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synodiporia_ooc2015-06-30 10:36 pm
powersthatbe) wrote in synodiporia_ooc2015-06-30 10:36 pm
SotG voting results + walkabout voting.
Jaunt Alternatives:
12 people voted in favor of walkabout options every Jaunt, presented when the Jaunt was first announced. 4 people additionally voted for mid-Jaunt Liminal Events. Nobody voted AGAINST either option. Therefore, we will be announcing walkabouts with a different tone, theme, & genre from our main Jaunts, at the time we announce our main Jaunts. In this case, see the bottom of the post for more details! Liminal Events mid-Jaunt will be considered for later inclusion, but will not appear in our July-August Jaunt.
Jaunt Order & Tone:
11 people voted to delay Lightning Age. No-one voted against this on the post, although several people mentioned on plurk their uneasiness with the idea. In future SotG posts, we encourage these players to take part in the vote in an official space (i.e. the comments of the SotG post, or alternatively, e-mails to the mod account at synodiporians [at] gmail [dot] com)! Sometimes a group thinks they’re in the minority and doesn’t bother to weigh in, when if they did, they’d encourage a groundswell.
At the end of this post we will be announcing the results of our voting on the replacement Jaunt.
Second Skills:
Six people voted to expand available skills, six people voted against expansion, two people voted tentatively against, and three people had votes which could not be neatly categorized.
That makes adjudicating this vote tricky. We’re going to prepare of list of specific suggestions for next month’s State of the Game that would allow us to address player concerns while still permitting us to expand what’s available to all our players. For now, though, we don’t want to punish patient and active players - this month & next, telepathic & liminal skills are acceptable learned skills in all situations, before we bring in slightly more specific guidelines.
Veteran Apps:
Seven people would like Veteran apps to continue. One person would like them to stop. Five people would like there to be some restrictions on them. Because there’s an overlap between “leave veteran apps open” and “limit but do not eliminate them,” counting is again a bit tricky here. We’re going to try the following:
Players who have never played in Synodiporia before will not be able to app Veterans, but existing players and past players, who are already familiar with the game, may. Additionally, future Veterans will be limited to a tenure of three sequential Jaunts (although if they pick Moebius-Spark-Belljar, they may have been in game before Moebius as well and not remember it). This should address concerns about handwaving 18+ months of CR while still allowing players a decent pick of previous universe skills and a thorough grounding in the game. As there are already plenty of characters who have served as Travelers together for many Jaunts and never interacted, it’s not implausible that veterans might not have CR with certain other characters, so we don’t believe anyone should feel forced to handwave CR if they’d rather not retcon more backstory in.
Cast Caps:
Eight opposed, ten in favor - and fourteen raising various questions or concerns about what specific caps we’d use and how we’d define a cast. In light of these concerns, we’re making no changes at this time, and in our next State of the Game, in early August, we’ll have specific, defined proposals for caps that players can vote on or amend, hopefully eliminating concerns about the vagueness of our current discussion.
Metagaming:
Some concerns here were expressed that the preponderance of Trump appearances might be a contributing factor in metagaming. Speaking to that briefly, the mod team can say: the Digital Frontier was an experiment, and there are no plans to include such a large number of Trumps in any future Jaunt at this time. However, Trumps will continue to appear, not in every Jaunt, but in roughly half of Jaunts, to advance the metaplot arc of this game. We will keep our eye out for troubling player behaviors, and ask that any such behaviors players see be specifically noted to the mods, as we cannot take any action on rumored but unreported, undetailed claims of metagaming.
Jaunt density:
Four people felt some Jaunts were too dense. Three people seemed to think we had struck a good balance. Many people wanted clear opportunities for player plot and initiative. While these answers were simply too small a cross-section to make any long-term game-altering decisions on, this next month’s plot will encourage player plotting and hopefully leave plenty of room for players to sketch their own destinies!
THE NEXT JAUNT:
By a very narrow vote of 16-15, QUESTING COUNTRY will be our next Jaunt! A magical girl jaunt, but NOT entirely or specifically a shoujo anime Jaunt, Questing Country will unite the surreal sense of wonder of Henson films and classical or medieval legends as a gaggle of rival magical champions from across many worlds engage in a competition to make their wishes come true. Friends, rivals, but only rarely enemies, these bold saviors must make common causes with friends new and old to make their way through a surreal wilderness, survive tests and challenges, solve riddles and puzzles, and defeat the occasional symbolic monsters with very literal claws and teeth.
There will be no defined factions this Jaunt, but certain challenges and certain skills that will be easier to achieve if a group works together and forms a bond between them. Players can start out in such a group of their choosing or assemble one along the way, but these groups are NOT in direct competition with one another (or immune from internal competition), and so they shouldn’t interfere with any CR opportunities players desire (we hope they’ll encourage people to reach out, in the magical girl spirit and theme of building new friendships to help save everyone together). This is what we meant earlier by self-selected teams - the mechanic shouldn’t be any more prone to cliquishness than the choice of who to thread with ever is, and we hope to encourage many diverse and growing nakama of champions.
Our walkabout options, by contrast, are:
• The Summer Solstice, a light sci-fi exploration set as a sequel to the Solstice Masquerade Jaunt but halfway across the world.
• The Jack of Spades, an Ace of Spades prequel in Jazz Age Brooklyn when the warring gangs still maintained an uneasy peace.
• Field Trip, an Ivory Tower sequel centered around an academic conference near an irradiated city.
Please rank the walkabout options from favorite to least favorite in the voting thread below, but ONLY VOTE if you’re strongly considering going walkabout. Voting will close at 11:59 PM July 6th. And do keep in mind that with monthly walkabouts, there may be plenty more chances to visit any or all of these worlds at a later date.
