THE FINAL FEEDBACK + ENDGAME

[raisingproject]

Hello there, everyone! We'd like to thank everyone for participating in Magical Girl Raising Project! for these last seven months. This is our final feedback post in closing, since there's a lot that we'd like to go over, and we'd like to hear your thoughts on how to improve for the next murdergame.

Here are our personal comments from us, as moderators:

Len (Head Mod):

Len here, as you guys can probably tell. I would like to thank everyone - again - for participating in this game, even with the rockiness the moderator team had at the start. We're all new to modding a murdergame, and even to me, as a murdergame veteran, this was a completely different and difficult experience for me, but it is one that I will honestly say that I would do again. While I say that I would definitely run a murdergame again - and there are plans for one in the future that is not MGRP related - it won't be happening in the near future, due to real life constrictions. But I digress.

Magical Girl Raising Project's conception was in late November 2016. There were several behind the scenes trouble that could have caused the game's early closure, but two of my good, trustworthy friends stepped up to the plate and assisted me in moderating the game. I honestly could not have done it without them.

I would also like to apologize in advance for my behavior at times on the Discord server as well that cropped up on occasion. It was not my intention to wall anybody from doing things from an IC standpoint or an OOC one in the slightest bit, and I heavily encourage characters to push past the decisions of the NPCs or the moderator played characters.

Anyway, there were several kinks that I was working with when I was moderating this game, and many of them were based on the original systems that were being tested out, but I'll speak on that in depth below.



Cases, Investigations and Trials:



As the head mod, I was primarily in charge of sending out the PMs for the cases and creating the Google Documents that would encase the clues. The first case was a bit rocky because we decided to give freedom to the players and give input depending on what they gave us, and that lead to a bit of a mess. Thanks to some feedback, in future cases, we opted to use a template, which helped smooth things out in the latter cases.

One of the biggest issues I realized was we never got scheduling down completely perfectly. The reason for this was due to timezone differences and a good portion of the players were also new to this format, which meant a lot of conflict in choosing players who were both available and also fitting for who did the crime.

Because of this, in future games that we plan on running, we plan on giving the times ahead of schedule and polling ahead of schedule.



The Plot, Secret Roles:



First of all, I'd like to apologize severely to Zero, our Joshua player, for not utilizing the role as the traitor as efficiently as I should have. The reason for this was because while we had most of the plot fleshed out, we... actually didn't come up with the ritual until a few weeks into the game.

The original plan was to have him investigate the others and potentially do something - which he did, due to a death roll - and also deal with the impurity and key gathering.

We also had a second secret role, and that was actually the medium, whose role was to speak with the dead and pass on the message to the living without seeming suspicious. That role was played by our Renji player who had to drop, so that was definitely rather unfortunate.

I'd like to say that a lot of the plot shifted out of circumstance -- there was a lot of things that I had to change from the original plans due to the tasks not working out like I wanted to and a lot of things behind the scenes work that I'm not going to go over here. But overall, I would like to hope that everyone enjoyed their time trying to figure out what's going on in the town and investigating.

Also, here is where I'd like to bring up Zange, and her role as the mastermind. As the mastermind, Zange had all access to her abilities, which means that she was able to swap with Hakua at will. I tried to show Hakua at certain moments -- one example being during the Dia's meeting when M appeared, the other example being during one of her talks with Taiki at the end of the second trial. Zange and Hakua are complete opposites; Hakua acts timid, awkward, shy. Zange is active, bold, and willing to do whatever she wants to get what she wants. Zange's role as the mastermind was not supposed to be the big plot twist. The circumstances behind it were.

I'm not going to lie that the plot was not perfect and this is something that I need to work on for the next game, hence why the next game will not be happening for a while, so that more of the preparation work will be done in advance.



NPCs:



I'm not going to lie that I kind of overwhelmed myself by adding in too many functional, working NPCs in the building of this game. Before the opening of the game, the NPC count was going to be as such:


• The Mastermind, who wouldn't show up much, who was Zange
  
• The Task NPCs -- which we cut, as spoken about a few weeks ago on how the system just didn't outright work for a short time.
  
• Snow White, who was going to be a "helper" NPC until she murdered near the end of the game.
  
• Ozuma, who was the "impurity".
  
• The ten ghost NPCs, which were split amongst the mods evenly.
  
  Personally, Ozuma and the Mastermind were not going to show up much. The Mastermind being for the sole reason that she was Zange and had to do her posts while nobody was watching, and Ozuma was always planned to not show up until the end. In any case, I sincerely apologize to those who didn't get their tags in ample time, especially in deadland. All the notifications for the moderator account go directly to my e-mail, but I tend to clean out my e-mail of mod replies because I'm trying to get to them by directly checking. I tried my best to respond in as timely of a fashion that I possibly could, especially when it came to not only the NPC responses, but the mod investigation replies as well.
  
  Now, I'm going to talk a little bit here on the Snow White murder plot because it was actually switched from my original plans due to the scheduling. First of all: murderweek was not a part of the original plan. The original plan was to have an "unsolvable murder" and scapegoat someone and then have a retrial for it as the final trial. And I say 'unsolvable' in the way that the case itself could be solved, but the murderer would not have gotten caught.
  
