Nasuverse FSN + SAO: j-jam it in!

[daniel_gudman]

Alteration is "attaching an ability outside its original effect to an object", while Reinforcement is "in the fundamental parts, executing elevation of properties, compensation of weak sections and the like" (please excuse the clumsy translation).

So I'm going to assume it can be used for purely physical phenomena; if Alteration is only for spiritual traits or something that I'm not picking up on, then my whole premise is wrong.

So... what about turning something that's a liquid into a solid? I can't think of a simpler example that's truly "Alteration" than that.

Well, except, viscosity is defined as the resistance of a fluid to shear stress. What if you Reinforced the viscosity so that the shear stress was less than the internal stress from weight? In that case it would behave like a solid, like clay, where it would remain the same shape without deforming once it was molded. You could have water that could literally be sculpted by scooping it up in your hands like mud.

...It's because my "common sense" is 100% mechanistic, but I can think of plenty of examples that could be called Reinforcement or Alteration depending on how you look at it.

And no matter what, I'll shamelessly hide behind the fact that since it's self-hypnosis, it's always whatever spell the user thinks it is.

 

[rajvir]

There's a reason why Alteration is considered inbetween Reinforcement and Projection.

 

[shioran toushin]

didn't Kaladbolg II come from using Alteration in Kaladbolg?

 

[Azure]

I think of it as, Reinforcement improves what is already in the object (up to the limits it can have), while Alteration adds a new property (or improves a property to a new limit?) the object, such as conductivity or so and so.

To me that viscosity example (... oh how it reminds me of Fluids mechanics) is probably more in the room of alteration. Water already has some measure of viscosity, so in the end you would increase that property which ends up Reinforcement (depending if the water can be improved so much before the structure fails). A good example for alteration to water would be adding/improving electrical conductivity (pure distilled water does not conduct electricity, if I remember correctly) or adding a fire effect to a sword to make it stronger.

Another good example of Alteration is Kadablog II, which resulted into changing the shape of the original sword into the spiral drill horn thing we all love.

 

[Abendroth]

So let me step back and ask more generally:
What should i be trying to accomplish story-wise with "the disaster", not just the mechanical effect of removing [Safe Zones], but what the impact on the thoughts of the people inside be; and what does that imply about what the nature of the disaster even is?

As I recall, the purpose of removing [Safe Zones] was twofold: One, to force players to invent bounded fields to recreate them. This was the reason to remove safe zones on future floors. Two, to force players who had remained inactive to participate somehow. This is the ultimate purpose of various disasters proposed.

I don't think the disaster should be triggered by players unraveling a bounded field or anything. You don't want to teach the players that [Progress is Bad]. Players should never be punished for advancing magecraft, so it should be an action of the boss.

On the subject of the disaster, perhaps the boss releases some sort of corrosion effect? Something that slowly disintegrates objects, starting on the first floor and working it's way up? First, buildings fall apart, then objects, then NPCs, then finally players start taking damage just for being there. The effect can be blocked with magic resistance or bounded fields, but the effect constantly gets stronger. So players are forced to either migrate to a higher floor, or develop increasingly advanced magecraft to stay there. Either way, Kayaba wins. The [Magic Teacher] NPCs can be the only ones unaffected, which can teach players how to beat the effect. This also allows him to provide a pressure from below, to goad otherwise inactive players. If the corrosion is constantly advancing, spreading between levels, players will realize that they NEED to clear more floors, just to protect themselves, even if they aren't front liners. This gives everybody a stake in the war. Also, Kayaba can make it explicit that it advances erratically, faster sometimes, slower others. This allows him to secretly "tune" the difficulty, making it slower if things are going unexpectedly badly, but turning up the heat later to compensate. Since the players don't know that it's rigged, it seems equally threatening all the time.

Really, making it explicitly an action of the boss still risks people saying "we would have been better off if we hadn't advanced" so maybe make it something that looks like the players have a chance to stop the boss from doing, but they actually can't? Well, maybe that part will just have to be suboptimal.

