doctor7

Having this problem. Tried deleting checksum and the .prv file. Restarted and still can't log in despite servers being "Up."

I have to say I find it quite humourous that we all totally embrace the stereotype the world has of Canada (that it's always cold) as most of the Canadian heroes have Ice abilities.

Also Provincialman wields a lumberjack axe and I noticed someone else made one with that too, haha.

The US has Statesman, the 5th Column has Reichsman but Canada has...

Provincialman! - Ice/Axe Tanker

[ QUOTE ]
ArcID 148594
ArcName: Dorks & Dungeons
Author: @doctor 7
Length: Short (1 mish)

Synopsis: Dudes playing DND open a rift, bring their characters (and the bad guys) from their latest adventure to the real world.

As a DM of 20 years, I had high hopes for this one. It has a kind of Joel Rosenburg "Guardians of the Flame" feel to the intro. However, that was never realized in the mission itself.

I never got why the characters being turned real would turn out to be villains and not allies trying to prevent the Vikings from having their way in this world.

Speaking of which... I was asking myself, why is it that the "player" was concerned that we wipe out their Characters, but didn't seem overly concerned that we'd be leaving behind a whole slew of vikings to [censored], pillage, etc... This storyline seemed like it should have been a defeat all ("please, clean up the mess we made and make sure *none* of these dudes escape").

Also, all the vikings and PCs seemed to continually spout metagame injokes that only the *players* would understand. Here we have characters saying things like "So then I killed the Goblin King with a natural 20.." I can see a player saying that, but a character? If these were really characters turned real, they wouldn't have that type of dialog.

Think of "The Last Action Hero", and how out of place Arnie's character was in the "real" world. That feeling was missing here. There were other out of character references by the vikings that blew the immersion for me.

Also... Viking Necromancers? really?

On mission exit, the dialog calls the player's own characters terrible? That seems self disparaging in a way.

Minor technical issues: Mish entry text… Dungeon Master should be capitalized; Only the PCs and the bosses had descriptions noting who they were... the Minions and LTs had the "so and so is only marginally more powerful than..." style text.

As for the main glowie... the language is really rough: "you begin the process of picking up the book" <-- what? why not just say "you pick up the book"?

All in all I think it was a fun story to play, but I didn't feel like I really *cared* about completing it (although I did complete it). It wasn't hard, but it didn't grab me.

I think there's great potential here; Maybe if it had taken a slightly different tack and had the players actually *becoming* the characters (again nod to Guardians of the Flame) and needing rescuing to return to their true selves, etc...
If at the least it was made into a multi mission arc, the PCs were made into Allies instead of villians, the dialog was fixed up, and the vikings took more than breaking a cauldron and getting a book to get rid of, it would be more engaging.

I gave it a 3 ingame... mostly because of the story potential, overall the balanced design of the custom group (again except for the Necromancers.. who's heard of a viking necro???), and it *was* fun to run through.

[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks for the feedback but I think we'll have to agree to disagree on a number of these points, at least to a degree.

The book used to cast spells was the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, it was an Evil Dead reference that you might have missed. I've made the dialog and mission text more obvious this time around but in case you haven't seen the series the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis is an unholy text where no one really knows the contents except for the fact it's pure evil. By casting the spells out of the book of the damned I think it's clear that anything out of the book would also be evil. Either way I made the reference more apparent.

Also we're just going to have to disagree on the flavour text of the mission. I've received quite a few feedback messages specifically singling out the NPC dialog as the absolute highlight of the arc.

I changed the book text to read "you begin searching for the book" and corrected Dungeon Master to be properly capitalized and added a bit of mission text to explain why you don't need to kill all the viking minions just the custom characters. Really it's because the mission used to be defeat all but I received multiple complaints and after playing a lot of custom arcs packed with the defeat all I'm just damn sick of it.

