One of the comments earlier already had an interesting suggestion: If you have players who want to solve problems and you don't want to derail things with instant gratification, give them smaller/side problems to tackle that make bits of progress and teach them nuggets of useful information. That kinda sounds like a good reasoning behind sidequests and optional objectives, honestly.
Naturally, the players and DMs here don't have the benefit (and curse) of an experienced comments section.
"Naturally, the players and DMs here don't have the benefit (and curse) of an experienced comments section."
Back when Livejournal was the big social media giant on the internet, I actually did use it in a way as just that--I posted weekly summaries of my sessions along with funny quotes that occurred and I'd get a lot of feed back and ideas to bounce around for the next session. Even the players in my group would show up to give their opinions for how the games were going, what worked, what didn't...
I never could get lightning to strike twice though. Attempts at it on other media platforms never quite found that magic again.
Everyone has moved over to DreamWidth now (for reasons known to the former LiveJournal community) but I know a group still doing that. It's good feedback and also makes good campaign records.
Yeah, Cozy Glow is a cute little filly and is the only one pony (except the mane 6) that want to use friendship to achieve her dream.
How could you consider her a villain ???
Well, I mean her version of friendship was (literally) racist, distorted, and entirely self-serving. But that speaks to her villainy.
I'm saying she's bad at being a pony.
a) Doesn't cower in fear at literally any trouble
b) Doesn't respect or fear any of the quasi-immortal demigods ruling Equestria
c) If she's a pony, then why is she in Monster-jail?
d) Are we sure she isn't the host of a cthonic being? Inconclusive, I say!
I also thought it was overkill that they put a child in Tartarus.
On the other hand, she's proven she's a master manipulator who can take about a thousand creatures of all walks of life and species, warp them all to her whims, and turn them against those who have a well established *reputation* for being defenders of Equestria.
So the question now remains: If you can't lock her up, *where do you keep her?* You can't just release her back into the population. She made it perfectly clear that if she was allowed to leave, she'd start it all over again. And considering she knows a spell that can destroy all magic in Equestria, there's no guarantee she won't *use* it again.
She's incredibly dangerous. The only way to not incarcerate her somewhere magic doesn't work, would be to go into her mind and make her *forget* key details. Which is also a horrific option.
But when all your choices are bad ones, which do you pick?
It's been speculated for years that the Elements don't create good where none exists. Instead, they rekindle or enhance the empathy and harmony already inside someone. This only when used properly. Otherwise they seem to default to imprison or destroy. This is born out by the redemption of Nightmare Moon and the outright destruction of the evil clones, or the banishment of Tirek and season 2 imprisonment of Discord. It's unclear what their effect would have been on Cozy Glow.
On her crimes, her magic had little to do with it. What she did was use artifacts to conduct a RITUAL that drained magic from Equestria. You have Treason, from attempting to supplant the Princesses, Treason for deliberately weakening Equestria to all threats (not just magic loss, but potentially diplomatic tension with neighbors ala her seeming race-oriented means of "friendship"), attempted regicide via trying to trap Twilight in Tartarus, attempted murder on Twilight's friends, Starlight, and the student 6.
She unapologetically attempted to conquer Equestria, and seemed to have wanted that when she first came to the school. She clearly showed she could manipulate and control her peers and elders. I don't think juvie is going to contain that, let alone reform it. And strangely, Tartarus seems like a regular jail, albeit one sealed by powerful eldritch spells and the like. Still another disturbing continuation of Celestia's "lock it away/send it somewhere else" method of dealing with problems.
This is definitely a refreshing conversation after reading through that session for so long. It really shows that even after the battle lines have been drawn, we are all looking for similar things in the end. D+d is such an emotional game sometimes, and you've done an incredible job at conveying that with this arc, which is why all of us could take it so... Personally at times.
"If you have players who want to solve problems and you don't want to derail things with instant gratification, give them smaller/side problems to tackle that make bits of progress and teach them nuggets of useful information."
This makes a surprisingly large amount of sense. I think the main way to do this is to have various rules and bounds you can't cross, even if the players don't 100% know what they are. For example, one of my campaigns has a powerful goddess who hates the players. However, she can't directly affect the players unless someone nearby invokes dark powers. Thus, she has to act through agents who champion her or try to interact through some of the players' dreams. This gives the players the ability to work against her schemes while knowing that there's limits to how much she can do to them. I think this is important since there's multiple villainous threats attacking at different angles so the players have different things to expect and can still fight back.
Any bets on who else will join in, who won't but will get their therapy at the table, and who won't even need that?
RD & PP might be the latter (RD never was cursed, and PP may just "snap out of it" once she sees everyone else is having fun doing so). That leaves FS & Rarity as the unknowns: FS seems possibly too shy, and Rarity too driven, to seek out the GM/TS/AJ. Though FS might seek them out, and Rarity might simply declare she's used Tom up in clothing and accessories (with commentary about this being the fate of anyone she loves).
Pretty much - it feels like it's been a long while since these characters talked to each other OoC without some sort of interference (general anger/annoyance + frustration, stuff like that), glad to see it's happening.
Honestly, I believe Twilight shouldn't have to be that apologetic. After all, all she did was try to keep the game moving forward in the middle of all the showboating and sidetracking, and in return, she was neglected, belittled, and downright mocked by the co-GM and her fellow PCs. Really, her being snappy is warranted, and it's actually a testament to her patience that she didn't just up and leave to be done with this malarkey.
