The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters

[Roz]

@seraphim73 said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

@roz We actually expanded the grid a little bit, making a few more of the temp-rooms into perma-rooms. It's about 25% bigger now. I would, however, love to get some suggestions on what you felt was missing (if it was anything in particular).

I honestly can't remember! I tried to write out my experience because you were asking, but it really comes down to just -- "I kind of just didn't put in the effort." But I thought it'd still be relevant for you to know when someone was just being LAZY. Like me.

[Seraphim73]

I wanted to respond to a couple of explicit notes here. I've reached out to some people directly via messages, but wanted to respond to some on the board in general.

@arkandel (and others as far as timezones go) - Totally get and agree with the activity catch-22. I'm trying to get in some shorter scenes during the day while my daughter is napping as well as the late-night RP, and we're going to get in touch with a couple of people as GMs shortly to expand the plotrunners available.

As far as carrots go, I think that Fara has done a really good job with the skill progression, but there definitely isn't much in the way of rank progression or anything like that. It was a bit of our hope that people would look to carve out personal domains a bit, but perhaps that's something we need to plant some more explicit seeds for. I think that while some of that isn't things we can do anything about, there are absolutely things that we can do to help.

We've actually been hoping that people would run their own monster or buccaneer scenes whenever they wanted to. We're totally open to folks running spur-of-the-moment scenes with a whole host of beasties and NPC pirates. Seems we need to make that more clear.

@Ganymede - I fully expect there to be pirate duels and brawls (there was one, but it was relatively tame). I sincerely hope that this continues. Our goal with CvC has always been that individual CvC is great as long as the players are mature about it, but we want to avoid whole-crew CvC.

@surreality - God yes, is Ares awesome. Even though we're not using it to its full extent (still using a wiki instead of the automated website), Faraday has a whole heck of a lot to be proud of with this system.

@Scissors - Yeah, we've realized that we really should have started out in the Real World, gotten people involved in more "pirate-y" stuff to start with, and then thrown them into the Spirit World. We had been hoping that the Spirit World stuff would tie them together so that they wouldn't have reason to get involved in crew-vs-crew conflicts while they were in the Real World (since we have English Navy, Spanish merchants, and Pirates as crews, plus all the combat and non-combat shore folks). Definitely a mistake though. Should have gone for the most genre-defining stuff first, then shaken things up.

[Roz]

@seraphim73 said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

Even though we're not using it to its full extent (still using a wiki instead of the automated website)

Oh! That's the other thing I forgot. This part actually does bug me, but I'd forgotten. Like, the idea of having to go to the web portal to copy over log stuff with it's already living on the web portal... Not a fan. Just use the web portal! I'd much rather a less elaborately designed automation than manual management with prettier art. Especially with the further improvements Faraday continues to work on.

[Seraphim73]

@roz Honestly, once we update to the latest version that Fara is working on right now... I might try to talk Blu et al into moving over to the Web Portal. It'd mean a bunch of transition work, but the changes she's put in... seem very, very good. I do feel a little bad about not using the web portal, but I like what Blu (and the rest of us) has done with the wiki so very much.

ETA: In the meantime, I've found it more effective to just copy-and-paste from scene/log into the wiki page, rather than uploading the scene onto the web portal first.

[Roz]

@seraphim73 Yeah, I mean -- it's really pretty? It's an attractive wiki. I just don't really care about pretty. For me, the thing I care about the most in regards to a game wiki or website is efficiency of use and clarity of information, and the idea of doubling up work needlessly touches a very deep aversion in my soul. So I'm not likely to play an Ares game that's going to ignore the web portal. (Especially, SORRY FOR MY MEDIAWIKI ELITISM, for Wikidot.)

[surreality]

Odd question, but... does this mean access to the game itself would only be accessible through the web portal? I may be in the minority but I am one of those folks who likes my MUclient where I have all my colors set up to work with my eyes and brain and all that.

[boneghazi]

I had a similar experience. There just wasn't enough activity/stuff going on in my time zone.

I submitted a PrP I still want to do, but I kinda backed off and let Arx swallow me whole again because there's a number of people that are active at the weird times I am. It seemed as if staff had a lot to catch up on after the holidays!

Also like, the few scenes I had, there was this one guy that just creeped me out a bit and he was the only one to play with. I wanna come back though. Maybe I will in the next few days and see what's cookin!

[Seraphim73]

@Roz There's currently no doubling up -- we aren't using the web portal except for Admin access (and if someone wants to do chargen there or connect from there). All the theme files, character pages, and logs are currently on the wiki -- that's the place to be.

