[OOC] STOMP Remembrance Project

[Caldwin]

Well, that too.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

That net got me bad.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Disappointed as she still felt, Amber smiled to see Rhapsody and trotted up to her. "Everything did seem to go quite smoothly. Miss Jack was particularly helpful," she said, glancing in Maple's direction.

Some notes on the exercise.

Zamuel:
Oddly, it's the reverse. While there were some preventions here and there, I instead had an offical GM loophole with the charm bracelets. Get too stuck and an NPC will save you, though you do officially "lose" in doing so. It's funny that this group wound up the most unpredictable. The bucket wasn't meant to be a real puzzle but briefly stumped the team. The puzzle was solved faster than I expected. I figured Amber would use one of her teleports to grab the chest (Item Teleport hadn't been used yet so t! his was a chance for that). I predicted a teleport out of the net but not towards the center platform--more or less the only wrong direction. Alternately, a hole was poked out and she teleported to safety instead of her teammates lifting the box. I predicted an Item Teleport but not a tag and recall (which was smart thinking). The aforementioned use of the floating platform to hold the "elevator" down was good. It actually does make sense that having prior expedition experience means he'd try to make sure there was a way back. The GM just played dirty by enforcing the lack of backtracking (another old school platforming aspect to this mission).

Zamuel:
So um...in the initial planning stages for this:

Amber/Night Cap/Maple
I get to drop a net on Amber!

Rhapsody/Static
Lightning room! Indoor black hole!

Anchors/Misty/Snowy
Um...water level? Those are hard, right?

OOC, nothing really broke because the GM was sorta out of ideas. On a more positive note, the group didn't really do anything that was really out there. The closest thing to breaking things was Sn! owy disrupting the cavern with the musical droplets and that's not breaking things in a way that messes up the mission.

I'm trying to remember what the Static/Rhapsody team did that caught me off guard but it's not coming to mind and it wasn't major.

Copper Bezel:
Since it's the second time you've said it, I don't know about toward towards the pedestal being "the only wrong direction" to teleport.

I think it's just the mental view of teleporting out of a trap, only to land in another trap and one that wasn't originally intended to be a trap. It worked out perfectly but at the time there was a sizable amount of "whyyyyyy?" upon seeing it.

Night Cap misunderstands the crystal ball.

Copper:
I would so be down for that scene. It sounds amazing.

Admittedly, my first thought on the description of the ball was that it forecast only the weather of the past, and that was also entertaining....

Zamuel:
It does only display the previous day's weather. I was trying to figure out the best way to word that IC.

Copper:
Awesome!

In that case, he definitely needs tell us all our futures. = ]

Fnu:
"Clouded your future is."

 

[Zamuel]

Ocean Bay's eyes went wide. "REALLY! A dreamwalker sounds all sorts of exciting. Seeing far off lands and fighting monsters sounds like the stuff of movies. Think about it...nightmare dinosaurs." Sea Bay hastily scribbled some notes.

If my head was in the right place, I could have possibly had this in the final arc. Oh well, enough was going on as it was.

 

[Destron D-69]

I love that this exists. it's a load of fun going back to the ic thread and reading the early adventures of a Very talkative young miss Maple lol

 

[Destron D-69]

reading this thread I'm getting a little blushy about how fondly everyone seems to remember what we did with Maple. I say We because every one of you helped shape her story in ways I'll never be able to correctly put into words. This game was a blessing, and I don't use that word often. Good Luck Fnu. you're taking on one heck of a task here.

 

[Destron D-69]

I'm thrilled that when people are reading this back, a lot of my subtle clues are showing through - That was one of my favorite parts of writing for Maple. It was often a lot of note-keeping lol, tracking what Maple was doing- both why she was doing it, and usually more importantly for IC, why she thought she was doing it.

I wanted to keep a constant and consistent record of the second one just in case I slipped up a little and ponies and their players started questioning things like say...

