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Going Forward: A Request


Vivi OOC

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I realize this is going to offend some people. Some of you will rile yourselves up and talk about how I just want to stifle your creativity, and put limits on your fun, but it's an issue that most of the serious posters have edged around and discussed at some point.

We all get ideas for things we'd like to try. They may be new and experimental, adventures in tweaked mechanics or alternate universes, or they may just be something we've always wanted to try, like a slightly kitschy noir theme.

Every new idea, however, does not (and in my opinion, should not) merit the creation of an entirely new game to further stress our most precious, and most limited resource: players. (Or, if you prefer, collaborative fiction authors.) A player (or author) can generate an almost unlimited number of characters, but we can't give them all the same degree of care and attention. We aren't growing fast enough to support the sheer number of games that crop up every time someone thinks it might be neat to try something, and then almost inevitably they find that someone else has also dangled a new shiny thing in front of the posters, distracted them away from their Great Idea, and it fades into oblivion. Everyone gets all excited about the New Idea, and then once the next New Idea comes along, they get all excited about that, too... And so on, until they have to drop out of one or more, or just gradually slip out of the loop.

Either way, we're all (almost all, at least) spreading ourselves very thin, and I don't think it's good for us, for the other players, or for the games (or stories) we enjoy.

I'd like to request that we all think a little harder before creating, or signing up for yet another shiny new thing on the forums. There are STs and players who can barely keep up with what's already on their plate as it is, and they're still piling more on, to the detriment of everyone involved. We need to prioritize and devote our attention to the games and stories we really enjoy, and I think we'd see improvements in both the quality and quantity of posts and plots.

Some games may not survive that. If it means some forums are abandoned altogether, that's fine- at least give them the dignity of a clean death, rather than letting them linger on with a post every few weeks just to keep it "active." Some may find their scope drastically narrowed as the population shrinks, but there's an opportunity there for a more focused game.

Discuss! wink

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Sounds like a good suggestion. Gonna be hard to implement though. People hear about a new shiny and see their friends all oooh'ing and aaah'ing over it and suddenly there's a herd-like rush that direction. I think it ultimately settles it self out. The ideas that really have more to them than just a nifty concept survive the herd's movements from one pasture to another. Btw, don't you just love the way I've compared us all to cattle with my metaphor? wink But you are right, games suffer from us spreading ourselves thin. I know I'm looking hard at my current list of games right now wondering what to do about it.

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Honestly I couldn't agree more. I have a game idea (ok a few) that I would like to run, but until one of my own ends or dies I'm not starting a new one.

People know their own capabilities but as Fox points out I think peer pressure and the "new shiny hotness" tend to draw people out beyond what they can sustain. That's going to happen, but we can at least mitigate it. I propose (above and beyond the current other suggestions) that we GM's agree to give other new games a 30 day window before even considering the kick off of yet another new game. That way we don't have competing shiny which tends to drag things away from established games even further.

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The 30-day rule makes some sense. There's also sense in what Fox says about people dashing hither and yon every time a new shiny pops up. I also think that there are people taking on more than they can handle. (I'm close to that myself)

New blood isn't really the answer, thinking about it. Having new people come in is not going to solve the problem of the people who are already here wanting to cast caution to the winds and create, or jump into, new games. Sure, it's nice to have more people to play and post with, and the increased volume will ensure life support to games, but there's still the problem of Impulsive Spontaneous Universe Creation outstripping the player base. It occurs to me that we might have more games than posters here, though I can't be sure without doing a count.

I personally am putting myself on a 'character slot' system and won't be signing up to any more games until a slot becomes free. It seems to be the only equitable solution.

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I am not sure about the 30 day thing. That limits us to 12 new games a year(not necessarily a bad thing). What happens if one of those fail? What if several new ideas come up about the same time? Are we going to wait several months to start a new game? Is there going to be a waiting list? How do you determine the order of that waiting list? What if one of the games on the waiting list has way more people wanting to play it than a game higher up on the list, do you make 15 people wait on starting their game for the sake of the 5 person game? What if someone new comes to the site and wants to start a game but can't because of the waiting period? Not saying a waiting period is a bad idea, just that there are a lot of things to consider.

