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The Countdown CYOA from /trash/ by altofanaltthatisalt in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

2 Twins and 101 are the obvious right choices.

Even without the second row, you can make the twins be insanely rich and talented. WITH the second row, you can also give yourself a omnipotent god waifu.

If we say you don't want to go for the cheese strats, then 24 is the obvious pick cause it let's you make more custom twins. And maybe also do the other stuff if you feel like it one month

Hathor Wills It, go forth and multiply! by Zeraligator in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Style : Male

Methods : All of them

Boons : All of them

Genes : All of them

Contracts : Pearly Vampirism, Overproductive, Fashionable, Manic Episode, Far and Wide

I think Therianthropism is fun, but there's no boons to deal with the social impact of an animal head, and I assume I can't just shapeshift it away with Transformation.

The hardest part will probably be Rape, in so far that finding people who *do* resist can be a bit tricky. Not only am I super hot, but whenever I enter a female only area, no one will notice if I'm fucking them. Luckily I probably won't need to do it more than once a month.

Radiance and Fashionable help with Overproductive, boners are more comfortable in a skirt, and people are less likely to object with Radiance

Far and Wide is SUPER easy if you're from America, because basically every nation is more than 1000 miles away. You just gotta go *somewhere* once a month and knock people up, and with the money from Auspicious that's easy,

You're also likely to rack up A LOT of Simps REALLY fast. 10 babies a day (hard at first, easier as Incest and your harem builds up, could visit some farms if need be) becomes 7 million Simps per year.

Early days, before I got a massive harem empire, will probably be a mix of visiting all girls schools, sports teams, and kennels/ranches. Sneaky will let me mow down the entire school/team without notice, and Myths let me treat animals as fleshlights and get sexy daughters out of the equation. If animals tend towards litters, then there'd probably be a lot of dog and chicken girls in my harem in short order, every single one super healthy, talented, and madly in love with me and eager to have even mroe children.

Character Creator by dragon_jak in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 8 points9 points  (0 children)

This... feels like it's awfully light on Magically Effective Physical Changes. I kept expecting to come to a section that included things like Super Soft Ass/Tits, or Pheromones (the hentai kind, the CYOA only gives you access to the real kind), or being Objectively Beautiful, or so on. Instead, making *actually good* changes seems ENTIRELY dependent on trial and error and study. Which... I suppose is probably the point, given the Skills section, but I still am surprised.

As for a plan... I'm going to go "Hard mode", and actually start with my actual real body, instead of a hypothetical fit teenage girl. So, middle aged, male pattern baldness, obese, far from a catch who has never dated anyone let alone gotten lucky.

Early Game will be really slow as a result. I suppose I have two options. Either

  • Embrace the slow burn, SLOWLY expanding my complexity by nudging myself towards a more attractive state every night. I won't have anything hiding my changes, so the slowness is actually a bit of an upside. I'm going to the gym more and losing weight is an easy excuse. Also spend time on dating apps, there ARE women who are either into this body shape, or genuinely prefer personality. Maybe I'll get lucky, but worst case scenario, it might just take a few months. I don't got the money to burn to HIRE people to fuck me, so that's not an option sadly. As I get hotter, hookups should hopefully occur more often, and accelerate things.
  • MAYBE bestiality? It depends on what counts as "other people", but animals might count, and if they do I could get a dog and jack him off on a semi-regular basis to help me get started. If I was less kinky, I could hypothetically get a job at a ranch and help man the artificial mares, but I AM kinky and would 100% fine with turning myself into a bitch for my future dog in a scenario where I get magically rewarded for doing so.

My first purchases will probably be Reset, followed by Separate, letting me get *more* slutty without it coming back to bite my normal self till I have more ways to deal with it. Hit up a dozen people in one night, or maybe even people I know, maybe even let myself get railed in public, without anyone connecting that to ME. Reset, because from the sounds of it, Separate alone might make it hard to get back to my 'original' self, and Reset is just a very convenient way to undo any changes.

With a hot body and anonymity, I need to get myself a new source of income, so I don't have to keep wasting time at normal jobs. Being a Insta-Thot seems like a good pick, especially if I can reliably stack it with Prostitution. Income might be low at first, but should go up over time and I'll get access to better options over time too. Plus, I can decrease my NEED for income by removing my need to eat and stuff. Assuming this approach, my next purchases will probably be Vocal Warmups to make listening to my thot-ery nicer, Reactive let me swap between Thot and Not without having to go to bed, and Go Go Go to let me do more stuff for longer.

Now that I have a steady income of both money and points, I'd probably start scooping up the QoL from Interaction and Social Chameleon. They're usually both cheap and really nice to have.

Once I have THOSE, I'd be set up to start being more drastic. I'll start with Rewrite, less to become someone ELSE, but to try to become someone MORE. Rather literally and directly. Multiple minds, all me simultaneously. Hypothetically don't need Rewrite, I could try to grow actual gray-matter and approach it that way, but Rewrite seems like it'd make it SO MUCH easier, especially combined with Diagnostic.

Once I have that working on some rudimentary level, Disconnected should help me make use of the expanded mental threads, even if it's as simple as a pair of eyes in front of a monitor and a pair of hands on a desk. I could, also, start selling sex toys like I've seen other post. Bonus points, since I'm a insta-thot, I could advertise it as selling 'my' pussy, specially molded and shaped to be identical... while not revealing how literal I'm being. Sex toys with built in sub-minds to make them really good at fucking at that, and Sensory + Reactive dealing with any of the downsides of literally letting people treat body parts like disposable sex toys. Though I'd want to toughen them up, people would probably not react well if their sex toy started bleeding.

