Dapper Dog Feedback and Stuff

[Dove Gray]

The NPC I interacted with the most was Valus, so I'm interested in hearing more about him. What he thought of Dove over the course of events, since there were a lot of changes between them (master and agent, briefly bedroom partners, rescuer, and then... "oh right, sorry, I was working against you the entire time").

[Dapper Dog]

So many memorable NPCs yet again!

Was Oraka Hin related to Gerry and Ashley Hin?

Did you indeed for Liua to be force sensitive or did that grow organically from player decisions?

That's cannon now, he is their distant relative.

Liua was created pretty organically I needed a hook for the origin thread she provided a person in need and then from there I just started building more info on her.

I left it to chance:

Liua Force sensitive 50+: 1d100 64

From there it just became a slow weaving of who she was and her connection to the Force. Then when I decided Jenna and Petrus were related to the Hoshin line I knew who her lineage was. I am glad people seemed to like the chain smoking street Jedi.

The NPC I interacted with the most was Valus, so I'm interested in hearing more about him. What he thought of Dove over the course of events, since there were a lot of changes between them (master and agent, briefly bedroom partners, rescuer, and then... "oh right, sorry, I was working against you the entire time").

Valus was a troubled student but Oraka had turned him into a good Jedi over time but then he got caught in an explosion and they thought he was dead and he was alone and felt betrayed and then got hunted and turned to the dark side. He didn’t trust her at first because he was attracted to her and then over time came to trust her and luckily the turn came when he had decided to fight against his dark nature.

At the end he feels deep remorse for what he has done why he sequestered himself in the Temple. The conversation they had at the end was odd to him because he knows he would have killed her with little thought at the time.

[Jenna Karath]

At this point in time, cause I'm just.. me about things, anyway!

I'm curious how much of Poule was developed at the start, and then what built and how moving forward?

Honestly, I obviously >_< enjoy the character a lot, for all sorts of reasons, but of course cause of the vibe I struck with it for Jenna. Really, just kinda interested in what was there for him generally? At the start seemed like he might just be someone to be set up as a super-cool looking commander dude to fight later on so when things developed in the story as they did, well, I naturally got very curious!

[Djanik]

I liked Varus, sadly after mid game it seemed like she was a bit tapped out - perhaps because things were so hectic.

Was she sort of wrapped up in your view, or was there more there that you were waiting for us to uncover?

[Rannek Nire]

Thanks Dapper! Tons of fun! Thanks for being so helpful!

[Dapper Dog]

I needed an Imperial liaison for the Aznuri arc and I wanted a grizzled and tough looking guy that was easy on the eyes and then I found that Captain America artwork and it clicked. Poule was a professional but not a “badguy”, he did the job he was asked and would have murdered all of you but not out of maliciousness it’s just what his job called for.

I knew I wanted him to be polite, good-natured and well genuinely a good person on the other side. He cared about his people and the mission and took that job seriously.

Other than that I had no other intentions at the start.

I liked Valus, sadly after mid game it seemed like she was a bit tapped out - perhaps because things were so hectic.

Was she sort of wrapped up in your view, or was there more there that you were waiting for us to uncover?

I would have liked to bring her out but she is 16 kind of hard to have her hangout at a bar and I just didn't see a good place to drop her, I probably should have done more and if people are interested a request will get me to bust them out. I think her arc was just getting started, I knew I wanted her to go the pilot route early on and with Djanik that gave me an avenue to bring that into the story.

Thanks Dapper! Tons of fun! Thanks for being so helpful!

You're welcome I hope you enjoyed the story I felt bad because he did have a slower start getting to Oraka than the others.

[Sacha Ordo]

Were there any plotlines or ideas that you wanted to do that didn't end up happening or didn't go the way you expected?

[Dove Gray]

At the end he feels deep remorse for what he has done why he sequestered himself in the Temple. The conversation they had at the end was odd to him because he knows he would have killed her with little thought at the time.

Bah, what's a little murderous thoughts or even murder-attempts between friends and lovers?

He is probably lucky there in that Dove is the most chill about such things as one can be. Murder and chance of dying is just part of the job and life.

[Dapper Dog]

Were there any plotlines or ideas that you wanted to do that didn't end up happening or didn't go the way you expected?

I had a desert Force experience planned for Petrus or any Jedi really but that never came together.

I had more planned for Elaranu's Obligation but she got busy so life happens.

The Temple was one that came together much better than expected.

The Inquisitors really worked much better than expected. I do wish I did more with Keeli.

[Jenna Karath]

I knew I wanted him to be polite, good-natured and well genuinely a good person on the other side. He cared about his people and the mission and took that job seriously.

Well thanks! I hope you also enjoyed how that developed!

(I hope I wasn't too much with anything.)

[Petrus Karath]

Were there any plotlines or ideas that you wanted to do that didn't end up happening or didn't go the way you expected?

I had a desert Force experience planned for Petrus or any Jedi really but that never came together.

Shoot! I thought that that was Daz at the prison! I should have asked again to see if I was still getting those visions.