I think the character slot idea is a better plan, but even that would have to be self imposed based on an honest self assessment of how much a person thinks they can handle. Some people have more free time than others or are just much better at juggling than others and sometimes life changes making that magic number change with it. (Which is the situation I'm in right now.)

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The 30 day thing would not be hard and fast, more like the Pirate Code, that is more of a guideline really. Savvy?

And really is waiting to launch a game such a bad thing? I can say with 100% honesty that I wish I HAD waited to launch Scion last year. I just plain wasn't ready, and TBH I don't think all of the players were either.

Proc's character slot thing, yeah great idea, but as you say Fox, its very much a personal thing as well. Hard to do anything but ask that people really consider their available time when a new game is proposed (or an old game is looking for new blood).

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Ok, I guess I'm the oddball around here, but are players really that scarce? I honestly would've thought that between players and ST's, that ST's would be way more scarce than players.

I mean, oddity (and my curse) aside, I was only in two games until NGD shut down, and now I'm only in one. I would love to be in one or two more games (which would max me out), but I can't find any old games that are accepting players, or new games starting up that fit my play style (I realize I'm more 4color and action hero than most here... but still...).

I currently use a version of the 'slot' idea. Every time a game comes up that I would like to play, I have a discussion with my wife; because each new game that I get into means time away from her. If I can convince her that 'I can play this new game because that old game died or is in a slump, so it won't mean any more time away from you', then I jump in. If not, I have to gracefully bow out. I mean, I love you guys and all these different, rich, and vibrant worlds, but I love my time with my wife more.

My thoughts, system, and two cents.

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Dav, Carver, and I were up until god-awful hours of the night last night talking about this. There's a major shift that has happened on this posting board that, I think, is causing the current crisis of gameplay:

The playerbase of the sight in general has not only pretty much replaced itself since the inception of NPrime, but the desire/playstyle of the new players is fundamentally different from that of the original NPrimer's. The NPrime game was not a game. It was a collaborative fiction board with no real rules other than a guideline from the books and no real ST's. People told their stories and mucked about in a shared world-space. They were authors.*

Most of the new players on the board aren't here to be authors in that same way. They're here to play games. They want rule and ST's and plot. This is fine, but it requires more effort on the part of the players that have stepped up as ST's and less effort on the part of players just being players than the collaborative fiction required. I think this is in part a reason for the "new shiny" issues we're facing. ST's either don't realize how much effort a game will be or themselves wander off at the drop of new shiny. Players, with the lowered effort needed for each individual game as they don't have to also play the part of the ST (usually), jump into more games and jump at most of the new shiny's and usually only realize that they're in over their head once it's happened.

We don't have an Utra-Board-Mod that's going to thwack us with rulers if we don't behave or follow some strict guideline on games (Chosen is way too awesomely laid back for that), and I at least wouldn't want one. I don't want to see this posting board end up like mini version of the Camarilla. I do have a suggestion for both players and ST's on a formula for self-regulation, however. And food for thought if nothing else.

Here's the formula:

(PC's x 2) + (ST x 4) = # of Hours a Week Devoted to RPG-POST

For me, this becomes (15 x 2) + (1 x 4) = 34 Hours (or about 5 hours a day)

I figured this out last night by thinking about how much time I really needed to devote to playing a character or STing a game on average for the game/character to stay interesting and moving along. I'm okay with this much time a day right now, as this board is generally what I do on breaks at work and after work around homework. I may let a few characters go that are in defunct games since I've seen the math on time for this over the next few months, as I'll have more schoolwork coming up in a few weeks and I'm working on making an rpg.

This may not work for you or it may take more or less time for average on your games/PC's, but I think it's a good reality check for your level of commitment, participation, and readiness for new games/characters on the board.

*Side discussion:

I also think this is why the open-world games are mostly dead. People want to be players -or- ST's in a game, not generally both. The current set-up of the OW games takes a great deal more effort on the parts of the players than ST-run games and also has issues with the expectations/involvement of the moderators.

