Limited Area Ward Discussion

So OoA has posted a new Ritual.

I read it and while there is nothing fundamentally wrong with I feel we can improve on it. As it stands it is not particularly scary and the drawbacks seem rather weak.
My idea to spice it up a bit would involve a special kind of paranormal entity or event that commonly materialises in these sorts of wards. Maybe space gets twisted in there, making it difficult to leave sometimes, as doorways suddenly lead right back into the protected area and stuff like that. Or a small ring of ash appears at the centre of the protected area and keeps expanding. Within the ashen circle resides something terrible and it only goes away a few days after the ashen line has encircled the entire area.

Just throwing ideas out there.

I very much like the twisted space idea. Additionally, I'd like to throw in an effect that usually targets the caster - maybe an entity that materialises, as you mentioned - but if two people cast it (especially if they're "similar" on, say, a spiritual level), it gets "confused" and is much less of a problem. OoA might not even have fully made that connection yet - but I don't know how often she did this ritual on her own.

There's lots of things that can be done. This is the point where I have to demystify a little and say (I don't think it's revealing too much at this point) that there is a Reason why things haven't exactly had a whole lot of drawbacks for her and her sister up till this point. The rituals that she does at home (or within range of home) have far less negative impact than they should.

Which means that when /someone else/ tries her rituals, they're in for a surprise. And I'm excited to see what kind of nasty stuff we can think of as effects she doesn't realize yet. I do actually particularly like the idea that it would lure in a specific type of Entity that is confused by multiple very similar casters.

I would also suggest, as a side effect that she herself has encountered but not figured out-if something gets /in/, it's far more powerful and aware of the caster than it otherwise would be.

Ah yes, that sounds amusing and intriguing! :}

Well ,then we have that point settled. However I want to point out that I feel a bit uncomfortable with the fact that the last two Rituals added have been altered by us. This RPG is not all ours and we should keep in mind that new ideas from the players are an important thing to themselves and the game as well.
Altering and trimming everything brought in might result in the players being less eager to add something to the world at all.
I dont think that we are at this point right now and queenofinsanity6 isare decent enough player to swim along with us but thi is still something we maybe should consider in the future.

I'd also like to point out that, while I don't mind you guys trying to help polish off my ritual, sometimes the people who post these don't know the side effects, and it's perhaps more effective if sometimes the ritual stands as is, only to have input later down the line.

Not everything has to have a side effect as obvious as a nasty migraine or other illness. Sometimes it might attract supernatural attention or give somebody freakishly bad luck, or other things that are harder to definitively pin on the ritual while you are experiencing them.

The things people post are limited by their experience. Sometimes people miss things, or sometimes things are hidden from them.

@JPunkt:
I see nothing wrong with discuss these things. It's not like we keep just completely changing these rituals. In fact we didn't change anything all. instead we just settled on the fact that certain outcomes aren't known. I just think we should make sure that the Mirrorverse remains consistent and one of the constants is that meddling in paranormal affairs is always risky and scary to some extent. That's one of the reasons we have this planning subforum, after all. To make sure that everyone is having a good time.

@queenofinsanity: I agree, that that is a way to make things interesting. However, we tried the ad-hoc approach with Shutter's geas ritual and it kinda caused problems, since just changing the properties of a ritual without the writer's consent was... kind of a dick move, really. So this time, when we saw another ritual we felt could do with some slight alterations, we decided to bring it up here and now we know the creator's stance on it, which allows us to bring up bad side-effects ingame later.

So in short: I want this game to be as scary and fun as possible for all players and I see no harm in bringing up the point of content that I feel lacks certain qualities. Communication is the key here.

I'd like to add: While each character posts subjectively and will miss or ignore things to an individual degree, it's good to have a solid ooc information flow about things the characters are not aware of. Of course that harms suspense and the improv aspect a bit. But it's still a game where numerous people are collaborating to have fun - so I don't really see the problem of talking about these things, asking questions and bouncing around ideas, especially when it's about keeping the mood of the setting intact. The creator of a ritual can still state "oh it's cool, make up some cool stuff" or "my character missed something vital, I'll send you a PM if your character tries the ritual". If, say, a ritual is quite risky (because it's attracting powerful entities or whatnot), then a player might have their character choose not to attempt at it because they're currently involved in another plot.
The play might become less opaque this way and lose a bit of suspense but I think the advantages for the players outweigh this.

I'm also really sorry if fiddling with their rituals upset anyone. :/

I made a thread for future ritual discussions and I'll add a link to it in the rules real quick. :3 Since some people might want to keep their things secret from other players until said players use said things, I've added the option to PM rituals to JPunkt, Nichtschwert, mapp and me so we can discuss them in the Creators Corner where no one else can see it and give good feedback directly.

And no need to panic. This forum is young, and a bit of trial and error poking around unavoidable. We should actually be glad we ran into this problem this quickly and with understanding players, and could learn from it right in the beginning of our run~<3

Whups! I meant that to sound like I was supporting OOC chatting about stuff versus deciding off the cuff that stuff needs to be changed or worse, IC flailing that throws everyone off like with that Geas thing. The OOC chat is helpful. Sorry I was unclear.

Pulling this up: Are the effects very heavy-weight? I have an idea how this could fit nicely with Noah's plot but I don't want to bite off more than I can chew, plot-wise.