What did we lose? What did we gain? 4th Inv aftermath

[Gustav Kuriga]

It still means he should have given his words a lookover, as I was not the only one who read negativity in them. I'm not saying he meant to be mean or arrogant, that was just the tone.

[Chenier]

For reference, I think these two posts are the ones who caused irritation:

Damn. And you were right all the time, too.

(as it was a reply to a few posts in which Mesh justified persecution on the Cult, where many accusations were made)

Bwuahahaha... merciful. The undead. You've not seen the Beyond trailer yet, have you? Merciful. That made my day. Still laughing from that. Oh, dear creation.

Try: So cunning that even now you don't realize the full extent of their victory.

(This second one especially, came out as a bit much)

It's all good with me at this point, though, just want to make sure everyone's talking about the same thing.

[Lorgan]

So Tom takes pride in bringing us hours of fun by creating an awesome invasion that was in my opinion very enjoyable and one of the best there has been if not the best. I don't see anything arrogant or wrong about that.
Personally, I've actively played in all invasions and I find it difficult to decide which was the best one: the first or the fourth. The first had vampire lords and giant frogs roaming around and the fourth had a real story and had those of us involved sitting at the edge of our seat during the entire thing, struggling to cling on to life. At least that was my experience, playing in Thalmarkin and Riombara (both realms that stood on the brink of destruction for a long time because they refused to ally with the invaders).

I don't care if the NPCs tricked anyone, I mean... imagine yourself as your character: giant beasts and walking corpses suddenly appear and start rampaging across human lands, would you believe what they have to say? I know that I, as a human being, would at least be a little wary of them..
Of course the invaders try to trick you and don't want mankind to be victorious, it's what they're there for and I think that was even pretty obvious judging from their actions - not their words.
You've imagined being your character, now imagine being Tom and seeing how even when facing terrible odds - which you designed - humans still remain true to their nature, even in a game. I think it's a pretty normal reaction of him - or anyone who has the same information he has - and not arrogant at all.

In short: they can only trick the player if you're playing from the player's perspective. So hide behind your character and you're safe.

[Tom]

Yeah, I have that sometimes. You'll have to learn to live with it, because even though I do look my words over, in the words of someone else "you have to be somehow", and that's just part of how I am.

And, don't get me wrong, you all were misled by the Undead. Which is pretty cool, because otherwise I wouldn't have a story for Beyond. And heck, all three NPC factions tried, so if the players only fell for one, and that only in parts, that's a darn good job.

[Peri]

Hi,

Apologies for bringing up this old post and perhaps going slightly off topic (I guess the mod can mess things up if he feels this is done for real). I ran into this post a bit randomly cause I didn't really read the BT forum up to now. Reading bits of it here and there one question came up to me naturally: how exactly do you guys know so much?

I mean, besides Tom and those that played the various factions, there seem to be quite some people arguing about things done in the invasion to an extent that leaves me wondering. I had a char during the entire invasion, first in fronen then in the meridian republic. An infiltrator. And I must say that I didn't have the slightest idea what the hell was going on from the very first to the very last day of the invasion. I saw the various faction raising, destroying almost everything, slowing down after a while and then vanishing leaving the blight behind. Fielding at first enough strength to wipe out basically everything and then not doing it for unknown reasons.

Confronting my experience of the 4th invasion to what I read here I am incredibly surprised at the amount of things I lost and that apparently made the invasion way more interesting than I could see. Completely.

Now, I do not mean this post to be a critic to the invasion or anything, but I was just wondering if the problem was me and my lack of commitment to gather informations on what was going on somehow (I really didn't check the wiki so much and didn't play the dream) or whether I just had the bad luck of being in the wrong realms and with a char that was not well connected. It goes without saying that something like the 4th invasion is certainly more entertaining for highly ranked and well connected characters, but I just want to know whether "regular" nobles could enjoy -and thus I was a bit the exception- or not. Maybe you can help me answering this question

cheers

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Speculation. Wild guesses at worst, and serendipitously somewhat accurate guesses at best. Only the ones involved in the actual Invasion planning know the real story, or perhaps not even they know the entire big picture. Maybe only the original author of it all knows. But then again, in some stories, the tale becomes larger than the author.

