trans_pilgrims | discussion of OOC game issues

Okay I know I said no more planning/discussion posts from me, but I lied. Evidently there are enough people who don't feel comfortable bringing issues up non-anonly, so I am going to try to start some discussions for them, with the intent of getting things out in the open so we don't have stuff seething under the surface which inevitably explodes with drama.

Since not all of these are my own personal concerns, I am making an open post, so that everyone can add their voices/their concerns to it. This is not going to be an exhaustive list, it is just meant to be a jumping off point.

Here's the list to get us started:

1. the game runs very slow for long periods, and then there are bursts of activity where everything else has to stop, while we wait for a plot to finish. During this time, non-combat characters feel like they have nothing to do and that they're closed out of the game since they have to wait for plot to finish before open posting is allowed again.

Thoughts: away teams (especially those that are for non-combat characters) and player run plots should help this issue. Can we get an actual estimated time-frame on when away teams/player plots will actually go into effect, IC?

2. people might feel like mods are not addressing an issue when in fact someone might have brought it up to the mods privately and they are working on it.

Thoughts: more mod to the game as a whole communication is needed. Something like a regular post from the mods saying "we are aware of issues XY&Z and we are working on them" might be appropriate?

3. on the front of mod communication, is there a reason we don't have a drop box where people who don't feel comfortable speaking up logged in can tell the mods their concerns anonymously?

4. Also in the vein of mod communication, some people feel there's too much secrecy in terms of what's going to happen, which hinders player plotting, and also can slow up the game if people feel like there's nothing going on or that they're not allowed to be involved in whatever's going on. I know this has been brought up to the mods before but I don't think it's ever been satisfactorily resolved?

Thoughts: the mods could do a regular post of "this is what we can and can't tell you about what is upcoming in the game." It would also give players an opportunity to say "I want to do X, is that going to interfere in the game plot?" and the mods could say "we can't tell you specifics, but yes, there will be something going on during that frame of time." or "no, go ahead," or whatever. An actual post seems preferable, because even if the mods say something in chat, only a small percentage of the game is actually in chat at any given time.

5. there does seem to be a recurring problem where people will bring up issues/concerns/things that need to be worked on, and discussion will start on the issue, but then nothing will ever be finalized. The two specific examples I'm thinking of here are:

a. I know there's been discussion of how to re-structure the away teams, but if any actual decisions were ever made and implemented, I don't know about them. That could be a fail on my part, but I kind of think it's because things didn't actually get finalized.

b. after the drama after the nightmare king plot, there was discussion on the issue of the fact that a lot of the day to day things characters do get handwaved instead of actually threaded out, (for example, regular training. the rogues train every day, but we obviously don't have daily logs) however, other players would not know that you are handwaving certain activities for your character, unless you tell them. Making assumptions about what is and isn't being handwaved ... well, it's trite, but we all know what happens when you "assume".

Thoughts: if issues get brought up in the OOC, I think someone needs to be responsible for making sure the issue is actually resolved. My suggestion would be that a mod or helper mod step forward and say "Okay, for issue X, I am going to be responsible for making sure a resolution is reached" and then they follow through, and if the discussion dies out or whatever, say "Okay, a call needs to be made on what the conclusion here is, so here's the call."

a: if people who know about the away teams could step up and get things finalized, that would be awesome sauce

b: there was a proposal of having some kind of regular weekly or bi-weekly post where players could check in and say "in this week, my character has been up to X" or "I've been handwaving my character doing X". that way we would have all that information in one place, and if people wanted to know what was going on, they could check that post. also if they saw something they were interested in threading out, it would be a place where they could drop the other player a line saying "hey, can we actually log this?"

And now I'm tired of typing, so I'm going to let other people do the talking.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I want a linked sidebar post where you can OOCly find what people are up to by clicking it. That'll help with handwaving/setting up threads.

Goddammit, LJ, that was a half-assed refresh. :|

Agreeing with this. Though I think that a new post every month that people respond to might make things less confusing and easier to navigate than one post that gets updated all the time, so people can just check the most recent post when they want to see what everyone's up to.

I suppose you could have the link direct to the tag for the update posts, that would be a permanent link.

Oh, yeah, that was what I meant to say. Somehow the thought about the tag didn't make it from my brain to the keyboard, hurrdurr.

*high five* XD

Can you elaborate? Do you mean a single post that gets constantly updated with what people are doing?

It's a good idea but realistically a lot of work for whoever's doing it, if it's manual.

they mean having a tag in the OOC com like "!activity report" or something. Then having semi-regular (the frequency is something people would have to agree on) posts where people could comment with their characters main activities for the month, or whatever. The link in the side-bar could just link to that tag, and that way the most recent activity report post would be at the top.

At least, that's how I understand it. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

What Fiver said. *waves, laughs*

As I said below, have the tag for the handwaving post linked to the sidebar, then, do a weekly post (say, every Sunday) that says "WEEKLY HANDWAVING" or whatever with a post that basically outlines that "this is the place for your threads/links, etc. for what your character's been up to for the last week."

The handwaving tag will be available for cataloging purposes so that the link itself won't have to be updated manually.

Ah, all right. That makes a lot of sense. I know people used to do "roundup" posts, so something like that?

Yep! That'd be it.

I like this plan. I wish to subscribe to your newletter. :|

(facepalm) Erm, NEWSletter.

While I think it's goofy to like, list out every little thing your character has done, the major things, obviously it WOULD be very useful to have a list.

In another game I'm in every activity check we also have to do a little list of what our character's been up to within the game. While it wouldn't really work as far as our activity checks go, some sort of bi-weekly "THIS WEEK IN..." or something would be lovely.

Yeah obviously we wouldn't want to make people list /everything/. But the major things, the things that would be relevant to other characters ...

I agree, a regular post where people could be like "hey this is what's up" would be pretty awesome.

At XI, they have a small update post every two weeks that lists events in the game. In the comments on that post, people OOCly tell what their character is up to, what lessons their teachers will be having that week, plotting, etc.

As I recall we used to have a post every so often that detailed one-sentence summaries of the current threads going on. I really liked reading that and it would mean some work for somebody, but the discussion portion of the post like in XI could be very helpful.

yes/no/ham?

I'm curious. What's XI?

xi_rpg

both a "what my character is up to" post and a game wide thread tracker post would be awesome, though you're right, the latter would be lots of work for somebody.

ham!

Brought this up in the school post, but I like the idea of a general handwaving post, at least for the training stuff, where people can go "Character X is attending Y class." And just have that linked somewhere where people can readily access it.

yep, agreed.

Oh, I like this. I was actually thinking of doing a handwavey post with the Warfare Training, for the characters that don't tag into it, but a general one for all ship activity would be extremely shiny. :D

discussion of OOC game issues

issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

no subject

no subject

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

no subject

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

no subject

Re: issue 5b: handwaving

no subject

Re: issue 5b: handwaving