Forging Ahead (GURPS Interstellar Wars/Celestial Forge)

Well, it was a fun ride until the end.

Thanks for all of your efforts Cliff, and good luck in your next endeavor.

 

You did really well! I loved the story and the writing progress and it was fun to debate and watch the debates happen in the comments! Look forward to your next story!

 

After the recent trial-and-error, one conclusion I have come to is that you guys were right. The Celestial Forge is even clunkier to work with if you don't random-roll. The potential power in there is immense, and the degree of randomness is necessary to slow your roll enough to actually have a story instead of a curbstomp. I tried alternate methods of slowing the pace in this story, and while they were working they weren't working great.

Pure random-roll of course has its own drawbacks, as "Light of the Forge" proved, but in hindsight I did hit on something valid there with 'random roll but veto and/or pick something less awesome than your roll'. It lets you slow the roll, but you don't have to give any artificial excuses for not speeding the roll up. If the dice don't give it to you, you don't get it, even if you can maybe get a lesser consolation prize.

Of course, I've already tried a "Light of the Forge". So I don't think I'll ever actually try the Celestial Forge again. Two experiments, two different approaches at using it, two failures at roughly the same point. Abandoning a fic depresses me somewhat, so, when I finally try again - at whatever indefinite future date - I shall very likely try something else.

Inspired Inventor, OTOH, has the problem of too much too fast. This works in Worm v1 CYOA because Worm's a fucking cosmic death world, you literally cannot be too powerful there for the plot. Even Kaleidoscope with the chain taken COMPLETELY off at least still lets you get out a complete one-shot (as I've already demonstrated, plug plug) off. The solution taken by Slayer Anderson's "Industrious", which has II exist but really slows down the recharge rate (in that fic, its 1 charge/month) looks very promising, and I already recced that fic earlier but by all means I'll rec it again. So, that's a long-range possibility. Although right now there's a fic doing it and doing it really well, so I ain't gonna head-to-head against that.

One other suggestion was Tinker of Imagination. That one I probably won't ever use - the ability to ignore the Tinker Cycle and conjure your own materials and specialized tools from the getgo means that any MC I wrote couldn't NOT go all SupCom inside the first 24 hours. As for regular Tinker of Fiction... I've read ToF fics, and the fun there is using all sorts of obscure stuff from obscure franchises in creative ways, and I do not know as many franchises as those guys do.

I do have an Essence of the Innovator I might use in a future tech-wank fic, and which I'll link here so people actually remember it exists. It's old and obscure.

tldr; We'll see what the future brings someday, but it likely won't be the Celestial Forge again.

 

On the other hand, winning the war is different from Overwhelmingly winning the war. There is so much to do, to improve the chances, and to reduce casualties.

Another good direction is expansion, whether it is in uncharted star maps, or uncharted dimensions. Kind of like in https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/cruel-to-be-kind-si-multicross-rehost.3509/
.

Another direction would be a multiverse jump via FTL warp gone wrong, either an entire ship containing MC, into space era, contemporary era, medival era, etc. Or, alone, into whatever. From there could branch into survival / crisis averting missions / empire building.

Speaking of crisis averting missions. When she's done, congratulations, she's rewarded with more work. Now go deal with the Borg, or Mass Effect, etc. And repeat.

Or you could finagle her away from research, and into politics. "High command decided you're more valuable being ambassador in the Sector's court. Oh look, some important figure wants to marry you, good luck."

Or such.
Questionable ideas, in the form of unasked advice aside, thank you for the chapter, and have fun touching grass.

 

Honestly something I would recommend is going the Tinker specialty route instead of a broad range of options if your not a fan of pure curb stomp. Find a niche that would fit your character and push them into it. Say like your character could be weirdly capable with clockwork to the point of a building a full on mech out of clockwork.

 

To be fair, Celestial Forge fics are rather tough to write without the "empire building" aspect. And your comfort zone is the adventurer story, so it was gonna be a struggle either way.

You did mention a interest into Inspired Inventor or Tinker of Fiction. And to be frank, it would probably be easier on the pacing rather than using Celestial Forge. Ssince Inspired Inventor uses charges and Tinker of Fiction focuses on one tech at a time for X amount of time so you can dictate how much tech/knowledge is used.

 

You're not forgetting Big Ears, Big Brain (Mass Effect | Inspired Inventor) by pez, yes?

