Post by Abby in Looking for feedback

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Thanks for your feedback, Rupert.

When I played Artefact, I found the agent questions daunting and too restricting. "How did you help them complete the quest", for example, assumes (1) they completed the quest and (2) you helped (instead of hindering or getting in the way or just looking pretty). I wanted something more open ended so a player could take the game in any direction they'd like, and I wasn't entirely comfortable with the entire "chapter" being based only on a couple prompts that didn't work for me. I also wanted to delve a bit more into the object's thoughts and feelings, and the world in which it exists.

Time of rest is there, but I haven't spent much time on it. I don't use a timer myself, which is why I include statements like "about a minute", so I personally haven't utilized the tables much. The types of rest in Artefact I also find confusing. I'm a huge fan of consistency and of not needing to rely on the book much once you know the basics, and multiple acts with multiple types of keepers and rests overwhelms me easily. I'm willing to revisit it, though, if you think it's important.

(Now I want to write a one-page reference sheet for people who already know how to play. I'll have to think about that when I'm done.)

Were Bear Writes2 years ago

I understand what you mean about the questions - there is an odd conflict at times in the games between the freedom given to the player and limitations imposed. I like what you are doing with the Events. I was just not sure what was happening with the Rests mechanic.

Abby2 years ago

I fleshed out rests a bit, but I don't think I addressed your question of tables. I had to fix the awful traits table first, but that's done now.

To answer your earlier question that I missed, I added a prompt or two for each agent - nothing fancy - but prefer the mechanic of the events for generating possible plots. I'm awful at figuring out plots on my own, so this was important to me.

¡Hipólita!2 years ago

In indie games, those types of questions are usually called "Leading Questions" and it's up to you whether you like them. In solo journaling games, players tend to prefer strong hooks in the prompts, where a fact of the fiction is "forcibly" established in the premise of the question. In other words, most people find "how did this make you feel?" far less interesting than "how did this break your heart?". "How did you achieve this?", in the same vein, is often a less interesting question than "Who did you betray to achieve this?" - leading questions help to establish tone, to drive home themes and to help kickstart the player's creative juices but like I said - it's your choice whether to include them or to be more open ended!

Abby2 years ago(+1)

Thanks, Misha.

I guess I’m not a typical solo journaler, since very specific questions tend to turn me off more than keep me engaged. I’m also fairly new to solo journaling - it’s one of the hobbies I picked up during COVID.

I prefer open-ended prompts so I can tell a story I feel comfortable telling. “Did you betray someone or did someone betray you?” therefore works much better for me personally than “Who did you betray?”, since my response will probably be “I didn’t betray anyone and have no idea where to go from here.” (My aversion to leading questions may be related to my training as a survey developer; in surveys you want to avoid them.)

I’ve asked a few friends to test it for me and will ask them if they would have liked more leading questions, but they tend to like very specific prompts even less than I do.

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