Thank you to everyone who played. This went on way longer than I expected so I appreciate everyone hanging in there. I know the pace could be slow sometimes but nobody ever really complained so that’s appreciated.

Special thanks to Nanjo/SC for continuously updating me on their theories throughout the game. It was definitely a very cool part of it for me to see how others were interpreting the story with the given pieces. Also props to SC just because Albert was the butt of so many jokes and I know that’s not necessarily easy even if it’s all in good fun.

Thank you to the spectators too, it’s always cool to see people react and still invested in the game. Hanzo especially was great as always because when you’re dead-tired at the end of the game it’s cool to see somebody very enthusiastic about it (that’s not a diss to anyone else).

It seems like people enjoyed the game, but I’m going with general impressions. But I do want to hear everybody’s honest, unfiltered thoughts. I don’t need a criticism to be flowered with a compliment if you really want to rant on a certain point. I might make this story into something more serious one day (don’t hold me to that I’m just saying) so it’d actually be a disservice to me if I didn’t know what especially bad parts are. And boy do I know there are bad parts.

If there’s a criticism that you have that you don’t want to post publicly for whatever reason I’ll hear it privately too. Story-wise this was probably the biggest thing I’ve done so I really do just want to hear about which parts/elements/characters didn’t work.

Also if anybody ever felt I was an asshole while GMing then sorry. Best I can say is that it wasn’t my intention to ever come across that way at least.

Also feel free to use this thread as a Q&A because I imagine there are a bunch. I’ll clarify here that everything I say doesn’t necessarily have to be taken as a canon. If you want to believe something like Tyrell Hodges being the puppetmaster behind the scenes, go ahead. The stuff I answer is more just what I imagined it as but never outright stated.

And I’ll start the Q&A off with a probably common one:

gg

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Also please enjoy this survey for character/ending rankings cause why not: https://goo.gl/forms/plouQDVHnDfSCziA3

I'll ask that people please don't take any of this personally as I doubt all of the rankings will actually come in line with how the roleplayer portrayed them. Many characters started way ahead of others pregame too and some were just in general involved more. This is just for fun, but if you're against it I have no problem making the results private for those who want to see them.

Thanks for hosting this, JM! I definitely had a lot of fun.

I might have more to say when it's tomorrow and not way past my bedtime.

Yeah go to sleep nerd

The timelines were definitely a really good idea cause it meant there was more incentive to actually do crazy stuff without risking a lame death or general awkwardness for the rest of the game. I mean obviously it meant there wasn't much """gameplay""" but I don't really care about that honestly.

I am curious though. You said you were considering having a tenth character. Who would that have been? Someone we know? Or was it just a general idea?

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This might be a little awkward.
If you haven't sold your soul and entered the Discord server yet you might be wondering "who the fuck is this random clown" (maybe with a little less profanity, maybe with a little more) but I just wanted to drop by and say that spectating this game was a load of fun. Y'all, players and GM, just did a great job as far as presenting an entertaining story goes and even though I wasn't involved into anything at all really (I only voted like twice, once as a meme) I did feel like posting here simply because I felt like it would be appropriate to thank/congratulate the people who played a part in creating such an interesting and entertaining story.
I don't know how to stop writing so you're going to have to stop reading now please

Nice this was extremely good! I enjoyed this game more than I enjoyed 999 for sure, so take that Uchikoshi. Being able to be a part of this was a lot of fun. As a person who plays a lot of rp both irl and on this forum and mostly enjoys it for its storytelling capacity, this was probably close to my favorite experience that I've ever gotten. It felt very real as a piece of work and pretty much any of these characters would be the best if dropped into a prior nonary game. The story was (pretty) well paced, especially for a forum game where engagement by the players can be sporadic, and I totally was hanging onto it as it took me for some twists and turns, and I was even able to get several beats right before they happened.

It was seriously incredible as a game/story experience, and I feel like it pushed the envelope for what nonary games can be. Getting all the different timelines was very cool.

Issues I had:

Bradley being Zero was like a not a moment where things were brought together at all. Obviously I was anticipating that Bradley's escape would somehow bring about the pandemic, but what I wasn't anticipating is that the entire Leader persona would feel almost entirely separate from everything we knew about Bradley. Like his motivations and personality didn't really match up, and most of what we knew about the Leader was downright misleading.

Like you said, we didn't really see how killing Violet would do anything. It would have been great to make that relevent to some endings or something so that we could anticipate that Violet is like somehow pivotal to everything. Also, it's really rough to have the entire game hinge on a Bradley-Violet relationship, which only really exists after the game concludes. Like they seemed to get along okay, but I never even took note of it because it didn't seem that different than the relationship of any other two unrelated characters.

