Shadows Over Reno
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@Miss-Demeanor said in Shadows Over Reno:
@Arkandel Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.... the situation with Vampire@HM also lead to Elsa taking over both ICly and OOCly... and then doing nothing and not letting go. So while there was an uptick in initial activity, it died out pretty damn quickly... and then killed the sphere completely.
Well, the perfect storm of dinosaur XP and staff altdom is probably not going to be an issue on Reno. What caused the sphere to flare up in the first place though was the self-driven political complexity of all these good roleplayers spread across Covenants - different factions got temporary monopolies on talent (LS at first, then Invictus for a little while, then of course the Carthians) but it was never just one monopolizing interest.
@Apocalycious said in Shadows Over Reno:
I think we have a good set of people in Vampire that mostly means we need just enough staff guidance to let us do our work, and we can probably make plenty of stuff happen and have a great time. I don't think we even need much. Just someone guiding the framework a little bit will go a long way.
I agree. Even if we had a bit more information on the setting... but what's on the wiki and that one bbpost is really barebones and generic (two NPCs' biographies and a few names, no other information, for Primogen) it could be really handy. That there have been +events scheduled since the game opened then kept being cancelled and postponed since hasn't helped much either, I think only one of them actually took place.
In my time on Reno so far I've only seen one open PrP for Vampire actually ran: Cobalt's.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel That's true enough, for now at least. XP accrues pretty quickly on Reno, so dinosaur XP can still happen. BUT... yes, at least for awhile it will make for some great ability for players to really shape the spheres.
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I may run PrPs for Hunter in the future... But I can't make any promises. My RL is such that I barely have time to RP, period, it seems.
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@Arkandel said in Shadows Over Reno:
@mietze See, Reno's situation reminds me a bit of Vampire@HM - it was kinda like that. Very little staff intervention but a good cast of characters spread out across at least a couple of Covenants... and once people realized that yes, there was nothing governing their steps or hand-feeding them roleplay but there was also nothing in the way of doing with the sphere as they bloody well liked, they took over. The results were great.
That was the intent with 1.0, too, and it was working well enough until RfK closed, at which point the very word 'sandbox' became a pointed insult, and a large percentage of the folks who had been around a while puttering along and enjoying what you're describing above got driven out by a shit-ton of negativity and insistence that everything change to fit the new crowd and what they had been accustomed to elsewhere.
When attempts to do something like that happened, the IC power split was spread around to both camps, but it felt artificial, awkward, and was generally full of head-scratch-inspiring bullshit -- the usual cronyism, gossip games, back-stabbery, and so on. (I mean the OOC kind, not the IC kind.)
Being very much a fan of the kind of environment @Arkandel is describing, provided it has enough reasonable oversight to prevent the kind of stifling roadblocks that @Miss-Demeanor is describing, well, I hope it will happen this time without a repeat of the last go 'round.
@tragedyjones had a season plot for vamp at one point; all but the smallest handful of people completely ignored it. Weresphere actually had a metaplot; see above, wash, rinse, repeat. Entirely unintentionally, they linked up in a way that was pretty neat, too, and that caused some cool tensions and conflicts, as a lingering thing from the few scenes run regarding each. TJ ran a few, Hazard ran a few, I ran one for TJ's and a handful for mine. Some were +events, a number of them were pickup scenes, because since the place was relatively small, folks were happy to either run stuff for each other when asked, or with fairly minimal scheduling.
I'd like to see that happen somewhere, frankly, because that's a good vibe. It'll be a while before I'm off my ass enough to get anything done myself, so hopefully Reno will get there.
Oh fucking well.
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If Wendigo asks me I'll flesh out the Vampire sphere with some stuff and/or things. But I do hope the game takes off, people want to play!
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@surreality said in Shadows Over Reno:
When attempts to do something like that happened, the IC power split was spread around to both camps, but it felt artificial, awkward, and was generally full of head-scratch-inspiring bullshit -- the usual cronyism, gossip games, back-stabbery, and so on. (I mean the OOC kind, not the IC kind.)
Being very much a fan of the kind of environment @Arkandel is describing, provided it has enough reasonable oversight to prevent the kind of stifling roadblocks that @Miss-Demeanor is describing, well, I hope it will happen this time without a repeat of the last go 'round.
You know what the problem is with this kind of environment, which I do enjoy very much myself? It's very hard to intentionally create as staff since it depends on a set of conditions which are difficult to plan for; it doesn't need to be a perfect storm but it's tricky.
So - for example - you need your major paragons to be spread out a bit, and that works exactly the other way on MU*; the typical case is that people see activity in a faction and flock to it ("hey, LS looks active, some people I know are playing there, I'm'a gonna roll there too!") which results in one overly inflated super-dominant group and others decaying in its shadow. Worse, not only are challenging sphere politics hard to portray realistically when there are 12 people in LS and 2-3 everywhere else but the internal politics in LS can easily lead to more drama since there are only so many positions for all those people.
To fix this staff would need to be pretty proactive, offering incentives as needed for people to roll elsewhere - and I don't mean the easy, cheap kind ("here's 4 XPs if you roll Crones, guys!"). I mean actually going to good players you know are rolling and talking them into the exciting possibilities that could be found there ("our upcoming plot will feature Crones prominently").
