@Axelford
it’s trial time
POV: You’re ajtazt/TLR up late in a VC and see three people all typing responses for a long while.
Glad to see my old charm still holds up. 
Like I said, I’m a patient fellow, I can wait. Though I have been told plenty would rather take hellfire over my criticism, so maybe hold off on the thanks part. Not to say I would purposefully do it, but it could get ugly.
But that’s why I’m public about these things. To get other viewpoints and for others to put me down if I have gone too far.
Not that I go down without a fight.
I’m more of a meta fellow, a very amateurish psychologist if being generous. My focus tends to be more on aspects that leads GMs, players, etc. into making certain decisions, the manipulation and directing of human minds. Game mechanics, rules, narrative, all helpful tools in leading or see what intention lies behind the curtain. After all, no matter how different the character or story is from the creator, it still comes from the same place. With correct directing of the person, the portion they write will follow suit, even if their work should be doing something else.
Like I said, Malaco is a joke character, but there was more planned for him to do. He was supposed to veer into something more sooner than this, but nothing has really existed yet to warrant that lane change. I need viable material to work with or write absolute nonsense, hence my earlier statements of writing a Malaco miniseries rather than contributing. Because in the current situation, him interacting heavily with the other characters would accomplish as much as his current lack of such.
But focusing on the larger picture, the idea of the game potentially be translated into another form is always on my mind. Writing is a major focus, yes? Then the lack of direction or stated expectancy of what should be done isn’t helpful. We are the monkeys being thrown at a typewriter and hoping Shakespeare comes out.
Sure, it’s still a game and collaborative to a certain end and there is some allure of mystery trying to be kept. It will just make what will already be a long task of translating the RP’s events into a viable story even harder without more concrete direction.
Thus, with what’s been presented so far, Malaco’s contributions would only make that messier. And in a rewrite, would potentially be given a backseat, as is the nature of his type. Might as well make that easier.
Even as mechanical as I am, I’m still human and still reactionary. I need reason to respond and to make Malaco do something.
I would respond to more, but I am now getting screeched at to clean. Why can’t these people ever inform me ahead of time when additional cleaning is expected.
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Good luck with your test.
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On second thought, and maybe it’s just me having being drained from mindless monotony, but I think my response here managed to cover most of the core things. Supplemental sections could be chatted about later, if wanted.
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So, correct me if I am wrong, and if I am that’s unfortunate because the rest of this post is based off of this premise (and if it isn’t, let me know and I’ll reassess), but it seems like you’re criticizing two main things: the pacing and the plot.
To the first. I am … excruciatingly aware of the issue of pacing in this, at the moment. I mean, we’re still part of the freakin prelude.
The game was always meant to be character-centric, writing-centric, theme-centric. And an unintended byproduct of that was … what we have now. The drawn out character interactions, the feeling of getting nowhere plot-wise. Until now, I’d perceived that as being … not a good thing, but not exactly a bad thing. Just ever so slightly, unexpectedly, overtly … painstaking.
I intentionally didn’t plop it immediately into the action, for several reasons, some based in creativity, others based in my own literary “morality”. I get that it’s generally tradition to start something, especially something of this caliber, as “Action! Now! Start!”
And I just … didn’t. And if that’s deemed a problem, I can pretty easily rectify it. Less roundabout solutions, more straightforward do this do that. But that segues into issue two.
I feel like it’s a little bit unfair to criticize the plot, when there … hasn’t been one, yet. Due to the somewhat unprecedentedly long interactions, we’re just starting. And there were more creative ways to start this, and some of them I considered, but I went with this because it transitioned the best into the main “meat” of the story. It was ultimately a creative decision, and I understand that it may well have been a flawed one, but it was what it was - not some sort of incompetent misgiving or misguidance.
The motivation, capital M, hasn’t been revealed yet, and again, that was unprecedented in timing.
But that does lead me to a query: much of your original post talks about what could have been, and your misgivings and expectations, but: how would you propose this should be fixed? Should The PlotTM be expediated? Should motivation become clearer sooner? Have I misunderstood you entirely and made a fool of myself by defending the wrong thing? All this and more on tomorrow’s episode of “Whinger typing disjointed replies too late at night”.
