MAY STATE OF THE GAME

[powersthatbe]

I. Jaunt Vote Results/Walkabout Voting

Our next jaunt will be Showtime, by a considerable margin. The other two proposed jaunts made strong enough showings to come back up in the voting pool at a later date; keep an eye out for them the next time we feel in need of a game-wide vacation.

Walkabout options for June/July are the following, all on a 1:1 OOC time ratio:

Ivory Tower: Field Trip: Postapocalyptic scholars attending a conference near an irradiated city find there's more to worry about than academic politics when local warlords make trouble. It may be time to test how much mightier than the sword the pen can be…

Escape from Junkworld: Shopping Trip: The motley inter-species band of Gehenna survivors keeping up their outpost on a distant moon are doing fairly well for themselves overall, but in need of a supply run to a nearby planet. Between hastily and poorly repaired outriders and the constant threat of officials from any number of civilised worlds bearing down on them, the mission isn’t without its risks.

Lightside/Darkside: November: As the elves of January gradually ease up the quarantine that’s kept their population segregated for so long, they also begin repairing the overland roads to the rest of the Federation of Hel - and their relations with their neighboring cities. A delegation from the nearby city of November is here to find out just what January’s been up to, these last centuries, and whether they’re ready to rejoin the Federation’s governing council.

Walkabout voting will close Thursday, May 18th, at 11:59PM CST, to give us a chance to put it together. As usual, votes are weighted so that first choices count for two votes and second choices count for one.

Poll #18353 June/July Walkabot

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 26

View Respondents

What is your first choice Walkabout for June/July?

View Answers

Ivory Tower: Field Trip
5 (19.2%)

Escape from Junkworld: Shopping Trip
15 (57.7%)

Lightside/Darkside: November
6 (23.1%)

What is your second choice Walkabout for June/July?

View Answers

Ivory Tower: Field Trip
8 (30.8%)

Escape from Junkworld: Shopping Trip
7 (26.9%)

Lightside/Darkside: November
11 (42.3%)

II. Jaunt Disconnect

Discussion of jaunt disconnect problems reared its head again during this jaunt, and we’d really like to organize that discussion in a central place, the better to get as much input as possible and see if we can figure out how best to help prevent the problem, especially on jaunts that don’t also feature a walkabout.

Suggestions have included making better use of diverse setting locations, or making it clear that some locations are only available for characters to Be From and will not be used as active parts of the jaunt setting. In this regard, the mods feel Code of Dishonor was perhaps the biggest success (three distinct regions, each with its own agendas and plots still woven into the greater whole), though no jaunt has been without its issues somewhere along the line.

We’re open to feedback of all sorts, both about problems players are having engaging with jaunts and potential solutions to those problems.

III. OOC Tensions and Character Bleed

As noted the other day, this jaunt has seen quite a bit of IC and OOC tension, as well as an unusually high number of player complaints. (The high number of complaints in no way makes these complaints less valid; every complaint brought to us merited and got an immediate mod response. Please, absolutely let us know when you see a problem.) We’d like to take a moment to remind you all that you’re perfectly allowed to take a step back for a day or two if you need to, even on a jaunt with as high of stakes as this one.

We’ve also learned a few lessons regarding the presentation of high-stakes jaunts, and will do our best to help prevent the tension from ratcheting up so quickly for the next one. If there’s anything else we as mods can do to help defuse these situations in the future, please let us know.

IV. Liminal Energy Skills
Recently, Riddick & Matthew, through some clever combinations of skills, have uncovered a portion of the Liminal Skill tree lost since before Moebius - Liminal Energy skills. Four new skills are presented here, and more can be developed - we strongly encourage characters to find clever, subversive ways to explore the possibilities of the network, Liminal Space, & the Travelers’ own pasts, & are always eager to consult any curious player looking to develop something like this.

LIMINAL ENERGY
By breaking down the matter of Liminal Space, create enough energy to power or recharge any one battery-operated device, appliance which would use a standard wall socket, or comparable machine. Usable once per day.
Prerequisites: Liminal Manipulation II.

