How's the Game?

[wearethecrystalmods]

HOW'S THE GAME?

Welcome to Cosmographia's second "How's the Game" post! This is essentially an open forum for players to discuss the game and where they feel it should be taken from its current point. Anything you think needs changing? Anything you want more, less of? Just want to air your opinions in a space with your fellow players? That’s exactly what this is here for! This also provides a place for players to air ideas for the game to the mods in a more broad sense than player plots and location ideas. In essence, we’re asking you guys to tell us exactly what you want from the game! Let us know what you’d like to see to make Cosmographia a fun, engaging experience for you.

Please note that this is not a place for criticism of specific players or characters. This is purely about the game itself. Please save player specific criticisms for HMD posts or private contact. Any disregard for this or out of hand conduct will be frozen or deleted.

How’s the Game is a space for all players to participate in a discussion. This includes current players as well as also past players that have left and new potential players considering the game; we’d like everyone to pitch in and gives us their thoughts! Please also not that for the time being, we will not be allowing anon commenting or sock accounts, though this may change in future HTG posts.

How’s the Game is a completely open forum. We have a list of topics we want to discuss (listed below), but after all those have gone up players are completely free to start their own threads with anything not covered by the other sections.

Current sections:

The Staff
Excursions
Setting & World
Game Plot
Future Event/Plot Suggestions

Comments

EXCURSIONS

[wearethecrystalmods]

So, here's the little announcement some of you may have remembered seeing me mention on Plurk a few days ago. We'd like your feedback on something we're hoping will massively overhaul the game in terms of player and character agency; something we're calling Excursions!

While we're not quite ready to whip off the tablecloth and unveil all the details just yet, here are the basics of what Excursions are currently planned to be -- this may change based on player feedback and further discussion!

★ Players will be able to unlock an area of the Temple that will allow them access to a huge number of warp pads that can take them all over the world!
★ Players will be able to take on missions and go out on Excursions to complete them. These will involve anything from fights to retrieving items -- any kind of quest you can think of!
★ Players will be able to unlock permanent additions to the game world through Excursions and may even make big changes to the existing setting depending on their actions.
★ Players will be able to freely explore these newly unlocked areas and may even stumble across metaplot elements or other interesting items!
★ Players will be able to run their own Excursions and submit their own areas to explore similarly to player plots and player-run areas in the game.

We're super excited to get this feature rolled out for you guys but before we do, we'd like your feedback! What do you think of Excursions? Do you have any suggestions for us regarding them? Give us your two cents!

Re: EXCURSIONS

[forgeabettertomorrow]

I think this is a really great idea! I think the only thing I can add to it would be breaking into three man cells or squads for excursions? And maybe have a way to group people together at random to help players get some new CR!

[lifeisfun]

I second the random squad formation idea!

[fixi]

Noted and agreed. There's going to be a good amount of diversity in what Excursions involve; some are combat-related, some are more heavily DMed puzzle sort of things, some have failure conditions and others are just exploration games. CR-building through RNG sounds promising and we'll add that into consideration.

[torya]

Aaaand fourthing this! Randomizing Excursion squads is definitely something we'll be considering doing for you guys.

[domeinion]

That sounds fun! So basically new missions unlocking areas?

[fixi]

Essentially, yeah.

We're still working out the system, but the idea is to give you guys setting-related things to do between bigger events, which hopefully you can use to kick off player plots and character arcs.

Not all Excursions are going to unlock new areas specifically - the ideas we have for content are pretty diverse - but a good number will have IC rewards or effects of some kind, from weird gem artifacts (think the Wailing Stone or the Desert Glass) to jamjar-curse-style effects to useful objects and information that characters can use to spruce up the neighborhood. Some "good", some "bad", all things to give players ideas and keep characters occupied.

Striking a balance between "giving players things to interact with" and "being on-call to DM all the time" is one of the major challenges we have to work out mechanics-wise, but I think we're headed towards a good system.

[fixi]

Yeah so this is what I've been grinning all over Plurk about.

The keywords here are "character agency"! We want to give you guys some tools to help shape Cosmographia's world, and Excursions are going to be the toolbox. Think of them as being like the missions Garnet takes the Crystal Gems on in SU canon.

This month's event will be run kind of like a more heavily-moderated (and more heavily-attended) Excursion, so keep an eye out for that for a preview of where we're headed!

[nailed_it]

I am so many kinds of excited for missions excursions.

It sounds like these might be more dungeon-y and/or retrieval-related events but has the idea of "rescue" and/or "defend the town" excursions been tossed about yet? Players could be informed of somebody that's gone missing in a certain area or a distant town that's being bothered by a particularly troublesome gem monster that they then need to warp to and aid.

Granted, the above would probably mostly be a new spin on what Gems have already been doing for Waverly Bay but in a new location (with potential meta-plot findings) could be really cool!

[fixi]

Not specifically, but these are great ideas that are going promptly into the pot. Excursions can and will cover a whole range of possible activities that follow a basic format of "prompt/challenge -> character action -> mod-tracked IC result for the setting"!