how's my driving?

[seafronted]

It's How is My Driving time! This is completely voluntary and not mandatory, but please consider it!

Rules of the Game;

1. Completely voluntary. Please comment with your nickname in the subject and a list of all your characters. One comment per player, please.
2. Please give constructive criticism in a polite manner! This is pretendy fun times on the

Comments

Re: DA.

[seafronted]

We're truly sorry if it seems that way, but we are not just shrugging off these concerns. We are taking them into account and have been actively discussing them.

Yes, in retrospect we should have mentioned in the OOC Plot Post that this event was meant to kick off the beginning of something bigger, to make you all aware of it. We should have let you know that this will be the start of something that will provide many opportunities for characters to get more actively involved, though we cannot provide any details. We know what the errors we made with this past plot are and will most certainly not repeat them, so please don't worry.

Players are limited to some extent with what they can have their characters do involving the NPCs - in the near future the limits will be lifted quite a bit. For now, if you have an idea for something your character can do to get involved, feel free to contact us and, if we can't say yes to it, we will work at finding a reasonable compromise.

Again, we are very sorry for disappointing our players with the last plot and are doing everything we can to make sure there will not be a repeat of it.

Another Anon

[seafronted]

Discussing is great, but these same issues keep coming up and you keep discussing but never doing anything.

Would it have really damaged the tone of the game if characters had been allowed to participate in the riots? It's boring to have a character unable to interact with their environment, unable to affect the world around them -- if I wanted to sit back and watch a story unfold, I'd watch a movie or read a book.

Roleplay is engaging because it's interactive storytelling.

same anon as DA

[seafronted]

But it wasn't just the last plot. Every plot that's had to do with the overarching plot has been handled terribly, and you keep saying that the plots will be better, that crits on them will be taken into account, but it never happens. It's why the same issues have come up on HMDs since the game began. If you continue running the game this way, it will die. Roleplaying is intrinsically an interactive art. If you don't want the players to affect the plot, then you should go write a book.

first long-rant anon

[seafronted]

While I get that this is the start of something the players do get to play in, my main concern is twofold: the existence of any of this plot in which the rest of the game has to sit by while NPCs do stuff, and the capability/agency of the characters-- if such exists in the setting.

If these are among the things you are already considering as issues, I'm glad to hear it; it's just that most of your responses have been "we should have told you in advance more stuff would happen later" rather than "we should have made any specific change(s) to how this event went. I'm unclear whether you think the errors were in your handling of the ooc information or in the actual plot setup-- and it's the latter I have issues with.

While things will obviously occur that the players don't have influence over from the start, being able to react to events is crucial. We want to play a game. Letting the characters out for the riots-- or even just defining the lockdown with more specificity than "utterly impenetrable, no way past" such that certain characters with the abilities could break out, would have made a huge difference. Even if said characters were entirely ineffective, wound up dragged off to the Unnatural (or whatever), letting the players try would have made a huge difference. We'd actually be involved in the event, not told "stuff's happening, but it's NPCs only".

Secondly, part of any plot or not-strictly PC-PC interaction involves what characters can do. With this lockdown, it's been established in-game that neither any single character nor any group of characters nor any powerset played here can make the slightest difference when the NPCs in charge don't want them to. Not that they couldn't win, not that they failed. That they couldn't even fight. For either side, for anything. That's the problem.

And I have serious concerns about how you plan to fix it. Saying "limits will be lifted quite a bit" implies to me that NPC-NPC actions will fix it-- largely because as you've defined player capability, PCs aren't at present capable of doing anything about it. And that doesn't help. Not nearly as much as the mess needs. Having non-player actions be "the start of everything" makes anything and everything the characters are able to do not something they earned with their own abilities-- just the byproduct of struggles between the people (NPCs) who matter in the game. If you really want to fix this, let player characters have a role in the game-changing events. Or at the least, don't shut them out from reacting.