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Six Kingdoms: Rebirth -- Out Of Character Topic


Unreliable Narrator

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News from The Desk:

July for the GMs ended like this. (CW: strong language, fantasy violence).

 

I cannot speak for @Vezok's Friend, but I can speak honestly: the conduct I've seen by numerous members of this gaming community has been utterly deplorable. Our mid-game survey revealed 25% of the community who took the survey felt the game had a toxic community. They encouraged the GMs (us) to ban players to resolve issues. Some players stated they have silenced/blocked members of this community for their own safety. That's good, by the way, don't unblock someone if you don't feel safe interacting with them, and definitely let the site staff know if you have an issue like that on BZPower. Some players called themselves out, others pointed fingers. At the end of the day, if this was a physical table for a table-top game I would have personally told several of you to leave over personal differences in what is acceptable social behavior.

 

Consider that fact. 

Consider whether or not you want to be here and actually connect with others in a positive way.

Consider the impact of your actions beyond their intention.

 

If you don't want to be nice, you can make another game. There are pages of BRPGs that have come and gone. Six Kingdoms will be just another one of those fun games. You can play another game. I have lost sleep over this game. Notice I called it a game. It's a game. Treat your fellow players with respect. Follow the rules of the website you are playing on and the rules of the communication apps you use, whatever they may be, to stay engaged outside the game.

This is my open and public letter to those in this community who do not interact well with others, who desire to gain power over others, and those who bully others into following them to leave. You are not wanted here. I am not banning you because you have not received three strikes, and to change the rules of this game just to do so would be unfair. That said, this is your public notice to shape up or leave.

With the way things went this month, I do not want to run a third game. I am certainly not considering the player requested time extension of two months to continue to run a game if players don't immediately improve their behavior. I'm not here to baby-sit you. No one here is. We're here to play a game. So play the game, engage with others, and be respectful about it or get out.

 

Weekly Summary: tbd, haven't done it, been dealing with everything else. It'll be up when I can get it done.

Favorite portion of last week: none. Sorry. I haven't really read. I'll update once I get to catch up on the game.

 

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Happy chat.

 

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Not to negate the negative implications of the above post, but I'm going to focus on the good from this last week.

My favorite thing from this last week is either the Knichou post where he uses the Mask of Creation or the Sidra post where she remembers her past.

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--------- “BRUH” -Makuta, probably ---------

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As long as the narrative demands it, methinks.

You don’t have to depend on the GMs to role play every environmental obstacle, just play through the Command function, verbally process it IC, and if Rose’s words strike some more primordial thought process or memory in Saybo’s head then use that to overcome the Command function. Just write stuff out and see what sticks. 

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OOC: @Sparticus147 @Unreliable Narrator We aren't ready to arrive quite yet, but while we're en route, I'd like to sort out exactly where we're arriving to. When I made Morangad, you told me all the things he would know about the Swamp; you mentioned he'd know the location of the Suva, but you didn't mention the Ruins of Air one way or another. Would he know where they are? If so, that's where he's leading Apex; otherwise, he would assume she's referring to the Suva, and so he would be leading her there.

In either case, we might run into @Kal the Guardian and Sala, as they're also searching the swamp at this moment.

Hello, thanks for prodding me Kal! Yes, Morangrad would logically know where the temples in the Fau Swamp are, whether or not it was safe to travel there alone. Your character profile makes him out to be a well traveled druid, and I think for the sake of creative expediency it works better if he knows.

 

Just so everyone is aware I'm currently reading up on my work breaks. I'm at page 94 right now.

Edited by Unreliable Narrator
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Happy chat.

 

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@Unreliable Narrator @Vezok's Friend

Has it been stated what hex the Grand Temple is located in? I'm trying to work out if Taja and Whisper's trip from Metru-Koro to the temple will take them through the irradiated hex. 

If it will, a couple of follow-up questions. 

  • Being shadow elementals, would Taja and Whisper be able to sense that there's residual light energy in that area, and know to avoid it?
  • If not, will they be more adversely effected by the radiation, due to shadow canonically being weak to light?
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I have to air some grievances—sorry not sorry—and call a slight foul about the last Okuo post. I wonder if anyone else shares similar trepidations.