LIMINAL GENERATOR
In any created room, create functional electrical wiring and active electrical power systems which can power or charge any devices in that space, up to 2kW/hour per level of Room Creation you possess (an average American home uses roughly 1.5kW/h on average). Without this skill, lights and appliances in Created Rooms are powered, but are powered by being part of the room - i.e., a lamp that is unplugged in a created room cannot be replaced with a different appliance, as it is powered by the creator’s understanding of how the room ought to be, not by measurable electric current.
Prerequisites: Room Creation I, Liminal Energy.

LIMINAL SHOCK
Once per day, produce a contact-based electrical shock less than or equal to two milli-amps per Liminal Skill. A ten milli-amp shock is extremely painful; between ten and twenty causes paralysis from contact, seventy-five causes unconsciousness and temporary cessation of breathing, and between one hundred and two hundred is fatal (a Traveler with every Liminal skill on every tree could only produce a shock this severe by using Liminal Power to double the effect of the skill).
Prerequisites: Liminal Energy, Liminal Bubble, Liminal Power.

EXTRALIMINAL TAP
Access the liminal energy you have access to to power systems or devices outside Liminal Space. Effectively, you can now plug devices into one or more outlet-portals to power them remotely.
Prerequisites: Liminal Energy, Intraliminal Skills, Object Portal.

V. New Business/Questions & Concerns
If you have something to discuss which doesn’t fall under the above headers, let us know here!

Comments

I. Jaunt Vote Results/Walkabout Voting

[powersthatbe]

II. Jaunt Disconnect

[powersthatbe]

Re: II. Jaunt Disconnect

[dino_zarf]

There are a couple things I've thought about that might help a bit with Jaunt Disconnect.

I think the reason the large setting worked so well in Code of Dishonor is that people actually started at all three main locations and there were things actively happening at all of them. Because everyone started out in Iolchis, it's been a bit harder to find a way to get characters to go anywhere other than up Olympus/down into the Underworld because it means the characters have to walk away from everything that's currently happening in Iolchis. Unleashing the creatures in Athens gave a reason for people to want to travel there. Meanwhile even though I have a character who is Theban, she's still in Iolchis because there's Shit That Needs Taking Care Of there.

In terms of easier suggestions to implement, it might help to have a Key Plot Developments headers in the summary to make it easier to catch up on what exactly is going on with the overall Jaunt plot.

I'm wondering if part of the disconnect that seems to have come up across multiple Phase II Jaunts is something about the more abstract win conditions with multiple possibilities. And that's about as far as I've gotten on that front unfortunately. And possibly something about the win conditions sometimes being an issue vs how characters are built, though that was more back on Haunted Isle where really Lovers never actually stood a chance simply because none of the Pualo infiltrators had developed their overlay in such a way that that they actually wanted to stay rather than find a way to go back home. This is the least coherent part of this comment because I can't quite put my finger on how the change in how win conditions are approached isn't quite gelling.

Re: II. Jaunt Disconnect

[comebewe]

Perhaps the Arcana being more explicit about 'this is win we want' could help with the abstract win conditions thing? Although admittedly, that comes with it's own issues (like whether that's even allowed, and whether that would also ruin the mystery element)

Re: II. Jaunt Disconnect

[amadine]

The first paragraph in the summary posts generally contains the Plot Infiltrator threads for the week - with the exception of the Shoals Jaunt, where everything was so heavily factionalized that it made more sense to break it down that way. Beyond that, there probably won't be any Key Plot Developments section in the summaries unless whoever's running the current plot decides they want to do that on their own initiative, because I'm not actually a mod and don't actually know what the important developments are outside of "follow the Plot Infiltrators". I can guess, and I try to include things that seem significant, but going week by week like we do, saying "and these are the things that are definitely going to shape the plot" is kind of beyond my scope.

Re: II. Jaunt Disconnect

[triggerhappytraitor]

One of the biggest problems I personally had with this jaunt so far kind of was two sides of the same problem. At the start, the jaunt set up information was a huge overload. There was far too much and it was a setting I knew very little about. It took most of the week given just for me to even process it.

And then it kinda all turned out to just be window dressing. Unless I missed something in the text wall, (which is 100% possible) it didn't seem to actually help much in actually figuring out how on Earth to engage. Then the jaunt started and there still wasn't much of a clue of anything to get involved in. Second week was abruptly heavy chaos and destruction... or climbing the mountain to find the plot. Only after going "okay, so the gods are half asleep" there wasn't much of an idea what to do about that either.