12 people voted in favor of walkabout options every Jaunt, presented when the Jaunt was first announced. 4 people additionally voted for mid-Jaunt Liminal Events. Nobody voted AGAINST either option. Therefore, we will be announcing walkabouts with a different tone, theme, & genre from our main Jaunts, at the time we announce our main Jaunts. In this case, see the bottom of the post for more details! Liminal Events mid-Jaunt will be considered for later inclusion, but will not appear in our July-August Jaunt.
Jaunt Order & Tone:
11 people voted to delay Lightning Age. No-one voted against this on the post, although several people mentioned on plurk their uneasiness with the idea. In future SotG posts, we encourage these players to take part in the vote in an official space (i.e. the comments of the SotG post, or alternatively, e-mails to the mod account at synodiporians [at] gmail [dot] com)! Sometimes a group thinks they’re in the minority and doesn’t bother to weigh in, when if they did, they’d encourage a groundswell.
At the end of this post we will be announcing the results of our voting on the replacement Jaunt.
Second Skills:
Six people voted to expand available skills, six people voted against expansion, two people voted tentatively against, and three people had votes which could not be neatly categorized.
That makes adjudicating this vote tricky. We’re going to prepare of list of specific suggestions for next month’s State of the Game that would allow us to address player concerns while still permitting us to expand what’s available to all our players. For now, though, we don’t want to punish patient and active players - this month & next, telepathic & liminal skills are acceptable learned skills in all situations, before we bring in slightly more specific guidelines.
Veteran Apps:
Seven people would like Veteran apps to continue. One person would like them to stop. Five people would like there to be some restrictions on them. Because there’s an overlap between “leave veteran apps open” and “limit but do not eliminate them,” counting is again a bit tricky here. We’re going to try the following:
Players who have never played in Synodiporia before will not be able to app Veterans, but existing players and past players, who are already familiar with the game, may. Additionally, future Veterans will be limited to a tenure of three sequential Jaunts (although if they pick Moebius-Spark-Belljar, they may have been in game before Moebius as well and not remember it). This should address concerns about handwaving 18+ months of CR while still allowing players a decent pick of previous universe skills and a thorough grounding in the game. As there are already plenty of characters who have served as Travelers together for many Jaunts and never interacted, it’s not implausible that veterans might not have CR with certain other characters, so we don’t believe anyone should feel forced to handwave CR if they’d rather not retcon more backstory in.
Cast Caps:
Eight opposed, ten in favor - and fourteen raising various questions or concerns about what specific caps we’d use and how we’d define a cast. In light of these concerns, we’re making no changes at this time, and in our next State of the Game, in early August, we’ll have specific, defined proposals for caps that players can vote on or amend, hopefully eliminating concerns about the vagueness of our current discussion.
Metagaming:
Some concerns here were expressed that the preponderance of Trump appearances might be a contributing factor in metagaming. Speaking to that briefly, the mod team can say: the Digital Frontier was an experiment, and there are no plans to include such a large number of Trumps in any future Jaunt at this time. However, Trumps will continue to appear, not in every Jaunt, but in roughly half of Jaunts, to advance the metaplot arc of this game. We will keep our eye out for troubling player behaviors, and ask that any such behaviors players see be specifically noted to the mods, as we cannot take any action on rumored but unreported, undetailed claims of metagaming.
Jaunt density:
Four people felt some Jaunts were too dense. Three people seemed to think we had struck a good balance. Many people wanted clear opportunities for player plot and initiative. While these answers were simply too small a cross-section to make any long-term game-altering decisions on, this next month’s plot will encourage player plotting and hopefully leave plenty of room for players to sketch their own destinies!
THE NEXT JAUNT:
By a very narrow vote of 16-15, QUESTING COUNTRY will be our next Jaunt! A magical girl jaunt, but NOT entirely or specifically a shoujo anime Jaunt, Questing Country will unite the surreal sense of wonder of Henson films and classical or medieval legends as a gaggle of rival magical champions from across many worlds engage in a competition to make their wishes come true. Friends, rivals, but only rarely enemies, these bold saviors must make common causes with friends new and old to make their way through a surreal wilderness, survive tests and challenges, solve riddles and puzzles, and defeat the occasional symbolic monsters with very literal claws and teeth.
There will be no defined factions this Jaunt, but certain challenges and certain skills that will be easier to achieve if a group works together and forms a bond between them. Players can start out in such a group of their choosing or assemble one along the way, but these groups are NOT in direct competition with one another (or immune from internal competition), and so they shouldn’t interfere with any CR opportunities players desire (we hope they’ll encourage people to reach out, in the magical girl spirit and theme of building new friendships to help save everyone together). This is what we meant earlier by self-selected teams - the mechanic shouldn’t be any more prone to cliquishness than the choice of who to thread with ever is, and we hope to encourage many diverse and growing nakama of champions.
Our walkabout options, by contrast, are:
• The Summer Solstice, a light sci-fi exploration set as a sequel to the Solstice Masquerade Jaunt but halfway across the world.
• The Jack of Spades, an Ace of Spades prequel in Jazz Age Brooklyn when the warring gangs still maintained an uneasy peace.
• Field Trip, an Ivory Tower sequel centered around an academic conference near an irradiated city.
Please rank the walkabout options from favorite to least favorite in the voting thread below, but ONLY VOTE if you’re strongly considering going walkabout. Voting will close at 11:59 PM July 6th. And do keep in mind that with monthly walkabouts, there may be plenty more chances to visit any or all of these worlds at a later date.