This was an absolutely delightful story, in particularly with the foreign office connection at the end. That last bit made the choice easier for me as I sided with teeth in that storyline.
As a first time subscriber to get the new story, I have to say I was a little disappointed. I finished it all in one sitting and was left with nothing else to do. The story itself was wonderful and fun with some interesting characters sprinkled in but I was left lacking. Now I wonder what the point of being a subscriber is if the story ends up being so short.
So there’s the Ringbreaker ending and the Songbird ending. Um, what’s the third possible ending?
There’s only two - the other option at the ending doesn’t do anything.
Thanks!
This was a very charming little slice of life story. The characters were well written and the three quests further fleshed out the city. I especially liked the hilarious lack of gratitude we received while trying to help those toffs over on Ladybones Road :P And that battle in that Veilgarden gallery has given me some rather serious second thoughts about maintaining my Singular Plant. I mean, yikes, do I really want that monstrosity running around my pantry?!
Another thing that gave this story its charm was the fact we had only two happy endings to choose from. They were a bittersweet sort of happy, but happy nonetheless. This is pretty unheard of situation in Fallen London, to say the least. Mister Songbird sounded so menacing and the Valkyrie was so adorably idealistic that I was convinced something horrible and traumatizing was going to happen. It was an awfully nice surprise when everything turned out relatively all right. And whichever ending we chose our characters made a friend, awwwww ^_^ Normally a two choice ending would have felt limited, but in this case it worked.
Lastly, HOJOTOHO! and The Heart, The Devil And The Zee both had some interesting experimental features that I thought worked very well. At various points in both stories we were given conversations or moral dilemmas that didn’t really have a mechanical outcome and which solely existed to flesh out the characters and allow greater RP. This added additional depth to the stories - and in the case of The Heart, The Devil And The Zee, helped the city feel more alive with its surprise Ladybones encounters.
edited by Anne Auclair on 5/3/2017
Assuming that your character is connected to the Face then presumably because they have not demonstrated a wonderful singing voice.
Out-of-game wise of course because the whole songbird thing is a new concept.[/quote]
Even in-game-wise, the Songbird might be a new concept. I can’t find the exact echo, but I was under the impression this is a more recent refinement of previous practices.[/quote]
Mr Songbird’s been around for years, it seems. There’s a very obscure reference in one of the Literary Ambitions options in Veilgarden. Speaking of which, there’s now a new option that replaces it if you choose the Ringbreaker ending (not sure about the Songbird ending yet). It gives an Airs reroll, a Romantic Notion, and a Nightmares reduction.
Anyone know the HOJOTOHO! value for the Songbird ending?
edited by Optimatum on 5/1/2017[/quote]
Oh, that is delightful! But they got the Wolf-Skin’s name wrong!
A funnier question has nary been asked.[/quote]
I think there’s a plant that eats them?[/quote]
Or possibly some kind of bird.
A funnier question has nary been asked.[/quote]
I think there’s a plant that eats them?[/quote]
Or possibly some kind of bird.[/quote]
Or a certain boatman…
[quote=Anne Auclair]This was a very charming little slice of life story. The characters were well written and the three quests further fleshed out the city. I especially liked the hilarious lack of gratitude we received while trying to help those toffs over on Ladybones Road :P And that battle in that Veilgarden gallery has given me some rather serious second thoughts about maintaining my Singular Plant. I mean, yikes, do I really want that monstrosity running around my pantry?!
<rest snipped>
edited by Anne Auclair on 5/3/2017[/quote]
What I want to know is how one of those Plants managed to free itself from the grip of the soil, and run around menacing humans!
[quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Anne Auclair]This was a very charming little slice of life story. The characters were well written and the three quests further fleshed out the city. I especially liked the hilarious lack of gratitude we received while trying to help those toffs over on Ladybones Road :P And that battle in that Veilgarden gallery has given me some rather serious second thoughts about maintaining my Singular Plant. I mean, yikes, do I really want that monstrosity running around my pantry?!
