Moving Forward After Disaster

[Kevin K]

I read Rob's point as: Your character wasn't affected, why do you care?

Speaking for myself in response:

1). My character *is* affected, just whose domain did this thing go down in?
2). The whole concept of elders is effected when the city explodes and the Feds come to town. From a character perspective, I'm concerned because this looks like a step towards "Seattle Explodes on Saturdays" which is a setting that my character and playstyle isn't really compatible with.

Why so much emotion? I think that's been an illuminating question to ask myself. And for myself, this is where I think it's coming from:

Many recent events look like the game from 10 years ago that (while fun for many) had very little stability. Seattle explodes, Princes die regularly, every possible rule and power is in use, Justicars walk the streets, and if you don't have magic in your pocket you are NOBODY.

And worse, it didn't effect anyone. Building exploded, meh. What are we doing next week? The players didn't want to pay close attention to that stuff, so we hit them over the head with bigger and bigger stuff until game itself broke.

I don't believe this was anybody's plan. Nobody got up in the morning and said, "IM GONNA MAKE EVERYTHING GO BOOM ALL TEH TIME". But as a trend, it's something I'm afraid of.

[Styx]

Personally, I think this is a fantastic direction change in plots, I'm looking forward to playing a powerful elder who suddenly is reminded that He's NOT the pinnacle of the food chain, I applaud the fact that staff is brave enough to go through with something like this (though I wish there hadn't been a "don't worry everything will go back to normal" statement), and I would like to encourage everyone to stop thinking about how this "ruins your game" and start looking at ways in which this can be an amazing breath of life into a game growing stagnant. Maybe this WAS caused by a magical bomb, I don't know, but the end result? We have to deal with MORTALS. Mortal fallout, mortal issues, feeding, etc. This can be AWESOME. So why don't we focus on making it awesome?

[user/874]

Clearly,





My point has not been understood in terms of scale.




It is really hard to play vampires in the city




When there isn't a city left to play in.



This is the scale we are talking about. 



Makes it kind of hard to eat



When the herd has been annihilated.



This is the face of 2000 deaths



and 25000 casualties.



If you are trying to tell me this doesn't affect your character,



I am calling you a liar to your face.



If this is the game we all want to play, cool.  Lets get down.



However, there is NO "business as usual."



We don't get to play courtly, pseudo-mannered vampires anymore. 



Yeah, that world is gone. 



This is what Seattle looks like now. 

[Iris "Chases-Rainbows"]

The "don't worry things will be back to normal" is part of the issue I think.

I am going to echo some stuff I just talked to PAs about too-

We seem to have two different WOD processes going on.

1. Plots are cool. Stories are coo.l things go *boom* but it's fun and our stuff isn't damaged. So let's keep playing- destruction is an accessory that makes things cool. Like bow ties. And Like the Enterprise or the Tardis we come back next time.

2. This is a darker scarier grittier version of the real world we live in. Something like this devastates a city and realistically we could have hundreds of new gut wrenching stories about rebuilding and trauma and that would be exhausting and the STs would probably burn out.

So take the people from the second process add Dramatic explosions and devastation but then tell them that it will all be fine in the next episode and all things are fix and life goes on.

I'm gonna guess that cool explosions/episodic City rebuilding was not what they had thought would be a thing. They are still thinking "realistically what would my character do now? the city is destroyed." Rather than a "oh wait a few weeks all will be cool but we could have some neat plots if you want to deal with that".

I can totally run in a anime/sci-fi show type world. I just needed to wrap my own brain around how the level of destruction and sped-up time table would work together as a realistic WOD thing. Otherwise, I can't see how Seattle would be a viable domain anymore for the long run with this amount of boom following martial law not too long ago and Justicars coming in.

I kinda wish there had been less destruction and more long term fallout, that would temper the whole thing and make a manageable long-running plot hook where feeding and domains and Domain security becomes a thing and is something the STs can deal with.

*EDIT- HOLY CRAP TODD You snuck that post in before mine. This was in response to David.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

I see all those pictures of destruction and think that would be a great city to play vampire in, actually. But, I also like Deadlands and Fallout and other post-apoc situations.

The facts of the matter sit at this: even if the destruction is at the above levels, we certainly have enough pooled influence (and the associated stats) to make this a non-issue. With what can be done using very high level influence actions, the IC systems, if the PCs utilize them, could solve the above in a few months. LARPs exist in an accelerated timeline. A few months become a few weeks, and presto! We're back up and running.

