Lodestar: Age of a New Dawn - Review by archivebro

Alright, I’ve put this off long enough. I’ve made it up by voting in the latter part of the 2nd thread and shit-posting about going a merchant route and DRM runes at least for a while… but that unofficially closed a while ago. Whoops.

My first thought on this was “man this is really reminding me of an LP I watched on Skies of Arcadia”, which you then commented on being a major influence on the quest. Congrats on making the source material feel so strong in the opening because Skies of Arcadia was a good game.

The quest hits the right notes past that to capture the same feel as the game, which was about good-natured sky pirates gradually getting sucked into situations increasingly above their head. The setting and tone leans (or is) comedic when dealing with the primary crew, with seriousness being interjected when seemingly at anons discretion. It’s a good fit for what it seems like the quest will entail, which will definitely involve flying ships to various locales for trade, adventure, and to see what’s out there.

You mentioned running this as a campaign before for some friends. That’s mostly a good thing for the quest since you’ve effectively tested a lot more of the setting, characters, and plot than most QMs. I do wonder how it’ll work when anons inevitably go off the rails in comparison, but you got through the “trial run” with the other group and no idea how they’d react so at least it’s familiar territory!

Some things to address: shops, scope creep, and party switches. First one is easy and already being worked on - you’ve mentioned making a better list of goods and services and delaying a vote on shopping to a new thread as a result. It seems like shopping is going to be a recurring thing in the quest, so spending some time to make scaleable lists you can easily shift between merchants seems like something that’ll pay dividends. It’s generally better to end threads with fiddly stuff like shopping rather than starting them since they can get bogged down in minutiae pretty easily. Not always possible with how long threads are, but this was a good opportunity for it.

Now, scope creep. Plenty of other QMs here have talked about it in the past! Anons end up doing things that QMs don’t expect or plan on, and all QMs need to figure out where the line is on building out their world vs. letting anons play in it and see what they don’t end up using/seeing. With an adventure-filled world in which you’re flying a pirate ship there’s a LOT of openness on where to go. Anons could decide to become merchants, sail off into the distance to see what’s out there and if Ramza will sleep with it, or stick close to their known associates and explore mostly when prompted.

Each is a very different game, and for now I’m unsure how heavy a hand you’ll have in guiding the narrative. The disk/part references and characters like Admiral Sato showing up “early” suggests you already have some far-off points in mind, and that may lead to some railroady feelings later on if not managed properly. The setting and feel of the quest promises the exact opposite of a script after all, so I can’t say anons won’t be more sensitive to it than some other quests. Just keep the scope of the quest in mind and don’t be afraid to ask anons what they’re looking to do (in-character or not) and take the time to retool things if you feel anons are gravitating towards certain aspects that don’t gel well with that long-term vision.

Finally, party switches. I like the idea of switching the PoV character every thread, it lets everyone have a hand in crafting the characters and lets anons get a better feel for how their crew thinks and operates. I do think a little clarification is needed on whether anons should be controlling non-PoV characters indirectly while voting. I ran down a list of why each member of the crew could support the demon crew member joining, but I don’t know I should expect that to “count” for the others or not. Playing as the character with low social/brain stats makes it feel like it’s out-of-character to try and convince the others even if I can think of reasons they’d accept.

So, some clarification in the opening post when anons go to pick a character would be nice. I imagine the options are that if you’re acting with the crew then you’ll figure out what applies on a case-by-case basis (i.e. write-ins with how other characters need to act may be considered), if thinking through other character’s actions/reasoning gives a bonus to a roll or check for them even if we’d have no way of controlling or helping as our PoV character (such as assuming a crewmate that escaped a prison would be trying to bust us out using a method within their skill set and we help set up the situation they’d need to use it), or if we’re limited to convincing others of our viewpoint or helping directly and we can get bonuses/maluses that way.

In terms of writing, nothing jumped out at me as a problem. I will comment that speech tics can be aggravating to read since I have to translate them mentally and the demon definitely uses too many ellipses, but with those problems quarantined to one character and none of the narration so far I can ride over that relatively easy. We’ll see how that holds up now that she’s a crew member though…

All told, a very strong start for a quest! Glad to have you on board as a new QM.