Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows

[Steel]

@Kanye-Qwest It was a joke. Do I figure people will have things to say about Staff playing FCs? Yes. I do. But that was meant incredibly light hearted. The game, though, wasn't designed for that. I see much more plot on my OC than I do on Fenris, to be perfectly honest with you.

@Thenomain Right now, Fenris basically just is hiding out. Now, the canon timeline does not dictate the timeline of S&S, so he, theoretically, could meet Hawke earlier than that. Thus far, Hawke is yet to hit grid, so he hasn't, but he /could./ Right now, he's mostly just about being a merc, and in grid rooms to stir rp. And for late night rp when I have time to kill. (I don't sleep. I have a lot of downtime. I basically always have at least one scene going in the background.)

[Thenomain]

@Steel said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

the canon timeline does not dictate the timeline of S&S

And lo, on that day doth Thenomain say, "Yeah, no, good luck with this game and all but this peeves me right off. I refuse to play a game that won't stick to canon, and if the website doesn't say in loud bold letters, we are not sticking to canon, then you should or you're misleading your potential player base, and that's what peeves me right off."

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@Arkandel said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

@Thenomain Do you consider the discussion of whether those toys should exist at all a separate one?

Toys exist. There is always a situation where staff can give more consideration, directly or indirectly, to any given player or to themselves. What they are is part of the discussion of staff favoritism, yes. Buying someone a cookie is not the same as buying them a Porsche.

[bored]

@Arkandel said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

@Thenomain said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

Morbid, hell, I think it should be required information. Knowing the perks of staffing is one of the checks against staff taking more advantages than players, or getting in the way of players having fun.

Yes, but in my experience - which admittedly might be anecdotal - the problem is less staff alts (staff tend to be pretty busy and can't play their own games very consistently) and more staff friends, which is a different issue altogether. Because then what is a 'staff friend' defined by? A good reliable player? Their buddy? RL bf/gf? To some extent any player trusted to play an important feature character has to be at least known by staff.

And that's without even factoring the subjectivity and petty jealousy some players are naturally inclined to demonstrate in MU*. Did Theno get given Hawke which I wanted? That fucker is obviously TSing/sucking up to staff.

This is basically why I am universally anti-feature (in the sense being discussed here, again, the comic sense is something else).

No matter how much staff promises its fair, no matter how much they say it's good players getting the slots, its going to be their friends (even if just by virtue of their friends knowing about the game first) and it's going to turn into a muddy mess. Even generally ethical people have trouble telling close friends (let alone SOs etc) 'no', or will just have distorted perceptions of how much favoritism they're really showing.

[Arkandel]

@bored See, while we agree on the approach I look at it from a different direction as well; that if FCs are important then staff ultimately has to pick the best players for it and who can they trust other than people they know and respect? In that scenario it actually is in the game's interest to make the right pick that way, so it's the price for it that makes it important for them to not have to pick at all.

The same way applies to high IC ranks. If you are choosing a Prince of course you'll want to grab the best player available (which by definition means 'among people you know well'), so of course it will be seen as favoritism and treated negatively by some. It's neater to keep an NPC at the position to steer theme and avoid the whole damn mess in the first place.

[bored]

@Arkandel Sure. Your argument is effectively @Ganymede's argument that we've had on this topic elsewhere.

I don't disagree with your conclusion, I just stress that you avoid the problem by addressing that 'if'. If FCs are important? Are they ever justifed for all the crapton of BS they cause?

In my MUing history, the answer is a resounding no. Can I think of good RPers who were good on FCs? Sure. But not one of those games didn't also have total jackasses on them too, or have the good ones still be elitist twats, or any other number of problems. I just don't see a benefit to MUing caste systems, which is what this shit boils down to: an elite caste of players, and then a bunch of shmucks.

And the members of this elite caste? Maybe slightly better RPers than average who are maybe are less dickish than average, all based on the totally unbiased judgment of their closest buddies.

So yeah, fuck all of that noise, every single time. If 'feature' roles are important to the theme, OK, but every single player needs to qualify for them alongside their pleb alts. That's the only way it's not a nepotistic shitshow, every single time.

[OrcRiot]

Well, the opinion here seems to be overwhelmingly anti FC, the person making the game doesn't seem open to changing his mind (which is fine, it's his game, in the end, he can do whatever), now we just sit back and wait to see how this actually turns out.

[Arkandel]

@DnvnQuinn It's not MSB's role to dictate anything to game-runners, it's only to provide an environment to express opinions. If this MU* succeeds more power to them.

[OrcRiot]

@Arkandel I didn't say that, in fact I said quite the opposite.

[Thenomain]

@bored said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

I don't disagree with your conclusion, I just stress that you avoid the problem by addressing that 'if'. If FCs are important? Are they ever justifed for all the crapton of BS they cause?

Yes.

@Thenomain said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

Having run an audition-based book-character game (TwoMoons, an ElfQuest game), I can verify that [auditions are] a good idea. And with only five to eight book characters to monitor, it just means the staff has to be involved with the game.

Edit mine. About a third or a fourth the characters we had on the grid were "book characters" (here called "feature characters" tho the two terms are not synonymous) and the only drama that arose was when we told the players that the action was too far outside the personality of the characters and they weren't allowed to do that.

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I'm now with the people who are saying that Hawke is such a non-entity for the player to fall into that it might as well be anyone. I was shrugging eh-whatever until I read (and missed from an earlier post) that they were not following the game. Unfortunately I doubt they're not going to explain why Merrill went from a kind of hard-assed Second to a timid mouse, but there was so much wrong with Dragon Age 2 that I'm happy to have the latter.

And of course Quinn has a point: Whatever we think of it, the game's going this way.

And of course there's the middle point: Discussing the merits and foibles of feature, book, and roster characters are the raison d'être of this board. Well, one of the raisons. Just maybe in another thread.

Mm, raisins...

[deadculture]

I'm with @bored in that feature characters are not always awarded in an objective manner. Auditions or not, your friends or people you like best will receive first consideration, and everyone else will get a declining scale to the very last.

This is especially so when Features do not, and I suppose these are my conditions for a FC to even be playable: 1. have a specific, defined role within the setting (Hawke is an open book, Shepard is an open book -- neither of which make for great feature characters. Hell, none of the Dragon Age main characters do.), 2. are temporary (let's say, they'll last a story cycle and the player could get a XP award for finishing the cycle instead of persisting on keeping the character), 3. Could be possibly foiled/defeated within the context of the story by original characters (because what you want here is the promotion of roleplay, not the creation of near-invincible epic characters), 4. have goals the FC's player must attain before the cycle is over. Even if it's just to set everything around 'em on fire.

Tiers are things I've always disagreed with. While it's nice that people should be awarded XP for running PrPs, giving them more experience points at character generation to do so isn't exactly going to guarantee that. Experience Points rewards for running PrPs could be more substantial, instead, as that will be a greater incentive for all to ST at some point or another.

[bored]

@Thenomain said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

@bored said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

I don't disagree with your conclusion, I just stress that you avoid the problem by addressing that 'if'. If FCs are important? Are they ever justifed for all the crapton of BS they cause?

Yes.

I think history is against you. I'd love to hear some examples of them being actual net positives on games, in ways that just as easily couldn't have been accomplished by characters who didn't get a bunch of lolzy 'I win 4 free' stats, or with more egalitarian availability of upper and lower tier characters.

[Thenomain]

@bored

It's all about the approach and the players. But like I said, worth another thread to discuss.