<rest snipped>
edited by Anne Auclair on 5/3/2017[/quote]
What I want to know is how one of those Plants managed to free itself from the grip of the soil, and run around menacing humans![/quote]
The story said, iirc: a particularly foolish artist dug it up from the earth of the Elder Continent and brought it home.
[quote=Optimatum][quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Anne Auclair]This was a very charming little slice of life story. The characters were well written and the three quests further fleshed out the city. I especially liked the hilarious lack of gratitude we received while trying to help those toffs over on Ladybones Road :P And that battle in that Veilgarden gallery has given me some rather serious second thoughts about maintaining my Singular Plant. I mean, yikes, do I really want that monstrosity running around my pantry?!
<rest snipped>
edited by Anne Auclair on 5/3/2017[/quote]
What I want to know is how one of those Plants managed to free itself from the grip of the soil, and run around menacing humans![/quote]
The story said, iirc: a particularly foolish artist dug it up from the earth of the Elder Continent and brought it home.[/quote]
I missed that, possibly because I read the storylets over my husband’s shoulder (I can’t afford ES this month). Thanks.
Why that artist would not re-pot the damned thing to keep it In One Place for the display is hard for me to imagine. But I can’t deny that that fight made for a really great scene!
[quote=Optimatum][quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Anne Auclair]This was a very charming little slice of life story. The characters were well written and the three quests further fleshed out the city. I especially liked the hilarious lack of gratitude we received while trying to help those toffs over on Ladybones Road :P And that battle in that Veilgarden gallery has given me some rather serious second thoughts about maintaining my Singular Plant. I mean, yikes, do I really want that monstrosity running around my pantry?!
<rest snipped>
edited by Anne Auclair on 5/3/2017[/quote]
What I want to know is how one of those Plants managed to free itself from the grip of the soil, and run around menacing humans![/quote]
The story said, iirc: a particularly foolish artist dug it up from the earth of the Elder Continent and brought it home.[/quote]
Actually we don’t know whether he dug it up or captured it while it was mobile. We only know that he "brought [it] back from the Elder Continent." I can only imagine how much the shipping fee was.
This was delightful.
I must confess that given the premise I did not expect the story to be this good.
Things I particularly liked:
- Characters - all of them fleshed out just enough. I really liked them all. The choice to break the story up into segments so we can spend time with only a couple of the urchins at a time worked really well. I also liked how each story segment ended with a small moral choice which helped define both our character and the children’s.[/li][li]All the new art. Just lovely.[/li][li]Great humour (e.g. Marsh Wolf hunt twist at the end, getting 1 x Penny as a reward, etc.)[/li][li]Mechanics - enough variation from segment to segment, and the pause for conversation with the Valkyrie between them were just the right length. I also liked how we could repeat options for new results (e.g. during the Marsh-Wolf hunt), and checking out locations after resolving the menace, to see our impact.[/li][li]0-action conversations, with more topics being added over time.[/li][li]Unlike the previous story, this was a good fit for the season’s theme, while still being an excellent standalone story.
Things I would have liked to be improved:
- Not being able to experience all options - especially when dealing with the spiders, since the options were luck dependent. Since we only had a finite number of actions to resolve the menace, it was impossible to try out all success/failure branches (and I failed most of them…).
