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While I do appreciate putting characters in a survival situation with a higher action quotient than recently available, I wanted to go over a few things I felt were still in line with some issues I touched on above.
Characters had few choices to make — their options were to help or do nothing, which was a choice largely made for them because their means of helping others was limited. A couple wardens headed out and groups of characters rallied to organize at the research center, but I don't think many people were brought back by the research center's efforts. Characters who were helicoptered had no choice in being violent or aggressive, so they’re largely not responsible for what they’ve done. Characters being snapped out of being helicoptered were inconsistent as to what trigged it, but there was at least some stakes there.
As a result, this really is just an endure situation, and it felt difficult to meaningfully impact that situation. For example:
- The OOC post explicitly laid out that characters couldn’t figure out that the helicopter was causing it, even though the helicopter was full of documents that could be examined and didn’t cause instantaneous insanity. (A couple characters DID note the helicopter IC as a potential source of trouble, but didn't investigate further.) What was the benefit of this set-up? What goal of this plot was incompatible with characters being able to find out what caused it and blow the helicopter up or figure out how to excise its evil or fix it or radio the scientists?
- The means of solving present problems (the biggest being getting road walkers to the research center) felt largely inaccessible because the event was bogged down in logistics. I think people are hesitant to jump on one of the few opportunities the plotting post offered (the ATV, the boat) when it had minimal utility in the first place (gas being in short supply meant only a few, if any, people could be rescued) and required a lot of cohesive OOC planning. For example, given the high volume of people at the single research center, determining whether the ATVs are worth the gas could be difficult, especially since tagging speeds could mean the event could be over by time a consensus had been reached IC. I waited a number of days before deciding Ezio would simply take an ATV without consulting anyone — no one else had spoken for them that I saw and I thought it was contained and simple. Nothing really materialized plot-wise for that until the last few days of the event, and then there was the snafu with the keys. I don't hold anyone in particular responsible for that, it was just the result of disjointed planning between the OOC and plurk, but I felt a little demoralized when by the tail end of the event and I had big blanks about the circumstances my character had existed in and who he'd interacted with. I feel like if plots are going to be highly reliant on logistics, then characters should be split into smaller parties, each with a set task, as it helps players plan around specific obstacles.
- Likewise, I think group posts where people can top level inspire a lot more interaction than a lot of posts that get minimal play, as it puts information in the same space. I think some people prefer individual posts because it counts for a whole post for AC, but I think if mods agreed to count event top levels as equivalent AC to a post, it would be a great compromise that would mean fewer people getting lost in a deluge of separate posts.
- A lack of consequence for any given action (or failure to act) makes for situations where players simply don’t bother because they know it’s a dead end. I thought it was a nice touch that being abandoned off-ship was a stated risk by the Admiral, but it was never actually a risk OOC. Obviously making it a risk at all is contingent on players being willing to sacrifice a character to the cause, but when that was the ONLY potential consequence to characters beyond a temporary death, it was toothless. Additionally, when events last a uniform length of time, you get characters saying "it'll be over in a week!" and adding to the endure-until-it-ends thing; it could be helpful to have events be shorter or longer as characters need to solve some problem or figure out how to get out.
- There's also a lack of reward for acting. When we talked a few months ago, you guys pitched July's plot being exploration and survival, and I don’t think exploration was present here; the survival situation was pretty bleak, with minimal option for supply restock or gear that would make the terrain worth venturing out to again, and we knew OOC that there was nothing to find BUT the research center. Characters at the research center were also largely unable to meaningfully help anyone; getting characters on the road to the research station required some level of info-modding to even know what direction to go into, and a fair bit of handwaving to explain how characters are doing things like surviving outdoors in late fall Nunavut/Alaskan temperatures without a coat or any resources. Characters had little to offer each other but broken up information, and then they were on their own. This is a bleak scenario that felt like it was set up for characters to fail through no fault of their own.
- While it was unique to not have an overboard option, I do think overboard options in a setting like this are a great opportunity to enlist players to use their characters in the place of NPCs for some sort of story component.
I do think the bones of this plot were fine. Being in a harsh natural environment with a competition for resources and people becoming threats to each other is not inherently a bad idea, and there's many places it could go.
But like I said initially, Mirror Barge clicked with me not because it was a Barge lore event but because it gave the characters reason and choice in their conflicts with each other, and characters had a means of changing the situation rather than simply enduring it. There were specific tasks set up for people who signed up to undertake them. Characters had motivations and goals even if they were AU'd into them; they chose to hurt each other and they understood their own motivations after the fact, as nothing they did was mindless. There was a power dynamic where some characters had leverage over others and incentive to use it. I think choice is very critical to what makes a plot that helps characters move forward in their character arcs.
I feel like if there's going to be plots based on group efforts to survive, there needs to be a clear roadmap for characters to succeed and fail based on what they choose to do, explore and find, rather than a neutral setting with no discoverable story. I also feel that perhaps the mod team could be more explicit about being open to player-pitched and player-run events, and solicit submissions periodically; I don't know how much feedback you guys get but I do think running these things can be a community effort rather than always falling on you guys every single month.