It felt a bit like being on a conveyor belt. Stuff was moving, but hell if I could tell what or how and very much feeling like nothing I did mattered at all. There wasn't really any information as to what was going on. You could sign up for godhood, but other than "Congrats, yer a god now" there wasn't really any information on that either. You could go other places, but there didn't seem to be anything to find. Your character had to have or make the proper connections to actually get involved, and even then, there was still a lack of direction in that involvement just due to what seemed like an utter lack of information about anything. (When the people in plot roles are saying that they have no idea or information, it's very disheartening.)

It's felt like there's been an utter lack of organization and information and actions were being functionally railroaded by virtue of no one having any idea what to do. Kinda like being in an old school point and click adventure where everything was clickable and there were no hints. Add in multiple locations and first, no easy way to get there, and then no idea WTF there was even to go see and you have a million choices and nothing to go on to narrow anything down.

All that said, suggestions include:
- More information on what can be interacted with/locations with content.
- Locations without time lag. The swift ships kiiinda fixed that, only not because the ships don't go to Olympus or the Underworld, unless I missed something in the description.
- Less locations.
- More leads/hints to where the plot hooks are.
- Follow up to plot hooks, or at least more of a nudge where the next plot point is.
- More OoC organization when subgroups are involved. A lot of plotting happens on plurk, but not everyone has everyone else added, nor should they have to.
- More reasons or openings for characters to be in subgroups (especially for infiltrations) or to collaborate.
- Being more open about the plot. Quite often it feels like any helpful information winds up being withheld to prevent metagaming or to pull an "Oh what a twist!" suprise.

+1

[morebelts]

this. all of this. very well said, thank you.

[maximumest]

There is a sense, at least as a very new player, that unless you are very specifically involved in the Titan Conspiracy, you're just along for the ride. I have not been making an effort to be directly involved because it's my first Jaunt, but I had that impression from everyone else's efforts in their own stuff. While there's a whole lot going on, none of the other plot threads seem to be actually affecting the meta-outcome.

Re: II. Jaunt Disconnect

[theflyingone]

We run into the problem of either not enough plotting getting done before the mingle goes up, or delaying the start of the next mingle because we need to plot/thread the previous mingle. I say plotting posts should be posted several days before the mingles to allow those not on Plurk or Discord to finalize plans before half the week is over. This does not mean summaries or the next mingle's teaser blurb have to be ready prematurely, just a space where we can get our plot stuff together in one place, and the rest of the info to be added by mods at convenience. This may be more important during the latter half of Jaunts, when IC plans mean more urgent OOC plotting, regardless of what the mingle content will be.

Somewhat related, what if Jaunts had a mingle every 10 days instead of every 7? or 15? Or mingles closer together for the first half of the Jaunt, and spaced out during the second half to allow for all the plot bunnies running around? It might mean less mingles per Jaunt, but yolo i'm tossing the idea out there, you lovely Jaunt writers you.

Jaunts are very long. I think this is contributing to the Jaunt burnout i keep hearing discussed, and the waves of relief as soon as Liminal happens. I come from a history of game events lasting no longer than two weeks to a month. Does anyone else feel the same?

The Jaunt summaries are a little cryptic. Less "So-and-so has made a discovery," more "So-and-so has discovered a vaccine for that XYZ plague" would help us immensely with catching up.

[ninjayeehaw]

+1 on the Jaunt summaries. I understand that it's a fair bit more effort for the summary writer to have to make more detailed notes, but it would be infinitely more beneficial to the idea that these are supposed to be telling us what everyone is up to, without forcing every single person who looks over it to dive into every vague summary personally.

[runawaystory]

I like the idea of mingles being spaced out a bit longer than a week. Or having variable spacing depending on what's going on.

Or possibly structuring them such that there's a "breather" week mid-way...? So breaking up each Jaunt into two parts with a mingle where nothing much happens. Though this is probably not feasible for every Jaunt.

