A Post-Mortem for Kingsmouth

[Tempest]

RfK's players seriously drank the Kool Aid.

Alzie is batshit crazy, nothing new there.

[Misadventure]

Most of the fun on a game is partaking of a consensual belief that there is fun to be had and you are having it. The fun isn't an illusion, but you can certainly talk yourself out of it, even when it is perfectly fair and healthy fun. Attitude does a lot to how you perceive the world.

[Groth]

@Misadventure said:

Most of the fun on a game is partaking of a consensual belief that there is fun to be had and you are having it. The fun isn't an illusion, but you can certainly talk yourself out of it, even when it is perfectly fair and healthy fun. Attitude does a lot to how you perceive the world.

Yes, you'll never have fun on any game if you can't bring yourself to enjoy it on its own terms.

[Tempest]

This post is deleted!

[Alzie]

@Tempest said:

RfK's players seriously drank the Kool Aid.

Alzie is batshit crazy, nothing new there.

That kool aid was tasty. I see you have no response to numbers. It's not a tempest hijack until there's at least one insult slung. We're done here, she'll go away now.

[vanderlylle]

If @Tempest is done tantruming over the fact that some people didn't have the same experiences and/or make the same value judgements as her...

Another thing I really unexpectedly enjoyed about RfK was the lack of RP rooms. Having grown used to people using or creating temp rooms for everything--up to and including using them as actual on-grid sites--it was nice for rp to actually be happening on the grid. I wonder if the redshirt bits were actually a step backward in that respect. On the one hand, they were really useful for finishing up a scene that ran long, or doing something casual during a spammy event, or if I had two scenes I needed to do and only one time slot that the people involved could make. On the other, I wonder if it would have slowed the breakneck pace and the burnout rate sometimes if I were having to spread things out more, rather than doubling or tripling up as I know some of us were doing.

As an aside, I really hate the term PvP. PvP is what you do in video game multiplayer. What RfK did well was give many outlets for managed character-vs-character conflict. Hell, I didn't just want to screw with my character's enemies; I made a character who was his own worst enemy and I was looking forward to the opportunity for him to undermine his own allies, even his regnant. (Jealous vice yesss) Coming from there back into the wider WoD world feels almost like games want to discourage characters interacting, for fear something, anything, might happen.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Tempest
Ok since you didn't answer the first time. Name one instance on any WoD game old or new where you used Allies in a matter that made any difference?
I hardly drank any Kool-aid, look at my posts on the other threads on RfK I argues quite about against things I did not like. But I will also give credit to things I liked.

[mietze]

@Tempest said:

I'm gonna roll my eyes at the 'tee-hee there was so much going on there was no time for TS'. The reason RfK was so popular for ghouls/mortals is that they could make sex-slave fuckbunnies who, despite only rarely RPing outside of their owner's bedroom, could pretend to be "useful" or brag about their "allies/etc" and roll dice at jobs and off-screen stuff (keyword there being off screen). The same attitude goes for many of the vamp players too.

If you chop off everything after bragging, then isn't that the most common thing said about ghouls, everywhere? You can make a fuckbunny anywhere, and most of the time that is kind of the most meaningful contribution you can make as a PC (social play), unless you're a PrP runner or something.

There will always be super/+ who do nothing but fuck or relationship drama, or never come out of their house, ect. I will say that I actually caught some people who I thought primarily only did that elsewhere out doing things (even RPing!) on RfK.

I am an active, social player who likes to run plots. I've never had a hard time getting lots of rewarding RP elsewhere. However, my experience on RfK was the opposite of my experience on TR and other places. Probably this is in part because I had over the years become less shy about opening requests and shit like that, and being a little more willing to cold call people for plot involvement oocly as well as ICly. But I believe it was also because ghouls/mortals were more functionally useful than they have been elsewhere. People are fond of talking a great game of how personal story is very important but I do think that PCs are treated with more respect OOCly (sadly, IMO, but I'll take what I can get!) when they are also valuable by the numbers and in a concrete way.

Also, while I respect that you had a very horrible experience there, I think you're conflating "here are the things I think were done right" with "every other game is WRONG." Which isn't the same thing at all.

@vanderlylle I think I could have lived with a couple of RP rooms (so that folks weren't bounced from 'public' areas when a scene had progressed or there was a plot scene where newcomers couldn't join in. It was pretty refreshing to have limited proxies too (though immediately coming from TR I grumbled about it at first), it did seem to improve attentiveness in scenes (though maybe this was just my perception). So I don't have strong feelings about that aspect.

