First of all, thanks for stepping up to mod this game and for opening this feedback post up to comments! I really appreciate that you are all willing to listen to your players. I have a lot of typing to do, so I apologize for the wall of text that’s about to follow. Before I get to that, though, I do want to say that I built some really fantastic CR here, that I enjoyed writing vaguely PA letters to the living every week, and that I appreciated the feedback posts and tried to utilize them whenever possible so we could grow as a game together!
I’m sad there won’t be more magical girl-based murdering in the future, since one of the things I liked most about this game was its premise, even if I don’t care for the MGRP series. I thought that tweaking that concept for a murdergame was pretty original, and I’d have loved to see those magical girl themes given more development and room to breathe in the future! I’m not sure how they could have been more integrated into the game itself, but I was definitely intrigued by that concept. As for the medium role, it’s too bad that it got placed on someone who had to leave the game, but I wonder if in that case something could have been passed onto another character? The little roles and complexities that were inherent in the worldbuilding were so exciting!
Obviously, a lot of my feedback is going to be based around my character being dead for most of the game. I don’t want to speak too much to how the living plot went after a certain point because I just wasn’t there to play through it.
As a player who spent most of the game in the graveyard, I will say that I spent most of my time in confusion about how much it was or was not going to be involved in the plot. As Sam said, I know that graveyards are usually pretty chill, but the appearance of the ghost NPCs, as well as Zange, had me anticipating that it was very important to do everything correctly while dead for the sake of the game’s plot. Unfortunately, it was very difficult for me to understand the scope of things, fundamentally, on an OOC level. I would have really liked to see the rules clarified a bit from the start, as I think that might have helped me figure out what role, if any, I had as a ghost.
I did have a good time playing the mod ghost NPCs. Sam, since you were the dead mod, I did appreciate how engaging Hinata and Rose were. Having NPCs in the graveyard provides something interesting for dead people to do and sort of a completely different world to engage with. (This is actually a concept that I think could be really cool in a longer game, too, where more intricate CR could be possible… Hm. That might be worth stealing.) I do think that for short-term games like this, the number of distinct mod NPC characters, even in the graveyard and especially since they are all fandom characters themselves, was a little high. I like your suggestion to plop like one or two people in there, tops. I think that’d be much more manageable and would also help out with one of the things that really hung me up as far as a player.
I think my biggest struggle in keeping engaged with this game as a player is that after a certain point, especially from the graveyard, it felt like it was the NPCs’ and Zange’s story and that the PCs were just pieces in that narrative. It’s a little hard for me to articulate, but these last few weeks especially I will admit I found it hard to stay motivated. I know there weren’t a lot of PCs who stuck around in the graveyard for the game’s entire run, so that might have also had something to do with it. But I guess—this may sound harsh, and I apologize—after a certain point it felt like it didn’t matter if I played in the game or not because it wasn’t a story in which my character had any part. I think that clarifying the graveyard role, streamlining NPCs so that more structured things (maybe not tasks, but like, chill stuff with a purpose), and limiting Zange’s presence a little bit on the IC stage (having her “die” during murderweek, a glitch limiting her powers, maybe something like that?) might be ways to do a similar plot structure in the future while mitigating some of those feelings for me. I have very little modding experience, so I’m just spitballing with these suggestions, but I hope they reflect some of the places I felt discouraged as a player and ways that might be different in another game!
This was my first murdergame, so it was a learning experience for me, as well. I’ve discovered a lot of things about how they’re structured and run. I admit, I came in with some of the same expectations that Steve had. Huge surprise! Thanks again for your work and for opening up lines of communication! Trial 2 was a real nailbiter for me and I really enjoyed trying to develop CR in a much differently-paced setting.
no subject
I’m sad there won’t be more magical girl-based murdering in the future, since one of the things I liked most about this game was its premise, even if I don’t care for the MGRP series. I thought that tweaking that concept for a murdergame was pretty original, and I’d have loved to see those magical girl themes given more development and room to breathe in the future! I’m not sure how they could have been more integrated into the game itself, but I was definitely intrigued by that concept. As for the medium role, it’s too bad that it got placed on someone who had to leave the game, but I wonder if in that case something could have been passed onto another character? The little roles and complexities that were inherent in the worldbuilding were so exciting!
Obviously, a lot of my feedback is going to be based around my character being dead for most of the game. I don’t want to speak too much to how the living plot went after a certain point because I just wasn’t there to play through it.
As a player who spent most of the game in the graveyard, I will say that I spent most of my time in confusion about how much it was or was not going to be involved in the plot. As Sam said, I know that graveyards are usually pretty chill, but the appearance of the ghost NPCs, as well as Zange, had me anticipating that it was very important to do everything correctly while dead for the sake of the game’s plot. Unfortunately, it was very difficult for me to understand the scope of things, fundamentally, on an OOC level. I would have really liked to see the rules clarified a bit from the start, as I think that might have helped me figure out what role, if any, I had as a ghost.
I did have a good time playing the mod ghost NPCs. Sam, since you were the dead mod, I did appreciate how engaging Hinata and Rose were. Having NPCs in the graveyard provides something interesting for dead people to do and sort of a completely different world to engage with. (This is actually a concept that I think could be really cool in a longer game, too, where more intricate CR could be possible… Hm. That might be worth stealing.) I do think that for short-term games like this, the number of distinct mod NPC characters, even in the graveyard and especially since they are all fandom characters themselves, was a little high. I like your suggestion to plop like one or two people in there, tops. I think that’d be much more manageable and would also help out with one of the things that really hung me up as far as a player.
I think my biggest struggle in keeping engaged with this game as a player is that after a certain point, especially from the graveyard, it felt like it was the NPCs’ and Zange’s story and that the PCs were just pieces in that narrative. It’s a little hard for me to articulate, but these last few weeks especially I will admit I found it hard to stay motivated. I know there weren’t a lot of PCs who stuck around in the graveyard for the game’s entire run, so that might have also had something to do with it. But I guess—this may sound harsh, and I apologize—after a certain point it felt like it didn’t matter if I played in the game or not because it wasn’t a story in which my character had any part. I think that clarifying the graveyard role, streamlining NPCs so that more structured things (maybe not tasks, but like, chill stuff with a purpose), and limiting Zange’s presence a little bit on the IC stage (having her “die” during murderweek, a glitch limiting her powers, maybe something like that?) might be ways to do a similar plot structure in the future while mitigating some of those feelings for me. I have very little modding experience, so I’m just spitballing with these suggestions, but I hope they reflect some of the places I felt discouraged as a player and ways that might be different in another game!
This was my first murdergame, so it was a learning experience for me, as well. I’ve discovered a lot of things about how they’re structured and run. I admit, I came in with some of the same expectations that Steve had. Huge surprise! Thanks again for your work and for opening up lines of communication! Trial 2 was a real nailbiter for me and I really enjoyed trying to develop CR in a much differently-paced setting.