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Having discussed next to none of this in PM since Ajtazt’s post, I’ll save my more scathing thoughts for when we get around to talking about it there. But at least to me, a lot of the issues here would be solved if the characters had something definite to do. Right now the goal is ‘leave’ and has involved some convoluted explanation to a puzzle that should have been much more straight-forward and require less gm hand-holding. Since the gm hasn’t been around often enough to justify that approach, it’s left the characters aimlessly meandering in space and filling posts with large, well-formatted bodies of text that accomplish nothing outside of an internal monologue.
Eventually that even for an ego lord like myself gets tiring. You start running out of things to say about yourself and you end up with a Malaco situation where his greatest contribution to the scene around him was choking on a piece of fungi in a gross manner which literally everyone else ignored.
Except ME, because I’m smart. Ignore the ego thing I just said.
In-game the RP has been in existence for about an hour, tops. But the actual amount of time passed is close to three months. That’s an awful long amount of time to write about the same characters milling in a room and overreacting. Which is why Basil had a seizure, broke the lightbulb, treaded in the glass, and is now bleeding profusely.
When the party gets through that door - whichever one it is - there should be a definite goal in sight. Head there, do this, get that, react to your situation or simply take in the world around you. I’m not sure what you’ve got planned beyond that top door, but as example, you have three flights of stairs to accomplish what should have been done with one.
Of course, I’ll defer to whatever your best judgement is with regards to your plan and how much you want me to be aware of at once. But something of substance needs to happen soon, preferably the moment after Basil’s able to move or be moved again. I have a good amount of patience here for my lovely co-child (don’t read into that) but another three months of nothing can only end one way.
And like Winger said, suggestions, please! If there’s something specific you’d like to see coming out of this, we’d really appreciate hearing about it. Let us know what your thoughts are so when I head to Winger’s home at 3 Am with a crowbar, it won’t look quite as suspicious.
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I would like to see Malaco with buff arms.
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This is a good suggestion. It will be considered thoroughly.
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In context this makes perfect sense.
However out of context it is very amusing.
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I think there’s a topic for that
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Those are problems, but they’re symptoms and not the cause.
Confusing, potentially false advertising, I believe to have stated.
The issue I brought forth was the lack of clarity as to the vision for this project and its execution. I brought objection to the plot hook, not the plot itself, due to vague and potentially misleading expectations. The mishandling of goals, the creation of a cursed problem.
I don’t know what you want to sell me and it seems you don’t either. But your business partner does and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t have even given it the joking chance without him. And something tells me this would have been abandoned entirely by now (if it even started), if not by you then certainly the players, where it not for Ghid. There’s little evidence that suggests you want to be here.
So tell me,
why is that? Which curse did you make? I already gave you potentially two of them. Misalignment of player and character was the first I told, conflict with the larger purpose was the second.
If the mystery is only a player motivation, then what is the characters? If the mystery is only a character motivation, then what of the player? Are both to have the same general motivation? No, then what is it? From a gameplay perspective, there is no clear or obvious reason to participate. Lack of clarity.
But that can also stems from the larger cursed issue. Traditionally speaking, post-based RPs are collaborative fiction, unlike most other RPGs. However, despite being in the written form, it’s still not a writing project, it’s a game. Like I said, we’re being asked to help write parts for a larger work. But we’re given no information, no direction, nothing for which to help write. A mystery story where only the head writer knows what’s going on, what needs to happen, but said writer refuses to actively participate and just gives vague homework.
Do you want a game or a publishable work? You cannot do both.
You can salvage a game into a publishable narrative. Or get a bunch of people together to write one book, comic, etc. taking different parts, perspectives, functions, whatever. You cannot create a collaborative work when no one knows what’s going on, what’s their part, or what they should do. We need information, everyone actively in the writing room, bouncing ideas off each other.
Even purpose conflict, in and out of game, aside, do you want to be here? If you do, you certainly don’t want to deal with the managing portion of the game. As I said in the first post, “Perhaps this statement was to say that GM involvement was to be minimal.” Character driven or not, the world shown so far requires heavy GM involvement. This isn’t DnD with nice little segments, only needing your attention for a few hours, maybe some prep or review here and there. It’s constant, sporadic responses, it needs more attention. At the very least, consistent amounts of attention.