Adriana and Nina being different people is something that should have been flagged up in a bigger way. I mean she died in both timelines where anyone knew about Nina, so we didn't get to listen to her deny it very much or get emphatic or anything. Obviously I did think that Adriana was really close to Helios, but that never really became unnatural. Adriana not understanding who she is would have been really interesting had more been done with it. Also, Adriana's origin story was weird, mostly because ultimately it's just like hand-waved by, "future stuff." Like I wish there was a better set of hints for how Adriana might exist before it was explicitly said in her ending.

I'll also say that Ghost should have gotten more clues associated with her. Revealing that she worked on this game happened really late I think, and so I was never able to consider her motives for doing so. I would have liked if there were actual hints pointing towards that aside from the fact her and Emma worked at the same place. Similarly, the fact that she might be from the future never really got any hints about it ever. From a meta perspective I considered her a possibility to be from the future, but nothing she did ever really supported that. Her not having a face and having never shown it to anyone (or Emma in particular) would have also been cool to know earlier.

Anyway, again this was a really cool experience. I'm really thankful I got to take part. Everyone played their characters well and the story they were a part of helped make them engaging.

Good game, JM! I definitely enjoyed this game a lot and without reservation can proudly proclaim that it is my favourite Nonary Game so far. Thanks for the special mention too, it was fun ranking the characters and such. I didn’t mind the jokes for the most part as well so it’s all good.

I’ll give more detailed thoughts when I come back from work but I don’t really have any ‘negative’ criticism that immediately comes to mind which isn’t too nitpicky so yeah.

Also out of curiosity JM, what were the survey results of all the players at the start? What type of characters did they want to play?

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Bradley and Violet were just meant to be "cosmically (almost randomly) related". It wasn't supposed to be a "wow their relationship is so special and transcends spacetime" kind of thing, and she definitely meant more to Bradley than vice-versa because she was the first kid he ever met, not to say she didn't care about him at all.

But yeah, fair complaints otherwise. Definitely things could've been shuffled around, and there were definitely restrictions with the forum game format like not controlling when certain things might come up. This game was rewritten to hell and back and there were versions that had some of the stuff you mention, but not in this one :p.

There's more to the Ghost stuff than it might seem. You may have already realized it, I can't tell from your post. But some of the stuff might make you feel better about it.

Great game, everyone! I had a lot of fun doing this, and I felt it was a lot easier for me to get into character this time (which could technically be considered a bad thing since I ended up referring to BP as my real dad once on accident).

I didn't have any real issues with anything. I got a little confused along the way, but that tends to happen to me with most things.

Anyways, thank you to everyone for making this a great game to play, and good luck to everyone else who'll be in Black Fable!

Oh and SC I’ll dump the pregame survey results tomorrow.

Also if it was unclear the postgame survey responses are going to stay private, I’m just consolidating them into one ranking at the end.

Holy cow, what a good time this was. Had a real fun time reading all the characters and seeing everything click together as time went on. Set the bar pretty damn high for future Nonary Games. Good job to everyone involved!

awesome job JM! this was absolutely amazing

I'll probably post some criticisms when i have more time to think and type but for now take the praise

Also for Nanjo's comments about Violet-Bradley and Adriana/Nina-Helios, they felt stronger to me but I also knew to look out for them more going in.




wait what xD

EDIT: also i guess i'll ask this one in thread too, for posterity

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It wasn't anywhere in thread or in Discord. I was just watching Volty's trailer for Turnabout Substitution and thought "oh yeah, my dad worked on this." and it took me a few seconds to realize what I'd said.

In my defense, Teddy looks a lot like my dad. Give him a bigger beard and a sweater and they're pretty much the same person.

Overall I didn't like the game.

There's a lot to say but that means there's a lot I did like too. I just don't think it was the kind of game I expected.

I'm on holiday just now so I've been stealing moments to say things on tablets and phones but I'll try and go into details later on.

Edit: Ok let's begin

When we started you asked us to also acknowledge that at times you would take control of our characters for little things. I agreed and was like fine assuming it was just like something to move the plot along if we were struggling or whatnot. I suppose I underestimated this at the start but it matched the tone for a lot of the game, where player agency and decisions did not really matter. At least that was how I felt.

At the start I did not have much to offer. Bradley was seeing real people for the first time and was eager to be with them and to make them like him...well except for a Ghost. Excepting that JM told me I would have to lie and keep my backstory secret. This felt weird because...Bradley is innocent...he hadn't done anything wrong...lying about nothing because it would look suspicious later on. JM had to manufacture the lie that Einstein was Nulls dog because that would Bradley a reason not to just reveal that he knew Einstein out the bat. In short, I had nothing I could really contribute to anyone at the start.

Things took a worrying turn for me about the time of Teddy's trial. A miscommunication between me and JM led to Bradley attacking Teddy (Bradley was legit not kidding when he said he didn't mean it). My choice had actually been to warn Teddy and so I felt a little scunnered at this. Then I asked JM if it would have made a difference if I had warned him. JM told me no. That set off massive alarm bells...my choice didn't matter...the story would proceed regardless...I couldn't really do anything and...would probably be ultimately doomed as things went on and Bradley as Zero was revealed.