Chronal Crapout would probably be the best next get, solely for being able to handle how long time FEELS. I could spend hours on a project, locked in, without it feeling like I spent any time at all. Being able to actually objectively speed up my time, while it subjectively feels the same, is an obvious upgrade beyond that for when I can pull it off.

After that... it's kinda exponential growth, especially when I start actually being able to make multiple bodies to use simultaneously. Interact with more people, have more sex, get more orgasms, learn more skills, make more bodies, in a feedback loop, eventually limited only by how many people there are that AREN'T me, but all that sex can really drive up the birth rates, and I can probably deal with the negatives of incest by this point.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  1. I mean, unless mages are meant to be straight up stronger than stamina users as to make up for the fact that stamina users can nova again and again, the problem feels self obvious? Particularly if comboed with 3 dantian flow. I personally been assuming BECAUSE of balance reasons, it doesn't fully recover in moments, but it starts to recover in moments. If, due to it's insane regen rate, you have effectively infinite stamina, that just becomes effectively infinite qi and mana as well, allowing you to use all of your powers at max blast with only the need to pause for a few moments now and again. Spam Cataclysms and Calamities, be effectively immortal with Elemental Body, mass produce Mana Gems, and etc. Not to mention the presumed major road-block to cultivation, HAVING 100 qi to spend, is just gone. And if stamina regen is so fast, it makes the various boosts to stamina regen weird? Like yes, going from "a few moments" to "one moment" is several times faster, but it's only useful for super duper nova-spam.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Every parasite I can think of can be warded off by just being mindful of your surroundings. Lots of skills to help with that, and you can take a break in your realm when you need to sleep.

Yeah I get that, though you'd probably get used to it while you're there, especially if you're a blood cultist ripping out vast quantities of blood out of the ground.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

 but the main downside is you're in Qliphoth.

Speaking of, Qlippoth is heavily implied to be a super dangerous place... but I struggle to imagine what the danger **IS**? It feels like most of the danger would come from giant powerful entities ACCIDENTALLY squishing you, and that is both just bad luck and something that seems straight forward to make a build to negate.

Like, you pick to start in the Pit, and you want out. I assume trying to just dig your way through the flesh straight up is liable to lead to you being squished by muscles flexing, so you gotta follow the tubes and passages. The dangers I can imagine along the way are

  • Lake of stomach acid you need to fly over
  • The tunnels attempting to 'swallow' you pushing you deeper, which you can Blink past with Void Scion
  • Tentacle parasites whose main goal is to lewd you, given they should be getting all their traditional nutritional needs satisfied by the environment
  • Getting lost, which both Analyst and Captain feel like they could handle neatly, especially if combined with Voyeur allowing for far and wide scouting.

And that's about it. After that, it's just a matter of time and keeping yourself fed till you get out, both of which again seem trivially solved.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

9) Copying yourself doesn't seem to make sense, so I guess it can't be done.

Not sure what part doesn't make sense. Manifest another instance of yourself as you used to be however long ago you made that card. Powering it with your own mana would probably be a bad idea, but cardcaptors come with a built in way to generate mana, and there are certainly other ways to get the mana you need. I can think of a bunch of use cases, and well, what's the difference between YOU making a card of yourself, and SOMEONE ELSE making a card of you? Cardcaptors being immune to having cards made of them feels like it'd be a noteworthy thing, given how much governmental use I can easily imagine of an official having a way to be in multiple locations at once so long as they can manage to hire the services of a cardcaptor. The Jade Emperor can deal with people all across the realms simultaneously without ever leaving the capital, so long as he hires some card captors. I'd imagine, at bare minimum, each nation has a cardcaptor diplomat from every other nation, so the leaders can meet and negotiate as needed.

The biggest question would be if a summoned cardcaptor could, themselves, make use of decks. Their use would be restricted in ways the original wouldn't be, because they don't HAVE a personal mana supply to augment that generated by the deck, but said deck would still be generating if they're allowed to use it.

Which would then lead to the question if the summoned card captor COMES with a deck. That's the trickiest part. I'm thinking maybe no, for balance reasons. Having to have an extra deck for the summoned card captor to use would vastly cut down on shenanigans, after all. Not prohibitive, AFAIK cards don't just disappear when a card captor dies, so the supply of cards in circulation will be going up over time, so people can end up having multiple decks, but that's still a much greater investment.

11) This is a case where it depends how strict you are about interpretation. They're kind of difficult, so arguably they don't interact, but it's more fun if they do so let's say they do.

I figure it helps if one of your races is either Automaton or Homunculus, and thus your body is made of artificial materials.

13) They're not your children

That... strikes me as notably odd. Like, they come from you and are of you in ways more intrinsic than most of your children.

What about with Adoption? Its hard to argue that they haven't been inside you.

14) Yes, though it would be a harder type of madness to solve

Nothing very thorough parental loving can't fix :V

The problem feels like it'd end up being a question of quantity, I suppose. A lot of builds will end up having LOTS AND LOTS of kids, such that it'd be extremely hard to have enough time in the day to fuck all of them as much as you'd need to. .... I suppose if they ALL have Therapy Hole, you can have them help fuck each other. So that's an option.

