[quote=Shadowcthuhlu]
Maybe we are supposed to suspect anyone connected to the zee is a cannibal?[/quote]
Based on Sunless Sea, absolutely. It was almost impossible, especially in the early voyages, not to "eat your crew". It’s even in the blurb. And at least one island offered dodgy dinners, too. Besides, anyone who has been governor and faced rescuing/not rescuing the fugitive who desperately knocks on the gate knows darn well what tigers eat (not just honeyed gazelle).
I don’t like this kind of uncertainty very much. I hope I can enjoy the same experience as all players when I pay the same amount of money. On this basis, I will consider playing probability games and get some less important extra prizes. So this story makes me feel unhappy, especially the frustration of four failures.
This was probably my favorite ES in a long time. No big but uselessly vague lore to obsess over, just a fun, light-hearted RNG throw. Yeah, it was too arbitrary. But I swung for the fences every time with the impossible choices and failed all four of them and still had fun. I get what people are saying about anxiety induction, and I can understand how that could ruin this one. But FL has so many dice-rolls in it already… I guess I’m used to them. Honestly, judging by the reaction here, it’s becoming clear that what I like about FL is diametrically opposed to what the vast majority of players like about FL. Glad that I can still find some fun in the game.
Gonna chime in that the huge amount of RNG kinda put me off a bit. Near as I can tell my actions didn’t increase my tested quality any, and even the easiest options were distressingly easy to fail given one only has one shot without spending fate. I was also a bit annoyed to find that, while I was told purchasing ingredients was a way of saying who’s side I was on and thus picked all the pastry chef’s stuff, in the end one course only has options for the critic and one only has options for the pastry chef. I could have picked ingredients that’d work for both of them.
In the end I got a colossal failure. I didn’t fail any of the options, but the odds did make me wind up picking two easy and two second easiest options.
I had a lot of fun with this one even though everything went horribly wrong.
No, let me rephrase that: I had a lot of fun with this one because everything went horribly wrong.
Maybe my memory isn’t the best, but I don’t recall a single Exceptional Story where everything I did ended in absolute calamity. This never happened before. And I’ve played them all.
It wasn’t just the RNG playing a big role: from every decision that was put to me, I chose the wrong path. I bought the wrong ingredients. I trusted the wrong people. It was an incredibly sobering experience. I waltzed into this with the typical end-game player’s confidence that I’ll be able to figure everything out and have the restaurant critics bow to me at the end of the story. Because that’s how it usually goes, isn’t it? After all, only a few months ago I learned how to be a perfect barber during the course of an ES. Cooking can’t be that much harder, can it?—In the end, my only saving grace was owning up to the disaster and thereby (hopefully) saving a few shreds of the Chef’s reputation.
I’m glad to see from the echoes The Curious Watcher posted on page 1 that success was actually possible. This is definitely a story, then, that I will replay on a different account in a few months, just to try out different paths and see what happens.
I know a lot of players will think differently about this, but I absolutely love it when an ES offers the full range from total success to utter failure, especially when it doesn’t affect our characters in any lasting, meaningful way. In role-play aspects especially, I think it’s great for our overpowered PCs to have a few memories of embarassing failures to keep 'em somewhat grounded. ;)
And once again this story taught me a couple of new words, and a completely new expression, which is one of those things I love about Fallen London. :)
edited by phryne on 12/28/2019
I think I see what’s gone wrong for me, at least.
On Friday morning, I saw a beginning storylet for an ES called "The Set Menu." So I did it. However, there is now no trace of a continuation storylet for me under the Season of Animals banner or anywhere else in FL. Apparently, they made a change in the title (and maybe other changes?) after I did the storylet, so the tags that would have resulted from my doing the storylet are now meaningless.
I could contact the Help desk, but I don’t have the money to buy ES status right now, so there’s no point in taking up FB’s time.
edited by cathyr19355 on 12/28/2019
Cross-posted to reddit. Both accounts are mine, I did not steal this.
Good Writing. Horrible Story.
It’s actually quite impressive how they did both.
It would have been a great Exceptional Story, if they had just. Let. Our. Stats. Have. An. Impact.
As it was, it was all up to the random number god, and I’m sorry, but a yearly tithe of devilbone dice does not excuse the appallingly terrible rolls I got during this tale.
Seriously, part of the point of the game as a whole is that you start from nothing, and build your way up. You begin as a beggar in the gutters, fresh out of New Newgate, and by the end, you are a Paramount Presence, one of the greatest movers and shakers in the neath. The climb is important, as is the progress, because you climb and you progress through the game. Fallen London, ultimately, is a power fantasy style browser game. You climb the ladder and become a powerful force to be reckoned with by end-game time.