Personally, I'd much more favor 'OW' style games ala DR, SGU, and BoP. You've got a lot of room to play around in the world and do fics, but there is an established 'Responsible Adult' for the game that will throw out (and follow through) on overarching plots and resolve disputes. There's a constant something to do even if it's not required that your character participate.

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Originally Posted By: Malachite_OOC
The playerbase of the sight in general has not only pretty much replaced itself since the inception of NPrime, but the desire/playstyle of the new players is fundamentally different from that of the original NPrimer's. The NPrime game was not a game. It was a collaborative fiction board with no real rules other than a guideline from the books and no real ST's. People told their stories and mucked about in a shared world-space. They were authors.*

Most of the new players on the board aren't here to be authors in that same way. They're here to play games. They want rule and ST's and plot. This is fine, but it requires more effort on the part of the players that have stepped up as ST's and less effort on the part of players just being players than the collaborative fiction required. I think this is in part a reason for the "new shiny" issues we're facing. ST's either don't realize how much effort a game will be or themselves wander off at the drop of new shiny. Players, with the lowered effort needed for each individual game as they don't have to also play the part of the ST (usually), jump into more games and jump at most of the new shiny's and usually only realize that they're in over their head once it's happened.


This has been one of my biggest gripes for a long while. I love OW games, simply because they are set up for you to write with others in a world that is created by and for the the characters than inhabit it. What we have now are a ton of players who don't want OW forums because they need someone to hold their hand and lead their PC through everything they do.

I liked NPrime, it was a hoot. I didn't always agree with it for several reasons:

1. People made some incredibly powerful PCs that ruined the balance of the world IMO.
2. No accountability. People did as they pleased. Murder, mayhem, destruction and got away with it. Including shitting on PCs who could easily have known who the culprit was.
3. People make some really dumb PCs with no fore thought, background, or anything. Just dots and suddenly we're supposed to recognize them as this Q5 nova who has 5s in everything and has been in our lives as a major media icon for years! We just never noticed til now.

And the best we had to settle things was a chat room to argue in.

Frankly, the reason things have slowed down so much is because people are in everything. The best I get from most posters in the games I'm in are two lines worth of text, maybe four, that the person didn't even bother to spell check. We got wise old men who talk like 4rd graders and some PCs and NPCs could have an emotional response to something if their lives depended on it.

We all have bad posty days, I know I do. But quality of the writing has seriously dropped in my opinion. If that means we gotta bag 1/2 the crap around here as we build up our player base, I say do it. I'd like to run a Pathfinder Game or a Mass Effect space opera based on the Trinity rules... but there's no way that's going to happen until I feel confident that the authors have woken up and decided to be authors again.

Quote:
*Side discussion:

I also think this is why the open-world games are mostly dead. People want to be players -or- ST's in a game, not generally both. The current set-up of the OW games takes a great deal more effort on the parts of the players than ST-run games and also has issues with the expectations/involvement of the moderators.

Personally, I'd much more favor 'OW' style games ala DR, SGU, and BoP. You've got a lot of room to play around in the world and do fics, but there is an established 'Responsible Adult' for the game that will throw out (and follow through) on overarching plots and resolve disputes. There's a constant something to do even if it's not required that your character participate.


You know, considering the three games above are in the Play by Post section and not in the Open World section I'm actually a bit pissed off about those comments. WoD:A was the first OW game where Vivi and I stood up and said 'look, you are free to play as you see fit, the STs are here to help out and have a good time, but you are accountable' and then let the players go with it. The biggest reason for it was to incorporate the 'Responsible Adult' theme that the Aberrant N!Prime venue seemed to seriously lack. It's been doing it now for two years and while the trip hasn't always been a smooth one its lull is do mostly to people going off to play in every single Play by Post game.

Despite issues with players at the time (Dawn, Sarah and Mala) I opened up the game world to them and placed my personal feelings aside to allow them to play. That's what a moderator does, they remain impartial and neutral to settle disputes among the players. All of you have a 'my way or no way' outlook. These games should be open to all players and what has happened in games like DR is something of a standard among you guys. If you do not like someone or are mad at them for something you brow beat and harass them until they quit or disappear from the site. Fox's favorite tactic is to send harassing PMs to rile a person up and then claim innocence or simply apologize and pretend it never happened.

