(no subject)
It's been quite a long time since I posted here. Things have been good, thankfully. Until now. Letter Format ahoy.
You are doing it wrong. Seriously. You arranged a combat scene. Several people joined. All our characters were teens, and inexperienced. Did we go into this expecting to kick butt and take names? Heck no. But two of the characters were, if not experts, at least competent enough to hit the broad side of a barn.
So what do you do? You godmod. The two competent characters tried to slap the baddie down, but their attempts were shrugged off or ignored, when one or both attacks should have had /some/ effect. Then you had Leaderboy 1 and another teen show up, and they kicked butt and took names. The helper teen? Has no more experience than the rest of us did. So why was he somehow more competent and able to smack baddie down? This would not be so bad if the baddie you used was an FC who is pretty much the most pathetic wanna-be fighter among the baddies. His own allies think he's pretty much useless, yet ... this.
And then you had Leaderboys 1 and 2 ... read our three the riot act. For endangering civilians, and for not running, etc. Now, this fight? Happened, ICly, out of /nowhere/, and the baddie popped up less than twenty feet away from our group. In a high-traffic area. In the GM poses, people were panicking and running. Canonically, the teens of this fandom ... do not sit on their asses when something like that happens. Nor do they tend to run, even when it's possible to do so, which it kind of isn't when you're in the middle of a freaking MOB. And the /tone/ of the lectures was so incredibly ooc for Leaderboy 1 and Leaderboy 2, it made the three of us that got godmodded on headdesk. Then we find out that you did all this to 'force' the teens into thinking about forming Teen Group. Ummm. What? There are about a bazillion ways to do that, without godmodding all over creation.
And it doesn't stop there. Repeatedly, you've arranged scenes where the adults get to Do Things. And require that the teens be there. So that we can stand around and do nothing. Or worse, supposed sceneage for the teens happens, but we essentially do nothing, then NPC's take care of all the action. The worst example of this having happened just the other day.
Big Event happened. Right in our backyard. It was sort of an 'all hands on deck' thing. You required one of the teens (not my character) to be there for the scene ... then TOLD THEM THEY WOULD BE ABLE TO DO NOTHING BECAUSE THEY WERE SICK. WHAT. NO. All the teens try to do something, only for you to put the brakes on things, in some seriously ridiculous ways. Then, once the entirely frustrating scene was over with, you posted a scene saying "this other stuff happened, after the scene. The adults and some NPC's accomplished them." And it was ... pretty much what we'd been trying to accomplish in the scene!
tl;dr Mods who godmod, and have NPC's or mod-controlled characters accomplish everything while player-run characters get to sit and watch.
You are doing it wrong. Seriously. You arranged a combat scene. Several people joined. All our characters were teens, and inexperienced. Did we go into this expecting to kick butt and take names? Heck no. But two of the characters were, if not experts, at least competent enough to hit the broad side of a barn.
So what do you do? You godmod. The two competent characters tried to slap the baddie down, but their attempts were shrugged off or ignored, when one or both attacks should have had /some/ effect. Then you had Leaderboy 1 and another teen show up, and they kicked butt and took names. The helper teen? Has no more experience than the rest of us did. So why was he somehow more competent and able to smack baddie down? This would not be so bad if the baddie you used was an FC who is pretty much the most pathetic wanna-be fighter among the baddies. His own allies think he's pretty much useless, yet ... this.
And then you had Leaderboys 1 and 2 ... read our three the riot act. For endangering civilians, and for not running, etc. Now, this fight? Happened, ICly, out of /nowhere/, and the baddie popped up less than twenty feet away from our group. In a high-traffic area. In the GM poses, people were panicking and running. Canonically, the teens of this fandom ... do not sit on their asses when something like that happens. Nor do they tend to run, even when it's possible to do so, which it kind of isn't when you're in the middle of a freaking MOB. And the /tone/ of the lectures was so incredibly ooc for Leaderboy 1 and Leaderboy 2, it made the three of us that got godmodded on headdesk. Then we find out that you did all this to 'force' the teens into thinking about forming Teen Group. Ummm. What? There are about a bazillion ways to do that, without godmodding all over creation.
And it doesn't stop there. Repeatedly, you've arranged scenes where the adults get to Do Things. And require that the teens be there. So that we can stand around and do nothing. Or worse, supposed sceneage for the teens happens, but we essentially do nothing, then NPC's take care of all the action. The worst example of this having happened just the other day.
Big Event happened. Right in our backyard. It was sort of an 'all hands on deck' thing. You required one of the teens (not my character) to be there for the scene ... then TOLD THEM THEY WOULD BE ABLE TO DO NOTHING BECAUSE THEY WERE SICK. WHAT. NO. All the teens try to do something, only for you to put the brakes on things, in some seriously ridiculous ways. Then, once the entirely frustrating scene was over with, you posted a scene saying "this other stuff happened, after the scene. The adults and some NPC's accomplished them." And it was ... pretty much what we'd been trying to accomplish in the scene!
tl;dr Mods who godmod, and have NPC's or mod-controlled characters accomplish everything while player-run characters get to sit and watch.