But all of that is lost when everything is left up to chance. I mean, for god’s sake, I can learn a star language, become a Poet-Luarate, and gain a legendary reputation with every last faction in London, but I can’t cook a fricking four-course meal? I had a room full of cooks all ready to work, my two-hundred plus stated character should have been able to do something besides fail miserably. This is that cheery-man-last constable story all over again. I should have been able to talk someone out of it or affect the outcome but not get caught, but I couldn’t since ‘it wasn’t my story’ and ’ I’m just an observer’ and then the whole thing wound up randomly decided.
The game is my story. You can’t build up a power fantasy, then take it away, leave something completely to the whims of fate and chance, and then not expect me to dislike the fact that you did, especially if I’ve spent years upon years and a small monthly amount of real world money ON said power fantasy.
Overall, I leave just as disappointed as my probably food-poisoned customers. This may have not been as bad as the above example, but the fact that my end-game character didn’t have the slightest advantage whatso ever, despite all the time and money I’ve put into him, and the fact there was no way to grind up any kind of stat to affect the outcome meant that this story is going solidly in my ‘worst ones’ category.
Seriously, ‘leave agency in the hands of the player’ is practically part of the ten video game commandments. Taking it away is bad and should only be done when you absolutely know it will work. Taking it away and leaving to purely to chance is just…dumb.
edited by Jules Asimov on 12/29/2019
Oh. That post sums it up perfectly. I felt some guilt for being a bad loser, but given my PhD is partly in game design… I should have seen what you describe here myself. Thanks.
@Jules: Some people might like ‘just being observers’ though. And I wouldn’t assume that every player wants to have agency over everything all the time.
Also, what’s the definition of ‘agency’? It wasn’t all purely random. I had at least two different choices at each branch of the story, four choices with different success chances for each course. It was up to me to choose which one I’d want to risk. Sure, they could add a "success here is guaranteed" path to make everyone happy. But I’m not sure having such a path is the point of playing a game.
Remember that these stories have to work for players of all levels. If you make them stat-based, 90 % of the low-level players are going to fail, while 90 % of the high-level players are going to succeed. And once you are an end-game player, this would mean you’re going to have one success-story after the other, month after month. Always winning does get boring at some point (for me at least, maybe not for everyone).
For me, this story had a good balance of luck and agency. I love how different FL’s Exceptional Stories are, in many ways, including mechanics and success chances. I think this one will stand out for many players, very positively for some, very negatively for others. So it goes. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
About your comparison with the Last Constable story: I don’t think that comparison fits. Like I said in my post above: "I absolutely love it when an ES offers the full range from total success to utter failure, especially when it doesn’t affect our characters in any lasting, meaningful way." The Last Constable ending absolutely has lasting and meaningful effects on our character’s story, which is why I’m not happy with it. But this ES - like most - has no effects beside a quality hidden somewhere in the long list of your Myself page. You can safely forget you ever played it.
I know, I know, you spent real-world money on it. But does that mean you want a guarantee that all will go well for you? I don’t. I pay that monthly sum to experience a story, and that includes being surprised and/or challenged by said story in unexpected ways. If there was a box somewhere that you could tick to make sure "All we be well", I wouldn’t tick it. But maybe such a box should be there for those who’d want it.
In the end, we shouldn’t forget that it’s impossible to make everyone happy all the time. I admire FBG for having the guts to risk doing something completely different now and again, and not always go the safest route.
edited by phryne on 12/29/2019
It’s not exactly agency that proved to be the problem.
As many have noted, Por Una Cabeza also set you up against a mastermind that held all the cards. The outcome was in many ways predetermined. However, you weren’t hurt in the process. In Fine Dining, you were dragged through the mud until the end. To be taken along for the ride without the opportunity to affect the outcome and have said outcome be destructive not only for you but also for the people you are trying to help, unless luck was four times on your side, was guaranteed to leave many people annoyed.
The story of the Clay Man and the Countess was a good example of how a story might be bitter to the end, and still be loved. The Last Constable instead was not. The difference? Some players got to experience a happy end and some got a tragedy - entirely because of luck. Your character might be a gambler but the player probably isn’t. Make the experience of the story a gamble instead of having a clear narrative goal and you are guaranteed to leave many people dissatisfied.
To add to that, it made no sense for a character with high abilities, money etc to be unable to find other means of rescuing the operation. The game was rigged to fail. Now, if the end result was a revelation, some lore, a secret, I would mind less, because the epicenter of the story wouldn’t be the success of the dinner, but what you learned. But no: your success or failure was the story. So letting some of us get a complete and utter thrashing, was in my opinion ill-advised.
I don’t mind FB experimenting at all, even though I stayed away from the game for a whole day after (so sour was the taste). At the same time, I can label some experiments disastrous and unenjoyable. Much like my four course dinner, of course.
edited by Jolanda Swan on 12/29/2019
As an avid foodie, and somewhat of a cooking aficionado myself, I knew I couldn’t skip this story. I had my Exceptional Friendship on hold for economic reasons, and I re-subscribed just to play through it - this is how much I loved the idea, no joke.