If you guys are the standard for 'Responsible Adult' gaming, then seriously you have a few things to work on. I'm not saying I'm perfect but I do not recall the last time I allowed PCs to harass, insult, and browbeat someone until they were forced to quit a game over one PC threatening others PCs IC. I hope it works out for you guys. I'l tell ya all now, I don't like AtomicWeasel. I don't. If I saw him on the street I'd prolly clock him in his jaw and tell him to learn to speak. However, despite my personal feelings, as long as he is a player within the UA:OW he will be given the same opportunities and treated with the same fairness and equality as any other PC within that venue. No one character is above or below the next in my opinion, despite whether or not I like them. I have doubts, based on previous observations that your 'Responsible Adult' gaming is nothing more than a like minded opinion of what you want and expect and any deviance from that opinion is 'Irresponsible Adult' gaming.

You guys have made the point before that WoD:A isn't even really worth being recognized and everything that has 'Dawn', Mala' and 'Fox' on it is pretty much gold. Despite WoD:A's rules being copied and pasted all through out the board as a guideline for players to follow when it comes to 'Responsible Adult' playing styles.

I'm done trying to keep something going that people have no interest in. I'll close up WoD:A and make room for all the Open World Play by Post games. I don't have the staff on hand that you guys do to keep it up anyway. I really don't.

Since those are the games people need to focus on and go be a part of as the new 'Responsible Adult' crowd, and I'm not welcome in two of them I see very little point in me participating in much around here. Which is a bonus to the topic above, I'll have more time elsewhere.
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A third of the players in WoD:A (cuz really, 6 players is not 'going strong') seem to be of the opinion that it's not 'Responsible Adult' gaming. That's what the game was supposed to be centered on and seriously if it's not viewed that way then I've failed to operate it and moderate it fairly and appropriately.

I've tried as hard as I can and I can't say all my decisions have been good ones, but let's face it, it's obviously not taken seriously by the real 'Responsible Adult' gamers.

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Why did this need to turn in to attacks against people?

As a result of the post above:

1) I finally accept that you do not like me and never will. No matter if we 'play nice' together in games from time to time. You obviously, don't care for me and will never forgive or forget past slights and will continue to bring them up every time you get irked by something.

I've been trying to be friendly and play nice.

2) I'm not happy about it because I don't like being at odds with people I would otherwise like or respect or that I have a lot in common with.

3) I'm done with you Rev. You can NPC Jor in the Mutant High game. I was struggling to make time for him because life has gotten busier for me and I've gotten stretched too thin.

If you ever get over yourself and want to play nice then shoot me a PM, but don't do it unless you are ready to forget the past issues.

For the record and as my parting message to you. I apologize. Everyone has their own perception of events, ours obviously don't match. I remember things a differently than you describe above, but for whatever I've done that has pissed you off so bad. I apologize.

Cya.

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Originally Posted By: Dave ST
A third of the players in WoD:A (cuz really, 6 players is not 'going strong') seem to be of the opinion that it's not 'Responsible Adult' gaming. That's what the game was supposed to be centered on and seriously if it's not viewed that way then I've failed to operate it and moderate it fairly and appropriately.

I've tried as hard as I can and I can't say all my decisions have been good ones, but let's face it, it's obviously not taken seriously by the real 'Responsible Adult' gamers.

Quit reading into something that wasn't at all aimed at WoDA. You're not the only one to read something into what Mala said that wasn't there, but you are throwing the biggest fit over it. Talk about being an adult...

Regardless, I have too much homework to get into it at the moment, and I know that Mala is working up a massive post, so I'll let her speak for herself.
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First off. Please take a deep breath. I wasn't attacking you or your games, Dave. I was pointing out some observations based off of what I've seen going on on the boards and what has been said to me by other players and storytellers on the board.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
This has been one of my biggest gripes for a long while. I love OW games, simply because they are set up for you to write with others in a world that is created by and for the the characters than inhabit it. What we have now are a ton of players who don't want OW forums because they need someone to hold their hand and lead their PC through everything they do.

