Have at. Got a suggestion for a plot? Let us taste your creativity. This post is more centralized for in-game happenings; technical comments should go on the mod contact, though we'll accept them here all the same.
what if, once in a while, the dream-district gets unstable and something gets out into the other districts? Like RAINING FOOD or something, Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs style? :D Or something just as ridiculous?
Hi! I noticed that you guys posted an announcement that you'd be closing apps on the modplurk, but nowhere on the comms. I understand that you guys need to get your footing, since the response to this was pretty huge, but would it be possible to announce things like this on the OOC comm in the future? It seems like quite a few people missed that announcement because they didn't have the plurk friended, or don't use plurk at all.
Thank you for the suggestion! It's true that there's been quite a bit of miscommunication and lag lately (and there are many players who don't use plurk, after all), so we'll be sure to throw up an announcement post on the OoC community soon and have a consistent update rate. Sorry for the chaos, especially with regards to applications.
I'd like to suggest a map, or at least more detailed setting info. IMO the game information is unclear about things like the layout of Mallow Hallow, distances between districts, how easily characters can travel between them, etc, which makes it hard to take advantage of the setting as much as players potentially could! Just knowing things like whether or not a character could, idk, take a bus from Orlea to Crystalden for an afternoon of shopping and then return home in the evening would be a big help.
A player offered to draw a map a while back, so we'll check in on with them about that, and we should be coming forth with more information on the setting soon!
We've recently released small information like the time it takes to move from one district to another, as well as added a number of landmarks that players have created, so we'll bring them to the playerbase's attention with the upcoming update. As for, say, the bus ride, we'll make sure to cover that, too.
Hey, yo, could we get a Wanted page for character's we'd like to see? I know I always check that page first when I'm thinking of apping someplace new, so I'm sure it would appeal to a lot of people. :3
So, I'm noticing something that seems to be holding a lot of people back in-game, my own characters included, and that's the lack of currency in-game. I feel like it eliminates a lot of possible in-game activity because there's no reason for anyone to work, or to offer their services. I'm wondering if it might stimulate more activity and allow more freedom if, by way of IC actions/events, some kind of monetary system is introduced? Just my two cents, from observing what's been going on in-game. :)
A sound idea! It's true that the lack of currency would be a demotivating factor for characters to be active, so we will take this into consideration and see what we can do about drawing payment from characters, etc. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. (:
So I actually have a serious suggestion for a plot event.
Doll here is actually a Shadow. If you've played/seen Persona 4, you'll have a pretty good idea of what that is, on the surface. A better explanation, if a somewhat flowery one, is here, which is actually a bit more straightforward about Shadows than Persona 4 itself was, and is half headcanon worked out from the clues P4 drops. (The Shadows in P3 and P4 did seem a bit different, to me; this isn't talking about P3's Shadows, exactly. And Doll's from a PSL that mostly just used P4's Shadow-world place for shenanigans, so handwave, handwave.)
Anyhow, what about the appearance of a "new district" for a bit sometime? Not that it's really a new district, or at least, not a permanent one, necessarily... but I could imagine that some characters might be quite interested in a place which conforms to one's reflexive expectations and beliefs, a foggy, perhaps vaguely-menacing area where you'd need to be careful about what you expect to see coming out of the fog toward you. Astralfield is one thing; it's based on dreams, and people know to expect all sorts of strangeness there. But a place that seems to conform to visitors' suspicions, for better or for worse, taking on the forms of their fears and hopes?
(And if someone wants to cause even more drama in it, since Shadows are essentially manifest from thoughts and feelings, especially the denied ones, their own Shadow could possibly confront them. But that particular plot seems to be being brought up more commonly in RP. The focus on the fog world itself, not so much.)
Might this be something of interest, you think?
[ETA: now that it's not stupid o'clock, I was pointing out that Doll is one since I'd totally be up for offering Doll as an unwitting plot hook for this somehow; maybe it gets tangled up in some sort of troublesome magic while out exploring, which causes the Shadowsplosion thing, or some curious but naiive magic-user gets inspired on inspecting it, or... something? I should prolly mention that being one doesn't mean Doll knows everything about them. Far from it, actually.]
Having very little experience with the Persona series beyond looking some character descriptions up to approve people, that write-up was very helpful about the nature of Shadows and the fog world thing. So thanks for that!
And it does seem an interesting idea. . .according to the write-up on NPCs and a history that I did, there WAS another district in the country once, that lay between Mallowhallow and Whitewood -- an early victim of the loss of life energy from Mallow Hallow. All that remains is a vague memory and empty space. . . It could be that that space could fill for a time with what you're describing. Imagine something that would be able to freak the rulers out! ("What the hell? Is it coming back?! . . .Go investigate, Tronctor.")
So yeah, I'm definitely willing to put it on the table, with Doll's involvement or not. Maybe the little guy wanders into the area, and something about his inherent Shadow-ness attracts more of the realm into the empty space?
oh man, if Tronctor went in there worried he'd find the place uninhabitable, and basically fearing it'd be some Lovecraftian hypercubeland or something, and was too shaken/unwilling to release detailed reports back, simply saying that everyone was to avoid it, in a text message....
Well, of course no one would avoid it. Curiosity killed the cat!
And then of course others would just have to do exactly that. Maybe it's something awesome and he's trying to keep it for his own team or something? ....so then there's a ton of mixed reports coming out of it, and everyone's totally confused at all the conflicting info... hahaha.
Of course, something not mentioned directly in the description linked, but implied, is that the setting, once... well, set... is kind of... you know, set. It's mutable still; the layout may change, but once those who go through it have an idea of what it should be like, it'll keep being like that. So it's entirely possible that someone could stumble upon an area someone else already made. (This was the basis of the dungeons in P4; you took your characters through the other chars' twisted inner realities... rescued one char from a fairy-tale castle themed dungeon (the trapped princess, waiting for someone to come rescue her: story of her life!) and followed the trail to find out what happened to another character, through what looked for all the world just like a place in reality (well, almost. See, she didn't expect to be anywhere else, and there were voices here, impressions that hung in her mind, things others had said -- her dad, people passing her on the street, perhaps, gossip -- and her own voice was left behind too, with sentiments she hadn't ever said aloud, for the investigating characters to hear...))
...So there's a lot of potential for not only Grade S confusion, but also for a whole lot of the secret skeletons people keep to come out of their closets. Crushes, insecurities, grudges.... I'd be willing to head a dungeon, I think, if anyone wants to have a boss fight of some kind? But it'd have to be a collab by nature; Doll is really open about its feelings and such, so it doesn't really have a Shadow of its own to project. (Yep, Jungian psychology. Gotta love it, right?) But that isn't to say that a potential group going in there wouldn't expect a boss fight, and their collective will, all psyched up for one, doesn't summon a beastly mass of blackness anyway... and we have both Souji and Minato, so that's sure to be interesting if they're both in on it!
Doll could very well have passed through the area while traveling to other districts, I'd imagine. And as Shadow-stuff is what it is because of minds, and Doll has its own, and hangs around other people quite a bit... maybe Doll's unwittingly set off some sort of chain reaction of Shadow-stuff being made, and it... uh... somehow congregated into that area, which has been a drain on the energy in MH for a while after its existence magically imploded, thus creating part of the problem of needing new people to be drawn in?
And it's still draining it, but now a sample of the Shadow-stuff, just a loose wisp that Doll left behind without even knowing it, has ended up there, and the magic in the area's apparently decided on its own that Shadow-stuff is a fine new form to take on, like some sort of chemical reaction, a catalyst... and presto, we've a Shadow event!
I can easily enough NPC the itty little stupid Shadow, if some random NPC might've decided it was cute and made it so! And Doll does have Shadow powers, if anyone wants to take the big toy with them for protection; think JRPG magic stuff, only... technically it's just will made manifest, if that makes sense? (Some people scream when furious; Doll expresses itself with high-damage shockwaves, the infliction of status effects, and more. And then is shocked to find that its fit has leveled the immediate area. Fun times.)
IDK, tossing up ideas. Sleepiness, pizza, and a ton of soda are catching up with me right now, I think, heh.
