics and how to influence them. Including our GM. We may have gotten it totally wrong, but from the way we read it, we started with only 1 materiel and therefore would have been screwed if anything happened to this resource. We asked for financial support via sending and got some more money (technically a favour from Risur?), but Tiz said that there were no guidelines on how much money to expect for what level of favor you could achieve. So he just gave us 10 "money" worth of funds as the Danorans had the same funding, which we had realized via Burton. </span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">- also there were the means of "sabotage" and "counter-sabotage". We knew that we and our opponents couldn't just blow up the supply line or we'd lose points from both Kenna and Zarkava. So we first tried to just secure our line, which was, as it turned out, pretty much impossible, as the total track line would have been over 100 miles. So we felt as if it wouldn't really matter if we hired additional security personnel or not. As this realization happened at the very beginning of the challenge and we didn't really knew what kinds of nasty tricks the Danorans would throw at us, especially Carlyle's player felt pretty much helpless and didn't know what to do to make a difference. (I believe he said "there is NO way we can prevent them from screwing us up if they want to"). Also, we didn't really get a concrete grasp on how much sabotage would be too much for either of the two advisors (we were quite sure that the Bruse would be laughing hard at explosions though).</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">- speaking of supply lines, figuring out the terrain and logistics wasn't easy. I guess a map would have helped much - which is why I tried to draw one (Tiz isn't really good at drawing) so we could at least guess where, for example, a coal supply might be located and whether it would be realistic to reach it in one day. </span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">- a really big topic (at least for us) is that the mechanics didn't really fit well with our abilities and roleplay. This had been a problem with the anti-Kell game in adventure 5 as well, but we decided to spare our troops and just do much of the work ourselves, so this wasn't a big deal. Here we were in the situation where we kind of *had* to use the mechanics to proceed. Which is where our playstyle collided with the adventure as we generally try to solve challenges by getting creative and/or talking to people.</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">For example, we argued a bit about the mishap chance and whether we would reduce it by simply escorting the train carrying the money and materiel. From our point of view, such an effort should have been possible, but it would have completely circumvented the mechanic as we'd just been able to buy 10 materiel at once without a chance of losing.</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">Story-wise we had Griento on our side, but Tiz understandably explained that this one trump card couldn't be enough to win the challenge. But he didn't know how much loss in time/morale/whatever "having Griento" would provide. Our actions also primarily targeted their morale (if I got this right), but the mechanics per se would have allowed Lya to simply pay more money to rise it up again. All in all, it didn't feel like we knew what our plans would really do mechanics-wise, or whether it would be worth all the effort instead of just playing the numbers game. </span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">So in the end, I guess that having a minigame-free version of the challenge would have really helped us and prevented most of our frustration. Either this, or providing rules for the minigame that work far more seemlessly with the underlying system (PF, in our case). As you probably guessed from the last post, we somewhen decided to ignore the mechanics in terms of our character's actions and go crazy while still rolling the dice for our construction.</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">But, again, that's our preference of playing: Having rules that are consistent enough that we can easily extrapolate how to deal with situations that are not 100% covered by the system. </span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p><p><span style="color: #008000">PS: as a little sneak-peek: Just started adventure 10 after going through two extremely powerful and emotionally challenging encounters. Really love the AP <3</span></p><p><span style="color: #008000"></span></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lylandra, post: 7630916, member: 6816692"] [COLOR=#008000]Since I currently don't have enough time for another recap and I promised some sort of feedback on the whole track-building challenge a few posts back, this one will be purely "mechanical" in nature. As a disclaimer: We're not exactly your average D&D/PF crowd and certainly have adopted our own style and preference of play and we're also always a bit skeptical when it comes to what we call "mini-game mechanics" that deviate from the system we're playing. Carlyle's player moreso than I. Also, this is from a player's perspective and neither of us has read the source material, so we don't know how much was lost or added in our GM's adaption. So keep that in mind when it comes to my /our assessment of the second beran challenge ;) All in all, we were not too happy with the way the whole challenge was presented despite being a really funny, crazy idea on paper (I mean... railroad building race? That's cool!). It just didn't integrate well into the rest of the campaign and kept us from getting as immersed into story and characters as we're used to. At least at first. And as I cannot really lay my finger on where it kind of failed to work well for us, I'll simply point out some problems we encountered during this challenge: - from the very beginning, all of us had a hard time figuring out the parameters of the mechanics and how to influence them. Including our GM. We may have gotten it totally wrong, but from the way we read it, we started with only 1 materiel and therefore would have been screwed if anything happened to this resource. We asked for financial support via sending and got some more money (technically a favour from Risur?), but Tiz said that there were no guidelines on how much money to expect for what level of favor you could achieve. So he just gave us 10 "money" worth of funds as the Danorans had the same funding, which we had realized via Burton. - also there were the means of "sabotage" and "counter-sabotage". We knew that we and our opponents couldn't just blow up the supply line or we'd lose points from both Kenna and Zarkava. So we first tried to just secure our line, which was, as it turned out, pretty much impossible, as the total track line would have been over 100 miles. So we felt as if it wouldn't really matter if we hired additional security personnel or not. As this realization happened at the very beginning of the challenge and we didn't really knew what kinds of nasty tricks the Danorans would throw at us, especially Carlyle's player felt pretty much helpless and didn't know what to do to make a difference. (I believe he said "there is NO way we can prevent them from screwing us up if they want to"). Also, we didn't really get a concrete grasp on how much sabotage would be too much for either of the two advisors (we were quite sure that the Bruse would be laughing hard at explosions though). - speaking of supply lines, figuring out the terrain and logistics wasn't easy. I guess a map would have helped much - which is why I tried to draw one (Tiz isn't really good at drawing) so we could at least guess where, for example, a coal supply might be located and whether it would be realistic to reach it in one day. - a really big topic (at least for us) is that the mechanics didn't really fit well with our abilities and roleplay. This had been a problem with the anti-Kell game in adventure 5 as well, but we decided to spare our troops and just do much of the work ourselves, so this wasn't a big deal. Here we were in the situation where we kind of *had* to use the mechanics to proceed. Which is where our playstyle collided with the adventure as we generally try to solve challenges by getting creative and/or talking to people. For example, we argued a bit about the mishap chance and whether we would reduce it by simply escorting the train carrying the money and materiel. From our point of view, such an effort should have been possible, but it would have completely circumvented the mechanic as we'd just been able to buy 10 materiel at once without a chance of losing. Story-wise we had Griento on our side, but Tiz understandably explained that this one trump card couldn't be enough to win the challenge. But he didn't know how much loss in time/morale/whatever "having Griento" would provide. Our actions also primarily targeted their morale (if I got this right), but the mechanics per se would have allowed Lya to simply pay more money to rise it up again. All in all, it didn't feel like we knew what our plans would really do mechanics-wise, or whether it would be worth all the effort instead of just playing the numbers game. So in the end, I guess that having a minigame-free version of the challenge would have really helped us and prevented most of our frustration. Either this, or providing rules for the minigame that work far more seemlessly with the underlying system (PF, in our case). As you probably guessed from the last post, we somewhen decided to ignore the mechanics in terms of our character's actions and go crazy while still rolling the dice for our construction. But, again, that's our preference of playing: Having rules that are consistent enough that we can easily extrapolate how to deal with situations that are not 100% covered by the system. PS: as a little sneak-peek: Just started adventure 10 after going through two extremely powerful and emotionally challenging encounters. Really love the AP <3 [/COLOR] [/QUOTE]
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