So I tried to keep the staff from falling apart, trusted my good old acquaintance the Bandaged Poissonier a tad too much, bought expensive ingredients for both the Critic and the Pastry Chef, yet they managed to botch the last two courses (the first half of the dinner was fine as far as I can tell.)
The Tiger was not impressed, the restaurant lost all its stars, the Chef’s reputation is in tatters - yet I loved every moment of it.
With the possible exception of serving human flesh (but, come on, can you really live in Fallen London and still be shocked about it?), I don’t feel my choices were particularly bad, yet I utterly, miserably failed.
Do I blame it on the dice? Yep - but for once in a while, that was FUN. I don’t buy into the idea that because I have the stats, I should be able to do anything (actually that’s been a pet peeve of mine in previous stories.)
My character’s no cook, yet she tried to fool a super jaded tiger gourmet… How could she not fail?
In the end, I enjoyed the story immensely. I won’t re-play it (I never do that, as I feel it detracts from the “actions have consequences” concept) and will remember fondly that time I destroyed a famous establishment in a single evening.
I mean - some times we want soul-wrenching dilemmas in our Exceptional Stories, or bits of lore, or character development. But I feel like we don’t need to get a spider-infested eye or swallow a dream snake every month - after a while, it all just becomes routine. It was nice to just fail for once, especially because unlike other stories, no tragedy occurred (look, everyone will probably need to find a new job - but that’s hardly the worst thing that can happen in this town, right?)
I tried my best, and I failed - utterly, grotesquely failed. I find it weirdly exhilarating!
If this story was an attempt to recreate the anxiety and chaos of a kitchen then it succeeded wonderfully. I’ve always found it annoying how a newcomer can suddenly burst into an arbitrary arena with no prior training or education and expect to not only succeed, but excel.
The cockades are references to Michelin Stars, where chefs have committed suicide in fear of losing one. And they expect me, a character who spent years goat grinding to have learned to cook at some point? Please, that’s what servants are for. I’m about a good a chef as the tiger is.
The experience to fail was novel, even if I disliked it. I haven’t failed this hard at anything since I first started Fallen London. It’s a good reminder that no matter how powerful and educated you are, there are always things where you’ll look a fool.
edited by Blaine Davidson on 12/31/2019
[quote=Blaine Davidson]If this story was an attempt to recreate the anxiety and chaos of a kitchen then it succeeded wonderfully. I’ve always found it annoying how an newcomer can suddenly burst into an arbitrary arena with no prior training or education and expect to not only succeed, but excel.
The cockades are references to Michelin Stars, where chefs have committed suicide in fear of losing one. And they expect me, a character who spent years goat grinding to have learned to cook at some point? Please, that’s what servants are for. I’m about a good a chef as the tiger is.
The experience to fail was novel, even if I disliked it. I haven’t failed this hard at anything since I first started Fallen London. It’s a good reminder that no matter how powerful and educated you are, there are always things where you’ll look a fool.[/quote]
Oh, the Tiger is an excellent chef–but only so long as what he’s cooking is meat. :) I know this because I watched my IRL spouse play the story through to the end, including his conversation with the Tiger afterward–and the Tiger said so.
edited by cathyr19355 on 12/29/2019
[quote=Jolanda Swan]It’s not exactly agency that proved to be the problem.
As many have noted, Por Una Cabeza also set you up against a mastermind that held all the cards. The outcome was in many ways predetermined. However, you weren’t hurt in the process. In Fine Dining, you were dragged through the mud until the end. To be taken along for the ride without the opportunity to affect the outcome and have said outcome be destructive not only for you but also for the people you are trying to help, unless luck was four times on your side, was guaranteed to leave many people annoyed.
The story of the Clay Man and the Countess was a good example of how a story might be bitter to the end, and still be loved. The Last Constable instead was not. The difference? Some players got to experience a happy end and some got a tragedy - entirely because of luck. Your character might be a gambler but the player probably isn’t. Make the experience of the story a gamble instead of having a clear narrative goal and you are guaranteed to leave many people dissatisfied.
To add to that, it made no sense for a character with high abilities, money etc to be unable to find other means of rescuing the operation. The game was rigged to fail. Now, if the end result was a revelation, some lore, a secret, I would mind less, because the epicenter of the story wouldn’t be the success of the dinner, but what you learned. But no: your success or failure was the story. So letting some of us get a complete and utter thrashing, was in my opinion ill-advised.
[/quote]
This. All of this.
It left it all to chance, and then made the success or failure of the gambles the biggest part of the story. I couldn’t increase my chances with the dishes, only unlock options for new ones. If I could have grinded up some quality like in the barber story, or passed some skill/item/renown/favor check to increase some quality that got me help or made cooking things easier then I wouldn’t be so upset. That would have reduced the gamble and give me more agency.
