FOR THE GUYS todd bonzalez's... smogoff rpg [postgame]

Blizihguh

Blizihguh

earl said:
Blizihguh im glad we made a good killing while it lasted

if anyone encountered the mystery masked pair, that was us
Click to expand...
It was a blast man, even if we didn't win I feel like we put in work. Sorry you got ganked and then immediately died again lol

Huge thanks todd for the great game and everyone else I bumped into while playing, wandering around and reading your posts was a big treat every day. Sorry I ended up killing so many of you, I swear I didn't go in wanting to murder but man a spooky tree guy gave me a cool cape, how was I NOT gonna take him up on that
 
earl

earl

(EVIOLITE COMPATIBLE)
is a Community Contributor
Blizihguh said:
It was a blast man, even if we didn't win I feel like we put in work. Sorry you got ganked and then immediately died again lol

Huge thanks todd for the great game and everyone else I bumped into while playing, wandering around and reading your posts was a big treat every day. Sorry I ended up killing so many of you, I swear I didn't go in wanting to murder but man a spooky tree guy gave me a cool cape, how was I NOT gonna take him up on that
Click to expand...
right before the gank i was the first to hit 100 likes… a real shame
 
az

az

toddmoding
is a Community Contributoris an Artist Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
hello, and welcome to the long-awaited smogoff rpg postgame

going back through the game and my notes has been been rly enjoyable (the game is already nostalgic somehow) but collating everything for an analysis has taken a lot of time!

i imagine that there is a mix of savviness on the mechanics of the game across players, and there wasn't much for bystanders to go on in this thread while the game was in progress, so i'll go over the structure of the game in brief, and talk a little about the mechanics. i also want to talk a little bit about the origin of the game

i'll be posting the play-by-play as i work through it over the next few days (it won't fit in one post, anyway)

right now you can read a play-by-play of the first quarter or so, cycles 1-9, the conception of the game, the map design, as well as look over the full item/npc/enemy compendioids. the full documentation of the game is included, too

hopefully you enjoy. if there are any issues accessing docs or you have any questions, let me know


game origin
i knew at some point after hosting smogoff amoonguss that i'd probably want to have another go at designing a forum game with deception and imperfect information. i had notes for a more vanilla "smogoff amoonguss 2" (expanded roles, ironing out some of the funk in that game like the cctv, better interactivity, gsc palette, etc), but the more i thought about it the more i wanted to do something farther afield from that

when discussing game ideas with fellow oldheads we were toying with the concept of a "posting mafia"; mafia games (on smogon, at least) typically have themes that colour the roles or double identities depending on the degree to which the game is 'blind'—information about which player is which is restricted. there were some fun ideas in there about what kinds of forum actions and terminology could translate over to a mafia game, but ultimately i realised i don't typically enjoy playing mob-style mafia games, and the variants that seemed more interesting to me on these forums were usually that way because the designers had layered a ton of extra stuff mechanically over the mafia framework. with that in mind, i figured i would just ditch it

i knew that we'd still need some kind of turn structure, but i was inspired by games like rogue (blind dungeon-crawling), dark souls (asynchronous information-sharing), and a whole host of MUDs i played as a kid, where players sharing some fictional location felt super important. i was also hoping to reference here a social deception browser game you could play with friends in which you were all royal rat siblings after the death of the monarch, and in the interregnum you each had to prepare yourself for power. where you travelled influenced how you could prepare yourself (combat training, study, hiding), but if two players chose the same spot it could lead to combat. i can't find the name of this game now! if you recognise it, please let me know

this was already the basic dna of the game. i'm not much of a puzzle-designer, and i knew the game would be low quality if any given player could just stumble upon the win condition and end it, so there would have to be layers to ending the game, and to some extent these would have to have global effects so that players weren't kept totally in the dark—they would know something was changing

some of the posting/forum-themed mechanics survived and came through well; i personally loved the 'locations as threads' angle and by extension the message posting concept, and later links between threads. in other places it was watered down quite a bit; enemies that were forum-related on paper ended up feeling like silly gimmicks; the spambot was much more fun than the "troll" enemy class, for instance

the old MUDs i referenced earlier also inspired the aesthetic, as did experiments in designing procedurally-generated isometric arpgs of my own. the mix of grid framework and traditional ruins was meant to signal a kind of information decay; what might the physical representation of a digital space look like if the data began to deteriorate? actually probably much more blocky and glitchy than this, which is a cool aesthetic of its own imo. maybe smogoff rpg 2 will be played out on the back of a giant missingno

the game was sprited in the db32 palette

premise
the default win condition for all players was to obtain the posting points, a fabled stash of treasure (and through-line to some goofy smogoff canon). there wasn't much else given to players on that point, just that they could do so alone or with a party, and to get out there and find it

the game itself was played out on an 8x8 map, with various points of interest, encounters, mysteries, etc on each of the tiles. the posting points themselves were not on the grid, but accessed through a kind of macro puzzle—obtaining four keys and locating their respective locks. the keys and locks were placed like so:


... but even if players found a key in a corner...


