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integrating2016-07-13 06:13 pm
onemind) wrote in integrating2016-07-13 06:13 pm
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STATE OF THE GAME - JULY EDITION
YE OLDE STATE OF THE GAME
Hi friends! We've been tentatively planning a State of the Game for a while now, but given the concerns over the current mission log we thought it might be best to tackle this now. We want to hear what's going right for you with the game, what doesn't work as well, and any suggestions you might have both in the long and short term!
Further, if you want to jump in and skip past the rest of this to provide some general feedback, feel free to. The section below is some directed spitballing in reference to mission logs and general game mechanics that has been on our minds; while we'd love direct feedback in relation to this, don't feel obligated to work through it if you don't have the time or inclination!
As always, thank you for your enthusiasm! We look forward to your feedback.
THE LONG OPTIONAL PART
If you have Abby on plurk, you've probably seen some brainstorming and discussion happening there between us (Abby and Donna) and some helpful players. In general we feel the current mission log, while brimming with potential, hasn't quite managed to hook the response desired from players. In an attempt to build momentum and give Concordia a slightly more directed feel, we made the executive decision to largely handwave the IC planning stage of the infiltration and bout it out missions, prefering to leave organization to OOC brainstorming and coordination. In retrospect (and in casually talking to a few players), we feel that was probably a mistake on our part. While we wanted to emphasize that the mission was very open to interpretation and approach, we feel that especially with the Infiltration Objective we probably gave everyone too much freedom and that may have resulted in a lack of organization and made the objectives difficult to approach. Basically: OOC planning is boring for everyone involved and rather than expecting everyone to get their ducks in a row OOCly so we could jump straight to the action, it may have been better to give everyone time to work through these thoughts on an IC level instead.
Right now our thoughts for tackling the current mission are this: We'd like to do a slightly backdated IC 'network' thread instead of simply handwaving at the top of the log description as it currently is described in the mission log itself. Our current thought is a sort of 'check in' through the mental link from Carata and Nirad early in the day of the mission, giving characters a chance to discuss what they've learned, what they've done, and how they think they'd like to approach the missions from that point in character. This would gives characters time ICly to work through the plan and figure out who they're teaming up with, what they're doing and how to approach problems in a more dynamic, organic environment than asking players (and mods) to do it OOCly. We hope this will make the Infiltration end of things a little more directed and easier to play. For the Bout It Out end, we plan to top level Kun-Kun for the final round of the fight. Originally we intended to let the log play out longer and then eventually thread jack an existing top level for this, but think that simply top-leveling with Kun-Kun or his reps might be the more effective approach at this point.
All this said and done we definitely don't want to skip past the objectives because they have a lot of potential and we have a ton of faith in you, the players, for being creative and doing awesome things with them. If it comes down to needing to handwave and move on, that's understandable and workable, but we'd prefer trying to recalibrate and give it a little more time first. Given how many of our tiny playerbase have been on official or unofficial hiatus, this seems like the least invasive way to do things for now. We'll be doing as much patch work as we can to make this run, but we'd love feedback for how we can run objectives like this more smoothly in the future. Is there too much freedom? Would it be better to have events like this more strictly 'on the rails'? Would you prefer IC planning to OOC planning or would you just prefer OOC planning be more directed (ie ' this, this and this MUST happen' instead of 'you can do anything! there might be complications though!')?
In general, we feel like we've done a not great job at emphasizing the fact that players are more than welcome to make up and mess around with the world as they desire, including creating NPC randos of their own. We feel this failure on our part has manifested really strongly in this log especially. We've given you a huge world to play in and a lot of flexibility, but have done a poor job of making sure players feel comfortable with that level of freedom. Right now we feel like the mechanics we've set up instead are encouraging players to wait for mod-driven NPC involvement/direction as opposed to driving events themselves which is definitely not our intention. For one, it makes things boring for you! We want your characters to have the most agency in this world; two, we have rather limited schedules and don't want to limit your play on our availability.
