PbP frustration

[cardinalsin]

blackrat said:

then second the discussion should be acted on, but by a small group of characters - say 2 or 3. Obviously they should take the others' opinions into account when doing this, but they can overrule them if they feel it's appropriate. Equally obviously, they should be prepared for possible IC fall-out if they do so.

...

Unless anyone disagrees, I think we should make this policy from now on. (Feel free to disagree, though - not trying to rush to a conclusion.)

I still have slight concerns about pacing and precedence when you have more than two parties interacting. It's a bit like in a session when the loudest person gets to do all the cool stuff, except that in this case it's the person who has the quickest trigger finger and/or the most time on their hands. I think we play by ear, and as part of our discussing what to do we can discuss whether to play it out as an interactive forum thang, play it out as a vignette written by one person, play it out as a mini-session or save it for a full session. Or play over skype. Or send smoke signals. <insert infinite further silly suggestions here>

[greywolf]

Personally I am slightly concern by this too. There has been a great deal of discussion here, with conclusions reached, that I have not been able to contribute to. As someone who does not always have a great deal of opportunity to get on the forum and cannot get on at work when a lot of the discussions / actions take place, I feel a little penalised. All the time I end up spending catching up on what has happened can limit what I am able to contribute and I think it could cause problems under the proposed system - I would need to be made aware independently that I need to get on the forum to give my opinion.

Also, while I can see the simplicity in all deciding together first and 2 or 3 people taking forward the actions taking into account others views, is this not going to add to the huge difference in xp, as for, example I could imagine that LH would almost always be in this group and GW is unlikely to be given his combat focus. Also, as CS highlights, it is likely to lead to those who can get on the forum the most getting to do all the good stuff.

As for the debate on the virtues, (although again this debate has already taken place without me) I feel the starting amount you can spend on this is a little low - 6 points to spend on virtues would be better than 5, perhaps with an agreement to have min comp 2.

[bravesirrobin]

all very good points again.

after the first session for which he was present Oneiros conducted a lot of downtime stuff over email rather than the forum. this works fine for stuff that is done from one PC to the ST or between two PCs (with ST copied in). it's not so effective for group discussions and suchlike.

i felt the very first off-session stuff worked better than subsequent. though we still had issues with the slave trade etc.

my proposal is to move forward in two ways:

1) for me to attempt to end the sessions at points that are more convenient in facilitating individual, non-crucial elements

2) for PbP to remain primarily individual and narrative, leaving group actions for sessions or mini-sessions. responsibility for checking actions with other PCs is reliant on players

the problem with stuff happening on the forum and people not being able to check it as much as they like is never going to go away - unless we did everything over email, which is a much worse alternative in my opinion.

as for the limiting nature of virtues i agree, but i also think this is an issue based on a group commitment to having starting characters with 5s in all major skills etc. i often want to spend more freebies on virtues than i do (my very first exalted character spent 9 freebies on virtues) but always feel my character will be handicapped if I do.

IF I were to give everyone another virtue point to spend - where would people put it? (and for comparison include current spread, easier than checking the character sheet thread).

[oneiros]

I agree to that. The bit about Maluka, whilst fun to weave across the boards, was a fairly significant event that probably should have been handled in session since there were more than 2 PCs involved. I think we can do group PbP but only where there is a firm commitment from those who can regularly post (which in light of current activities probably limits it to BSR, LH and me).

The proposal you put forward in (2) is more than fair to me since I don't want to be part of a problem for the other players in the campaign.

As for the virtues issue, it's not so much about having 5s in everything but more where necessary (I didn't really want Occ 5 but I couldn't have AESS without it and the only other one I have is Medicine) but then as a general player I'm a skills-junkie. I always saw Azir as high Con/high Temp, which unfortunately then pushed Com to the side.

I have a sneaking suspicion that if I'd had an extra VP at the start, hand on heart, it probably would have gone in Temp. Now, well, it would go in Com since Fox (and Kairos to a certain extent) have made compassion based arguments. The rather exponential view of the 5-dot system as outlined by BR *does* seem to put a yawning chasm between 1 & 2 and 2 & 3 in terms of personality portrayal - again which makes it awkward to know how to pitch a char, expecially when the mechanical effects are blended into this.

[Learned Hand]

Taking comp from 1 to 2

[Learned Hand]

greywolf said:

Personally I ams lightly concern by this too. There has been a great deal of discussion here, with conclusions reached, that I have not been able to contribute to. As someone who does not always have a great deal of opportunity to get on the forum and cannot get on at work when a lot of the discussions / actions take place, I feel a little penalised. All the time I end up spending catching up on what has happened can limit what I am able to contribute and I think it could cause problems under the proposed system - I would need to be made aware independently that I need to get on the forum to give my opinion.

