Very fair. I feel like his would be one of the harder routes language-wise. Especially when he’s using both Greek and Roman god names and I’m trying to translate from katakana and still have no idea who’s who 
3 has so many endings. Why are there so many endings ahhhhh. That game is dense. My Vita memory card corrupted so I had to wipe and reset it and I couldn’t get the save data back and started over from scratch 
So I’m curious what you guys do in this kind of situation…
BU$TAFELLOWS have now gotten to the part where there are good endings and bad endings to get. I don’t think B$ requires bad endings for anything but achievements/full set of CGIs, that kinda thing. (Although I might remember wrong.)
So that got me thinking, which order do I want to do them? Because I’m personally planing to get it all, at least for this first route. So do I go for bad endings first so I can have a good ending last, or do I get the good ending first (which is the only one I need) and then go through the bad endings?
What do you guys do?
0 voters
My instinct is to go bad endings first so I can really enjoy the good ending at the end. This will somewhat depend on time though, since I need the good ending to unlock the next bit of content to be read with the club, while the bad endings could wait until I have time.
@rokon If Bustafellows keeps being this fun, I’m definitely thinking about reading the sequel too.
I’m always team bad endings first, half cause they happen earlier in the story so you still remember the context when you play them, and half because I like to play the “true” endings last so that that’s my final impression of the character and story. I also rather enjoy bad endings… both this game and collar x malice had great, plot-relevant ones >:)
Depends a bit on the VN, but I usually like to do a first “blind” run where I just take choices based on what I’d do if I were in the same situation as whatever is happening in the VN. I always found it fun to see what kind of story the authors had prepared for someone like me (spoiler: it’s usually bad endings or the boring “nothing happens” ending XD). This did backfire in a few occasions - some romance VNs for example, didn’t let me go for the character I was most interested in the first run because it needed to be unlocked by some other endings.
Afterwards I usually then use a guide (except if during my first run I find that the choice system is interesting or at least makes sense, which sadly seems to be the exception not the norm), and usually go for the bad endings → good endings → true ending (if available) in that order.
I looove a bad ending that is well written, so that’s a bit of a bias for me for going for those first, but also finding the good / true end last is always more satisfying at the end since that’s the aftertaste you get after finishing the game, which usually makes it more enjoyable.
Since I usually try to do all routes, not necessarily bad endings unless I’m really invested, I usually just do them as I find them.
The only one I’ve planned is Clannad, where I figured I might as well do every other ending beside the main one, as the main one goes further, and I think you might have needed to do some other endings before being able to get it?
Me getting Kenji on my first Katawa Shoujo run: 
At least it’s a funny story..
Thanks for the replies. 
I look forward to when I’ll play my first VN with choices by myself, because I think I’d like a blind play through first too. Especially since true endings are usually locked behind doing at least one other ending or something like that. I’m not sure I’d be happy if I accidentally hit the true ending on first try, you know. xD (Not as much a problem with an otome because I sure hope I want to do more than one route!)
After that, I guess it would depend as @2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz said, about whether the choice system was fun/intriguing/easy to understand, etc.
I’m not sure I’m a finding all bad endings person, I think it would depend on how many bad endings there are (and how well written they are), and also on whether they were necessary for the true ending (if one exists).
Food for thought definitely.
A bit late but I usually go for a blind run (usually leads to bad end) and then only go for bad ends if they are interesting and I’m invested in that route, otherwise I skip them. If they are good I’d rather do them first so the last thing I see is the best ending, otherwise it can feel a bit sad (some VNs get really grim in their bad ends…).
Since we’re about 3 weeks from the end of the first route of BU$TAFELLOWS, I decided to do some polls to figure out if people want to continue reading it together and also to gauge interest in general VN club vs only otome vs fluke, as we wondered about earlier.
Here is a link: BU$TAFELLOWS 💰 (Visual Novel Book Club) // Currently Reading! - #111 by MissDagger
I only posted it a few hours ago, so it isn’t nearly done yet.
I also thought it would be good since we wanted to check in with the two concurrently running clubs. And see about when a vote for another pick would be made and such.
For 9-nine-, any idea how many weeks are left, approximately?
As for B$ (I love that nickname @Sylph xD), 3 weeks (and two days) until end of first route. And so far we have 3/4 (who has voted) in favor of continuing the club. When most/all readers have voted, I’ll figure out other stuff. But if we decide to continue, I will poll for potentially raising the speed, but we also have to figure out how much is different within the main story chapters around different choices (aka is there a lot of reading or will we do four chapters in the time we did one before or even in half the time? I don’t know currently, planing to try and figure that out during the last portion of the current route).
We’ve stepped into unknown territory. In terms of progress this week hits the 80k character mark out of 142k in JPDB’s script (which includes adult content and was about 10k higher than our measured counts in Loopers). This week also happens to be finishing the first ending with an alternate requiring a second play through. In the worst case we somehow have 6 more weeks, but I’m going to guestimate 4 weeks instead. However, this is all assuming we stick to only reading new content in the ng+.
