Fading Suns

[Apollonius]

I will say that I never asked for loyal subjects. But was it so much to ask to not have PC and NPC subjects who were hell bent on driving a coup from Day One? Lyov's reign on behalf of his father was intentionally very vanilla and bland, per background. All the tax and military levies were moderate or light and Lyov was in the process of reversing some of his father's gross excesses and shifting some of those policies to the Jakovians.

To wit, Lyov had the ability to pretty much pull a trigger and get a free kill-a-baron-with-total-impunity card or a free kill-a-marquis-with-light-impunity card or a free kill-a-countess-and-still-be-okay card. But I felt that playing that hand was just asking for OOC drama and any boon that P or Lex throws at you is guaranteed to do a dramatic fail and kill off half your troops.

In hindsight, shit would've been so much quieter in Auberry if I just killed Chiaka when she started getting uppity and especially when she started conspiring with Amber to dislodge me. I'm sure @bored ICly wouldn't be happy but I'm pretty sure half the game would be cheering ICly and OOCly. She was a terrible baroness anyway. Her entire barony's infrastructure and economy was geared to supporting her boondoggle space ship.

Frankly, I got wind pretty quickly that Paulus' idea of a 'second chance' was to stack the cards in such a manner that my PC could not hope to succeed but because somehow he somehow scryed that it was 'what I would have wanted with my PC.' That's what rapists say.

[Apollonius]

Oh, here's some constructive advice:

If there is ever a voting system, don't stuff it with arbitrary NPCs that are designed to give staff whatever vote outcome regardless of the PCs voting, keep the rules opaque, and then change things up when the voting is seeming to go the other way.

Staff blatantly stacked a vote to Amber's favor and when I secured enough votes to overturn the decision, staff padded Amber's faction votes to prevent an overturn of the decision. Amber still complained.

[ThatGuyThere]

I agree with that advice. I was not involved with he political stuff but it seemed to someone not dealing with it like a giant games of try what ever you want but this is what will happen. Same with the war stuff.
Also if you create systems for things not in the books, like the voting and fife management stuff on Star Crusade, play test the crap out of it first before shoving it live. And for the love of god don't chance it every couple of months. I had an ooc friend with a fife that i helped her crunch numbers on, literally in ht short time the game was running they overhauled the combat system twice and the fife management three times at least they were honest and said they did it that way cause they didn't get the results they wanted but still that seems like a shitty way to go about things.

[Apollonius]

@ThatGuyThere To my understanding, the fief management WAS tested and vetted, but they changed power levels multiple times for the units and kept the rule book to themselves. I'm pretty sure @bored and I both made requests to see the staff playbook but a game that derives game mechanics based not on rules of the game but players specifically not knowing the rules of game is not a real game.

It's Calvinball.

[Packrat]

The fief management system behind the scenes basically never worked and barely existed, it was a bunch of spreadsheets plus a lot of handwaving, whilst also being ridiculously detailed and needing updating by hand. It was both not fit for purpose and contributed hugely to staff burnout given the huge amount of manual work required to update things even every couple of months. Stuff like mass combat, economy stuff, even equipment lists, were thrown together on the fly without any testing at all, at the point the game launched there was not even really a solid idea about what the demographics of the setting looked like.

I seem to remember that the idea was that the best way to keep staff engagement and focus was to have a game to be on - but once the game opened the influx of players was absolutely insane, for the first months I was basically reviewing character applications for 5 hours a day and everything kept being pushed back or rushed resulting in the flash in the pan and recrimination filled mess that was Star Crusade.

The degree of staff favouritism is being hugely overstated though (Though not the degree of railroading), it seems that EVERYONE decided that their IC rivals were being ICly unfairly favoured by staff and themselves punished. Literally every Count level player ended up spending more time complaining about how the other three count level players had unfair advantages over them than they did anything else as far as I could see while I was staffing. Custodius' character, Renaud, had the richest County (I still do not know WTF Paulus was thinking giving him that position, it was well known what he was like at that point). But his character also sucked at being a Count, he was a really big guy who was kind of decent at hitting people and riding a horse along with knowing about Kurgans but had very minimal management or political skills. Obviously the player then tried to play him as some kind of cunning mastermind showing the face everyone wanted to see to each individual. Also he kept getting sent incriminating letters from the Kurgans and answering them and nobody ever took advantage of that.

