Quote Originally Posted by C0L0R3D View Post
Well... as neato as this is, I have another request that I think may sound a teeny bit iffy.

I got the sudden craving to know what a successful Sin Purge would have looked like for seasons 2 and 5. Not as in how ya do 'em, but what happens when they're done besides from oofing the Abyss. Like, how the Pokémon reacts to being saved and all that junk. Also I was curious about how each Stalker would be revealed (eg. Franny's unfinished ritual) when his, her or its route was done. Kinda like most of, if not ALL of the Stalkers in Season 3 (eg. Kanja's grinding room or Ferghus' blacksmith worship thingamadoodle if you know what I mean. Maybe without all the glitchy stuff though, so it's like spooky but also not.
I'll admit, these were usually done on the fly as the narrative responses were written as the players made their actions and it depended on who did it (though we did have thoughts and ideas that were in the development threads). Certain other factors (like with Season 5) depended on what steps the players did (did they find the memento or not) and things of that nature. Think of it like a multiple-choice/path RPG game where certain actions have some outcomes and consequences. Mass Effect, Fallout, and Elder Scrolls are very good examples of this.

Usually to keep in with the immersion, narration posts were written in a 2nd person perspective (as in "you did this" and "you went here") kind of format and usually these narrations were written in response to the actions of each player. Such as if you're a flying Pokemon, you flew to your searched location and other verbs (swimming, walking, lifting) were custom-tailored to whatever Pokemon the player was to make it feel that much more immersive (when this was possible). Same thing with interviews, which were also reactive to exactly what Pokemon the player was and how it affected their rapport. We (as in Xanthe and I) felt this really gave the feeling of immersion and I strongly felt this while I was participating as a player (I was Emolga!) for the first half of Season 4 before Xanthe became too overburdened with work and I had to take over as GM.

So yeah, the basic framework of Stalkers is done in advance (who is a Stalker, what their routes/story is about, where items and puzzles are, etc...). But the actual fleshing out of details and depth (details and descriptions of locations, the exact interview conversation the player has, and how fights and their outcomes played out) was done on the fly and in response to who did what and when they performed that action (which sometimes was affected by what other actions other players took, such as if another player searched the location before or if that NPC had a conversation with another player). The fun thing is it keeps Stalkers interesting for the GMs before and during the event, it has unpredictable outcomes, and it's never linear. As a GM, you may lay a devious trap in a location or have some kind of dark surprise in store, but you have no idea who is going to be running into that or what their reaction will be to getting a puzzle or finding some dark secret. It's bloody awesome. xD

In terms of what the ACTUAL Sin Purge Ritual would have looked like in Season 2, usually these Sin Purge posts were pretty lengthy and I'll admit the exact details of how I planned on handling that have gotten pretty fuzzy over the years, sorry to say. For Season 5, I had such nifty ideas for Stalker battles but they were pretty brutal and I was just running out of steam to keep it going. While some tweaking to the balancing is possible behind the scenes without anyone knowing (if things look too hard, it's possible to tweak stats and drop extra rewards that weren't there before), it just seemed like there was still such a LONG way to go and no light at the end of the tunnel. So I just tweaked the Sin Purge Ritual to be a end-all kind of thing rather than a way to prepare the final fight against each Stalker.

But yeah, hopefully that answered your question. :3