Anything you'd want to know about any of it? Persona 4 mechanics, potential end-results and bonuses granted to characters from it (like being able to cast spells of sorts themselves/summon Persona) or... IDK, whatever? I can ramble for pages, haha. I should shut up now and go to bed though...
Nobody ever listens to what Tronctor says. It's a fact of life. Orion would probably go in there and try to take control just to spite him. (They really do hate each other.)
Wow, you've been thinking about this a lot, haven't you? XD Still, it's great to see someone with an idea on how to get the comm moving! It's been a really quiet August. I like a lot of your ideas there, with people venturing in, and people stumbling into other people's "set pieces," and all of that. And yeah, I bet that lost district IS being a nasty drain on things -- it was the first to fall victim to the dwindling life energies, so it's not out-of-place to assume it's a sort of dead area that drains life from those around it. . . And wow, who knew Doll could be so dangerous? So yeah, this could be pretty awesomely wild. :D
Some potential end results would probably be a good idea to think of -- also how long this whole thing should run for, given the schedule we're on. (I'm thinking this would probably be a good OOC-It's-Halloween Event, running through most, maybe all, of October.)
Oh man. I can only imagine what Orion might find in there.... (and would very much look forward to finding out, too!)
I've had a great deal of fun playing through P4 and trying to pick it apart. The hows, the whys... I dumped a friend's char into the fog-world setting in a PSL (because I am a cruel and terrible great GM like that. My friends have a tendency to rely on me to provide setting and NPCs and plot and basically everything but their one character, hah... so... well, if I'm going to do all the work? Muahahaha.) and so I had to figure out the logic behind the item drops in dungeon runs and such, to translate that to RP, and how things worked that weren't explicitly explained in the game. And I like to think I've figured it out; I'm not sure if the Persona 4 devs actually had in mind the conclusions I've come to, but I'm pleased with my version of things, and the rules that I've come up with, by which I play with the fog world and some Shadows, Doll included.
Doll's kind of a mess to explain in detail, but the short of it is, it's like the stupid tiny cute Shadow, in a sense: someone believed that a certain Shadow was all sorts of sweet and friendly, but it was destroyed... and so they ended up accidentally recreating it from the loose Shadow-stuff remnants of its original ~Lv.50-ish-boss-fight-potential self, except with their ideas of it as the new basis for its personality.
Yep, that was fun. ♥
I like the idea of turning it into a Halloween event, actually! Seems like something that should be tossed up in the OOC comm for more discussion and getting everyone involved in plotting, especially since we've got some canon Persona characters about. They might have some fun ideas to add to this!
I'd have to think about it and plan out just what each ruler would find there, just in case. Though Queenie would probably stumble into someplace ultra-clean (since she's such a neat-freak) or ultra-dirty, depending on her mindset.
Isn't that great? I like to do the same thing with stuff I'm interested in -- I'm currently writing up Forgotten Vows's full backstory, and that's included a lot of getting to know "Alice: Madness Returns" better. (Latest discovery -- the key motif running through the game is even more insidious than you might think. While the big memories' relationship to keys is obvious, I never noticed just how many little memories have key-related stuff in them too.) It certainly sounds like you've done your research. :)
Yeah, I thought that would be appropriate! I probably will make a post about it in the OOC comm later -- or, if you want to go ahead and make one, I'm okay with that. You're the one with all the info, after all. XD
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I'd like to suggest a map, or at least more detailed setting info. IMO the game information is unclear about things like the layout of Mallow Hallow, distances between districts, how easily characters can travel between them, etc, which makes it hard to take advantage of the setting as much as players potentially could! Just knowing things like whether or not a character could, idk, take a bus from Orlea to Crystalden for an afternoon of shopping and then return home in the evening would be a big help.
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We've recently released small information like the time it takes to move from one district to another, as well as added a number of landmarks that players have created, so we'll bring them to the playerbase's attention with the upcoming update. As for, say, the bus ride, we'll make sure to cover that, too.
Thank you!