Antonio was +sheet wise competent at ruling, a good if not the best battlefield commander and almost certainly the single most personally dangerous character on the game, he also had like twice the forces of any other count through his playing up to Crusader sentiment and collecting hordes of frothing maniacs, though he had also the most 'at risk' territory. Then again he also had that assault lander full of elite murder fanatics. He then proceeded to have an OOC meltdown at staff after finding out that Sans had a Melee skill 1 higher than his, as one example.

Amber was kind of middle of the road? She was pretty good at ruling and politicing and stuff +sheet wise, had moderate lands that were moderately at risk (she did have some hardcore raiding going on against her if she did not bribe certain Kurgans away, which she did).

Lyov did have to deal with Chiaka which I can only sympathize with but I seem to remember he had psi powers that allowed him to remotely spy on pretty much anyone anywhere and never used these for blackmail, reconnaissance or intelligence purposes? I am afraid that I did approve the traitor baron who turned that fortress over to the Kurgans but I had assumed Lyov would unmask him sooner rather than later and the player was apparently okay with the character being at severe risk of being caught by the Decados.

A lot of the character who were commonly being accused of being 'staff friends' really were not though. Amber, Hugh, Caelwyn, (Or Antonio) they were nobody known to anyone on staff before applying for their characters, I mentioned before but it was this weird lottery where you had to luck into the secret of asking for the world if you wanted to get a lot of stuff. (Stuff being big numbers on your +sheet, private armies, etc).

[Alzie]

@Packrat People thought that because Paulus was telling people that. Take Ghilat. This is what happened.

Momoko says, 'What does my PC think about the chances of this working?'
Paulus says, 'She thinks this is stupid.'

Sans and Chiaka say, 'What do our PCs think about the chances of this working?'
Paulus says, 'Well it's probably stupid, but sans has a pretty good chance of making this work.'

What Paulus doesn't say, 'Hey, I told you all different things. You're all operating under totally different pretenses.'

fast forward a couple of poses

What Momoko sees: Oh look, someone just pulled a dagger, well fuck me.
What everyone else sees: That guy really likes to rub his hip.
What Paulus doesn't tell anyone: By the way, Momoko is really good at sensing and responding to danger, so there IS a dagger, just no one else saw it.

So to answer your question, the reason everyone thought everyone else was a staff friend is because it was really fucking hard not to when Paulus was giving everyone totally different poses and information without telling people they were getting totally different poses and information. We could all be staring at a damn ship, agree that it was a ship, but one person would get a pose about a blue ship and another two about a red ship and then they would argue for 4 damn hours about the color of the fucking ship.

Case in point: Seriously, fuck that. If you do this and think it's right fuck you.

[ThatGuyThere]

Honestly the main feeling i got from some of the plots was that staff enjoyed playing against the players rather then telling a story with them.
And yeah they all felt pretty railroad-y. And the communication of what was happening in the crusade big picture felt very bland and random. Oh in the plot scene the PC won and everything was done right but somehow t=we still lost the big battle, which the player will learn about in a post in two days. Not that I mind the side i am on losing, but if you have the plot scene happen then have a post to reverse the result two days later why bother with doing the scene in the first place? I have better things to do with my evening then to play out a pointless scene that will have the result of it ignored.
This thread is starting to make me really not want a fading suns mush. I love the setting and would love any mush with an more adventure-y focus then the urban horror/ fantasy that currently holds sway, but would likely avoid an FS game if it had any of the staff from Star Crusade now that I am being reminded of the warts of the place.

