24 KiB
The Council of Arches (Worth the Candle side story)
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Author: u/cthulhuraejepsen Fruit flies like a banana*
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Score: 128
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Created: 2018-05-28T15:11:46
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+45] (an hour later)
Never realized while reading the main story, but I miss Solace
u/Watchful1 [+17] (4 hours later)
Fortunately she's going to be back soon. Right? Right?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+5] Mouse Army (4 hours later)
But are we willing to trade Mary for her?
u/PresentCompanyExcl [+10] The Culture (8 hours later)
Unless the soul eater eats her soul to get the knowledge. I guess that might work, and all the foreshadowing is there.
u/WalterTFD [+2] (21 hours later)
Same.
u/None [+19] (2 hours later)
This was truly fantastic. I would love to read more Council of Arches sessions.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+33] Fruit flies like a banana (5 minutes later)
Much of this story was written when I was writing ch 56, but my $300 goal on Patreon was that I would finish it, which I did yesterday (and that actually worked as motivation a lot better than I thought it would). I don't consider it required reading for Worth the Candle, though it is suggested; maybe stay away if you don't like the tabletop parts of the story as much.
Thanks for reading, and if you're a patron, thanks for the support.
u/mojojo46 [+14] (an hour later)
I'm curious, does receiving more patreon donors make much difference in your motivation levels?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+44] Fruit flies like a banana (3 hours later)
Kind of? The biggest difference right now is probably my wife, who is super proud of me, and much more willing to give me writing time if it's helping support our family rather than just my hobby of sitting in front of my computer for hours at a time. Not that she wasn't great before, but it's also easier for me to ask when it's not just "hey, I'm going to disappear for a bit, watch our son, please".
Motivation is probably minor though. I'd be writing either way, it's just a matter of how much I try to sneak writing in on the off time, or how much I think about writing when I'm not writing, and stuff like that. Maybe I'm a little more conscious of trying not to do unproductive things (like arguing with people on the internet). I'd like to be able to say that every time I get a new patron, or someone increases their pledge, I race to the keyboard, but it's not really like that for me.
And motivation is distinct from inspiration, which has a much bigger impact. I won't say much about it, but there was a point a few chapters back where I had this "a ha" moment of being able to tie two different plot threads together, and that's the sort of thing that A) makes writing a lot easier and B) is really hard to induce artificially.
tl;dr: Motivation gets my butt in the chair, inspiration gets the words flowing, patronage does help motivation (though I'm already pretty self-motivated) but doesn't help inspiration.
u/mojojo46 [+3] (11 hours later)
Interesting, thanks for the answer. I'll continue to donate, and it if helps with motivation, great! If not, hopefully it at least makes it more worth keeping going at it in the long term.
u/Calsem [+1] (2 days later)
Keep in mind that it's not just about this author. Donating creates a positive environment for authors in general because other aspiring authors can look at the top authors and see that there's money to be made
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+15] Mouse Army (2 hours later)
Grak. He had looked at her character sheet, and apparently memorized it.
So jealous. My main limitation as a GM is a very limited RAM/working memory for stuff like that.
u/cabforpitt [+12] (9 hours later)
I like how the 4 characters match up with the real man / real roleplayer / loonie / munchkin player model, although Mary is more accurately a minmaxer/optimizer than a munchkin.
u/Bowbreaker [+1] Solitary Locust (a day later)
What's the Real Man stereotype? Never heard of it.
u/cabforpitt [+3] (a day later)
http://dragon.facetieux.free.fr/jdr/Munchkin.htm
The Real Man usually plays a fighter type and does generic good stuff.
u/XxChronOblivionxX [+13] (3 hours later)
That was really nice.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+9] Fruit flies like a banana (8 seconds later)
Typos here, please.
u/IamJackFox [+6] (2 hours later)
"...having the fairies do things out of your sight is somewhat difficult -- half the time for a normal slaver..."
That should probably be salver, unless you're implying something I didn't expect about Miranda's relationship with the fairies.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (3 hours later)
Fixed, thanks!
u/vulcanodon [+3] (an hour later)
but if questioned directly, I’ll tell say innocuous, boring, things.”
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (an hour later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (2 hours later)
The scurrily were waiting for them +[as soon as] Bachewin kicked in the manor door
With dice, I was pretty sure that she’d constantly be rolling hot, even
they weren’t straight 20sthough they wouldn't be straight 20s.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (3 hours later)
Fixed, thank you.
u/TempAccountIgnorePls [+2] (3 hours later)
Everyone else, flip up two cards a total of five times, keeping them in their groups, then take the highest card from two groups, and the lowest card from the two other groups
I think should be "flip up two cards a total of four times"?