@Onaku, is Okuo a Disney princess? I ask because it's wholly implausible for anyone less than Cinderella to charm a wild bird-thing with a few pieces of jerky and claim it as a friendly steed in about as much time to watch the opening theme to LOST. That's just not how that's supposed to work. Even a D&D ranger character at high level would not be able to do such a feat without some practice and really good rolling, and Okuo is definitely not a ranger-type character with animal handling skills—his profile doesn't suggest that at all, anyway. Finding a weird creature wandering alone in the underworld is fine enough, as is traversing across a subterranean border, and even befriending the creature is cool storytelling, but the sheer number of things done in such rapid succession is troubling to me. And I find any of this incredibly unlikely to have been cleared by either of the GMs, either.

It seems cheap, doesn't it? A deus ex machina that not only begets a character an ally but also conveniently was used to allow said character traversal across three (at least) whole hexes into a whole other section of the game. All that in the course of a single post. If this were an epic-style story where Okuo (or any other character who does such stunts) was the singular protagonist this would be A-okay, but this isn't just Okuo's story, it's everyone's, and the narratives should be governed by what we write and plan well in advance or worldbuild after getting inspiration and clearance from what we already know about the setting. 

This chapter of Okuo's story does not appear based at all on what already exists in the setting and if anything stands in stark contrast to the mechanics already set in place for mass-traversal. Once could make a comparison between this bird-thing to an airship, but airships (or mutated wings) are pre-ordained by GMs and have mechanics for how quickly they can carry someone over land. 

All in all, I just want to point out how this latest stunt purely abuses the freedom of worldbuilding we already possess in this game, and thoroughly appears to be a simple asspull of a random perk that doesn't add anything interesting to the character and instead invalidates the careful, measured storytelling of arcs done for characters like Korruhn, Stannis, and Knichou (to give but a few examples). If we all could just make stuff up without caring for the plausibility of it and dump our characters willy-nilly about the landscape this game would be a lot less fun—a fun that the post was not. This is a collaborative game where everything takes roleplaying and time to keep things fun and exciting for everyone involved. Leg godt.

 

And yes, I'm directly wondering what other people think about this sort of thing. 

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I agree that it might be kind of contrived, but is it really any more game-breaking than characters effortlessly annihilating waves of NPC enemies, or conveniently deciding to go to certain locations just in time to participate in/interrupt other actions? More to the point, is Okuo's journey - however unorthodox it may be - directly impacting or detrimenting any other character or plotline in any significant way?

With the game wrapping up in the relatively near future, and a character limit being imposed for the next one (assuming that's still going to happen) I feel like we're all under a lot of pressure to try to fulfill our character objectives. Maybe this wasn't the most practical way to go about it, but I can certainly understand someone wanting to take their character to a new location/in a different direction, especially someone like Okuo who has spent a vast amount of the game so far stuck in one place. 

 

I'll also clarify that I'm not just saying this because Onaku and I had something in the works or anything like that. I only found out Okuo was heading to the swamps when I saw the post last night. 

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Yeah, the entire aspect of nearly-instantly befriending a flying animal that happens to decide to give you a ride feels extremely implausible, and I'm glad EW brought it up.

One of Pixar's rules of storytelling is "Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating." This summarily explains why the 'useful' outcome of the rahi providing a way out for Okuo here is unsatisfying to me, even if it may seem on a surface level to be 'balanced' by other unexpected 'bad' things happening to Okuo in the same post (His vehicle breaking down due to battle damage, him getting shot by a rhotuka, and crash landing in a place he didn't want to go). While a push and pull, give and take attitude works well in many situations (Such as PvP, where allowing a hit to do some damage, etc. can provide for a much more realistic and satisfying encounter and encourages both sides to give each other some leeway), doing it with unrealistic results doesn't really work.

Overall, to me, the way Okuo gets out of Metru-Nui feels very contrived and overly complex - the same result could be accomplished by Okuo using the hoverboard to get out of Metru-Nui, but getting spotted by the same guards or beset by some other obstacle on the way that causes him to lose control and get lost in the Fau Swamp. That would feel more realistic and more likely an outcome than surprisingly being the Kahu whisperer. Okuo riding the rahi out is an implausible solution to a problem that's created in the very same post, there are plenty of ways to do effectively the same thing while not breaking a reader's suspension of disbelief as hard.

27 minutes ago, Nato the Traveler said:

I agree that it might be kind of contrived, but is it really any more game-breaking than characters effortlessly annihilating waves of NPC enemies, or conveniently deciding to go to certain locations just in time to participate in/interrupt other actions? More to the point, is Okuo's journey - however unorthodox it may be - directly impacting or detrimenting any other character or plotline in any significant way?