[Packrat]

Well I will go on record as having quit staff, then the game, over a lot of this stuff. Lextius in particular was terrible for just seemingly wanting to shaft players, win a narrow victory? Now time to describe the aftermath in a way that makes it clear you really lost! A player character could respond to some crisis in an entirely optimal way taking advantage of pre planning and resources put in place to cover the eventuality and he would still try to work out how they were going to lose.

Actually that happened on Vargo, Custodius (not the most popular example I know) responded to hints that there might be a famine by immediately buying up all of the available grain using his character's entire savings, then storing it in his already existing fortress granaries so that he could feed his vassals. He also allocated a substantial proportion of his troops to guarding shipments, struck deals with guild PCs to buy/transport the stuff, etc. I mean it was frankly the best set of responses possible to the situation and I still had to argue Lextius out of trying to 'Get' him.

[Arkandel]

I don't know who Lextius is but just from that, I hate him.

Alright, I don't hate him, but damn is that ever the wrong way to run a game. Punish your players for playing intelligent, proactive characters. Good job there.

[Apollonius]

@Packrat My entire time was spent dealing with Chiaka conspiring with Amber and/or Custodius to either lead a full on coup or strip away my baronies and then P and Lex started metastacking the Curia against Lyov and Antonio in favor of Renaud and Amber. Lyov also didn't have that much Psi. He could read the entire room and that was about it.

I got feelers on the traitor baron at Newbridge but he was barely on when I was on to RP in the first place. Also bear in mind that Newbridge handed over Sidon to the Kurgans well after Lyov went native into Sathraist lands and Lyov gave a public Fuck You announcement that was pretty much interspersed with me giving the staff a Fuck You OOCly. Stuff about second chances and people deserving nothing but bullshit. I don't think Newbridge was in a serious position to revolt against the Decados while Lyov was in charge and I got the opinion that Newbridge was about to idle out IRL. He wouldn't log in for weeks, although he did have a weird offshore job. Anyway, he took advantage of the confusion that resulted after I had been effectively forced out of the game or otherwise be helpless while P and Lex tore apart Lyov as a PC. Good for him. Well, and staff screwing over @bored .

And the Curia votes were stacked. I have entire logged conversations somewhere in an old HDD where P practically cops out to it but handwaves it based on game balance and the importance of telling a story, much less testimony from other staffers. At a certain point in time, Auberry and Outrejoyeaux were brimming with PC activity while Leon and Johburg were languishing because Amber had driven out most of the activity in her county and all of Custodius' peons from elsemu* got bored and idled out. P and Lex rewarded them with a free hand at Curia votes and loyal subjects while the rest of us got dust storms and pirates... in part thanks to Chiaka. There was a point where it was mathematically impossible to stop Amber from pushing through stuff with the Curia and I was told either to assassinate her and be caught for treason, or to deal with it and see Auberry dismantled or handed off to Chiaka. Screw that.

So Lyov, thanks to his dad, was supposed to be filthy rich per background and P's assertions because said dad was milking the treasury of Akko for years. But when faced with giving me actual numbers, both P and Lex gave me the run around and they implied I barely had more troops than some of the wealthier baronies.

[deadculture]

@Apollonius That guy takes the prize for the Well Done, Traitorous Douchebag Award. And he took full advantage of OOC timing, with Amber's blessing if I had to guess.

@Packrat said:

Well I will go on record as having quit staff, then the game, over a lot of this stuff. Lextius in particular was terrible for just seemingly wanting to shaft players, win a narrow victory? Now time to describe the aftermath in a way that makes it clear you really lost! A player character could respond to some crisis in an entirely optimal way taking advantage of pre planning and resources put in place to cover the eventuality and he would still try to work out how they were going to lose.

Actually that happened on Vargo, Custodius (not the most popular example I know) responded to hints that there might be a famine by immediately buying up all of the available grain using his character's entire savings, then storing it in his already existing fortress granaries so that he could feed his vassals. He also allocated a substantial proportion of his troops to guarding shipments, struck deals with guild PCs to buy/transport the stuff, etc. I mean it was frankly the best set of responses possible to the situation and I still had to argue Lextius out of trying to 'Get' him.