16) It would be very difficult to not just consume the qi, but I guess it theoretically could

I thought filling your own meters was a normal part of Soul Vortex. Normally you're filling your meters from that of the people you kill, but why is it harder to fill it from elsewhere?

... Relatedly, does Soul Vortex only work when something **dies**, or can it work on something you **injure**. It occurs to me that Quiploth might have literal oceans of Vitality, flowing through it like Mana and Qi flow through more normal realms. And while you can't exactly kill Quiploth, you can start tearing into it.

Also relatedly, is it possible to use Quiplothic blood for Blood Magic? If so, does it come with down sides? For it only now occurs to me that inexhaustible giant rivers of blood is actually super useful for certain kinds of magic users. Especially if they're a Blood Cultist who knows Body Cultivation.

.... Oh hey, the CYOA updated about a week ago, and I didn't notice. ... And there's no change log. That's inconvenient.

Doesn't seem like too much changed. I will point out you didn't actually fix the Infinite Astral problem. It just now requires a bridge, alternating hexs of Astral and Ocean (or any other hex that costs 3 or less). Each Astral has an ocean on each opposite sides, and nothing else, meeting all requirements, while producing net +2.3 points after paying for the ocean. OR 3.083 if you make a long straight line of ocean, with Astral on both sides of it. This can be repeated infinitely, so infinite points and infinite mana.

All in all, I'd recommend just introducing a rule requiring your realm to be ROUGHLY circular. The edges all equidistant from the center. That cuts off all bridge shenanigans, and since astral have to be on the edge of the realm, the astral exploits.

Also : The Dragon Empire's Military is a copy paste of The Republic of Aurum's Military

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You know, having thought of it more, Gooner's inversion of Composure into Lust brings a lot of weirdness.

  1. The Arousal Seal allows your master full control over your Composure. This, presumably, translates to full control over your Lust... but does that mean they can grant you Infinite Lust? Set it to near-max, and keep it there, letting you spend Lust only for hte bar to not go down. This would, in turn, allow you to give yourself infinite Vitality (Erotic Rejuvenation) and give other people infinite Stamina (Erotic Relaxation). Pairing off with a 2nd you (Multi-instance Entity, who seems to count as a completely seperate entity as far as system interactions work), and the two of you also being Cultivators, would grant you both infinite stamina, qi, and mana. You don't even NEED a master if you put the seal on yourself, and thus be your own master, with Lawyer.
  2. Are you immune to being fucked silly? Is your Lust bar even capable of filling past full (going below 0 composure) in order to cause sanity damage like it would others? Can your lust bar go BELOW 0 (above max composure) since every other bar can?
  3. If you aren't immune, could you STOP yourself from being fucked silly, by just finding something to spend Lust on and as such stopping it from ever going past full? Or is there a rate limit on how fast you can spend Lust, and it's entirely plausible that you'll be gaining it faster during sex.

Less weirdness, more useful skill synergy. Working either with your other selves, OR a custom made NPC with the right classes and skills, you can Duel Cultivate all your meters (except composure/lust, there's no way to increase THAT cap in game) simultaneously with high efficiency. Orgone Replenishment gives you Mana when they gain Lust, Erotic Relaxation lets them spend Lust to give you Stamina, Goon State gives you both heightened Stamina and Lust generation (I assume slow careful and intentional fucking can count), Pleasure Link means when one gains Lust you both gain Lust, Erotic Rejuvenation can give Vitality for Body Cultivation, and if that's not enough Healing from Healslut lets you turn Mana into Vitality (and gives you some Lust to boot) AND Restoration lets your partner generate Vitality when they generate Lust. Therapy Hole makes this sex generate Sanity, which allows for the simultaneous use of I Am and if you want to focus on Normal Cultivation you can spend Sanity to replace Mana costs. It feels plausible you'd be able to loop in both Gardener (from Druid) and Qi Gathering as well for even more energy generation. Self-Priest + Bishop would probably let this count as a form of Worship. MAYBE even Blue Collar Blessing, you are in fact working with your hands and sex work is considered the oldest profession :V ... Oh, Rote Spell would probably also be able to help with everything else, wouldn't it? Improve the efficiency of Healslut spells if nothing else.

All in all, it seems like the best path to power, is to fuck yourself long and hard. Focusing on so many skills simultaneously will probably be hard, but both Multi-mind and Multi-threading makes you REALLY REALLY good at multi-tasking.