But under the proposed system there would be no resoultion of the discussion, or action, until everybody had agreed. Effectively, this would mean we would all wait for you to get on the board before we did anything. This would also mean (I'd assume) that there'd be far fewer posts to catch up on.

greywolf said:

P
Also, while I can see the simplicity in all deciding together first and 2 or 3 people taking forward the actions taking into account others views, is this not going to add to the huge difference in xp, as for, example I could imagine that LH would almost always be in this group and GW is unlikely to be given his combat focus. Also, as CS highlights, it is likely to lead to those who can get on the forum the most getting to do all the good stuff.

I don't see why I'd be on everything. On Sunday everybody broke into groups and I was left in the government building to reroll The Audit whilst you all went around investigating. There will also be story considerations. I might not be on the expedition to Kharadron because I'm currently in Nexus. Besides, I would hope that the fact that I've taken spells which benefit the group at least as much as they benefit me (I chose the ability to guarantee a fertile harvest, rather than the spell which makes glass death fly forth from my fingertips) would go some way into balancing our power-levels.

What's more, there's nothing stopping you starting a thread saying 'I want to take my troops to fight the evil lord of the east. Alone (or you could ask for volunteers). Is everyone ok with this?' Once everyody signs off on it in principal then you have a thread to yourself, which you could even agree with BSR to do over email.

There's also nothing stopping you starting a thread saying I want all 6 of us to interrogate some guy but then hopefully somebody will say either 'I think 2 of us would do it better' or 'then let's wait for a session'.

Once Slavion's tale is over I'm going to set up a road-building scheme in Maluka and whilst you're all welcome to join in, I doubt any of you will. I will, however, check my basic plan with everybody.

greywolf said:

As for the debate on the virtues, (although again this debate has already taken place without me) I feel the starting amount you can spend on this is a little low - 6 points to spend on virtues would be better than 5, perhaps with an agreement to have min comp 2.

O's one-off gave us 6 virtues and that's also the first character I've made who's started with no virtue at 1.

So basically, I agree with everything BSR said, I'm just trying to up-sell it.

[oneiros]

As an aside (apologies), it's quite interesting that this debate goes on over Compassion but not Valour. A wide Temperance disparity in the group prob wouldn't provoke the same passions either, I'd imagine. No real point, just an observation.

[bravesirrobin]

admin said:

O's one-off gave us 6 virtues and that's also the first character I've made who's started with no virtue at 1.

So basically, I agree with everything BSR said, I'm just trying to up-sell it.

I also support that assessment of O'd pentangle creation rules. I love virtues - I often try to have a 1, because I think it leads to interestingness and funness, but I tend to want the other three virtues to all be insanely high.

Also I think that Blackrat makes a good point about us not having a substantial difference between 3, 4 and 5. I would argue this is because we don't play it right - and becuase I don't tend to point out virtue dictates very much. a virtue at 5 shouldn't just be a matter of more dice, it should be quite dangerous really, because if you're not careful it will rule you.

so a question on flavour of the campaign; how much do we want virtues to matter? i more or less willing for them to be a bit of a mechanical difference - and that's basically how we've been playing it up to now, but i think it would be better in some ways for us to include them more heavily?

will probably copy this question into a new thread, to allow a more full discussion.

[Blackrat]

I'm happy with my current spread - Comp 3, Conv 4, Val 2, Temp 1. If I had another point, it wouldn't go in Comp but could easily go in any of the others. First instinct would be to put it in Conviction, probably, but I'd consider Val & Temp as well.

GW - I see your points. However, it's not fair to say this debate has "happened without you". It hasn't finished happening yet, and conclusions have not been reached. If you have objections to any specific conclusion that you think is arising, say so. No-one's instigating any policy until all players have commented and agreed. In fact I specifically said in my last post, "Feel free to disagree, though - not trying to rush to a conclusion". (Excuse the lack of proper quoting.)

I agree that there's a risk that significant PbP usage could favour certain characters. However, provided we ensure that we spread the action round when planning, I think it's easily avoided. We've done combat on the boards before (and, being turn-based, it actually works much better than non-combat stuff, albeit slowly), and I don't see any reason why a combat char can't participate. The whole thing (both discussion and action) will be much slower, yes - but that's a necessity of a PbP system; it has to go slowly enough for everyone to enjoy it.

Alternatively, there's no reason why an "action" PbP can't be arranged to be a small-party live session instead - something which is much better IMO anyway; as we saw last time, large combats are difficult to manage.

The other point you make, that time constraints might harm some people's PbP, is definitely valid. However, that will be a problem whatever we do, unless we decide to ditch the PbP altogether. (Which, frankly, I'd be happy to do.)