Anyhow, I've incorporated the criticism you made that I agree with and stuff so maybe that'll help you enjoy it more. I doubt you'll give it a 5 because the core of it remains the same but I took what you mentioned into account and tweaked it for what I think we can both agree is the better. Try and keep it mind that the D&D reference is there just to establish that they're playing a pen and paper role-playing game and that the enemies are not supposed to be dictated by what does and does not exist in D&D. So yes, Viking Necromaners, seriously.

[ QUOTE ]
Hello everyone. Can somone please give my Arc a look?

Arc Name: The Seven Deadly Sins
Arc ID: [color:r ed] [/color] 5568
Faction: Neutral
Creator Global: @Shay 'd
Difficulty Level: Medium/Hard
Synopsis: Do you have what it takes to defeat The Seven Deadly Sins, and save The Seven Virtues? SFMA
Estimated Time to Play: 1 mission, 15-20 mins

[/ QUOTE ]
Probably going to seem harsh but I gave this 2/5 stars. Two stars were for the concept, really I would've given it 1 star because I found the bosses to be too tough but you did give a warning that it shouldn't be solo'd but when my 43 scrapper can't do it without dying on challenge level 1 that causes me to raise an eyebrow. But still I didn't take a star off for that.

There are some grammar problems (your is NOT "you are") "wasn't" was spelled wrong and, most of all the story is non-existant except for the concept really. I liked the concept but it's not explored.

You're given a mission by a priest. Why this priest? Why not a bishop of the local diocese or an arch-bishop? When you're bringing in a real-world organization these questions come up and need to be answered. You could just make up a unit of the Catholic Church or something instead if you wish.

But literally the mission felt like "Go here." "Do this." "Thanks." I had no motivation to keep going to be honest.

As well the virtues and sins felt pretty lifeless. There could've been more attention paid to what they say and how it's related to their sin/virtue. I saw you do this with some of them but not all. Really I'd say if you were doing it for all of them step it up a notch heavily.

Finally all the custom characters looked almost exactly the same. Spice up the sins a bit. Sloth could be a fat slob, wrath could be a fiery fellow, lust could be a hot babe. I don't know, get creative. But they all looked like chicks in a toga.

So 2/5 stars from me. I like the concept but it's not developed and it doesn't feel polished. If you go back to it please post in this thread and I'll give it another go because I honestly think your premise shows promise.

So my new mission:
Canada, Beaver Boy and Provincial Man
Arc ID: 157251
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global: @doctor 7
Difficulty Level: medium-hard (depending on challenge selection)
Synopsis: A new biker gang, the Whole Fists, have taken the country by storm! Provincialman, Canada's national superhero, and the entire country needs your help!
Estimated Time to Play: 3 missions, about 60 minutes total

Note: Will auto-SK anyone below 44 to 44, so it's great for large groups of varied levels. Final mission contains and AV. If soloing I'd suggest a lower challenge level so it downscales to an EB. You do get 2 allies to help you out and I was able to solo it on challenge level 3 with my 43 scrapper.

[ QUOTE ]
Dorks and Dungeons ARC# 148594
Length - 1 mission

Run with my L34 MA/SD Scrapper on Tenacious. I'll go bullet style here.

- Typos in mission intro. You've got an extra quote just before thursday in the 2nd sentence. Also, thursday should be capitalized. And you need a period in front of "me", followed by "me" being capitalized to start a new sentence.
- Fun premise overall. A member of a D&D group brings a real spellbook to a session, and the characters get brought to life.
- I personally don't like real-world political comments in missions, and your "... otherwise all the conservatives will be proven right..." comment bugged me. Not a great tragedy, just figured I'd mention it.
- I really like the design of your characters.
- Very funny dialog, especially the "Who says walking around looking for heroes isn't a great way to spend the day?" one.
- Baddies could be a little more challenging, but for what I perceive to be a comedy arc they don't need to be so.

Overall I thought the funny parts were good and the characters looked great, but the fact that it was only 1 mission long coupled with the typos and off-putting political comment kept me from giving you 5 stars. Fix the typos and add another mission or 2 & I think you'd have a really fun little arc that would be accessible to a lot of characters.

