Reforge Discussion, etc.

Link to Reforge
Reforge is a fantasy adventure in which a handful of very unprepared people in a very unprepared world try to stop the servants of an ancient god from recreating the universe in its image. Not dying in the process would be a plus. It relies heavily on reader suggestions with nothing really written in stone, and usually updates more than once a week. It used to be hosted elsewhere, and a mirror including the older, pre-ET content is pending.

On the topic of the mirror- within probably just a few updates, the viewpoint is going to switch to a scene that relies much more heavily on older content. I don’t think that reading that past content is an absolute necessity given the recap, but I recognize that people might still want clarification on stuff. Because of this, I wanted to get the mirror up before the scene change but it seems like the new site isn’t quite all there yet. So in the meantime this thread can act as a place to ask about anything that seems unclear!

Obviously it can also act as a place for general discussion of characters, events, and world.

Feel free to pitch me questions about the story, setting, or running of the adventure, too, because as a reader driven endeavor I want to have open communication about this thing.

Dang, I was thinking that Donella might have been doing that when she made herself disappear. Can I see the update where that happened?

Wait, doing what?

The mirror's up through that moment now, so check it out I guess?

Ah, sorry. I thought she might have been hoping strongly for something in order to make the jar react, but...hm now I'm not so sure. Maybe I didn't get Donella to hope for the right things?

Okay so I think probably me failing as a storyteller is at fault here because you're totally right on both counts. It was her hope for salvation that made The Thing happen at first, and her hope to be noticed that ended it. Was that not clear? How did the last update's events read to you if that didn't come across? I'm making this up as I go along and have very little idea what I'm doing so feedback is appreciated.

Also, mirror is fully caught up now!

It read to me that the magic jar stopped working/maybe was destroyed through overuse of its power, mainly because line read to me as "No, you picked wrong."

If only it could be as easy as just hoping.

I think it was especially easy to come to that conclusion because I was only basing my suggestion off of Blue's earlier use of water magic to cross that gap, and trying to translate it into something Donella could do without using out of character knowledge.

Right, that makes sense. I think I had intended it to be like a dramatic irony thing? I think it reads like that now, thoughts? Though tbh not really sure why I took it in that direction to begin with.

Character building questions are hard :(

EDIT: I think the new line works well.

Nice update! The first image is really well done.
Out of character, I'm confident that they break the magic rules. But what evidence does Donella have for that, again?

Thanks a bunch! I wasn't sure how that panel would work (especially with the one on the far right which I've never drawn digitally) so it's nice to hear that it came across alright.

As for Donna's suspicions, they're all about color. Donna doesn't actually have a lot to base this off of and is by no means certain of anything, but here's how it breaks down.

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The different elements of magic are each associated with a different palette:

(Although these are kind of general and I don't really stick to specific hexes or anything like that)
In the forest, Donna saw Cyan preparing to cast a spell, and she looked like this; at the time Donna thought the color seemed off but that it might have just been Air, which it looks close to.

Later, Cyan uses the same color of magic when conjuring up some energy blades to kill Aeron with. So Cyan's not only using a color that doesn't actually look like any of the elements, it's harder for Donna to believe that it's Air and she's just seeing things when Cyan's doing stuff with it that seems like it would probably not be under the domain of Air.

Like I said, none of this exactly proves anything, and all of it is just in Donna's memory. It's also worth noting just how significant of a claim this is to make- I had hoped to firmly establish that fact about the setting's cosmology before this came up but because of how things panned out I didn't manage to fit in a relevant scene before we hit this point. Oh well?

Suffice it to say, magic just is divided into the elements. It's not even a question, or a matter of academia- it's just a fact of reality that everybody knows and experiences every single day. There is only one exception (or three, or six, depending on who's counting), and it is a BIG DEAL and not relevant to the situation.

Also I now realize that in leaving out the old character creation and whatnot I never included in story the list of and colors of the elements? WHOOPS, gonna try and find a way to slide that in as a new first page in a way that actually works.

Ha, I noticed that you skipped something. When you originally posted reforge, I decided to hunt down the wdyd forums, but they seemed kind of extremely broken. I did get to see the first panel, though.

My personal base for confidence is that the palette is different, but also that Cyan and Blue appear weirdly limited in their spell choices.

What isn't really clear to me, though is this: can individuals ever use more than one element themselves?

This hasn't come up yet in story, but yeah, it's possible for a person to be born with the ability to cast in more than one element. It's uncommon but not mind-blowing or anything.

In general, increasing numbers of elemental affiliations are exponentially rarer in the human population. There are some creatures or plants or whatever that are inherently multi-elemental, however.

Spirits can also be composed of more than one element, but that means something a little different than an organism using multiple elements.

Heyyyyyyyyyy guess who's about to use a discussion thread to ask for specific feedback bc it doesn't really seem like the type of thing that belongs in the main adventure critique thread I think?

Alright so the current title page sort of thing on the mirror, imo, needs to be replaced. I had this idea to like, have a thing that would update over the course of the story, with other main characters and factions joining the cliffside as they banded together in the comic and although I still think that could be fun the image is frankly not indicative of the actual adventure as much as it was a project that I already had lying around partly drawn when I realized I wanted a title page to put links on :|

So I've been working on an actual title page and figured I'd ask for some opinions before putting it up:

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Also! Got around to hitting up that last panel again, and the thing is that all sorts of bits of the underground were originally going to be industrial grating but I couldn't find a way to do it so I just left it blank. I think I have a way to do it now, but of course I'd like to get some idea of whether it's alright, or if I should just stay consistent, or if it's too visually noisy or something before committing to doing it in future pictures!

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Thanks!

I thought I'd repliedto this earlier, sorry. Both look good :)

Don't worry about it, thanks a bunch! I still never edited that panel in, but there're a bunch of continuity snafus to fix lmao

Something not really clear to me -- how is information on enemy spirits stored? How do you look them up?

Something not really clear to me -- how is information on enemy spirits stored? How do you look them up?

It's euphemisms all the way down. Describing what their domains and appearance are, giving written descriptions of symbols that you can't risk actually drawing, coming up with epithets so that you can reference them without actually saying their names, etc.

Though I imagine that if an epithet becomes overused it starts to be just another 'canonical' symbol of (aka part of the body of) that spirit and you have to stop using it.

Basically it's as much of a pain in the ass as possible.

I think it's more difficult for a spirit to pop up where another one has already staked a claim though- and this makes the symbols of the High Gods really useful! Gestalt symbols like the one built into TSB's helmet are powerfully symbolically loaded w/o representing a specific active spirit. They saturate an area with 'magical meaning' or w/e in a way that doesn't generally risk summoning anything.

So maybe all you need to do is blanket a page in High God shenanigans and then if you write SCARB down it'd be 'neutralized' by the opposing holiness or whatever?

I've been having fun with the strategy prompts myself. For me at least, they're easier to feel confident in than open ended plot guiding prompts. Still pretty time consuming to reply, of course.

Well, I'm glad they're fun! :o
And yeah, that one ran really long. I'll try and keep the word count and 'listiness' (real word) down in the future.

Howdy! OK SO
1. I love doing Reforge, it's very fun and everyone who's ever participated has my undying affection
2. It turns out that it is Difficult to do this and other art stuff at the same time :|

So I'm just making a thing to say I'm putting the adventure on pause while I work on some other projects because I feel like I should say so if that's what I'm doing, which it is.

It'll probably come back (consult point 1) but like, in a way that's not as longwinded probably :| :| :|
Until then,

:(
Thanks for letting us know (and for your undying affection).
See you eventually.