So much to say here. So much to discuss. This discussion I suppose will touch those who frequent the boards, are brave enough to stand up and have a say, or have the energy to discuss. But it wont touch everyone. We are only a few.
It takes a bit to pen a post, and make a comment that is thought out and measured. Presented in a way that hopefully fosters discussion, while not tearing any ideas down. Tone is a difficult thing to convey online. I myself struggle at times with the wry humour I have, and that cheek can be misunderstood. So before I start, please know that I am presenting from a place of love, honesty, and hope.
There is a lot of noise that these discussions make. A feeling that something isn’t right to one who speaks up, that might be presented or misinterpreted in translation, that is taken on a tangent or in a way that offends. If you post it’s because you care. It is because you want something to be as good as it can be. I don’t think people who post want to tear down things, or be malicious. I think we lose sight of that. I think that style in presentation goes a long way to ensuring people are heard and respected. Something central to ensuring a robust discussion is had.
I want to stress discussion. Discussion does not mean argument. A discussion challenges points that are raised, but returns a question or suggestion. A discussion has no winners and losers. As a saying goes “Compromise is important. It is easy to be right, but then you are right and alone.”
In a way a discussion is a negotiation. A successful negotiation has give and take on both sides if it is to lead to anything lasting. I think in Crucible conversations, we tend towards argument and debate, rather than discussion and negotiation. And I think this is central to bad feeling.
Below are some of the issues I believe to have been raised and my take on them. I read a bunch of these posts prior and I think the issues get confused. But if they are concerns for others, then great, we as a community should discuss them and work through them, even if we don’t agree or have a different view. The GM’s aren’t an island. It is up to us to help effect meaningful change
On the top of my list is player participation. Something Hannah (My wife to be) and I have decided to call 365C and is what the OP is about.
This is in reference to the level of participation this game offers to its participants. Crucible is large and enveloping. It has close to twice as many players as Teonn, which had about twice as many as St Wolfgangs. That’s pretty big. Lots of scope. Lots of people. Lots of interactions. With many more people involved in this game you are naturally going to get more happening. Scale cannot be overlooked.
Somewhere on the scale we have participants who want to engage with the game every day, all the way to participants who want to do the minimum Weekend events. That is a pretty broad spectrum. But what should a game cater to? Is it possible to cater to both extremes and provide a meaningful and fair experience to all who are involved?
Determining meaningful and fair is hard. It’s subjective to a point. Every participant probably thinks what they are wanting/doing/enjoying is fair. But I propose that the only fair and balanced answer is somewhere in the middle of the extremes. To me it comes back to this negotiation. Meeting somewhere in the middle. It comes to me to that determining what is healthy for the game, the players, and the community is paramount. This game will be hear with any fortune for the next 2 years. That is a decent chunk of time and commitment for all of us.
If I was to summarise the key points of 365C, it is
- Crucible events/planning/thinking/RP/ is pervasive and available 365 days a year.
- Crucible space is large. It encompasses social media, websites, real world non crucible events, It is unrelenting and difficult to escape.
- Sanctioned events provide mechanical benefit in the form of XP, but
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All interaction provides a benefit in some way to a character in the world. Some types of interaction provide more of a benefit.
So if we have players going it is too much. It’s invading my life! and some saying it’s great! Give me more! what is there to be done with it?
I personally don’t accept this “Crucible is X” mentality. That is siege warfare thinking. The GM’s have a vision. That vision is 1 year in and ever changing as stuff flys and sticks or drops away. It evolves. It isn’t completely fixed. But importantly to me is that it serves the playerbase (It’s customers) and it’s wants. Introduce new ways, and try new things, but if your player base is rejecting it, then there is no point in being keeping with it. That to me is a healthy approach.
So what is good and healthy for the participants? Is there evidence of over saturation being unhealthy for participants and the community? I hope that we can agree that health of participants and therefore the community is a priority. It supports this game and games that follow. Without a strong community, we are all going to be playing by ourselves in short order.