@surreality Definitely not. As great as playing from the web portal is if you're on someone else's computer, MU* clients are totally the default as far as we're concerned.

@nyctophiliac Ack! I'm sorry you got creeped out. If you want to let me know the character's name and what creeped you out about the interactions (PMs are great, or a request or mail on the game), we'll certainly address the player. As for the PrP, it slipped through the cracks during the holiday nastiness (one Staffer had a death in the family and a new baby between late November and late January, another Staffer had a massive amount of work over Christmas and hurt their hand, and my mother was diagnosed with brain cancer -- it was not a good holiday season for the Staff). I'll try to get a response to it tomorrow. My apologies for the horrible amount of time it's been.

[faraday]

@roz said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

So I'm not likely to play an Ares game that's going to ignore the web portal.

Just for the record - I advised T8S staff not to use the prior web portal release because it was still kind of hacky and buggy and I knew it was getting overhauled anyway. It didn't make sense for them to do a bunch of work porting over their oh-so-pretty wiki style only to have to redo all the design work in the next version. So that part's not really their fault.

@seraphim73 said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

There's currently no doubling up

I think what @Roz meant is that the log is literally already there in the web portal, but you still have to copy/paste to the wiki. Ditto with character pages. You have to update your info in-game (even if you're not using the portal; for example with RP hooks) and then copy/paste to the wiki. While you may not be using the information in two places, it's still more work.

The new version's going to be rolled out on BSGU in the next couple days and I'd be happy to help Blu sort out the style changes to make T8S's version look as close to the wiki as possible when y'all are ready to update.

@surreality said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

Odd question, but... does this mean access to the game itself would only be accessible through the web portal? I may be in the minority but I am one of those folks who likes my MUclient where I have all my colors set up to work with my eyes and brain and all that.

The new version supports joining scenes through the web portal, but the telnet experience is unchanged.

[Testament]

I don't play on this game, but I just want to point out that this is probably the most positive-related thread I've read on this site in awhile.

So good on you guys.

[buttercup]

I love this game. It's been really fun and I play a very interesting character there. I hope it gets more active outside of the Monster of the Week stuff. I would encourage people to give it a try.

[Roz]

@faraday said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

@seraphim73 said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

There's currently no doubling up

I think what @Roz meant is that the log is literally already there in the web portal, but you still have to copy/paste to the wiki. Ditto with character pages. You have to update your info in-game (even if you're not using the portal; for example with RP hooks) and then copy/paste to the wiki. While you may not be using the information in two places, it's still more work.

Yeah that's indeed what I meant!

[bored]

I'll add that I thought this was going to be a game I'd go nuts for, but it never really succeeded in grabbing my interest. Variety of reasons, really.

I think the fact that the 'crazy supernatural stuff' came in so front loaded really killed the mystery, while also kind of hamstringing a lot of the typical pirate-y tropes people. It took focus off 'arr, we be pirates' and turned it into 'we are the scooby doo gang' very quickly. Also into a standard FS3 BSG combat of the week reskin as far as the cycle of do-nothing filler and combat-only 'plots.'

I'll add/echo the lack of grid RP even being an option being a thing that turned me (and my tag-along) off. I get the newschool +scene code kinda stuff, but for some people the idea that you can't really just 'go on the grid' for RP is a disconnect, even if it's only psychological.

[Lithium]

@bored I feel the same way, I dislike the inability to even have social RP on the grid, cuz it's like, how am I supposed to make connections with people?

[Seraphim73]

@bored I hear you on the bait-and-switch between pirates and monster-hunters. It wasn't our intention, and we're definitely going to try to course-correct back to more pirate-y stuff. As for the combat-of-the-week... yeah. You've got some valid complaint there. We've been pushing several more non-combat plots, but a lot of the plots are currently combat plots.

But as far as grid RP, it's absolutely an option. There's a 25-30 room grid where you can absolutely wander around and RP straight on the grid. There are an additional 10-15 scene-rooms built out from there that can be used with the scene code. We've heard that having too many scene-rooms and not enough actual grid rooms was putting some people off, so we shifted some of the scene-rooms over to the grid (it used to be more like 10-15 grid rooms and 25-30 scene-rooms).

[Scissors]

I feel that the spirit world mystery is also stifling normal social RP a bit. When people get together in the tavern, all they talk about is this thing, and the latest batch of monsters. Most personal goals and ambitions are, by necessity, pushed to the side, so it hinders any sort of intrigue/political RP. And Tavern RP is just Bar RP with a fancier name... you can only do it for so long.

