Faire Fracas
Ugh. I don't want to single people out or be negative. Yet a person has to vent, I guess?
Disclaimers:
I usually try to be at least somewhat objective when I look at goings on, but ultimately I'm just a person. My own perspective and experiences bias what I see. Things that bother me may not bother others. That's life. I at least acknowledge this.
Lots of recently-annoying events revolve around someone who evokes an emotional response from me. I am simultaneously envious of their drive and the ensuing attention this generates as well as dismayed by other aspects of behavior. So it's entirely possible that person's mere involvement makes me picky in ways I wouldn't otherwise be. Gotta acknowledge that too.
Re-ugh...
Furryfaire is not my sandbox. For as much as I may have contributed to the setting through actions of my characters over the years/decades, I have never really felt I had much say in things since... hmm... since about the time a map was made and I didn't go to the mat for a tiny island nation that was the origin of a couple of my early characters. So as far as Faire history is concerned, no such place ever existed.
This is even more true with the latest time-jumped Discord-based incarnation. I signed on with a character for a train murder mystery plot and it became "this is now the active version of the setting." I missed a lot of the early world-building discussion because either I didn't devote enough attention to it or I wasn't invited into the relevant channels or both.
That's okay, I suppose. It's not a deal breaker. But it means I really do not have any grounded sense of the setting, much less any feeling of control over it.
When a train is put forth as revolutionary transport and an early car is a new thing, that says something about a setting. I can buy into that. I can even sort of see the argument when airships exist - maybe the train is sufficiently cheaper to operate in spite of having to lay and maintain track and being limited in where it can go?
But, setting-wise, I find that is undermined when players can readily access airships when they need to. And ether portals. And established city-to-city portals that existed in the previous age of the setting, but I think maybe are supposed to be disabled now or something?
PCs can be special and all, but all these alternatives have been offered up so frequently that I can no longer buy the concept that clearly-inferior mechanical methods of transportation would be any more than a blip on research track to all these other, mostly-magical, means.
Someone can get up and tell me that's what the setting is, but that is not what I've been shown in the slightest.
I've similarly heard the setting is supposed to be "low magic" in some way. Again, not at all what I feel I've seen.
Then there's some... disagreement over "big" events.
As far as impact to ongoing RP and "should this be discussed beforehand maybe?" I sort of draw the line around "do/should people not actively involved in this scene right now have to react to this?"
Someone popping up with a magical chalice that turns day into night over a city (or wider region?) kind of transcends that. Even if the plan/expectation is said chalice will get boxed up and inactivated or something soon, the situation has theoretically just interrupted every other character in the zone of influence and that, at the very least, is inconsiderate from an OOC roleplayer perspective. It could have much wider implications long-term, whether intended or not. And that's why something like that really should probably have been mentioned OOC if there's any sort of sharing of admin/GM duties.
I mean, if the whole server/setting is really intended as one person's playground and everyone else is just expected to go with it, I guess that's fine? Everyone else can suck it up and play or leave in that case.
My impression is the intent is to be more collaborative than that, though, which should require a bit more mutual respect.
Meeting gods (or near enough), legendary characters, teleporting unexpectedly, saving heroes, unraveling demonic plots... All of those things don't automatically trigger my above "stepping on other people's toes" warning, but they are noteworthy in a different way. They may not be big in global repercussions, but they are "big" in the sense that they should probably not be crammed together in a constant stream.
Based on my understanding of the setting (which could be misguided), any one of those things should be once-in-a-lifetime for a person. Or less. Now, PCs are, by nature of it being a game and narrative, more inclined to experience the uncommon. That's fine to a degree. Past a point, though, it erodes any sense the players have that there is a lesser "normal" in the setting.
As with talking technology and transportation above, hitting PCs with several rare events in the span of a few game days make the game and setting feel more extreme.
I think this is a matter of expectations.
If Player A is expecting a low-magic setting where gods are distant and trains are awesome, then regular scenes of visiting gods/demi-gods and near-supersonic airships clash with that - even if they see it happening to Player B.
Maybe I just don't know what the setting is actually supposed to be, but there seems to be a real disconnect somewhere. Perhaps people need to communicate better about what the setting should be or people running plots should steer things a little more toward that rather than basking in the "exceptions" to the rule.
And then there's consequences for stuff in RP... I'm less sure how to frame my thoughts on this...
Again, it depends on what kind of game you're going for, but generally there probably should be consequences for character actions in cases where it makes sense. I can see offering players a chance to make an applicable stat roll to maybe avoid a huge social blunder, but I feel like lately I've seen sooo much:
And no, consequences for character actions don't have to be immediate, necessarily, but they have to show correlation or they won't really be apparent and no one will learn anything. If someone has offended a prideful deity enough that said god would actually consider them worth killing, waiting to smite them later doesn't come across as a consequence so much as a GM being a dick. Same with having a player design a fast-fragile airship and them immediately shooting it down. These "consequences" don't feel like such. They feel like arbitrary punishments out of nowhere and only serve to upset more people.
... Okay, I got rather specific there, but I don't know how else to best make the point.
I guess that's it for the moment....