Well, kind of? Yes, generally speaking, in many instances throughout the past two games, NPCs have been portrayed to be weaker than some (myself included) would prefer, but also a lot of these situations are involving characters whose skills are combat-related, or is overall done in a way that makes sense within the world given the powersets at play here. As far as meta-gamey decisions for characters to end up in the right place at the right time, that is certainly irritating and shouldn't be normalized. Even if Okuo's unlikely actions in this post don't directly change the outcomes of the larger story or his involvement with other characters (As I said, there are ways to get out of Metru-Nui without breaking your hoverboard, flying on a friendly rahi you just met, then getting shot, then getting saved by the rahi again) the method it's done does feel in stark contrast to a lot of other characterizations of the world and it's rules, as EW stated.

Edited by BULiK
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I'll leave the discussion open and won't rebut anything here, but I do want to offer a perspective to this remark, Nato:

Quote

I feel like we're all under a lot of pressure to try to fulfill our character objectives. 

Yes, we are admittedly on a time crunch. But in my opinion, that's reason to be creative, not desperate. This game isn't about any one character achieving their bucket list, it's a collaborative effort featuring all our characters across this setting; we cannot prioritize our own PC to the detriment of everyone else's, and especially not to the detriment of good storytelling. Every role-player should be working to collaboratively engage with each other and not push our own agendas just because we see the time tick away.

EDIT: Also, that hastiness is a direct pull from the metagame. We should not be using OOC information to direct our IC actions. 

Edited by EmperorWhenua
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That's a fair point. I can definitely see how the way this played out crosses that line. 

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Most of my points have already been mentioned, so I'll keep this short:

From an outside perspective, the optics of this post just look way too convenient to be anything good. 2 months left in the game, panic sets in. Giant Rahi start coming into play in other areas of the map, Nuva devices come to play throughout the map (although very few people know of them IC), and Okuo (by no fault other than your own) has been in the Archives for a good chunk of the game. The time crunch leads to frustration, all of a sudden you have some mythical Rahi not only tamed, but as your mount, and then to top it off it conveniently drops Okuo right near where Sidra and co. have begun forging discs, and have access to a nearby temple.

It may not be what you intended, but from here, it looks like you were upset about having been in the Archives for months, and wanted to make up for that as well as compensate for your character's complete lack of knowledge of the Nuva devices by conveniently getting into a fight with a 3-headed Gukko (also, why?) directly over where others are working on making discs to activate Nuva devices.

Now, my biggest issue with this is that myself, EW, Nato, and others have spent a significant amount of this game on puzzles and solving them, one prize of which was finding these Nuva devices. So firstly, I understand a bit of your frustration for having a character trapped in an area for a large amount of time, and now having a time crunch. BUT, now you essentially undermine the hard work all the puzzle crews have been doing by injecting Okuo right into the middle of it, presumably out of your own frustration of trapping your character in the Archives for so long. Pulling a stunt like this makes me wonder "why did I go through the effort of solving this puzzle and uncovering the secrets, when I could just have spawned a Rahi from my posterior and teleported to someone capable of making disks and not gone through the trouble of the puzzle in the first place?"

This just isn't storytelling anymore, it's like playing chess. But the thing about roleplaying is, the player and characters don't know the same thing. So I'm just really confused and frustrated by this entire scenario.

Edited by Crimson Jester

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"This spot marks our grave; but you may rest here too, if you like."

 

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13 minutes ago, Crimson Jester said:

It may not be what you intended, but from here, it looks like you were upset about having been in the Archives for months, and wanted to make up for that as well as compensate for your character's complete lack of knowledge of the Nuva devices by conveniently getting into a fight with a 3-headed Gukko (also, why?) directly over where others are working on making discs to activate Nuva devices.

For the 3-headed Gukko part, I created that in a previous post near Le-Metru Nuva. It attacked Viltia and Sidra as they flew to the village on the back of a Kahu, so it does make sense it would still be hanging around the area near the village and attack another flying Rahi that was passing through.

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Just now, Kal the Guardian said:

For the 3-headed Gukko part, I created that in a previous post near Le-Metru Nuva. It attacked Viltia and Sidra as they flew to the village on the back of a Kahu, so it does make sense it would still be hanging around the area near the village and attack another flying Rahi that was passing through.

That's reasonable. But if you take all these parts and put them into one frame, it still doesn't look great, at least from where I'm standing.

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"This spot marks our grave; but you may rest here too, if you like."

 

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25 minutes ago, Unreliable Narrator said:

Also, what's up with Odd Company lately? I want to make sure Atamai and his new friends get to link back up with Odd Company if that was the plan!