Potential steps towards solution: Reassess. State a clear mission goal in one sentence. Look at materials created and rank how they support or conflict with that goal. And how those materials are being used to incentivize your other collaborators into helping achieve that goal.
In essence, convince me of what you want and are hoping to get out of this. Though in the meantime, Ghid’s post is a decent break fix for the immediate things plaguing the game/activity. It won’t fix the code on the backend, but at least it will make the interface nicer.
Ask and you shall receive.
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Entirely unrelated, but I just realized I’ve been capitalizing the A in ajtazt this entire time and it’s not written like that. It’s never been written like that.
I promise that I can read.
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Entirely related but in my 784 word post I spelled Ghid four different ways and all of them were incorrect. I did not just realize this and it was entirely intentional
I promise that I can spell correctly. “I just choose not to.” -G2 Kopaka
Yeah, sorry about that . I’m not meaning to make it seem like I’m joining the “gang up on aJTaZT” bandwagon; I just really like to debate certain things, and projects that involve writing, especially one I’m involved in, is definitely going to be one of those things.
And yeah, I agree with this. As I see it, all of what’s happened so far is comparable to a pilot episode of a series: it’s meant to set up the characters and how they interact, while the plot comes once the door is opened.
Side note: it might seem like I’m pushing for the plot, since I had Sue continue up the stairs in my last post after seeing Basil’s wound; and yeah, I kinda am, but Sue’s written as someone who’s not good with people, so helping an injured child is way out of her element in any case. I don’t mind if there’s minimal focus on her and Jung until the rest of the party catches up; better, in my opinion, than her being involved in a situation she’ll probably just make worse.
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“Bully!
A challenge!
I love competition!
Now where will I mount this stuffed head of a Winston?”-- Theodore Roosevelt, ERB
Nah, I just added the POV thing as a joke, because of how much response it got. I love a good scrap regardless of how many come to bat. Trust me, I was born in the fires of old internet flamewars, it’s a nostalgic fun.
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The next time someone in a game I’m in doesn’t post I’m going to make something like this and send it to them.
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i’ll have to get back to you on that tomorrow
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So it’s been fifteen days since a Winger rp post, and if there isn’t one by the end of the week I’m just gonna describe the doors everyone’s waiting for so people have something to do. It’s been really long with no input.
Too long with no input.
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UPDATE:
I’ve been given the reigns temporarily by Winger as well as a detailed description of the next set of events and how to proceed. I’ll be running things here until he has the time to dedicate to this again.
I’ll also be taking any questions about details in case anyone needs some pointers for how to move things along. Believe me, I want to get out of this stairway building as badly as you do.
Forgot to cover this, but the publishable work (webcomic) is entirely my own initiative. And even then, it’s a maybe at best. This is first and foremost a boards rp with heavy focus on characterization/character interaction, and any other ideas of followup media are 100% secondary.
As for lack of clarity, I will do my best to provide that here, so feel free to ask. I’ll be extremely limited with what I can and can’t answer as per Winger’s wishes, however, but I will clarify what I have the option to.
And finally, @Eilrach I would highly recommend you repost your signup sheet so it can be reviewed one more time before I give you the greenlight to be introduced. Winger’s already given it his blessing, but I am a grumpy old man with a weighted cane, and all within a three foot radius of me fear my voracity for character design and my unwillingness to scroll up more than three mouse wheel turns.
Sorry that this took so long, but hopefully this sort of hiccough won’t happen again.
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And, um, one thing to note: there’s zero drama or falling out or animosity between me and Ghid. He’s not like, taking over forcefully, or anything. I’ve just gotten very suddenly really, really busy, and creativity/writing/GMing require energy and thought that I suddenly don’t have a lot of.
At risk of sounding like an empty promise, I’ll do my best to respond to the discussion from before break tonight or tomorrow evening. Questions are also welcome, though maybe not direct enlightened discussion, if you know what I mean.
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