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January 6 Update: NGM #2 (Patreon)

Published:
2019-01-06 23:32:47
Imported:
2021-07

Content

I am right in the middle of a huge creative run. Hate to pull myself away from it to do other stuff, but better to keep everything moving along.

$5 patrons, you should have received a message containing the link to New Game Minus #2. Please feel free to offer any feedback you like, and if you find any typos, please report them!

Will keep this one short so I can get back to work. Please be patient if it takes me a while to get to any messages, as I'm pretty focused on productivity right now. See you next week!

Comments

Quiet Stranger

Excellent read. Though I am a sucker for a good isekai, I greatly enjoyed the coincidence of encountering this release on the day I finished volume one. It has been a splendid and invigorating marathon. It was so familiar. And still so enchanting. Strikingly familiar. I didn't notice it while reading, but on reflection, I appreciate that New Game Minus as a syncretic unification of themes in your other works. The patterns played out again. The personalities signature to your writing formed an ensemble cast. The nostalgia tugged me along by the heartstrings. I could so easily see myself playing this story as your RPGs that I wish I that were so. But I already have, haven't I? Piecemeal. Although my attachment will prevent me from offering effective criticism, I suppose it lends a certain sincerity when I thank you for the product and its efficient release. Keep up the good work. And remember that you work best while in good spirits.

Quiet Stranger
>>18687835

While I'm sure it shall be mentioned in the final book, at what part of the intended story was Elleane the Paladin meant to encounter Raigar the Valorous? Was she due to appear in Edsdam, opposite the programmed shoulder devil?

wearMoniker

Overall, I enjoyed this book. While the comments that follow are geared more toward critiques, please know that they are minor objections to something I generally liked very much. 1. I thought Book 2 started a little slow. I don't think it'll be an issue for people who come into it immediately from Book 1 -- future "new readers" and bundle readers. This is because Book 2's opening quarter offers a breather following the Book 1 finale. However, as someone who had some time pass since reading Book 1, it felt a little meandering. Cozy, but a touch slow. The book feels like it really gets started when the protagonists visited the arena for the first time. 2. The urgent threat of OG!Raigar against the city feels like it doesn't plays out quite as strongly as I'd expected. The heroes basically hang out grinding for a month. We get a few asides about random attacks on the city, but there's nothing that really gives a sense of the place and its citizens being under siege. Whenever OG!Raigar is on the battlefield, everything feels satisfyingly high-stakes, but the rest of the time the city doesn't come across as terribly different from usual. It felt like a comedown after OG!Raigar goes full-on Evil Overlord with that holographic projection over the city stunt. 3. The only scene that didn't work for me dealt with the skull prototyping, specifically the stretch where Bloodwraith is reflecting on the companion classes and letting the first prototypes do cockfights. The followup scene where Izzy's skull first appears is good, but the initial scene is pretty dry, especially coming as it does after an infodump about the companion class types. 4. I liked the parallels between OG!Raigar and Baratak. When the latter boasts about how gold can buy power through equipment, it felt pitch perfect in terms of hanging a lampshade on the parallel. 5. In the arena sections, there's a recurring adventurer. She's the one who gets burned the first time OG!Raigar shows up for a tussle, and in the finale helps the heroes get teleported out of the city. While she's not important enough to merit a name -- it'd be too distracting -- she seems to merit some sort of physical or clothing identifier. As is, she's just a touch too vague for the role she plays in the story. Some sort of identifier who make her easier to visualize. 6. In the epilogue, I liked the reveal of how Marrin and Elleane seem to be something more akin to willing (?) collaborates rather than outright slaves like Meara and the Keeper. The idea of locals siding with AdventureCorp adds a fun wrinkle to the setting.

sierralee
>>18727679

Thanks for your feedback! 1) Yeah, I was concerned that it would start slow. The early chapters with Raigar were there to try to increase tension, but I recognize that won't work for everyone. 2) My intent was that he's kind of lazy, so didn't follow through fully, but I see how that could be unsatisfying. 5) Good point. I have given her a pair of Groucho Marx glasses. 6) Glad you liked it. Book #3 will be a little different than people might expect, so I hope it works for people.