They've been chilling for a while, still at the ruins. I think everyone involved just lost track, but Atamai returning with his new pals would probably be a nice jumpstart to get them moving again.

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@Nato the Traveler, @Eyru

Thanks for your patience! Answers to your questions are as follows: 

  • Radiation Zone: after the fight with the gargantuan manas crab, Giruga, the hex (6,11) became full of toxic radiation. Simply passing through this hex will give your characters radiation poisoning. They will need to seek immediate medical attention once exiting the hex. (This can be found in the initial post for the game, in the location descriptions.)
  • When Skorm was in the radiation zone it was presented as extremely dangerous to his darker half, and that he could feel the toxic light invading physical forms. I would say it's okay to double down on that.
  • Your characters may not notice the radiation zone until they step in it, unless they pay attention to their senses. AKA: if they have high passive perception they're fine. :P 

Happy chat.

 

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@Unreliable Narrator before I post Collector I have a question, are the Stone Ruins closer to Po-Koro or Metru-Koro? I haven’t checked the map in a while. 

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It is with deep regret I must inform you all that I am leaving the game. I will remain in contact with any and all players whose characters were in the midst of interaction with my own to try and work something out, but due to various factors, I have reached the conclusion that I cannot keep playing SKR. I apologise for anything and everything this will impact in the game. I've much enjoyed these last seven months with you guys, and were the situation any different, I'd much prefer to keep going, but I'm afraid that's not currently on the table. Thank you all for everything.

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Happy Monday!

From The Desk,

We. Hit. 100. Pages.

Yes! We did it, we broke into the triple digits for SKR in early August! I wasn't sure it would be possible, but it's cool to see it happen. Thanks all for playing, and for continuing to work on being a collaborative group. As a personal note, I am working overtime this week. Lots of overtime. Expect less interaction from me while that is happening, though I will due my diligence to continue to stay up to date on the happenings, and even post if at all possible!

Weekly Summary

  • The Ruins of Fire rooms have been fully opened! Congratulations to those who worked hard on those puzzles.
  • Barius announces the need to feed! A might feast for Barius's triumph with the warksaks begins, even as his new tahtorak lumbers off towards... The Rig?
  • Cravious and Gore continue their food-loving adventures, dragging in more fine folk to help them in their quest for ingredients and components in the Fau Swamp!
  • The skies of Metru-Nui cease to be filled with combat Dar Poroka flies away on his newfound tentacle wings, and those aboard his ship make a safe extraction.
  • Taja and Whisper explore not just the road south to the Fau Swamp, but what it means to be alive.
  • Le-Metru Nuva continued it's progress towards unlocking the secret to forging great kanoka with the help from a new ally.
  • Atamai comes back to the future with an unwelcome guest: Axxon. Their debate turns to blows, with Atamai joined by some old new friends who happened to be traveling North.
  • Sorilax and Sala explore the Fau Swamp, finding the air suva and a surprised matoran!
  • Pridak's armor is destroyed, and the fight seems to near a terrifying conclusion...

Favorite Moment of the Week:

  • I'm loving... LOVING... the philosophical introspection by Whisper and Taja. 
  • I'm loving... LOVING... Viltia and Sidra. 
  • Generally, the Fau Swamp is getting some descriptive love over the past week or two and I'm here for that.
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Happy chat.

 

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23 hours ago, Unreliable Narrator said:

Favorite Moment of the Week:

  • I'm loving... LOVING... the philosophical introspection by Whisper and Taja. 
  • I'm loving... LOVING... Viltia and Sidra. 

I'm really glad you, and others, have been enjoying these scenes. I think moving away from high-stakes, adversarial interactions into some smaller, more character-focused scenes has really helped me get into a better headspace.

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Regarding boss fights:

Hey everyone, I wanted to quickly address something. I’d hoped not to have to write this, but I noticed something over the last couple of days while writing the Pridak bossfight that I want to curb before it becomes a habit: attacks are not landing, or are being significantly minimized. This is a serious fight, and an important moment, let’s not cheapen it.

Obviously we all want to indulge in our bonkle’s epic powers every now and then, but if there’s no struggle, there’s no accomplishment either. As a fictional boxer once said: It’s not about how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

I want to remind everyone of the rules for PVP and auto-hits in Six Kingdoms.

Expect to see GM auto-hits to help encourage the significance of these kinds of scenes moving forward. So far, this fight has been a joy to write with all of you.

Play well!
 

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