I encountered a couple blocks to my actions as time went on. Bradley wanted to utterly mutilate Sherrington with the plasma cutter in a nice grotesque way to convey his hatred mid-monologue about killing Ghost. It felt an appropriate snapping point but I wasn't allowed to use anything more dangerous than the pepper spray and even then I had to wait until Sherrington had had his moment to share all the plot. By the time they had to throw him in the freezer the moment for sheer-emotional rage had gone and it was a piecemeal solution.

JM tried to make up for this with the brutal murder of Adriana later on but this shocked me and wasn't what I wanted. Bradley and Violet had had talks about killing people for Vengeance and so Bradley had calmed somewhat then. So then I was put in a difficult position of having to roleplay something really drastic. Bradley being so screwy that Ghosts suit got ripped was also unpleasant too.

I wanted to reveal Bradley's name to Ghost earlier on. There was a nice moment in their private conversation where Bradley got to talk about how Ghost and Bradley had named each other but JM said no. I wanted to try various ways to smash Ghosts visor or open Ghosts suit (after they were dead) but these wouldn't work simply because it wasn't the narrative point in time. I never wanted the Ghost/Bradley showdown to be public because...well it was a private matter. They were both clear on their relationship to each other but Bradley still didn't want others to know plus having spectators there might hurt his resolve knowing that others would see him killing someone. However, all information has to be revealed and it wouldn't have been good "entertainment" and so it turned into a public spectacle.

All the times I felt that there could be a rational outside-the-box solution to something when really it was pointless and there were only ever the two answers. That's something I really hate. It's the thing I hate when I watch stuff "why would you do this stupid thing? There's easily other ways out of this" and then being actually forced to play into those tropes was frustrating. It was especially prevalent at the end. Everyone knew there were child hasmat suits, they could all have died, went back one more time encased Bradley in a suit and went out with Ghost still alive and just decided not to even start the trial. Bradley even knew it wouldn't work, there was no reason to believe he would time skip away and sure enough there was a "true" ending where Ghost is sacrificed. The entire final scenario felt really contrived and Ghost suddenly remembering she was Violet without any kind of real explanation felt like a bit of a deus ex machina.

It felt like I could only really do what JM wanted and everything in between was just wasted space. No one could die until exactly their time, player actions were just the fluff between whatever JM decided would happen. I feel this was distinctly bad towards the end when questions were being asked of Null but really I think only JM had the power to move things forward. I remember thinking I'd hate to be Cesar towards the end because most of my posts would just be JM moving the plot along.

My goal was pointless, what's the point in trying to escape when I know it's futile? I'm not a player at that point I'm an actor.

The best things I love about Nonary games I think is the emergent storytelling. It's a sandbox basically! People have goals, yes there is an underlying story for people to reveal but I don't know how things will pan out, who will survive? What schemes will the players concoct?

It's why NG5 is my absolute favourite! It feels about as close to a "true end" as possible but it was made possible by all the players. Yes there was scheming and trickery and interesting twists but it was all done by the players and the story did get revealed in the end! It was wonderful and we all had a hand in it.

With this I realised "well this is going to hit the true end regardless of what I do" and so I stopped trying to figure things out, realised I was just along for the ride. There was little for me to earn and less for me to influence.

I think that's why my favourite bit might have been Bradley and Teddy in Helios ending. It felt like something I had earned (although maybe that was just because I had realised the twist before JM was able to tell me specifically). I had mentioned about how killing Albert secured vaccines in the morphogenetic field and being rewarded for that felt great. Getting to go through that moment felt nice, it was still private at the end, something special and bespoke. Bradley knew intimately the lengths that Teddy would go to protect Violet and could never think of him as a bad person after that. As they say you never forget your first kill. It felt earned which was good. I felt like I'd done something that mattered which most of the game lacked.

Like I said it just wasn't the kind of Nonary game I was expecting. It was role playing with confines and very few "game" aspects of it. These are all narrative choices and have their pay offs as well. I did like how people each got a handcrafted trial intended for them and the emotional moments in the story were good and enjoyable even if some of the twists felt contrived towards the end. You sacrificed some player agency in order to tell your own story and from the looks of it most people enjoyed that so it worked well! It just wasn't that fun for me.

Minor gripes:
Puzzle Rooms-
The puzzles in my experience were boring and dissatisfying. Most of them were just search places and then do an anagram...and I hate anagrams they are hard, time consuming and I don't find them much fun. Even at the end there were still some unsolved ones I think which is another problem where they were actually pointless. Felt weird to just solve an anagram, have a plot conversation and then just have someone declare "That's all we'll find here"

Case in point: We solved the Garden anagram and correctly followed the clue of the anagram to dig around the garden and then spent most of the phase digging but (related to the earlier problems of "you can't do that it's not time yet) we were never able to randomly dig up Adriana's body. Despite the fact that random digging on a shorter time limit was what discovered this later on in the plot.