Thanks for creating and posting the arc.

[/ QUOTE ]
Just wanted to say thanks for this review. I went back and address the grammar problems you pointed out, thanks for letting me know. I find that no matter how much I proof read my own work stuff always seems to slip by.

I also slightly modified the intro dialog to say "the negative stereotype will be proven right!" I wasn't attempting to make any "real world commentary" beyond "some people think D&D players do dabble in the occult." In my experience I've never encountered a liberal person that's found something wrong with D&D. But I don't want my Arc to start any sort of debate on the subject so rephrasing it should improve it a bit I think without losing the humour of the situation.

As far as making it more than one mission that's one thing I've heard consistently throughout the feedback and I think I should say that I had originally intended it to be three missions long with each mission having it's own unique group of enemies. However, upon finishing the first mission I had used about 80% of the 100kb. As such I thought it would just be best to compact everything into a single mission as best I could. Right now it takes up just under 95% space. If they increase the storage size three-fold I'll change this one up for sure but, as it stands, I want to use my other two arc spots for other things.

As far as balancing goes I think I did a pretty decent job. The minions are very weak but the Lieutenants and the Bosses aren't push overs so you can get swarmed. However the bosses don't spawn on lower challenge levels so choosing the challenge level affects how difficult the mission will be by quite a lot.

So with my Scrapper I can solo through at level 4 but with my Blaster I have a hard time soloing past Challenge level 2 which is pretty comparable to real missions. Hope that helps as to why my minions are pretty weak.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that your feedback was appreciated and implemented on the stuff I was able to change.

As well I just finished another comedy Arc that I'll post when I have time to give someone else a critique.

I'd appreciate some feedback on my first arc.

Arc Name: Dorks & Dungeons
Arc ID: 148594
Length: Medium
Mission Count: 1
Morality: Heroic
Genre: Humour
Description: When pen and paper role playing goes horrendously wrong.

I've played through it solo on my DB/Will 42 scrapper on challenge level 4 and not died twice, though there were some close calls with the bosses but I think that's appropriate for the difficulty. As such I think the challenge is acceptable. All the enemies are custom made by myself.

This is also a single map arc so if you want a sweeping 4-7 map story arc then don't go for this. It's a quick ~20minute arc that's about having a laugh.

Arc Name: Dorks & Dungeons
Arc ID: 148594
Length: Medium
Mission Count: 1
Morality: Heroic
Genre: Humour
Description: When pen and paper role playing goes horrendously wrong.

[ QUOTE ]
I've got two critiques out but only one in return so far. This one's been getting a pretty good response so I thought I'd throw it up.
THESE MACHINES KILL FASCISTS
Arc ID: 118731

Factions: The 5th Column, Rebelling 5th Column robots, and someone else. You'll figure it out soon enough.

Creator Global: @Doc Photon

Difficulty: Level range is 30-34. There's two custom enemies you might find a bit more difficult and one EB, but most of this arc should be about as difficult as a typical 5th Column arc at those levels.

Length: Just three missions. The second one often ends very quickly. Good for when you want a fast one to blow through.

Synopsis: The 5th Column is in trouble -- their robots have gone berzerk and turned against their masters. The prevailing opinion is the new Autonomous Command droids are on the blink and have hijacked the rest of them. Maybe. But what's with the strange things the robots are shouting now, as they tear their fleshy meatbag masters apart?

This was published once before but I took it down and changed some things pretty heavily to rebalance it. I much prefer it now, and player response has been even more positive than I expected. Here's hoping you like it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Nice and funny for sure. The humour works and doesn't fall flat like some other arcs I've played.

I gave it 4 stars due to there being some grammatical problems during the first mission intro text. I sent you a message saying the same thing. Also something I didn't like, but is out of your control, is being 33 capped for the first mission, 39 capped for the second, and 33 capped again for the third. When the next AE update comes out hopefully you can specify a constant level. But again, I know that's out of your control so it's a suggestion for improvement when the option becomes available.

Certainly would recommend other people try this one out though, it's fun!