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thusia_ooc2012-11-28 04:44 pm
thusiamods) wrote in thusia_ooc2012-11-28 04:44 pm
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DISCUSSION: To Plot and Beyond
Hey guys, your resident mods here with a... not quite a full-out discussion post, but we'd like to get some ideas and points of note out there and your feedback on the matter. Particularly involving the latest plot and currently running plotlines. There have been a few discussions on plurk, but we'd like to have something more formal to make sure everyone has the opportunity to read and get their input on things that'll affect them.
There's a few things we'd like to touch upon with this post, the main points revolving around current/past/future plots and how we as mods can make things more fun for you in the way we handle them. Also on our agenda are things like State of the Game, God Functions, Player Accessibility, and probably more. To keep things organized, we'll be using header comments to cover specific topics and linking them in the post for easy navigation, so once you see a topic linked here, feel free to jump right to it.
CURRENT PLOTS: Moving HQ | Bitey Dogs | Weres
Week of my Life Posts | State of the Game | Affecting the Gods | Nature
There's a few things we'd like to touch upon with this post, the main points revolving around current/past/future plots and how we as mods can make things more fun for you in the way we handle them. Also on our agenda are things like State of the Game, God Functions, Player Accessibility, and probably more. To keep things organized, we'll be using header comments to cover specific topics and linking them in the post for easy navigation, so once you see a topic linked here, feel free to jump right to it.
Week of my Life Posts | State of the Game | Affecting the Gods | Nature
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
What we've been doing thus far is getting player plots sent to us, saying 'yes' or 'no' to them, and then leaving the players alone to figure out everything for themselves. Which was pretty uncool of us, we'll admit, and had a lot to do with the fact that we just didn't feel like we had the energy to keep up with everything. But I think in doing that, we limited the effect that a plot felt like it had upon the populace; because we never really brought it to attention, had IC consequences to things characters were doing ICly, etc, players felt like their plot lines didn't matter and didn't have an effect on the world, which was actually the opposite of what we wanted. It was a pretty bad policy and left everyone feeling frustrated and we want to change it to something that works.
What will work is something we're not sure of, but trying to figure out right now. I think it'd get tiring and not to mention feel a little inconsequential on all parts to constantly have to NPC, in this case probably nature. Trying to take on all the responsibilities of nature-related things myself has pretty clearly not been working, but I would like to have some kind of force for people to react to/get reactions from. I'm just not entirely sure how to achieve that without actively playing everything myself, which is also a thing I don't want to end up doing.
... I am not sure if I actually answered your question, but I think the short of it is that we'd like to give more emphasis on the importance of player-driven events and provide people with a THING to play against in nature without having to actively/only play it ourselves. Doing that is what personally wore me down for a long time, so I really don't want to put that on anyone else.
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
Addressing the first part, yes that has really been a problem, and it leads to perceived mod disinterest in plots. Not just player but NPC god plots. If someone excited and burbling brings a thing it would get a yes or a no and not be matched with the same enthusiasm. Or when player plots ARE run, it seems like the mods didn't even that it happened, much less what was IN the last three comm posts. But yes, WEEK IN THE LIFE will at least help mods keep up.
But, yes, engage, work up and work with your god players, back them up and what they do, and you'll probably find more things happening than simply forcing them to do something idk anything you want to do via newly implemented AC.
Like... when I was doing Ygin things, I would constantly go OKAY OKAY IF I DO THIS? and get a sure. And that would be it. Where do you want this to go? Anywhere, you're free to do anything you want.
Add onto that, there had been a lack of leadership in what gods can and cannot do. It's not so much telling us one thing or another, but going out and showing us a FUN THING THAT IS GOIN' DOWN RIGHT NOW. OKAY WE NEED YOU BECAUSE YOU'RE X ELEMENT SHOW ME WHAT YOU'VE GOT.
And to talk about the tedium of running a thing is ... I think the flaw of what you focus on and how you focus on it, and it comes down to passive and aggressive elements.
The reason why the flood got SO MUCH ACTIVITY with so little mod work, was that it was a passive element. It was a mindless, huge and encroaching thing. And because it was mindless, no one felt bad or is by the nature of RP trained away from assuming the actions of it. You honestly could put in a mod note saying OKAY ITS THIS DANGEROUS TODAY and people would go AHHH and react and start working faster. It helps that water, specifically large amounts of water are things that are so daunting that overcoming them is a theme of myths... parting the seas, redirecting rivers, building an arc, etc etc. You're already primed to think, HOLY SHIT THIS IS TOO BIG FOR ANY ONE PERSON.
You had multiple player plots going, from pumps to gills, to riots and all sorts of neat ideas jumbling all over each other at once.
The reason why the dragonplot is getting so much criticism for doing the exact same thing... is because you're treating an active, aggressive element like a passive one.
And this is two fold and touches on the same elements: The first is that beasts and birds of this nature are practically other characters to rpers. They have been assigned a danger level and an intelligence, characteristics and abilities unconsciously. If another character doesn't play with you? You drop the thread and generally you deregulate the importance of what is going on TO your character.