I hear the burnout problem, but I think the longer-than-usual-for-DWRP duration of Jaunts is necessary. Events in other games are temporary departures from everyday life. Jaunts are the actual meat and bone of the game, and also each one (with rare exceptions) needs to encompass a discrete plot in and of itself on top of all that.

At this point in the game, I don't think varying light/serious "tone" is going to be sufficient for alleviating Jaunt burnout. We're all (ICly and OOCly) aware that every Jaunt has high stakes and serious implications for the metaplot tournament between the Arcana... No matter how innocuous a Jaunt set-up, that knowledge is always going to keep the stakes high.

I dunno, I don't really have any suggestions, just throwing some thoughts out.

[mytearsaremine]

My biggest problem with the current Jaunt that I'm not seeing anybody else bring up has been that a lot of the important people, the people behind things who are starting things or affected by things, are NPCs. The mods have been doing a great job of keeping up with threads, but that's only for those who come to them, there's no reaching out on the NPCs part like there would be on the part of a PC who needs AC and CR. That means that unless the "right" person goes to them and asks the "right" thing, the players have a much lesser chance to find out anything useful. I mean, our plot role deity found out about the god-poisoning like a week later than would be easy for her to do anything with it.

It kinda just feels like this is a plot run by NPCs, ya know? It'd think be easier to engage if our "enemies" and "people to save" were players we could engage with. That may just be my own opinion and/or preference, and I don't know that it affects the previous Jaunts any, but I wasn't as engaged in the previous Jaunts for RL reasons, not plot reasons, so I can't speak as well to those >.>

[summerorange]

I do have one thing that may not have been addressed by others yet. Have Tower and Chariot themselves appeared within the Jaunt itself? Like, actual threads/top-levels? I may have missed it due to RL stuff, but if they haven't, then that might also explain things.

Let me explain that. Back in the Pogemon Jaunt, we actually had Emperor and Hanged Man appear in-person within the Jaunt for people to talk to. And that was a great, IC way to have Travelers that aren't their Marked know who's involved, if they haven't figured it out ICly, and get some hints regarding what to do for the next mingle/plot twist. I do feel that if neither Arcana physically appeared within Ancient Greece/within this Jaunt, Travelers may have missed out in a way to know how to resolve things without, say, being Marked by them or by becoming directly involved with the Titanspiracy.


I dunno. It may just be me, and I apologize if this idea might create too much work for the mods in the future.

Re: II. Jaunt Disconnect

[loyalrebel]

I feel that a piece of the problem with disconnect is that we get large(ish) groups of characters who decide to get in on a single plot point/event, which leads to a few more people hopping on because their CR is doing it and then there’s a few last stragglers who come in because it looks like the most decent heading for getting traction.

Which results in upwards of a dozen characters doing A Thing, another 5 or so in the background of the thing waiting and then everyone else feeling like all they can do is stand around and ‘look pretty’ while a big plot point/event is being resolved.

This seems to have happened with each of the most recent jaunts one way or another; the Deepsinger fight, the Nevermore plot line and now with the Olympus Climbers/Titanspiracy.

I’ve seen this repeatedly lead to folks feeling like it isn’t worthwhile to join these big groups because there’s 6+ other characters doing the exact same thing but it’s what their character would do ICly. It also leads to the people who have side plots they want to do feeling discouraged when they can’t get very good traction on them because everyone seems more focused on the Big Plot Thing.


I have a couple ideas about how to help mediate this:

- Have an upper limit on the number of characters able to go on these groups, dependent on what sort of thing is going on. This can be RNG’d based on sign-ups with preference towards folks who didn’t get it last time or something similar.

This can also just be a thing to keep in mind when plot opportunities hit, being willing to step back as a player and let someone else’s characters have a moment in the spotlight when you’ve already done the thing last time.

- I’d also like to suggest that things like large “boss fight” logs get narrated like I did for the Nevermore Final Fight that way a big fight doesn’t get left hanging for weeks/get dropped and never really resolved.

Characters/players sign up and give the NPC runner/mod their characters powers/general strategies and things get discussed OOCly as to how things go and RNG who gets KO’d/killed out of the pool and who gets the “winning hit” so to speak. I thought it went fairly well and opened up things for those players/characters to go on and do other things in the jaunt/mingle that week without having to wait to see what happened.