Sorry if I sound repetitive. I know I already said I'm not a fan of the current theme.

[Arkandel]

@seraphim73 said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

@bored I hear you on the bait-and-switch between pirates and monster-hunters. It wasn't our intention, and we're definitely going to try to course-correct back to more pirate-y stuff. As for the combat-of-the-week... yeah. You've got some valid complaint there. We've been pushing several more non-combat plots, but a lot of the plots are currently combat plots.

That's one way to look at it. The other way is to figure out what the hooks are for non-combat plots to plug into; if I'm playing a diplomat, a shrewd investigator, a fast-talking rogue... what am I going to be useful for?

I think this is the case where you might need to create a universe before you can make a tree in it - which isn't to say the structure for such a thing doesn't already exist in your notes, because I'm sure it does, but because it has to emerge through daily play as well. The world needs to feel like there's a place in it for characters of different alignments before plot-runners will feel inspired to go "oooh, you know what would be cool to throw at these guys right now?".

[scar]

I’ll admit that my character there has not picked up as much momentum as I hoped she would, but I don’t fault the game for that and I haven’t given up hope. Holidays and then new class schedules drew me away from the keyboard. That and well, I don’t have a tendency to veer towards combat oriented rp (or large group scenes) and that’s just where a lot of the initial action appears to be. Not unique to this game -- a lot of the new games that have popped up are going that route. I actually think they did a great job with 8th Sea, both in world building and player management.

The setting itself is interesting but poses certain creative challenges, especially if you plan on rping outside. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just something to work with and around. It almost always seems to be raining, which makes for this sort of constant dismal uniformity that I imagine would start to weight pretty heavily ICly on anyone who has been present for any length of time. Coupled with the supernatural stuff, a lot of the imagery invoked for me personally is like... some kind of Tim Burton-esc pirates nightmare. Might be wayyy off but that's the beauty of reading logs instead of watching a movie!

By expanding the grid more, particularly rooms on the boats where the crews live and work, I think opens up places to form personal relationships within crews themselves and maybe even exploration of professional hierarchies. (I want this!) The boats were originally a single room each, which honestly drove me bonkers when there is a lot of opportunity for creating all those various decks, quarters, crows’ nests, etc to get folks’ imaginations going. (I’m in favor of rooms. MOR ROOMS! Rooms for all! OOC Lounges just don’t do it for me. They’re too easy to just stay in once you’re already there. They attract chatter away from the channels where, in my opinion, chat belongs -- especially if people want to continue to chat and rp out on the grid at the same time. But I realize that this is all just a matter of personal taste.)

I see my character as somebody that compensates for her own lack of life experience with an abundance of brassy faux-confidence. Or maybe it’s legitimate confidence and she just isn’t wise/self-aware enough to be afraid. I don’t know yet! Her and I haven’t gotten that far. I look forward to seeing her bite off more than she can chew or mouthing off to the wrong person -- hasn’t happened yet! So far, I’ve just been seeing her bounce off of seasoned sailors without too many hackles going up. She’s of Carib descent on her mother’s side (a woman she never met, whom she has complicated feelings about) but she was raised in Catholic traditions. Something I really looked forward to exploring when I made her was the interactions with Carib culture and the duality of her identity there. <-- If any of that sounds like something someone would be interested in building their own hooks off of, I totally welcome them to do so.

[bored]

@seraphim73 If you redid the grid that's a good fix.

Ultimately its the supernatural stuff that's hard. I'd guess (admitting I could be wrong) that for the average MSBer, Black Sails is more inspirational than Pirates of the Caribbean. Or even PotC 1 (that most people love) vs all the later garbage cashgrab ones. The skeleton pirates as a reveal was interesting. Ghost/monster pirate captain #12 is dull.

Obviously I read the theme when I started, but I also kind of assumed that the storm was there to bound RP and that the supernatural elements would filter in. Instead my very first scene was people telling me about troglodytes. So I was playing D&D. Which is fine, I do play D&D, but it wasn't what I signed up for (or even designed my character for).

Unfortunately this is kind of a cat out of the bag thing and I don't know how you put it back in. The world of the game is no longer set in a pirate world, it's some kind of supernatural survival horror thing with optional eyepatches.

[Ganymede]

@scissors said in The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters:

Most personal goals and ambitions are, by necessity, pushed to the side, so it hinders any sort of intrigue/political RP. And Tavern RP is just Bar RP with a fancier name... you can only do it for so long.

I didn't realize that Beppe had such ambitions.