[OOC] Heroes of Beacon - the Next Chapter

[Crimmy]

@Guess Who His powers aren't Speed Force-based.

And yeah, new Wally was pretty much a new character onto himself rather than the old one, but they're keeping him around as a Kid Flash Wally West. Explanation is that he's our old Wally's distant cousin, and they were both named after their grandpa Wally West.

Wally's gonna mentor Wally, it seems.

[Guess Who]

@Guess Who His powers aren't Speed Force-based.

And yeah, new Wally was pretty much a new character onto himself rather than the old one, but they're keeping him around as a Kid Flash Wally West. Explanation is that he's our old Wally's distant cousin, and they were both named after their grandpa Wally West.

Wally's gonna mentor Wally, it seems.

@Crimmy

[Lady Seraphina]

That actually just made me think of something: Has Superman ever been able to access the Speed Force? I mean, he is fast enough to make a clean cut through a moon:



I'm no physicist or whatever scientific field you would have to be to calculate that, but I'm sure you would have to be going really, really fast to be able to do that.

@Guess Who

That kind of feat would have to do as much with strength and durability as it would with speed but that aside the Speed Force grants superspeed, superspeed does not allow access to the Speed Force. The power of the Speedsters and Superman's speed may look similar but they can effectively be considered different powers. Though they achieve a similar result they have a completely different cause. It's like the difference between a diesel and a petrol engine. The two fuel sources don't mix well together. Also the reason that the Flash is faster than Superman.

[Guess Who]

<Snipped quote by Guess Who>

That kind of feat would have to do as much with strength and durability as it would with speed but that aside the Speed Force grants superspeed, superspeed does not allow access to the Speed Force. The power of the Speedsters and Superman's speed may look similar but they can effectively be considered different powers. Though they achieve a similar result they have a completely different cause. It's like the difference between a diesel and a petrol engine. The two fuel sources don't mix well together. Also the reason that the Flash is faster than Superman.

@Prince of Seraphs

That actually clears up a lot of confusion I've had. I knew all of the other stuff you mentioned, but I had previously thought that the Speed Force granted power to heroes as well as was accessible to anyone with super speed.

[Krayzikk]

Please do not take this statement as maliciousness on my part:

I hope that everyone who fought me to get rid of deadlines and the like is making the most of all this extra time.

It's very hard to convey the sincerity in that remark. I'm happy so long as this extremely slow pace is allowing for the desired characterization that drove the lobbying. I would just be disappointed if this wasn't the case.

@Lugubrious

This right here is what we call a straw man of Stay Puft proportions.

The context, as Seraphs pointed out a lot more patiently than me, for that lobbying was the disastrously brief amount of unstructured time to interact. You know, that time when a timeskip to missions cut short;

-A party that never got to start
-A trip to Vale
-A trip to the swimming pool
-A fight at the lake

Four interactions, each with at least three characters involved (save the swimming pool, but given that more than three were involved in all the others, it ends up being a low estimate), which adds up to at least twelve players that had their plans cut short permanently so we could transition to these "all-consuming and gelatinous gravitational anomalies". Puts a whole different spin on the concept when you can go and apply it to the first problem that crops up, doesn't it.

That said, I lobbied against mission deadlines, too. Because you wanted to set them at a time that would require getting everything done over finals and holidays, which would have lead to the majority of them being cut short anyway. Because I speak from a lot of experience when I say that creating a deadline doesn't create more time to do everything you need to, it leads to stress and cutting things from your schedule to create the illusion of more time.

Such things really have no place in an RPG done for fun. Now, Seraphs covered it pretty well himself:

<Snipped quote by Lugubrious>

I think the lobbying for more time was in situation when people had full and complete control over where there characters went and what was happening. Like a weekend adventure or some such. I think it was unfortunate that the petition for less deadlines came just as a mission was approaching because I think self contained events like the missions, combat classes and such, things that will only affect those that participate in them should be regulated in order to keep the RP moving. It's when there's an after school moment and a number of characters are cooking something up and it gets timeskipped over that problems start to arise. I think we should start wrapping up the missions within the next two or three weeks. You really can't tell me that after all this time you actually need more than that to finish whatever is going on.

@Prince of Seraphs

The petition for a lack of deadlines was with the intent of giving players the ability to actually have some autonomy, instead of trying to squeeze what we want to do inside of tiny blocks of time within the arbitrary schedule.

Missions, on the other hand, are not autonomous. They're rigid and inflexible, and that means that when a member of your team (or your antagonist) is taking a long time to post, you can't get anywhere. BASL and JCL? We want to get Brewing Storm done. At this point it's a chore for a list of reasons longer than my arm, and we're fairly punctual about getting posts done to do it.

But there are eight people involved. Eight. When a single one delays, usually for reasons outside of their control, the whole thing gets gummed up. And every other team has this potential, admittedly with a few fewer players. I could run the math on how much rigidity in missions increases the probability of delays, but I just finished my semester and I really don't want to. Not when the point is logically apparent.

I'm in agreement that missions should be wrapped up soon, and discussion should be had on how better to regulate missions and combat classes in the future. But blaming delays in missions on a lack of deadlines is a straw man of the highest order, given that deadlines would just have cut them short.

I don't even think the problem is that the missions have gone long, because it sounds like everybody has been working at it. The bigger issue to me is that it seems like 80% of the teams decided to do things collab-style, which really doesn't let anyone else know how things are progressing and makes the IC and OOC dead as fuck apart from the team or two that are doing things post-by-post.

@Plank Sinatra

This is completely true, too. Collabs are the bane of an RPG's survival the moment more than half the game is taking place in them. BASL/JCL and VGNB are currently the only teams actually posting within the main topic aside from releasing the latest installment of their collabs. As a result, no one needs to check the topic. As a result, the topic slows to a crawl.

