Newbie Question: Keeping Narratives Straight

Hello all,

Been playing FL for about a month now, and I really like the setting and the fiction. I’m trying to keep the pace nice and easy; play through my available actions in the morning, then again in the evening. But I am having trouble keeping all the narratives straight in my head and wonder if there are any tips for that. As it is, I’m getting more of a general tone or feel for the setting than a collection of stories. I don’t perceive any particular central or ongoing narrative other than my Ambition, which has been on hold for weeks while I level up enough to get to Wolfstack Docks. Perhaps part of the problem is that I’m constantly jumping from location to location, trying to keep my abilities approximately evenly leveled.

Just wanted to say, browsing through the forums, that this seems like a wonderful community. Happy to be here.

Yeah it’s a lot easier to keep narratives straight if you only do one at a time.

Going through narratives one at a time can be rather difficult, as many of them proceed gradually as one raises one’s abilities, or sporadically by drawing cards that might not appear for quite some time, where certain desirable options might have unforeseen requirements that might require grinding otherwise unused qualities.

As the journal is of little help once one tries to document more than one narrative at a time, I take screen shots of both options and the results of the options chosen. Then I can always go back and remind myself of what I’ve done before. But it’s also turned these narratives from enjoyable stories to rather arduous tasks of documentation. In fact, grinding has been turned into a leisurely stroll through the Neath compared to exploring any sort of narrative. So perhaps it is best to simply rely on your own memory? And if that’s not enough, just let it go?

Yeah, this is sort of where I’m at. I’m mining the storylets for tone and impression, rather than for narrative. I can view the hazy, jumbled recollection of previous events as part of the hallucinatory vibe. I’ll suppose that my character is somewhat addled from a not-unwelcome Prisoner’s Honey habit.
edited by Lalswing on 1/22/2015

Personally, I’d check the Fallen London wiki. A lot of the content is not word for word (trimmed), but it can at least help keep the story straight.

I use a spreadsheet to keep track of everything I’m doing at high level, together with the Wiki, which is an invaluable resource for reviewing free storylines. That leaves fate-locked content, which I document for myself with a text editor.

When I first started playing I had 4 accounts, so remembering plot points was pretty easy. The tradeoff is that having 4 accounts when you’re brand new is quite a lot of hassle, and I ended up ditching all but my main for the longest time.

Personally I don’t think you should worry too much about trying to remember all the little details - go through the game and get an idea of the big pictures. After you’ve exhausted all the content you want to do on your main account and you’re just grinding for an Overgoat you can create a new account to check out another ambition, and view the early game content with the knowledge you’ve gleaned from endgame revelations.

Plus, you can always just ask about anything you’re unsure of here! We like discussing lore, and the answers you get might help someone else who’s also gotten muddled.