9.1 KiB
[RT][WIP] Worth the Candle - Chapter 14, End of Book I
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Author: u/Noumero Self-Appointed Court Statistician*
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URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11478249/chapters/26377209
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Score: 43
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Created: 2017-08-05T11:50:34
Post:
Comments:
u/Noumero [+18] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (15 minutes later)
u/cthulhuraejepsen, I think you're balancing the main "realistic" fantasy plot, game mechanics, lyrical digressions, and flashbacks to tabletop role-playing sessions really well, creating a very unique narrative. The plot is rather interesting, as are the characters. Great work!
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+13] Fruit flies like a banana (2 hours later)
Thanks for posting! If you're a first-time reader, here's the link to the entire work or the first chapter, and here's a brief synopsis:
Worth the Candle is a self-insert litRPG portal fantasy, loosely based on my personal experience of falling into a portal to another world and discovering that I had a character sheet attached to my soul.
You can download the whole thing (Book I) from AO3 as well using the "Download" button, but it doesn't preserve some of the CSS in epub, mobi, pdf, etc. formats (a relatively minor issue).
I very much appreciate all the people who have given words of support over the past three weeks, and all of the people who have pressed the buttons to make the metrics for this story increase. I like seeing numbers become bigger numbers.
Book II starts in probably a day or two.
u/JanusTheDoorman [+7] (5 hours later)
Really enjoying this so far. I like that Juniper is at least starting underpowered compared to everyone else, though the rate of power increase is a little concerning. Going from "this skin tattoo is a deadly and imminent threat that I can't understand or manipulate" to "able to shift it far enough and with enough control to avoid anything vital" in one chapter feels almost deus ex machina.
Being largely cut-off from civilization, without a peaceful environment to setup grinding/power-leveling, and skill caps tied to ability scores do a lot to mitigate power creep, but two of those are circumstantial and the last one is likely munchkinable.
I'm just worried we'll end up in the same place as The Games we Play, where by the end every fight scene was basically "Once Jaune had thrown 37 suns at the boss, opened up a rift into an alter-dimension he was the god of, and assembled 1600 copies of the world's deadliest legendary weapons, the fight really began!"
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+9] Fruit flies like a banana (5 hours later)
I read and enjoyed The Games we Played, but I really thought it ramped up too fast in relation to its threats. I'm trying to be conscious of power creep, mostly by thinking to myself "well where do we go from here" when writing.
There are other, unrevealed mechanics for slowing down power creep, some of which will show up shortly.
u/narfanator [+4] (15 hours later)
I mean, there's two poles to a particular part of game design: Introduce mechanics as a character levels up, so the player isn't overwhelmed with rules; and introduce everything at the start, which necessarily involves rapid initial learning.
Nothing saying you can't do both!
A usual mechanic for that is the there's an additional cost beyond the skill level up per additional skill category, or quantity-of-skill-category has a cap based on level, or....
I'm sure you've got something good planned!
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+3] (a day later)
though the rate of power increase is a little concerning. Going from "this skin tattoo is a deadly and imminent threat that I can't understand or manipulate" to "able to shift it far enough and with enough control to avoid anything vital" in one chapter feels almost deus ex machina.
I strongly disagree. Amaryllis was like "woah, what the hell is with your learning so quickly?", so Juniper basically spent every second he could trying to powerlevel his not-getting-killed-by-the-tattoo skill over a couple of days, because he knew there would be no way the party would expect it, and that he absolutely had to circumvent it ASAP.
u/JanusTheDoorman [+2] (a day later)
Ah, maybe I'm misreading some of the context of time. I thought the progress he made was over the span of hours, not days.
u/Noumero [+4] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (2 days later)
It was made in the span of hours, I'm not sure what u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN is talking about. The Fool’s Choker was placed at the end of Chapter 12, the party talked for a few minutes afterwards; Chapter 13 started "not long after that" and consisted of the party breaking into the castle then waiting "an hour and a half" under Time-Out; Chapter 14 started immediately afterwards, the elevator plan took no more than half-an-hour.
u/Making_Bacon [+5] (a day later)
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u/None [+6] (3 hours later)
I accidentally read the whole of this chapter without realising it was the fourteenth instead of the first. I'm not sure whether that's a complement to the author's writing or an insult to my reading skills.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+8] Fruit flies like a banana (12 hours later)
I have a definite weakness for the sort of story that drops you into things without explaining too much and hoping that you pick things up along the way. Most of qntm's stories do that, and I love them for it.
Also, there are two bits of advice given to aspiring writers quite often. The first is to start as close to the inciting incident as possible, and the second is to write the first chapter and then throw it out, because the real story always starts in chapter two. I sort of waffle on how correct this is, but there are instances where I'll write things and think "man, I could have just cut off the front chunk and been fine".
That said, this is a story that I intend to be read from chapter one. :)
u/Laborbuch [+7] (17 hours later)
At a recent public reading Ann Leckie of Ancillary Justice fame mentioned something in that vein, an agent/editor she was introducing her book to was of the opinion she should get rid of the entire first third of it and throw the reader into the massacre. She however disagreed on grounds of the characterisation that necessarily needed to take place, to make clear how wrong that massacre was, even if it was done by as the in-universe archetypical expansionist empire, and how it affected the people enacting it.
I have to agree with her.
However, that doesn’t man your opinion is without merit. Usually the first chapter should end on the inciting incident, so the main character’s regular day can be experienced before the irregular day begins, so to speak.
Unrelatedly, /u/cthulhuraejepsen, let me tell I immensely enjoy Worth the Candle. It is a refreshing deviation from what I have come to expect from litRPG. Please drop me a message when you release a commercial version, I’ll gladly buy it.
u/None [+6] (18 hours later)
I just thought I was reading a really cold open. After reading the first thirteen chapters, I definitely got that I was missing something, but it also taught me a lesson about how much you can infer based on limited data. I've seen people write works with an eye toward subversion before, and most of the time, the length means that even the creative moments are drowned out. However, I don't think I'll be forgetting that it's perfectly reasonable to open a chapter with ELEVATOR FACTS now that I've read this.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (20 days later)
Just catching up now. Why did the meatshield get cut off in the elevator by Quill? Seems to be weird, he could have still provided utility.
u/Noumero [+3] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (20 days later)
He was dead. Damage-by-proxy from Feidlimid's fall killed him. Or do you mean the items and armor they could've collected from his corpse?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (20 days later)
Ohhhhh. Thanks, I didnt catch the impliciation (its not at all mentioned in the text).
u/Noumero [+3] Self-Appointed Court Statistician (20 days later)
But it is mentioned.
Inge Carter defeated!
Tova Feidlimid defeated!
With Carter being the meatshield. Granted, the reason behind this chain-kill isn't directly stated, but it's a direct consequence of the meatshield magic's rules.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+1] Mouse Army (20 days later)
Thats what I get for reading it past midnight. So interestingly there is some sort of time delay in the meatshield magic? If other messages had time to pop up in junipers HUD.