I can't really complain about being mistreated by staff (once I learned how to write a background the way they like I got, what I think was hands down one of the best characters in the game excepting Antonio) even if I did majorly get shafted by Lextius at some critical juncture. Silver linings, of course. Momoko/alzie's complaint is entirely valid because Lextius liked to fucking misdirect under pretense of giving 'unique perspective' of the characters to the fight.

Amber was perhaps the most unpleasant person to talk to, aside of Custodius, I'd ever met in my time in the hobby.

However, part of the negative aspects to that game was watching some of my online friends start to drift apart as a result of the politics that got mixed with OOC manipulation and too much interaction, to be honest. That was a bummer.

[Apollonius]

@deadculture Paulus and Lextius probably watched with glee as RL friendships got torn apart by their lies and manipulations. It's just a game, but the reality is that there are real people behind those computer screens and they reveled in their ability to cause discord and engineer real humans to behave in ways that were destructive and hurtful.

It's like the movie Pandorum.

[bored]

@Apollonius I'm not sure what you mean about me being happy or not happy with what you did with Chiaka. I didn't dislike either of you especially. You both had moments where you were annoying as fuck, but I'm sure you thought the same of me and that's just par for the course MUing. I'd play with either of you again (Chiaka was actually on my L5R game for the while it lasted). I wouldn't hand you some big cheese char as you never even seemed to be the 'activity generator' that P claimed, but then again I'm not big on feature slots generally. Games I've worked on have always pretty much been coded cgen, you can have what you buy - there's really no other way to do it fairly. If I wanted different degrees of power/influence, I'd do a lifepath style thing (not unlike default FS) and work in serious downsides to being higher on the ladder.

Paulus and Lex, I'm going to agree probably have serious issues. I'm not a psychiatrist so I'm not going to throw out some couch diagnosis, but the degree of impulsive, constant lying means something. Same with Custodius on that count. They are people I'd actively avoid playing with in the future, because they're really more poisonous than the average player with their occasional selfishness or drama.

@Apollonius /@deadculture I doubt the Sidon/traitor vassal stuff was really even about anything players were doing or not doing. Your replacement got some hint of it too. I had some hint of it just from my instincts (oh you asked for backup troops for the war and you send guys to my castle? lol ok) and I even double-checked with P about what kind of troops I needed at home to effectively man the castle and be secure against some rear action. He told me, and I kept them there. But then lol KURGANS FROM THE SKY and various other shit, that naturally never worked when PCs did it (Antonio's lander getting foiled every time he tried to use it) but totally crushed me. So I really doubt you, I, Olivia, or the traitor player even mattered much. If the traitor player hadn't been there, it would have been some NPC, and the Kurgans probably still would have conquered me from the sky, or some other shit would have happened. Because that was the story they wanted to tell.

[bored]

I'll add, I wouldn't have even minded the loss of Sidon if he didn't also cheap out on the actual battlefield victory. Compared to Renaud, Amber, and that Li Halan guy staff couldn't stop jerking off to, who never once got serious opposition and were fighting literal 'you have to crit fail to lose' battles for the entire duration of the game, P threw a comparable top-statted enemy general with a doomstack of troops at me. We had a bunch of PCs work together to raise troops to fight and won the battle on 2 out of 3 rolls. Yet that did nothing because of P's arbitrary 'oh its medieval combat there's not many casualties' rulings (despite part of the battle being described as me leading a charge right into the side of an isolated flank, and giving specific orders for my cavalry-heavy knightly army to chase down routed troops). So the victory meant less than zilch, despite being something that had been building for my entire tenure on the game.

So that was the issue. They told one sided stories. It was never you win some, you lose some, it was you look like you win a little and then LOL WHOOPS NOPE THAT WAS BAD FOR YOU HUH? The funny thing is, from what I could tell most of the playerbase was telling them this for months. I won't say the players were always super mature, but I think they would have tolerated some losses if they ever got any gains to match them. It's just that somehow that side of the equation, despite being in P's mission statement, never seemed to make it into play.

