STATE OF THE GAME

[returnjourney]

STATE OF THE GAME

Hello, passengers!

We've passed our two-month anniversary, and so we'd like to take this opportunity to check in with our players, to see what's working for you guys and what could use improvement. You can consider this post a place to freely share your thoughts, both with us and the game at large. If you'd like to engage with the mods one-on-one, please see our Mod Contact page!

Feel free to converse amongst yourselves, whether it's about expectations, concerns, or anything else.

Character Activities

We also wanted to introduce a new page we set up, to make it easier for your character to contribute to the ship and also notice those contributions! Please check out that page here.

You guys can use this page to post and track any background behavior or activities your character and others are up to, whether now or at any time in the future. Basically, things that aren't big enough to merit a player plot, but are still important to how your character engages with the setting! Think of it as something adjacent to a handwaved CR meme; you can see examples on the page itself.

We'd also like to give you guys the opportunity to plot amongst yourself, insofar as the group activities go. There were a few of these mentioned on the warden meeting posts, so if you have an idea for a group activity and would like to present it to the game at large, please post it under this header! Then, if it gets enough traction (or has received support elsewhere, like plurk), submit it to the proper header on the Activities page. Other players can show their support by adding a +1 or -1 in the subject of their replies. Let's say there should be participation from 4 or 5 characters for it to count!

That said, if a group activity doesn't get enough support (or your character wouldn't bother trying to get support and would do the activity solo), please submit it as an individual activity! You can always bump it up to a group activity in the future, if more passengers participate later.

Please note that this page is not meant as a substitution for threading out cool things or player plots. Rather, we'd like to give everyone a neat, easy way to see what's going on around the ship at any given time, so wardens and inmates can stay on the same page with their activities and share plot hooks.

Since this page will be a mainstay, if you have any questions, please ask them on our FAQ!

Comments

[kaijuice]

Hey y'all. Appreciate the open conversations going on in here, and while I don't have much to add, please know that I've read and will keep them in mind.

Joining the chorus that if there's an issue OOC, or you aren't having fun with something, you can reach out to me about it. I will always find a reason to edit a post, or redirect a character's actions.

That said — I'm here to play a bunch of negative and complicated CR, and will be doing so (including on my Warden) unless someone expresses that they'd prefer not to. Which you should feel free to! It isn't always fun! But I can't opt folks out of it without a heads-up.

I've been having a good time here, and look forward to seeing how things develop. It's a real privilege to get to play in a game from the start, growing pains included; thanks mods for letting us be a part of it.

Kicks up my leg. Let's get this space bread.

[kaijuice]

Just chiming in to say that I don't think you need to worry about touching on uncomfortable content, provided that you label threads appropriately. Rough stuff is going to come up!

A simple CW: Etc in the header of a thread will suffice for most things, as well as skimming the "content warnings" portion of someone's permissions before diving in.

You can't be responsible for anything that folks don't flag, or otherwise tell you is an issue. None of us read minds*. If you ever do stumble into something, I can say from experience (on both sides!) that folks are generally chill about expressing that, and editing the thread.


* If anyone here does read minds, let me take you to Vegas.

[sanctus_dei]

Hellooooo I talked to a lot of your on plurk already, I'm bad at expressing feelings about this stuff over text generally so I don't have much in the way of crit. I'm having a good time, I think the mods have a great game here and are approachable and responsive, and any time a tag from this game rolls into my inbox my mood improves by 10 points.

I've been in a LOT of DWRPs but none as enthusiastic and welcoming of plotting as this one. I'd been out of the loop for awhile but being in such a welcoming space has been a delight. It's always a bit nervous when it comes to OCs, especially apping one as complicated as Theo to a game where I only knew one other player. There are absolutely people out there that look down on them in the DWRP community so I'm relieved to not find that attitude here. You all treat him just like part of the gang. I truly appreciate it!

I know Theo is a terrible, hostile, immature kid that's tough to deal with, but he wouldn't be here if he wasn't capable of change. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing where all this takes him.

While I'm here, I just want to say I'm dropping Waver. I love the guy, but like I said, being back to DWRP after a long break meant I bit off more than I could chew w/r/t bringing in a Warden too. I didn't know how much of my free time it'd take up. It's pretty much all on me tho, Waver would take this job so seriously and thoroughly, and I don't have enough time in my day to do him the justice he deserves. It was making me afraid to start more tags/plotting with him instead of getting out there and doing it, so obviously I need to let him go. A shame since that all just means you're now stuck with Theo instead. :)

Thanks everyone! Keep on keepin' on.

