Masquerade Plot Thread

[Seerow]

There is a plot guide the Forums you can look at: http://subeta.net/forums/view/895545

[Silverevilchao]

There is a plot guide the Forums you can look at: http://subeta.net/forums/view/895545

Ohhhhh, derp. Sorry. x.x

[Gagarox]

I'm loving the Masquerade. The plot guide has helped me through the plot up to the current step. I even got a few items from the Menagerie, plus a few items I have. What do you think?

[Wingsrising]

New plot step! Head back to the Coda Caves.

This is getting interesting, although I agree that the Player Character seems a bit thick.

I'm now going to screenshot the Ziara history book -- I wish I'd done it earlier. (Maybe a good idea to do that before you do this next plot step if you haven't already.)

[Seerow]

I'm sad I skipped a good chunk of this step. I'm not sure if it's been fixed yet, but there was a glitch where your other self would appear before you'd gone to Yun Enterprises and I clicked me and finished. Hopefully there weren't any "points", if there even are going to be, during that part.

Timeline seems kinda off though! We were sent back about 20 years, but wasn't Yun killed like 3 years ago? Marcel must have been plotting murder for a very long time

[Rakumel]

How many times am I supposed to go through the whole go-back-in-time and click-on-myself thing before I successfully pick my own pocket? Seriously, I've done it about seven times now and I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong.

[Wingsrising]

I don't think I missed anything, but I picked my pocket on the first try and I'm wondering if I did something wrong now...

Someone pointed out in the thread on Subeta that TWO things have changed in the book -- the people who made failed assassination attempt that was opposite the Vernon Yun page escaped before, but were caught now (maybe our pocket-picking led to increased security?)

I assume that this was one of those Back-to-the-Future-like "30 years from now you will be killed by Libyan terrorists" things and that's why the timelines don't match, but does that mean the last Masquerade plot didn't happen now? If it didnt, will Inspector Thorpe even remember us? I notice the shopkeeper dialogue at the two shops hasn't changed.

[Rakumel]

Okay, somehow I got it after about three or four more tries. *shrug* I don't know what I did differently. Maybe it's random for each person and my luck just sucks today? XD

Well, that aside...at least things are kind of getting interesting now. Wonder what else is going to change?

[Ierosbats]

Well, I hate to be that guy (oh, who am I kidding. I'm always that guy...) but this plot is driving me crazy. The pacing is way off, the mechanics are clunky, writing dialogue (that hasn't even been proofread) for the player is obnoxious, and my god... why the heck did they attempt a time travel story? Time travel is so freaking hard to get right. It can be amazing when done well but it can get out of hand very easily. Even the Doctor Who writers don't always nail it. It's very ambitious for this event, but I think a little foolish. The previous subeta plots haven't exactly been gripping epics. I'm not saying the creative team isn't capable of writing a good story, I just think that when the other site events are "Christmas" and "Halloween" and "Flowers" then maybe jumping straight to time travel is a bit of a stretch.

This line is especially great:

Success! You nab the time travel device and make a quick getaway. You don't linger to see what happens to the other you.

Oh, is that so? Great. Why would I? What could possibly go wrong? Consequences what even are those no no no it's fine.

[bonecrivain]

To be honest, I'm not even bothering to read the dialogue. As far as I can tell, it's not necessary, since the plot writers so kindly provided my side of the conversation for me, and I'd rather not read the things they're making me say. That's been too embarrassing/infuriating in previous plots.

Time travel is something I'm stupidly fascinated with. I blame it on my dad, who had a similar love for anything time travel related (books, movies, tv shows), even though most of that genre turns out to be pretty terrible. There's a reason for that. It's an extremely complicated idea, and it takes a lot of skill to weave something believable without too many gaping holes. Subeta plots are pretty inconsistent and badly paced on average, so I really don't hold out much hope for this one turning out well.

A lot of the new items are nice, so I'm mostly just dancing to pick up enough trinkets to buy those and maybe, eventually, another key for a steamworks pet.

[Foghawk]

It's okay, Ierosbats, we can be that guy together. I've already expressed my reservations about the writing, but the time travel mechanics have expanded this plot into a new dimension of clunk. IMO anything but a type one timeline (or maybe a very careful type four) is cause for automatic facepalm, and I can't say I'm expecting Subeta to redeem that with a good story. Rakumel, it took me twenty or thirty tries to pick my stupid pocket; this I consider frankly absurd.

That said:

Someone pointed out in the thread on Subeta that TWO things have changed in the book -- the people who made failed assassination attempt that was opposite the Vernon Yun page escaped before, but were caught now (maybe our pocket-picking led to increased security?)

The book says Thorpe was assisted by "an unknown bystander". I'm assuming it's us. Maybe we'll get some lore cleanup on the Subetan government? It's never made half a lick of sense.

I'm just holding out hope that these "riftborns" will be a) battle opponents or b) a kickass new pet color. Knock on wood?

[Marah]

Apparently the attempt at the chancellors life was stopped because inspector Thorpe had help from an unknown person. I'm guessing that was us? in a timestream that might possibly still happen? edit: what Foghawk said

And I can't help but wonder what else will be undone and if isaac is a real boy now...

[Cranberry]

I love time-travel movies and stories... love them (the movie Triangle is really neat recent one, for anyone who hasn't seen it). But yeah, even the best ones have paradoxes. I can make myself ignore them if it's a great story. It's really hard to do time-travel stories well.

Anyway, I have access to the staff forum where everything's spelled out, but I try to ignore most of it because I like actually doing the plot instead of reading blocks of text in a thread. I just find out if and when they need my battle admin services and take care of that. So I'm not sure where this one is heading!

[Wingsrising]

I agree that the plotting and writing isn't exactly Hugo-winning quality, but so far it appears to be an ambitious storyline am I'm interested to see where they're going with it. So I'm enjoying it so far.

[Silverevilchao]

It's okay, Ierosbats, we can be that guy together. I've already expressed my reservations about the writing, but the time travel mechanics have expanded this plot into a new dimension of clunk. IMO anything but a type one timeline (or maybe a very careful type four) is cause for automatic facepalm

Would just like to say right now that the best type one timeline of all time is in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

That aside, yeah, time travel has to be written well or handwaved (see: Skyrim*) to work, and my problem with the time travel in this plot is primarily that it assumes. I didn't do the Steamworks plot last year, so going by the plot my character should be, by all accounts, not there in the past at all. But this year's plot assumes that I did, which breaks my suspension of disbelief a bit.

I don't really have a problem with the "rewriting history" kind of stuff (Back to the Future did it really weirdly but the movie's still good), but I hate it when timelines make assumptions. On the other hand, even the best stories with time travel tend to muck things up, so while this isn't exactly Heinlein (speaking of time travel mucking things up), I think some leniency should be granted. I'm happy that they writers are trying to do something massively ambitious as opposed to the same old thing, even if they stumble and fall over a little bit while doing so.



*in which the time travel is explained by "yeah, previous heroes used an Elder Scroll to break time here, so using the same said piece of creation at that location could allow you to go back and see what happened. Also, dragons are descended from Akatosh, the god of time, so we're already kind of fucked up in the time department"