The other caveat to destroying the lower floors is, there will still have to be some mechanism whereby low level players can practically level up. So either have some sort of "learner" area on upper floors, or destroy the lower cities and safe zones, but leave the portals and floor monsters otherwise intact so that players can "commute" there to level. Players don't just need "game experience" but also "real experience". Still, this may be another area where players just have to live with things being harder, and work with higher level players.

 

[Vanigo]

If you fry the starting cities, though, where do players go when they want to find an NPC vendor?

 

[Azure]

The other caveat to destroying the lower floors is, there will still have to be some mechanism whereby low level players can practically level up. So either have some sort of "learner" area on upper floors, or destroy the lower cities and safe zones, but leave the portals and floor monsters otherwise intact so that players can "commute" there to level. Players don't just need "game experience" but also "real experience". Still, this may be another area where players just have to live with things being harder, and work with higher level players.

Mmm, a good idea would be for the main cities in the first floor to be invaded by the Dead, and eventually become a castle for Vampires/Ghouls which are controlled by the 25th Floor Boss. While the other parts of the floor are functioning like normal (aka low level dungeons and stuff), the cities then become some higher level dungeons that the frontliners can try to reclaim and fail, at least until they learn to make better bounded fields. Hell, it could even be a mechanic, of having monster checks against bounded fields, and if the fields fail, then the areas get invaded by the field bosses (a good opportunity for a chapter dedicated to fighting that ultra strong death-type field boss).

Also I support that the 25th Floor Boss has a flying castle called [Wuthering Heights], it just would be good to have Akihiko do something personally in the game at least once. After all, nothing is more boring than seeing someone else play a game.

About Argo, shouldn't she also try to look into Alchemy, at least the Mental Alchemy Sion from Atlas does in Melty. Learning to make weapons and homonculus without the use of magic circuits is something worthwhile.

 

[Abendroth]

So let me step back and ask more generally:
What should i be trying to accomplish story-wise with "the disaster", not just the mechanical effect of removing [Safe Zones], but what the impact on the thoughts of the people inside be; and what does that imply about what the nature of the disaster even is?

Second post, because I really didn't answer the question directly before.

The purpose of the disaster is to force people to get with the program, and learn magic. Fear, Death, and Pain should only be used in the amounts necessary to advance that goal, not as goals themselves. "Dead" players learn less magecraft than live ones, even if he sticks a bunch of them on their own shard and makes them forget they "died", so [Death] should be avoided when possible, in favor of [Fear of Death].

For this reason it should be something that appears dangerous, but not something that happens suddenly. If it happens suddenly, he will have to have it "kill" a few players as examples, which is undesirable. It should not be combat based for the same reason: too many of the people who have not been participating so far will die. Make it something obvious, but give them advanced warning, so that [Fear of Death] has plenty of time to motivate them.

The "solution" to whatever problem is created should be "learn magic". "Move to an upper floor" is only valuable to the extent that it forces players to interact with the more magic-savvy players.

Since Kayaba wants them to keep learning magic even after the first disaster ends, it needs to be either something ongoing, or he'll need multiple [Events]. Multiple [Events] is sloppy, from a programmer's point of view, but maybe desirable from an author's?

Also, it should not be something that a small number of players willing to erect bounded fields out of charity can permanently protect the whole city from. It needs to either be constantly escalating or constantly mutating, and mutating introduces surprise, which produces unnecessary death.

People should know that "more magic" is the solution before they actually get hit by the problem, so they have time to actually learn it.

 

[dfinc]

New poster here, so excuse me if I am not too deep with the comment. I have a suggestion for the Kirito response to the slime level, and perhaps a over the range of story idea as well. Rather than letting Kirito cruise along as a swordsman with a few spells, make him a Researcher/Experimenter, who prove his magic theory in battles.

