early game (cycles 1-9)
players begin to explore the map and get a handle on mechanics, strange puzzles are discovered, and rivalries begin to form...
cycle 1
everyone aside from
chimp posts. this meant when post locations were revealed the turn after, chimp was essentially off grid. it would have been possible to deduce someone started there based on the grid pattern, but i don't know that anyone did. it was really fun to see people have fun with the post mechanic.
Drifting's devious
wounded by chimp and need allies. meet me at the south corner - BIG ASHLEY |
is a personal favourite.
Albatross began as she meant to carry on, artposting. i won't embed them all here—you can see them in the documentation, but needless to say these ruled, i loved them a lot, and their reuse kind of turned them into image macros, or perhaps, micro-memes...?
cycle 2
of the pairs of players that had a chance of running into one another this cycle, only
Brambane and
Blizihguh chose to move to the same location. there might have been an opportunity to get an early party in, at this point, but
Brambane was not interested, leaving
Blizihguh free to loot the chest. a few other players happened upon chests, here, notably
Albatross' acquisition of the Alert Bell, a powerful item in its own right and also one she became particularly attached to. a lot of lore developed between alba and her bell. perhaps a tale for another time...?
Mathy and
Voltage both explore the corners and have their first encounter with the locked away keys, though neither can figure out the password.
Voltage even attempts to smash the container with their weapon, but there's no brute-forcing these—they'll need the code.
Voltage and
ThatOneSpork both begin here similar early-game plans that they will stick to for a while: scouting the outer perimeter of the grid.
Voltage assumes the pen name 'phive', '5', or 'φve' to self-impose a kind of double-blind mechanic on their posts as a sign-off, which i liked
BIG ASHLEY reaches H5 and discovers the smug-looking statue of a man that informs her of as much. you wouldn't get it
monkfish discovers the Amulet of Celeritous Posting, and aptly begins a posting trend on its thread, E3, that will be championed by other posters for the length of the game
cycle 3
the first npc encounters occur:
grape tylenol discovers the Filthy Lurker store, and
Blizihguh encounters the Assassin, a faction NPC. both seem pretty creeped out by these meetings, for different reasons
dave has an ill-fated run-in with a Crawler. we waited 3+ days for
dave to take a turn, and in the end i had to godkill them to keep the game moving. there's no way around this, really; it sucks to have to do that, and i would have loved to have had them in the game proper, but it also sucked to have the momentum of the game zapped out of it so early on when things were still super exciting. alas, poor
dave, but i think it was necessary
ThatOneSpork discovers one of two healing pools capable of completely restoring HP and curing all status ailments, and makes use of it to restore their single point of missing HP
earl does battle with a flame troll, which was much posted about in the smogoff rpg pm thread. these were gooves but actually i think it was really fun to have people hearing about some combat encounter they couldn't see and wondering how if earl was dead after. spoiler: he was not, and picked up a powerful piece of armour for persevering, the Firewall, which blocks all incoming statuses. however, he is already burned
in the diametrically opposed location,
Lady Salamence and
monkfish encounter one another, and a Toxic Troll
[talk] with the power of teamwork , i believe we can defeat the enemy
[flee] sw
Lady Salamence was probably pretty livid, but this act of extreme cowardice made me laugh a lot
left to do battle on her own,
Lady Salamence gets pretty beat up, but like
earl comes out of it with the powerful Firewall armour. also like
earl, she is already stuck with the status condition from the combat, so this is more like future-proofing than panacaea
after insisting she must scratch around in the dirt at every location for bugs to devour,
Albatross (sort of) gets her wish when she encounters the somewhat insectoid Scraper, and kills it for the Scraper Knife. this is a powerful weapon that will serve her well for the bulk of the game, so i thought it was worth mentioning here
CryoGyro... ah. this was a mess. F2 was mentioned in the signups post for smogoff rpg as a sort of goof; that there would be an ambush waiting there. i hadn't decided exactly what that would be at that point, but i did want to actually implement it (bc that's funny). so,
CryoGyro encountered a suspicious pool of water similar in appearance to the healing pools, but with some slightly ominous framing:
You have arrived at F2.
There is a pool of water here. You cannot see the bottom.
There is some kind of glowing orb suspended above the pool. It is just within reach.
after touching the orb, they were zapped for a little bit of HP, shown the orb's true nature (the lure of a giant angler fish), and told that something felt off... and that was it, for now. what really happened was that an internal spawn timer began, after which a clone of
CryoGyro was to be spawned (angler... phish, get it?). the idea was that things would get very fun and funky with a clone of a player running around on the map
for... reasons that we will get to, this didn't really land at all, and actually caused a lot of frustration down the line. alas
finally, on a sillier note,
Troubadour1 (confusing name change) arrives at D4, becomes the first player to encounter a lock, and begins their dedication of themselves to being available to solve this puzzle.