... the keys were locked away behind a password, and once obtained were inscribed with their own cipher, which determined which key went in which lock...


... so there was more to it than just legwork. players were asynchronously finding their way around puzzles, the rules of the game world, and finding items...


... interacting with enemies...


... hazards...


... npcs...


... and other players


mechanics
on arrival at a location, players were given a description of what was there, an update on their status as relevant, and then a list of context-sensitive actions they could take, such as [Talk], [Attack], [Flee], etc:

az said:
It is Cycle 18.


You have arrived at F5.

You took 1 damage for moving while poisoned. You recovered 1 HP from your ring.

There is a treasure chest here, but it has already been looted.

There are posts here:

who up playing with they worm​
my worm thoroughly played and up​
I'm playing with my worm (where playing with means eating and worm means worm)​
(who up doing the worm (funny dance move))​
who has hyper quill. PM me x​

Actions
[Plant Egg] - Choose a location to spawn a Spambot on next cycle (eg "G5"). This will destroy your [Trojan Egg].
[Post] - Inscribe a message at your current location for others to view (include your message).
THEN
End cycle
[Move] - Choose a direction in which to travel: NW, NE, SW, SE. You will take 1 damage for moving while poisoned.
OR
[Rest] - Remain at this location until the next cycle. You will regain 1 HP per cycle spent resting.

Please select your action(s).
Click to expand...
all players started with the Feather Quill, which allowed players to [Post] a message of their choosing at this location. posts are displayed to players that arrive at tiles, and do not overwrite one another, so even when wandering around on their own a player could glean information by essentially reading a thread

having one's message viewed would automatically afford a "Like", the game's currency. this isn't how Likes work on smogon, but people seemed to figure it out. there were a handful of times where this detail was relevant, too, as players with few posts could see their Like count go up by 2 and strongly suspect that a pair of players had chosen to follow them

there were light rpg mechanics; players started with 10 hit points (HP), and had three simple stats that could be altered:
Attack Bonus (AB) to do more damage,
Defence Bonus (DB) to reduce (or negate entirely) incoming damage,
Speed Bonus (SB) to act before others in combat

each of these stats could be both positive or negative, so a negative defence bonus would confer increased damage from incoming attacks

there were also a handful of statuses in the game world:
OK, no adverse effects,
Burned, which increased the damage of incoming attacks by 1,
Frozen, which reduced speed by 1,
Poison, which reduced current HP by 1 whenever the afflicted player moved instead of rested at the end of a cycle, and
Static, which discharged on contact, conferring 2 damage to both parties, and then was removed

with the exception of Static, all statuses lasted a maximum of 10 cycles since affliction, or were cured by resting 3 times (not necessarily consecutively). Frozen and Burned were also cured by their inverse status, so an attack that would ordinarily inflict Burned would simply leave a Frozen target OK, etc

all rolls were courtesy of roll the dice, and damage calcs were simple (and revealed to players). an attack by a player with an attack of 1d2 with 1 AB against a player with armour affording 1 DB would look like this:
Example Attack
1d2 = 2 + 1 (Attack Bonus) - 1 (Defence Bonus) = 2

in my opinion combat (especially versus enemies) was the least interesting part of the game, but that might not have been a huge problem, since HP pools were typically low, and players quickly understood the benefits and downsides of combat with various enemy types. these were often filler encounters, providing texture and an extra wrinkle of decision-making on the way to a destination

combat was turn-based, and proceeded until all enemies were dead, or until a party chose to [Flee], which would end that party's cycle. aside from fleeing (or [Move], if not in combat), players were also able to [Rest] at their current location (in most instances), to recover 1 HP

map design
the world of smogoff rpg was laid out as follows:


outwith the corners and central four tiles the layout of tiles might seem irregular, but seen from this perspective you might notice that the grid is actually a repeating pattern of quadrants, like this:


each quadrant is rotated, so the grid is actually more like a big pizza of four slices of identically set out toppings, like enemies, and shops, and hazards... like if all of your pepperoni slices were mathematically positioned. this metaphor is getting away from me

the aim was for the pattern to be somewhat disguised, but possible to deduce if people took the time to keep a record of the tiles they'd discovered. that way, realising that a point of interest like a shop or a hazard will be replicated in a unexplored quadrant could afford players advantages through planning, even when they feel like they have "rolled" poorly and just been unlucky (see: stepping into the toxic thread at C3)

players recognised the significance of the keys and locks in the corners and centre respectively, but sadly otherwise i don't think any player had a grasp on this pattern replicating concept. that being said, drifting did finally make this quite cute map in cycle 31:


team gaslight ghostlight gatekeep girlbosses (more on them later) did make some very interesting heatmaps for analysis of the post updates for each cycle in order to get a sense of which tiles had been explored by whom, which i loved to see. they looked like this:


lol

... which probably won't mean much to anyone but basically it was just very rewarding for me to have people interfacing with the game at that level. ok bye

obviously in spite of this replicated pattern the starts were asymmetric; some players might run into a key and gain that little puzzle piece right away, or come across treasure, or an enemy, or another player. i gave some consideration to this with regard to treasure/enemy layout, but after the first cycle this becomes so many variables to try to "balance" for that i opted to just let go of that worry and let the game play out. i think that is the right choice; the winning team had a mix of experiences through the game similar to other players, but made reasoned plans and executed on them well. i don't think any one player or team gained a significant advantage or disadvantage based on their starting location

on tiles with enemies to be defeated, enemies would spawn again after 3 cycles. treasure chests were refilled every 10 cycles, up until the lategame

game analysis index
early game (cycles 1-9)
players begin to explore the map and get a handle on mechanics, strange puzzles are discovered, and rivalries begin to form...

mid game, pt 1 (cycles 10-17)
new players enter the game, powerful treasure awaits, and the killing begins...

mid game, pt 2 (cycles 18-26)
a reign of terror, the body count rises, new alliances are formed, and a team dispels the fog of mysterie

late game (cycles 27-32)
players trigger a race to the finish. two rival teams establish themselves firmly as the frontrunners, and there's a bloodbath on E4

end game (cycles 33-42)

items
Weapons


[Tagger] (2 dmg)
"The strange glyph in its centre guarantees its magic hits."

[Empowered Tagger] (3 dmg)
"The swirl at its centre thrums with energy."


[Pushpin] (1-3 dmg)
"This old pin still holds a point."

[Reinforced Pushpin] (2-3 dmg)
"Its point promises a deadly thrust."

[Shimmering Pushpin] (3 dmg)
"The grip has been detailed with intricate patterns."


[Needle & Thread] (0-4 dmg)
"Sharp enough to pierce, with enough thread to bring it back to you."

[Honed Needle & Thread] (1-4 dmg)
"The shaft has been straightened out for a truer flight."

[Refined Needle & Thread] (2-4 dmg)
"The needle glistens with the promise of power."


[Rusty Thumbtacks] (0-2 dmg, twice)
"They held something in place, once."

[Polished Thumbtacks] (1-2 dmg, twice)
"The points of their pins catch the light."


[Scraper Knife] (2-3 dmg)
"Its days of data-gathering are behind it."

Armour


[Broken Lock]
+1 Defence Bonus
"Broken, but still sturdy."


[Old Crest]
+1 Defence Bonus
"All that survives of the decorative design are two wings."


[Cloak of Proxy]
Cloaking device. Hides the wearer from searches.
"Very Private Neck-garment."


[Doubleposter's Doublet]
Allows the wearer to attack twice per turn. -1 Defence Bonus.
"Twice the posts, twice the infractions."


[Firewall]
Blocks all incoming status effects. +1 Defence Bonus.
"Get out, stay out."


[Spam Mail]
Afflicts attackers with the Poison status. +1 Defence Bonus.
"Geddit?"


[Mask of Alt]
While worn, disguises your identity from other players. Will resurrect the wearer 1 cycle after death, then be destroyed. +1 Defence Bonus
"Not big on 'forgive and forget', eh?"


[Reply Button]
Returns (but does not negate) the damage of attacks to the attacker before defence. +1 Defence Bonus.
"Post not stones in glass threads."

Trinkets


[Alert Bell]
Allows the holder to [Ring] to detect players in adjacent tiles.
"It has a lonely sound."


[Amulet of Celeritous Fingers]
Boosts the wearer's speed. +1 Speed Bonus.
"First."


[Ring of Refreshing]
Restores 1 HP at the end of each cycle.
"Spamming it doesn't appear to do anything."


[Quote Bubble]
Confers the Quote ability in combat.
"The same joke, just louder."


[Search Lens]
Allows the user to [Search] a location.
"Only lightly chipped."


[Moderator Badge]
Signifies the holder as moderator-aligned. There is a latent power within it. +1 Defence Bonus.
"Service with a smite."


[Redirect Page]
Allows holder to [Redirect] one target's action in the next turn of combat to another target.
"If you do not want to visit that page... Tough."


[Hot Pepper]
Confers a chance for attacks to inflict Burn. +1 Attack Bonus.
"Sprinkle for spicy takes and risky clicks."


[Message of Mending]
Confers the [Heal] ability, restoring 2 HP to the target.
"Lo fi kind words to heal to."

Inventory Items


[Feather Quill]
Allows the user to [Post].
"Never seems to run dry."

[Hyper Quill]
Allows the inscription of hyperlink posts, to link two threads together. Requires Blue Ink.
"'The Hyper Quill is mightier than the Quill.' - Unknown..."