[Alzie]

@bored Paulus had a mission statement? I think this is the first I've ever head of it. Was it 'If it ain't imploding it ain't shit?'

[silentsophia]

@bored said:

So that was the issue. They told one sided stories. It was never you win some, you lose some, it was you look like you win a little and then LOL WHOOPS NOPE THAT WAS BAD FOR YOU HUH? The funny thing is, from what I could tell most of the playerbase was telling them this for months. I won't say the players were always super mature, but I think they would have tolerated some losses if they ever got any gains to match them. It's just that somehow that side of the equation, despite being in P's mission statement, never seemed to make it into play.

I remember that. It felt like some folks ran into things and just never seemed to win. Sofia had a fairly mixed bag and I really do have shitty dice. And yeah, I was in a few scenes with Chiaka. She didn't handle losing well.

[Usekh]

I can't remember which admin it was, but it was towards the end of Vargo. Anyway I got the distinct feeling that whatever my character did they had a story they wanted to tell their way and I was pretty much window dressing. And sure enough none of my chars actions mattered for shit.

[Packrat]

To be entirely fair, the Kurgan dropping from the sky were not actually made up for the occasion, there was a huge spreadsheet with available Kurgan troops, quick cheat sheets for the positions and skill levels of their commanders, etc. They actually only had 2/3 the military strength of the known worlders with a very similar proportion of 'fancy stuff'. That contingent of power armoured guys had been hanging around in orbit on the station since the game started.

Of course almost all of them actually fought as a single side instead of being at each others throats thanks to the political situation having been deliberately structured to cause internal conflicts. Combine that with the aforementioned 'You won the battle? Well it does not matter!" Tendencies already mentioned, for maximum effect. Also almost all of the Kurgan leaders were as good as the best player character commanders.

I do find it weird that Paulus tried to claim minimal losses from a victory in particular, he loved outrageous casualty rates, I know that Caelwyn lost almost a quarter of his troops in a battle he won for example and that was with the enemy badly outnumbered.

[bored]

@Alzie said:

@bored Paulus had a mission statement? I think this is the first I've ever head of it. Was it 'If it ain't imploding it ain't shit?'

Well, early on, when the game just opened and (I think?) well before you joined, there were a lot of times he spent hanging around on channel talking about the feel of the game they were going for. He emphasized a lot of things to make it more realistically (in FS, lol?) feudal. Vassals not being your strict minions to order around, small engagements that made a single knight with a band of men a meaningful force, limited casualties, and particularly a lot of back and forth with smaller fiefs being lost and regained. OK.

He just didn't keep to most of it, or he made sure those things only applied when they were harmful, not when they were helpful. The small engagement thing was an outright lie, it was doomstacks or nothing. A single knight (or even baron's) forces were insignificant because the counts literally had orders of magnitude more stuff. The feudal disloyalty stuff, well, it definitely happened, but instead of letting that be natural (it's not like MUers won't bicker like rabid wolverines anyway) he specifically lied to people or just outright encouraged them to be rebellious. The casualty thing was applied with no consistency at all as already pointed out. The 'back and forth' mostly meant no one could make gains OTHER than the main plot force, which was all Renaud/Renaud's daddy NPC/etc. You saw that with the Ghilat stuff, where as soon as Antonio won land, they came and took some away (and made damn sure you lost no matter what you did).

@Packrat I'm sure the Kurgan assault lander existed on a spreadsheet somewhere, but that's not the point. The point is when the enemy used it, it worked cinnematically as this super scary doomdrop. When the players used one, it would either have no special effect beyond moving 100 troops around sorta quickly (which was meaningless when everything was 3-5k troops on a side) or... there was that time staff made a magic sandstorm that vetoed it completely. So there's no 'entirely fair' at play there, at all.

[Alzie]

@bored To be fair, I wasn't even mad about Ghilat. I didn't even know electrified shock spike clubs were a thing. I learned that electrified shock spike clubs were a thing. Electrified shock spike clubs should be a thing more often.