Do you have any thoughts on the problems I raised in the first place? Obviously I don't want to ruin anyone else's experience of the forums, but I do also want to improve mine. Do you agree with my concerns? Do you see a way of addressing both them and your own? I begin to feel that the conflict between those who want to PbP regularly and can do so, and those who can't is perhaps irreconcilable.

We certainly need to play it by ear, as CS says. However, GW is concerned that even doing discussion on the boards is unsuitable. So we can't do action on the boards, and we can't do discussion. Where does that leave us?

[cardinalsin]

I'd probably put an extra point in Compassion, partly because of the current discussion, and partly because I never really wanted any level 1 virtues - but felt I needed to get Willpower 6.

On the desire to get 5-point abilities, I think this is basically accurate (though not entirely relevant to how virtues are picked). As it's a bit of a hobby-horse of mine, I'll just say that I think the disparity between the XP costs, the Freebie point costs and the Basic allocations allowed, creates a system that can be gamed. The temptation to game it is hard to resist. As an example, you could start with two skills at 3, and buy one of them up to 5. Or you could start with one skill at 5 and the other at 1, and buy the latter up to 3. The XP saved by taking the latter route is (ignoring the favoured bonus, which in itself is distorting things) 8 XP. That is at least a session's worth of XP! Assume you're making several such decisions at character gen and you're potentially choosing whether to be several sessions behind other characters. IMO the system should be immediately adapted so that starting characters are given XP to spend rather than dots.

Anyway, rant over.

On discussion on the forums, I sympathise with GW. Ok, so the discussion doesn't end until everyone has had the chance to contribute. In reality though, it's hard to break into a discussion if two people have made a couple of dozen posts already. By way of a solution, we could feasibly rule that nobody should post more than once per day on a given thread. I think this would help fix the problem for people who can't get to a computer more than once a day. For those who can't get there more than once a week, it's kinda tough - but I think that's fair enough, really. If you've gone on holiday then you don't expect the world to stand still while you're away. If there's actually someone who doesn't get regular access normally, that might be different (is there?).

[Blackrat]

I'd certainly be happy limiting posts to 1 each per thread per day, if that would help GW and others.

[Learned Hand]

cardinalsin said:

On discussion on the forums, I sympathise with GW. Ok, so the discussion doesn't end until everyone has had the chance to contribute. In reality though, it's hard to break into a discussion if two people have made a couple of dozen posts already. By way of a solution, we could feasibly rule that nobody should post more than once per day on a given thread. I think this would help fix the problem for people who can't get to a computer more than once a day. For those who can't get there more than once a week, it's kinda tough - but I think that's fair enough, really. If you've gone on holiday then you don't expect the world to stand still while you're away. If there's actually someone who doesn't get regular access normally, that might be different (is there?).

I don't disagree on any particular point but I think that a rule isn't needed here.

I have a bunch of reasons but my biggest concern that if I'm in a thread that's just me and O (with BSR STing) the rule wouldn't need to apply. Of course, I couldn't assume that so we'd need to discuss it. I don't like the idea of beginning each thread with a rules discussion. Such discussions (like this one) are mercifully rare. So are discussions where people will frequently post.

As long as we remember (a) nothing happens IC until we've all agreed, either IC or OOC and (b) not everybody can post frequently so be prepared to wait for that agreement and be prepared for the discussion to take a whole new turn when they do post, we should be alright.

[oneiros]

I'd say 1 post/day per 'activity' thread if there is something that requires group interaction.

Solos and general OOC threads don't have to be subject to this requirement I'd have thought.

Potential drawbacks though:
a) everyone waiting til the last minute to do any posting coz they're waiting for everyone else;
b) every post is fairly long-winded as ppl try to pack in as much as they can in their one shot.

Admittedly, I don't think they're much of drawbacks but I wouldn't be much of a compliance officer if I didn't point them out

[cardinalsin]

The issue I'm trying to address with the suggestion of a limit is, a theoretically group discussion turning into a two-way dialogue with occasional interjections from third parties. There's a big difference between that situation and one where two parties contribute extremely long posts (but without dialoguing off each other), but at no faster rate than the third party.

I definitely agree that where a thread is explicitly one-to-one (or in general by agreement of the participants) no such limit should need to apply. Indeed if all participants agree I would think almost any rule we might devise should be disapplied.

[Blackrat]

oneiros said:

Solos and general OOC threads don't have to be subject to this requirement I'd have thought.

But GW's point above is that OOC threads do have to be subject to this. He is concerned that his opinion won't get voiced on threads like this one because the discussion moves faster than he can post. If we need to have a post limit, we need to have it on OOC threads like this as well, I think. GW, isn't that what you're saying?

However, I tend to agree with LH that just being prepared to wait and for the discussion to change is probably a sufficient solution.