The rules for Arches can be found here
Not a typo exactly, but this just links back to the same AO3 page.
Finally, this might be me misunderstanding the rules, but if Fenn flipped seven, six, five and four for her stats, how does she have a zero to put into Charm?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+4] Fruit flies like a banana (3 hours later)
You flip up two cards five times, but only choose from four of the groups. Similar to the D&D stat-rolling concept of "4d6, drop lowest".
Not a typo exactly, but this just links back to the same AO3 page.
That's probably AO3 not allowing links to a Google Doc ... I don't think that I've ever seen them do link-stripping before, but I also haven't tried linking there. I added the rules as a second chapter to this work.
Finally, this might be me misunderstanding the rules, but if Fenn flipped seven, six, five and four for her stats, how does she have a zero to put into Charm?
Juniper made her throw out her stats, because they were suspiciously high.
“Okay, since you’re identical twins, Fenn, you and Amaryllis will have the same pool, but you can put your abilities into different things,” I said it quickly, not giving Fenn a chance to object. “You have four cards, just take half their number value and assign those four numbers however you want. Remember that ace is one, off-arche is zero, and on-arche is fourteen.” There were eight of the arches, two in each deck, one good and one bad, which I was effectively using as a red and black joker, special cards with special rules. “Oh, and round down.”
The full stat arrays for each character:
.. Grak Fenn Mary Solace Physique 6 7 0 3 Endurance 5 2 2 5 Wits 2 6 6 5 Charm 3 0 7 1
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (14 hours later)
Can you include the stat block in the chapter directly? I know I was trying to figure out what each character had for each stat, and it took me out of the immersion in the reading a little bit. If you really don't want to add it in the middle of the chapter, then how about adding it to the second chapter with the rules?
By the way, it was a very well-written chapter.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (21 hours later)
Sure, I can add them in the second chapter.
Edit: trying to do that on mobile was a stupid idea, will do later tonight
u/TempAccountIgnorePls [+1] (3 hours later)
You flip up two cards five times, but only choose from four of the groups. Similar to the D&D stat-rolling concept of "4d6, drop lowest".
Then shouldn't it be "take the highest card from two groups, and the lowest card from two of the other groups"?
Juniper made her throw out her stats, because they were suspiciously high.
Ah, That makes much more sense. I somehow misread it as Amaryllis getting Fenn's pool instead of vice-versa.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (4 hours later)
Ah, I see what you mean, will fix.
u/Halinn [+1] (20 hours later)
Shouldn't Mary have -1 physique, with the salver malus?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (21 hours later)
Juniper says minimum 0, though it's not in the full rules. I'll add it there.
u/adgnatum [+2] (5 hours later)
Now do you want to get going, or would you rather wait around her for some reason?
here
you manage to draw you on-arche.
your
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (7 hours later)
Fixed those, thanks.
u/Kerbal_NASA [+2] (7 hours later)
Not technically a typo but you might not be aware there are only 2 sentences in between
we had a single page of simple rules I’d written myself
and
you could have fit the whole system of rules on a single page of paper with room to spare, which I had
which felt a little redundant. Also not a typo but something that felt like a continuity error was that there are only 6 sentences worth of dialogue between this sentence:
[Solace] ... got up from her chair and slipped away, down into the cellar beneath the tree house.
and this sentence:
“What kinds of trinkets?” asked Solace.
(also requires Solace to hear the previous line of dialogue and there's no mention of them waiting nor a pause in the conversation nor Solace returning)
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (7 hours later)
Edited the first one slightly, because you're right, it's clunky.
The second one was due to editing. Time taken while people speak is always one of the hardest things to nail down in prose, because it's hard to account for speaking speeds, pauses that aren't noted in the text, distractions, etc. It's now noted in the text that Solace asks her question as she comes back, which I don't think is unreasonable given how long it took me to speak the lines out loud ... but maybe it still reads poorly. (I have no idea if the internal geometry of the treehouse is written down anywhere, but the cellar is basically just down a ladder from the common area with the big table, so it's equivalent of stepping into the next room with the door open.)
Thanks for pointing those out.
u/Sparkwitch [+2] (8 hours later)
“He was a mysterious old wizard,” said Solace with a shurg.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (9 hours later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/JulianWyvern [+2] Wayward Wanderer (8 hours later)
If a flip with an off-arche is a success, it succeeds by an extra degree, or if it fails, it represents a minimal failure.