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Doll here is actually a Shadow. If you've played/seen Persona 4, you'll have a pretty good idea of what that is, on the surface. A better explanation, if a somewhat flowery one, is here, which is actually a bit more straightforward about Shadows than Persona 4 itself was, and is half headcanon worked out from the clues P4 drops. (The Shadows in P3 and P4 did seem a bit different, to me; this isn't talking about P3's Shadows, exactly. And Doll's from a PSL that mostly just used P4's Shadow-world place for shenanigans, so handwave, handwave.)
Anyhow, what about the appearance of a "new district" for a bit sometime? Not that it's really a new district, or at least, not a permanent one, necessarily... but I could imagine that some characters might be quite interested in a place which conforms to one's reflexive expectations and beliefs, a foggy, perhaps vaguely-menacing area where you'd need to be careful about what you expect to see coming out of the fog toward you. Astralfield is one thing; it's based on dreams, and people know to expect all sorts of strangeness there. But a place that seems to conform to visitors' suspicions, for better or for worse, taking on the forms of their fears and hopes?
(And if someone wants to cause even more drama in it, since Shadows are essentially manifest from thoughts and feelings, especially the denied ones, their own Shadow could possibly confront them. But that particular plot seems to be being brought up more commonly in RP. The focus on the fog world itself, not so much.)
Might this be something of interest, you think?
[ETA: now that it's not stupid o'clock, I was pointing out that Doll is one since I'd totally be up for offering Doll as an unwitting plot hook for this somehow; maybe it gets tangled up in some sort of troublesome magic while out exploring, which causes the Shadowsplosion thing, or some curious but naiive magic-user gets inspired on inspecting it, or... something? I should prolly mention that being one doesn't mean Doll knows everything about them. Far from it, actually.]
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And it does seem an interesting idea. . .according to the write-up on NPCs and a history that I did, there WAS another district in the country once, that lay between Mallowhallow and Whitewood -- an early victim of the loss of life energy from Mallow Hallow. All that remains is a vague memory and empty space. . . It could be that that space could fill for a time with what you're describing. Imagine something that would be able to freak the rulers out! ("What the hell? Is it coming back?! . . .Go investigate, Tronctor.")
So yeah, I'm definitely willing to put it on the table, with Doll's involvement or not. Maybe the little guy wanders into the area, and something about his inherent Shadow-ness attracts more of the realm into the empty space?
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Well, of course no one would avoid it. Curiosity killed the cat!
And then of course others would just have to do exactly that. Maybe it's something awesome and he's trying to keep it for his own team or something? ....so then there's a ton of mixed reports coming out of it, and everyone's totally confused at all the conflicting info... hahaha.
Of course, something not mentioned directly in the description linked, but implied, is that the setting, once... well, set... is kind of... you know, set. It's mutable still; the layout may change, but once those who go through it have an idea of what it should be like, it'll keep being like that. So it's entirely possible that someone could stumble upon an area someone else already made. (This was the basis of the dungeons in P4; you took your characters through the other chars' twisted inner realities... rescued one char from a fairy-tale castle themed dungeon (the trapped princess, waiting for someone to come rescue her: story of her life!) and followed the trail to find out what happened to another character, through what looked for all the world just like a place in reality (well, almost. See, she didn't expect to be anywhere else, and there were voices here, impressions that hung in her mind, things others had said -- her dad, people passing her on the street, perhaps, gossip -- and her own voice was left behind too, with sentiments she hadn't ever said aloud, for the investigating characters to hear...))
...So there's a lot of potential for not only Grade S confusion, but also for a whole lot of the secret skeletons people keep to come out of their closets. Crushes, insecurities, grudges.... I'd be willing to head a dungeon, I think, if anyone wants to have a boss fight of some kind? But it'd have to be a collab by nature; Doll is really open about its feelings and such, so it doesn't really have a Shadow of its own to project. (Yep, Jungian psychology. Gotta love it, right?) But that isn't to say that a potential group going in there wouldn't expect a boss fight, and their collective will, all psyched up for one, doesn't summon a beastly mass of blackness anyway... and we have both Souji and Minato, so that's sure to be interesting if they're both in on it!