While I respect the opposing views, and I can still very clearly see why CHARACTERS would be freaking out, I have no idea why this suddenly became a PA issue. There is a story in progress; lets see where it goes.

[user/874]

Don't get me wrong, Rob, I love me some deadlands too.

However, that wasn't actually the game I signed up to play at ECC.

I also contest your assertion that we have the pooled influence to make this a non-issue, even on an accelerated timescale. New Orleans is still a shithole, 8 years later. This changes everything, everywhere.

The infrastructure that held up all that influence is utterly destroyed. If we really wanted to play this out as a rebuild, repopulate storyline, those influences should be completely wiped. Those should have to be rebuilt like everything else.

If we wanna run with this story, lets commit and do it. All in. What I do not want to do is half ass this, where half the game ignores it and continues on, business as usual. It shouldn't be just a story people roll their eyes and tell in 6 months like it was just a rainy Tuesday. Either go with it, and play out the story as it would be, or reign the scale back in.

My main complaint here is the cartoonish value it has. ZOmg! 100000 dead! City wrecked. Oh, end of the episode, Buggs Bunny says something witty, we all laugh, and next week nothing happened.

[Oberon Gault]

Am I the only one who read the fact that the World of Darkness was, in fact, not a nice place in any capacity? Where a hundred could die in a night of unusually low gang activity, and people got suspicious of something else? I don't really know why we're stuck on what happened in the real world when something bad happened in a city closer to a low-tech Dredd or Blade Runner city? 20,000 injured or missing is a big number, yes, but that's not "these people are also dead."

This is a world of slave trade, where it's entirely possible that people got nabbed in a panic for other nefarious activities. Where someone thought, perhaps, "I could use a new set of cult/herd/followers" while purple lightning streaked across the sky.

This is a world where we have to remind people in the Pacific Northwest, one of the most sedate regions on the planet as far as crime and "bad stuff" goes, that you can opt-out of things if they get too uncomfortable. We have a fade to black clause because, turns out, we're not the horrible monsters we play on TV.

Let me reiterate: Horrible Monsters. World of Darkness. A hundred in gang violence is a low statistic.

Yes, in the World of Darkness, the world can move on after a couple thousand people die. It isn't a nice place. We elected staff to run a story. They've heard a great deal of input on it, before and after a decision. Let them, the elected staff, run it. Have faith in them, your elected staff, to run things for you.

Also, recall how many people answered on past surveys that they thought the world wasn't dark enough.

[user/874]

We clearly have a different idea of what makes a "World of Darkness".

I am cool with this storyline, if we go all in and play out the consequences.

If we hand wave it away, business as usual in three months, that is some cartoony anime bullshit. There is nothing dark about a plotline that vanishes and has no long term repercussions. Something on this scale, in any world, should change everything.

I also think your view of the real world is somewhat skewed. The real world is a place where the slave trade exists. There are places like Mogadishu, Somalia where a couple hundred deaths in a night just passes almost unnoticed. Look at the utter anarchy that reigns there. You don't get to have your civilized, upper crust politics game in the middle of a warzone.

Even in Mogadishu, 2000 deaths in a single night does not go un-remarked.

Scale. I think the general conception of it is waaaaaaaaaaaay off base.

[Iris "Chases-Rainbows"]

I'm all for the dark and scary and world changing too.

But let's play dark and scary, not "we can ignore it if we want to"

[Thornstar]

What I'm getting out of the conversation at this point is:

World of Darkness:


Not World of Darkness, but still fun in some ways:

[Bertie]

Before I answer any specific questions or points, I wanted to bring up two new things that have been posted:
Sabrina posted a mortal account of events on the MNN: An Unexpected Disaster
I updated the domain tag list, both to take into account the recent storm, and events leading up to it. I haven't updated the map itself yet, and will probably wait until new domains are announced: Feeding Domains

Now a few people had some domain actions dropped over the past few months. I'm going to try to talk to you at game about it. Now, I might have missed a few people going through the archives. If you think I missed a domain tag change that you put in for, send the staff an email, and we can check up on it.

So the first thing I'd like to respond to is the comparisons to Katrina. Yes the death tolls between the two events were similar, but the power of the storms were not the same. Before Katrina hit a large percentage of the region had already been evacuated. The death tolls from Katrina were from people who were still in the storm path. This storm was less powerful, and less structurally devastating, but nobody was evacuated ahead of time, making the death toll much higher than it would be normally. I'm not saying that everything is great right now, but things aren't as devastated as the pictures Todd presented.