[Bookmark]
Allows the user to mark a location to return to once, at will. Destroyed on use.
"Right where you left off."


[Trojan Egg]
Choose a location (eg "G5") to plant the egg. On the next cycle, a Spambot will appear there. Destroyed on use.
"Not sure horses come from eggs..."


[Blue Ink]
Used with a Hyper Quill to inscribe links to other locations. Destroyed on use.
"The bottle says 'blue', but it keeps turning purple."


[Sticky Note]
Prevents the target from fleeing this encounter. Destroyed on use.
"Info, Guidelines, & Updates: Are you feelin' lucky, punk?"


[Mysterious Key]
It bears an inscription:
"FDL-IS" / "RMT-SS" / "ST-TDC" / "B101-FDL"

npcs and bestiary
NPCs

Angler Fish


the angler fish lurked on a tile telegrapher in the sign-ups thread as an ambush. this location looked similar to E1 and D8, but instead of pleasing motes of light, there was only a single glowing orb. that was the angler fish's lure, and touching it via [Investigate] would zap the player for 1 HP, and begin an internal timer of 3 cycles, after which a clone of the player (indistinguishable from the real thing at first glance to others) would be spawned on the map to wreak havoc

Assassin


the assassin awaited players on F7, where if interacted with via [Talk] he will tell players he's only interested in dealing with players that have gotten their hands dirty—ie players that have killed another player. that makes them eligible for this NPCs subquest, which is to alter their win condition to simply be the last player (or party) standing. the assassin would also then gift the player the Mask of Alt, allowing them to hide their identity and resurrect once after death. at the cost of foregoing any other armour

Editor


the editor sold items associated with posting, such as the quill and ink, and could also upgrade any of the starting weapons in exchange for Likes. her tile, G3, was designed as a seamstress's tailoring workshop, inspired by the idea that the closest thing to "editing" a thread must surely be some kind of needlework

Filthy Lurker


the filthy lurker kept a much less attractive shop on C2. he sold lower-level items, simple armour or consumables such as the Broken Lock and Bookmark. the idea here was that these had been scrounged up or looted from fallen posters. this guy is a creep

The Last Moderator


the last moderator is somehow still here in the long-dead forum, tasked with dispatching hostile entities and protecting the Posting Points from posters like the players that might seek to loot them. he attempted to recruit players to his cause, altering their win condition and affording them a trinket that will ramp up with power over time. he isn't hostile if you decline him, however

Enemies

Crawlers and Scrapers


crawlers and scrapers were low-threat enemies that could drop some handy items for players that dispatched them, and could be encountered alone or in groups up to 3. they were inspired by the concept of forum-crawling bots, poring over data long after users have stopped posting

Crawler
3 HP, 0-2 damage 0 Speed
Drops: Search Lens + 3 Likes / 5 Likes

Scraper
3 HP, 1-3 damage, 0 Speed
Drops: Search Lens + 5 Likes / Scraper Knife + 5 Likes / 7 Likes


Daemons


daemons travel in clutches of 3-5. they have low hp, but each one gets an attack per turn, so the jabs from their bidents could add up. similar to the crawlers and scrapers, these were a manifestation of automated web service processes that had lost their initial purpose and now just scurry around doing mischieves. yes, i know that demons and daemons are distinct ideas but look at these funney lil imps lol. love these guys

2 HP, 0-2 damage each, 0 Speed
Drops: 5 Likes

Trolls


trolls, flame trolls, and toxic trolls were often the first tougher encounter players came across. they have a little more bulk, hit harder, and the flame and toxic variants had a chance to inflict dangerous status effects on players. these variants spawned nearby to locations with appropriate hazards—toxic trolls by the toxic thread, and flame trolls by the flame war battlefield

Troll
5 HP, 0-3 damage, 0 Speed
Drops: 7 Likes

Flame Troll
5 HP, 0-3 damage, 0 Speed
Hits inflict <Burn>
Drops: Firewall + 5 Likes / 7 Likes

Toxic Troll
5 HP 0-3 damage, 0 Speed
Hits inflict <Poison>
Drops: Firewall + 5 Likes / 7 Likes

Spambots


probably the most dangerous "regular" enemy, spambots had a couple of attacks up their sleeves that made them a pain even for players that had the damage to get through their hp pool quickly. they also boasted a Speed Bonus of 2, more than enough to outspeed the average player. a lucky roll on their Spam ability could do a great deal of damage to a player without any armour. thankfully, they had some extremely handy drops in their lootpool. the trojan egg allowed players to choose a location to spawn a spambot themselves the next cycle. pay it forward!