That's insulting. I like ST run games because it's fun not to control the responses of adversaries in a story, nor to know what they're planning/doing all the time. It's a preference for enjoyment, not a personality deficiency. No, I don't enjoy OW games as much as ST games. I'm not immature for this. I'm different than you. Please stop insulting me, and others on this board, just because we're not carbon copies of you as gamers or writers.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
Frankly, the reason things have slowed down so much is because people are in everything. The best I get from most posters in the games I'm in are two lines worth of text, maybe four, that the person didn't even bother to spell check. We got wise old men who talk like 4rd graders and some PCs and NPCs could have an emotional response to something if their lives depended on it.

I agree. From my understanding, that's what we're trying to fix or at least alleviate somewhat.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
We all have bad posty days, I know I do. But quality of the writing has seriously dropped in my opinion. If that means we gotta bag 1/2 the crap around here as we build up our player base, I say do it. I'd like to run a Pathfinder Game or a Mass Effect space opera based on the Trinity rules... but there's no way that's going to happen until I feel confident that the authors have woken up and decided to be authors again.

Okay. I'm not going to argue opinion, and at this point I rather agree anyways. Self-regulation is a good idea. That's part of the reason I made up my little formula so I could get a numbers/time grip on what I'm doing on this site.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
You know, considering the three games above are in the Play by Post section and not in the Open World section I'm actually a bit pissed off about those comments. WoD:A was the first OW game where Vivi and I stood up and said 'look, you are free to play as you see fit, the STs are here to help out and have a good time, but you are accountable' and then let the players go with it. The biggest reason for it was to incorporate the 'Responsible Adult' theme that the Aberrant N!Prime venue seemed to seriously lack. It's been doing it now for two years and while the trip hasn't always been a smooth one its lull is do mostly to people going off to play in every single Play by Post game.

First....I thought all the games here were play-by-post? I'm assuming that you mean ST-run vs. OW, but please do tell me if that's an incorrect assumption.

I've had fun in WoDA. I think it's a fine game for an OW game. I'm not a huge fan of 'superfriends' White Wolf games, but people made kick-ass characters and it's been very gratifying to see development of characters of a longer period of time than most of the games I've tried to play in lately have lasted. Having characters that can reference things that happened in game over a year ago is a fantastic experience.

That said, I'm less interested in it than in games that have an ST consistently running plot and that I can see the overall story being told by the plots that have been run. This isn't a slam on WoDA. There's nothing wrong with plot-light, slice-of-life games that are primarily centered around either the social interactions of the PC's or whatever personal plots are developed that end up dragging half the city into the fray. I like that, too. I just have a slightly higher preference for more....hmn....coherent, Greek-style storytelling. Which pretty much requires an ST.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
Despite issues with players at the time (Dawn, Sarah and Mala) I opened up the game world to them and placed my personal feelings aside to allow them to play. That's what a moderator does, they remain impartial and neutral to settle disputes among the players. All of you have a 'my way or no way' outlook. These games should be open to all players and what has happened in games like DR is something of a standard among you guys. If you do not like someone or are mad at them for something you brow beat and harass them until they quit or disappear from the site. Fox's favorite tactic is to send harassing PMs to rile a person up and then claim innocence or simply apologize and pretend it never happened.

Bad shit happened in DR, and no one was without culpability in the bad blood that it created. Not Dawn, not Fox, not me, not you.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
If you guys are the standard for 'Responsible Adult' gaming, then seriously you have a few things to work on. I'm not saying I'm perfect but I do not recall the last time I allowed PCs to harass, insult, and browbeat someone until they were forced to quit a game over one PC threatening others PCs IC.

Dave, dealing with your rather acerbic, abrasive, and mercurial attitudes is half the reason people either didn't start playing WODA or had to think long and hard about it. Soemtimes you're great and fun to play/hang out with, and other times you get a wild hair up your ass and you're a dick for weeks.