So then the biggest question we have for you guys is what can we do to help you feel more comfortable taking control? Is it something we can do ICly or is it something better articulated OOCly? Should we provide you with more setting information? Less? Would it be good for mission runs to have a section of 'what you can learn' so you can more effectively interact with the world without needing to turn logs into massive ten character threads? By and large, we're committed to creating interesting framework for you guys to tell stories in but ultimately we want you guys to be driving the direction, action and momentum of them. We feel thus far we haven't been doing a stellar job of that. Anything we can do to help you tell stories more effectively is our priority, so if you've got an idea for this specifically please do share. Currently one option we're spitballing is the possibility of giving a bullet list of hard-fact current-mission relevant 'clues' your characters could get from NPCs, hacking, etc, that could be used in threads if you feel it's relevant to your character, but we're sure there are other ways to approach this too and we'd love to hear your thoughts.
As always, we also wanted to take the time to thank you for your patience and enthusiasm. We love this game and love everyone we've had the opportunity to play with. We feel like Station 72 is a pretty unique experience and despite the learning curve and the challenges of running such a small, tight knit game, we've ultimately found it incredibly rewarding. You guys are awesomely creative, super enthusiastic, and have been very patient with us as we figure out what the hell we're doing. This has been a great, collaborative experience so far and we look forward to coming up with ideas together to make it even better for everyone.
Thanks all!
CONCORDIA MISSION: OVERVIEW • DAY :008 - :013
NAVIGATION • PREMISE • FAQ • RULES • GLOSSARY • SYMBIOTIC SKILLS • ABILITY POINTS
NAVIGATION • PREMISE • FAQ • RULES • GLOSSARY • SYMBIOTIC SKILLS • ABILITY POINTS
no subject
Even so!
Lexa has had a plan for a while that she came up with with Hux to essentially propose a system of organization over everyone. Now, coming from Lexa's mouth, this can sound rather rigid, but the way she handles her people in her world, it's a lot lot lot more loose and I think it can apply in game.
Basically, what she wants is for everyone to first say what abilities they have and what strengths they are so that they can be expected to carry out certain duties during missions (investigating skills or flying overhead and getting the gist of things or hacking or whatever), while also ensuring that the information is shared. Obviously, some people are going to be reticent or difficult about sharing, but she does think that part of the issue with the Nest is the freedom.
The other half of this plan is ensuring some kind of stable buddy system. People check in with one another, or check in within a circle of individuals (outside of the brood construct) to make sure things like Parker getting killed or Angel accidentally destroying an android without help don't come to pass (again, or in general). Naturally, this would be a little more on the assumed/handwaved CR side, but it would be a way of ensuring people aren't off brooding alone without help.
The upside of this is that people can use an interconnected system like this to ensure that their characters get involved, either if they're too skittish/dickish/etc. to go alone, or if someone wants to have their characters drag someone along for the ride. Or whatever. I think it can also make people go, "Hey, my character doesn't know how to log into their E-Mail for this plot. Who wants to help with that?" or you can know who to have your character approach for E-Mail help. Whatever.
Generally, more succinctly, the idea is to have them work as scouts/warriors/healers (or other roles, with scouts being a very, very loose term for "people who gather deets") who are essentially agents working toward a greater cause. I think by all of the hosts knowing each other's skills, and seeing each other as competent or potentially competent, they can also work with each other better. This also leaves room for people to have characters fuck off and do whatever they want, because it isn't as rigid.
Other factors are like - is it TOO loose? Should they have at least a sense of who's telling what per the mission? How would this get managed ICly? I feel like it also gives room for some people if they want their characters to be more hands on in herding, they can without feeling like they're telling other people what to do with their characters. This also gives room for malleability from mission to mission. What if a world is particularly bad for someone who's usually the technical guy? Well, there are other tech guys. Or whatever.
I guess this is a long winded way of saying "what if they created a system of scouting/spying and communication and acted on it efficiently IC."
no subject
re scouting/in-team systems etc: I'm sure we'll end up talking about this in more detail in our eventual response post, but I wanted to take a quick moment to say this kind of thing sounds like an awesome idea for a player plot or something driven by ooc player/ic character initiative. We want to allow players to create those kinds of structures (or at least try to - we've got a bunch of reprobate characters on the game roster haha) if their character feel compelled to do so.
no subject
Thanks guys!