Spambot
6 HP, 2 Speed
Abilities:
Spam: 5d0-1
Virus: Confers poison
Drops: Spam Mail + 5 Likes / Trojan Egg + 5 Likes / 7 Likes

Administrators


just run

documentation & images
three resources for you:

smogoff rpg, the google sheets with all of the templates and data i used to track players across cycles

cycles, a .rar of the .pngs and .gifs sent out in pms each turn (~9 mb)

this .png, an export of the spritesheet/testbed for sprites. this image has, in one form or another, every sprite in the game plus wips and scraps
 
Last edited:
az

az

toddmoding
is a Community Contributoris an Artist Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
early game (cycles 1-9)
players begin to explore the map and get a handle on mechanics, strange puzzles are discovered, and rivalries begin to form...

cycle 1


everyone aside from chimp posts. this meant when post locations were revealed the turn after, chimp was essentially off grid. it would have been possible to deduce someone started there based on the grid pattern, but i don't know that anyone did. it was really fun to see people have fun with the post mechanic. Drifting's devious

wounded by chimp and need allies. meet me at the south corner - BIG ASHLEY​

is a personal favourite. Albatross began as she meant to carry on, artposting. i won't embed them all here—you can see them in the documentation, but needless to say these ruled, i loved them a lot, and their reuse kind of turned them into image macros, or perhaps, micro-memes...?

cycle 2


of the pairs of players that had a chance of running into one another this cycle, only Brambane and Blizihguh chose to move to the same location. there might have been an opportunity to get an early party in, at this point, but Brambane was not interested, leaving Blizihguh free to loot the chest. a few other players happened upon chests, here, notably Albatross' acquisition of the Alert Bell, a powerful item in its own right and also one she became particularly attached to. a lot of lore developed between alba and her bell. perhaps a tale for another time...?


Mathy and Voltage both explore the corners and have their first encounter with the locked away keys, though neither can figure out the password. Voltage even attempts to smash the container with their weapon, but there's no brute-forcing these—they'll need the code. Voltage and ThatOneSpork both begin here similar early-game plans that they will stick to for a while: scouting the outer perimeter of the grid. Voltage assumes the pen name 'phive', '5', or 'φve' to self-impose a kind of double-blind mechanic on their posts as a sign-off, which i liked


BIG ASHLEY reaches H5 and discovers the smug-looking statue of a man that informs her of as much. you wouldn't get it

monkfish discovers the Amulet of Celeritous Posting, and aptly begins a posting trend on its thread, E3, that will be championed by other posters for the length of the game
monkfish said:
[post] First
Click to expand...
cycle 3


​

the first npc encounters occur: grape tylenol discovers the Filthy Lurker store, and Blizihguh encounters the Assassin, a faction NPC. both seem pretty creeped out by these meetings, for different reasons

dave has an ill-fated run-in with a Crawler. we waited 3+ days for dave to take a turn, and in the end i had to godkill them to keep the game moving. there's no way around this, really; it sucks to have to do that, and i would have loved to have had them in the game proper, but it also sucked to have the momentum of the game zapped out of it so early on when things were still super exciting. alas, poor dave, but i think it was necessary


ThatOneSpork discovers one of two healing pools capable of completely restoring HP and curing all status ailments, and makes use of it to restore their single point of missing HP

earl does battle with a flame troll, which was much posted about in the smogoff rpg pm thread. these were gooves but actually i think it was really fun to have people hearing about some combat encounter they couldn't see and wondering how if earl was dead after. spoiler: he was not, and picked up a powerful piece of armour for persevering, the Firewall, which blocks all incoming statuses. however, he is already burned


in the diametrically opposed location, Lady Salamence and monkfish encounter one another, and a Toxic Troll
monkfish said:
[talk] with the power of teamwork , i believe we can defeat the enemy
[flee] sw
Click to expand...
Lady Salamence was probably pretty livid, but this act of extreme cowardice made me laugh a lot

left to do battle on her own, Lady Salamence gets pretty beat up, but like earl comes out of it with the powerful Firewall armour. also like earl, she is already stuck with the status condition from the combat, so this is more like future-proofing than panacaea

after insisting she must scratch around in the dirt at every location for bugs to devour, Albatross (sort of) gets her wish when she encounters the somewhat insectoid Scraper, and kills it for the Scraper Knife. this is a powerful weapon that will serve her well for the bulk of the game, so i thought it was worth mentioning here


CryoGyro... ah. this was a mess. F2 was mentioned in the signups post for smogoff rpg as a sort of goof; that there would be an ambush waiting there. i hadn't decided exactly what that would be at that point, but i did want to actually implement it (bc that's funny). so, CryoGyro encountered a suspicious pool of water similar in appearance to the healing pools, but with some slightly ominous framing:
az said:
You have arrived at F2.

There is a pool of water here. You cannot see the bottom.

