The Eighth Sea - Here There Be Monsters

[TiredEwok]

I am sorry I haven't been more active as my PC. I was hoping to really get into RP but then life kept interfering and robbed me of any real brain power.

[WildBaboons]

My problem was that no one was around to RP with when I could RP most of the time and all the events were scheduled for times I wasn't able to get to so I never really got a feel for what the game was intended to be about. Aside from bar RP about future food/supply scarcity wasn't sure what do to with myself

[Pondscum]

I had a similar experience to @WildBaboons. Timezone issues meaning activity was low when I was able to play, and events being mostly EST evening making it early hours of the morning for me.

[Arkandel]

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

I had a similar experience to @WildBaboons. Timezone issues meaning activity was low when I was able to play, and events being mostly EST evening making it early hours of the morning for me.

Which now that I think about it is a separate issue, and maybe something staff here can look into and tweak.

T8S, by its current nature, is very dependent on PrPs; there are no obvious venue for characters to generate their own roleplay in everyday RP, at least not before a critical mass of stuff has already happened they can draw from.

It's in many ways the same pitfall as say, Werewolf games run into. If there are no NPCs to fight, since there are no IC politics and other kinds of goals, what do people do?

It's fixable, though.

[Lithium]

I will send a PM as requested. @Seraphim73.

[surreality]

I made sure I didn't fall off into Davy Jones' Locker of freeze the other day for a reason: this place is lovely, and the people on it have been universally lovely. (Well, except that one dude that promptly got banned for being a creepshow, but that again speaks volumes as to a place's awesome factor.)

Holidays, then got sucked into the Reno HALP!!! wiki hell (which is still not done but the frenzy of yanking before mechanipus closed is over so it's slowed), then just a combination of things has my 'head not where it should be, focus on code, not games' switch flipped to code. I stay off games when I don't trust my chill to be totally solid, or my general ability to people is expended. (Holidays have a way of doing that.)

They did a beautiful job with this place, and way more people should try it. People are friendly, chill, and it was never hard to get involved in things. It's pretty easy to set up a character, and I'm impressed with how things are set up. People were massively helpful when it came to getting set up, too; I'd not tried any games using any of faraday's systems before and it was easy to pick up for a new-systems-averse person.

(Yeah, this is the 'is secretly trying somewhere' place. I don't publicly share alts on MSB any more, but if you also are there and want names to ensure you never have to be in the same room with me on a game or something, PM and I'll let you know; I'm chill with that. One's only ever been IC once, the other was around a bit; so far as I know, neither stepped on anybody's toes, face, or any other bits IC or OOC. Needless to say, if you ever asked somebody if they could play and 'I wish I could but omg I have so much code to fight today! I will nudge the moment I get through it!' that was probably me, and I'm still slogging through code even now. )

[tek]

I love my characters and I love you guys, I'm just having trouble with momentum and finding things to do and people to play with.

[Scissors]

I am also very appreciative of the staff there, as well as the work put into the presentation of the game. S'why I made sure to let them I know when I left, and explained why I left. For me the problem primarily was a mismatch of expectations. I love pirates as a theme, and when I see the word "Pirates" I am thinking of typical Hollywood tropes; unfortunately for me, the game doesn't focus on the things I was looking for.

@Seraphim73 did tell me a couple of times that staff do have plans for more regular Pirate-y plots down the road, so there is hope yet.

[Ganymede]

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

They did a beautiful job with this place, and way more people should try it. People are friendly, chill, and it was never hard to get involved in things. It's pretty easy to set up a character, and I'm impressed with how things are set up. People were massively helpful when it came to getting set up, too; I'd not tried any games using any of faraday's systems before and it was easy to pick up for a new-systems-averse person.

I definitely second this. The folks are reasonable, and by that I mean they are helpful to newbies and quick to address problem players with prejudice.

[RnMissionRun]

I made a character and everything but between my hectic work schedule and the place not being terribly active, I never actually played. I might give it another go after the holiday season, when I have more free time.

[Arkandel]

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

I definitely second this. The folks are reasonable, and by that I mean they are helpful to newbies and quick to address problem players with prejudice.

Agreed. I'd definitely give this game another chance if some tweaks are made, because they really do have a lot of potential. Everything is in place for the MU* to succeed - staff, code, wiki... it just needs a little more oomph.

[Pondscum]

I wasn't sure where the game would go when the monsters were beaten. Would the island continue floating around forever? What then? Or would the characters always be fighting monsters?

[Seraphim73]

Edited to Add:
To everyone who responded: Thank you, we'll take a look over the input, and see what sort of tweaks we can make. Unfortunately, timezones are hard for Blu and I, but we're looking at bringing on a couple more GMs to help spread events out and keep them moving.

Original Post:
@pondscum We're going to be talking about that with folks on the game, so I don't feel bad sharing it here, but the plan was always to have the PCs figure out who caused Tortuga to be drawn into the Spirit World and to figure out how to get it back into the Real World (we had no specific plans on how the latter would happen because we wanted to be able to go with whatever the characters came up with). The trip to the Spirit World and back would allow the monsters access to the Real World again, but there would also be more pirate-y stuff available. The intent was to use the time in the Spirit World to try to weld the disparate PC groups (Reavers, Santiagos, Impudents, and Shore-folks) together so that they had reason not to go after each other (on a ship-wide scale, we're totally okay with individual CvC) once they got back to the Real World.

[Arkandel]

@seraphim73 Spoilers!

[Seraphim73]

@arkandel Yup. I don't have a huge deal spoiling general ideas that we have. It's the methods and characters that will (hopefully) be interesting. There are a couple of things about the Spirit World (and any presumptive return to the Real World) that I definitely don't want to spoil though.

[Roz]

I apped a character and then promptly never played like an ASSHOLE. I'm one of the people who doesn't LOVE the trend towards reducing/erasing grids in favor of a bunch more flex/temp rooms. I find actual grids to be part of my immersion and how I get to know the game. T8S has what I'd call a reduced grid, which isn't as big an issue for me as it'd be with a 100% flex grid type of thing, but I felt a little more unsure about exploring, it felt harder to figure out geography etc. THAT SAID, that's not necessarily anything against the game as it is just how I personally like grids, and also I totally did not work that hard to dive in. I've gotten a bit spoiled playing on a much bigger game and I've gotten used to the methods of finding RP there and got super out of the habit of other methods.

So really it was me, not you.

[Arkandel]

@roz You are the anti-Arkandel. I hate large grids. I get lost.

[Roz]

@arkandel I mean, I'd say that I like medium grids? I know that some people are pushing the idea that we don't need grids at all, and for me, at least, I definitely wouldn't want to play on a game with no grid. But even touring through T8S's small grid, I didn't really find myself getting a good feel for things.

[WildBaboons]

as an aside, but speaking of grids and flex rooms.. I could not get the scene room system thing to work for the life of me. I don't know if it was a client issue or what, but I could create a scene, but was never able to join it afterwards.. so I just stopped trying to use the system instead of going through teh hassle of figuring it out/getting help

[Seraphim73]

@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).

@WildBaboons I'd be happy to run through things with you to try to figure out what went wrong, whether or not you plan to continue playing on the game (in case you play on an Ares game in the future).