Basically, one of the main attribute in Kirito's character is that he's a "munchkin". As a gamer he's basically the min/max guy doing ridiculous combos of stats and skills that's pissing off the GM. In your story setting, the magic is greater than the sword skills, and he's going to (already) picked up on its importance, and his "build" development is revised accordingly. Throughout the various SAO story arcs, he usually display "outside system" skills. They aren't hax moves, are possible within the boundary of the system, but more or less only Kirito can do them in the story because he's the only one to think of them AND develop the fundamentals to make them work (Spellblast, chaining Sword Arts to bypass the cooldown, etc.). Have him figure out some "cheats", and spread it out as a type of method in the game. This might be a special bonus for Kayaba, as someone like Kirito could start the development of alternative spell casting or development paths, min/max'ing in a way that'd piss off the "pure classes" of mage traditions.

In the R&D environment you are building the setting into, that could be the way for all the new mages being trained, to be "protagonists" advancing to a new magic paradigm. This can also be a thematic way for you to introduce, or alter the rules of magic as you see fit for the story, making use of the ambiguous nature of the magic system. Moreover, if you do use Shirou as the end boss, his type of magic and personality is so much more attuned to battles than most players that it'd be very difficult to beat him in a slugfest. Rather than power against power, having the players figure out ways to "cheat" to victory would make the whole thing sweeter, and present a much bigger threat to the current order.

 

[lhklan]

@dfinc
The Nasuverse magic system is WAAAAAAYYYY different from what Kirito is used to. So I sincerely doubt he can pull off the same stunt here, especially if he doesn't understand the system.
And even if he did, remember: "To be a magus is to walk with death". One wrong step, one wrong move, and Kirito is dead. Nasuverse magic system is very very lethal, not just to your opponent.
... Though for some reasons your post just reeks "Kirito become somebody great" idea. Sorry if it's not your intention.

 

[dfinc]

Well, the idea is not about Kirito, but rather about what it means to develop magic from a diff. perspective, a gamer perspective. This story seems to be 60% shirou/ilya, 40% SAO characters, and that's fine. Since kirito and other mains from SAO are still near the axis of the story, they are a good point to introduce changes. If Daniel wants he can move the development stuff to an OC if he prefers, but it's logical to use kirito and friends since they are already doing it, and kirito is good for that because it's not his pure "skills" that made him the strong in the SAO series, but all the little side skills he bothers with that others don't - the hallmark of a true munchkin. The point is, game munchkins would be trying to "cheat" all the time, even in face of the risks. Some suffering should in the way, but also some genuine reward, other then learning the same magic as everyone outside the game. This is an unique R&D environment, so have some of that D - Development! Even Shirou and Ilya, taught from the 'old school', should be learning from it!

Right now, my impression is that the story is pushing toward a "make enough mages and they'd overwhelm MA by sheer numbers" sort of thing. I don't think that's a good way to go, because most of those mages would still be very squishy relative to enforcers, and the really strong mages should have some sort of contingency to squash a lot of them really fast. Remember, they are going to wake up with bodies that are fragile from disuse as well. And while MA is not known to be very computer savvy, they can probably spot the SEEDs' implications eventually and expand their target range. MA would still be overwhelmed in term of keeping magic secret to the world, but the casualties would be horrendous before they give up on trying. Kayaba is smart enough to know that, and Shirou will probably figure it out too. just outnumbering MA is probably going to lead to a shadow world war situation, and it might be hard to convince Shirou to go along with it.

 

[101495jb]

I know this topic has been gone over many times before but here is my input

my idea of how you get the people to start making boundary fields and other such things after you get to #whatever-floor make all the teleport gates from that floor and onwards have restrictions like limited times a day or item restrictions then when they reach #whichever-floor make their be no teleport gates all together forcing the players to build the fields so they can keep the front lines up because walking up multiple floors just to get to the front lines would be hard for players although this would also make it hard for any guild to really have a home base unless it was mobile and had the ability to go up floors

 

[daniel_gudman]

Elemental Alignments

List of magic users whose elements I know:

Tohsaka Tokiomi: Fire (at least)
Tohsaka Rin: Average One
Emiya Kiritsugu: Fire and Earth
Emiya Shirou: Sword
Keyneth el Melloi: Wind and Water
Matou Zouken: Water (probably?) (at least)
Matou Sakura: Imaginary Numbers (natural); Water (artificial)
Caster (Medea): Wind?
Caster (Gilles): Water?