III. OOC Tensions and Character Bleed

[powersthatbe]

Re: III. OOC Tensions and Character Bleed

[truerevelation]

My own two cents from someone who's been particularly affected by this, as to some of the general key issues... while I've had more problems relating to the general Jaunt disconnect due to personal overlay troubles, these things have at least been part of it.

- This has been the first Jaunt where the Travellers have had had a marked (heh) interest in the actual specific outcome of the Jaunt - whether that's anti-Tower or pro-Chariot. (While the 'anti-Tower' sentiment's fairly common, there are members of the Chariot crew with a lot riding on their patron's success... and they do tend towards explosive personalities... making post-Jaunt fallout on a personal level potentially complicated.)

- There is a tendency among Travellers to end up using ... rather dramatic means to solve a Jaunt. Looking back at these two's Phase Two Jaunts, they're two of the most notable cases of 'stuff on fire' in the game, but not the only ones. As such, it has almost seemed like ... It's been easy to feel like "yeah, we're doomed from the offset", or that one mistake's going to screw things up. Two very volatile Arcana.
It's also hard sometimes to balance the line of... conflict can be interesting/challenging, but causing trouble in the Jaunt can easily spiral out of control.

- Even without the Arcana conflict as such, the whole fact that this Jaunt's about taking sides with gods and will have a huge effect on the world adds plenty of tension too.

- As such, it's also felt like stepping back or doing something less stressful is ignoring the plot, ignoring the metaplot, and generally a ticket to a bad outcome... and this has also been a case where the effect on the metaplot and eventual game outcome's a potentially dramatic one.

Re: III. OOC Tensions and Character Bleed

[amadine]

One thing that might help for the future is not telling us the win/loss conditions halfway through the Jaunt. It seems to me like part of the OOC dogpile behaviour I've seen in a few places stems from the fact that people know what Jant outcome will lead to Chariot winning/Tower winning/the Jaunt hanging ahead of time, and have that ammunition to try to shove things in their preferred direction.

Making sure the possible outcomes are framed as valid choices would also help. The conditions here feel almost too clear-cut - there's very little reason for anyone to back Tower, when backing Chariot will accomplish exactly the same thing but with less fire. It makes it seem like there's really only one valid IC choice for any Investigators, and that's bled pretty badly into the OOC discussions. If things were set up so backing the "bad" Arcana might still do good, or backing the "good" Arcana would cause some harm, the situation would be a little less black and white, and there might be a little less polarizing between players as a result.

[haremtrap]

I just wanted to say that I was fairly lost and disoriented for most of this jaunt, as it's my first one since joining the game and kind of big and fast paced, but that the mods have been very friendly and understanding about this and that that helped a lot. So good job there mod friends!

Re: III. OOC Tensions and Character Bleed

[loyalrebel]

OOC Tension/Character Bleed

I know that I’m not at all innocent for some of the tension during this jaunt, and I’m apologizing here and now about that. There’s no real excuse other than that I’ve also been tense/annoyed by things both IC and OOC and have been wording things poorly and being bad about escalating things too much in reaction to others.

That being said there’s some things I have notes on as well as some suggestions as to how to possibly get a little kinder towards one another when dealing with things.

IC Conflict

There’s been a lot of (for lack of a better term) steamrolling of other player’s ideas/responses to plots, as well as what others have mentioned in ‘dick waving contests’ of power/knowledge/etc. We have a lot of strong/smart “Big Damn Hero” types in Syn, and a lot of them have very different personalities and moralities which leads to conflicts between characters especially when those personalities/IC moralities come in to opposition with what the jaunt/arcana’s goals.

This does not mean that there should be conflicts between players however, and it also doesn’t mean that a player has the same morals/viewpoint or reasonings as their character.

That being said:

Not all conflicts are best solved with physical altercations between characters

I know I’ve been fairly ‘stab happy’ with things and I’m going to be making a conscious effort to try to find other means of IC conflict resolution.

This plays a lot in to the feeling that things are starting to be come a superpowers dick waving contest between everyone and that to have any say in how something goes in a plot you have to be the biggest best fighter/powerhouse in the room.


Characters can’t always win.