I think there was another one who did this right, but forgot its name.

 

Aww now I'm sad. I actually liked how things went orignally with the Grandfather and was excited to see how things would go and develop from there. Drat Muses

 

So you need a power that is not too powerless but not too overpowered? why not try Worm CYOA's Shaper power? as far as I know theirs only 2 interesting fic that is centered around that power that exist and managed to end. For Tinker powers v5's Fictional Engineering is good too not weak and not too strong depending on which sci-fi setting you choose. Though v3's Apprentice is good too adding the mental archive and tinker ability it also has limited escalation as the users need training and combat to improve.

Too bad is abandoned as its starting to get to the interesting part too. Anyway good luck on your next fic.

 

Maybe a specialty route instead of a broad range of techs? People do love when someone munchkins, which is probably why your Light of the Forge fic did well in the beginning and somewhat later.

I mean it doesn't have to be obscure. You could have probably done this fic with your knowledge of DC or MCU tech.

There's Inspired Voyage (ST: Voyager / SI) and Inspiration Strikes! (A Quarian Pseudo-SI/OC in Mass Effect).

 

Do you have any idea how broken that power truly is? It lets you create any amount of biomass arbitrarily, or manipulate any existing biomass arbitrarily, up to and including jacking, duplicating, or boosting whatever superpowers it has!

You can literally win Worm v1 CYOA with Shaper simply by giving Zion a dirty look. Nothing in that power keeps you from using it to fuck with Entities. One thought and he dies. Or becomes your helpless slave. Or whatever.

Shit, one thought could literally put Earth knee-deep in Zerg from pole to pole. That power has multiple no-limits fallacies deliberately built into it. That's how broken Shaper is.

 

In regards to interesting framework ideas, there's 2 Fallout 4 stories that work under the Wiki Warrior format. One is Sauce Warrior (https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/fallout-4-sauce-soldier-wiki-warrior.18246/) that uses NHentai random searches as inspiration for power/item/character drops, and the other is a non-QQ thread that I can't remember the name of. MC of the Bastion game is sent to FO4, and starts getting Wiki Warrior style rolls from a multitude of sources. Like, one of the recent rolls was post-anime David Martinez with the power base of a Destiny Titan.

But one of those author's mentioned recently that they had rolled for something powerful in advance of a chapter, and the author sat on it until it made sense to implement in the story.

Maybe you can take a look at their Wiki Warrior format, and add/subtract wikis you know for a future story? Maybe roll out the random rolls in advance for writing a story, and "bank" anything that would destroy your power curve for later?

Eh, it's my two cents, take it or leave it.

 

Was not aware of their existence, going to read them now.

 

Vacation? Who ever she wants. Introduce those bodyguards. A potential sister or matronly figure? Or a bro or stone cold fuck mother? Or perhaps she gets invites from high level leaders or scientists to visit and network. Her parents with her baby brother? Whip that muse till it stops being prissy.

 

And Cherico made an interesting story with an Endbringer Shaper SI and what your implying is an SI with morals off and also are shards and entity organic? I thought their made of crystalline structures.

 

Dude, I used to be the guy who read fanfic, cursed that so many great fanfic ideas stopped after a few chapters and were never finished, and wished those fanfic authors would just work harder.

Then I became a fanfic author, and once I saw how the other half lived I dawned to the overwhelming awareness that Past Me didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. Which is why I gave up complaining about lack of updates or abandoned fics years ago. This shit is hard, and worse yet, it's often outside of the author's own conscious control.

I mean, shit, do you know what you call a writer who actually does have the gift of making his muse work on cue? Published. When you can actually pull that feat off, as few people can, then you stop being a fanfic author and actually make a living doing it. Which I do not.

Whatever else the Entities are, the author has made it pretty plain that they're alive, not machines. So I choose to treat them as life forms. And fuck, it's not like silicon-based life doesn't have ample precedent in sci-fi.

 

I'm sad, that this is finished. I've been enjoying what you've written. I suppose drawing a line instead of forcing the story to limp is a better choice.

I feel that while you're probably right, a simple limitation that would be fairly reasonable is to consider the fact that the cyoa talks about biological life forms. Why this is relevant is the fact that Zion's species could be considered something similar to nanobots in how they reproduce. And nanbots unless designed to be biological wouldn't fall under shaper's powers.
So the who weird biology could make shaper messing with them a challenge. On top of this, even with something like blank shielding them, I'd say it would be still be possible for some sort of thinker power to attract attention to allow for Zion to fight back. Even with a sort of response it doesn't need to be overwhelming unless something is shown to be truly dangerous to him.
Writers for Worm often seem to deal with greater extremes then are necessary.

