#woj analysis

It is so frustrating because there is a purpose for narrative incompetence. It can help regulate tone, and lower the sense of threat, both of which are important for this being a kids' game. It can provide comic relief and relieve tension. But it has to be handled with balance.

The glaring problem with overusing narrative incompetence in a character who is supposed to be taken seriously, which the villains of a story should be, is that it will eventually circle back onto the main characters. Because if the villains are utterly incompetent, then why can't the heroes defeat them already? And if we add on the layer of issues with SSE's current stance on feminism and girl power : if all of the men are too incompetent to do anything, then what does it say about the competence of the women who still haven't stopped them?

It's one of the reasons that I've felt a particular disconnect with the overconfidence of the Soul Riders lately. Despite us seeing the absolute magical havoc the Dark Riders can cause, the Soul Riders are almost boastfully confident in themselves. In one of the recent quests with growing the seed for the Wild Weave, where we'd mostly been following Linda and the MC, they get cornered in a 2v1. And then Lisa shows up and tells Katja to scram, and Katja just does. Just like that. This also gets into the lack of definition in the full scope of the Soul Riders' abilities beyond "primary trope," but for the purpose of this discussion, it makes no sense for Lisa to be as confident as she is. Why couldn't the MC and Linda handle it on their own? It was a 2v1. Even with one of them protecting the seed, it's not an even match.

We are told over and over throughout the story that the druids, and thereby the current Soul Riders, are keeping the Dark Riders at bay. Not on the backfoot, at a neutral standstill. Worse, we see more examples in the story of the druids taking losses than we see examples of the Soul Riders winning. The lose of the Light Ceremony book, the capture of Lisa and Anne by Dark Core specifically, the Baroness feeling threatened enough by DC/Sands to imprison Linda, the death of Concorde, the death of Elizabeth, the kidnapping Justin for so long as to distract from dealing with the Light Ceremony book or rescuing Lisa and Anne, DC being allied with several witches as to have resources and allies that the druids don't, the discovery of Drakeonium, the restoration of three generals and the return of the fourth. To highlight on that too, the druids don't have any allies outside the druids currently. Tentatively they might have Ydris now, and Mrs. Holdsworth. But there is very little evidence in the narrative of how the druids are even holding their own with no outside help (in fact, there's now further division within the druids and the Keepers as these aren't the same thing) or ready supply of resources.

And yet when we interact with the Dark Riders and DC, they are largely incapable of stopping us in the moment. Their goons are inept, Darko is laughably emo and never shown as a serious threat (let alone shown any reason why he could unseat Sands), and Sands, despite his position as the current commander of Garnok's army, concedes his responsibilities to let his grandson escape. The latter would be an amazing point of interest to follow and talk about inner turmoil Sands is perhaps having now and internal shakeups within DC, but instead we have zeroed in on a cartoon villain level of evil that the other four must always be engaging in by monologuing and then being momentarily foiled by the MC. Because the villains can't be threats when we engage with them.

All of this circles back around to the Soul Riders and makes them look worse for not being able to handle these threats. They feel more and more like they are fumbling backwards into handling these issues, and it brings out their worse traits. Alex is incredibly clumsy and brash, Anne is almost mindlessly angry, Lisa's "eh"ness becomes more glaringly apparent, Linda seems excessively cautious. And none of these traits, individually, are bad. The exploration of them all would make sense in the narrative. Alex is afraid of letting everyone down but she struggles to be a forward thinker. Anne is justifiably upset about the death of her best friend and her imprisonment and desperately needs an outlet to direct that anger. Lisa is, as the party healer, always seeking to be the peacemaker and meet everyone at their needs, at the risk of becoming a people-pleaser herself and losing her identity. And Linda is a young person who can see the future, to include very likely the injuries (some of which are likely fatal) of her and her friends, to the point of fearing taking the wrong course of action.

Each of those would be fascinating to explore. But because the threat they're facing is so unable to actually feel like it's any danger, all of the Soul Riders' fears, their weaknesses and shortcomings, go unchallenged by the narrative. Thus highlighting their weaknesses over their strengths. There is no room to grow, because the force they are fighting against has not been serious enough that they've needed to. So they remain stagnant as characters, which is the worst thing for a main character to be.