Also the lack of any non-plot items made them dull but I can see why you would do this. Items add variables to the plotline and that's not what this game was going for.

Sudden Phase Changes:
I would deeply have preferred it if these were marked and broadcast in advance. It made it hard to know when to do things or how long we would have to discuss something because the game would just accelerate randomly. I think more than once discussions got cut short by sudden scene and plot changes.


There might be more but I've already said enough for now.

It was definitely an experiment and there's definitely fond memories I'll take away from it, they just don't outnumber the disappointing moments and a lot of that is probably down to personal taste.

All the same I recognise the amount of planning and work that went into this and I congratulate JM on everything he's done and the time he's sacrificed to put this together. Well done!

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Pierre elaborated on a point I was going to make too, though I still liked NG7 for what it was. NG7 wasn't really a "game". It was a visual novel (well really just a novel I guess there were no visuals) where the characters were all played by real people. I didn't get the impression any of the players had any real agency, the best they could do is choose between two predetermined choices with known (for the GM) outcomes as far as the story went. We could never really take matters into our own hands. However, I did realise this early on, especially with JM telling us this would basically be like a Telltale game. I don't think NG7 was a game but it was something I enjoyed a lot, so this isn't really a criticism as such.

As far as actual criticisms go, I think Adriana had a lot of interesting things going for her, but her role in NG7 itself was lacking. Most timelines she didn't get any moments for herself, and typically died in some random anticlimactic way. It was only right at the end that all the interesting Adriana stuff came out, and even then she never got a chance to build upon it in-character.

I've already talked about the "Violet dying = chance to change the future" thing so I don't need to go over that again.


Can't think of anything else at the moment, so a question: why was Ghost missing/declared dead in Helios's end? I know a little more behind the scenes of that but I still don't know why that was the case.

Also the answer is, I think, guessable from the story, but: why was Helios declared alive and well in Midge's end?

I could tell :p. Thanks for participating until the end though!


As a start I'll say there were much more decisions in this game than most people probably think. A lot of htem were just in the background.


It's fair to feel it was contrived, but the idea was that Bradley wouldn't trust anybody right off the bat. If Bradley was just open about everything from the beginning that kills the fun of the game, and makes exploring his route pointless. People care about doing those routes because they reveal more about the characters.


You know it's not until right now I actually see what you mean. You posted 3 times in a row for that decision (201/202/203) and I only saw 203. Even when you complained about it when I did the wrong thing back then, I hadn't seen 201/202 when I went to double-check and only noticed now.

So for 203, I see that Bradley will distract Teddy for Helios' plan. And that's what I went with (and he couldn't escape up the chimney because it was locked). I told you it wouldn't have made a difference not because your choices didn't matter, but because the trial itself was pretty much doomed to end in failure. If Bradley warned Teddy about Helios, Teddy would shoot Helios. Then more people would die. And eventually Bradley would die too. That's all I meant.


I said this because it wasn't important for that ending and I figured Panda wouldn't want to know. But maybe I'm wrong for that last part.


It was because it couldn't be smashed or ripped. It's not like it was plot-contrived. Ghost's suit was never opened throughout the entire game besides the Albert End. Ghost's Schrödinger trick wouldn't have worked if she just made it so the suit could be opened easily.


So much stuff in the Bradley end was already happening in the background with the qt that happened between Bradley and Ghost. All the other players were kind of just sitting on their thumbs. I didn't want to have an ending that just resolved itself in the background, especially since all the stuff that was meant to be private was going to be revealed in that exact same ending. Considering you didn't like having to hide information from the beginning of the game, I thought you'd appreciate being given the go-ahead here too.


You can cite specific examples if you want but almost every time it was because you were misunderstanding what was going on. Which could totally be my fault for not making it clear.


Like this. This is not a solution. They would not have gone 'back in time', they would've just died. And then maybe in an alternate history they'd remember what'd happen if they started the trial. But that was not a rational solution.





Not knocking Cesar (and I think he played well) but he's not the most active, especially during certain parts of the day. So yeah there were times where I posted as Emma to move along the plot at the end.


The puzzle rooms SUCKED and were really just there to give some freetime between characters/break up the pace. They would've been better if I was good at them.


The garden is big, that's why randomly digging six foot holes didn't work. Helios only found it at the end because he remembered through the field.

And the very last thing I'll mention here. Zero's goal was originally just that he hated humanity (with a little more flavor). Ghost was also present in all 98 attempts. First half Bradley was lining up just fine with this, but then when the Zero twist happened it was clear you didn't like it and Bradley changed a lot because of it too.

