A Raven and Drama

So I was invited into a Godbound game online and, after some struggle to overcome inertia, convinced myself to give it a try. I had to reread a bunch of rules as my previous experience with them was focused on a narrower part of it (heroic mortals). Over a few days I settled on, and built up, a hengeyokai raven (tengu) thief.

A character should have goals and a Godbound character should probably have particularly big ones, but the character didn't really feel like one to do nation-building. But... king-backing, maybe. So more a working-from-the-shadows sort looking for another character to support. I hope that's solid enough going forward.

Tsukuda “Kara” Karasu was born in Larendre, but remembers next to nothing of it. In her youth, her parents brought her on a trip to Threshold - a mission of diplomacy or trading as she remembers, but her parents were killed. Whether it was a deliberate assasination or mugging carried too far is unclear, but authorities never did find anyone responsible and in the traumatic whirlwind the young tengu was left on her own with no effective ties to the land of her birth and only fading memories of family.

On the streets of Threshold, she was taken in by a beggar-thief by the name of Nicholas who saw something in her, thus she grew up among the Celestial Guild, stealing for a living in the city’s shadows. While her features and forms may belie her heritage, Kara rarely uses her hybrid shape and speaks Dovus much like anyone born in the city. She holds dear the mithril pendant of the Twins she was given “for luck” without paying any particular heed to the heavens.

Those carrying the blessings of the heavens, however, are quite interesting. Her own abilities truly manifested in her teens while carrying out a particularly tricky little heist from a guard captain of a noble house, waking none and passing security with supernatural ease to steal documents as well as the captain’s own Medal of Unshaking Leadership - an artifact she now retains as a trophy of sorts. While she has not experienced a visitation, her waking powers made her curious of how others have been gifted.

Reaching her twentieth year (by best guess, as she doesn’t know her exact age), Kara has become far more confident than desperate, comfortable on the streets and looking to expand her horizons. She feels ill suited to carving out a domain of her own, but sees potential in working alongside (or in the shadow of) someone better able to do so. This has led her to her current spot on the ship, judging the gathering of those aboard for who may deserve such backing.

Judgmental raven. Woo!

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Of course, one of my big worries remains "getting lost" in a Discord game. MU* games really had some of the same risk, but it just feels more common in Discord. That might be a sign of the times, connectivity, and app technology more than actually Discord vs. MU*.

In some cases, that's logging on after a day of work and looking to see pages of character interactions is disheartening. Perhaps ignorance is bliss and missing out on scenes on a MU* was easier to handle because you just didn't see those unless someone shared a log. In Discord, the text is all there, so you can catch up, but knowing you weren't there to reply is disruptive. At least to me. That can be mitigated some by set play times, if people can manage that.

But there's also things like what happened yesterday.

The game was set to start on a ship belonging to one of the PCs. That player (P1) had put up some "ship's rules" in a a thread. I found one of them kind of questionable, but make a decision to read it in the most favorable light and said to myself, "Not my character's ship anyway, they can live with it while aboard," and went on with other things.

A couple other players chafed at the rules and one of them (P2) complained in a way that did not strike me as overly aggressive or emotional, but apparently touched a nerve with P1, who who said "bye" and left the game server. I believe another player was turned off by the drama and left too.

Several of us don't see all this until a bit later. So suddenly we're down two players and have one that feels bad for saying anything that touched off the powder keg and the rest of us are left feeling preeeeetty awkward.

Is this sort of thing a danger particular to Discord? Well, no. I've seen stuff blow up on Furryfaire while I was at work too.

Would it have been avoided if everyone was present? I'm not sure. It's possible the situation could have been defused with the presence of others, but it seemed to reach the point of someone leaving pretty quickly with little of what seemed to me to be aggression.

So I'm not even sure how stable the incipient game is at this point. We'll have to see how things develop as we wind toward an actual first session...