Another Unofficial Far Shores Ramble
The response to the reset has been absolutely positive. That’s to say that, if there are any negative feelings lingering around on this subject other than the expected and totally understandable bite of losing your characters and game world, Cath and I are yet to hear them. That is not to sound dismissive, as we will quite happily sit down and
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I think your second point is an issue of you being misinformed, or not realising that when you've received apparently conflicting information it's been because system calls have changed. The Luck list, for instance, did used to be instant-cast and couldn't be countered. That was unbalanced, and so we changed it, about a year ago. Everyone with the Luck list - everyone with any list we've changed - was informed of the changes. I do believe there were announcements as well, where if we didn't at least tell people what had happened, we did say that there were changes in general. As for the apparent misunderstanding with Mind magic and Blood magic, the times when they 'beat' other lists are generally specifically stated (such as Blood magic's negation of the other lists). This is no more complicated than the Stalker list's Empty beating all detection spells. If people want to go out there and calculate which list is top of any pile, then they are absolutely free to go and do that, but as refs we will not divulge that (incredibly academic in the first place) information.
We have taken several steps to make the rules as consistent as possible in the past; any ref worth their salt ought to have this goal. Certainly we bear something that basic in mind as we continue to develop and change the system, but I don't think it's something we need a cue card reminder for. If someone hasn't played a particular list and decides to get their information from casual sources whose knowledge might be dated, there's nothing we can do about that since they're the ones who chose to not come to the refs and we're not psychic.
As for the Time Freeze issue, I'd counter that with two points. The first is that this is one encounter which had that issue. Your average linear is 30 encounters; you get 4 linears a term, and so 12 linears a year, and FS has been running for 3 years. I'm okay with those numbers. Sometimes, things just happen, like people choosing to use their various effects all at the same time. The second point is even more relevant: due to the nature of that encounter, people had been given insta-cast spells in their power-up. The Time Freeze, as I recall, was actually so that everyone could explain what they were doing so they didn't have to shout over each other in combat and have something missed, or have people listening out for calls instead of getting into the fight.
As I recall, after that opening salvo of special effects, the fight was perfectly smooth, with no higher-than-average time freezes, and lasted perhaps five minutes, which is a long time for a combat encounter. It was not bogged down in time freezes.
Ultimately, we have a lot of ideas already for the setting and how to develop it, and a lot of ideas of how to change the system to both improve it and bring it in-line with the new setting. I am confident that when people read what we have put together, they will enjoy it, and so I'd encourage against anyone jumping the gun or making assumptions before then.
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