Runcible Technician

Tore through this one as fast as the first. I love the character nuances, Meara's personal struggle for meaning in the group without being able to fight really stood out to me, plus Denniah is just too cute. The part with the skull fighting seemed long, but to me it really set in stone that Bloodwraith picked his companion based on an intuitive understanding of traits that character stats don't measure in video games. The many instances of picking abilities that the game didn't recommend, but were clearly valuable, was very familiar to me.

Anonymous

Damn, that was really good. I'm too busy to make a full post of my thoughts right now but hopefully I'll have time tomorrow. For now I just want to say that the ending was intense

sierralee
>>18772191

Happy to hear you enjoyed it! No rush, but I look forward to your feedback!

Anonymous

Okay, so thoughts on the book. I really liked it. It took the things that made the first one work like the parody and/or commentary on standard video game tropes, interesting characters, and it's unique and interesting spin on the reason for the existence of RPG mechanics and then did more of those things. And not just repeated itself like you see some sequels do, I mean it either expanded on what made them good, or tackled it from a different direction. I liked that Bloodwraith's hatred of the boxes is reduced (after the whole incorrect information thing is gone) because that joke probably would have gotten stale as enjoyable as it was. And now that they're interfering with his necromancy, the way the others treat the necromancy has sort of replaced it in my mind? I don't know if that's intentional, but I found myself getting the same sort of comedic relief out of hearing Daniah/Maera teasing him about his skulls that I used to out of him chanting “Damnable boxes!” The new characters were all really interesting. I know they weren't major characters but the barbarian guild in particular were pretty fascinating, I hope we get some more of them somehow. Presenting them as rough but not dumb made them seem real and intruiging to me. I know this isn't the first book ever to have the “Savages” be smart, but in this sort of setting I think it was a particularly interesting route to go. And we also got Izzy and Gharavi. Both are very different characters so I won't try comparing them, but I liked them both in their own ways. Izzy provided a lot of the “aww” factor and the comedic relief (surprising from an undead ghoul but that just makes her even more fun) and Gharavi was great because I really liked that there was another person onto the fact that their world is being invaded, and of course because I just liked her. Having someone not necessarily smarter than Bloodwraith but more experienced at many things was an intersting character dynamic. And I loved it when her ruse fell apart and her first reaction was to explain how she had been acting correctly the whole time. Made me laugh. Raigar works really really well as one of those villains you just want to punch until he stops moving. What a shit. You can't respect him because all of his power is handed to him (and because he's a shit) so his ultimate defeat is just so, so damn satisfying. Secretary Skeleton worked as a nice balancing against him too, making sure we got at least some smart-villain stuff out of the story. My only real criticism though is that after they ignore him for a long time nothing really happens. I saw someone brought this up already, so I won't go too far into it, but some consequence would have been nice. Even something like a quick mention of “oh he got bored and massacred a bunch of people” would have been satisfying to me. EDIT: And by that I mean people I had some small reason to care about. Like a bunch of orphans who were celebrating free puppy day The highlight of the book for me was probably the glimpses into the other worlds. Whether from Raigar, the guy who watched over the Arena, or even the guy from the epilogue, every time it happened I just got so caught up. I've reread those scenes actually, just because that's sort of my addiction with books with big mysteries like these. I cannot wait for the sequel to see where it goes next. Please keep us posted!

sierralee
>>18800568

Thank you very much for your full thoughts! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it. ^-^ I was going to reply at greater length, but since you were mostly complimentary it might end up being patting myself on the back. I'm especially glad that you liked the new characters, and if you like the mysteries so far, I hope you'll keep enjoying the developments I have planned on that note. The third book will take a little longer because I am getting sucked deep into TLS work and have some other things ready, but I do look forward to writing it.