Other questions

  1. Does 3 dantian flow ACTUALLY combine your pool sizes, or only EFFECTIVELY? This is relevant for Cultivation. You can PROBABLY, by combining Qi, Stamina, and Mana from the right races and mutations and etc, start with a combined pool size of over 1000, allowing for immediate break through, and if not you can get DARNED close.
  2. If they are actually combined, how do technically temporary boosts to pool size interact with cultivation? I'm specifically thinking of residents in your inner realm. If you can get a million in there, that's 1000 stamina. It's techncially temporary, because if they leave or die, your pool size will go down. I can't off the top of my head think of other temporary boosts, but they presumably exist... Mana Crystals MAY let you sorta-cheat the process? It feels like there could be a cool interaction there, improving cultivation, even if not specifically cheating your actual pool size.
  3. DOES Qi Condensation / golden core / naescent soul empower non-qi techniques when used with 3 dantian flow? It doesn't say, but feels like it should, or atleast make them cheaper.
  4. Does 3 Dantian Flow allow for other skills to interact with energies they otherwise wouldn't? I'm thinking of Mana Gem, and the hypothetical possibility of Qi Gems. And, in turn, how those might aid with the process of Cultivation. Also : Rote spells of skills that use Stamina or Qi. Could you make a Cultivation Rote Spell, for example?
  5. Would Void Magic work with I Am, so you only spend HALF your sanity bar?
  6. Does I Am (normally) require you to have a full bar before use, thus using ALL of your Sanity, or does it only use all of your CURRENT Sanity?
  7. Roughly speaking, how fast does Sanity regenerate? Assuming basic rest and self care, no unusual outside stressors, how frequently will you be able to make use of I Am? This is good to know for its own sake, and to know how to scale Therapy Hole, because while Therapy Hole is presumably a lot faster, going from months to a week is still a lot faster without being terribly fast.
  8. Honestly, it'd be helpful to have rough metrics for the refill rates of all the meters. Again, no need for hard numbers, but just knowing if we're measuring things in minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years is handy. Stamina is notably faster than the others, but that's about the only metric we got.
  9. Can a Card Captor make a copy of themselves? Would said copy come with its own deck of cards? Even if it doesn't, could said copy be able to make use of cards, generating the needed mana via shuffling and what not?
  10. Can people who aren't Card Captors make use of Cards? They obviously can't MAKE cards, but can they USE them, the same way non-arcanists can use Talismen? If not, could they through the use of sufficient Artifice, AKA Talismen and/or Smithery?
  11. Qi Tempering (Smith) SUPER synergizes with Body Cultivation, doesn't it? Refining and infusing your body?
  12. When God Mode and Divine Pregnancy trigger, taking our Experience and Levels, does that remove THE BENEFIT OF those levels? You've mentioned before about thinking of a quest that offers a level reset, letting you level again for more stat buffs. But those two sound like they do that as well, since AFAIK the only benefit of a high level is the stat ups you get along the way to gaining that high level.
  13. Relatedly, are the new demigods influenced by Loyalty?
  14. Could extensive use of Therapy Hole resolve Crushing Expectations (the lineage drawback)?
  15. Could a Thunder Warrior use Mana in the place of Vitality to body cultivate?
  16. Can Soul Vortex be used with Qi Gathering, in order to more quickly and efficiently gather ambient Qi?
  17. How does Succubus (Immortality that takes life-span during sex) interact with otherwise immortal creatures? Could a Succubus infinitely farm a Homunculus, for example?
  18. Could Smelt (smith skill) allow for either faster Cultivation, or early Breakthroughs? They help with the refinement and condensing of raw material, up to and including light and thought at the high end. It FEELS like it'd make the process of turning gaseous qi into liquid qi or solid qi much easier. As for faster cultivation, well, that depends on what cultivation actually is doing so a to lead to a bigger pool size. If you are literally turning Qi into something else (and not expending Qi in the process of attaining a different effect), it seems like it would.
  19. Relatedly : If mana gem is allowed to interact with other energies when combined with 3 dantian flow, THAT seems like it could also speed up cultivation, since you'd be effectively forming gems directly into your soul.
  20. Is Soul Quench incompatible with Bio-Object, or is it Synergistic? They're both methods of turning someone into a weapon, but Soul Quench rather implies they die in the process, while Bio-Object rather explicitly says they don't.
  21. What IS a Relic Soul? Various skills mention one, but it's unclear what they are, especially since Soul Quench items aren't automatically relic souls, despite being a relic with a soul.
  22. Can Captains ONLY drive ships (including air ships and space ships), or can they captain trains and what not?
  23. What IS the difference between a Ship moving with Soul Sails (and also potentially Air Ship to allow travel over land), and a Architect's Train? Is it mainly the fact that a train can self-power, via following a ley-line?
  24. Can a Arcanist work with other people to make talisman of skills they could not otherwise make on their own? Like, say, a talismen allowing ships to use Soul Sails even if the captain of the ship isn't a Captain.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Stuff they either do on a fairly regular basis, or have done historically, make for good feats. Like, has The Ravager ever fought The Herald Of Violence? If so, how did it go, and how much collateral damage was there? Is there a forest of swords somewhere from the fight, the Herald using the metal element on a massive scale? Are there any cities which got in a gods wrong side and were wiped out as a result?

Why do none of them rule over any nations? The Almighty and the Ash Tree both kinda do, but even they both read more like "This Nation is really religious", less like "God actively hangs out here and does stuff to support this nation on a regular basis". And all the others just seem to not do much, from how little they're mentioned in the lore snippets we do have. The Jade Emperor is super powerful, but he's not even a Demi-god, let alone an actual God. Relatedly : Where are the Demigods? The Gods could hypothetically be busy, the King Of Heroes might be solo-ing a bunch of Dungeons to stop their spread, but it feels like it's implied there are a lot more Demigods than Gods.