Lets start with an anecdote. I like chocolate. I have chocolate once a year and I am fine. I have chocolate once a month and I am fine. I have chocolate once a week, once a day I am fine. I eat chocolate every meal and suddenly I am not ok. I might be ok for a day, a week, a month, but eventually I am harming myself. The saying too much of a good thing originates to remind us that we need variety, that too much of one thing is harmful to our health and wellbeing (mental and physical). Sage advice. It has been around for sometime and still holds true. Moderation is key.
Lets extend that metaphor to gambling. A swish on the melbourne cup probably wont do you any harm as long as you arent betting your house on it. A weekly flutter may not be too bad either. But what of the gambler that sits at the pokies all night , every night? Discussion of casino opening hours does the rounds regularly. Should they be 24 hours a day? Do they have a duty of care? It’s tough. We don’t generally want to infringe on peoples freedoms when they don’t directly harm another, but to the employer who puts up with late appearances, or spouse who sleeps in an empty bed at 4am in the morning, they might have other ideas. Extreme perhaps? Maybe. The one thing for sure is that if you asked the gambler at 4am if they thought they had a problem they would likely say no.
So how does that relate to crucible? If at all? Well more than I would like IMO. If something is harmful then asking the people who are doing said thing, whether they want it to change, then the answer is likely to be no. So who wins? What is the answer? What do we do? Well I suggest that doing less of a thing is much more preferable than doing more or staying the same. That is compromise. Those who want to do more can find other outlets, even within the same community, but the one who wants less is harmed if they feel or in someway compelled to rise to this level of participation.
So is the current situation harmful? I think we agree that we have people saying they want less, and people probably saying give me more. The official standpoint is that all the extra stuff above the weekend games is optional. Opt in if you like. Do the downtime, or don’t. Go to sanctioned side events or dont. Go to an unofficial birthday party event, or dont. Roleplay online or don’t. All up to you. Choose your level of engagement. Seems good right? Until it isn’t. There are inherent problems I suggest with this strategy. Evidence and observations I am seeing and recounted to me, that makes this difficult if not nigh on impossible. And brings me to the participation portion of Crucible 365.
Players feeling pressured to participate.
This is a hard one to grasp I think. Why should they feel this way? Surely not? Well if they say they are, then we must listen if we are to be a healthy community. A like it or lump it approach seems very dismissive. So why do players feel pressured? I propose it is threefold. Character Utility, Character development, and and Game awareness.
XP is a decent measure of Character Utility. More XP and a character can do more in a game. To gain xp between games participants need to attend at least one event. OK xp isnt everything but 4/14 of points on offer per year and extrapolated 14/44 useable xp in the chronicle does equate to a decent measure. In a game where there are competitive overtones I suggest this is a pressure. A player may feel obligated to keep up for themselves, but also out of a sense to ensure they are as strong for their faction as can be. That extends to personal downtime actions being linked into factional downtime success (extra resources and information gathered, strength of warbands etc) and even if they don’t want to be involved outside of the main weekend games, there is pressure to be inherent in the mechanics of the game
Events or Online RP etc provide the biggest pressure IMO. I propose that what truly is important to a character is interaction. XP is but one small thing in the grand scheme of character development. What truly matters to a characters development (expressed from my many years Larping and RPing) is the relationships they create. Basically what we do in a game is interact. Interactions are what make lasting changes and impressions in the world. They are what drive drama. XP spend can never have the same impact. So it stands to reason that more opportunities to do this will progress a characters development and be beneficial. Think about this example. You have the chance to save one of 4 characters in front of you. Will you save the one you have a shared RP with, or one of the 3 lesser known to you? Seems easy. You save the one that your character cares about and have a relationship with I reckon. The more opportunities you have to build a relationship with someone, anyone, the more chance you have of being the one that is saved.
