Results 1 to 1 of 1
  1. #1
    Cheers and good times! Neo Emolga's Avatar
    Senior Administrator

    Join Date
    Mar 2013
    Location
    New Jersey
    Posts
    17,433

    Squawkers RPG Update

    After giving this a lot of thought, I've decided to retire Squawkers RPG. Please don't hate me!

    I'm going to return it back to Stalkers in due time, but with PXFIRE going on right now, I think people are too busy for this and I haven't been able to address both at the same time either. The other thing is I don't think I could put it on hiatus and return to it later. It's a tough thing to suddenly drop and then try to pick back up again for both me and you guys.

    In all honesty, I really didn't think it would be going on for so long. Season 3 felt perfect and I modeled this around that, so I don't know why this felt so much longer. Plus it's been going on since April 1st and I think just about everyone has gotten tired of it.

    I also think people liked Stalkers RPG more and more people participated in those variants. Heck, I felt more motivated to run that because it was fun, cool, and creepy whereas there were days that I just didn't feel funny enough to make posts for Squawkers. The other thing is because of the random and goofy nature of Squawkers, I noticed it was extremely hard to people to pick up on clues, signatures, and themes. I have a feeling people just completely gave up trying to associate the goofy signatures and I can totally see why that was the case in a game where not making sense was the norm. That's probably not the best practice for an investigative/mystery game.

    There's a few other things I think that need to be revised and I'm definitely open for discussing them.

    • Combat system - Though we didn't really get the chance to try this, I think it needs revision because I have a strong feeling it would have flopped. It depended on there being at least one Guardian Snow Angel and everyone having items equipped. That said, with some vital people dropping out and people reluctant to equip stuff, I don't think fights would have gone over too well. So I need to look into this further.
    • Individual Inventories and Wallets - I feel people were reluctant to spend money for items and equip stuff because it belonged to the whole team and people are naturally sheepish to do this because they don't want people to feel like they're stealing it for themselves. Thing is, this was definitely something you were going to need to do. In future editions, everyone would have their own money, their own inventory for consumables, equipment would be automatically put on (I'll stop putting traps directly on them), and only the key items would be put into the team inventory. You can still trade and exchange items with other players, but instead of having to ask the whole team if it's okay if you equip Item ABC or spend X money on something, you just need to ask one other person if they don't mind you taking that item. Item inventory space will be limited though.
    • A Third Stat - I'm thinking for Stalkers, have Health and Sanity, but the new stat would be Purity, which gets reduced the more your character gets exposed to dark and shadowy influences. Something graphic, like the sight of gore, blood, or dismemberment would hit for Sanity where something that's pure evil or occult-like in nature will hit for Purity.


    Things I liked:

    Weather was fun to work with. I think I might bring that back, but make the effects less insane of course. Things like dark storms might do a very minor bit of Purity damage while a nice and sunny day might raise it up by one.

    Equipment and Money was something that seemed to work okay, but as I said above, how it's handled might just need a bit of tweaking.

    Up-scaled stats were MUCH easier to work with as opposed to 4/4 or 6/6. I may even take that further and have Health/Sanity/Purity values at amounts like 20/20 or 30/30 or so.

    NPC helpers were fine, but I need to limit how many the team can have at once (max of 2 would feel right) because this could have turned into a nightmare for me to manage. But besides that, they were fun to work with and were able to take roles that were not taken by other players.

    Reincarnation I almost had too much fun with. In the new Stalkers variant, it would make sense for this to still be a thing (as in your character can still be killed), but YOU choose what you get reincarnated into now. And it would make sense because Utopia would need to play it like you're a different Pokemon unrelated to the one you were before when you're just in a whole new body now. It could still work nicely and if there's ever a need for a certain Pokemon type (such as no one being a steel type when there's an essential +Steel Type+ obstacle that needs to be dealt with), this would allow you to change into the needed Pokemon to get beyond that.

    -----

    All in all, I hope you guys aren't bummed out about me closing this early, but I think it's kind of gotten worn out by now, things were just kind of running in circles, and I really didn't think it conflicting with PXFIRE would have been a factor, but urf, did it ever become a problem.

    The next round of Stalkers will need to be a bit smaller to keep things fresh, but fluid. I think the same setting after a while gets tiring and something that feels too big makes it hard to get a handle on things. All in all, I liked Season 1's setting the most, but Season 3 was my second favorite. I might go more for something like that the next time around, but you know me, I like to twist things up every now and then, so we'll see.

    In all, thanks for your understanding and I hope you enjoyed it!

  2. This post has been liked by:


Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •