Spirit Lake - Discussion

Caryatid · Jan 7, 2019, 8:02 AM

I'm definitely going to be giving this a try. If anyone wants to be magic buddies, hit me up. I'll be playing the owner/artisan of a touristy botanicals and beauty shop inherited from her mother.

Dreampipe · Jan 7, 2019, 8:16 AM

@caryatid I'll take you up on that. 'Magic buddies' sounds too good to pass on.

Bad at Lurking · Jan 7, 2019, 8:35 AM

There looks to be a heck of a lot of depth and long-term potential here. I can't wait.

scar · Jan 7, 2019, 9:22 AM

@cobaltasaurus said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

It had me at twin peaks and Buffy. But I work all the time so not sure... @Tat How accessible do you see your game to casual players? (Like I work overtime a lot so scene maybe once or twice a week.)

Once or twice a week should be somewhat manageable. Supernatural occurrences are going to be cut with small-town happenings that we hope will regulate pace somewhat. The setting is a real place, it's google-able, and it's hilarious. While there are a few plans down the line that may shake things up, there's no real aim to make this the kind of place where you look away for a second and suddenly all of the things have changed.

Our Alpha was a bit rapid-fire due to time constraints so I think it's safe to say that's something we're being mindful of.

Tat · Jan 7, 2019, 1:32 PM

@scar said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

@cobaltasaurus said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

It had me at twin peaks and Buffy. But I work all the time so not sure... @Tat How accessible do you see your game to casual players? (Like I work overtime a lot so scene maybe once or twice a week.)

Once or twice a week should be somewhat manageable. Supernatural occurrences are going to be cut with small-town happenings that we hope will regulate pace somewhat. The setting is a real place, it's google-able, and it's hilarious. While there are a few plans down the line that may shake things up, there's no real aim to make this the kind of place where you look away for a second and suddenly all of the things have changed.

Our Alpha was a bit rapid-fire due to time constraints so I think it's safe to say that's something we're being mindful of.

Yeah, what @scar said. I think that once or twice a week might make it a bit difficult to engage with larger plots (although I envision a fair number of one-or-two-scene exploratory plots), but we try to be very on top of keeping plot pages up to date with a skimmable summary so that players who are in and out can track what's going on without having to read logs.

And hopefully there will be plenty of day to day RP, both magical and otherwise.

Also, as scar mentioned, for anyone considering apping, I cannot suggest walking through Grand Lake on google street view enough.

Tat · Jan 7, 2019, 1:36 PM

@cobaltasaurus

Oh, another thing I'll mention is that in Alpha, we found that Ares is AMAZING for really adapting to different playstyles and needs. The ability to start a scene live, then hop over to the web portal for a bit, then restart live later, is just fantastic.

I had several scenes where I RPed for maybe an hour in real time, then slowed down to a play-by-post type crawl (sometimes posing from my phone) while I went home and got the kids in bed, and then sometimes moved back to real time later, or sometimes just wrapped up. I know some players had scenes entirely in the web portal as time allowed through the day, often from mobile devices. It felt very refreshing and freeing for someone with more time constraints than I used to have.

Saturna · Jan 7, 2019, 2:00 PM

@cobaltasaurus said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

It had me at twin peaks and Buffy. But I work all the time so not sure... @Tat How accessible do you see your game to casual players? (Like I work overtime a lot so scene maybe once or twice a week.)

My darling! Why don't we make researchy types, so we can just support everyone else while maybe not actively scening as much as we'd like? We can discover all the lore/etc, and then send people out to fight/find things.

I work wayyyy too much as well.

Snackness · Jan 7, 2019, 2:22 PM

I'll be popping in once you open!

secretfire · Jan 7, 2019, 5:13 PM

Took a quick look around the wiki. Looks neat. Lots of backstory. Noticed a bunch of characters already created which, while I'm not 100% sure, seemed to have a bunch of RP logs together and were from other worlds. Presumably the other sides of the portals? Are those alpha characters, or npcs, or what?

scar · Jan 7, 2019, 5:22 PM

@secretfire Those characters listed as NPCs hold thematic relevance which can be revealed through play. Many are former Alpha characters. The players who went through Alpha with us were able to create their Beta characters early but Beta gameplay has not begun.

skew · Jan 7, 2019, 6:48 PM

@cobaltasaurus said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

Show Notifications
....why?

@faraday @Tat Would be great if we could find some way to explain why it wants to send notifications.

@everyone else... I'm fixing to play a cafe/community art store owner. Be more than happy for any connections people want. See you all on Wednesday!

Saturna · Jan 7, 2019, 7:24 PM

@skew said in Spirit Lake: An Original Modern Fantasy Game:

@everyone else... I'm fixing to play a cafe/community art store owner. Be more than happy for any connections people want. See you all on Wednesday!

I had thoughts of playing an artist!

Roz · Jan 7, 2019, 7:27 PM

I believe that I will be brewing up a young single dad whose dreams of an athletic scholarship for university were dashed when he got his high school girlfriend pregnant. So stayed in his hometown working at his parents' cafe/coffee shop that now years later he is pretty much modernizing and running full-time. I will know how old his kid is once I decide how old my PC is. >_>

(If someone is interested in playing my kid's mom, hit me up! Caveat that I mostly mean people I've played with before.)

Tributary · Jan 7, 2019, 7:35 PM

My first thought was that I wanted to play a baker who makes cinnamon rolls as big as your head at a family cafe. It sounds like there are others who are also into the family cafe business. Let us put something together so that we are not running sixteen competing coffee shops.

(Or maybe I will go the easy route and volunteer to play @Roz's ex and spend a lot of RP time having delightful arguments with @Roz.)