I don't recall if the other magic-using Characters (Waver, Maia, Kirei, Bazette, Sola, Kariya) ever did any kind of elemental stuff. Well, I'm also discounting some of the Tsukihime-side folks like Roa and his Lighting Beam, since I don't know how much of that was from his (back when he was human) Element and how much was from his vampire transformation.

So out of those six-to-nine characters, I'm gonna drop the Casters because of the question marks, and also Shirou because his Element is totally synthetic.

So that's six characters, one of whom (Sakura) had a natural Rare Element.

1/6 = 17%

That seems a little high for the "natural proportion" of Rare Elements inside the total population of magic users.

Well, there's crazy sample bias in addition to being a pathetic sample size, so basically, I can make the % whatever I want it to be.

Right now I'm leaning towards somewhere between 1% and 5% of people naturally have "Rare Elements"; enough that it's, like, "Rare", but not especially so.

Well, since Ilya's going to be collecting these people like Pokemons, I want to poll the peanut gallery on what kind of percentage they think feels "right".

And I should probably add more characters to the list of "Rare Elements" if I'm going to have Ilya kidnapping recruiting them into the BSM. So if there's some characters you want to see Ilya drag into the narrative, lemme know. I'm not opposed to doing that to one of the Black Cats (it would make them practically a farm team for the BSM, but that's almost the case anyway; probably Keita because he needs a solid Protagonist Parameter. Everybody gets a Protagonist Parameter except Kirito!).

Ah, I just figured out what to do with Kuradeel.

 

[Sunder the Gold]

Well, there's crazy sample bias in addition to being a pathetic sample size, so basically, I can make the % whatever I want it to be.

*nods*

Well, since Ilya's going to be collecting these people like Pokemons

HAHAHAHA!

"Okay, I already have the Sword-element Oniichan, the Four-element Meido, and the Beast-element loli... Rrrr, Kirito-kun HAD to already go and snag the Death-element girl!"

Ah, I just figured out what to do with Kuradeel.

...Huh?



So, Ilya poach one of the Black Cats, or she recruits the guy who goes on to split away and form his own guild?

I don't think you want to have Ilya's guild absorb Klein's guild, but what was Klein's element(s) supposed to be, again?


Argo will surely avoid Ilya's enslavery recruitment. She already has Silica.

Would Ilya want to steal Lisbeth from Takachan, since Shirou is going to be focused on weapons to the exclusion of armor?

 

[Ravraxas]

List of magic users whose elements I know:

Tohsaka Tokiomi: Fire (at least)
Tohsaka Rin: Average One
Emiya Kiritsugu: Fire and Earth
Emiya Shirou: Sword
Keyneth el Melloi: Wind and Water
Matou Zouken: Water (probably?) (at least)
Matou Sakura: Imaginary Numbers (natural); Water (artificial)
Caster (Medea): Wind?
Caster (Gilles): Water?

This reminds me, you didn't give Argo an element because you had planed her as a pure Formalcraft user. Well, now she will eventually be able to make a Circuit, so thats something to think about.

Also, acording to Typemoon wikia, Fire is supposed to be the "normal" Element and Wind is "noble". I gess that means Fire is the most common while Wind is relatively rare. Are you planning on playing with this? It coul make for an interesting magic talent economy as people with rarer elements become more valuable.

I don't recall if the other magic-using Characters (Waver, Maia, Kirei, Bazette, Sola, Kariya) ever did any kind of elemental stuff. Well, I'm also discounting some of the Tsukihime-side folks like Roa and his Lighting Beam, since I don't know how much of that was from his (back when he was human) Element and how much was from his vampire transformation.

So out of those six-to-nine characters, I'm gonna drop the Casters because of the question marks, and also Shirou because his Element is totally synthetic.

So that's six characters, one of whom (Sakura) had a natural Rare Element.

1/6 = 17%

That seems a little high for the "natural proportion" of Rare Elements inside the total population of magic users.

