Man, I wish we had a Wellington GM, if only so the game would have more GMs. I think it’d take a serious shift in the way the game is perceived for someone to be willing to step up to that level, though.
Soultions-wise, I wonder if it would make a difference if Crucible facebook events were designated as on-topic areas? A lot of them tend to devolve into in-jokes and trash-talk, and it makes it really hard to find information when it’s needed. It turned pretty ugly last night on the Gnosis Point event, and it definitely wasn’t the right place to have it happen. Diatribe forums are slightly better, but I feel that a lot of the place for online RP and trash-talking would be on personal facebook pages, rather than the repositories for information.
For what its worth I am only aware of the amount of dissent in the community because my partner keeps me abridge of it occasionally. Being off facebook is great like that. The cost is that I have no idea what this Gnosis Point Event is, but to be honest what I don’t know doesn’t hurt me.
[quote=“Derek”][quote=“musicforwolves”]Man, I wish we had a Wellington GM, if only so the game would have more GMs.[quote]
I don’t actually know who the Crucible GMs are…[/quote][/quote][/quote]
To be fair, this is possibly a good thing for their sanity - limits the off-channel opportunities players have to solicit information off them. I don’t think I know them all either.
It feels like this thread is getting bogged down again in circular arguments. I don’t think some kind of magical remedy exists for any perceived disparity between Wellington and Auckland player experiences. I just think we need to be good people and involve our friends from out of town - involve them in rivalries of epic scale, involve them in friendships and romances that they’ll remember long after the campaign finishes. Be worthy opponents and staunch allies. And talk to each other out of character and openly discuss each other’s enjoyment of the game so that you can help your mates have a good time. That’s what we do internally with Alteraan and while not perfect, it’s working out okay for us.
To address Jackie’s recommendations… I still think War Table. My vote is firmly for War Table. Everything else, I’m easy.
[quote=“Damocles”]It feels like this thread is getting bogged down again in circular arguments. I don’t think some kind of magical remedy exists for any perceived disparity between Wellington and Auckland player experiences. I just think we need to be good people and involve our friends from out of town - involve them in rivalries of epic scale, involve them in friendships and romances that they’ll remember long after the campaign finishes. Be worthy opponents and staunch allies. And talk to each other out of character and openly discuss each other’s enjoyment of the game so that you can help your mates have a good time. That’s what we do internally with Alteraan and while not perfect, it’s working out okay for us.
To address Jackie’s recommendations… I still think War Table. My vote is firmly for War Table. Everything else, I’m easy.[/quote]
War table will be good.
I mean, each faction will need their own separate time and pieces, since we’re all being very secretive with our everything and isolating each other as best as possible.
If having a War Table will mean I get to do that ‘general’ pose where you lean on your fists over a map table, dagger thrust into the wood in the centre, wine goblet making a ring-shaped stain on a map some poor aide is going to have to re-copy tonight to fix, cloak thrown back, staring at the models representing armies on the map with that distant ‘planning and/or asleep on his feet’ stare, and all that jazz… then I’m down.
If having a War Table will mean I get to do that ‘general’ pose where you lean on your fists over a map table, dagger thrust into the wood in the centre, wine goblet making a ring-shaped stain on a map some poor aide is going to have to re-copy tonight to fix, cloak thrown back, staring at the models representing armies on the map with that distant ‘planning and/or asleep on his feet’ stare, and all that jazz… then I’m down.[/quote]
I mean, each faction will need their own separate time and pieces, since we’re all being very secretive with our everything and isolating each other as best as possible.[/quote]
I can’t tell if you view this as a good thing or a bad thing, but either way… War Table.
However, still doesn’t address the initial intent of this discussion. Indeed, several suggestions have included more Crucible time and involvement. I would prefer to have condensed, well spaced out Crucible involvement, both IC and OOC, and for the LARP calendar to have plenty of space for other projects (after all, playing just one character at a time seems needlessly limiting!). I have had the feeling particularly between the first and second Crucible weekend games that the LARP community was sucked dry of its creative talent. There seems to have been a resurgence lately with several new projects popping up, which I take as a good sign, but if Crucible is going to try fix its issues with player negativity by adding more fuel for us to debate over I feel it may result in fewer alternative events to divert the conversation. If we create One Game to Rule them All and then it turns out to be slightly less than absolutely perfect, people will complain, but if we take a whole bunch of games going all at once the chance each player has for awesomeness is far increased.
For what its worth I think Crucible is a fantastic game with a great deal going for it, but despite Liberace’s comments to the contrary, too much for a good thing is less than great.
He may be correct to point out that mechanical advantages perceived in Auckland are non-existent, but there is an advantage which Auckland has. This is an advantage which cannot be squelched by the GMs, because it does not rely on them putting out extra information in Auckland. It is an advantage, in fact, which would exist even if there were no day games at all, as long as there is a larger player base in Auckland, who are interacting with a larger group of other players in between games than the Wellingtonians.