[Dapper Dog]

It was Daz at the prison but there was more planned with visions of Daz and Baesal chatting and more background on his role in the past.

[Dapper Dog]

I will say Yusandr turned out much different than expected.

[Xanna Teevou]

Were you expecting people to run off and try to enter the Calm? Or was there an event planned if Neela hadn't been redeemed?

[Juri Saizesh]

Thanks for all the Witchy stuff. I appreciate all the work you put into it with Riule, and seeing Servant Nine and Valkorian show up was unexpected and neat.

Was there much more planned for the Outcast origin? It seemed all the Outcasts prerry quickly ended up firmly with the Resistance.

[Jenna Karath]

Oooo, I'm very curious, did you have a personal favorite NPC to write?

[Dapper Dog]

Were you expecting people to run off and try to enter the Calm? Or was there an event planned if Neela hadn't been redeemed?

I expected someone to try, and if Neela had not been stopped that was the next stop.

Thanks for all the Witchy stuff. I appreciate all the work you put into it with Riule, and seeing Servant Nine and Valkorian show up was unexpected and neat.

Was there much more planned for the Outcast origin? It seemed all the Outcasts pretty quickly ended up firmly with the Resistance.

I knew the outcasts and locals would get swept up in the main story they just had two very different entrances into it. The origins were less story arcs and more hard hooks to attach people to the setting and major stories directly. I wanted to get to the meat of things faster.

Oooo, I'm very curious, did you have a personal favorite NPC to write?

The Inquisitors were fun, Neela redeemed was interesting, Sister Viati was fun, Liua was a surprise that people liked, Mother Yugba, Lyla was crazy, Delia was very sedate for being so powerful... I liked Weggs but she was pretty redundant with a lot of PCs, I liked Yusandr even if she had to be the bad guy for the CIS it was not intended just several of them tended to bring out her angry or suspicious side and Dove's player really covered the bulk of her issues with that fact in her post which Yusandr agreed with 100%.

Captain Hrugos was the absolute worst and sometimes you need that, Poule was fun if minor character. Veras had a fun journey too. Oh the King was a fun and amusing character.

[Qareme Torth]

Thank you for running such a fantastic game.

Did you expect how the Inquisitor stories ended up going to happen?

[Dapper Dog]

I wanted a redemption arc but the way it played out was amusing and I did randomize it and apparently Orokos loves Redemption because it was not a for sure thing. That played out well and Qareme had a large effect on Neela throughout the game.

I did want to take a moment o discuss the Resistance and Yusandr, I enjoyed that arc but it definitely suffered from I think a disconnect in some cases of player expectations and the fact this is a large scale game that needs to accommodate a variety of stories and characters.

Number One the Resistance was never dumb, but I did have to allow for dumb stuff to happen I guess and the players were the main characters so I wanted to make sure they were involved in the major actions of the resistance but that did not mean they were incompetent or unable to get the job done, just wanted the players to be the stars. This also meant that they did stuff even if the players did not and like the movies the Rebellion did not grind to a halt because the main heroes were stuck a space worm or something, stuff still got done.

Number Two was Yusandr herself, she was never supposed to be the villain though she came off that way to the CIS at times. Mostly I think it came down to what sets her off; one she loves her people they are sacrificing their time and efforts for no pay but because they believe in the cause and she respected that. She listens to her people and has an optimistic outlook, more importantly she values honesty. These two critical points put her on a collision course with certain characters.

This may surprise some people, but she isn’t violent by nature, but she is protective and if people insult her people she will square up because she knows these people are here because they believe. She had no issue with being hated or even insults to her person, but her people were a no go. So why did she draw her weapon on Djanik, this was because she values morale and more importantly he as damaging morale by shooting down ideas for no reason in her mind and getting into reasons that front line soldiers don’t need to concern themselves with, or more importantly they already knew it was dangerous she does not see her people as idiots she knows they know the score so it was just conflict she tried to avoid. This is not n attack on the player just an explanation of a tense sense scene.

Like she explained to Djanik later, come to her in private but not in public like that, it served no purpose other than to anger people and degrade morale in her eyes. She was not an egomaniac, I have no problem with the CIS hating her they have their views and that’s fine but she was pretty humble and listened, which is why she had the confrontation with Bowe because characters had voiced their concerns see Dove’s post as it gives an excellent assessment of her reasons.

She would have been fine with the CIS if they just came out and said what they wanted but in her mind, and honestly my own observations, they tried to play as patriots when they were anything but. She valued honesty and that is what made her the angriest, just be real and she would have been fine with them trying to steal from the Foundry, that’s why she worked with Vandil or the Aznuri they were honest with their reasoning and she could work with that. I again am not calling those players liars, but perception was different from what perhaps they intended.

So yeah, I hope that makes sense because she really became more contentious than I expected.

[Bowze Coppa]

I think there is a difference in approach to warfare and the long term results of some action but there is certainly a clear bias on the part of the character of Yusandr.