From context, I believe that's supposed to be on-arche
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+1] Fruit flies like a banana (9 hours later)
Yup, fixed.
u/thrawnca [+2] Carbon-based biped (18 hours later)
delapidated/dilapidated
foresaken/forsaken
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (21 hours later)
Fixed, thanks.
u/TheGuardianOne [+1] (18 hours later)
why have you foresaken me
forsaken
u/natron88 [+1] Ankh-Morpork City Watch (a day later)
Second Chapter:
what their characters would or would not do, rather than what they’re mechanically confined to by the mechanics.
u/daydev [+9] (14 hours later)
If Joon didn't want to kill his players' characters, his death save system seem very harsh. Immediate death on any failure (which, if I understand it correctly, is almost always more likely than a success), and you can only recover on a critical success? I'm thinking the system may have been designed for dramatic tension first and foremost, so death is at stake on every flip, by comparison D&D 5E death saves are very safe, but very unexciting. Or maybe that's Joon's "DM taking his grief out on the players" approach lingering on.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+8] Fruit flies like a banana (21 hours later)
There's a difference between not wanting to kill a player's character in the moment, and not wanting there to be a penalty of death. I've played a variety of systems with different rules on death and dying, and usually find the more permissive ones to be grating. If it's really permissive, where "reduced to 0 HP" just means "knocked out", then the player is just taken out of the game, and combat can last a long time, so they've got nothing to do. Even 5E can result in people checking out, because their "turn" is a single roll of a die that they have nothing to add to, leaving their fate entirely in the hands of the dice ... just more drawn out, which is a problem as far as tension goes, IMO, since you get "oh right, he's dying" moments that tend to make it fall flat.
Besides that, part of the point of them playing the tabletop game, in-story, is so that they can get a feeling for what it's like to play a tabletop game, and relatively harsh rules on character death help underline the "death and re-roll" aspect of how parties work, narratives get cut short, etc.
u/daydev [+2] (22 hours later)
There's a difference between not wanting to kill a player's character in the moment, and not wanting there to be a penalty of death.
It just appeared to me that Joon was being a bit of hypocrite at that moment, like he didn't like the idea of dealing with the drama of Grak's character dying there, and tried to take a moral high ground, like there's nothing he could've done, but in fact he personally designed the system so it's stacked very harshly against the players. I think there's something to be said for the difference between having a penalty of death and stacking everything on a single fickle save-or-die (with awful odds too boot, if I understand the system correctly, a person with average End would die on the first flip with the probability of ~71%).
Even 5E can result in people checking out, because their "turn" is a single roll of a die that they have nothing to add to, leaving their fate entirely in the hands of the dice ...
And with harsh rules it's over quick, but then the players checks out until the end of combat at least plus however long it takes to get to the point of the introduction of the next character (unless you're suggesting there's supposed to be hot swap, like the new characters enters the next round already somehow).
I guess there's a difference in styles, to me it feels like having the fate of a character that represents a quite sizable personal investment/attachment depend on a single throw with bad odds is very harsh, like something you'd do with the purpose of making a particularly hardcore or mean game.
Anyway, thanks for the reply.
u/Anderkent [+2] (a day later)
And with harsh rules it's over quick, but then the players checks out until the end of combat at least plus however long it takes to get to the point of the introduction of the next character (unless you're suggesting there's supposed to be hot swap, like the new characters enters the next round already somehow).
Well, you get to build a new character, that's something to occupy yourself with ;P
u/CouteauBleu [+8] We are the Empire. (a day later)
"You meet in a tavern," I said. I loved those words, they always felt like the five words that held the most possibility for the future of the campaign. "Bachewin, you’ve been sitting here stewing for quite some time, wanting to go after the scurrily at the decrepit manor they’re staying in as a way of starting down the path to restoring your family’s honor, but without the raw might necessary to accomplish it on your own."
I like that this mirrors almost exactly how Joon and Fenn met Grak.
“No, they don’t,” I said. “They’re fur-covered, so maybe some straps or packs to hold things, but they don’t need clothes as much, except maybe for modesty, or to pretend that they’re like humans.”
He says to the plant lady who would probably spend her time naked if she wasn't hanging out with the group.
u/moozilla [+7] (a day later)
u/traverseda [+5] With dread but cautious optimism (5 hours later)
“You find it in the corner, hidden beneath a bit of collapsed wall, stuffed their intentionally,”
Wrong there.
u/CouteauBleu [+3] We are the Empire. (13 hours later)
Great side-story! I like Mary and Fenn get way into their characters and get at each other throats. Normally it's something you wanna avoid when running a tabletop, but it sure makes for good drama!
u/MaddoScientisto [+4] (18 hours later)
I didn't know I needed this but now I know I loved it
u/nytelios [+3] (a day later)
After you’ve flipped a card, discard it. Once your discard pile is full, shuffle all the cards back into your deck and start over.