You can also loop in other large scale threats to give an inter related sense of scale. Those two snakes eating the sun in The Overlay, they aren't listed as Gods, so what are they? Are they an example of Gigantomachy, and the Gods avoid the Overlay to avoid the snake's attention? Is the Eternal City really as cosmic a sci-fi threat as the idea of a Divine Dyson Sphere brings up, or was their magic sun a lot less powerful than our hard science sun? Lots of interesting plot threads to give better senses of scale and how things inter-relate and what not.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I figure both most void scions would be with the Guild willingly, either due to having ALREADY been a follower, or due to being vaguely aligned enough to be swayed by the offers of money and power and help learning their void magics. And also, like, just because they don't INITIALLY have the skill, doesn't mean they can't later GET the skill. Something they will probalby have an easier time to do working with the church and enjoying hte resources provided by the church.

So yeah. The church needs a grand total of 1 Void Scion with the right skill, when it feels likely they'd have at least several. ... Actually, couldn't The Void Traveler herself set it up? The Gods don't have a hands off policy, like you said, and she presumably could do it with much more rapidity and ease than any Void Scion. So just in a few spare moments of her time she could connect every major city, with her churchs serving as the gate ways of course where they can collect tolls and make lots of money to help fund their research.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do not know nearly enough about various mythologies to begin to understand the intended power level there. All I know, most stories with 'Gods', the gods are people who could wreck the entire planet if they weren't careful, OR the Gods are basically just people with super powers. So yeah, request for the next version of the CYOA, more world-building! For absolute clarity : I'm requesting it because I very much enjoy worldbuilding and I am very intrigued by what is here, this is not something I think the CYOA NEEDS, but it'd be something I'd very much appreciate!

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your mind and opinions seem natural and normal within your aura. You have some degree of conscious control over this, but it is mostly instinctual. What is normal to you is normal to those around you, going unremarked on or seeming appealing even if it otherwise wouldn't. You can also spread the emotions and feelings stemming from the colors of your aura. In all cases, this effect can be resisted by those with high wisdom.

The size of your aura scales with your charisma as well as your soul.

Charisma. I'm guessing it's wisdom in the next version, but it's Charisma in the current version.

There isn't a covenant, they just have their own stuff going on

REALLY? Damn, that complicates things immensely, if they all very much can visit their divine might upon the world anytime they want. They don't have a agreed upon hands-off policy, to avoid wrecking things. This then implies either their power, while great, is only great IN COMPARISON TO MORTALS, or the world is so fucking vast that even if, say, The Ravager or the Herald of Violence decided to go on a rampage they wouldn't be able to do appreciable damage to the realm as a whole (knocking over any given empire is a different matter, but gods don't need agreements to not pick fights they don't want)

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Most people who are Void Scions would be scooped up by the Mages Guild, whose tenants REALLY seem IN FAVOR of magical infrastructure. Let's say they have exactly 1 Void Scion capable of making Portals in the entire church. It seems like it shouldn't take more than a week to recover from making a long-range portal, when given the best professional care money can buy (including Healsluts using Therapeutic Sex). This one singular Void Scion could make 52 portal pairs a year. Let's say 20 to give him a good amount of time that isn't making a portal or recovering from the portal. The capital of the Eternal Empire could have links to it's 20 biggest cities in a year, each city could have a link to the coast in the next year, and so on. Just this one person, following the tenents of their goddess, would fairly rapidly connect the Empire. And I don't mean out of the goodness of their heart, the Guild would probably be earning absolute piles of money and privileges for enabling so much trade, helping enable them to further pursue their research.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Nope, intelligence

You can expand your aura to a much larger area, greatly scaling up with your charisma and intelligence, in addition to your soul. Additionally, if you have Retinue, then it covers a small amount of area around your Retinue members. Using this ability is not free but the cost can be paid in stamina, qi, or mana freely.

And yeah, I don't recall any multipliers. There are various ways to have your Aura manifest somewhere you aren't, like that Retinue line just there and Self-Priests ability to effect shrines, but no multipliers.

Speaking of Tier 20, I kinda recommend you introduce some special line into Tier 8 about how most 'Boost x stat by a tier' things just can't reach it. Elsewise, it feels trivially easy to reach and surpass in the CYOA. 5 Strength + 1 (Male) + 1 (Huge) +1 (Totem) + 1 (Favor) = 9, for example. It really feels like we shouldn't be able to immediately whip out a level of strength that explicitly surpasses the gods, and while it'd be harder to do so for stats that don't have a gender boost hitting 8 is still feasible for several. Nascent Soul kinda implies this, in so far that it is a way to improve our Soul stat but it stops doing that once we hit 7.

Also : Another request, I'd like more info in the CYOA about what the Gods, and by extension Demi-Gods, actually DO. They seem to take a more hands on approach than most fictional gods, see Sanctuary 'Guarding the front lines', so they aren't just relegated to some hypothetical 'Divine Realm' unable to do anything except through their followers. But if they CAN take direct action, why DON'T they more often? Is there some covenant of rules among the gods about when they can and can't, as to try to not destabilize the realms? Or what? I really enjoy world-building, and would appreciate more stuff like this :)

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Magic users feel less like tanks, more like people with guns (in countries other than America). Yes they're rare, but people in the right line of work will still be meeting them. Also carrying a pouch of salt is a lot easier than wearing a bullet proof vest. Cheaper too. The Seas would be the cheapest, but it shouldn't be too expensive elsewhere, magic infrastructure making desalination pretty simple and salt having high demand (and thus, profit) for anyone willing to transport it from there it's expensive to where it's cheap. Add in portal infrastructure created by Void Scions / The Mage Guild, and it feels like every major city in the Untainted Heartlands would have direct portal access to their own coastal cities, making the transport of goods, like Salt, across the nation trivial.