There are IC situations/conditions where a given character will have a higher chance of winning due to location or the issue at hand or the way their powerset works. Sometimes it’s your character, sometimes it’s not. Being willing to lose sometimes, or find a way around a fight if that’s reasonable, helps in easing the desire in others to prove that their character is just as good as yours.

A character’s canon strengths and skills and knowledge are, and should be, just as valid as the Skills that others might have picked up over the course of the game. Sometimes this just makes a head to head fight against a character a not so great idea, but finding a workaround is sometimes more fun and makes better opportunities later down the road for character growth or CR.


I think keeping in mind that our characters aren’t the only Big Damn Heroes in the game, and allowing a chance for others characters to have their Moment Of Awesome (whether it’s a good idea or not) will help ease frustrations between folks.

Attitude Towards Different IC Opinions

Something that has come up repeatedly in various jaunts is the attitude/idea that a character’s canon knowledge/experiences either shouldn’t matter or should matter less when a jaunt happens to be in a setting similar to their own and they happen to be investigating.

The idea that “It’s not their (the character’s) __________” is very dismissive feeling towards the player hearing it. There’s a reason we enjoy our characters/canons and it is fairly often includes things that happen and the different viewpoints that they explore. That an infiltrator is inherently “better” or “more valid” than a character who’s investigating when it comes to information. experiences or IC worldview is incredibly disheartening to have as the kinda… status quo of things.

This jaunt has also brought up a bit of a mindset OOCly of “because the Arcana said so” as being a good enough reason for every character to go along with things when the character’s own morals/experiences/etc dictate that they would be directly opposed to what’s going on.

It’s felt like that by doing so, half the game is going to be angry at the player for playing their character ICly or that going against the grain or ICly questioning things that seem to be the ‘status quo’ will cause too much fighting or outright break another character’s CR.

I’ve personally felt that if I were to have my characters speak up about not being ICly okay with a situation, I’d have to deal with them being told they’re wrong/stupid/being dismissed and after a while that becomes incredibly frustrating both ICly and OOCly.

IC conflicts of opinion shouldn’t be treated as a bad thing, or something to be more right about than someone else. It should be a way towards character development on all sides, not a contest between Rightness which is what it’s been starting to feel like.

I don't really know how to fix this, but I’m hoping that folks have ideas about how to.

Re: III. OOC Tensions and Character Bleed

[bite_the_hand]

I think part of what caused things to escalate so fast might have been that we had multiple good ends and bad ends overlapping? Chariot losing is a bad end for a lot of characters (and by extension players), no matter who it's up against. Tower winning is also a bad end for a lot regardless of which Arcana gets beaten. Either is "bad", but I think either would have been a lot easier to deal with on its own? But in this case, there are two "good" results and two "bad" results at once, and it's all or nothing.

I'm not sure there's a "fix" for that, but it's something to perhaps keep in mind for similar situations going forward?

IV. Liminal Energy Skills

[powersthatbe]

V. New Business/Questions & Concerns

[powersthatare]

If you have something to discuss which doesn’t fall under the above headers, let us know here!

technically really old business but

[wholeheaded]

STARMOVER TECH DEETS

There I did the thing. Thank you modfolks.

[truerevelation]

Technically this is part of my personal Jaunt disconnect but it doesn't seem to fit nicely into the above discussion so...

Skills this Jaunt. Specifically, Immortal Ichor and its follow-ups. While in the context of the Jaunt itself, how this set of skills work makes sense? During the planning stages, it seemed very arbitrary, and taking Immortal Ichor as a skill is a complicated issue for characters under 20 or so in a way that it isn't for older characters due to the age freeze.
This wouldn't be so bad on its own, if rather frustrating, but while "characters are getting mythical gifts" was part of the backstory/setting, for these things like gods' blessings/ancestry without the full divine package ... there has been no skill offered to cover the slot between "fairly mundane learning" (ok necromancy and fortune telling aren't so mundane, but by the setting's standards...) and "full on godly mantle" except the relics.
While a character shouldn't typically need to take ~all of the skills~, this has definitely made skill planning an issue this time around.

also technically old business

[runawaystory]

So... I've been meaning to follow-up on this forever and I keep forgetting, but now I will not forget!

What is included in the "Secret Police Training" skill from Villains & Vigilantes?