Spectral_Ent

Ah, sorry! I didn't make that clear. The first arc is from the Carnieverse side. It takes place (chronologically) just after they capture the explorers, and features them going through the portal and taking over the branch of Portal Corp. This gives them a base of operations and a way of accessing it so people can begin being insidious Carnie saboteurs.

Praetoria isn't what the complaint was raised about.

(That subject has been dropped)

EDIT: In fact, while I think Praetoria's writing was damn good for the most part, First Ward (pacing issues and unfortunate placement of characters aside) was above and beyond that. I mean, we could have done with Midnighter earlier, for example, when the stakes aren't so high so we can appreciate the comedy, but their writing? Darn good. Just needed to be less of it, and a bit more spread out.

Okay, the first Carnieverse arc is entering the "slight tweaks" section of development, so what days and times are people going to be ready for the first Carnival-side action and for all this to kick off?

A: First Ward is level 20-30. That's twenty levels off 50.

B: Malta, World Wide Red. Carnies, Upon the Psychic Plane. The Lord Recluse SF. There's a whole ream of content at 50 which has nothing to do with the Incarnate storyline.

C: Venture, and most of the people who play them's point is very accurate. The plot isn't good.

Anyway, those are my three cents. I'm fairly sure GG has never changed her mind on anything in her life, though, and this is a thread about First Ward, so I'll get back on topic.

We've had the "who does your character look like" thread a while back, but now here's the voice acting version. An animated movie is made entitled (character name). Who's voicing your toon?

It now lives on in the wiki. Tonight/this weekend I should get the first Carnieside mission up and maybe the first "kidnapped psychics" one, then I'm freeing things up a bit for individual Carnies and Carniedoubles (and Carniebubbles) to play around for a while. Witch-hunt fun

Okay guys, this is what I've got for the "blurb" for our plot. Just putting it up before I go for dins. Are we digging it or do I need to rewrite it?

People like us are the only ones who remember that lore. It was a long time ago, Emmert days, and with the influx of Freems there won't be people who'll remember how things were. They've been non-explicitly retconned, basically.

Building on Kiken's big-top idea, what if the Carnies are looking for a way of importing it, or a site that could, both literally and mystically, hold it?

Also, as a regulatory thing: Can people who plan on being replaced PM/Email/Tell me so I can add you to the list, and are we going to need an IC thread on this?

Is the event IC? It might be a nice place to show off costumes irregardless.

Also! I missed the Carnietown idea a page back. I love it, particularly since it works for a setting for the final showdown segment.

Is everyone okay with the proposed structure above for the rough plot outline?

That was somewhat awkwardly phrased, yeah, I don't mean I think he should have been screaming about it the second time broke, but the bit with River could have easily been "You plonker! I'm faking my death here!". I guess the excuse could have been "there wasn't a good time" until the end, but...

Still unthematic!

Sorry about the delay. I was hoping I'd have good access to the internet, but not on my PC, so I'd at least be able to patrol this thread. Instead the house I'm at has a rotary dial phone, so I think it's pretty obvious the level of internet access I have out of Uni...

I came off feeling a little unsatisfied, personally, for two reasons. First off, we know, ever since the bar scene with the Teselecta, it's been a robot. River never needed to handcuff him. He could have just said "Oh, by the way, I'm a robot". A lot of the "I HAVE TO DIE" "NO YOU DON'T" drama seems a bit pointless in that light.

Second of all, all the episodes leading up to this have had a strong sense of survivor's guilt for the doctor: Kavoria (sp?)'s point, is, in fact, he makes people into monsters. He even rants to Craig about his "everything I touch withers and dies" tendencies. It would have been brilliant if seeing the response the universe gave when River asked for them to help him was what caused him to frantically make up a new plan to save his skin: He realises he's not perfect but he means a lot to a lot of people. Instead, he's still got that unresolved guilt and just always intended on cheating fate. It just seemed thematically inconsistent.

Drag a picture onto the search bar.

It's fun, try it

Okay, I'm getting internet connection on Thursday, so hopefully I'll be able to organise things a little more adroitly then. Has anyone started doing anything already or has everyone been graciously reawaiting my return?

Okay, I felt I should actually finish the arc before I make criticisms, as previously I did the 5-10 arc and that put me off it so badly I never bothered to finish it.

I'll start with the good:

The twist at the end was pretty interesting. The map was creepy, and I did get the classic evil smirk when I revisited the NPC involved and found the new text given. It did seem to come out of the left field a little, but the explanation does explain some of a character's more... irritating abilities, although it felt more like the twist tried to justify the evidence than the other way around. A few more hints could help there, so long as it doesn't descend into mind-bendingly obvious levels of stupid. The explanation of how the Fateweavers work is also interesting stuff.

Now... Criticisms.

The arc feels incredibly railroady, and this isn't in spite of, but because of the fact dialogue trees are used. As someone on the channel I use put it: "You have the option of being a jerk or a dick". Where is the cold, unfeeling killer's lines? Where is the friendly, jovial psychopath? Where is the knight templar who has fallen as far as the villains he condemns or the noble demon who has principles in spite of his villainy? A brilliant example of this is the set of choices on the first computer. As I believe someone already said, it explodes anyway immediately after, why can't I just smash it? The fact I get choices here is also really annoying when I subsequently don't get to choose to not mock Zephyr, or to not rise to Omnicore's 12-year-old-sibling level trolling.

Why is it necessary for the arc to be about kowtowing to not one, but two grandiose overlords? Heroside doesn't have this problem, not in the same way, and even then it'd be more excuseable because heroes have a history of deferring to judiciary or civil bodies. I want to be a villain so I can play by my own rules. Sandy's help there is a minor comfort when you just realise you've swapped Grave's game for his.

Why is the arc written entirely for normal, run-of-the-mill humans? I'm serious. In spite of all your lauded powers, numerous parts of the mission assume you're normal. I remember a long, long time ago, running my first paper mission and getting the "You slick back your hair and crack your knuckles. Time to be the bad guy." on my first alt, a robot. I laughed a little back then, but at least my robot's non-existant hair was never used as a plot point when other people in the mission were specifically barred for their baldness. Seriously. Check the computers in the mansion and see what they say about Omnicore and Zephyr. It specifically notes they're unsuitable due to being cyborgs and magic, respectively. Where does that leave any magic or cyborg characters you've made, let alone full robots? Why, also, do you have no psi resistance? What if you chose Willpower, or, hell, you just made a robot?

Why does the arc assume you're an absolute friggin' idiot? Is it necessary for my character to bellow "Is that good or bad?!" like a lost kid after reading his details? Do we really need the, frankly painful, sequence where Dollface not only convinces you you have a mental time bomb in your head, but subsequently Dean John Yu mocks you to your face for falling to it, on the basis your character doesn't know some simple latin? Oh, and did we have to retcon that anyone who's ever bought from the Tech Quartermaster has been bugged the entire time?

As has also been adressed, you don't learn enough quickly enough, either. The arc is very easy to overlook and teaches you how to level at level 5, at best. This is far, far too late. The advice also needs to be a little more obvious. Some players won't realise where to look for clues unless it's spelled out. These are, admittedly, also problems with the hero version. (I also got a little laugh out of the "Maybe you've been mindwiped too?" line, so credit there.)

The final indignity of this story arc is the fact it desperately needs a proofread. Even if I was okay with the poor plot and mission structure, and the lessons that come far too late, I come to things like Graves telling me to go and fight Overdrive. Who won't be appearing for quite a few levels yet. There are also a lot of typos and painful grammar. I can't remember the exact line, but there was a section of the "Mental timebomb" bit that I had to read a few times to get my head around what had just been said.

Oh, and the fact Zephyr can use Ascension pieces at level 1 and we can't is an ouuuuuutraaaage.

So, to conclude, the principle of these arcs is good; villains need some form of tutorial as much as heroes, and the twist at the end is also interesting and very cinematic. Getting there, however, is a painful slog with only occasional bright bits to relieve you from having to listen to yourself embarass yourself again and again. Really, this is the main problem with the arc; the finale could probably redeem all the other bits if your character wasn't so bad. It's an arc I think I'll be avoiding unless I need the badges on most of my characters, however.

And before I go: Whoever wrote this, I totally sympathise. Writing arcs for villains is hard, much more so than for heroes. At the end of the day, all heroes are heroes, whereas villainy encompasses a very broad territory. I think the comment about "where are my knight templars or noble demons" covers that pretty well, including those as options would be incredibly difficult without derailing the arc or introducing plot holes. But I'd ideally like an arc where it feels like some other options are there: As it is it seems we get functionally identical choices, when we get them, and when we don't we're petty, competitive, arrogant jerks. I'd like villains with a bit more class than that, please.

Does the reactivation of all the accounts signal the end of the head-start period? And is this our "prior warning" we were going to be given before Freedom?

If yes: Cool.

The idea also goes very well with the concept of a recently turned Earth that doesn't really get that the Carnival is bad yet. It lets them have a base, nearby to everything, and everyone would overlook it due to the network's effect on them. Everyone knows there are Carnies, but everyone just thinks they're nice, clever folks with slightly weird, if awesome, fashion sense.

Clarifications, proposals, and an idea I've bandied on URP.

Firstly, a clarification. You don't need a psychic character and they don't need to be kidnapped to be part of the plot. The plot will be leading to the eventual conflict between the Carnies and denizens of Primal Earth. We need people to play for the home team, too!

Secondly, most people seem to be in favour of a mix of ideas 2 and 3, that the Carnies are somewhat mysterious, but omnipresent and are viewed as benevolent. The Carnival world is free of most serious crime, and everyone's international relationships are good, because ultimately everything is controlled by DeVore. And they celebrate with parties. Weeks-long festivals with downtime during which people get on with their peaceful lives. And people who're disruptive, who don't fit in, or just refuse to have fun vanish during the revels... The Carnival's psychic network is a lot stronger here, filling most people with a sort of generic feeling of goodwill towards the mysterious women in porcelain masks and helps everyone get down at the parties. For people staying for any length of time, one of the challenges would be resisting the feelings themselves and not ending up as another happy Carnie-Earth citizen.

The third idea, that I bandied around on URP today, involves the idea of a menagerie kept by the Carnies, possibly in the sewers or in secret rooms in buildings. Mutants, aliens, other weird "things" that the Carnival finds would be thrown in here. Ones with useful powers would be made to work to keep their abilities useful. Other mutants or oddities would end up as a behind-the-scenes freakshow to be prodded, laughed at, and ooed and aaah'd over. I think this could be a great source of allies for the psychics, and could also give light to some creepy scenes if the Primals stumble into it by accident.

As a rough outline for how the plot will take place, I propose this. Obviously, at all points players could drive things in different ways, so really, take this as "assuming everything goes to plan":

1. The Carnies move from their world to ours, kidnapping some of their doubles to serve as stores of information, amusements, and emergency rations.
2. Carnies take the places of the people they kidnap. URP suggests this be done with a PM sent to me, for witch-hunting, "who can you trust?" fun later down the line. If there are objections to this feel free to voice them, though. At this point, the people kidnapped are stuck in the Carniverse, captives of the Carnival of Shadows in their own world.
3. Infiltration and sabotage occurs, along with the moving of Carnie-Earth people into Primal. Primal Earth's Carnival notices this and the skirmishes break out. At this point, some people have broken free on Carnie-Earth and would be trying to find their way home.
4. Hero investigations time! There is now mounting evidence that things are Going On. Some villains would also be investigating, I imagine. The investigations could be helped by some of the psychics who do escape.
5. Carnie Earth invades, having realised they're compromised and attacking before significant opposition can mount. Primals fight back, and most likely succeed since they're our protagonists here. The psychics could be rescued here, if they haven't escaped yet, or...
6. Counter-invasion is launched. This'd be a "maybe" depending on how the plot goes, even more so that the other bits, since I can easily see the argument for just being alert. However, if some psychics are still there, a rescue mission might be more likely.

Large update, so please don't hold back on opinions.