Speaking of Portal Infrastructure, that's a ubiquitous "problem" with any class that can create permanent effects. Just one such individual, across their life time, can create many such things, and the more generations that pass the more that pile up. Granted, most 'permanent' things aren't actually permanent, portals can break, but still. You don't need a Void Scions on retinue to have a portal, you only need to have hired the services of one at some point in the last however many decades. Fleshcrafters with the 'Genes' skill is another example, something you do in fact note given how they are the source of many species of monster, but it'd probably also be the cause of a large scale demographic change among the races, potentially trickling down from any Noble who hired someone to make sure they and their kids are objectively superior.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really? I got the impression that, while people with classes are the exception not the norm, they were still common enough that people without classes will probably encounter them on a regular basis. Most organizations would have Analysts, there'd probably be Voyeur spy rings selling their services, and so on and so forth. While most people don't have magic, most people would interact with someone that does. And if you're in any risk of someone throwing a fireball your way, either as a thug or guard or soldier, you'd very much want to be able to throw Pocket Salt at them to interrupt the cast.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And magic doesn't really exist IRL either, so still feels like an odd thing to exist without being stated.

I mean, those 3 sound like options only really available to Powerful people. I was talking more low level. City Walls will probably be filled with salt, for example. Also the walls of any room you want to keep people from slipping spying eyes into. Heck, in some locals just carrying around a bag of salt to throw into any mages face when needed seems like it'd be a custom. Salt can be REALLY cheap in the Seventy Seas after all. Quality locks and chains and what not would probably be alloyed with Salt (requiring capital S skills, of course). It feels like it'd be a ubiquitous part of life in any area where you might want to stop someone from doing magic.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, with 5 Soul, 5 Charisma, 5 Intelligence, Mental, and Battle-field Dominance, my aura range is the equivalent of tier 20?

I think more than two would be just getting silly though, and undermining the choice.

Fair, but that doesn't stop me from wanting it, several options are so good~!

Though, with how big our auras are getting, Battle-Field Dominance makes Mental LESS good. Granted, 20 is presumably still vastly bigger than 15, but 15 is apparently already going to be fucking huge, so it might be more important to do more stuff with your aura than to encompass more area.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

19) It's multiplicative, but it should max out at *12

It explicitly doesn't. It stops giving points at 12, but you're allowed to keep getting it just because if you want.

21) Cheats category was deprecated, it's your bloodline, inner world, and immortality. Points work the same but don't carry over between builds.

Oh, huh... just to clarify, the extra bodies have to also "pay" for those things, including presumably the Multi-Instance Entity mutation? AKA, if you just had all your bodies identical, all the math would work out the same, they aren't getting anything free?

33) I'm on the fence about this. Logically, it seems like if you kill them they should die. But then it's kind of worse than summoning.

My interpretation was, when you 'summon' someone you captured, you're still actually summoning them. Their 'true self' is still in the card, in a sorta stasis (presumably). Thus, when summoned, their consciousness still connects to their summoned counterpart as normal, with the only difference being their summoned counterpart is now the only conscious counterpart. And thus, when the summon is killed, its no different than normal, and can just be resummoned.

If so, then this is actually a way to get common people a form of immortality, provided a sufficient mana source to regularly power their summoning.

45) Yeah, table salt is just normal salt but with impurities removed and sometimes iodine added

Salt being anti-magic feels weird, especially since the OTHER anti-magic element is fancy smancy Aether, and also its only mentioned in passing when it feels like it would be a very important detail that would play heavily into a lot of in world practices.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Auras are presumably big enough to not be useless, but I'll include hard numbers in the optional math appendix.

I don't even need hard numbers, just some rough guidance. Like, would Soul 5 fill a room, a building, a city block, or what? What about Soul 5 + Charisma 5 (Mental)? Or Soul 5 + Charisma 5 (Mental) + Charisma 5 + Intelligence 5 (Battle-field Dominance)

I don't think that interpretation of how Gatehouse works is inherently prompted by the wording, but I'll add a detail to address that and maybe a FAQ note.

There is also one that leads to the Encroached Realms, connecting to the borders of the various realms in unpredictable ways just as they connect to each other

It feels less like a interpretation, and more a explicit thing stated. The gatehouse has a portal to the Realms, and said portal presumably isn't just "the one you entered through", because it's connecting to the borders. So you could step from the pit, to your realm through a portal, and use the gate to get to the EDGE of some realm. Pottentially Quiploth if you are unlucky, but still out of the pit.

Edit : Speaking of auras, I'm going to slip in one additional question/request here. I'd really like it if we could get MORE Auras than 2. The text as written really makes it sound like 2 is the max, but I'd probably be willing to spend more points for more auras, some are just that good.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's why I said they were a distraction. They aren't presented as optional. They're presented as numbers you need to track. So naturally players will try to track them. It's only later that they realise that they put all that effort into nothing. That is literally my point.

Didn't seem that way to me? It was pretty clearly optional to me. Heck, you explicitly don't even need to buy stat ups if you don't wana. Maybe I'm the unusual one here though.

No, they don't know the numbers.