All in all - an excellent story. Looking over my ranked list of all Exceptional Stories, I feel that it must be placed really high, almost at the very top of the list:
[spoiler]Excellent:
- Lost in Reflections[/li][li]Cut with Moonlight[/li][li]Hojotoho![/li][li]The Frequently Deceased[/li][li]The Waltz that Moved the World[/li][li]Flint[/li][li]The Century Exhibition[/li][li]The Twelve-Fifteen From Moloch Street[/li][li]The Persona Engine[/li][li]Where You and I Must Go
- The Pentecost Predicament[/li][li]The Calendar Code[/li][li]The Art of Murder[/li][li]The Chimney Pot Wars[/li][li]The Final Curtain[/li][li]The Heart, the Devil and the Zee[/li][li]Our Lady of Pyres[/li][li]The Clay Man’s Arm[/li][li]Five Minutes to Midday[/li][li]Discernment[/li][li]The Haunting at the Marsh House
- The Last Dog Society[/li][li]The Seven-Day Reign[/li][li]The Court of Cats
[/spoiler]
edited by dov on 5/4/2017
That is unlikely to be something that is going to change. Baring Flint (which is technically two stories) all ES have been that length, more or less. They only have a month to make each new Exceptional Story so it is limiting how much content they have time to make. To be frank that they manage to make a new story every single month, plus a free bonus story every season, of this kind of length and quality is pretty impressive.
I really enjoyed this story, and last month’s too. The art was great, and the RP choices were fantastic. I also loved just sitting on the rooftop and talking (as my character is being more and more drawn away from The Game, it felt right to encourage the Valkyrie in her idealism). I also really like the new option on the Urchin card (but I’m curious about what I’d have got from siding with The Songbird).
[quote=Anne Auclair][quote=Optimatum][quote=Catherine Raymond][quote=Anne Auclair]This was a very charming little slice of life story. The characters were well written and the three quests further fleshed out the city. I especially liked the hilarious lack of gratitude we received while trying to help those toffs over on Ladybones Road :P And that battle in that Veilgarden gallery has given me some rather serious second thoughts about maintaining my Singular Plant. I mean, yikes, do I really want that monstrosity running around my pantry?!
<rest snipped>
edited by Anne Auclair on 5/3/2017[/quote]
What I want to know is how one of those Plants managed to free itself from the grip of the soil, and run around menacing humans![/quote]
The story said, iirc: a particularly foolish artist dug it up from the earth of the Elder Continent and brought it home.[/quote]
Actually we don’t know whether he dug it up or captured it while it was mobile. We only know that he "brought [it] back from the Elder Continent." I can only imagine how much the shipping fee was.[/quote]
It seems to me that if he tried to capture it while it was mobile, it would have eaten him. It must have been secured somehow or he’d never have gotten it to Veilgarden in the first place.
The point of being a subscriber is a month of doubled action storage and a ten-card opportunity deck. The story is a bonus - Failbetter only even started the Exceptional Stories in (iirc) April 2015, and Exceptional Friendship was available for years before that.
(Plus you can actually get two stories for one month’s worth of subscription, or even three stories some months if you time it right. After all, the only requirement to play a story is being a subscriber during the month it’s available so you can play the intro storylet…)
That is unlikely to be something that is going to change. Baring Flint (which is technically two stories) all ES have been that length, more or less. They only have a month to make each new Exceptional Story so it is limiting how much content they have time to make. To be frank that they manage to make a new story every single month, plus a free bonus story every season, of this kind of length and quality is pretty impressive.[/quote]
I actually think this story was a little shorter than the average. Not complaining, just noting that it felt a little shorter.
edited by Anne Auclair on 5/4/2017
That is unlikely to be something that is going to change. Baring Flint (which is technically two stories) all ES have been that length, more or less. They only have a month to make each new Exceptional Story so it is limiting how much content they have time to make. To be frank that they manage to make a new story every single month, plus a free bonus story every season, of this kind of length and quality is pretty impressive.[/quote]
I actually think this story was a little shorter than the average. Not complaining, just noting that it felt a little shorter.
edited by Anne Auclair on 5/4/2017[/quote]
In terms of written text, this ES is one of the biggest
The Clay Man’s Arm +Season opening: 24,935 characters - 5,066 words
The Heart, The Devil and the Ze : 27,344 characters - 5,691 words
HOJOTOHO! : 36,202 characters - 7,397 words
edited by Ivica on 5/5/2017
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