There is some kind of glowing orb suspended above the pool. It is just within reach.
Click to expand...

after touching the orb, they were zapped for a little bit of HP, shown the orb's true nature (the lure of a giant angler fish), and told that something felt off... and that was it, for now. what really happened was that an internal spawn timer began, after which a clone of CryoGyro was to be spawned (angler... phish, get it?). the idea was that things would get very fun and funky with a clone of a player running around on the map

for... reasons that we will get to, this didn't really land at all, and actually caused a lot of frustration down the line. alas


finally, on a sillier note, Troubadour1 (confusing name change) arrives at D4, becomes the first player to encounter a lock, and begins their dedication of themselves to being available to solve this puzzle.

... unfortunately, their posts, their unending vigil over that tile, and Albatross's very thorough use of the Alert Bell to confirm that the tile was still occupied many cycles later all ironically scared people off ever visiting the tile... with an exception we'll get to. this was so sad to watch for Troubadour1 because evidently they were looking for others to join them in the spirit of jolly co-operation and no-one ever came, but god it was hilarious knowing the truth and seeing teams discuss in dms what terrors awaited them on that tile, and who this mysterious D4 poster could be...

cycle 4


monkfish and the very much alive Lady Salamence have an awkward reunion at the lock puzzle on D4. monkfish tries to play this off:
monkfish said:
[investigate]

[talk] oh thank god you made it
Click to expand...
... but Lady Salamence is having none of it, and leaves him in the lurch after doing some funney misinformation posting to befuddle Troubadour1, who has sadly hopped away from their vigil over D4 for one moment to check on the other adjacent tiles (and therefore discover that there is a similar object on D5). D4 will not be visited again by a single other player until cycle 23, which is actually mad to think about, and again, so so sad for Troubadour1 hahaha. near misses like this were typical in the game, but this one is especially brutal


grape tylenol steps on to C3, and contracts the Poisoned status. as a result the following ~10 cycles will probably be the most frustrating stretch of the game (for both of us)

Albatross happens upon a previously-looted treasure chest, and is insistent that she will find a way to carry it around with her. this must be in a dnd textbook somewhere as an example of mad things players will do to play around the game you have planned, instead of the playing the game you have planned. in the interest of diplomacy i cede that she may consider it her nest

CryoGyro rests off their sting and sees no further suspicious activity at the phishing tile

BIG ASHLEY discovers the Ring of Refreshing at F5 (geddit???), a very powerful item conferring passive health regeneration that will be the focus of a lot of planning later on in the game

Voltage defeats a Crawler, which drops the very handy Search Lens. with one of these a player can choose another location on the map to view for that cycle. these will become more common as the game progresses, and allow players to glean a sense of others' statuses, plans, allegiances, etc, but only in passing. tools like this were fun to come up with and even more fun to see players make use of, and in my opinion more interesting than plain combat

cycle 5
Voltage discovers a healing pool as he and ThatOneSpork continue their mirrored edge-crawling playstyles. at full health, though, he receives no benefit from interacting with it, and so disregards it as unremarkable


Drifting happens upon a key locked away at A8, and makes an attempt at accessing it with the password, but to no avail. he settles down to rest afterwards, however, committed to solving the puzzle

chimp similarly bumps into the key at H8, attempts to access it, and rests there

Albatross discovers the first of many memetic

If you are cool come meet at D4​

posts, and the fear grips her. her response?


Lady Salamence discovers a second lock at E4, and so begins to get a sense of how this puzzle is laid out


earl and BIG ASHLEY encounter the lock below, on E5, but they end up perhaps at cross-purposes on communication, with earl trying to talk and BIG ASHLEY posting and moving on after investigating the lock

ThatOneSpork has a pretty nasty run-in with a Scraper that they will be resting off for a few cycles

cycle 6
chimp gives up on the key at H8, and moves on. Drifting however has sussed it out:
There is a pair of strange of devices here. Standing in the centre of the chamber is a large tube holding in suspension what appears to be a key. The key idly turns, locked away behind what might be glass, or plastic.

In front of the chamber is what appears to be a console. A cursor blinks on the monochrome display. There is a keypad for input below, and what might be a prompt above:

"8606408"
Click to expand...
see, each key is locked away with a code like this. every time a player encounters these, their first attempt is to enter the same code displayed to them. this isn't the password, though, but instead references a post in smogoff by its post id. i'll let you input the above and discover what the password for the first key Drifting lay claim to was. needless to say i was extremely happy when Drifting figured this out; we'd had no communication about it, there were no further hints, and i was a little concerned that something like this that relies on information outside of the game might be a problem, even with the game's setting being lampshaded as the smogoff forum itself. other players managed to suss out this gimmick on their own, later, too, so i think it worked out just fine, and would establish a precedent for another puzzle concerning the keys—what on earth their strange inscription referred to:
There's a delay, a few soft bloops, and then the quiet hum of something whirring up...

Before you know it, the key you had seen suspended in the tube disappears, and you are in the same moment conscious that it is upon your person.