This is simply that this larger playerbase, while regularly interacting with each other, has more opportunity to share plot information, discuss it, understand it and progress it. Even if they have no chances between games to actually take actions to advance plot (which they do anyway, in the form of the factional downtime actions - for some plots), they would still come to the weekend games with a better understanding of plots, and thus be more able to affect the plots in the weekend game with less time, discussion and effort put into understanding and planning on the spot.
This is an effect which the GMs cannot stop - even saying ‘there are no canon interactions outside of games’ would not actually stop people from talking to each other IC. That would, at best, cause people to talk about it OOC and then pretend they’ve talked about it IC, which would be awful for continuity of RP.
I mention this not because I can see any solution (except one that would cause an uprising in Auckland - that is, GMs purposefully dumping more info to Wellington’s smaller playerbase to make up for it), but because saying that Aucklanders have no advantage simply because they may have no mechanical (or GM-input - although this, I do believe we do also have) advantage is untrue, misleading at best.[/quote]
As an Aucklander, I agree with most of this: quantity of players has a quality all of it’s own.
I’m not sure that your solution would cause an uprising, though, but then again… I tend to think the best of people (well, I tend to assume people will have stupid kneejerk reactions, self included, but assuming it’s explained why you’re doing something, I’d like to think most people would accept that).
Another thought: from my perspective, this isn’t a faction vs. faction game. This is a factionalized PvE game. The squabbles between the five base-human factions look like they will prove to be an insignificant sideshow compared to the rise of the Dark and the Aether War.
So… maybe people should worry less about whether or not other factions are doing well (or badly) and focus on whether or not the apocalypse is on schedule to be averted or not (so make sure your faction is doing well, but rejoice if another one caught more breaks).
This was my impression too, though as a person who up until recently was playing a non-politically involved character, I have next to no idea about the rise of the Dark or the Aether War, so the game to me appears as a factional PvP game.
Some of us have an idea of what LARPing is that doesn’t include some of the things which Crucible has expanded to include.
Personally I really like the new ground which the game is covering.
Especially the opportunities for crew to get more involved and invested in all aspects of the story and the different aspects of the game (including the downtime actions and day games/player generated events, which crew ARE involved in) many of which I enjoy in particular.
I wouldn’t be involved in Crucible if it wasn’t more than other LARPs in the past have been.
Some of us have an idea of what LARPing is that doesn’t include some of the things which Crucible has expanded to include.
Personally I really like the new ground which the game is covering.
Especially the opportunities for crew to get more involved and invested in all aspects of the story and the different aspects of the game (including the downtime actions and day games/player generated events, which crew ARE involved in) many of which I enjoy in particular.
I wouldn’t be involved in Crucible if it wasn’t more than other LARPs in the past have been.[/quote]
I disagree that it’s the crux of the issue here. The true crux of the issue is Wellingtonians being dissatisfied with their level of inclusion. Many of them enjoy downtime. They find it confusing as hell (Like most of us), but they enjoy the extra dynamic. The way they handle their actions and get together for War Councils is actually the best I’ve seen. Downtime is not the source of discontent here. For people who really do love the 'Live Action" elements and hate the Downtime stuff, they can ignore it. It’s really not that big a deal.
Where I see semi-valid points is that Auckland had 3? 4? GM Sanctioned Events this Downtime. I think that’s too much if Wellington have a sum of Zero. Sanctioning a single event per downtime, per city, is probably the fair way to do it.
Downtime admin and actions are a potential contributor to the 365 over-saturation some have expressed concerns about.
Some enjoy them. Some don’t. Unfortunately, I’m finding it’s not as easy to ‘opt out’ of downtime stuff if you are still interested in following the story and want your character’s POV/attitude/goals to be in line with your faction.
Some of us have an idea of what LARPing is that doesn’t include some of the things which Crucible has expanded to include.
Personally I really like the new ground which the game is covering.
Especially the opportunities for crew to get more involved and invested in all aspects of the story and the different aspects of the game (including the downtime actions and day games/player generated events, which crew ARE involved in) many of which I enjoy in particular.
I wouldn’t be involved in Crucible if it wasn’t more than other LARPs in the past have been.[/quote]
I agree there are definitely some awesome extra things that Crucible has included. The downtime faction actions are cool and their scope has made it feel like there does exist a faction that includes many people with mouths to feed and that need protection.
However, at the moment they feel a little accounting-esque, particularly the Governor’s part - we get a spreadsheet and min-max the numbers until we get some sort of optimal resource generating combination. I’d prefer it if instead of a spreadsheet we got a map of our region with some building props on it and some ‘hand written’ documents listing our resources, and for this to all be in game. From that we then allocate resources and move troops, and the GM’s run our decisions through the spreadsheet without us seeing that. It would achieve much the same thing, though would likely be less min-maxed and would have a bit more of a real feel to it - we have a representation showing where our granaries and warehouses and living quarters are on a map, rather than a simple number and list on a computer. It would also allow spies to look at our documents in game and make specific actions against specifically placed objects - and for factions to give false information to people snooping around. Same for troop movements.
An in game war room to run the faction downtime is an improvement on a good idea.