I'm not experienced with tabletop rule creation, but was this rule created purely to curb Fenn's elf luck? Or to guarantee a wider range of outcomes and prevent streaks?
It just seems to tempt card counting and, consequently, a potential lack of suspense (or fun) when the deck thins to the last few cards at a critical game moment.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+5] Fruit flies like a banana (a day later)
There are three reasons for it.
- It makes "luck" fairly even, so that a streak of bad luck will immediately be balanced out by a streak of "good luck".
- Shuffling after every flip is a lot of busy work and overhead, especially if you're going to be calling for multiple flips in a row, which as the rules are now is a definite possibility.
- Having a discard opens up a lot of design space for magic items, class abilities, enemy attacks, spells, etc. If you have a discard, you can have effects that put cards into it, pull cards from it, that shuffle it into your deck on certain triggers, activate when it's at a certain size, etc.
The rules do caution that card-counting might be a problem though. "Hidden" discard is the easiest but probably least effective option to deal with it. Shuffling after every flip removes a lot of design space and makes things more random, but probably doesn't hurt you that much unless you were actually using the design space. Alternately, if you really wanted, you could increase the size of the player's deck to make card counting much more difficult; it's at fifteen cards per player, which is pretty small and easy to track.
u/infomaton [+3] (a day later)
Did you actually flip for this? Any fudging?
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+6] Fruit flies like a banana (2 days later)
I flipped for stats, built out the sub-characters as I thought the characters would build them, then played two combats solitaire to see what potential outcomes were like in terms of how the system actually worked and where the most interesting scenes might come from.
For the actual story, I think I made flips twice, then just faked everything else (but kept careful notes so that no one would flip a card that they logically couldn't have).
For the end of play, when Grak had to make a flip for survival and Amaryllis had to make two flips for revival, I actually wrote it a few different ways and then picked the one that I liked best, both as it sits within the story, and as it sits within the larger narrative (IMO, here it largely provides an up note and a counterpoint to down notes that happen a few chapters away from where this sits). I also think that's where fudging is most noticeable though, but it was a tradeoff I was willing to make.
I actually wrote an essay on Simulationism vs. Narrativism you might find interesting.
u/I_Probably_Think [+3] (3 days later)
"Three card Monty" definitely brought a smile to my lips :D
u/AgentOfDimir [+1] (10 hours later)
If you make a tier of your patron site getting to be in a RPG that you DM, I bet you could make a ton. If you can do modding and writing alongside each other.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+13] Fruit flies like a banana (10 hours later)
Unfortunately, they use essentially the same part of my brain. I've also had mixed success with online games; there's a bit of a disconnect with people, and everyone comes in as a stranger, which means that it first takes some time for everyone to find their groove with each other, and sometimes it just falls apart because people are bringing in different ideas about what the game is or should be.
My DMing right now is limited to linked one-shots that I do with some friends, less than once a month (and it's been a while since the last one). Here's the setting doc, I'm fairly sure I've linked it in one of the worldbuilding threads before, to the wide disinterest that worldbuilding docs usually warrant.
That said, I've thought about it, it's just more something that I would try at a meetup or convention than as a reward over the internet (partly because I don't think I can guarantee a good level of quality).
Besides, I think I'm a better writer than a DM.
u/AgentOfDimir [+8] (11 hours later)
I’m a better writer than DM
You’re great enough at writing that would you have to be worse at almost everything else by comparison. :P
The way you make character development and conversations WORK is incredible. Fenn’s jabs, Solace’s caring, Amy’s strong methodical nature. And Grak who is so hard to understand that it feels so much nicer when you get those glimpses. Like when Joon said that he didn’t think Grak meant it when he said “clever”: that was hilarious.
Thanks so much for writing this and your other works.
Worldbuilding doc looks cool too. I’m sure you’re selling yourself short as a DM, but of course I believe you about the challenges and reasons for online being a poor medium.
u/Anderkent [+3] (a day later)
there's a bit of a disconnect with people, and everyone comes in as a stranger, which means that it first takes some time for everyone to find their groove with each other, and sometimes it just falls apart because people are bringing in different ideas about what the game is or should be.
To add to that, it's really hard to get a good feel going with just a videocall; jokes fall flat, people check out constantly because there's no subtext channel, and generally meh.
Which is a shame because conceptually Blue Stairs / Red Stairs was right up my valley :(