I Dun Goofed

Alright, so. Let's cut right to the chase.

I've fucked up, and I'm sorry.

I know a lot of people have been less than pleased with the direction of the quest for a fair while now, and to be honest I haven't quite been feeling it myself either. It's been quite a bit since I've really enjoyed writing the quest, and as I've thought about it I've realized this really has nothing to do with anything about the quest per se, and everything to do with the shitty decisions I've made in writing it. I've backed myself into a corner I never really wanted to go, and never should have gone.

It's not so much the matter of the darker elements and tone, though that is definitely something I'm not terribly happy about. I regret having gone so far down that path, and I think the quest really has suffered for it. But really that matter is something of a tangent to what I think the real root of the problem is, and by itself I don't think it would be too difficult to fix.

No, the real problem here is that I've completely strayed off the path of what this quest is supposed to be about. Namely, I've ended up making the quest inordinately focused on the Producer. It's certainly not good to have the quest MC to just be a bland, faceless shell for self-insertion, but I got so wrapped up in trying to give the Producer a background and an identity that I strayed too far in the opposite direction and pushed him into being really the dead center of attention for the quest. And while that may be a perfectly fine place for an MC to be in most quests -- expected, even -- this isn't quite a typical quest.

The main purpose of this quest is to cast the iM@S girls as fantasy adventurers, and play with the developments from that premise. That's what I really wanted to do going in, and that's what I imagine many/most of the players came to see. While the Producer certainly has an important role to play in all that, his role is not the central one. The Producer is there to guide and help the girls in their stories, not stand in the spotlight of his own.

And what did I go and do? Stuck Producer right smack dab in the middle of the spotlight. And I did it in a way that really digs myself into a hole as far as getting him back out of there. It started with the whole demon possession thing. While I do think this concept could, in theory, be perfectly viable, I must admit that my clumsy execution of it made it a terrible idea in practice. That matter logically demands a lot of focus, and warps the whole of the story and the responses of the other characters around it. Which just isn't right for this quest. This is iDOLM@STER Fantasy Quest, not Recovering Demoniac Quest. Not that the latter is bad, but it's not what I set out to write, it's not what (I think) most people came looking for, and frankly it's not something that particularly hooks me as a writer. (Such as the term can be applied to such a rank amateur as myself.)

Then on top of that, I went and, without even really thinking about it, started up a whole scenario that's basically all about P with no particular room for most of the other cast members, logically speaking, and which (frankly) isn't especially important to the plot. I had/have my reasons for going with the whole pit fighting thing as the Hangover-esque fallout of the drinking contest, and while I must admit I could have done a better job of conveying the sort of tone I had in mind I don't think the idea itself is that terrible. Except for the fact that it is inherently all about P, and only P.

And that's just terrible. That was a huge fuck-up on my part. I should not have done that, I regret it terribly, and I apologize profusely.

So. Confessions and apologies out of the way, where do we go from here? What's the best way to dig us out of this hole I've gotten us into? I have a few possible paths in mind, but I think this is something that deserves player input. (And frankly, in light of all this realization of how much I've fucked up the course of the quest so far, I'm not entirely trusting of my own judgment regardless.)

The easy way out would be to simply throw in the towel and scrap the quest. I've proven myself to be a pretty shitty writer, and there's really no easy way out of the mess I've written myself into short of cheap retcons or brazenly sweeping the issues that ought (logically) to keep the story focused on P under the rug. Along with the dwindling player satisfaction and the way my schedule as a grad student makes pacing an absolute nightmare, I can see a reasonably compelling argument for just calling it a bust.

However, if there's still a substantial interest in trying to salvage the quest and keep it going, I'm perfectly open to that. I'm not going to give up and run from the challenge if there are still people willing to put up with me, and while the tightness of my schedule will make the pace of things problematic, I do have an idea that might help with that. I see three main ways we could approach trying to salvage what I've gone and fucked up:

One would be to pretty much just keep going, learning from this mistake and working to fix it without any major gaps in continuity. If we go this route, I would like to skip over the remainder of the pit fighting gauntlet, as I really don't think there's all that much of significance to be gained by playing through it in detail. Rather than going through the remaining fights in detail, I could address it all in a single block (or split it up with just a couple of rolls or decision points, if that's preferred) and focus on getting back to a context where the rest of the cast can get back into the picture. Past that point, it's just a matter of trying to work through P's hiatus and recovery without making it all about P again.

Another would be to go with a bit more of a timeskip, jumping to the tail end of P's recovery to allow for a bit of a fresh approach and avoid the risk of getting bogged down in details that draw the focus back to P, as I seem to be prone to. (Hopefully that tendency will be reduced now that I'm consciously aware of the problem, but it still may be wise to take additional precautions against it.) There wouldn't be (much) of the slice-of-life stuff, which some may have been looking forward to, and it's a bit more major of a continuity disruption than simply jumping past the fights, but it's probably the safest bet short of retconning whole chunks of the story (which I really don't want to do) or a total reboot.

Which is the last option I have in mind. Reboot. Start fresh with a new Producer. It could have some continuity with the existing storyline (something like the current P deciding it would be best to retire after all, and a new Producer coming in to replace him later on), or just be a total reboot.