[Geronus]

And I must say that I didn't have the slightest idea what the hell was going on from the very first to the very last day of the invasion. I saw the various faction raising, destroying almost everything, slowing down after a while and then vanishing leaving the blight behind. Fielding at first enough strength to wipe out basically everything and then not doing it for unknown reasons.

Confronting my experience of the 4th invasion to what I read here I am incredibly surprised at the amount of things I lost and that apparently made the invasion way more interesting than I could see. Completely...

 ...I just want to know whether "regular" nobles could enjoy -and thus I was a bit the exception- or not. Maybe you can help me answering this question

This was more or less my experience. I wouldn't call my character well-connected, but he was a general for a substantial portion of the invasion. Personally, I suspect your experience was more or less the norm.

[Kai]

Speculation. Wild guesses at worst, and serendipitously somewhat accurate guesses at best. Only the ones involved in the actual Invasion planning know the real story, or perhaps not even they know the entire big picture. Maybe only the original author of it all knows. But then again, in some stories, the tale becomes larger than the author.

The tale becoming larger than the author is rarer than people giving up and the tale becoming forgotten.

Everyone likes a narrative conclusion. I feel like the DM won and still won't give up his secrets when you punch him while eating pizza afterwards.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

That might be because the DM in this case prepared some follow-up material to serve as an epilogue of sorts where all secrets might be revealed.

[^ban^]

Everyone likes a narrative conclusion. I feel like the DM won and still won't give up his secrets when you punch him while eating pizza afterwards.

If one assumes the story is complete, that would make sense.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

We should take a poll to see how many "active" members even care whether the story continues.

[Geronus]

We should take a poll to see how many "active" members even care whether the story continues.

That's a little harsh I feel, considering the work that probably went into developing it, but I have to say that my investment in the story is quite minimal.

The consequences of said story certainly have a daily impact on my BT characters in the form of hard realities like the blight and the undead spawns, but the story was so obscure and hard to piece together that I can't really say that I'm invested enough in it to care. My characters know almost nothing of consequence, and I know only marginally more.

Perhaps those players who had the time and inclination to dig deep into the story and rumors that surrounded it might feel differently, but I suspect that such people are a relatively small minority of the player base.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Harsh, I guess, but I have a sinking feeling that it might not be far from the fact that many players might have simply thrown their hands up and said something like "Screw this! I'm just gonna do whatever and hope for the best."

Add to that the myriad of lies and deceit, both coming in the main game as well as in The Dream (which really should have been expected), along with the rumors and twists that humans include naturally, you have a story that reads like Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves minus the colorful text and bizarre typography.

That doesn't mean the story had to be simple, and I know very well that there was a lot of effort put into this. Unfortunately I think that a consequence of the reactions to presentation was that there was a lot of initial curiosity, then frustration, then some wrong twists, followed finally by reluctant acceptance that there was no answer in sight. And even if anyone did get to the right answer, they'd never know anyway (Until presumably Beyond comes out or something. Though if that does the unreliable narrator trick as in The Dream...Agatha Christie wasn't even immune to her readers getting angry about that stunt in more than one of her novels).

So much as I would like to think that people were really interested in 4th Inv, and by my involvement in these threads, I certainly was, as well as possibly some others, I think in large part players involved don't care too much about the story behind it all anymore, possibly more or less like their characters. They are probably more concerned about how to deal with the blight, and why undead were/are popping up more. The practical aspects, which realistically is probably what happens among humans after a calamity.

Also, for future reference, in general, humans really are that stupid, in case some things we did during the 4th Inv made foreheads meet palms.

[Heq]

Well, I really enjoy the mystery.  I also really enjoy building beliefs that I know are wrong for characters and the invasion gave us something wierd to consider.  It really helped me flesh out a worldview for one of my characters, which challanged his fundemental assumptions about the world.

Though I think that if you don't enjoy the theology/priest game you might not have gotten to be part of the "what the hell?"  "X, no, Y, no the incarnated goddess!" sort of discussions.  Really, if I didn't have a dutchy to run I would be sorely pressed (now that it looks like the Tonkotsu cult has folded) to make a blight cult focusing on the Undead.  The problem is that players really don't often want to set their characters up to be proven terribly, horribly wrong.

Still, any excuse to chain a zombie Orge in your cellar is a win in my books.

[^ban^]

Still, any excuse to chain a zombie Orge in your cellar is a win in my books.

There were no zombie ogres, unfortunately.