[Meta thread] Lord Windos' PokeRole Adventure : Celadon City Vandels

[Dragonstrike]

Been awhile since this Meta Thread has been updated, eh mates?

Reason I'm doing this is not because I want to start up the game - heavens knows we hardly have the time for it anymore - , but to ask a couple of questions for my two main players involved.

Do you guys actually want to finish the campaign the way it is? And if not......should it be reset to somepoint, or have events within it retconned?

I love the direction my game has gone in, but I'll be the first to admit its become rather complicated, intensive, and HARD to get through, which is pretty much anthema to its origins as a supposed 'Quick Side Campaign.' I've thinking whether or not it be a good idea to wipe the slate clean and start anew, or at least rub out parts of it.

What do you think? Give me your honest opinions.

Honestly, this is a big part of why I've been finding it difficult to motivate myself to continue this campaign.  I want to get it over with and move on, maybe even get up a 'quick test game' (in quotes because I know it will probably be anything but super duper quick, given the nature of forum games.  It definitely won't be as long as the main game I'm planning, though, and would definitely be done before Skull Ruins is finished if I set everything up correctly) for my own campaign ideas going after a little break.

Problem is, the longer we went on and the more complex things got, the more I found it to be a bit of a drag.  Finding M.E. was fine at first.  Then it almost immediately became a plot deviced thing literally designed to be a god-killer in the right hands.

And then more of them started showing up.  A lot more.

The icing on the cake was when not one, but two of them completely derailed any plans I'd been making by killing/altering the characters those plans revolved around, directly or no.

And now we're in a location that I didn't even want to go to because it would take ages to get through and is probably more trouble than it's worth in the long run, given Reiner's current plans.  And all because my character was all but forced into going into that location for plot reasons (well, not literally, but...).  That's the strawberry on top of this bittersweet treat.

I didn't expect to be playing SMT when we started this campaign, but that's what I feel like it's turned into: SMT, but with a Pokemon skin and mechanics.  Don't get me wrong, I do like the SMT series...but I don't think it necessarily meshes well with the Pokemon series, and it feels like we're playing more SMT than Pokemon at this point.

There have been times where I've thought, 'How would it have gone if the Cursed Arms hadn't been a part of it?'  Valarie would have likely been easier (and buffed appropriately to compensate), there would have probably been more encounters with Mitchell, Romeo and Juliet wouldn't have been a thing (well, they still could have just been naturally crazy like I originally thought they were, I guess), Riza and Buzzwole wouldn't have been a thing, Mina and Clair wouldn't have died, Alice wouldn't be a thing, Arial wouldn't have suddenly become a prophetic madman just because a certain higher power said so, there would have been no (good) reason to go to the NRF from a Team Rocket member's perspective...and the mini campaign would probably be finished by now, most of the focus having been on Reiner and his crazy story as a prospective Rocket Executive and potential redemption instead of almost entirely being focused on the Cursed Arms, relegating the original story to being a side plot.  But by the time I realized just how much I really didn't like the Cursed Arms, they'd become so deeply ingrained in the plot that it'd be impossible to remove them from it.

I agree with what Mew stated at an earlier point.  I think things got really derailed once the Cursed Arms entered the picture.  As long as it stayed as a side thing to the original story, though, I was mostly okay with bearing with it.  Then Mina died, and we dedicated weeks to Thursday Night as the plot thickened for both stories...then we find out that the NRF has a Cursed Arm hidden in it, and that we need to immediately make plans to go visit it without letting anybody know exactly why we're seemingly acting suicidal all of a sudden...then Clair died, and a major part of Reiner's story ended up ruined and taken over by the side story, even going so far as to completely alter Mew's personality for the rest of this campaign and possibly the sequel to it if it ever gets one...and through all of it, we're being harried and even a little railroaded by a manipulative, god-like being that we can't do anything about, even if he is helpful more often than he is harmful.





That's my main beef with this campaign, if I'm being honest, and why I'm so tempted to just blow up the NRF and be done with it.  That's why I've not answered Alexandria's question yet: because I feel like blowing up the NRF with Genesis Supernova would be the easy way to help me get out of my slump OOC (which I feel like Alexandria would have almost no problems with), but we're stuck in there until we find the Cursed Arm at a minimum (but leaving before stopping the mad scientist or investigating the facility after stopping him at this point would also look strange to Alexandria and Lindworm if the two goals don't happen to be close to each other).  And that wouldn't entirely fix it because the Cursed Arms are always going to loom over Reiner from this point on, and it wouldn't truly feel like his story any more.

I think the tipping point was Megido's Revelation, when it indirectly caused Clair's death.  That's when most of my motivation went out the window, and I've not been able to truly get it back since.  The ever present, looming threat of having to go investigate the NRF didn't help either, but it got a whole lot worse when we actually got there and found out exactly how brutal it was when it was at its worst...I honestly thought it would have been fine.  I'd made some necessary purchases, made sure I was stocked up on a decent amount of Potions...and all within a budget I'd set for myself and had been maintaining since almost the start of the campaign.  I felt a little better after that, thinking we might actually be able to get through it decently quickly...sure, maybe it'd still be a little difficult, but I wasn't expecting Nuclear Pokemon to be easy fights by a long shot since one and two hit KOs are near impossible in Pokerole unless you have an extreme difference between Strength + Move Strength and Vitality...

...oh how wrong I was...




I feel like I could keep typing about this for awhile yet, but I think I'll cut it short here.  I'm sorry that I had to state all this...I was actually planning to PM this to you relatively soon, Windos.  Probably on the 29th, since that would've been the 3 week mark since the last post in the meta thread.  It's already been 3 weeks since the last post in the game thread.

I honestly don't know if I want anything to be retconned since everything that I would want to be retconned is rather deeply ingrained in the plot now, or if we even should in the first place.  I just want to get the NRF over with and finally finish the campaign.  Get Reiner some peace of mind by him reuniting with Taylor, helping her find what she's lost...maybe eventually returning to Blackthorn with Clair's help, even if she is...changed...and definitely helping Mew get some peace of mind as well...I'm just dreading the fact that the last one is likely inexplicably linked to gathering all of the Cursed Arms at this point...I'm not sure if any of that would ever be in a sequel campaign, I just would like to at least imagine it all happening at the very least...

I want Reiner and those super duper important to his story to have a chance at a happy ending after all of the @#$% tauros shit they've been through over the course of this week, for both their peace of mind and mine.  Is that too much to ask?