November Update - New Mechanic & Caps

[moustre]

Samuin, a time of year's end, of settling matters both business and personal, began Octeuril 31st and ends Noveuer 2nd -- while the festivities itself have sprung slightly since the frightful experiences the rest of the month, the main event is what everyone's been waiting for:

The fireworks.

While the city prepares its grand farewell to the past year, inviting all to the roofs in order to see the display, one Witch stays below. With a willing Monster volunteer, he sought the answers to his own inquiry, aided by the months' happenings; if they could transform those temporarily, in such a fascinating and real way, then was it truly impossible to change your lot in life should you wish it?

Delving into the Coven's most secret and dangerous of ingredients, he cast a spell as she drank the solution so finely tuned after trial and error, and with little more than a cry did they find themselves switched; while it became more apparent to his own body, quickly gaining feathers whereas she began to lose some of her own, it took only the practice of a beginner's spell for Four, someone who'd once been a Harpy, to learn that she had been the successful test subject of a short lifetime's work.

And with that bit of flavor out of the way, a warm thank you to Owlie for allowing us the grandest excuse to introduce something we felt would be most appropriately done when the boundaries were low and magic high -- role switching. Should you feel your character is more of a Witch or one of the Monsters after all, you have the choice to change it -- provided they've been in the game for at least three months, to give a full experience of the prior role.

This is also a permanent process. Once changed, they cannot change back nor change into something new -- it's already upsetting the balance, and the Coven, once it's caught wind of their former Witch's dealings, have officiated it as such too. The ingredients used to prepare it are rare and cultivated entirely within Nessie's gardens, which means someone certainly was where they shouldn't be; regardless, it is possible now!

Monsters who would like to change into another species are also applicable, and there is one restriction to this change: No one can be changed into a Dragon or Fae, regardless of reasoning. A post for this new feature can be found here with all the trappings and further information, so be sure to look at it if you're interested!


Regarding Caps
We've looked through your responses and have decided on thus:

A franchise cap of 24, a cast cap of 10, and within that cast cap is a Fandom OC cap of only 3. This is to ensure that MMO, DnD, and certain other canons which have both will be able to include playable NPCs, rather than be topped off on OCs alone. Anyone in a cast that is currently over the new caps is grandfathered in - of course no one will be forced to leave, but new applications for that cast will not be accepted until the number dips down below the cap naturally through drops. Applications for casts approaching the cap will be accepted on a reserve-only basis.

Thank you for all your suggestions, concerns, and considerations on this matter! Should you have any others, we as always welcome your voice.

Comments

[digiorno]

quick question regarding role switching: is this 100% an ic choice? is there any way it might not work on a particular character? i ask this because icly my character would jump at the chance but oocly i have zero interest in playing him as a witch, and i'm kind of concerned about remaining ic while also continuing to play with the monster game mechanic i apped in for.

+1

[starseedling]

Seconding this problem. Steven really wants to be a witch, but I don't presently want him to be. He'd definitely try it if it's something publicly known. It'd be good to have a way to avoid this.

[moustre]

Yes, it is 100% an IC choice. Should you not wish for it to work on your character, they might find themselves allergic to a key ingredient -- not unusual, as these are rare and haven't been ingested for centuries. Plenty of native citizens can't consume it either.

[foursakes]

question about magic from monsters that can’t be used as witches!! four’s canon output for magic/spells is through her singing/voice. as a former harpy with a siren’s song, would she still be allowed to use her voice to cast spells and not be able to “hook” anyone like a harpy’s song would, or would her singing voice just not be a good magical output to use in general?

[starseedling]

I guess to expand on this, like...I don't want to do it right now but it would be nice to have the option open for the future? So having some kind of innate allergy to it is also a bit complicated.

[moustre]

She can absolutely use her voice to cast spells, particularly using it as her "focus" for magic! Join a choir, Four, you'll need the new friends.

[faithlikeaseed]

Does this require an exchange of role with another (possibly non-player) character to occur in all instances?

[moustre]

In that case, it simply won't work. It is rather experimental still after all.

[starseedling]

So that he could theoretically try again in the future, especially when it's more refined? Okay that works. Thanks!

[moustre]

Yes, it does require exchanging roles with someone else. This is always going to be an NPC though, unless two players wish to work something out together, but we don't anticipate that being a common scenario.

[sporelett]

I do have concerns about the OC caps for D&D/Pathfinder specifically. Making original characters for those games are how you play them, so there's going to be way more demand for OCs in those fandoms specifically than for most other fandoms. Also, even if someone did want to play a published D&D character, since D&D is a game system, not a universe, there are a lot of different settings that those characters could be from within the umbrella of the D&D franchise. Even within a cast cap for an individual setting, like Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms, 7 published characters is way more than needed and 3 is not nearly enough. I honestly think the balance should be weighted the other way where tabletop RPGs are concerned, because as it is now, the cap is just preventing people from playing characters in those fandoms.

[faithlikeaseed]

Great, thank you.