The second thing that multiple people touched on was the possibility of doing things differently. Nothing about this means we can't do personal horror as well. I don't want to spoil things, but we do have some things cooking besides masquerade breaches and clean up for you guys. On that note though, we aren't going back on what went down. The initial variation was because we hadn't had our meeting yet to iron out all the details, but the event isn't getting retconned.

A few people spoke up against the whole three month idea. Part of the reason for it is as I believe Kevin stated in the original post, we don't want to focus on this one plot forever, eight years of reconstruction might be a little much. Also, just because at a certain point things will start approaching normalcy, doesn't mean that it is a normalcy that your character would like or enjoy. There are good reasons to be involved in the rebuilding (even if its just to screw over your rivals or skim off the top of aid operations).

Now as far as the Masquerade and the Camarilla, it has survived worse things than this, but that doesn't mean that these aren't good worries for your character to have. It might be worth doing everything you can to make sure that some idiot neonate doesn't get caught eating corpses babies on CNN.

The bit I'd like to end on, this specific plot is only six days old right now. We are still hammering out all the details. Before you dismiss it as a monster of the week, a return to the bad old days, or utterly incompatible with your playing style, or how you see vampire, I'd ask that you give it a chance and by extension, give us a chance to run it right, and in a way that you might end up enjoying.

[Styx]

+1 to Kevin.

[Shah-Khohr of Ventrue]

Likewise: obligatory +1 to Kevin.


Though you gave some domains the 'Haven' tag and some the 'Refuge' tag. Are these the same thing? Haven doesn't have a listed value.

[Bertie]

Thanks Rob.
Haven was an earlier name I was considering, but I thought it would be confusing since the word is already important in vampire. All of them should be listed as Refuge now.

[Ascanio Giovanni]

+1 Rob, +1 Blewis, +10,000 Kevin.

I for one am really excited about all the possibilities for story this line opens up. This is the kind of thing that can make real, gritty plot for the entire game. I can understand character panic, and find it entirely appropriate here. But OOC player panic? Why? This is all story.

This city has survived a shit ton of disasters in the 7 years I've been here. To name a few: Magical Setite Pyramids, Homeland Security raids, insane mages teleporting us into magical mazes, demons on boats, the bell that could end the world, car chases downtown with invisible cars that tore a giant hole in the masquerade, war with the sabbat (more times than I remember), war with Vancouver, the many exploits of Luthias, an insane 4th gen hunting us for our blood, magical sewer penguins, 144 packs of werewolves filling snoqualmie valley, werewolves on a plane, 2 different Red-Listers, Tzimisce infiltrators, Tzimisce antitribu, an avatar of Malkav exploding in elysium, and Tiberius Harkness.

I think we'll survive this one too. Let's enjoy the plot line. I intend to. The only thing I can promise, is if you are determined to hate this plot before it even gets started, I guarantee you will hate it.


EDIT: Missed some important ones

[Kevin K]

To Jaron's point:

No, this isn't the first crazy thing. But from what staff has said, it changes the mortal landscape MORE THAN ANY OTHER. In particular: There's nearly zero risk of masquerade breaches downtown. Let that sink in a bit. I think if we take the plot seriously, that should have major repercussions to the playstyle.

Is this is good? This huge change is just part of a trend. You point out avatars of antideluvians, Justicars, and red-listers. We also have every obscure clan and bloodline showing up in town. I'm seeing the amount of crazy plots increasing lately, to the point where strange things aren't special, and I'm not sure that the setting will support the subtler, political play.

Where are we going here? I'm not sure I like it. And I think that's a reasonable conversation to have.

[Ascanio Giovanni]

Ultimately I think this is an important conversation to have. But we are not the ones to have it. It is an important conversation that staff should be having. We have elected them to tell these stories. Electing staff is a sign of trust in them.

What I am hearing a great deal on this thread is that a lot of players here do not trust the staff not to sink the game into unplayability. I find that incredibly disturbing, particularly given the very high margin that Brendan won by. If you do not trust the staff and think they are going about this completely wrong and know that you can't possibly have fun with the game after this, then say it openly and either attempt this threat I've heard of a vote of no confidence or leave. But if you still have trust in the staff, as I do, please let them handle this side of the game and stop worrying. Worry about how your character would interact with this disaster. Worry about the hunter attention this might draw. Worry about how your character might help/harm/profit from the situation (depending on personal preference and morality). Those are all things that we as players should be thinking about. Direction of plot lines are not mutable by vote. They never have been, nor should they be (I think anyone who has tried to run a tabletop with multiple GMs as I have can attest to this).

