Ranty McRant

Kyn has a lot of negative things to say about Furryfaire. He's also not the most restrained or tactful person I know. This leads to the occasional rant on pubchat, which I always hate to see. As much as I dislike the negativity, I frequently (though not always) agree with the underlying point.

General Statement 1: "Just because we don't agree does not mean we aren't listening."

This is often poorly conveyed, but if someone responds to your rant, they're probably at least listening. They may agree. They may disagree. But they're listening. Sometimes, even if they don't reply, they're still listening. There's no point in getting all in a tizzy over it on either side, really. The more emotionally-charged a statement or concern is, the more likely any responses that come back will be likewise, and hostility escalates.

If you want to actually have a productive discussion, try to be calm and rational. If someone has conflicting views, try to see if there's a reason, and if a compromise can be reached. Saying "you're wrong, you need to do this" gets nowhere.

Specific Statement 1: I am concerned about the current state of Furryfaire. Being "concerned" does not make me feel everything being done is bad/wrong and that it should be taken out and shot.

Specific Discussion 1: Nimby

When the portal TP was just over the horizon, I expressed some concerns to the headwiz. Among them, I said specifically: "First off, this further encourages separation of the player base, by setting up a whole 'nother grid and plopping attention over there. That's probably not good for the MUCK, especially since one of the founding principles of FFA2 was to keep people closer together - mind you, that's only worked so much to begin with, so maybe the principle itself is flawed."

I do feel this has come to pass some. Observational statements from my part:
- When I log on in the evening, perhaps half the characters showing up in a findall are in "New Creation" rooms. Whether these are mains or alts, it's clear that a notable percentage of the player base's attention has shifted to the new grid.
- I clearly see the headwiz is more occupied with these things going on, whether it's adjudicating rulings, logging votes, or inputting rpinfo entries.
I can say I personally know both these things to be true from my point of view.

Is that a detriment to the rest of the MUCK, though? I'm less sure there. The headwiz shouldn't be necessary for frequent rule questions. I'm going to state this carefully and come back to it later: I have not noticed any wiz duties that would have been done go undone due to Nimby-based activity. Many of the characters in the campaign are alts of others that remain on the primary grid.

So is there any clear evidence that Furryfaire is suffering for this?

Well, to my knowledge there is at least one TP that has been moving slower due to Nimby things going on - Ralyn in Naipon. The problem is, I'm not sure how much was intended to be done with this to begin with. The TP is catering mainly to one character, actually involving a total of two PCs and one NPC (plus GM NPCs in the scenes), so it's not exactly huge. Should that be prioritized over something involving a dozen characters? Should it have been finished? How much GM attention should a couple characters get when they go to a far-off land which puts them out of regular touch with others? I'm not sure what was expected by everyone involved and what's appropriate, so it's hard to say whether it was intended to be low-maintenance or whether attention has been cut back due to Nimby.

Certainly the fact that the headwiz is running things in Nimby means he's running less elsewhere, but it's not really his responsibility to run everyone's TPs anyway (even if it often works out there way). So the MUCK really isn't any worse off than if he weren't GMing at the moment in that regard.

Remember when I talked about wiz duties above? Well, while I haven't seen any that would be done get overlooked, I have seen things that should be done go overlooked. The one thing that comes to mind is the "new" magic system that got rushed into live usage just before Nimby. At last check, it hadn't been fleshed out in some areas, including lacking one whole path. Now, this wasn't getting done before Nimby, so I can't blame the campaign, but it should have been. I didn't press the matter because I was afraid doing so would lead to more unfinished/unpolished rules being shoved out into regular use - as I recall, artificing needed work yet at least. So while that (and any other little rule/code issues) may not have been done whether or not the campaign/mega-plot was running, it certainly isn't going anywhere now.

Based on all this, I do feel the "primary" Kith Kanaan portion of the MUCK is suffering some. I'm not convinced that means we need new administration or a new MUCK. Whether the matter is actually serious or trivial is not something I feel comfortable gauging at the moment.

So I am concerned, but I'm watching. I'm not to the point of flipping out about it.

Specific Discussion 2: Foreign Lands

There's also been a lot of off-grid, but still on-world (or near-world), RP in the last six months or so. As mentioned above, this goes against one of the early principles of keeping players closer together. This could be as detrimental as a campaign involving a (relatively) disconnected world as far as scattering player and wiz/GM attention.

We had an invading other-realm that's still around, Shademire/Selene. We had huge events in Siren's Cove, and still some RP there between a couple characters. We had a small group go to Naipon to become nobility and host a tournament. We had a group hope cross-plane to Rym to do exploration. All of these things took attention away from the Shire itself.

On the other hand, maybe that principle really is obsolete. With increasing numbers of capital-linking gates, near-instant travel between nations is possible. Even the Rym jaunt wasn't that long due to use of planar physics/supernatural powers - the group spent more time traveling there then getting there and back. From a MUCK perspective, there is little difference between two groups of PCs doing things in neighboring buildings and neighboring countries when there's fast travel available. And even when you have them in neighboring buildings, there's no guarantee they'll RP across groups.