TLV - Mod Contact

[bargemods]

MOD CONTACT

If you have a question, comment, or complaint to raise to the mods, you can contact us directly by emailing us at any of our listed emails/Plurk addresses or by sending a PM to any of the listed character accounts. These will be forwarded to everyone else on the core mod team unless requested otherwise. If you have a general question about the game, you can also leave a comment over in the FAQ. The PM inbox of bargemods is not checked regularly.

GAME MODERATORS

Iddy || ZieglerFan719 (at) gmail (dot) com
Plurk: ihdreniel
Journals: citizendetective cactusy

Isabelle || ilseinthemorning (at) gmail (dot) com
Plurk: shipoftheseus
Journals: deuceoftears takestime

Kira || swordwithasmile (at) gmail (dot) com
Plurk: tinwateringcan
Journals: reformedsinner wildguardian divingdeep

directory • rules • ic faq • ooc faq • setting • potential applications • requests • pairings • cabins • jobs • calendar • contact

Comments

[bargemods]

Hi Jenn,

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!

[dog_eat_dog]

I can definitely see how Mirror Barge may have skewed my perception of how the game does events, but I also have to feed that back to something else I talked about before, which is how the game pitches itself from the outside. Mirror Barge was my first event as a new player, and it matched up with game information really seamlessly –– trials, death and redemption, prison dynamics, inmates being punished (some being Admiral endorsed!), etc. It has also been very difficult for me to tell what is TLV as normal, what has changed over time, what is just 2020-2021 being a temporary lapse, etc. If the answer is just that this is how TLV does events, period, then it is what it is and I truly appreciate that being made clear.

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.