Again, you actions with Primal in DR (being the specific instanced referenced here so far), was so overly aggressive and was pretty much leading to a pointless amount of violence and PC death for no reason and no fun in the game. When you were asked to reign it in for the sake of getting on with the game, you pretty much blew up over everyone involved. Sticky goo all over the game. Ew. People did not respond to you well. Bad on them. If Fox was inappropriately harassing you in PM, I'll apologize as much as I can for actions I had no part in. I doubt you'll believe me, but I actual was trying to find a way to keep Primal in the game and still make it fun for the other players. I failed, rather spectacularly so, and in a large part because I got into bitching cat fights with Vivi. I try not to do that anymore because this board, above and beyond anything else, is supposed to be fun.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
I have doubts, based on previous observations that your 'Responsible Adult' gaming is nothing more than a like minded opinion of what you want and expect and any deviance from that opinion is 'Irresponsible Adult' gaming.

Actually, I never said anything about 'Responsible Adult' gaming. I was trying to be tongue in cheek from a joke in the Trinity game; it wasn't meant to be insulting. My point was the idea of an authority/plot-giving person that was responsible for the smooth running and overall enjoyment of the game by the players. That's all. Sorry if you don't like the 'responsible adults' of some of the ST run games on the board. All I can offer for that is to not play in those games. I'm not being facetious or rude (at least, I'm not trying to); I mean that sincerely. If the game isn't fun, then don't play. We're all far too busy and have far too much stress in our lives to waste our free time doing something voluntary that we don't enjoy.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
You guys have made the point before that WoD:A isn't even really worth being recognized and everything that has 'Dawn', Mala' and 'Fox' on it is pretty much gold. Despite WoD:A's rules being copied and pasted all through out the board as a guideline for players to follow when it comes to 'Responsible Adult' playing styles.

Um....the two games I've tried to run I either bailed on because of stress and not enough understanding of how much work running MCoH would be, or because I just couldn't cut it as an ST for the game. Hardly gold.

Fox has run one awesome game to completion and started another that is popular on the board. Dawn has run quite a few games on the board, and is probably at this point the most prolific writer here. They have reputations, good and otherwise, with the various other people on the board. That's really all there is to say.

Originally Posted By: Dave ST
I'm done trying to keep something going that people have no interest in. I'll close up WoD:A and make room for all the Open World Play by Post games. I don't have the staff on hand that you guys do to keep it up anyway. I really don't.

Since those are the games people need to focus on and go be a part of as the new 'Responsible Adult' crowd, and I'm not welcome in two of them I see very little point in me participating in much around here. Which is a bonus to the topic above, I'll have more time elsewhere.

Again, you're just being combative and pissy with this. WoDA, from my observation, is doing about as well as most of the games on the board, and the other OW game that you're running is so far going as strong as the more popular ST-run games.

My suggestion was just that: a suggestion based off observation and personal preference. My use of the three games from the ST section of the board was there for stylistic comparisons and I wasn't specific enough about what I was using them to illustrate, I guess.

Those three games have a style of ST/Mod interaction and a split of plot/fic posting that I think encourages players to develop and pursue personal or self-driven storylines through fictions, but also has ST-driven plots available for those that don't like/aren't proficient with coming up with plots on their own, just want to play a game, and/or are currently experiencing a dearth of creativity for self-generated stories for their characters.

I like WoDA. I love Oneca. Hell, she's the first character I've ever made where I've actually played her in two different games at once. Sometimes, though, I don't have the time, energy, or creativity to write all the parts of her story; to come up with adversaries and how/what they're doing in her life and how they react to what she does. Sometimes it's nice to have someone else doing at least part of that. Sometimes it's nice to know that I can log on, put up a short post in the plot thread that she's currently involved in, and log off of her for the day. It keeps me in contact with the character and game world but doesn't require as much effort as self-driven plots do.

In DR, I can do that with Gabrielle. In SGU I can do that with Kyria. And the hope is to provide that to the players in BoP.

Hmmm.....here, I think this might help. I enjoy playing rpg's on this board. I like telling stories here. Most of the time, though, I don't have the time or energy to be a novelist on the site. I leave that to Dawn (as Path of Vengence clearly shows she does). From observation, that seems to be the case with a good chunk of the current players on the site. Games with the flexibility but ST oversite set-up like DR, SGU, and BoP seem to appeal and to work.

That's what I was trying to say. I'm trying to help.