A follow-up concern: I'm in a position where I'm interested in switching roles down the line, but my character absolutely would not be (especially as it requires taking someone else's magic). I imagine there may be people playing Witches who feel similarly--they'd have more fun playing a Monster but their character wouldn't voluntarily switch. Is there going to be any provision for working around that or are we just kinda out of luck unless we can discover an IC motive for a switch?

[krihnnges]

+1, also want to add that popular D&D campaigns, such as Critical Role and The Adventure Zone, are in that same boat. By and large, they're their own, standalone franchises, and if those are being classified as under the D&D franchise, that just makes it even worse.

+1

[sylphid]

Agreeing with all this here and adding my own concerns about a franchise cap re: games like Final Fantasy and Fire Emblem.

Most of those game are set in entirely different worlds from each other, the only thing they have in common might be gameplay or type of mechanics. It makes very little sense to me, whereas limiting Trails franchise makes perfect sense, since that's all set in the same universe with characters appearing in more than one set of games.

[exarchal]

+1 to all this. I'm curious to hear the reasoning behind it because it's a genre rather than a canon or franchise in the traditional sense.

+1

[stellung]

All of the above, for both Ryuu's comment and the top comment. I'm incredibly concerned about such harsh limits on a system used to create homebrew games, where the point is to create a character within the bounds of the rules - not a world with copyrighted (for lack of a better word) NPCs or somesuch.

If the issue is that the mods aren't familiar with tabletop RP, I'm sure many of us would be willing to talk to the mods about it, and explain the setup for what it's worth. At the very least, i would be.

[krihnnges]

I'm going to +1 this, as well.

i am literally incapable of not being verbose sry

[bleedinghare]

Similarly, I have some issues with this mechanic being choice-based. The mechanic being derived from choice feels like it's readying to sweep the rug out from under all the characters whose gaining of monster traits were less than ideal; especially in contrast with the situation in Dorch, what witch is going to want to become a monster, and what monster isn't going to want to become a witch? The original premise of the game doesn't involve the character being able to choose their monster/witch placement, so I feel like having this mechanic be something primarily involuntary with the rare voluntary swap seems to fit a bit more with not only character development, but the premise.

For instance: my character Adeline comes from an incredibly appearances-focused society and has struggled a great deal with her transformation (so she might grow through it and find some distance from the "mask" she's accustomed to wearing in polite society.) Given this new change, what's to stop her from simply... not being a monster anymore, except for "oh, it didn't work"?

Having the changes not work solely for the purpose of keeping a character transforming feels like a bit of a weak storytelling move, & begins to make the entire process seem like a string of uncanny coincidences. On top of this, given what I can imagine is going to be a big imbalance in the number of "monsters who want to be witches" to "witches who want to be monsters" (and hence the need for NPCs,) it just feels like we're going to have a grain silo full of NPC witches who are sheerly monster-swap fodder, and ultimately doesn't add to the game and again feels like a lukewarm move for storytelling.

Most of these issues are resolved with, as I said, the mechanic being something involuntary as with the monster/witch premise & the choices being the rarity, not the premise. The long & short of it is that I feel like posing the question "do you want to become a monster" to a witch has a very different meaning than asking a monster if they want to become a witch.

+1

[fiddlestick]

+1 to this. As i recall, this concern was said by a few people on the last feedback post, so it's a little worrying it didn't seem to be taken into consideration.

[stellung]

Another +1

[interlucere]

+1 on this.

+1

[starseedling]

This is what I've been feeling as well. The idea that it simply doesn't work sometimes is serviceable, but it feels pretty unsatisfying on a narrative level, especially with the importance of the species divide to the rest of the game.

Also there is almost 0 reason for most witches to want to be monsters. Even if they have a thing for monster parts, they could just study transfiguration. It seems like a niche desire to the degree that people playing witches will have very rare circumstances in which it would make sense to go ahead with it, ICly. Whereas monsters have few reasons to NOT want it.

Witches can do pretty much everything monsters can do with magic if they train for it, so the only major reason to want to be a monster is OOC desires for transformation stuff. So this being an IC solution instead of an OOC one is a bit difficult.

[clickclickbang]

Can you explain what you mean by "franchise cap"? There are a lot of "franchises" that have...nothing to do with each other but are still technically a franchise such as Final Fantasy, Tales, and SMT (Digital Devil Saga, Devil Survivor, all the Persona games except P5, etc) and it'd be incredibly easy for two casts to fill up the "franchise" slots.

+1

[sporelett]

I agree with this sentiment as well. There are definitely circumstances it might be cool to change a character's form for plot reasons, but having it be an in-character choice just doesn't work in a lot of cases, for reasons people have already covered.

+1

[sageprincess]

I don't even have much of an interest in switching myself, but I agree with all of this. Feels to me like it would be much simpler for whatever jamjar power that brought the character to aef in the first place to just... mess around with them randomly, just the same as they get messed with in their dreams sometimes.