The third reason I suggest is that of Game Awareness. This is simply the idea that you know what the game state is. You are up with the play and that you are abreast of all the things that are happening, both in character through interactions and briefs and out of character about what is happening events wise or announcements wise. Being informed is a pressure on it’s own and key reason why communication, especially administrative is vital IMO. No one wants to be left behind.
I think Crucible as game could do better. I’m not a super fan of the social media personally, but I appreciate the strides forward it has made. Jackie in particular with her work on the website has been great. But this isn’t really the post for this.
All of these I think provide pressures on a player to participate and a reason why it is simply not easy to pull back. The opting out is difficult and reinforced by the games nature IMO. The more events or opportunities to RP and endorsed by GM’s then that adds pressure. A system of personal downtime reinforces that also. You couldn’t control personal online RP, but I suggest that other avenues could relieve this pressure that are controllable. Perhaps less flooding of the airwaves will give something else the chance to pop up? I’m not sure. But that is what discussion is about. I don’t have all the answers.
Histories of similar games
I thought I would share some of my experiences with games that have had a very similar (not scope) set up. A game that was always on 365 days a year was Wellington by night. An old Vampire game run in the late 90’s. This game single handedly destroyed larping in Wellington. At its height it had 60-70 players. Not bad at all in the early days. In fact I bet some of us remember it, as well as the infamous Hamiltonian game.
Basically this was a monthly game. It had factions and cliques. It had the PVP and and antagonist elements. And it was always on. The GM had a place where friends could hang out. These friends would just slip into conversation IC, and OOC at parties or hangouts and discuss the game, make alliances, share information. They had proximity to the GM and so could bounce stuff off him, and well the regular monthly game became more like a weekly game (even started to come with xp IIRC) and then it became a daily game for some. Some people lived this game and the factional nature and advantage others were able to get did drive a wedge into the community. Real relationships were destroyed, a community ruined (Not hyperbole, there was no regular larping for a decade). The monthly players were left behind. It went from inclusive storytelling to power gaming. You were either in all the way, or you were left behind.
These traits I am starting to see come alive again in Crucible and our community. It may seem like doom and gloom, but these experiences are real and not in isolation. It isn’t just Vampire, although that had a high rate of it, and I am sure the old heads in the community could tell you more.
Larping died in Wellington after that. We had a flagship at Kapcon every year, but that was about it. Then there was St Wolfgangs. That for some of us reignited the bug. A game could be different. We could be collaborative. The games were spaced to 6 monthly and so weren’t all consuming. We all had space to breath and do other things.
No game is perfect and that and Teonn had its troubles, as all games do, but I haven’t seen the community so unhappy and vocal as I have since crucible started. And that worries me.
So if we have participants standing up and saying that they are worried, that there is too much, then I think we should listen. That is we as the community, not just the GM’s. How we interact, and what we think together as acceptable behavior will in essence be our contract.
We have players in this thread saying they are being bullied, that they are having trouble connecting and engaging and are overwhelmed. If they are the 1% then that is one thing, as I don’t think the game can be everything to everyone. So perhaps an Anonymous survey is a great tool for us to get up and going. Get some real data and poll the participants. It can’t hurt. It gives us data to work with and better than anecdotes and hyperbole. But even if it is the 1%, they are bringing the chance for us to discuss these issues, Meet out if they are real and tangible, and then discuss what level of change is necessary or achievable to keep us a strong community
I realise I’ve typed a bunch. It is new years eve and I would love to be spending it with my family, but I felt it important to post. Somethings needs to be said and discussions had and I don’t feel bad to have done it. I have more to discuss and that will be for later. The topics of geographical location and player privilege. GM availability, bullying (Personal attacks etc) and communication, are all topics I’d love to share and discuss. But for now the OP challenges us to ask whether we are doing too much. And I hope this adds to the discussion
I wish you all a happy new year. I hope that 2015 brings great things.
Anthony