  

  The Final Trial (Endgame):

  
  
  To be honest, the final trial did feel a bit... easy, but everyone put in a lot of hard work during the final investigation which made the trial run smoothly (although there were some Dreamwidth errors, I admit) but if there was anything that was confusing or felt missing, that's all on me, and I am honestly deeply sorry for that.
  
  

  Other:

  
  
  Other than what I've said above, overall, this was a huge learning experience for me. There are a lot of things that I figured out worked or didn't work and I had to adjust accordingly or come up with things on the spot when necessary. I will admit here - as I've admitted on Discord as well - that we will not have a round two for Magical Girl Raising Project. The reasoning for this is due to parts of the game structure just not working and the overall storyline being closed. The arc for this murdergame is done.
  
  However, this does not mean that I will not be moderating a short term murdergame in the future! I just need some time to reflect and figure out what things we could improve on and tighten up to make everyone's experience of the game better overall.
  
  I can't help but thank everyone enough for your participation and that doubly goes for Sam and Steve, my fellow mods. You guys did wonderful work, both during game play and behind the scenes, and I cannot express how much I appreciate all of it. And again, I'd like to thank for those who submitted their feedback in the last few posts and through our private contact. It helped us a lot in growing and finalizing a lot of things and how we can deal with things next time!

Steve (Tasks NPC Mod, Item Shop Mod):

All right, so like I think I told everyone way back when, this was actually my first murdergame, both as a mod and a player. And it's definitely been...interesting. In a good way though! Before we started, and definitely when I was only planning on playing, not modding, I was under the impression that murder games were like regular games just....fast.

This is the part where everyone laughs. Go ahead.

Okay, so now getting to feedback, the first thing I'd like to do is apologize for leaving people hanging with NPCs back during the tasks. I was in the middle of switching jobs when we started, and honestly didn't think it would be as intensive as it was. So I apologize for that, and thanks a ton fellow for picking things up when I couldn't.

I definitely think though, it was kind of a mistake. It was a good idea and did a lot to try and give you guys stuff to do when there wasn't murder, but I think an approach like that, in hindsight, is way better suited to a regular game or a different kind of game. With some retooling, it could probably work.

As far as the item shop goes, that was pretty much the RNG's fault. I take no responsibility for anything other than the joke items and terrible descriptions. I'm sorry, my sense of humor leaves a lot to be desired. In all seriousness, I hope you guys had fun with it, and I was actually pretty surprised there wasn't more item sniping. Okay, there was a little, but you guys all played such nice characters, it was kind of amazing.

Being at work for investigations, I can't really talk there. It looked like a ton of fun though, and I'm sad I couldn't participate!

Trials were definitely the bulk of the learning experience...I think. We never really got room search timing down, then when things worked out we didn't need it, it just turned out to be kind of a mess, in my opinion. Which isn't really anyone's fault, things just kind of never lined up, and that's okay. It's a learning experience for next time.

I can't really comment too much on the deadland stuff, I had fun trying out some new characters, and I hope you guys had fun interacting with them.

So now let's get to the thing I've been wanting to give feedback on forever now. Let's talk about trial 2! So when Kaine got rolled, I wanted to go for a simple case because he's not going to go for the most creative murder ever, that's just not...him. But that was also my first time crafting one of these things, so I can definitely say that in hindsight I should've thrown more evidence at you guys. Still, it wasn't meant to turn into a giant clusterfuck, that was all you guys, and I love all of you for that.

With that being said, we know we had a bit of a rocky start, and sometimes things didn't quite work out the way we intended, I still think, or hope, everyone had fun, even with us learning how to do this as we went along. And I can definitely say I'd be willing to play in one of these or help out again. But maybe with somebody more social next time!

Sam (Deadland Mod + Helper Mod)

Hello, I'd like to again thank everyone for their time and patience with us getting ourselves sorted out. This was my return to modding games, but my first time modding a murder game. This has been a new and interesting experience. I barely knew anything about murder games before I stepped in to assist.

As all of you know, I'm the one that handled dead land business. I tried to give all of you something to do there and later learned dead lands in murder games are supposed to be chill places. I will say next time I rule the land of the dead, I'll have like one poor sod be there.

I was mostly using Hinata anyway and sorry for all his dumb drama. Next time I want to set up some kind of guidelines and structure but something really loose so there's still stuff to do. I want it to be fun there without any kind of major pressure. Whatever I will do I promise I'll have a much easier time keeping track of things. I'll make sure nothing gets in the way like some things in my real life unfortunately did.

I apologize for any confusion I myself caused. Me being mobile a lot meant I missed things. That aside, I'll take that extra second from now on to be sure I don't. Once again, thank you for participating and hopefully having a good time.

Overall, we'd like to give yet again, a final thanks to everyone in game for everything and open up the floor to any last thoughts and feedback that you would like to give to us as a game or to us as moderators. You are also free to leave us a comment privately on our contact post. Thank you so much for playing in Magical Girl Raising Project!

Comments

[starflare]

Sam here. I also agree that the survivor pool being larger could have helped with some of the feel of the end. While murder week wasn't planned, in the future survivor pool and endgame feel is something we'll heavily consider long before any game is set out for reserves.

I have nothing but respect for our players. I feel that part of why we had such communication is we were all willing to work together to make things possible.

Again, thank you for playing and I definitely think we have learned a great deal from this experience.