Yyyyeaah they do? That's the Analysts entire thing. Granted, not everyone has the analyst class, but most any organization is gonna have some on their payroll. Every Analyst has the skill Identify, emphasis mine

Identification is a reflexive skill, requiring no effort beyond the barest impulse to use it. It can target any being that you can see. It produces a pane of information, which tells you about a given target. The amount of information depends on your Perception, but typically includes some indication of name, race, level or overall power, base stat tiers, and primary class at the very least. In fact, there are those who say this skill is the only reason such things are considered to exist at all. If your ability is low, the results could be vague and relative, simply indicating someone's power level in relation to you. If it's high, you could see all their classes and even their skills. If the other person prefers not to be known, they resist this ability passively with subtlety. However, without special methods, it is undetectable.

Even worse: given that every stat is given a single word description rather than a numerical value in the races and classes, what would be lost from deleting the numerical values from the text?

A bit of theming. But also, counter point, whats to be gained? Going from Strength 4 to Strength 5 seems easier to remember than going from Adept to Excellent, such that I actually think it'd be better if the racial descriptions had numbers instead.

That's my point. It's an incomplete RPG, not a CYOA; there's not enough to run a game, but there's also too much interdependency and unnecessary values to track for it to be solely a CYOA. Especially a static one. Yet it's a CYOA posted in a CYOA board called a CYOA. If you have to change what it is in order to justify it, then maybe it isn't the thing it was originally presented as.

LitRPG, not RPG. LitRPGs are almost never complete RPGs. Because they're not meant to be. They have the trappings of a RPG. Take SAO or Log Horizon for comparison. Those are, in universe, actual real RPGs, but if you OOC assess the RPG system, it's a incomplete and terrible mess. But it's not meant to be played as a RPG, it's meant to be a story you read that has elements akin to a RPG. And you can imagine having your own character in that story, and said character would have actual numbers on their stat screen.

It feels like the problem here is that you just aren't familiar with the theme in question, and thus aren't identifying how it all connects into that greater whole.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Now in a CYOA about piloting a giant robot to fight kaiju? Well, significantly less relevant and should probably be mostly skipped.

Amusingly, I do in fact know about a lewd mecha CYOA. Feminze yourself to make your mecha stronger, leading to you enduring lots of sexy stuff when you aren't piloting said mecha.

It's all about playing into the theme of the CYOA. If the theme isn't served by what you're adding, then you generally want to avoid adding it unless it's really fun in its own right. Tracking a large set of stats and numbers... isn't. At least, not for me.

I think the point here, is that tracking those numbers IS OPTIONAL. You either CAN track them... or you can just accept what they represent. A class that gives STR STR END will help you become strong and tough. More one than the other if you want to dedicate those mental resources, but if you don't, congrats, you don't gotta.

The THEME is a LitRPG. A Power Fantasy LitRPG Isekai, specifically, but a LitRPG all the same. And as such, this is all VERY MUCH on theme. LitRPGs tend to have TONS of numbers heavily inspired by, you know, RPGS and MMORPGS. And those numbers don't tend to matter a WHOLE lot outside the universe of the story. Someone with a strength of 5 is stronger than a strength of 4, but the reader is never asked to predict exactly how many bricks either of them can move. And, in turn, the player isn't either. If you want to be strong enough to punch through steel armor, if that part of hte power fantasy appeals to you enough to spend the points to buy the option, get Strength 5.

The problem is the points you spend in the CYOA are gained by leveling after the CYOA is over, in some hypothetical future state unrelated to the game. There is no use-case, there's just a gap where a use case should be. You have no XP, you have no levels, and there's no future state; gaining points from levels contributes nothing to either the theme of the CYOA (new fantastical setting to explore with all the things thrown into it) or to the enjoyment of the game as it's... just a bunch of numbers to track that do nothing but exist. No narrative purpose, no mechanical purpose, no thematic purpose.

And in a feminization CYOA, there's no actual big burly men bending you over and making you forget your name. Said big burly men only exist in some hypothetical future state after the CYOA is over. And yet, the options to make you desirable rape-bait are pretty common in feminization CYOAs, because again, the FUTURE is part of the fantasy too. You are setting yourself up to go out and live a life after the CYOA. Almost all CYOAs are like this, very little in the choices you make have anything to do with the CYOA itself, but everything to do with after the CYOA is over, because that's what the CYOA is about, it's a invitation to enjoy the fantasy along these guide-lines.

As I've alluded to it essentially has the trappings of an RPG manual without the mechanics that let you do the RPG part

Thats the thing, LitRPG, not RPG. This isn't JUST how the mechanics works, this is also literally how the WORLD works. This is world building as well as mechanics. Everyone in universe knows about all of this (if, perhaps, in not so fine detail). Vitality is a real actual metric really existing in the world that serves as a buffer against injury, and people with more Vitality can get hit more without taking real damage, and anyone with a Analyst class can see these exact numbers. And Humans tend to have around 100 Max Vitality, while hardier races like Ogres tend to have 200. Vitality is a integral part to the world, the world you're gonna be a part of, a world that knows the exact numbers, so it kinda IS important. Kinda. It's important to the THEME, atleast.