I know I made a mistake early on with the coin flip that was pretty small, but later episodes might be nuts. 9-nine has been all over the place for this, with the choices changing anything from a few lines to half a day’s worth of content… x.x I’m still planning on reading more late tonight and will probably post a more detailed explanation in our planning thread. However, I will say I haven’t had any issues remembering what happened in prior chapters and can spot the differences without much effort. The recolored read text helps, but our VN just isn’t that complicated in the first place.
Hmmm… okay, might be worth to check in a week or so how the 9-nine- crew feels about reading more or not.
Depending on that, and how B$ poll(s) turn out, we should know if we should hold another poll for next pick soon/asap, or whether 9-nine and B$ will just continue.
Although I do know we have at least one B$ reader so far who wants to continue reading at their own pace, and wants to keep being with the VN club, so that might just mean, we might have to face off-shoot club decisions already?!?! (I don’t know if that is exciting or terrifying. 
)
Also, because I’m clearly on an organization streak , I’ve gotten the VN club added to the master list of book clubs. I think we just kinda forgot to add ourselves there, but now that this club is proving to be a working concept, even if organizing it can be a pain, we even have our own drop down! 
My listening has really benefited a lot from the VN, happy that it can get more exposure! Can’t wait to be able to read them in Japanese too!
Alrighty, everyone!
It is starting to be the time to do another vote for next VN, but before we get to that, there are some matters to consider.
First order of business is that the two parallel clubs are coming to an end or a possible end. For BU$TAFELLOWS, the first route will soon be done and since it will have been almost 3 months once we hit that point, it would be a natural place to move B$ into off-shoot territory. For 9-nine-, the first game/route will be done soon too (each game kinda works as a route if I understand/remember 9-nine- 's structure correctly), so similarly, it would work to move into off-shoot territory.
With the length of VNs in general, we have to carefully think about how much of one we read before we probably need to have a vote for the next VN. After all, those who didn’t like the current pick(s), could otherwise have to wait a really long time. (B$ will most likely have at least 15 more weeks to do all routes and main story, which is another three months plus, meaning the club as a whole will have been going on for longer than half a year.)
So first, let’s figure out everyone’s status.
0 voters
Meaning if you plan to keep reading either/both VN(s) but in your own time/at your own pace, please pick “not continuing with the club” option.
With B$ “finishing” a week into March, and 9-nine- probably around the same time, the next pick would probably start mid to late March. Keeping that in mind:
0 voters
You will not be held to your answer, instead this is more of a gauge.
A couple of more things.
Firstly: We currently have 9 nominations, so we have plenty of room for more. I believe polls have a max of 20 options, so we have room for 11 more. Please look through the instructions in the main post.
Secondly: We should consider deciding on guidelines for what we do with really long VNs.
For example, we could set a max amount of time a VN will be the current reading option for the club (maybe 12-16 weeks?) and/or the closest good stopping point to that (if such exist). This would make sure that we’d keep having new picks regularly and make sure that readers don’t get left behind too long. But it could also lead to a lot of us either getting scattered across a lot of off-shoot clubs or abandoning a lot of VNs.
The point is that we need to balance the time we make available for each pick and how long someone who isn’t reading that particular VN has to wait. And I don’t think we’ll end up happy with only reading short VNs to avoid this problem. (B$ is really long, and if one includes all parts of 9-nine, then that one is too, so we’ve already proved we don’t mind longer picks. 
)
So please share your thoughts on this. Especially if you voted back in November and didn’t read B$ nor 9-nine, because your opinion carries a lot of weight for this kind of thing.
Someone else should probably do these posts, because I suck at being brief. Hopefully I included everything necessary… 
For me, I usually like to read something on the side unrestricted while doing the VN club. So if we ended up voting for a new VN while putting 9-nine/B$ as offshoot clubs, I think I would have to stay out of the new VN. Reading 3 VNs at once would just be too much for me and I’d prefer to finish something that I’ve already started (9-nine in this case). On the other hand, I could just read 9-nine by myself instead of with the offshoot club to join the new VN, but if there is an offshoot club I think I’d prefer to finish it there. If the new VN was something I really wanted to read then maybe I would read 9-nine by myself in order to participate but hard to say at this time.
I am fine with a max amount of weeks to read a VN but only with the assumption that the entire VN will be read during that time. I don’t really want to buy a VN and then stop the story halfway through. I always 100% the VNs I play unless its like a moege/pure romance where the only point is to date your favorite character but I get the feeling those type of games aren’t going to be nominated
I haven’t kept up with how the B$ club is doing but for 9-nine our pace has been faster than it was during Loopers and all of the core members have been doing fine as far as I am aware. I guess it depends on how long the VN that wins nomination is, but I am fine with longer VNs meaning that we’d just have to read at a faster pace. I think most people have a general idea how long something is before they read it (if not, there’s a lot of places you can look to get a rough idea like jpdb, vndb etc). So with that in mind, people can nominate something longer while knowing that they might have to dedicate more time to it or they can choose to vote for something shorter to keep it relatively relaxed.
