@Juniper said in Neon Protocol: The elephant in the room is how Neon Protocol straight up looks like a scenario in AI dungeon. I was immediately repelled by it. This – aside from terrible AI in general, the aesthetic is very jarring with the NEON colors juxtaposed with the “small town farmer’s market flyer” sort of AI slop. I get that it’s trying for small town supernatural but definitely missing that mark. Also I get that not everyone’s an artist or adept at PhotoShop but we existed for decades without it on Mu*s, we don’t need it now.

My mentality is “I’m here for a good time and maybe a long time.” If I’m not interested in what’s happening, I just kinda…wander off. Or, if I really like the place, I’ll try to make my own fun right up until someone tells me “I’m doing it wrong.” Which is basically what happened with AoA and Cujo. Right now I’m between games and just waiting to see if one pops up that looks more interesting than just booting up the PlayStation. I don’t really feel any drive to ride a game into the sun.

@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling: The important thing is to set expectations. Agreed. Even the most well-thought-out story-based consequence can feel like a capricious punishment rather than an interesting story moment if there’s no communication and the player is blind-sided.

@MisterBoring Whether or not that’s better, I don’t know if it’s practicable. And there are folks that really like that down time between episodes (I like some, just I would prefer that it be a couple of weeks compared to a month or three, again, I know people who prefer the downtime to the episodes, so YMMV). I think that the only way you could possible get anywhere near even just a couple of weeks between episodes is to have two Storyteller Staffs, because there’s going to be some cooldown time and some administrative ramp-up time on either end of an episode. Even then, I think it would entirely depend on the setting/theme of the game whether the shortest possible downtime is the best option, a medium length, or a long downtime. I think that if you have intense episodes without much time for the players or characters to catch their breath, you’re going to want a medium-long amount of downtime; if you have episodes that meander and have time to catch your breath in the midst, then I think you would want shorter amounts of downtime. I could see, say, a WWII game that has people at the front (or on alert at the airbase or whatever), needing a month or so between campaigns, to let the characters (and players) breathe and find their new status quo. But I could see a murder mystery game needing much less time between cases (because you’re probably going to get a little bit of investigation time and some breathing room in there, and it isn’t likely to be as life or death all the time as a combat game.

@Pavel fr tho, who are these kids that don’t know what a phb is??? didn’t your parents teach you anything when you were coming up?! [image: get-off-my-lawn-old-lady.gif]