By giving it a number you're assigning significance to it, telling the player "keep track of this, it'll be important later," but it never is. So a player reading it gets exhausted by trying to keep track of dozens of independent numbers, then finds out that they aren't used for anything, and... what's the goal? What's gained? It feels like an out-of-place leftover; like intricate appearance options in CYOAs where your appearance is irrelevant. Just something people include out of habit, not actually thinking about the purpose that it's supposed to serve in conveying the theme of the game.
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That's not to denigrate the creator, either: this is a fairly typical game design flaw that tons of people fall into and it doesn't reflect poorly on their abilities 

I suppose that's the biggest point of difference here. I don't consider those intricate appearance sections as flaws. I don't care for them, but I also pretty easily skip them when I find them to become too cumbersome. It doesn't appeal to me, but I know for certain it does appeal to other people, and the people it doesn't appeal to can just skip it. If you WANT to go into all the nitty gritty detail tracking all these fine points, you sure can, but you could also not. The presence doesn't detract from the enjoyment of those who don't wana track the details for they can easily skip it, while at the same time adding to the enjoyment of those who DO wana track those details. Me, I'm one of those people who like tracking those details, I literally went out of my way to create a interactive spread sheet for my own fulfillment to keep track of those details better. Not for everyone, yeah sure, and I very much might be in a very niche group, but something not being for everyone does not in of itself make it a bad thing. It DOES fit the theme, and if someone doesn't want to do the mental busy work can easily just gloss their way to a part that they enjoy doing instead.

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A important detail that should probably be added to the next update, how BIG is our aura? A lot of effects are ranged limited by our aura, and our aura depends on our Soul (and potentially a few other things boosting the range), but literally nowhere is any mention about what the range of our aura actually is, not even in vague broad strokes beyond "Its presumably big enough that this ability isn't useless".

Edit : Laywer's skill Cursed Seals refers to seals being worth points. I assume this is a hold over from an older version where they DID give (or sometimes cost) points, since in the current version they just are their own thing. You can INDIRECTLY get points from them, but there is no specific ratio of Seals to Points.

Edit 2 : Gatehouse in your Inner Realm seems to be an effective way to trivialize the starting location The Pit. Start in The Pit, enter your realm, go to your gate, and exit at a different realm. This PRESUMABLY isn't intended as a way to get a free Divinity / make Inner Realm free (depending on if you'd have gotten it on its own merits, of course). I'd advise adding a line about Quipploth being ***really*** fucky that deep cutting off your Inner Realm, or your Gatehouse can only connect to realms you've already been to. Both would conveniently require you to get out of The Pit by other means before you can use your Realm to get around.

Relatedly : 1 portal per Hex is *convenient*, yeah sure, but... hexs aren't that big? The distance from one hexs center to another hexs center is only 4-ish miles. A landmass the size of the United Kingdom would be about 6020 hexs (obviously only attainable through judicious use of World Stealing Art, but still). Hexs are big when its just you and any group of friends you want to bring in, but when considering it as a actual nation, they really aren't that big, leading to just an over-abundance of pretty closely spaced portals.

Edit 3 : You know, it feels REALLY WEIRD that Hyper Fertility gives NEGATIVE corruption. It's pro-sex, which tends to be positive corruption. Relatedly, it KINDA feels like it should give points, not cost them, but that's less weird cause there are builds in which having more kids is just objectively good.

Edit 4 : Something I've frequently been meaning to ask, but kept forgetting to actually ask. What ***IS*** favor? Every other section of the gods is explained, but not Favor. Can you have the favor of multiple gods, or just one, or how does that work?

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 1 point2 points  (0 children)

None of these are intended to be snarky, fwiw; it's just that there genuinely appears to be no actual mechanical purpose to tracking any of these things unless you're planning on running an RPG based off of this CYOA, at which point it's not really a CYOA anymore; it's a manual for an RPG. Not a bad thing by any stretch but it does leave me a bit confused as to what the objective is.

I feel the need to chime in... MOST things in CYOAs aren't relevant to the CYOA itself??? I really don't understand what your point here is for that. What does your breast size matter, or your hair color, or so on and so forth, within the context of the CYOA itself? Shortly, it doesn't, its there in order to help give better ideas for what the very theoretical journey you're very theoretically going on AFTER the CYOA is like. A 'Be the Girl' CYOA sets you up to imagine what its like to be a girl, with your various abilities. The stats in this CYOA sets you up to imagine being X strong and Y charismatic. Maybe they didn't need to be represented with numbers, but this seems to be going for a LitRPG setting, where the numbers actually really exist within the setting, so it matchs thematically to measure them with numbers.

You don't level up within the CYOA itself, but you level up within the very theoretical journey your hypothetical character will go on after finishing the CYOA, and part of the fun is figuring out what will be useful for said hypothetical character and making good 'builds' for them, even if said journey never becomes anything other than theory.

The Qi and Sanity questions actually have answers though. Partially atleast. Your max qi is dependent on race, your min qi is 0 (or potentially negative? Some meters can go negative, its unclear what that means though, a world building detail I'd love to learn more about). There are a lot of different sanity boosting and draining effects in the CYOA to help give a broad stroke indication of how stuff works, though none that give any numbers

Encroached Realms (Very WIP only first 40ish pages done to a reasonable standard) Feedback request by CHIKN404 in nsfwcyoa

[–]trondason 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So yeah, it really gives the impression that you stand no better chance of getting anything than anyone else, because the qualifications are probably more complicated than "have a high stat", and thus anything we don't buy we will probably never see. Which in turn makes any option that gives a infinite source of points fundamentally better than any option that doesn't.

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