Disclaimers:
I usually try to be at least somewhat objective when I look at goings on, but ultimately I'm just a person. My own perspective and experiences bias what I see. Things that bother me may not bother others. That's life. I at least acknowledge this.
Lots of recently-annoying events revolve around someone who evokes an emotional response from me. I am simultaneously envious of their drive and the ensuing attention this generates as well as dismayed by other aspects of behavior. So it's entirely possible that person's mere involvement makes me picky in ways I wouldn't otherwise be. Gotta acknowledge that too.
Re-ugh...
Furryfaire is not my sandbox. For as much as I may have contributed to the setting through actions of my characters over the years/decades, I have never really felt I had much say in things since... hmm... since about the time a map was made and I didn't go to the mat for a tiny island nation that was the origin of a couple of my early characters. So as far as Faire history is concerned, no such place ever existed.
This is even more true with the latest time-jumped Discord-based incarnation. I signed on with a character for a train murder mystery plot and it became "this is now the active version of the setting." I missed a lot of the early world-building discussion because either I didn't devote enough attention to it or I wasn't invited into the relevant channels or both.
That's okay, I suppose. It's not a deal breaker. But it means I really do not have any grounded sense of the setting, much less any feeling of control over it.
When a train is put forth as revolutionary transport and an early car is a new thing, that says something about a setting. I can buy into that. I can even sort of see the argument when airships exist - maybe the train is sufficiently cheaper to operate in spite of having to lay and maintain track and being limited in where it can go?
But, setting-wise, I find that is undermined when players can readily access airships when they need to. And ether portals. And established city-to-city portals that existed in the previous age of the setting, but I think maybe are supposed to be disabled now or something?
PCs can be special and all, but all these alternatives have been offered up so frequently that I can no longer buy the concept that clearly-inferior mechanical methods of transportation would be any more than a blip on research track to all these other, mostly-magical, means.
Someone can get up and tell me that's what the setting is, but that is not what I've been shown in the slightest.
I've similarly heard the setting is supposed to be "low magic" in some way. Again, not at all what I feel I've seen.
Then there's some... disagreement over "big" events.
As far as impact to ongoing RP and "should this be discussed beforehand maybe?" I sort of draw the line around "do/should people not actively involved in this scene right now have to react to this?"
Someone popping up with a magical chalice that turns day into night over a city (or wider region?) kind of transcends that. Even if the plan/expectation is said chalice will get boxed up and inactivated or something soon, the situation has theoretically just interrupted every other character in the zone of influence and that, at the very least, is inconsiderate from an OOC roleplayer perspective. It could have much wider implications long-term, whether intended or not. And that's why something like that really should probably have been mentioned OOC if there's any sort of sharing of admin/GM duties.
I mean, if the whole server/setting is really intended as one person's playground and everyone else is just expected to go with it, I guess that's fine? Everyone else can suck it up and play or leave in that case.
My impression is the intent is to be more collaborative than that, though, which should require a bit more mutual respect.
Meeting gods (or near enough), legendary characters, teleporting unexpectedly, saving heroes, unraveling demonic plots... All of those things don't automatically trigger my above "stepping on other people's toes" warning, but they are noteworthy in a different way. They may not be big in global repercussions, but they are "big" in the sense that they should probably not be crammed together in a constant stream.
Based on my understanding of the setting (which could be misguided), any one of those things should be once-in-a-lifetime for a person. Or less. Now, PCs are, by nature of it being a game and narrative, more inclined to experience the uncommon. That's fine to a degree. Past a point, though, it erodes any sense the players have that there is a lesser "normal" in the setting.
As with talking technology and transportation above, hitting PCs with several rare events in the span of a few game days make the game and setting feel more extreme.
I think this is a matter of expectations.
If Player A is expecting a low-magic setting where gods are distant and trains are awesome, then regular scenes of visiting gods/demi-gods and near-supersonic airships clash with that - even if they see it happening to Player B.
Maybe I just don't know what the setting is actually supposed to be, but there seems to be a real disconnect somewhere. Perhaps people need to communicate better about what the setting should be or people running plots should steer things a little more toward that rather than basking in the "exceptions" to the rule.
And then there's consequences for stuff in RP... I'm less sure how to frame my thoughts on this...
Again, it depends on what kind of game you're going for, but generally there probably should be consequences for character actions in cases where it makes sense. I can see offering players a chance to make an applicable stat roll to maybe avoid a huge social blunder, but I feel like lately I've seen sooo much:
GM aside: "Ahaha, character is so f-ing this up. This will get them killed."It got old after the first couple times. If a player is being handed an out to avoid consequences, they aren't suffering them, are they? That sort of quasi-gloating is just... annoying?
GM to player: "Roll. Okay, you know you're making a mistake here."
And no, consequences for character actions don't have to be immediate, necessarily, but they have to show correlation or they won't really be apparent and no one will learn anything. If someone has offended a prideful deity enough that said god would actually consider them worth killing, waiting to smite them later doesn't come across as a consequence so much as a GM being a dick. Same with having a player design a fast-fragile airship and them immediately shooting it down. These "consequences" don't feel like such. They feel like arbitrary punishments out of nowhere and only serve to upset more people.
... Okay, I got rather specific there, but I don't know how else to best make the point.
I guess that's it for the moment....
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