... unfortunately, their posts, their unending vigil over that tile, and
Albatross's very thorough use of the Alert Bell to confirm that the tile was still occupied many cycles later all ironically scared people off ever visiting the tile... with an exception we'll get to. this was so sad to watch for
Troubadour1 because evidently they were looking for others to join them in the spirit of jolly co-operation and no-one ever came, but god it was hilarious knowing the truth and seeing teams discuss in dms what terrors awaited them on that tile, and who this mysterious D4 poster could be...
cycle 4
monkfish and the very much alive
Lady Salamence have an awkward reunion at the lock puzzle on D4. monkfish tries to play this off:
[investigate]
[talk] oh thank god you made it
... but
Lady Salamence is having none of it, and leaves him in the lurch after doing some funney misinformation posting to befuddle
Troubadour1, who has sadly hopped away from their vigil over D4 for one moment to check on the other adjacent tiles (and therefore discover that there is a similar object on D5).
D4 will not be visited again by a single other player until cycle 23, which is actually mad to think about, and again, so so sad for
Troubadour1 hahaha. near misses like this were typical in the game, but this one is especially brutal
grape tylenol steps on to C3, and contracts the Poisoned status. as a result the following ~10 cycles will probably be the most frustrating stretch of the game (for both of us)
Albatross happens upon a previously-looted treasure chest, and is insistent that she will find a way to carry it around with her. this must be in a dnd textbook somewhere as an example of mad things players will do to play around the game you have planned, instead of the playing the game you have planned. in the interest of diplomacy i cede that she may consider it her nest
CryoGyro rests off their sting and sees no further suspicious activity at the phishing tile
BIG ASHLEY discovers the Ring of Refreshing at F5 (geddit???), a very powerful item conferring passive health regeneration that will be the focus of a lot of planning later on in the game
Voltage defeats a Crawler, which drops the very handy Search Lens. with one of these a player can choose another location on the map to view for that cycle. these will become more common as the game progresses, and allow players to glean a sense of others' statuses, plans, allegiances, etc, but only in passing. tools like this were fun to come up with and even more fun to see players make use of, and in my opinion more interesting than plain combat
cycle 5
Voltage discovers a healing pool as he and
ThatOneSpork continue their mirrored edge-crawling playstyles. at full health, though, he receives no benefit from interacting with it, and so disregards it as unremarkable
Drifting happens upon a key locked away at A8, and makes an attempt at accessing it with the password, but to no avail. he settles down to rest afterwards, however, committed to solving the puzzle
chimp similarly bumps into the key at H8, attempts to access it, and rests there
Albatross discovers the first of many memetic
If you are cool come meet at D4 |
posts, and the fear grips her. her response?
Lady Salamence discovers a second lock at E4, and so begins to get a sense of how this puzzle is laid out
earl and
BIG ASHLEY encounter the lock below, on E5, but they end up perhaps at cross-purposes on communication, with
earl trying to talk and
BIG ASHLEY posting and moving on after investigating the lock
ThatOneSpork has a pretty nasty run-in with a Scraper that they will be resting off for a few cycles
cycle 6
chimp gives up on the key at H8, and moves on.
Drifting however has sussed it out:
There is a pair of strange of devices here. Standing in the centre of the chamber is a large tube holding in suspension what appears to be a key. The key idly turns, locked away behind what might be glass, or plastic.
In front of the chamber is what appears to be a console. A cursor blinks on the monochrome display. There is a keypad for input below, and what might be a prompt above:
"8606408"
see, each key is locked away with a code like this. every time a player encounters these, their first attempt is to enter the same code displayed to them. this isn't the password, though, but instead references a post in smogoff by its post id. i'll let you input the above and discover what the password for the first key
Drifting lay claim to was. needless to say i was extremely happy when
Drifting figured this out; we'd had no communication about it, there were no further hints, and i was a little concerned that something like this that relies on information outside of the game might be a problem, even with the game's setting being lampshaded as the smogoff forum itself. other players managed to suss out this gimmick on their own, later, too, so i think it worked out just fine, and would establish a precedent for another puzzle concerning the keys—what on earth their strange inscription referred to:
There's a delay, a few soft bloops, and then the quiet hum of something whirring up...
Before you know it, the key you had seen suspended in the tube disappears, and you are in the same moment conscious that it is upon your person.
