Dieselpunk Magical Girl Quest – Review by CosmicWatcher

By: CosmicWatcher !118LTnv3DE
Originally posted: 02.08.2016
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DIESELPUNK MAGICAL GIRL QUEST

THREAD 1 REVIEW

WRITTEN AS IT IS READ

FORWARD

My knowledge of the magical girl genre extends to having watched Sailor Moon and Cardcaptors on Toonami when I was a kid and when I had the misfortune to have watched Madoka on the recommendation of a friend.

I only have a passing familiarity with the conventions of the genre.

STORM THE BEACHES

We begin as a girl named Victory and we're entering WW2 occupied France to meet up with La Resistance and fight the Nazis.

Well that got dark. Don't magical girls usually fight shadow monsters and aliens and stuff like that? It's going to be kind of jarring to see us shoot a heart shaped beam through Hans Grosse. Here's hoping we're at least old enough to enlist because if not then wow is this thread suddenly dark.

I was kind of thinking Rocketeer with tutus from the quest title. But the way the quest opens its clear we're going for a dirty, grounded tone. And I'm fine with that. We don't ride in on a motorcycle and save people. We don't escape a Nazi castle. We creep around in the bushes and its dark and dirty and when we find the good guys they're disheveled. We traveled to Normandy stuck in a torpedo, not parachuting out of a plane.

What I'm saying is good job laying out the tone quickly. For a quest with this title you get a lot of ideas about what its about and the first few paragraphs make it clear what its all about.

I recommend switching to something like "Allied Hexen". Its a bit more informative and flavorful than "Dieselpunk Magic Girl". Rolls off the tongue better too.

CLOAK AND DAGGER

We do a lot of cloak and dagger work. Deciding whether or not to fight enemies, whether or not to hide, and I'm getting a sort of Godlike/Uber vibe where its WW2 and there are superhumans but its very gritty and the supers have exploitable limitations.

Then we turn into a catgirl.

WE TURN INTO A CATGIRL

We turn into a catgirl because we screwed up a roll to turn into a cat and go stealth mode.

It more than a little jars with the tone. Especially when we're saved by a grenadier traumatized by popping Fritz through the head with a Mauser.

Headshots and Catgirls do not a consistent tone make. To the QMs credit, he rolls with it pretty well and doesn't draw much attention to it. Maybe it can work? I'm just saying "whoops my spell backfired and now I'm a catgirl" is very disconcerting.

NO MERCY

We meet our first enemy magical girl, a woman that throws scalpels named Mercy.

It's pretty dull. She's a crazy nurse and our bantz aren't anything. We roll and crit and that beats her.

I'm having uncomfortable flashbacks to Hitmaid Quest. A boss fight should be exciting, but it just made me wish we were back doing cloak and dagger stuff.

You know games like MGS really work to build up a boss character before you fight and kill them. If you're going to throw a life or death bossfight and want it to be a bossfight the boss needs to have had a bit of developing beforehand.
-cont


You don't have to make the character a catgirl because of a botch and you don't have to make the the boss drop in one blow because of a crit.

In our first fight going full magical girl with the costume and everything we just bop Mercy on the head and win. It's kind of a let down. When the hero first gets to henshin they should be a show stopper.

We rescue a defector and return to Eisenhower base. We're introduced when American MG New Yorker boxer Uppercut gets in a brawl with snooty elitist French MG Epesiste. It doesn't really give us much to work these characters. They seem pretty stereotypical and their character development is kind of stilted. After Uppercut knocks out the Frenchie we get some exposition about how she might have had a relationship with dead magical girl Clockwork and it feels really inorganic.

We file our report (which shouldn't have been a vote option. As one anon noted, why not do both options? What were we going to do, lie to our boss?) and move on to down time.

DOWN TIME

Thank you thank you thank you QM for remembering to put some downtime in the first thread. People need to talk in between the action. Think Star Wars. Some of the best scenes were in the downtime like when the group was on the Millenium Falcon before they got to the Death Star. A narrative is the tide, it has ebbs and flows.

And color me surprise. Mercy is foreshadowed to come back from the dead slasher villain style.

Be careful QM. The players know to burn the body now. And they will if you let them. which is why the next fight takes place on a boat and ends with Mercy falling into the water .

The character interactions during the down time feel a little stilted but I'm glad they're there. Ericka talks to us about her backstory, and then about the leader of the German MGs named Dracula and then she's crying in our arms as we hug her. The dialogue feels a little too expedient.

Don't be afraid to really stretch out a dialog especially when it involves a character we're just now getting to know.

We then talk to a soldier, and I like that. I like that we just can talk to this soldier and add some flavor to the world. It makes the game world feel that much more organic. Then we talk to Uppercut, female Joseph Joestar basically. Clockwork is even her Caesar. Our interact with her is short but cute. I liked it.

THE GOAL

We're in a world where the Axis benefited from Dracula and magical girls and that's a sentence I never thought I would type. Rommel succeeded in Africa and is moving on to Mesopotamia led by Dracula. We have to stop Dracula from getting the Spear of Destiny.

This is good. We have a clear thread and a clear goal right away.A lot of quests don't do this.

SO FAR

It's not the best written quest but what needs to be in place for a quest and good narrative is in place. We open with an established tone, we develop our characters through interaction, and we are presented with a clear adversary and goal.



DIESELPUNK MAGICAL GIRL

THREAD 2 REVIEW

WRITTEN AS IT IS READ

BIZARRE ADVENTURES

We land in Cairo after surviving an aerial engagement thanks to our pilot who may or may not have special luck powers. I like that there's more to this world than magical girls. There's power armor and guys with supernatural abilities and the Nazis are plotting to use the spear of destiny to make an army of the dead. Revolver Ocelot is even on the Ruskie's team. It makes the world seem very large and vibrant.

We recruit a diamond creating magical girl and I'm a little worried we might run into problems with the cast growing so fast. The Uppercut/Clockwork drama has been tabled for now and I wish we got more on that. She did deck one of our teammates over it. With a 4th magical girl on top of allies like the Russian magical girl Blizzard I'm worried the character development is going to slow and get stale, don't let that happen.

We get in a lot of fights with our MG buddies. Fights against airplanes and armored soldiers and thugs and even zombie soldiers when we attack a Nazi dig site. But as one anon in the thread pointed out the fighting is kind of dull. It needs polish, it needs emotional investment.

WHAT I'D LIKE TO SEE

I think we could use some explaining of the whole magical girl thing-when did it start, how did so many people develop powers, what are its "rules", things like that. We could also use some character development for our MC. Victory is a player character, but that doesn't mean she can't have her own personality.

I remember a bit of criticism I got on my quest that really helped me out. It was to stop having everything the MC said be voted on. Have the MC say and do things on their own and save the dialogue and action choices for the important stuff. That way the character becomes a character but the anons can still control their actions.

And as I've mentioned before more emotion and description in the fights. Describe what the characters think and feel as they fight. Describe how the fight affects them.

VERDICT

There's only 2 threads in the archive so this is a young quest. It could get better or worse. But as it stands now I give it a LIGHT RECOMMENDATION. The characters and setting aren't particularly interesting but I feel that they could develop into something interesting as the quest continues. And there's nothing I find annoying or eye rolling. The tone is for the most part consitant. The characters are shallow but clear. The overall threat is clear and is slowly being developed and uncovered.

The biggest advice I can give is to take some more influence from JoJo. Make the team really feel like bros through their struggles. Have them play off each other.

If you can make the anons care about our NPC sidekicks you will have a playerbase that will follow the entire quest.

END OF DIESELPUNK MAGICAL GIRL REVIEW