For what it's worth, I'm also working on a breach pitch of my own, which I will hopefully be in touch with you soon for feedback/ideas.
no subject
Thanks for writing again! Glad to have your feedback on the recent port. Unfortunately now that we've highlighted a little more the issues you're concerned with and the style of plotting, we're now more of the feeling that your coming into the game right in time for Mirror Barge may have impacted your expectations for what the typical TLV event is like. Although we do sometimes run plots like this, they're consciously infrequent, more in the area of once a year, if that. They're far more intense in terms of planning, execution, and workload than our typical monthly events, which are more freeform and player-led in terms of plotting. We do have the structure of one more intense event pending, but with Isabelle's hiatus these recent months it's on the backburner for the time being.
Also, a few specific comments you've made in this thread are making us wonder if you're reading event write ups as more inherently limiting than we intend them to be? Both in this comment and in your original comment, you've referenced a few things as having been forbidden during past events that we actually would have been perfectly fine to see in play (and in some cases, definitely did see in play). To use this most recent port as an example, we certainly never wanted to shut down the possibility of characters figuring out that the helicopter’s influence was driving people mad. Looking back through the event post, we see the line that might have given you that impression (“There's no real way to triangulate the source of the feeling to the machine itself, except that by the end of the week anyone who spends too much time trying to see what's going on with it has a habit of not being seen again”); however, our intention there was not to set down an arbitrary mod decree that characters were not allowed to connect the dots, but rather indicate that the connection wouldn't be definitively confirmed ICly, and that characters would need to figure out that it was the likely cause through investigation and observation. Likewise, characters deciding to blow up the helicopter in an effort to neutralize its effects is something we would have been happy to roll with (though we would have asked that it happen towards the tail end of the event, to make sure that the players of hunters would have enough time to do whatever they wanted to do with their characters). Generally, our biggest hard nos have to do with ideas that would either compromise a fundamental game mechanic (for on-Barge events) or disrupt the setting to the point that players trying to play with it in other ways would not have any way to work around the disruption (for both on-Barge and off-Barge events). After your original crit in May, we were aware of the potential for something that we intended to be read as “here’s a possible hurdle or obstruction that your characters can run into if you want!” to instead come off as the more hardline “this is a mod-enforced boundary that characters may not cross”, and we kept it in mind as we were doing the write-ups for both June’s flood and July’s port. However, it’s clear that we weren’t as successful in conveying this as we’d hoped! We wonder if it's worth jumping on a plurk together to go into specifics, either now or maybe closer to our next breach/port write up date?
Lastly, we hear you about pimping the suggestions post more, as well as making it clear we're up for all kinds of event suggestions for players (anything from "here's a single line describing a port setting I think would be fun" to "here's an entire write-up I've done for a breach; what do you guys think?" to everything in between). This, along with the player feedback polls, is something that's fallen by the wayside during this hellyear, but it's an easy and natural thing to work into event announcements!
no subject
And I think as far as things like limitations and the helicopter example go, it's nice to hear that it's possible, but it's really more like... when I as a player have 48-72 hours sort out what I'm doing in a plot, and the event post specifies that going near the helicopter makes them want to go nuts, and it's full of amber liquid and research notes, but it also specifies "there's no real way to triangulate the source to the machine itself", this feels like a hard stop to me. Why include the "you can't prove this is causing it" line at all if we as players apparently COULD pitch figuring out and doing something to the helicopter? The plot post also specifies that by the end of the week the helicopter would be impacting everyone in the research camp –– it reads like circumventing the helicopter in any way regardless of investigation is impossible because its presence at the end of the plot is already in the plot outline, so the player is left with a) asking the plot to bend to their idea at 48 hours notice or b) pitching a solution for the tail end of the plot where the characters' actions will have no meaningful impact because the characters know it'll end at that mark anyway.
I'm not saying the alternative has to be complicated or laborious to run: just that plot are designed with a spot for players to have their characters plan a mid-week intervention. Players themselves can actually do the playing out, you can even flag one of them to make the post for it. Otherwise I feel like it means dozens of characters who are perceptive, proactive, solutions-oriented and adventurous are left doing largely hand-waved "camp stuff", and I feel that is much more limiting than people not being able to make their character get helicoptered on day 4+. In a game about character choices determining their present and future as inmates or warden, I feel like plots should be designed with actions built in for characters to make a choice and then feel the consequences of that choice –– characters could get mad at gas being wasted, characters could get caught in the crossfire, it could backfire and make the helicopter's influence spread further by accident, you know?
Please understand that I'm not looking for Big Damn Hero moments for myself, nor do I specifically care about the helicopter, just that it's an example of things built into these plots that makes characters sit on their hands while there's an obvious danger in their midst, prevent players from choosing HOW their characters would intervene because the plot post set up the ending from the get-go.
But overall: yes, I'd love a plurk conversation when you guys are available, and I'd love to see more event solicitation and player feedback polls, I think it would be great and rewarding.