You gained an item:
[Mysterious Key]
It bears an inscription:
"B101-FDL"
BIG ASHLEY discovers another lock
Blizihguh stumbles upon
earl still at E5:
you can't just ask somebody why they're a bird
... and from these humble beginnings, a beautiful, deadly partnership is formed. this is the beginning of the game's first formal party, the
goon squad. they share the information they've learned, like the location of the Assassin at F7, and the nature of
earl's Burned status
Lady Salamence takes a moment to rest on E4 to take the edge off the poison
grape tylenol has resolved to investigate what she suspects to be an ambush at F2, and so continues to beeline for it. each cycle she moves instead of resting, she takes 1 damage from the poison
Brambane does battle with a Spambot, a pretty powerful enemy with some nasty attacks and a bulky HP pool. after doing a decent amount of damage, they resolve to cut their losses and run
cycle 7
with goon squad having moved on together,
BIG ASHLEY returns to E5, only to now meet
Lady Salamence there, who is continuing to investigate the centre of the map and the locks there, suffering her Poisoned status.
BIG ASHLEY attempts to make contact, but (perhaps coloured by the run-in with the devious
monkfish)
Lady Salamence dips. as you will come to see, this was probably a good call
at this point in the game the locks are stacked with players, and players are posting frequently, so people know there are others close by. it's a natural place to congregate since players started mostly towards the edge of the grid
Albatross encounters a clutch of Daemons that she does not fancy dealing with, and flees.
Voltage runs into the same enemy, and also resolves to flee, but instead flees back to the tile they came from. this could have been an accident, or as a result of a communication error (it does make some sense to only be able to flee behind you, although not how it is signposted in pms), but in the end it won't affect the competition for A1 that
Voltage and
Albatross will end up in
CryoGyro encounters the Filthy Lurker shop, but without the Likes yet to purchase anything, they move on
Calamity Ashely arc continues as
grape tylenol stumbles into the Charged Thread, gaining the Static status. there are no immediately obvious adverse effects, but it does stack with Poisoned
Brambane encounters their first lock, at E4
Drifting seems to have a gameplan in mind, now, beelining for A1 with their key in tow and a good inkling of how to get any others that might exist
cycle 8
monkfish discovers a Bookmark, a powerful if under-loved imo item that lets a user mark their current location to return to at will, once
Drifting runs into a Crawler, defeats it, and rests off the damage
Albatross also hunkers down to rest off the previous cycle's Daemon encounter. she'll be here, on A2, just out of reach of a key, for several cycles. ringing the Alert Bell will show her a stranger (
CryoGyro) skirting around her for the duration
Mathy encounters The Last Moderator, another faction NPC, like the Assassin. his pitch:
The swordsman relents from skewering the creature pinned under his sword, and calls back to you in a deep, full voice:
"Oh, hello there. An adventurer, are you?
"I almost mistook you for a daemon... Ha ha...
"So, what is it? Have you come for the Posting Points, like everyone else?
"That's the only reason people come here, anymore...
"Me? My name's—
"Well, that doesn't matter, now. I am The Last Moderator. I keep posters from getting their grubby little mitts on the Posting Points... Ha ha...
"Hm? Oh, don't worry. I'm not about to lunge at you. Actually, I have a proposition for you.
"It's a big ask, keeping things in check down here, all on my own.
"What would you say to changing sides, so to speak? Ha ha...
"I could use an extra pair of hands, you see. All you'd have to do is stop posters from looting the Posting Points.
"So, what do you say?"
Agree to join The Last Moderator? Yes, No
Note: This will change your win condition!
Mathy accepts, marking the first time a player's win condition is altered:
Your win condition has changed.
To win, you or your party must prevent the Posting Points from being obtained.
needless to say this flips
Mathy's game on its head a bit; his win condition is now the inverse of everyone else's
Mathy receives the Moderator Badge trinket for their trouble, conferring a small Defence Bonus for now, with the promise of further powers for every would-be Posting Point looter eliminated. they also receive a Bookmark—the idea here was that moderator-aligned players would bookmark this location, where their faction leader was located, and return to it to have their badge powered up every time they got a kill.