You gained an item:

[Mysterious Key]
It bears an inscription:
"B101-FDL"
Click to expand...
BIG ASHLEY discovers another lock


Blizihguh stumbles upon earl still at E5:
earl said:
Why are you a bird
Click to expand...
Blizihguh said:
you can't just ask somebody why they're a bird
Click to expand...
... and from these humble beginnings, a beautiful, deadly partnership is formed. this is the beginning of the game's first formal party, the goon squad. they share the information they've learned, like the location of the Assassin at F7, and the nature of earl's Burned status

Lady Salamence takes a moment to rest on E4 to take the edge off the poison

grape tylenol has resolved to investigate what she suspects to be an ambush at F2, and so continues to beeline for it. each cycle she moves instead of resting, she takes 1 damage from the poison


Brambane does battle with a Spambot, a pretty powerful enemy with some nasty attacks and a bulky HP pool. after doing a decent amount of damage, they resolve to cut their losses and run

cycle 7


with goon squad having moved on together, BIG ASHLEY returns to E5, only to now meet Lady Salamence there, who is continuing to investigate the centre of the map and the locks there, suffering her Poisoned status. BIG ASHLEY attempts to make contact, but (perhaps coloured by the run-in with the devious monkfish) Lady Salamence dips. as you will come to see, this was probably a good call


at this point in the game the locks are stacked with players, and players are posting frequently, so people know there are others close by. it's a natural place to congregate since players started mostly towards the edge of the grid


Albatross encounters a clutch of Daemons that she does not fancy dealing with, and flees. Voltage runs into the same enemy, and also resolves to flee, but instead flees back to the tile they came from. this could have been an accident, or as a result of a communication error (it does make some sense to only be able to flee behind you, although not how it is signposted in pms), but in the end it won't affect the competition for A1 that Voltage and Albatross will end up in

CryoGyro encounters the Filthy Lurker shop, but without the Likes yet to purchase anything, they move on


Calamity Ashely arc continues as grape tylenol stumbles into the Charged Thread, gaining the Static status. there are no immediately obvious adverse effects, but it does stack with Poisoned

Brambane encounters their first lock, at E4

Drifting seems to have a gameplan in mind, now, beelining for A1 with their key in tow and a good inkling of how to get any others that might exist

cycle 8
monkfish discovers a Bookmark, a powerful if under-loved imo item that lets a user mark their current location to return to at will, once

Drifting runs into a Crawler, defeats it, and rests off the damage

Albatross also hunkers down to rest off the previous cycle's Daemon encounter. she'll be here, on A2, just out of reach of a key, for several cycles. ringing the Alert Bell will show her a stranger (CryoGyro) skirting around her for the duration


Mathy encounters The Last Moderator, another faction NPC, like the Assassin. his pitch:
az said:
The swordsman relents from skewering the creature pinned under his sword, and calls back to you in a deep, full voice:

"Oh, hello there. An adventurer, are you?

"I almost mistook you for a daemon... Ha ha...

"So, what is it? Have you come for the Posting Points, like everyone else?

"That's the only reason people come here, anymore...

"Me? My name's—

"Well, that doesn't matter, now. I am The Last Moderator. I keep posters from getting their grubby little mitts on the Posting Points... Ha ha...

"Hm? Oh, don't worry. I'm not about to lunge at you. Actually, I have a proposition for you.

"It's a big ask, keeping things in check down here, all on my own.

"What would you say to changing sides, so to speak? Ha ha...

"I could use an extra pair of hands, you see. All you'd have to do is stop posters from looting the Posting Points.

"So, what do you say?"

Agree to join The Last Moderator? Yes, No
Note: This will change your win condition!
Click to expand...
Mathy accepts, marking the first time a player's win condition is altered:
Your win condition has changed.

To win, you or your party must prevent the Posting Points from being obtained.
Click to expand...
needless to say this flips Mathy's game on its head a bit; his win condition is now the inverse of everyone else's

Mathy receives the Moderator Badge trinket for their trouble, conferring a small Defence Bonus for now, with the promise of further powers for every would-be Posting Point looter eliminated. they also receive a Bookmark—the idea here was that moderator-aligned players would bookmark this location, where their faction leader was located, and return to it to have their badge powered up every time they got a kill. Mathy opted not to use the Bookmark in this way, however, and instead posted a little disinformation to steer other players away from interacting with The Last Moderator

the long-suffering Lady Salamence runs into yet another troll, this time a Flame Troll, and opts to not deal with it. her Firewall armour protects her from being afflicted with Burned on the way out, at least, but she is hurting

the goon squad stumble into the third hazard location we've covered so far: the Flame War Battlefield, which afflicts visitors with Burned... or it would, if earl was not both already Burned and immune to further status. just Blizihguh, then. misery loves company