But yeah, Reno isn't there yet. What it needs is work, polishing things up and giving people things to do. Sandbox is a fancy way of saying players are responsible for their own fun but right now that's a bit tricky because we know so little about the setting. There isn't enough thematic consistency for us to share the world, so either we need to be put squarely in the drivers' seat or staff has to give a more concrete framework of what's out there.
At the moment I can't tell you which Clan my character's Primogen is from or what the relations between Crones and the Ordo Dracul are like in Reno. That makes it really hard to portray politics with any degree of complexity.
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@Cobaltasaurus No I am not approved. I could not spend XP at all, I could not go IC, I could do /nothing/. So no, you are wrong. When I left I was absolutely in a position where I'd been sitting for a RL WEEK and other people who app'd after me had been approved, because I was waiting for an approval, after I was requested to add my Kuruth triggers in a note, which I did 2 hours after the request was made THAT MORNING.
So no, don't try and put this on me.
K thx.
@Arkandel said in Shadows Over Reno:
@Lithium The problem with all this isn't that you are wrong. It's that you are neglecting to mention the fact staff has repeatedly said as much - they are having issues finding people to handle jobs, and are unable to meet the volume of +jobs.
In other words we haven't been promised anything else than what we're given. If you don't like it you can walk away - I don't mean that in a flippant fashion or as a flame but .... what do you expect them to do?
The cards are on the table. Stay or go.
There is a delay, and then there is waiting so long for approval from one tiny note. I've not once neglected to mention that Wendigo had two deaths in the family, in fact I mentioned that in my beginning posts on the topic, and how I wasn't trying to be impatient because I get it.
So yeah, quit trying to say I'm doing shit I'm not.
Also: I am definitely gone already, so no worries there.
Hello! Long time listener, first time caller...
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@Lithium Okay, cool. I was mistaken.
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sigh.
It was just pointed out to me that the PrP I thought I had scheduled for tomorrow was actually scheduled for next week... because of course I fucked up the dates.
G'dammit. I wonder if it's too late to reschedule it for tomorrow anyway.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@Arkandel See if you can get in touch with the players and check. If they're not available, schedule a related 'prequel' scene for it tomorrow? You may end up getting more people then interested in the one you already have on the books for next week, too.
Oh fucking well.
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Yet another staff-scheduled +event was rescheduled an hour before it was supposed to be ran last night. There have been several of those - in fact I don't know that any has been ran.
I'm just a bit more irritated about this one because there was no post or other warning about it, and I went to a matinée show earlier so I could be there for it.
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Mmm. On the one hand, I don't think the game is officially 'open' yet - I get the feeling that the events are meant to kickstart things, and if staff is too otherwise occupied with RL/OOC, I'd rather they push the events back until they can devote the resources to it instead of starting things then letting them stagnate.
On the other, a quick glance of the people who've signed up for the Werewolf one, that has gotten pushed back once or twice already, shows a number of folks who haven't logged in for a week or two, if not longer; so it looks like people are either losing interest or just finding other stuff to do.
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@Killer-Klown said in Shadows Over Reno:
Mmm. On the one hand, I don't think the game is officially 'open' yet - I get the feeling that the events are meant to kickstart things, and if staff is too otherwise occupied with RL/OOC, I'd rather they push the events back until they can devote the resources to it instead of starting things then letting them stagnate.
I will never hold staff (not just here but anywhere) on what they haven't promised or specifically said they can't handle. So for instance I can't begrudge Reno's management for being unable to handle +jobs in a timely manner because, well, they already posted they can't. Nor can I hold them accountable if they don't go over Secrets of the Covenants soon and make them available in-game since they never claimed they would. If those things happen then great and if they don't... well, I can have my money back.
But this isn't those cases. If even as a regular player I schedule an +event for 20:00 on Tuesday I'll either be there for it or I'm going to make my damnest sure to post well ahead of time it's not going to happen because it affects people's RL schedules. It's just common courtesy, and in this case it wasn't observed.
On the other, a quick glance of the people who've signed up for the Werewolf one, that has gotten pushed back once or twice already, shows a number of folks who haven't logged in for a week or two, if not longer; so it looks like people are either losing interest or just finding other stuff to do.
What comes first,+events full of people who've left to find other stuff to do or people who find other stuff to do because +events don't take place?
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I have to agree with @Arkandel in this case, to a point. I don't mind if people cancel scenes they were going to run because something came up. I don't even mind that much if they cancel at the last minute... occasionally.
I do start to mind if they're regularly canceling at the last minute, though. I often plan my day around things like +events. If I'm signed up for an +event, I've quite likely declined other plans, missed out on other opportunities, etc in order to be there. They might just be other fun-time, relatively unimportant things, but the point stands. Maybe I declined going on a raid in WoW, or to a movie with friends, or whatever else.
For me personally, I would rather not have events planned at all, or have them canceled a day or more earlier because the ST probably can't make it, than have them canceled just before they're supposed to happen because they ST waited until the last minute to be sure whether they could or not.
If it happens every once in a while that's fine. Shit happens, and sometimes people don't know before hand that they're unlikely to be able to make it. When it becomes a repeated pattern it starts to look less like last minute things popped up just this once, and more like someone not being respectful of the time that others have committed.
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The next (social) scene featuring a meeting between Reno's Uratha and Kindred is set for this Friday night. Wendigo is bringing some NPCs along for the ride.
If it's canceled I'll do my best to let you know beforehand though.
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Sniff. Of course it would be on a Friday.