"boy have you noticed how Maple doesn't seem to understand personal space and she's always right there with like a wing or a hoof ... how could somepony be so touch starved?" ... yeah that would have been a killer.

that being said, one of my favorite bits of storytelling that I don't know if anyone's made a comment on over the years would have to be just how well suited the wrestling angle was for her being a changeling who didn't know it. like okay sure looking back now we can see that all the hugs, and trying to make people feel better stuff was her true nature poking through in ways that wouldn't crack the facade she'd developed. The wrestling thing was a way for her to physically Manifest her powers... when she put on her MMM costume(s) she actually would be a unicorn under the unicorn one, or an earth pony etc .... she also grew a bit -bulked up... I -to be honest, was more than a little thankful that nobody seemed to question her on why her outfit that she sometimes pulled out and showed the group was never padded, why her boots didn't have lifts... lol and so on.


honestly though, if it wasn't for precious Scootaloo you all should have called foul when I was constantly describing her wings as making a buzzing sound XD

 

[CoffeeHorse]

It is humbling to read in retrospect. So many hints were there, but I never suspected a thing. I'd have been in trouble if we had a malevolent changeling in our midst.

 

[Destron D-69]

oh look at that, we're up to the first match in town... golly though was that ever a long hug with Misty. *blushing maple face*

 

[Caldwin]

I never suspected anything either. I was completely floored at the reveal. But then reading the early stuff knowing what comes later, the clues were very much there.

 

[Zamuel]

We're also getting more of Tipsy Tulip's setup right now. I still feel mixed on how she ended up. The threat of the role she has did get built up, while her physical presence got muted due to the other threats the players faced, yet she managed not to get the jobber treatment early campaign so I guess it worked out. I will say she's the one enemy across both campaigns that more or less needed a combat system with a map to truly feel right.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Oh man this is a long email chain.

 

[Destron D-69]

I loved Maple's little deception in this part, that bit about loaning MM one of her costumes as a way to answer Rhapsody's point was great fun. And the match itself my gosh was that hilarious to reread - you've got Static questioning his alignment, Night cap becoming a superfan, Rhapsody having fun, Amber cheering on the bad guy so she won't feel bad that no one is rooting for her... and Misty being beautiful. Not to mention MM fighting the Changeling Champion... gosh Zam, we were just throwing it right out there in everyone's faces, weren't we? It's basically a play-by-play of Maple's entire character ark. In disguise fighting against her own heightened misunderstanding of her true nature, yet still making friends with it to the point that in the end, she's okay with that side of her ultimately winning and not really being all that horrible after all.

classic

 

[Zamuel]

One fun thing is that Destron and I were more or less freeforming the match on the fly as opposed to it being preplanned. I think the match ending with Maple losing was the only the only predetermined fact.

 

[Destron D-69]

oh yeah, none of that was planned other than Maple's friend the Masked Mystery Mare losing, and Maple's match being canceled. We discussed a fair bit of what each of us wanted to do with the character and how bringing her into the game could benefit the other players - like when we converted her to be a more support player and dropped some of her initial abilities.... but much of the actual IC stuff yeah was both of us winging it where we needed to.

 

[Caldwin]

It still seems crazy how absolutely no one saw it coming but reading now it's just so obvious that it's like "how did we not see it?"

 

[Destron D-69]

I think having her ongoing focus on hiding that she was the MMM from the party was a good distraction to have you all focus on lol that way any weirdness would be seen as "how does this fit into the wrestling angle?" instead of becoming a "what else is she hiding?" the disliking the princesses thing was another of those ... but that turned out to be very much involved with the truth of it all.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I just assumed she didn't like the princesses because they're so tall.

 

[Destron D-69]

but she likes a long-legged mare ... but we're not really that far into the game yet XD

 

[Zamuel]

I think having her ongoing focus on hiding that she was the MMM from the party was a good distraction to have you all focus on lol that way any weirdness would be seen as "how does this fit into the wrestling angle?" instead of becoming a "what else is she hiding?"

This extended to her character sheet. Her bio was written explicitly to pull a sleight of hand with the wrestling angle.