If the success or failure of the restaurant was incidental to the story, like there was something bigger going on or it w as much more of a character piece, then I wouldn’t have been so mad. Probably not happy they left it purely to chance, but not mad. Especially if it was well written.
But the gamble was all that was. The cooking for the critic was all there was. And my character, that I have built up for years, floundered due to circumstances completely and one-hundred percent outside my control. I couldn’t really change or affect anything, and it was centered around, and up to, luck. And that is something I really don’t like.
As you could probably tell from my rambling, poorly penned, kinda long internet screeds.
One thing I think would have worked better with this material would be to make it an optional Fate-locked story like Theological Husbandry, The Spinning of the Wheels, etc. The writers would have had to pare down the material into a smaller story, but that way players would have had a choice to buy the story, face off with the RNG and likely fail miserably. Instead, everyone who’s an Exceptional Friend got this story as their monthly content, so the whole thing feels more mandatory. I don’t know how well this story would have worked as purchasable Fate content, but the story removed player choice in a lot of ways and that marred the rest of the story, which I quite liked.
I cannot express my relief that the review ended with this:
"…the Head Chef was not behind the travesty that I experienced. For this reason, the restaurant will not suffer a loss." I normally try to be in character a bit on the forums but my honest, out loud reaction to this was "oh my god. Thank god. I didn’t destroy his restaurant."
I wish they’d have tied this to your Attributes. I mean a Paramount Presence should have been KNOWN and you’d think have the knowledge to needed to make a decent meal. High Watchful should have caught the undercooking/overcooking/noticed things weren’t spiced, etc. Persuasive should have been able to deal with the chaos through force of personality. Shadowy could’ve used the cunning aspect to offer alternative solutions that no one thought of that could be easier. Dangerous couldn’t have helped much honestly, unless the experience of knowing what bits of things are poisonous for more exotic fare is what we’re going with.
If we wanted to get connections involved you’d think me being closest to the Urchins could have let me recruit help with buying everything I’d need. I could see Closest to Docks, Criminals, Urchins could have helped at the market by saving time. Closest to Society, Hell, and the Great Game could’ve helped with the kitchen by sourcing extra help who won’t ask questions. Tomb-Colonies and Rubbery Men (And Hell and the Great Game) could provide more exotic cuisine probably. Constables, Church, Revolutionaries and Bohemians coulda been useful with damage control after the nights over if nothing else.
I just don’t like when the entire story is up to RNG. No we don’t have any experience with cooking in a restaurant but with as experienced as some characters are and as many connections as we can have, you’d think that we’d have some options here to call in favors and figure some things out.
I wish I had come clean at the end instead of playing coy on how bad things were. Maybe the review would have been forgiving of the poor mans restaurant. I did like how my cab driver parroted my words at the beginning back to me on fine dining being barely food.
This story made me feel the anxious chaos of what it would be like to try and salvage a horrifying situation where you have no idea what the right choices are or if your choices are even effecting anything.
On one hand- brilliant combination of mechanics and story telling to help accomplish a solid emotional state. Very well done.
On the other- that emotional state was Intense Anxiety. Its a very well done story, I think, but it wasn’t traditionally fun. If I’d been having a very bad/anxious day it probably could’ve sent me into an anxiety attack (mainly because ‘YOU HAVE NO CONTROL’ is something I struggle with a lot in my day day day), which on one hand, is testament to how well it captures ‘EVERYTHINGS GOING WRONG AND YOU HAVE NO CONTROL’ but on the other, well. Anxiety attacks ain’t great.
Overall though, very good story and very intense experience.
Well, usually I let new stories sit and ripen for a while (given that I have EF mainly for the extra turns and cards*), but you’ve all made me feel I need to play this now! So I can share in the common – erm – emotion. Frustration.
I have to say I really loved the story/characters, and the detailed dive into this tiny piece of everyday London life. It was a refreshing change since lately the storylines I’ve been playing have all felt so heavy and significant and existential.
While initially I was frustrated to be at the mercy of the RNG for important choices, at some point I let go of trying so hard to get it right, since the gameplay seems designed to result in a comedy of errors. How else do you explain Buying the mystery meat based on the butcher’s expert knowledge of the Tiger’s allergy, and immediately turning around to find that’s all just a rumor It was sort of fun to really FEEL (as the player) the same chaos and confusion my character felt in this ridiculous situation. It was as if I had been dropped into a runaway horse-cart careening through the streets-- the only thing to do was hold tight and try to enjoy it.
Aiza failed spectacularly on all fronts, it was hilarious, and I’m quite satisfied.
edited by Aiza Moor on 12/30/2019
edited by Aiza Moor on 12/30/2019
Just play Fidgeting Writer instead. Same taste, fewer calories.