Same here. It also just feels like terrible value. There are sale periods, but I think most of what we’ve looked at is in the $20-$40ish range. I can afford it, but a new one every 3-4 months to abandon it half finished would not sit well with me. I’d expect Switch users to also be in pain for the cartridge tax, especially if anyone is importing physical copies.
Between 3-4 months and abandoning partway and taking a little longer (eg. 6 months) I’d lean towards longer if it means finishing, but going back to what Azuza brought up I’d probably end up trying to finish things with an offshoot club or on my own and end up abandoning the main club once we got even a couple titles in. The number of titles that we’d finish in even 6 months is probably low :-/ Unfortunately, I feel like the VN space has a problem where short titles are by book club standards extremely long. A lot of what I saw on JPDB was listed as 300k, but the usual LN would be something around 100k right? It’s a bit rough for getting a variety of series in similar to manga/LNs.
Because of this I think there’s an awkward set of compromises where average length VNs need a faster pace to finish in a reasonable amount of real time which is kind of contrary to general interests (variety, low commitment, beginner friendly reading). To make it worse, a lot of the shorter titles are just part 1 of X which rarely seem self-contained. 9-nine: episode 1 is looking like it’ll end with a lot of loose threads. It’s not a fun problem to solve x.x
I didn’t really add any of my own thoughts, did I?
I’m not the type to abandon things. I only do so if I don’t plan to finish them. I will sometimes delay finishing things if it makes sense. (Loopers, I’m coming back, I promise. 
) But I prefer not to.
If I had to put myself on the spot, I’m more likely to stay on top of an off-shoot club to finish an already started VN, than I am to start another. Especially right now, since I’m already in the middle of two.
For me, personally, I want any one book club to take up my reading time for one, maybe two days a week (meaning if I was in 6 clubs, at most 6 days a week would be taken up by club reading, and if I was in two clubs it would be around 2 days). So for me, a very high speed for the VN club compromises my ability to read with the club. I still don’t have enough of the VN domain vocabulary internalized to read VNs easily either (maybe in a few more months…). I don’t know so much that I need to look up a lot, and since sitting at a computer is not the way I prefer to read, looking up will never be as easy as it can be for the PC crowd. 
I have this policy because I rarely manage to stick to a consistent routine for very long. That means when I fall behind (because it will be when, not if), I need to have space each week to not only keep pace, but to catch up.
I don’t have any solutions. Perhaps we need to just figure we’ll only read 2-3 VNs per year with the club. So we can dedicate 4-6 months per VN and finish them. The problem as mentioned becomes the person(s) that don’t want to read that particular VN. They have to wait a really long time before there is a chance to read together with the club again.
One way to mitigate that problem, would be to always reading two VNs in parallel, but the only reason we did that now was because so very few were interested in reading both. So we had a very natural split where we could more or less read two things and have everyone join.
I honestly don’t know if there is a good solution. Compromises have to be made if you want to read something together with other people in this way, we just have to figure out which compromises to make.
And personally, I’m definitely not in the camp of: let us abandon 4 VNs per year so we can read as many different ones as possible together. If I enjoy something, I want to finish it, and I don’t have the bandwidth to have too many things going at the same time.
On the other hand, VNs ARE easier to read, because of the images, the texts that are dialog mostly, and when available, the voice and the texthooks (sorry Switch readers), so it makes sense to me that they are longer / you read more per week
But also VNs in a bookclub make less sense than books or mangas, because of the routes. I feel like it’s a bit against the VN principle to agree on a route and follow it, at least for me part of the fun is to go blind and see what happens.
And not to mention how hard it is to find where best to cut it for the organizers.
This is probably the best solution. It’s a bit unfortunate if something gets picked that someone doesn’t want to read but I think any other way around it would hurt the people that are reading and I think its best to prioritize the people that are reading. Even in the last poll, 9-nine had 12 people voting for it but we only have about 4 people reading it weekly. I’d feel weird trying to prioritize people that aren’t reading when they might not even join either way.
For me its the complete opposite. Unless the VN is designed in a specific way where you have to read it blind (and I can only think of like one or two examples) I always use a guide and follow a route order. A lot of VNs sprinkle in information throughout various routes to the point where you could accidentally spoil yourself reading out of order or things would make less sense if its not read in a certain order. I’ve seen VNs before where early bad ends spoil who the criminal is before the climax of the story. Guides are also nice for me since they tell you which choices matter and which ones you need to save at. It makes it easier when going through the other routes so you don’t need to backtrack as much.
Thanks for the point of view, didn’t know that was a possibility with the spoilers!