And this isn't to say that so incompetent yet still able to pull off their goals can't be a seriously scary situation to be in. But that requires an incompetent head of the evil supported by a competent team of generals, of which we haven't gotten. All of the villains fluctuate on their competency on and off screen. And if the goal was to do this with Sands, Darko would have to seem more competent than him and he is not remotely close to being scarier than Sands. There is in fact no reason for Darko's character that couldn't be written in as being Sands. Every one of his scenes could be replaced and he could be written out entirely. That should say something about how useless he is as a character.

Circling back to the point about this being a broader issue with men in SSO not being able to be intelligent unless they're eccentric old men, this is incredibly damaging to little girls too. SSE has the prime opportunity to highlight healthy masculinity, men comfortable in being masc and femme and themselves, to show little girls (just to follow target audience) what healthy masculinity looks like so that they can set proper boundaries with the men in their lives. That doesn't require writing more male characters or not centering the female main characters. All it requires it writing the existing men in the story well. Showing them trying to help people, like the arcs I suggested for Justin training as a Wild Whisperer bonding people with horses, or Raptor taking over as a record label to help young women enter the industry like Lisa. And this is to gloss over entirely what it does to have those examples for little boys and how that is an important part of feminism too.

First, I want to say that none of these are just exclusively antisemitic. The problem lies in the common tropes used for them. Witches and dwarves are easier to talk about this on this point since they do have real world counterparts. Goblins get a little iffy, but you can write goblins that aren’t antisemitic, as vocalized by several Jewish members in the ttrpg community. It’s the how that’s the issue.

Let’s talk about witches for a second. We can’t just say witches are antisemitic because witchcraft is a living separate faith. Saying that you practice modern paganism doesn’t make you antisemitic, but there is an overlapped history there. Paganism just means “not Christian,” which means that the “old pagan tradition” included Judaism, and both what most people call “pagans” now a days and Jewish people were tried as pagans in ye olden days. And it’s also why there is a complicated history here to unpack.

Take the classic witch hat for example. There is a history of female brewsters using black pointed hats to help market their wares. There is also a history of the pointed hats being used to mark Jewish people in crowds. The combined purge of both groups actively blended the stereotypes because they were both tried for the same thing: witchcraft and satanic practices.

That doesn’t make witches antisemitic. What makes witches like Pi antisemitic is how they’re depicted. The rest of the tropes: evil magic, secret orders of practice, physical traits like beady eyes, hooked/prominent noses, and, the big one, green skin. Green skin was a trope used to other Jewish people consistently. One or two of these can be done without being antisemitic. People can be in secret orders or use shadow magic, but it’s the tandem use that’s the issue, the physical traits AND the practices that make is antisemitic.

That’s why too Mrs. Holdsworth isn’t. Sure, she’s in a coven, but she isn’t depicted with stereotyped physical traits of a Jewish person. Or why our Dark Riders aren’t antisemitic. They may use shadow magic, but they aren’t actively depicting these other traits. It’s the tandem use that’s the issue.

Similarly, let’s talk about dwarves. Dwarves often fall into antisemitic tropes. They’re greedy, they horde wealth, they’re isolationist. But they aren’t explicitly antisemitic as a race. The core problem here begins with Tolkien. Tolkien actually had a huge amount of respect for the Jewish people and researched Jewish diaspora that influenced how he wrote his dwarves. The dwarvish diaspora in Middle Earth reflects this. The problem is most fantasy writers saw Tolkien’s work, took the spark notes version of it, and didn’t explain these traits in setting, which fell into caricature as a result. They checked off the whole list without unpacking the why. Context matters here, and plays another part in what makes a depiction of a fantasy race antisemitic. Were these people hunted and now isolating to rebuild their culture? Is mining directly related to their primary trade as a nation? Is it one hat or are they multifaceted with a notable cultural practice?

This is where we get back to goblins. Goblins as a creature do predate their antisemitic tropes, but much like witches and dwarves, were blended in to centuries of antisemitism. Green skin, beady eyes, hooked noses, and greedy. Those are the issues with goblins. You don’t have to do all of them, the HP goblins don’t have green skin, but they do hit the rest of the list. The snow goblins hit all four of the big points here.

There was a Jewish creator I saw who had redrawn goblins to avoid the antisemitic tropes in D&D, which is where I’d first learned more about this. It’s been a while and I didn’t write down their name, so instead I’ll point out the goblins in the Hobbit. Largely, they’re little orcs, and pale from living under the mountains, but I’ve seen no claims they they’re antisemitic. Because the goblins in the Hobbit aren’t greedy, they don’t universally have hooked noses and green skin. They might have hordes but it’s more of a bandit horde than a wealth horde. They aren’t lingering near societies to hunt bad kids (notable Jewish people often couldn’t live in the cities and had camps near them), they lived in the mountains and are depicted like mountain bandits. Like Mrs. Holdsworth, they hit one or two tropes, but it’s not to that tandem use.