Well, there's crazy sample bias in addition to being a pathetic sample size, so basically, I can make the % whatever I want it to be.

Not only that, but take into account that Nasu writes his characters as cools "exceptions". We haven yet to see that slippery Regular Magus, we have only been shown the gifted and the clever underdogs. Basically is a sample almost explicitly skewed towards exceptional individuals.

Right now I'm leaning towards somewhere between 1% and 5% of people naturally have "Rare Elements"; enough that it's, like, "Rare", but not especially so.

Well, since Ilya's going to be collecting these people like Pokemons, I want to poll the peanut gallery on what kind of percentage they think feels "right".

As I said above the wiki kind of insinuates that Wind users are considered "noble", I take this to mean that their rarity makes them a valuabe asset to the Association. For this to be the case, there should be very few of them, and certainly there should be noticeably more Wind users that people with a Rare Element. Of course this doesn't take into account that one can have more than one Element and, like Sakura, one of them may be Rare. Maybe you can have a 5% of the player base having a Rare Element and a 1% having only a Rare Element.

Ah, I just figured out what to do with Kuradeel.

Really? Do tell.

 

[lhklan]

"Okay, I already have the Sword-element Oniichan, the Four-element Meido, and the Beast-element loli... Rrrr, Kirito-kun HAD to already go and snag the Death-element girl!"

Let see...
Sword-element Oniichan: Shirou
Four-element Meido: Lizbeth? (She's the only Meido that I know of in SAO)
Beast-element loli: Hmmm... Silica?
Death-element girl: ... Asuna?

Argo will surely avoid Ilya's enslavery recruitment. She already has Silica.

Uh, since Argo is Shirou's apprentice/in the inheritance line, I'm pretty sure Illya would consider her a package deal.

 

[shioran toushin]

death element is Sacha or however her name is spelt, besides IIRC Ilya already had Asuna in her Guild.

 

[Sunder the Gold]

Four-element Meido: Lizbeth? (She's the only Meido that I know of in SAO)

You've forgotten Ilya's declaration that her guild's uniform will be "maids and butlers" after Asuna joined the guild. And Asuna has all four cardinal elements.

Death-element girl: ... Asuna?

Sachi.

Uh, since Argo is Shirou's apprentice/in the inheritance line, I'm pretty sure Illya would consider her a package deal.

But Argo wouldn't be recognized as part of the guild by the system, nor would Argo accept Ilya's authority.

 

[shioran toushin]

who says that Argo has a choice(or more likely that her choice would matter to the Sadistic loli)? it's Ilya... your wants are irrelevant to her, she will just make you do wathever she wants via different means...

 

[zeebee1]

And then Shirou would give Ilya a sad look and Argo would go free.

Has it been decided what will happen to Lisbeth? Because Shirou already has swords covered. Even if she goes towards armor she'll have to be a genius to come close to Shirou's weapons.

 

[lhklan]

And then Shirou would give Ilya a sad look and Argo would go free.

Has it been decided what will happen to Lisbeth? Because Shirou already has swords covered. Even if she goes towards armor she'll have to be a genius to come close to Shirou's weapons.

Dude, Illya would just counter with the "puppy dog eyes" trick. Shirou have absolutely no chance of resisting that.

 

[Sunder the Gold]

Dude, Illya would just counter with the "puppy dog eyes" trick. Shirou have absolutely no chance of resisting that.

Shirou is weak against sincere unhappiness. He is immune to Puppy Eyes he knows to be insincere, and would never allow Ilya's whims to inconvenience another person.

 

[rajvir]

Seconded though I could not think of a good way to say it.
On a side-note is anyone else having problems quoting?
Before it was only on my phone, but now if I hit quote on a computer as well it just brings me to the Post a New Reply with no Quote.

 

[Celestrail]

Yep, same for me. Actually, no. Only on mobile.

 

[rajvir]

Hopefully that gets fixed soon. (Though I wonder why what looks like a phone is below my post, when I am currently on a computer. It might be because I am still logged on my phone? Than again I have never had this problem before on a computer.