grape tylenol arrives at F2, the site of the telegraphed ambush, on the exact turn the internal turn timer ticks over for spawning a clone after the phishing of CryoGyro. what follows was a bit of a mess; she sees the lure the same as CryoGyro did, touches it to receive that same little sting of damage, but because of her Static status it does bonus damage to her, and also (unbeknownst to her) kills the Angler Fish NPC. so she doesn't get the same explanation about the lure that CryoGyro got. with the source of the clone dead, what appears to be CryoGyro just... vanishes as a result of the explosion, and grape tylenol is left at critical HP (Static discharged but still Poisoned) and feeling pretty sorry for herself because it feels like the game is evil and hates her for exploring, with random objects exploding seemingly without reason

we've talked about this at length but i will say again here: i personally feel the poison mechanic is defensible; stopping to rest is the telegraphed way to recover HP, also the telegraphed way to not take damage from poison, and (not telegraphed, secret) the way to cure Poisoned faster (any 3 turns). it also theoretically means that you know (at a price) have valuable information on a location to avoid or lure others to. what i think absolutely sucked from top to bottom and is not defensible at all was this implementation of the Angler Fish; none of the potential cool interactions came through, having it interact with Static at all was a mistake, and nothing cool was gained, no helpful information, just a very frustrated player. lots of the game ran on information being imperfect, things being mysterious and obscure, but this demonstrated that in combination a lot of this could be pretty obtuse. i know that this was not fun at all. lessons learned the v hard way

cycle 9
ThatOneSpork arrives at H8, and follows the now-typical single-attempt-and-rest protocol wrt to that corner's key and password

monkfish runs into the same Flame Troll Lady Salamence ran from, takes a stab at it, and then also resolves to flee

CryoGyro has a nasty run-in with a Spambot that will leave them pretty low, but they are victorious

Voltage opts to circumvent the Daemons he previously ran from, which meant taking the long way around, but also put him on a path to encounter the Filthy Lurker shop next cycle


the goon squad arrive at their destination, the Assassin, at Blizihguh's recommendation. it was great to see players and parties undertake little quests like this. they are not alone with the Assassin, however: chimp is here, too, and they eavesdrop on the conversation. the Assassin refuses to say more to anyone that hasn't "gotten their hands dirty" yet, and chimp seems happy to oblige:
chimp said:
YES I LOVE BLOOD LETTING!
Click to expand...
a fight breaks out. in spite of being outnumbered, chimp may have actually had a chance at winning, considering both members of goon squad were already hurt, and suffering from Burned causing them to take additional damage. for some reason, though, chimp split their damage, making themslves pretty easy pickings for goon squad. earl's potentially enormously powerful Quote Bubble helps, allowing him to repeat any action taken in a previous round of combat—great for "locking in" a high roll, especially on weapons with big damage spreads

with chimp dead, goon squad conveniently now meet the Assassin's prerequisite, and so he offers them a deal:
Before you settle down for a much-needed rest you strike up conversation with the masked man in the red-robe.

Their voice has a strange, uneven lilt to it:

"Well, well, nicely done...

"Another poster dispatched. Perhaps we are kindred spirits...?

"I've quite a knack for offing posters, you see. It's why I came here. No, the Posting Points don't interest me any.

"It's the hunt I came for... And the quarry.

"Now that you've demonstrated you have what it takes, perhaps you'll consider giving up that fool's errand for the lost treasure, and join me in a little blood sport, hm?

"The treasure may not even exist, but there are plenty of posters to hunt.

"So, what will it be? Do you have a taste for it, yet? A taste for blood?"

Agree to join The Red-Robed Man? Yes, No
Note: This will change your win condition!
Click to expand...
it's a mirror to The Last Moderator's faction, but distinct; the goon squad now must be the last players standing in order to win. it also comes with different perks: both Blizihguh and earl receive the Mask of Alt, a very powerful piece of armour that alters their sprite to that of red-robed figures, and conceals their identity (their names are not printed in pms). a good chunk of players will know the red-robed figures as having being infamous; in this form goon squad will command a pretty convincing early game lead, and frankly a reign of terror; many pm conversations were had about them, dreading running into them, and even if these "npcs" (ha) were overpowered, well into the late game. there certainly was another very powerful perk to these masks—when the wearers reach 0 HP, one cycle after death they will be resurrected, and the item will be destroyed. that may well seem overpowered, but we'll see how it plays out. one final note on this equipment change: it meant earl giving up the status immunity afforded by his Firewall. with their new mission and identities in hand, the goon squad need pretty desperately to rest: they're both at half HP, and still suffering from the Burned status, making a further encounter pretty dangerous... and more encounters were coming

behind goon squad, Lady Salamence and BIG ASHLEY are reunited on the Flame War Battlefield. Lady Salamence is immune, but BIG ASHLEY picks up the Burned status as a result. apparently still distrustful of strangers, Lady Salamence leaves BIG ASHLEY in the ashes...
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

  • ... and 1 more.
    • Top