Mathy opted not to use the Bookmark in this way, however, and instead posted a little disinformation to steer other players away from interacting with The Last Moderator
the long-suffering
Lady Salamence runs into yet another troll, this time a Flame Troll, and opts to not deal with it. her Firewall armour protects her from being afflicted with Burned on the way out, at least, but she is hurting
the goon squad stumble into the third hazard location we've covered so far: the Flame War Battlefield, which afflicts visitors with Burned... or it would, if
earl was not both already Burned and immune to further status. just
Blizihguh, then. misery loves company
grape tylenol arrives at F2, the site of the telegraphed ambush, on the exact turn the internal turn timer ticks over for spawning a clone after the phishing of
CryoGyro. what follows was a bit of a mess; she sees the lure the same as
CryoGyro did, touches it to receive that same little sting of damage, but because of her Static status it does bonus damage to her, and also (unbeknownst to her) kills the Angler Fish NPC. so she doesn't get the same explanation about the lure that
CryoGyro got. with the source of the clone dead, what appears to be
CryoGyro just... vanishes as a result of the explosion, and
grape tylenol is left at critical HP (Static discharged but still Poisoned) and feeling pretty sorry for herself because it feels like the game is evil and hates her for exploring, with random objects exploding seemingly without reason
we've talked about this at length but i will say again here: i personally feel the poison mechanic is defensible; stopping to rest is the telegraphed way to recover HP, also the telegraphed way to not take damage from poison, and (not telegraphed, secret) the way to cure Poisoned faster (any 3 turns). it also theoretically means that you know (at a price) have valuable information on a location to avoid or lure others to. what i think absolutely sucked from top to bottom and is not defensible at all was this implementation of the Angler Fish; none of the potential cool interactions came through, having it interact with Static at all was a mistake, and nothing cool was gained, no helpful information, just a very frustrated player. lots of the game ran on information being imperfect, things being mysterious and obscure, but this demonstrated that in combination a lot of this could be pretty obtuse. i know that this was not fun at all. lessons learned the v hard way
cycle 9
ThatOneSpork arrives at H8, and follows the now-typical single-attempt-and-rest protocol wrt to that corner's key and password
monkfish runs into the same Flame Troll
Lady Salamence ran from, takes a stab at it, and then also resolves to flee
CryoGyro has a nasty run-in with a Spambot that will leave them pretty low, but they are victorious
Voltage opts to circumvent the Daemons he previously ran from, which meant taking the long way around, but also put him on a path to encounter the Filthy Lurker shop next cycle
the goon squad arrive at their destination, the Assassin, at
Blizihguh's recommendation. it was great to see players and parties undertake little quests like this. they are not alone with the Assassin, however:
chimp is here, too, and they eavesdrop on the conversation. the Assassin refuses to say more to anyone that hasn't "gotten their hands dirty" yet, and
chimp seems happy to oblige:
YES I LOVE BLOOD LETTING!
a fight breaks out. in spite of being outnumbered,
chimp may have actually had a chance at winning, considering both members of goon squad were already hurt, and suffering from Burned causing them to take additional damage. for some reason, though,
chimp split their damage, making themslves pretty easy pickings for goon squad.
earl's potentially enormously powerful Quote Bubble helps, allowing him to repeat any action taken in a previous round of combat—great for "locking in" a high roll, especially on weapons with big damage spreads
with
chimp dead, goon squad conveniently now meet the Assassin's prerequisite, and so he offers them a deal:
Before you settle down for a much-needed rest you strike up conversation with the masked man in the red-robe.
Their voice has a strange, uneven lilt to it:
"Well, well, nicely done...
"Another poster dispatched. Perhaps we are kindred spirits...?
"I've quite a knack for offing posters, you see. It's why I came here. No, the Posting Points don't interest me any.
"It's the hunt I came for... And the quarry.
"Now that you've demonstrated you have what it takes, perhaps you'll consider giving up that fool's errand for the lost treasure, and join me in a little blood sport, hm?
"The treasure may not even exist, but there are plenty of posters to hunt.
"So, what will it be? Do you have a taste for it, yet? A taste for blood?"
Agree to join The Red-Robed Man? Yes, No
Note: This will change your win condition!
it's a mirror to The Last Moderator's faction, but distinct; the goon squad now must be the last players standing in order to win. it also comes with different perks: both
Blizihguh and
earl receive the Mask of Alt, a very powerful piece of armour that alters their sprite to that of red-robed figures, and conceals their identity (their names are not printed in pms). a good chunk of players will know the red-robed figures as having being infamous; in this form goon squad will command a pretty convincing early game lead, and frankly a reign of terror; many pm conversations were had about them, dreading running into them, and even if these "npcs" (ha) were overpowered, well into the late game. there certainly was another very powerful perk to these masks—when the wearers reach 0 HP, one cycle after death they will be resurrected, and the item will be destroyed. that may well seem overpowered, but we'll see how it plays out. one final note on this equipment change: it meant
earl giving up the status immunity afforded by his Firewall. with their new mission and identities in hand, the goon squad need pretty desperately to rest: they're both at half HP, and still suffering from the Burned status, making a further encounter pretty dangerous... and more encounters were coming
behind goon squad,
Lady Salamence and
BIG ASHLEY are reunited on the Flame War Battlefield.
Lady Salamence is immune, but
BIG ASHLEY picks up the Burned status as a result. apparently still distrustful of strangers,
Lady Salamence leaves
BIG ASHLEY in the ashes...