Bards, musings, and storytelling

[Navi]

Bards are my favorite specialization as of this writing. I honestly didn't think I would have as much fun playing one as I do. Hopefully some of that carries over to those who have interacted with my character. That being said, I do have some feedback regarding their rotation of activities.

The initial grind of storytelling is a bit slow, which isn't a terrible thing. Once storytelling is close to maxed out, you are basically rolling in mountains of riln as high as the ones in your stories. It's honestly the most rewarding progression I've come across in terms of profession skills. The only thing I would change in regards to storytelling mechanics is the resource required to tell them well.

Right now, I don't actually need to go out and do anything for inspiration for my stories. I could sit around town and tell stories whenever the cool downs are up. That's kind of what I do to some extent. There's no real reason for me to go out into the lands and explore or fight things, which is cool; I'm trying to keep my character alive after all. However, the description for bards seems to indicate that they should be out in the lands searching for inspiration to tell their next story. A mechanical resource pool to symbolize this would be fantastic in my opinion.

There is already an inspiration pool that generates resources with tactics: bard. A second pool could be called something like Musings. Whenever you generate inspiration, there's a chance to generate a single musing. When a bard tells a story, it consumes a musing, and as a result, the story is at full force. This would be like when I tell a story and the whole crowd cheers and I get the maximum riln generation. Telling a story does not require a musing, but the effectiveness of the story will have a hard limit on it. For nonbards who take up storytelling, the effect would be minimal.

Later on, when storytelling offers different boons, these musings could be consumed to add additional benefits to the effects of storytelling around other player characters. If you wanted to go a step further, you could add different types of musings to be woven into the stories in order to achieve different boons. For example, different types of musings could be:
Thoughtful, a story successfully woven with a thoughtful musing can increase the rate at which experience is drained from the character's bucket.
violent, A story woven successfully with a violent musing grants a chance for additional energy damage to be inflicted when damage is applied normally.
calm, a story woven successfully with a calm musing grants a slight resistance to negative morale hits and supernatural mental attacks.
energetic, a story woven successfully with an energetic musing grants a small boon that has a chance to reduce roundtime for crafts. When musings are generated, they can be assigned a random type from a list like the one above. Only one boon from a story woven with a musing can be active at any given time.
Best wishes,
Thanks for reading.

[Lexx416]

Very much like the idea of a secondary resource to tie in to storytelling. I'd personally have the riln cap for a successful story being lowered overall, but boosted to the current maximums if you have a Musing/resource to expend when you tell that story. That way those who specialize in being a bard get a way (beyond just lots of skill) to signify that they're the experts in storytelling.

You could also tie this resource (and inspiration) into the world at large. Catch a particularly big fish that triggers a morale boost? Could be an extra musing. Finding some source of natural beauty for the first time (or on some kind of long cooldown, 24+ hours)? That could be a source for this resource (and possibly a way to generate inspiration without explicitly having to fight).

[Navi]

I love those additional ideas. Thanks for sharing.