Maybe she doesn't need to be, but apology is purely for others. Twilight FEELS guilty, even if it might seem disproportionate to her guilt. She looks at her behavior over the course of the session and is dissatisfied, because she usually holds herself to a higher standard than that. Honestly,it's a sign of a good person, when they are critical of their own actions and behavior. It's also an empathy thing. GM is expressing the same sort of critical self-reflection, and Twilight doesn't see it as fair that the GM is taking all the blame on their own shoulders.
Again, this is setting aside the issue of actual blame or fault. Twilight is expressing a level of guilt that is healthy to the situation and isn't doing so for self-serving altruism. This is reflex: she knows the situation went poorly, believes she had a role in it, and is looking backward for any similar behavior even if it was appropriate for the time because she feels the need to correct herself and be better.
And inexperienced commenters! In terms of tabletop campaigns I have taken part of I only was DM for two of them...and they fell apart due to scheduling issues and - in one case - having a group of people who COULD NOT play nice with each other including a Lawful Stupid Jerk Paladin (he WOULD NOT STOP calling the druid a hippie loser...)
As for the times where I was a player...those groups also fell apart because of scheduling issues. Also they kept changing location WITHOUT TELLING ME. Kind of hard to play when I don't know where we're meeting.
Do I still love D&D? Yes. Do I desperately wish I had a group to play with? Also yes. I have a set of house rules that hybridizes D&D and Withe Wolf's Exalted that I want to test out...
Back when Livejournal was the big social media giant on the internet, I actually did use it in a way as just that--I posted weekly summaries of my sessions along with funny quotes that occurred and I'd get a lot of feed back and ideas to bounce around for the next session. Even the players in my group would show up to give their opinions for how the games were going, what worked, what didn't...
I never could get lightning to strike twice though. Attempts at it on other media platforms never quite found that magic again.
(I kid)
How could you consider her a villain ???
I'm saying she's bad at being a pony.
a) Doesn't cower in fear at literally any trouble
b) Doesn't respect or fear any of the quasi-immortal demigods ruling Equestria
c) If she's a pony, then why is she in Monster-jail?
d) Are we sure she isn't the host of a cthonic being? Inconclusive, I say!
(Yes, I'm honestly miffed about this. She's a FOAL!)
On the other hand, she's proven she's a master manipulator who can take about a thousand creatures of all walks of life and species, warp them all to her whims, and turn them against those who have a well established *reputation* for being defenders of Equestria.
So the question now remains: If you can't lock her up, *where do you keep her?* You can't just release her back into the population. She made it perfectly clear that if she was allowed to leave, she'd start it all over again. And considering she knows a spell that can destroy all magic in Equestria, there's no guarantee she won't *use* it again.
She's incredibly dangerous. The only way to not incarcerate her somewhere magic doesn't work, would be to go into her mind and make her *forget* key details. Which is also a horrific option.
But when all your choices are bad ones, which do you pick?
On her crimes, her magic had little to do with it. What she did was use artifacts to conduct a RITUAL that drained magic from Equestria. You have Treason, from attempting to supplant the Princesses, Treason for deliberately weakening Equestria to all threats (not just magic loss, but potentially diplomatic tension with neighbors ala her seeming race-oriented means of "friendship"), attempted regicide via trying to trap Twilight in Tartarus, attempted murder on Twilight's friends, Starlight, and the student 6.
She unapologetically attempted to conquer Equestria, and seemed to have wanted that when she first came to the school. She clearly showed she could manipulate and control her peers and elders. I don't think juvie is going to contain that, let alone reform it. And strangely, Tartarus seems like a regular jail, albeit one sealed by powerful eldritch spells and the like. Still another disturbing continuation of Celestia's "lock it away/send it somewhere else" method of dealing with problems.
Because he is best dragon.
This is good newbie. I'm happy to see this.
This makes a surprisingly large amount of sense. I think the main way to do this is to have various rules and bounds you can't cross, even if the players don't 100% know what they are. For example, one of my campaigns has a powerful goddess who hates the players. However, she can't directly affect the players unless someone nearby invokes dark powers. Thus, she has to act through agents who champion her or try to interact through some of the players' dreams. This gives the players the ability to work against her schemes while knowing that there's limits to how much she can do to them. I think this is important since there's multiple villainous threats attacking at different angles so the players have different things to expect and can still fight back.
RD & PP might be the latter (RD never was cursed, and PP may just "snap out of it" once she sees everyone else is having fun doing so). That leaves FS & Rarity as the unknowns: FS seems possibly too shy, and Rarity too driven, to seek out the GM/TS/AJ. Though FS might seek them out, and Rarity might simply declare she's used Tom up in clothing and accessories (with commentary about this being the fate of anyone she loves).
Oh, wow... Rarity becoming a femme fatale? Suddenly I'm imagining her having the voice of Mrs White from "Clue."
"Men should be like kleenexes. Soft, strong, and disposable."
#twilightdidnothingwrong =P
Again, this is setting aside the issue of actual blame or fault. Twilight is expressing a level of guilt that is healthy to the situation and isn't doing so for self-serving altruism. This is reflex: she knows the situation went poorly, believes she had a role in it, and is looking backward for any similar behavior even if it was appropriate for the time because she feels the need to correct herself and be better.
As for the times where I was a player...those groups also fell apart because of scheduling issues. Also they kept changing location WITHOUT TELLING ME. Kind of hard to play when I don't know where we're meeting.
Do I still love D&D? Yes. Do I desperately wish I had a group to play with? Also yes. I have a set of house rules that hybridizes D&D and Withe Wolf's Exalted that I want to test out...
temple run