Was this ideal? Absolutely not, but the first week of every event is always rough. I know a lot of folks will contest the 18k, but under the assumption that SSE is going to follow their methods of increased gathering from (almost) every prior event, Hollow Woods was almost 33k before the price change and plenty of folks did that in a week. Is that overlooking the other methods of gathering from the Summer Camp and Hollow Woods? A little, but under the assumption that those things will be added as the event goes on. Is this still the best way to encourage people to play? Eh, you need like 500 a day which is a half hour of play time if you get a good loop, and that time will go down. I hold that judgement until later in the event personally, they may add a wisp and/or cache equivalent Wednesday and that would make progress feel a lot better.

The bigger issue I think with this track was the filter. I never personally had issues with the color filter, but it did make the map feel oppressive. Which, if you lean into the spooky ghost stories part of the season, is a vibe. But I know a lot of folks did have an issue with the filter, either with headaches and migraines or with making it feel like the event was depressing due to the lack of color. I think the markers for change to the filter are way too high. There is no noticeable change at the first quest (6k) other than some crystals lighting up, and the filter only drops to 50% at the second (12k).

I think there are far better ways to indicate lack of life in the village than the color filter that would have had less of an impact on the game, like the animals slowly returning or there being less visitors or some vendors (like the retro shop or cafe) being closed. The filter should have been dropped at like, the first reward, which should have been a boosted tutorial for free players who haven't played the Hollow Woods content yet. I think also instead of as many XP or shillings rewards, there should have been more quests to indicate this progress throughout, because the rewards as are made the whole thing feel slower for me as someone with all maxed horses.

If you want to make things a little more bearable, looking over any mechanics that may be added in future updates or big rewards in the Advent presents, here are my recommendations for getting through it:

Listen to something. I say this about training too. I was super behind on CR campaign 3 when the event started and I got through like 3 months of episodes in the process.

Avoid the ice as much as possible. The drift will only add time trying to catch singles. Do a pass for the piles, any singles on the way, and then do a circuit on solid ground.

Nooks are not worth it. You will get more mounds to respawn by running around the edge of the lake and then through the lake than you will going off into nooks for maybe a mound and more likely singles.

My circuit was to start by the small pond with penguins at the bottom of the ramp and circle clockwise until I reached the other side of the lake, and then I would counterclockwise on the lake to get back to the pond. Repeat.

Something I didn't notice at first, but EACH of the ice carvings reward 20 snowflakes, do all 4.

If you're saving the Advent for horse XP, day 7 is 500 snowflakes.

Have someone to share progress with. @centeris2 helped me with this, particularly today doing the last 4k.

I haven't seen a lot of people talking about the mechanics of the ribbon itself, but the Baroness Ribbon you get for doing the 80 races and champs for the Spring Event adds content to the game when you're wearing it. This content isn't anything excessive, it adds more pop up dialogue to the game as NPCs respond to your player having the ribbon. But this prompts two things that I think merit discussion.

First, it suggests that adding more idle dialogue to the game is something the team is considering and I think that's great! Having dialogue like this in the game is a great way to add depth and lore to the world by making NPCs feel a little more alive. It's something I had started myself as a fan project though ended up stopping just due to other projects (was probably starting ROJ around then if I remember right, and you all can see how much work ROJ was) and can attest to the absolute massive undertaking it would be, just on the writing end. But based on the most recent roadmap, the updates to the state machine allowed for updates to NPCs as well, which could mean this kind of system change would be possible.

Second, and I think having a bigger impact on the game as a whole, the ribbon indicates that tack items can change your player's status "effects" in the game. Wearing the ribbon tags special case dialogue to pop up. Which means that other clothes and tack could be given status effects as well to change other values in the game. Say for example, a cold resistant outfit for a rebuffed Dino Valley or a heat resistant one for a desert area. Or a Dark Core or G.E.D. disguise for a stealth mission, or to prompt special dialogue from certain NPCs. The team has discussed bringing magic to the game as a mechanic, what if certain outfits can give slightly difference appearances to spells based on the character they're from? Like equipping Katja's outfit gives spells an icy appearance. This feels possible since SSO does have a big focus on clothing and if certain outfits gave special appearances to magic, I think a lot more folks would see their costs as worth the prices.