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I asked for a discussion on how to keep us all from overloading ourselves, and limiting the number of Shiny New Things that pop up constantly. I'm perfectly capable of starting and perpetuating flame wars on my own, without help from anyone else, so if everyone could please take a step back and focus on the original topic, it'd be appreciated.

We don't all like each other. We don't all get along. We don't all have fun for the same reasons, and in the same ways, even if we think our methods are clearly superior. As much as some of the comments you've made in the preceding posts have rankled me, and as much as, sometimes, I'd like to kick some of the players here in the metaphorical junk, if we cannot cooperate we cannot have fun. At least, not outside of tiny little cliques, and it's pretty obvious how well that works.

If you want to brag about how awesome your forum is, your friend's forum is, or Joe Schmoe's forum is... If you want to bitch about how much you dislike X player, Y story, or Z idea...

Do it in another thread. This one's meant to be constructive, and I will absolutely come down like a ton of duracrete bricks on anyone who decides to treat it otherwise from this point out. If that means no one's got anything else to contribute, fine. It'll die off just like the vast majority of discussion threads, and no harm done. We'll all go back to what we're doing now, perpetuating an endless cycle of Shiny New Thing/Game Abandonment/Shiny New Thing and continue to burn ourselves out.

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Some of the ideas suggested in here have been very good. To sum up (and attempt to get back on track):

1) We need more people. Even though that potential means more games being run, we'll always have those people who don't run anything and are only interested in playing. More people would be good.

2) Running fewer games. This is the harder one; people don't want to drop what they enjoy. We've already started to see this happen, so I hope that's being dealt with.

3) Running smaller games. This might be the hardest of all - telling friends, "No, I can only have four players, and your concept wasn't as cool as X, Y, Z and John's." Or even, "No, I can only have five players, and you were the sixth to ask, even though I know that player J will piss me off so bad I'll hate the game in six weeks and player R will just disappear for a month or eight inside of three months." Or you have a situation where people get invited for games... and I think we'd quickly see the same people being invited over and over again.

But in reality, there's nothing that can be done about any of this other than to ask STs to keep our limited resources in mind, and to ask players to limit themselves to what they want to play.

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Originally Posted By: jameson (ST)
4) We STs try to allow some reasonable amount of time between kicking off new games lest the power of shiny overwhelm us all.

I see that as part of #2, fewer games. That's a niggling distinction that I don't think needs to be made, necessarily.
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From my perspective there is an inherit flaw in limiting the number of games or setting a specific time for a new game. What if we get more people to come to the site? Do we still limit the number of games which could then turn those people away because they aren't involved in a game?

Also, having newly starting games is an easier way to get a new player involved. Getting in from the beginning will always be less intimidating that joining something already in progress.

How do you determine what games is introduced next? If I come up with an idea and realize that 3 people just posted ideas before me do I have to wait 4 months before my game has a chance of taking off? In which case we'll loose any chance of getting other ideas out there.

I understand the desire to want to have control over the games here. I appreciate the desire to want to improve the quality of the games here. But I don't think putting a limit on the number of new potential games is a viable option.

There is a darwinian principle in letting all the games go, which is the best ones will keep people happy and the ones that aren't as enjoyable will be stopped so that others can take their place. This was something I assumed would happen when I switched the focus of the site to many games instead of 1. At times things will be spread thin, but with that it will always go back to people playing the games they enjoy the most.

I have some limits on the games already, which is you have to have a certain number of players to play the game. I don't think the site can do anything to limit the number of games though, because that can only limit the site's chances for survival. I am all for you guys setting limits that you would like to follow though.

I wrote down a bunch of options that we could consider, but at the end of the day they wouldn't really fix the problem. So I deleted them and will end with something much simpler.

This is a site for the players and it will always be for the players. Running or moderating a game can be hard and time consuming. If someone has a great idea I don't want to turn them away simply because people want to sample everything. You all have to be realistic with what you are doing. You have to understand the time you have to commit to a game. STs need to understand the players that are offering the join their games and whether you think they can offer enough to your game. At the end of the day you simply have to police yourself if you want more order. Because anything that I would do would simply disrupt the natural system and hinder the potential for exciting new games.

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