 

Well, I am sad to see this go, but at least you have yet again proven you can play very well in a pen & paper sandbox to make it understandable and interesseting.
Maybe you could try one of those challenges? I know they are still pretty big on Through the Hellmouth and we got them going pretty regulary over in the CYOA thread.

 

Why do always the good ones get abandoned ;-(

 

I see that's why you thinking that the Shaper is too OP still its not something a arbitrarily limitation that it cannot affect Zion's species can't solve. If your really sticking with the Tinker/Inventor theme why not just pick 1 to 3 sci-fi franchise and like the ToF grant the MC the tech base of that franchise and its best not to pick a sci-fi franchise that is not useless or overpowered but still useful to make a difference or impact in the setting where the MC is in like Its practically a heavily nerfed version and limited of CF and ToF.

 

I am kinda sad about this. While you feel you don't know as many series as others, the ones that you have shown that you know very rarely (if at all) get used, such as Shadowrun and Rifts. I think you could bring some really obscure things to the table in a Tinker of Fiction story, but if it is not meant to be it is not meant to be.

 

There is also Inspired Mass (an Inspired Voyage spinoff) by the same author as inspired voyage.

 

I think Inspired Voyage makes an argument for II not being an "I Win" in certain settings and scenarios. He could have gotten them home in like a week to a month even with gimped 1 charged per week. The reason he didn't was because the time in the Delta quadrant was important, that much of it was time sensitive and required they not hop over everything.

For not too OP and not too under powered some variation of Gamer might be a neat thing to try. Not something free form like the original story necessarily. Maybe something based off of a TTRPG. Or even mix things up by mix matching the setting with the source.

 

Aww it's abandoned? Oh well, it was great while it lasted! I'll just imagine this ended with an Epilogue with Sophia becoming God-Empress of the Milky Way after ascending to Godhood through Forge Perks, and beating Grandfather.

 

Am I going insane or did chapter 8 already get posted a few days ago with a cliffhanger ending?

 

Cliff deleted it because he wasn't happy with the teleporting mechanic... I think.

 

My analysis, for what it's worth: the problem with Celestial Forge, and most CYOA-alikes is that they are, fundamentally, designed to break a setting. And Light of the Forge worked because Rifts is both a setting that kinda needs to be broken a bit, and also has high-enough-power players that it takes a while to break them.
Where, here, it seemed like you were working for a "can power up but not actually break the setting" scale, which is a goal that CF is not great at. It can be modified to do that, but said modifications can be the subject of endless debate.

Still, treating this as a short story that wraps up here with a "satisfied win condition" makes my brain okay with ending this.

And, of course, I enjoy most of what you've written, so on a purely selfish note, here's hoping inspiration strikes again soon!

 

Chapter removed, story dead, unfinished rewrite as a farewell gift.
Sad to see it go, but the muse does as the muse does.
Thank you for writing what you did, and I'll look forward to reading whatever you write in the future.

 

I've had some ideas about limiting the Celestial Forge for lower difficulty worlds, firstly being lower the cp generated, second being restrict higher tier perks from being bought until enough low tier perks have been bought. For example, 200CP perks are completely locked until 250 perks of the 100CP price are purchased, then 300CP are similarly locked until 100 of the 200CP priced perks are purchased. Dunno if it'll actually fit the problem though, a large variety of low-end powers combined might still be able to steamroll opposition.

 

While I really liked the fic, and thought the pace while fast was manageable I understand why you’re abandoning it. It’s unfortunately something that seems nearly inevitable with CYOA and CF fics (not that I tend to read the former as they’re always OP power wanks from the get go, and with the latter its usually much the same unless the author puts on some very large limiters such as those you added) as the very nature of such systems does not lend itself well to a well balanced story in which the main character has to go through actual struggles. The CF system in particular (though how you set it up vastly mitigates most of its issues) is particularly prone to difficulties given the original systems word count bs. But I digress. As a lover of sci-fi stories that have lots of fun tech stuff in them, I hope that you still continue trying to come up with such a story even if it’s not this one. It was a fun journey and I guess I’ll see you around when you make a new one.