These are factors to consider, instead of just throwing straw men at the problem.

[Forsythe]

I for one do not really mind the collabs. Regarding the lack of OOC activity it was more often an assortment of random stuff completely unrelated to the RP which frankly is better suited for a skype group or somesuch, from writing perspective I'd rather have the option to do easy inserts and edits on stuff like missions because it just makes it look neater, and from a readers perspective it took me a couple of days of convincing myself to actually catch up with other missions than our own just because it's so easy to lose thread in such plethora of posts - I find it much more enjoyable to read a couple of larger chunks.

I don't really see the problem with the illusion of the thread being dead because we do not need to attract new people. IMHO it should really be a common courtesy to notify others if you are going to have an extended absence and to check the RP for progress. If people can be bothered to click that subs button once a day, where's the problem.

[Abillioncats]

Collabs are okay sometimes, but after being in one for MONTHS I'm really sick of them.

[Krayzikk]

I for one do not really mind the collabs. Regarding the lack of OOC activity it was more often an assortment of random stuff completely unrelated to the RP which frankly is better suited for a skype group or somesuch, from writing perspective I'd rather have the option to do easy inserts and edits on stuff like missions because it just makes it look neater, and from a readers perspective it took me a couple of days of convincing myself to actually catch up with other missions than our own just because it's so easy to lose thread in such plethora of posts - I find it much more enjoyable to read a couple of larger chunks.

I don't really see the problem with the illusion of the thread being dead because we do not need to attract new people. IMHO it should really be a common courtesy to notify others if you are going to have an extended absence and to check the RP for progress. If people can be bothered to click that subs button once a day, where's the problem.

@Forsythe

Except a Skype group for Beacon as a whole doesn't exist, which means the OOC is the one place a sense of community forms. Community beyond the fragmented subgroups, that is. When that begins to wither, the community withers.

And collabs are detrimental because, ultimately, RPGs thrive on interaction. A collab every now and again can be very good. But where I come from, they're referred to as jams (in the sense of "jam session"); in keeping with the term, they are what you add to food to make it better. You don't build your sandwich out of jam. When everything is done in collabs, games fragment and disintegrate because you aren't all playing one game anymore. You're playing half a dozen separate ones that don't overlap in any way.

And as we've seen here, that leads to dying games. When the first OOC post in a week is a comment on how dead the activity of the game is, you've long since crossed over into "too many collabs". I can cite a list more than half a dozen entries long of games that have died this way.

[Lucius Cypher]

Then would you propose that we post whatever we immediately have for our collab and return to a posting format rather then collabs? Collabs may not be perfect, but if they're going to be done away with then we'll just have to do things the old fashion way where a more active group will dominate most of the ic, leaving slower players to have to dig through the IC or hope someone is keeping track of all the action. Combined with our busy schedule and I suppose this is a good way to weed out the weak.

[Forsythe]

I am proponing the collabs for the missions mostly, or for that matter when somebody doesn't want anyone jumping in xD I understand it makes sense not to use them in 'down time'. There is time and place for everything =)

[Krayzikk]

It doesn't have to be an either-or is what I'm getting at, though. In fact it shouldn't be. Collabs should never be used to the exclusion of traditional posts, and traditional posts shouldn't mean that a few players can't cover an interaction or development heavy sequence in a collab.

The problem is that right now, collabs have pushed out traditional posts almost entirely. Thus the community and activity (seems to) dry up. And it has dried up; just because writing is going on doesn't mean the game is active. It means preparations are happening for the day that a post might go up and show all the work that's happened.

Traditional posting can get a little rapid fire, but this is Casual. One liners aren't allowed, so people can't just spam activity. And for people who really can't keep up with the potential for quick posts, just keeping an eye on what posts are relevant is easy. The "Unread" button makes going right back to where you left off literally as simple as a mouse click. And then you can just skim through display names until you see posts from someone you're waiting for. If you miss something important, like someone arriving to an interaction they weren't at before, a quick PM fixes that in an instant.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing, but keeping everything in pads is killing the game.

[HereComesTheSnow]

pads are my safe space from interacting with nasty people

[HereComesTheSnow]

like girls and their germs

[harinezumikouken]

like girls and their germs

@HereComesTheSnow

-Licks your face-

[Plank Sinatra]

>ASL will never give me the cold

[HereComesTheSnow]

does bianca have cooties

important info for teambuilding exercises

i ain't having luke trust-fall into cooties

[HereComesTheSnow]

<Snipped quote by HereComesTheSnow>

-Licks your face-

@harinezumikouken

i said girls

[harinezumikouken]

<Snipped quote by harinezumikouken>

i said girls

@HereComesTheSnow

I can be anything you want me to be, bby.

[Write]

@HereComesTheSnow

She has every cootie.

But in accordance with the real talk

I don't think there's any need to be dramatic about collabs. To my knowledge the most active section of the IC during this whole mission period has been myself and @Crimmy and I think it would average out to about a post a day for a week period, and then a break for another week or so - typically it's been a post every few days.

That isn't burying anyone, especially not for people who don't have to read the VGNB mission. If you're more concerned about your own mission, then simply talking it out with your teammates about establishing some sort of posting order can help with that. During off time, once more it is never necessary to read other people's posts that don't pertain to your characters. You can do that whenever you have the time if you feel like it, but if we're talking necessities I'd stick with your own characters and their interactions.

And as @Krayzikk correctly pointed out, people will and do make mistakes. You can always just PM someone.

[Silvan Haven]

I've always thought that collabs work best for cutscene like segments. Important scenes that can be read all at once and happen in a contained environment, so to speak.

Right now it's like an author circle where everybody gets together once a month to show their latest short story.