Doll could very well have passed through the area while traveling to other districts, I'd imagine. And as Shadow-stuff is what it is because of minds, and Doll has its own, and hangs around other people quite a bit... maybe Doll's unwittingly set off some sort of chain reaction of Shadow-stuff being made, and it... uh... somehow congregated into that area, which has been a drain on the energy in MH for a while after its existence magically imploded, thus creating part of the problem of needing new people to be drawn in?
And it's still draining it, but now a sample of the Shadow-stuff, just a loose wisp that Doll left behind without even knowing it, has ended up there, and the magic in the area's apparently decided on its own that Shadow-stuff is a fine new form to take on, like some sort of chemical reaction, a catalyst... and presto, we've a Shadow event!
I can easily enough NPC the itty little stupid Shadow, if some random NPC might've decided it was cute and made it so! And Doll does have Shadow powers, if anyone wants to take the big toy with them for protection; think JRPG magic stuff, only... technically it's just will made manifest, if that makes sense? (Some people scream when furious; Doll expresses itself with high-damage shockwaves, the infliction of status effects, and more. And then is shocked to find that its fit has leveled the immediate area. Fun times.)
IDK, tossing up ideas. Sleepiness, pizza, and a ton of soda are catching up with me right now, I think, heh.
Anything you'd want to know about any of it? Persona 4 mechanics, potential end-results and bonuses granted to characters from it (like being able to cast spells of sorts themselves/summon Persona) or... IDK, whatever? I can ramble for pages, haha.
I should shut up now and go to bed though...no subject
Wow, you've been thinking about this a lot, haven't you? XD Still, it's great to see someone with an idea on how to get the comm moving! It's been a really quiet August. I like a lot of your ideas there, with people venturing in, and people stumbling into other people's "set pieces," and all of that. And yeah, I bet that lost district IS being a nasty drain on things -- it was the first to fall victim to the dwindling life energies, so it's not out-of-place to assume it's a sort of dead area that drains life from those around it. . . And wow, who knew Doll could be so dangerous? So yeah, this could be pretty awesomely wild. :D
Some potential end results would probably be a good idea to think of -- also how long this whole thing should run for, given the schedule we're on. (I'm thinking this would probably be a good OOC-It's-Halloween Event, running through most, maybe all, of October.)
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I've had a great deal of fun playing through P4 and trying to pick it apart. The hows, the whys... I dumped a friend's char into the fog-world setting in a PSL (because I am a
cruel and terriblegreat GM like that. My friends have a tendency to rely on me to provide setting and NPCs and plot and basically everything but their one character, hah... so... well, if I'm going to do all the work? Muahahaha.) and so I had to figure out the logic behind the item drops in dungeon runs and such, to translate that to RP, and how things worked that weren't explicitly explained in the game. And I like to think I've figured it out; I'm not sure if the Persona 4 devs actually had in mind the conclusions I've come to, but I'm pleased with my version of things, and the rules that I've come up with, by which I play with the fog world and some Shadows, Doll included.Doll's kind of a mess to explain in detail, but the short of it is, it's like the stupid tiny cute Shadow, in a sense: someone believed that a certain Shadow was all sorts of sweet and friendly, but it was destroyed... and so they ended up accidentally recreating it from the loose Shadow-stuff remnants of its original ~Lv.50-ish-boss-fight-potential self, except with their ideas of it as the new basis for its personality.
Yep, that was fun. ♥
I like the idea of turning it into a Halloween event, actually! Seems like something that should be tossed up in the OOC comm for more discussion and getting everyone involved in plotting, especially since we've got some canon Persona characters about. They might have some fun ideas to add to this!
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Isn't that great? I like to do the same thing with stuff I'm interested in -- I'm currently writing up Forgotten Vows's full backstory, and that's included a lot of getting to know "Alice: Madness Returns" better. (Latest discovery -- the key motif running through the game is even more insidious than you might think. While the big memories' relationship to keys is obvious, I never noticed just how many little memories have key-related stuff in them too.) It certainly sounds like you've done your research. :)
Yeah, I thought that would be appropriate! I probably will make a post about it in the OOC comm later -- or, if you want to go ahead and make one, I'm okay with that. You're the one with all the info, after all. XD