Truth be told I did not set out to make the CIS a thing but it became evident that many players had a different approach to the conflict that was incompatible with others but still deserved to be explored. From my perspective the CIS was more for those who wanted to be slightly more grounded approach to insurgency. I was glad we had the opportunity to explore this event if we somehow ended up on a collision course with Yusandr's part of the resistance.

I think the open distrust from a couple of people can be justified but the way it was expressed through Yusandr was not only hurtful to the characters who where earnest, even if some where shady by necessity, but also to the players who just wanted to contribute to the story of the rebellion but from a different angle. We did, after all, sunk every ressource we gained during the game into things that ultimately would be risked in the final battle.

Still, I liked the game despite the hiccup and look forward for the next one. Thank you for running it.

I hope things get resolved with the other players. I would love to play with them again

[Dapper Dog]

Yusandr expressed it exactly as it was presented to her, that's all I can say to that, at no point was I out to steal anything from a player.

Players get invested but she was reasonable until she couldn't be, also and just for the future in general if you're coming into a thread just to do a drive by speech with a skill check, run it by the GM of the intent and I would have been up front in why I saw that as a deception check.

Anyway it worked out.

[Dapper Dog]

Overall it was a learning experience but at the core just remember I'm not out to screw people over.

[Ria'la Tu'roth]

Thank you for Rayne.

[Sinnya]

FWIW, my personal feeling is that Yusandr not drawing some kind of line with the CIS would likely have left other players feeling unhappy too. That's a tough line for a GM to walk, and from my perspective you handled it as well as possible. What to do when some players' goals create the possibility of making other players feel narratively disempowered is, to my mind, one of the trickiest parts of GMing for a big group like this--it's the point where the usual tabletop-GM challenges intersect with the internet-forum-moderator side of the job.

Anyway, on the whole I've been enjoying this game a lot. I really enjoyed Original Bankor too (and I had more time to play in that one), but I think Nu Bankor even edges out the original in terms of pacing and momentum, and also capturing those core Star Wars vibes. (Old Republic stuff is neat, but kind of its own thing atmospherically; the original trilogy and its atmosphere will probably always have more of my heart.)

Style- Co-op/PvE games are always my favorites, but they're also the most work. As usual I'm sort of boggled by (and full of admiration for) the amount of energy you have for running not just combats, but tons of individual subplots and such, and for adapting the overall plot on the fly in response to PCs going off the map. I do think it's a natural challenge of the format that sometimes the squeakiest wheel gets the most grease--i.e. PCs that mesh well with the overall plotline can just do events and don't need as much individual attention from the GM, while PCs that can't or won't fully engage the co-op aspect may take up a disproportionate amount of focus. You've been able to mitigate that some by, again, just having an insane amount of stamina to pump into your games, though it remains a question that I don't think any PbP GM has yet completely solved.

Pacing- The way that events could really change the characters' world right from Day 1 was unexpected and lovely. The mass expulsion from Rygor in the second session was pretty brilliant in terms of naturally building cooperative cohesion. The timing of events around the interim gaps also worked really well, I thought--instead of feeling like lulls in the momentum of the story, they were a space for mental montages of characters reacting to the big stuff they'd done on-screen, finding a place in the resistance movement, etc. I don't think I've ever seen inter-session gaps used to such good effect until this game.

Mechanics- Heists were super neat. There were times I regretted not playing a hardboiled criminal because I thought I might never get to do one. So obviously I was delighted to see the resistance heist events D9! Would love to see this format continue to appear and develop.

I agree with others that if bounties don't really do it for you thematically (they don't for me either), there's no reason you need to include them. Like crime, they're really only an option for a smallish subset of PCs, in any case. And rewards for optional underworld stuff can be tough to balance when many players have IC reasons not to do them. If you do want to continue including them, maybe scheduled events? State that Target Guy will be available for capture on Day X, and players that gather clues to his whereabouts before then (one or more time slots/rolls) will have the option of joining that encounter. That's not as immersive as RPing out the whole hunt with a series of NPCs, but maybe logistically easier all round? And players could still RP the evidence gathering, they just wouldn't need as much GM input.

Aznuri stuff- OMG, thank you for this, the collective improv of "what are the Aznuri" was so delightful and I'm so impressed by your openness to all the things players added on to the concept. One of my fave aspects of the game.

Thanks for all of it! <3

[Venator Praedae]

Thanks once again for putting this game on for us. Apologies once again when things got pretty busy for me and I could barely post during critical times.

I rather did enjoy the heist and the other co-op events like the Aznuri ones even when I wasn't involved with them.

For better or worse, I kinda went all in on the bounty hunting angle. So I'm kinda curious how tough all the bounties were and what you think the recommended number of players were needed for each of them.

It did feel pretty lonely when the Imperial crackdown happened and pretty much the entire player base moved to the island resort. Didn't really have anyone to do threads with for random encounters unless I rented a speeder or something. Even then, Venator had no reason to know where the Resistance base was till much later. So I am glad that the bounties were around so that it gave me something to do.

Did you foresee any players not getting affected by the crack down?