[TiredEwok]

For the most part, I really did enjoy my too-brief time on Requiem (I didn't join until the beginning of May so was only there for a couple months). I think the only complaint I have is that there was very little of the bigger-picture kind of thing for anyone playing a non-ghoul/thrall to get into. Other than that, I had a blast, made some awesome friends and ran into old friends I've played with on other games, and got to have some very excellent RP on top of it all.

[Shears]

I had an amazing time as Hailey the ghoul. I was more active than any of my regnants, and rather than being bored or stuck with casual RP, I wound up getting into a bunch of plot, to the point where Shavalyoth actually wrote me into the metaplot so I had a very major personal stake in it. The plot affected everyone on grid and what I was doing mattered, whether people knew about it or not.

What's more, in addition to being one of the plottiest people, I was able to provide all kinds of tangible benefits to my regnants when I wasn't trying to save the world, both off screen with rolls, and on with RP. I wheeled and dealed to make sure they got this job offer or that boon. I was able to go out and play politics with the vampires even though I wasn't Empowered to speak, and in almost every case I was treated with ooc respect by all the players I dealt with. I can count on one hand the number of times I was relegated to being furniture, and I was averaging ten scenes a week.

[Bristled Thistle]

RfK was amazing. If Shav had any faults in her implementation, it was in the vein of stuff that would lead to burnout. Oh, and that she never TSed with me. <.<

[OrcRiot]

Reviving an old thread, whatever.

Yay that the staff is working on a new game. I'm excited, but I'm also scared. Kingsmouth closed fast. There really wasn't any warning for people who didn't pop on every day. I got sick for about a week or so, everything seemed fine. Came back and the doors had been slammed shut.

That doesn't leave me with a huge feeling of security regarding this new project. I love what they do, but I don't want to invest the time in it if one day it's just going to be randomly shut down, at least from the players point of view.

I think if you're going to shut a game down you should wind it down and then go out with a bang. Have a earth shattering event. It's less jarring and at least we know it's coming.

[Arkandel]

@DnvnQuinn said:

That doesn't leave me with a huge feeling of security regarding this new project. I love what they do, but I don't want to invest the time in it if one day it's just going to be randomly shut down, at least from the players point of view.

How long was the game running for? (Not a rhetorical question, I don't know).

If staff has been running a game you liked for say, more than a year, and they've been active in that time that's a pretty impressive span of time. Would you begrudge your friend running a great long campaign in their living room for ending it because the circumstances of their lives changed?

Enjoy it while it lasts, and make sure to say thanks. Security doesn't play into it unless the game summarily shuts down a month in. We're not owed anything.

[Misadventure]

It doesn't take much to leave a place open for a month just to let folks pack up, make contact outside the MU* with one another etc.

[OrcRiot]

The servers even up. They just walked away, deleted everything and said, sorry we're done. But we're making something else we'll tell you about someday...

[Alzie]

Well the server host decided when he wanted to shut it down but that aside, the game was up for well over a month even after the announcement and I posted the address for the new game the next day and told people to hop over if they wanted. So 'shut it down and ran away' is pretty misleading.

[OrcRiot]

We talking about the same game? The server is still up (everythings gone, if the server host wanted it down, why isn't it?), there's no MOTD message with a link for a new game and I've met people on other games since then who said the same thing about it closing abruptly.I was gone for a while, sick but not that long and they agree it came outta nowhere.

If somehow I traveled time, or was in some sort of illness induced coma..I guess I'm wrong then.

[mietze]

The game itself shut down abruptly. But people hung around on it and ooc chatted for a week or two, got into contact with people they wanted to, ect. The wiki did go away abruptly which kind of sucked, but I think that may have been a payment timing thing (and they did warn about that). But for over a month you could log in to everything intact. So if you left and then came back to "everything's gone, and it was running before" then you were gone for a lot longer than a week or so. Unless by "or so" you meant 5 or 6. If you're looking to get into touch with specific people, I have a lot of people's skypes/where they are right now--and would be happy to get a message to them that you'd like to be in touch. Just PM me with who/and ways they can get into contact with you if they would like to (or post it in the ISO section of soapbox, I'm pretty sure someone can assist. )

[OrcRiot]

Oh I wasn't even talking bout the wiki. Just the game itself. Why would I worry about them shutting the Wiki down on a new project? I said I enjoyed playing on Kingsmouth, but I was concerned they would end the game suddenly.

Lol you edit alot.

I already madee a playlist thing. Listing char-names. I think I'd only wanna catchup with Dara, Kilaria and co.

[mietze]

They may. There's no guarantees except in a game you run yourself, and even then--a lot of people find they need to end things in a way that they didn't anticipate (either abruptly or neglect-fizzle).