I didn't want you to change Bradley because you should have freedom to play the character how you see (and pretty much every character was different from how I imagined them pre-game). So I actually changed the story itself to make Zero's goal more focused on protecting himself from being erased, and I also made it so Ghost was only a presence in the last two attempts (so Bradley was definitely more fucked up in the other histories without her).

I didn't think these changes were bad since I felt enough of the setup to the twist was still there (Zero was a super-esper and Bradley had been infected with Blight for so long, Bradley was messed up from living in the shelter so long, etc). My main point here is that I wasn't just locking in on a story. I did recognize that you didn't like the Zero twist and adjusted the story as much as I could accordingly.

Oh, wow, first answer is nicer than I expected, nice.

Second answer is what I figured was the case, but yeah until near the end of the game it did stand out as a strange unexplained point that could have had all manner of crazy, plot-relevant explanations.

Wow already wrote up my answers to these but they got lost in the void.

Oh and to respond to this, yeah. It wasn't much of a game but I did do my best to make the decisions matter, even if a lot of them were in the background. Almost none of my preplanned scenes ended up in the game because of the directions players took things.

This is probably the last game I'll GM though because there are projects I need to take more seriously, and these 'games' I make are starting to lean towards more story-related anyway. I am glad I made this a game anyway though just because so many things happened that wouldn't have been scenes otherwise, because I was locked in expecting a timeline to play out a certain way.

Oh, yeah, I guess that relates to another criticism I had, though you were aware of it. A lot went on behind-the-scenes, which meant other players (or indeed the spectators) missed out on things that would have tied the plot together stronger. If secret decisions swayed the story more than I realised, then it's meaningful that the impression I got was that the game was more linear than it really was.

Another question, why did Albert change his last name?

Also I got told the answer already, but for posterity, what was the deal with Midge's password?


Cool to hear you're going to be taking projects seriously, I really do think NG7 is a good sign that you can do really cool things.

I liked the level of gameplay we had in here, but I also hate making decisions so that's probably why. And I can understand most of the decisions JM apparently made. I think NG7 was designed more as a game people would enjoy spectating. Not to say NG5 wasn't good, but with the players left to their own devices, we basically got three room phases of panic and then a boring latter half of the game until the end. Which seems to be a trend with these games.

If I did an NG it'd probably be more like this but we'll see.

I was only really disappointed by the Bradley is Zero thing cause we didn't really get to directly see how he became the leader character. And cause Bradley was just like "no frick that" the entire time after the reveal. Like I can pretty much get how it happened, but it just would have been cool to see. I was kinda hoping that Bradley's childish view of morality never had the opportunity to develop, so he thought his acts as the leader were heroic.

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Was there any significance to Violet's trial specifically involving an elevator shaft as the method of execution or was that just for the dramatic flavor?
Also were the players who froze to death in Tesla's trial chosen at random or

Bit busy to make a huge post now but to answer Kami it was fairly arbitrary :p It was mainly made to distinguish between the two of them. Though I did want to make a Sherrington post where he said he changed his name because “it didn’t suit who he was anymore” or something to that effect, but alas, I never got the chance.

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I considered a scene where Bradley would use Albert's device and switch places with Zero (and also control Adriana) but I decided against it cause it seemed a bit silly. And the heroism thing was part of it (which is why his enemy was Helios) but just wasn't fleshed out.

First off-- the good things: This is, obviously, the first forum NG that attempted to replicate the Zero Escape-style branching storylines, and I think that was a really cool thing to attempt. It reinforced the idea that in this game, death is cheap, and in this game, it certainly was. I think more new elements like this will keep these games from going too stale.

I'm really glad you decided to knick (and then simplify) the DRF Quicktopic convos. I thought that generally worked well. One of my favorite parts of the game was my QT with Nanjo. I think that went about as well as it could've-- and being basically a Stepford Wife probably didn't make it as interesting for them as maybe it could've, but that's basically what my character was, so it went about as well as it could've and I was legit thrilled with it.

I also kind of enjoyed my last-minute QT with BP as well, but I kind of didn't get the time I would've liked to in order to explore it. I sort of wanted to go in the direction of Adriana developing an odd sense of morality, but I didn't think BP was super into it, and we didn't have time to really get to the meat of things anyway, so I sort of just let it lie fallow. That was my bad.

No one else has mentioned it, so I might be the only one, but I found it really very hard to regulate what my character knew in any specific timeline. I liked that JM basically copied the posts before the branch to give context, but I was often still not quite sure if some event had happened in a given timeline or not. If someone wants to attempt branching timelines again, I think it might be worth just doing a bullet-point list of significant events in the first post of that timeline's branch. It might help players like me in future games.

