u/Senior_Fuel5975

chapter 455. re reading the novel. i cried again. i am craying right now, fuck i wish they had a happy life. he didn't deserve it, but fuck, i still wished he could have had a happy life with the love of his life, and not become the monster he did become. mourning for a impossible future, saddened by a unreasonable present.

the worst part of this novel is that i will never find anything like it ever again, that's the worst part of all.

"I send a voice transmission to Yeon Wei, and she, who is in her split soul state, overturns the board where she is losing to Yuk Yo, and takes the stakes straight into the room where Jeon Myeong-hoon and Yeon Jin are training.

A moment later, after a brief commotion inside, Yeon Wei, now in Yeon Jin's body, flies towards me.

"Ah, have we already reached the end of the sea domain?"

"Yes, please cool off your sweat."

"No need. It's not my body anyway. Huhu. Anyway, since the Conqueror King kid said it's the same as before, my help should be enough to cross.""

It... it may just be me being weird, but if I'm not wrong, wasn't it said that disciples from the Golden Divine Heavenly Thunder Sect have to dual cultivate?

Sooooo... like... here, were JMH and Yeon Jin going at it...? Since, like, there aren't any other Golden Divine Heavenly Thunder Sect members... and both of them need to dual cultivate... hm... because I don't think there was actually any need for both of them to practice together otherwise, right? And Yeon Jin did learn that... I forgot the name, but the gender-swap technique.

I'm not being weird, am I???? Like, this isn't just me being weird... I hope. Because they did say they needed to dual cultivate, didn't they? Or something along those lines...

i have always tried making war scenes where two massive armies clash in my games, but in all of these instances, the clash was kinda anti-climactic. I think it has a little bit to do with no one really knowing what to do when the armies clash. I can't even really put it into words, sorry. I have a hard time describing issues and stuff, but well, let me give an example.

3 days ago, I was in a session of my Xianxia game (a Chinese power fantasy game where demigods fight each other), and there were two armies. One was an army of snake people that had around 10 demigods and 4 half-gods. The other had 9 demigods and 4 half-gods, and below that war on the ground were around 400,000 people divided evenly between the two sides(I know the number is ridiculous, but it is a feature of the genre. Everything is crazily big, and that's part of the fun.)

I narrated all the divine dudes arriving, they exchanged some insults/taunts, and then they started brawling. So I narrated the fight beginning: fireballs here, explosions there, some people went titan mode and began punching each other, acid all around, all the cool shit that happens in Xianxia.

...and everyone went silent.

It was VEEEERY anti-climactic. I stopped talking, and for a solid 30 seconds nobody said anything before I asked, "Soooo, what do y'all do?" and it was a bit awkward because nobody really knew what to do... and I also didn't know what to do. I mean, I managed to do something, because, like, it's a god battlefield. I made a few attacks from above rain down on the players and kill people, then a giant hand fell down and they had to kill the hand, then BOOM, explosion and acid rain.

In the end it was fun, but I wanted a few tips to avoid these situations. Like, what can I do in a war scene to let the players engage with it? Or just overall tips on how to do war scenes so I am not lost?

Edit: Ok, i didn't give enough context for the entire war, so i'll upload the entire context here, sorry id idn't do it before, i just thought making a massive post would make people, lose interest in commenting, here's the entire run down i think, a few things might be missing;

"Basically, the reason for the war is because the Snake Evil Guy is going to ascend to godhood, and he has been killing the entire continent to refine humans, beasts, spirits, and everything with spiritual energy into pills to consume. After about 95 years of struggle, the allied forces have finally found a way to stop his forces: create an artificial god.

The plan is simple. One of the allied force's powerhouses is a snow woman that can store infinite spiritual energy, and she has made a technique where she can basically create a "puppet" of spiritual energy that has the power level of a true deity. But she is fragile as fuck, so their plan is to invade the Snake Evil Guy's territory, then create a summoning array so she can be summoned inside his territory and create the divine puppet right there.

She can't create the puppet from a distance because, although she has a massive amount of spiritual energy and can create the god body, spiritual energy isn't such an easy thing to get that she can just spend tons of it manipulating such a massive, gargantuan, literally divine construct from far away. So, to save as much energy as possible, she'll create the divine puppet on the spot and manipulate it right there.

It also works as a cornering strategy. The main forces will invade from the front while she creates the divine puppet from the back, and the Snake Evil Guy won't have anywhere to run during the war.

So their purpose is: get through the Evil Snake Army's first line of defense, fight their way to a safe spot that their intelligence gathered is hidden enough to summon the Ice Lady there, and then they'll use a large-scale camouflage spell to hide the area. Then the Ice Lady will create the divine puppet, and she'll manipulate it to go kill the Snake Dude.

My 3 players are divided into 2 teams.

One of them decided to take the "meat shield" position. He and a massive amount of other NPCs decided to just throw themselves at the first line of the snakes to create chaos, and the other 2 players decided they would be support, going around helping people and healing injured warriors. One of them is a healer with a tank summon, so they can save people frequently, and the other one is a ranger.

That is the setting. They decided on the strategy, and I also told them the strategy of the war.

Then, 3 days later, all allied forces moved toward the Snake Evil Guy's territory. The sky was blocked out by hundreds upon hundreds of millions of divine cultivators. They all flew toward the frontline, and I set up the situation.

I explained how the tankiest warriors took the front of the confrontation in the "meat shield" group together with Player 1. Then the rest of the warriors divided themselves into a total of 100 groups around the battlefield, 20 of which would serve as the "spear" of the army. They would be responsible for forcing their way into the territory and finding the place the intelligence said would be safe to summon the Ice Lady.

So after the forces were explained, I went ahead and explained what the big players would do. All 9 allied demigods took a step forward, and all 10 enemy demigods confronted them and immediately started fighting. I did not "write fanfic." I simply said what the strong members of each army were doing.

After the 19 demigods began fighting, the 8 half-gods teleported in, and I did a 1-minute exchange at most between them. Evil Snake Guy teased Allied Guy about being stupid, Allied Guy said he's an old fuck, then Snake Guy said his wife was tasty (because he eats people and shit), so Allied Guy punched him in the face. He was sent flying back and BOOM, chaos ensues. All 8 half-gods fought.

Again, this all took 1 minute, maybe 2 at most, of me just explaining what they were doing. I did not take attention away from what was happening around the players, and I didn't stop every second to explain what they were doing. I just made it clear the half-gods were there and were fighting. THAT'S IT.

And after that, when I said the two armies began fighting, there was silence where they didn't say anything.

I don't think I did anything absurd, and I did not remove attention from the players. The objective was clear, the scenario was described, everything was in place. I was just waiting for them to do something. I don't think I did anything wrong, or that I didn't give enough information. Even the strategy they were going to take was decided. The players just genuinely didn't know what to do in the moment.

About system questions, we're using a modified version of Mutants & Masterminds with flavor mechanics to fit Xianxia's scale of destruction. Like, 1 rank of Strength is worth 5 instead of simply 1. It doesn't change anything in the math, and we can keep the numbers low. It does NOT break the system or change any of the mechanics. It literally only makes it so that an area that would cover an 8-meter radius instead covers 250 meters, and it also means a speed that would make you move 120 meters per move makes you move 8 thousand kilometers instead.

There's no "war" system, though."