Brad worried about his character's goals and fears and that is what led to this. Not some uber-evil plot to destroy the game by staff as I've heard suggested. A player took an action. We do not get to adjudicate his actions. Those are between him and the staff. And unless what a player is trying to do simply won't work, it is staff's purview to adjudicate the results and the aftermath of that action. That's it. That's what happened. A player took an action, and staff followed a logical chain of events from that action. This is exactly their duties. I applaud them for not shying away from this.

I for one trust this staff to run this game well. Hell I lost a 1300 xp character based on a call Brendan made and I still trust staff (it was a good call, even though it got me killed). Every staff slips up from time to time. I know I did as an ST. I don't think this is one of those times. From everything I have heard, staff handled this exactly how they should. This was an action of epic scope and it deserved the epic response it got.

So anyway, before you continue questioning and hyperbolizing about this situation, please take a moment to ask whether or not you trust staff. And if you don't, please just come out and say it.

I for one do trust them and am looking forward to running my new character through this plot line. Why don't you see if you can find something your character would do with this instead of whining on the boards about something you have no authority to change?

*This post is not solely aimed at Kevin's one before it. The you I am referring to is a general you, not a specific one.

[Michael Fabsits]

I for one welcome our new laser dinosaur overlords.

[Jansth]

Nov 22, 2013 13:38:25 GMT -8 Michael Fabsits said:

I for one welcome our new laser dinosaur overlords.

That would be so frik'n Metal...

[Just Evan]

Nov 22, 2013 13:22:53 GMT -8 Ascanio Giovanni said:

...If you do not trust the staff and think they are going about this completely wrong and know that you can't possibly have fun with the game after this, then say it openly and either attempt this threat I've heard of a vote of no confidence or leave. But if you still have trust in the staff, as I do, please let them handle this side of the game and stop worrying...

I would like to respectfully and politely caution against this line of thinking. There are not two groups at game - those who trust staff, having no issues with game and those who distrust staff, wanting to see them removed.

Setting a duality like that up or assuming the matter is that black and white leads to a very 'us and them' attitude - either you are on the side of staff and support them or you need to pen your name to a piece of paper asking them to step aside. It feels, to me, akin to those bumper stickers that say "America, love it or leave it!"; in other words - agree with the party in power or get out.

Jaron, I do not in any way accuse you of demanding players love this current plot (or any particular plot) or leave the game. I am outlining a line of thinking I see this conversation turning down that has me very concerned as a player and advocate.

From reading everything in this thread and talking to the number of players I have, both as a PA and simply in normal conversation, the matter is far more complex than "I trust the staff" or "I do not trust the staff".

We, staff and players are all part of the same community. We can remain members of that community and work together regardless of whether we agree with a specific decision or not. Call of concern over this plot direction do not read to me as an enraged hatred of the staff or a loss of faith in the game.

We have raw emotions over our game's description of a natural (well, unnatural) disaster. Some of us have actually been IN or part of the recovery from natural disasters. Some of us have just experienced them vicariously through news. In either case, there is a valid concern that the scope of a disaster of this scale is not being told. The human suffering, the loss of basic infrastructure (ei; no influence use because no one answers their phones or gives out permits), the reality of armed soldiers on street corners and the seizing of useful property and goods for the relief effort. The staff has answered that concern with an explanation that they are not interested in telling this story alone for the next eight months and then saddling the next 6 to 10 staffs with the same plot as the 'real' course of relief happens.

We have players taken aback at the level of destruction a PC driven plot can involve, wondering where the line in the sand is and how much a PC with the right dots can get away with. The discussion of what should and should not be allowed in game is a sticky, giant issue and one that has raged for years. This brings a matter already of concern to the forefront.

Finally, we have the hardest question. What recourse do players have when they feel concerns about the course of the game? The concerns brought up here are legitimate and are being discussed. This discussion is the first and best recourse for players and staff alike to resolve these concerns. The public nature of this discussion has sadly turned the conversation into a perceived power struggle - can players demand staff do X, Y or Z - but that clouds the actual issue that all of this boils down to - if a player is unhappy with the course the game is taking, especially when such a broad course, effecting ALL players is undertaken, how do they handle it? Whom do they discuss their concerns with in the hopes of getting some discussion or resolution?

In that light, isn't it better to have us talking this out and exploring the facets of the concerns and complaints? A silent but growing group of angry players attempting to organize a vote of no confidence with no respectful and reasonable discourse beforehand would be dramatic and, to use a much bandied about term, bullying behavior. Instead of a black and white "with us or against us" attitude, can we please consider discussion and good faith resolution of concerns?