The puzzle rooms were atmospherically nice, but otherwise felt really flat and were just there because it felt like they "should" be. If puzzles aren't a priority then I think in the future the puzzle rooms can just be ignored. That said, I really liked very much Einstein travelling between the rooms. I thought that was a stroke of genius. I would've preferred that we not have stuff posted in the main thread, though. Maybe for each pair of leaders, a private QT could be opened up for something like that? That's a bit more work, but would add a degree of paranoia to the proceedings ("Is our leader actually saying what we think they're saying to the other rooms?") that I think could add a lot to the atmosphere JM was trying to build.

Now for the things I wasn't so enthusiastic about.

tl;dr I felt railroaded to tell the story JM wanted rather than contribute to our shared story. None of the decisions offered to me seemed to actually determine anything about the story of the game in a way that I think is counter to the spirit of RPing.

I don't think I've made it a huge secret that I found aspects of this game really frustrating, and they were core enough to the experience that I can't really say, when I reflect on the game as a goal, that I had the kind of fun I was looking for when I signed up.

When the player survey asked what kind of character I wanted to play, I said some bullshit that were sort of suggestive of character ideas (that were mostly completely out-of-tone with what the story ended up being), but the one thing I really wanted my character to be was proactive-- to have options to affect the storyline. I said that not because I really really wanted to be a "main" character, but because I just wanted to leave my mark on the game.

Just handing Teddy a gun from the beginning was, I think, a really big mistake and limited my ability to have a dramatic scene to what amounted to Mexican standoffs where a gun was pointed at Adriana and Adriana had a cure. In fairness, both of those scenes were pretty good, but there were several times where I felt that if I did try to do something dramatic, then it had to conform to Teddy's character goals because otherwise he'd just shoot Adriana. There were at least two ends where I acted in a way that I considered wildly out-of-character because I thought that doing the opposite would just lead to a "bad" end and waste everyone else's time. It just wasn't the sort of thing I could simply forget about when I was reasonably sure that not everyone would be on board with things I wanted to do.

My character's twist, taken on its own merits, was fine. I wish that I’d have been given something to foreshadow it with. How it fed into the rest of the game seemed like it was given no thought at all, though. Once I found out the nature of my character, I wanted to kill Helios- I thought it would be dramatically appropriate for Helios to pay for making Adriana into his idealized version of her by having her kill him in one timeline-- I even said that this could be a new goal of mine in communications. But I wasn't given the chance to do that or much of anything-- in one timeline I found out, and Teddy immediately blew Helios away, and in the other it was obviously the endgame-- I could've gone apeshit and kill all humans, but there was never any way that was going to plausibly work out, and even if it had it would've just been a waste of like 12 hours for everyone.

I was presented with a choice-- I could've either killed Violet to spite Teddy (which in retrospect, I regret not doing) or just handed over the cure, thereby releasing all power I had over the situation. This binary choice was incredibly unsatisfying and every alternative that I offered was met with "well that won't work" without even having BPs input. That didn't make me feel like there were any alternatives that even could happen, by GM fiat, and if that's the case why was I presented with a choice at all?

Every other choice I got was a variation of "so are you gonna die quietly or is it going to get messy"? I had the opportunity not to go into the freezer, which maybe I should've delayed a bit longer in the interest of it being batshit crazy, but it just felt like I'd have wasted everyone's time to do it, given the circumstances surrounding the trial. And my trial was the same, even worse because everyone could see it coming. I even said something like "when I die I want to have a QT with Bradley in the next timeline?". At the time of my trial, I had no reason to betray Helios because that's one of the few real defining characteristics of Adriana, that she loved Helios, and at the time I had no reason to go against it, even though "sudden and inevitable betrayal" was literally what was on the table, and with Helios' trial it was repetitive to boot.

When was I given an opportunity to show off Adriana's competence? Instead I was just killed off-screen in nearly every ending other than Adriana's and the endgame.

For that matter, I didn't care for Adriana's ending, either. She was just the victim of circumstance and was never given any way to take matters into her own hands, and it ended with her mired in self-pity in a way that none of the other endings were. It wasn't dramatic, it was just ignorable.

All of this stuff culminated in me feeling like Adriana was always, and I mean always, the character things were happening to, and was never the character that was doing the thing other characters were reacting to. And that made me feel like I was unnecessary to be there. If I'm just going to be made to go along with whatever narrative decisions the GM wants then I'm certainly not RPing and I'm barely playing the game at all. It made the character and me, the player, feel powerless to affect the story.

This was really disappointing because the character I got, I was really enthusiastic about. But I didn't feel I could live up to the promise of that character because I felt like I was put into the "side character" bucket and forgotten about. I’m happy that most of the other players seemed to have a better time of it than me, at least.

Right, so I’m a bit more free now so I feel more obliged to give my thoughts on this in more detail. Believe me when I say that I have been thinking about this game for a good chunk of today, so it’s left quite the impact on me. Anyway, gear on up and put on the epic music, because this is gonna get…something, I dunno.