The second is perceived danger levels. Whereas a flood is mythologically dangerous, the dragons are... not. If every dragon encounter that happened in Thusia was both A. Rare, and B. like Sparkles versus Reddy (overwhelming and HOLY SHIT WE GOTTA RUN) this wouldn't be an issue. People would just assume HOLY CRAP MOUNTAIN BATMAN THERE ARE 15 REDDYS UP THERE. But instead you have actually had a mod played character able to take one down all by themselves. So you can modnote and assign a new danger level to them, but it's honestly not going to be the same because in the back of their minds, they have SEEN that one character can do it. And almost AS A RULE, active elements are something that can be DEFEATED. Nature is overwhelming as a passive element but can be overcome as an active one. "So what if all of us mount an offense?" And their sensibilities get ruffled when they're told that nothing was run because we figure no one would be stupid enough to want to walk into that.
Characters are ALWAYS stupid enough.
So it comes down to energy to do it. And really, I agree and absolutely empathize that constantly running active, aggressive elements are tiring as all shit. They really should be kept for big events. You have already established everything you need to do about nature being deadly... so focus on passive elements. I can spout off ten interesting and engaging elements that could entice, rather than force, characters to do exactly what you want them to do.
Want them to find fuel cells/power sources?
-----Try having an alarm button go off near the monitors
-----------Interact through the monitors, most is in an alien language, but hey, there's a picture of an interesting thing... oh hey this gets it to translate...
-------------------------It shuts off with JUST ENOUGH HINTS and refuses to come back up. Other lights in that area start going off.
-----Turn off the power to the building 1-2 days later.
------------Is it getting hot in here? ......... Was there an AC system?
---------------------The lower door fails, etc etc.
Aside from the first event, which would require interactive work (and pre-prepared flavor text), most of this can be done by simple event updates.
Estimated time to run? 3 hours of investment.
Benefit: No one is telling them that X or Y is the answer to this event, or even giving them a time frame to do it, it simply exists and is getting worse, and eventually, the players are going to come to the end goal conclusion you want or awesomely and sometimes EPICALLY they come up with something EVEN BETTER, unique to them and it transforms the environment. Either way, they have a VICTORY rather than a handout.
But you can have mystery things (that I'm not going to outline because I'd like to suggest) that instinctively say something bigger is happening. Something is wrong. You don't need to run them as hard as you do nature and they can spur just as amazing things without the tedium.
However, eliminating active elements ... is also unsatisfying. Sometimes you're going to need them to move an event forward, to emphasize an encroaching danger (rather than be the sole push of it.) But you have to time them for when you have the energy and they have to be... interesting to you. Like... I hated running raptors. Utterly hated it. But oh my would I run some terapedes :DDDD It comes down to what you like, and the event itself will benefit from it.
The last and final element is pacing. Deciding what happens and when, and even deciding the mood of events. One of the biggest feelings that came with hearing there was going to be a move was "Already?" Followed by "BUT WHY?" (which is addressed again with perception of active elements being defeated with effort.) It feels rushed and forced when the answer is plopped down after an inactive post where no one played a single dragon saying. WELP KIDS THIS IS TOO DANGEROUS. Here's your answer, it requires nothing more for you to do than volunteer.
That's. Not fun. Thus characters and players started suggesting OTHER THINGS THAT COULD BE DONE, and to your credit you started listening to them. It's not that they didn't want the move. It was just framed in a way that wasn't FUN.
So again, this is a lot of wordswordwordswords and meta that may or may not be right or appropriate... but I hope might be helpful and it is my own personal perception of events and how they are perceived.
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
But RELATIVELY SPEAKING, running a flood is a lot easier than running a horde of dragons. It is harder, naturally than NOT running a horde of dragons at all, but ... well, not running a horde of dragons and expecting them to be as effective as the flood is why we're here.
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
We are happy that other solutions/additions were proposed in response to Eizon, that is good and exciting and I think Aviy plurked about having fun with that post because charas were coming up with other ideas in response.
Obviously that doesn't solve the problems with how it was couched and the frustration of feeling limited to one path that was handed to everyone, but hopefully as more stuff develops we(TEN??) can throw in new elements and IC complications that'll shift the event into something that feels more engaging on the player side. THE POINTS YOU HAVE MADE ARE GOOD and I personally agree with them in terms of how events should be run.
AS FOR THE EARLIEST POINT, I applied to being a mod with the knowledge that encouraging Gods to run cool things was part of my job-description so I SUPER SUPER APOLOGIZE that I haven't been helping to keep the energy up for that sort of thing (I... I was excited for your event... I'm sorry if I only said so in my own head...). I am excited for a lot of the ideas I have heard about and need to do a much better job of following up with them. I'm realizing the lack of follow up from the player side on some of them isn't just because the player lost interest, it's because they weren't motivated to continue, so S-SORRY ABOUT THAT.
Re: STATE OF THE GAME
I don't actually have very much to say in response to your points because I think you nailed a lot of really good points here; all I really can say is thank you for giving your perception. We'll be doing our best to keep these things in mind going forward, since it does really cover a lot of things we hadn't really been conscious of. I'll admit that I'm really inexperienced when it comes to running/participating/any...thing... plot-related, but in this post and on plurk we've gotten a lot of advice and a lot of offers from players to help us out and I really want to get on tapping those resources.
So... yeah, we definitely messed up a lot in starting up this plot because of our own shortsightedness and we've been doing a poor job in working with our players and I think there's only so much apologizing we can do for that because what matters more to everyone including us is that we actually do the things we say we want to for our players. Which is what we will be working on once we get ourselves reorganized and refocused.
... Now I have put a lot of words but I guess the short of it really is, thank you for your words.