Anyway, where do I even start? Well, as you can probably tell by now, I was a huge fan of this game. I loved the branching timelines because it meant things were hardly ever too sparse and it was extremely exciting throughout, not to mention it also gave all the characters their time in the light. It was an interesting dynamic for sure. I can understand if people felt the decision making parts were too linear, but I honestly didn’t mind too much. Even when I was dead it was great to spectate on. And of course, we only have the cast to thank for that.

Let me be frank and say that I loved the cast this game. They were extremely solid characters, played by very excellent RPers and the connections between all of them were solid. Teddy, Helios, Ghost and Violet were especially some of my personal favourites (Teddy especially, guy was freaking incredible as a character and I loved how he wasn’t just the typical Ace or Dio character, and while he wasn’t one dimensionally evil he didn’t pull the sympathy card all the time either), but everyone else also did very well and there’s not a single character which I really “dislike” that much.

I’ll echo what Kami said though and wish that Adriana got more stuff to do ultimately, because while I liked her character concept and her dynamic with Helios, she ultimately didn’t do much except erase her memories at the end which really also led to kind of a weird ending. I also wish that she were Nina Gummer instead mainly because I feel that Nina was a much more interesting character to me than just Adriana but whatever. I can also see where Mecha is coming from and most of his complaints seem pretty valid so it seems worthwhile to look into balancing characters more in that regard.

The characters I think also each had their moments other than that, and their endings were all solid and gave them all a sense of completeness for the most part. I’m especially satisfied with Helios, Violet, Midge and Emma in that regard, their twists were pretty great. I was also satisfied with Albert as a whole despite the incessant and somewhat unfunny memes revolving around him. I think I played him relatively well but he was also just another great concept to add onto the list and JM gave him so many moments to work with, both as Blaketon and Sherrington. It all worked in a natural way for me and he felt like a very ZE-esque character in that regard, so another huge thank you for JM for giving me such an incredibly solid character.

Puzzle rooms weren’t that great but unlike one moronic GM, JM at least didn’t advertise his game as “puzzle heavy” when it ultimately wasn’t so whatever. The programming puzzles were weird too but those were kind of supplementary anyway. Though now I need to ask, what was the anagram in the Biolab all about? I don’t think that ever got properly answered.

I guess in terms of complaints, I’ll agree with Nanjo that the end-game reveals kind of felt weak. And I mean the end end-game reveals. Bradley being Zero didn’t really click with me and the way Pierre handled everything involving that admittedly didn’t sit right with me either. I felt it was particularly weird how he still didn’t get mad at Teddy. Sure, Bradley technically never knew his parents but Teddy was also responsible for that Blight-X outbreak, which was the original reason he was kept confined in that facility he despised so much, so I expected at least some mild anger towards him, to say the least. I think Pierre being so stubborn on that front did hurt his character as a whole, honestly.

And speaking of, while I can understand where he’s coming from with the game design, I honestly don’t agree with the examples he provided. The Sherrington thing especially, mainly because it involves me. It would’ve hurt the pacing of the game as well as the overall ending had he just been laser cutter to death just like that and everyone escaped. While it would’ve been IC for Bradley to do, it wouldn’t have sat well at all with any of the players had it just anticlimactically ended like that, so I don’t blame JM for doing what he did because quite frankly, it’s more important to take into account the overall pacing of the game and how players would feel about it than randomly just allowing that to happen. Also, I agree with PB that it would have been easier to care about Bradley being Zero had we actually seen his future self be evil and stuff.

In terms of other twists, Ghost being Violet was alright but admittedly the reasoning behind her dying saving the world was a little weak. To mitigate that, I think having that sort of stuff be established beforehand would have helped a lot with that stuff. And I also felt “eh” about the twist that Ghost wasn’t actually Violet. I suppose I don’t dislike it, but I felt that it was like the Seven being a liar twist from 999. It’s just a weird twist thrown in at the end to confuse people more before boom, the game ends. I don’t dislike it, but I’m more apathetic to the fact that Ghost was just some nerd who got attached to a kid. Not that there’s anything wrong with the concept itself, in fact I love the idea of her pretending to be Violet in order to give Albert the inspiration to cure Blight, but it just made the connections not hold up as well. I guess it’s just left ambiguous though so whatever. And speaking of Violet, I kind of felt her connection with Bradley also wasn’t that great despite JM’s explanation so that’s just whatever, I guess.

Also random tangent but the QTs this time were meh, and I think it’s because a lot of people were Discording it up and forgot to use their QTs. Which is a pity because I love reading through that stuff after the game ends and seeing everyone’s thoughts and speculations at the end. Special mentions to Pierre, PB and Nanjo for actually using them, you guys were cool. I’m also pretty amused that me, Ghost and Midge all came up with the ‘Ghost is Clara’ theory at some point or another in the game, that was pretty cool. Same with the ‘Violet is Zero’ theory. Also a big heck you to PB your dumb whisper at the end got me kicked in the crotch by a crazy kid and I was extremely confused till now so thanks for that.

In terms of other questions, who killed whom in Adriana’s end? And what was the payoff to Bradley reminding Albert of Isaac, other than him “saving” him in the true end? And who were Slim and Zippy to Midge, anyway? Just guys she knew who also happened to be immune?

I feel like I have more stuff to say other than this but I forgot so oops. Get ready for an even longer post if I do remember that stuff, I guess. Nah, but in all seriousness that mostly summarises how I feel about the game. Ultimately, I’m feeling pretty good about it, though I think Pierre/Mecha’s thoughts are definitely worth taking into consideration, and for the most part I think it would work for the better if we didn’t use this formula too often, especially as it takes a lot of planning, haha. If I ever host another NG in the future, it’ll probably just be a single timeline (though probably way shorter than this). Anyway, that’s about it. Thanks for the fun times, JM.

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I'll respond more thoroughly when not at work @Mecha @SC

Hmm yeah, I dunno if that anagram would've improved my thoughts on the twist either. Though I'm fine with the payoff, it's honestly quite nice, even though I was expecting some crazy twist involving an Isaac homunculus XD

Also Slim and Zippy for NG8 please.

Oh also what the heck was that Albert/Albert QT all about and why didn't I receive it?

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I definitely neglected my QT, but I'm not normally forthcoming about things, sorry. Was the same with my QTs in every other game I've been in.

Personally, Ghost being "just some nerd who got attached to a kid" was actually a really nice twist, as to me it's really moving that she went so far despite not actually being someone special like Violet. I guess it subverts the usual twist of "they were this meaningful person all along" by saying "they were just someone all along. They could have been anyone, yet they went that far." Kind of like a "normal people are the real heroes" deal.

So NG6 was the exception huh, I see how it is.

Sure, honestly, I can see why you like that. In fact, thinking over it for a little while I actually feel fine with the twist. I like what it says about her character despite barely being connected as a result. Though it's weird that the message in your QT pretty much confirmed you were Violet but I suppose that it would be very hard to be ambiguous over something like that so I suppose I can give JM a pass on that.

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No, even NG6 was the same :p I wasn't proactive, I only posted there because you kept prompting me to.

When I read the QT post I interpreted it as Ghost not being Violet, actually. I immediately saw where JM was going with it.

Well you can't say I didn't try then :p

Also ooooh, rereading the post that makes a lot more sense. I liked the wording he used for that. So yeah never mind that twist was great (though I still think revealing it just like that right at the end was weird but whatever).

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I would have liked for Adriana to kill Helios, but the only opportunity for that I was presented with involved Helios teaming up with Teddy, which seemed too OOC for me to actually justify it. I also wasn't a fan of Adriana's trial, and if we had done C2 first I probably would have just allied. I think it kinda messed up C2 by turning it into a re-tread.

I can't believe Pierre blamed Albert for that, that's hilarious.

Also I never posted this so you people have no reason to believe me, but I kinda guessed Slim and Zippy were Midge's friends because in Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, the main character is homeless and he had similar nicknames for his buddies which isn't really relevant other than me wanting to mention Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard.

Also why did everyone get vaccines in Albert's ending? I assume it had something to do with the blood money but I forget the details

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Yeah actually PB that's what it reminded me of too, weird coincidence.

Also Albert took the money in the safe so anyone who killed him would get vaccines I think. It was a sort of secret trial.

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The final twist is a good twist but I feel like it's underdeveloped no matter Ghost's identity. The number of fingerprints Ghost had on the game were too few. Like this game and the entire concept was largely influenced by her, but like before that point there wasn't really anything else which relied on her so much. Everything else felt like it could have come from Emma. It would have also helped to have experienced why Emma and Ghost thought the Violet dying thing mattered so that Ghost's actions to hide her identity were for a reason we could have understood.

The homunculus character actually changed around a lot. It was originally Bradley (and the original him died of Blight eventually/died when escaping) but then ZTD came out.

That qt was so Blaketon and Sherrington could dialogue but it didn't make much sense so I decided nah.

I'm not really sure about that, if anything I was afraid it would be too obvious. It was known from Bradley End that Bradley was trapped in a bunker not allowed to leave, and Ghost had to wear a hazmat suit around him. We also knew about Ghost's employers from that ending. I thought Ghost's connections with the CDC, setting, and by extension Emma were plenty established. Emma was just more invested in saving the world while Ghost cared more about Bradley. To each their own if you still think there wasn't enough but it was a twist that was guessed :shrug:

She just as easily could have been uninvolved though, from where I was standing. Like sure, I theorized that maybe Ghost was behind some sort of plot, but the nullification game's relationship to that plot didn't exist. There was nothing that Ghost's part in making the game would explain until the last page, so that didn't work for me at all.