[omniavincit]

Hey! I was working last night and am just now catching up on all this, but since you mentioned William I thought I'd chime in for some clarity/to give you a sense of where he's coming from.

he has actually been plain on the network on how poorly inmates were treated on the last ship

I've tried to be really circumspect about this, since OOCly I don't want to dwell on bad past experiences or potentially drag new players into discussing or even relitigating things that happened in a game they had nothing to do with. ICly William is also being circumspect because he has difficulty talking about it and doesn't want to freak inmates out. It'd be really helpful if you could point to threads where this happened so I know what to adjust!

(And also feel free to ping me if William ever takes things too far--I'm trying to take an approach of "William is impressed with and surprised by things that are an improvement over the Barge" vs. "William laments how terrible his time on the Barge was.")

there was a whole chunk of network interaction where bucky was lambasted for giving silco a nickname, which tells me oocly that icly characters will not take to harsh things well.

I think other people have alluded to this, but differences in wardening style are really common--I don't think you EVER have to worry about every warden unanimously condemning Bucky for a choice he's made.

In the thread in question specifically, William's reaction to Bucky had to do with a couple factors: 1. canonically having experienced the kind of treatment Bucky was giving Silco (there's a reason "don't call me Billy" is in his name field) and feeling as a warden he needed to stand up for the guy; 2. Bucky's defensiveness, along with Claire immediately jumping in, made William feel ganged up on and like Bucky and Claire weren't interested in discussion so much as being right. In some ways William's response was intensely personal, in part because that's how he approaches wardening--it's a personal experience and he's an emotional guy.

If something like this happens again and you ever have questions about where William's coming from, please hit me up! (Or like, feel free to ask here and now!) I love talking about him, I'm always happy to shed light on his motives and can easily adjust if something is uncomfortable (or just too CRAU-y) for you--but I can't know something's wrong if you don't reach out.

[returnjourney]

This is unacceptable and unproductive, Fire. You're done here.

[shiftedshape]

Loki's in! He needs the practice and can help with demoing, including magic stuff that might come up during events or if someone gets their powers back (largely the telekinetic blasts).

[dealwiththe]

you will pry this icon out of my cold dead hands

[rank1]

predominantly what anna described, because between the wardens (together) trying to gain the trust of the inmates, it's become almost sacred to do anything other than solitary, where they still have a lot of freedom and might not learn anything. i don't think it's just locked to bucky being harsh, but if any warden were particularly harsh, it'd be like a collective gasp moment almost.

Also as per the conversation with Anna, I do feel that we need to give wardens more reason to come down hard on inmates –– wardens need a bigger leg up on inmates to criticize their behaviour. On the flip side, I think the extremes of this might be a difference in perception, too. The Warden Command page has a place for wardens to put in incident reports for this reason; there's a lot of ways inmates are being punished, including solitary! Travis has been handcuffed to different locations twice, and put in solitary for a full week, and to my knowledge no warden even complained about inmates being put in solitary. I think we can do something about balance as far as inmates having opportunities to do things bad enough to warrant solitary, though.

i have held back because i don't want to impact the story some people are in the middle of still telling. is it something i can ask and check with them each independently? yes, but even icly right now a lot of wardens would take it very poorly and that's something i'm trying to avoid as a player.

Absolutely. I respect that it's a lot for you right now and you're trying to avoid wardens taking it poorly, but I do think that communication regardless can determine whether wardens would actually react negatively to this: as above, multiple wardens HAVE used solitary, deprived characters of things, etc. I think it's wise to be cautious about basing your choices on what you feel their characters will do if you haven't confirmed with their players what they know their characters will do, you know?

thank you so so much for all your support, jenn. i really really appreciate it, and i'm sorry if i've done poorly with explaining anything or letting my anxiety color things a particular way i wasn't intending. a lot of the ooc anxiety i expressed about people reacting negatively has more to do with not knowing if i'm speaking well enough or not and less to do with anyone directly.

You're most welcome, I'm happy to help with whatever makes gameplay smoothest for everyone, and I really appreciate your ability to step back and look at this objectively in discussion.

[bornofthedarkness]

Heyo,
Whew, so this is a lot to chew on but I appreciate all the thoughts that have been going on here! I think for me I feel pretty distant from everyone which might just be a fault of my own, frankly. I'm prety busy, I have a difficult time keeping up with and being on plurk too so there is that.

I know Malekith is... difficult, he's old, he's seen a lot, experienced a lot, holds some pretty gnarly views that are deeply entrenched in his being and by nature alone travels down the path of antagonist because the state of the universe is kinda killing his kind, yanno. He's not the most ACTIVE inmate at the moment because he's watching, and scheming, and planning. Learning things. Also because he knows he's weak and sorta hates that but is kinda vividly aware of that. So that's been a bit of a trial to navigate. His superiority complex doesn't help either so there's some just. Things that make it difficult at the moment just by nature of him being him, lmfao.

I really love deep and complicated CR, I love negative or kind of gray spaces. I just don't really know how to get involved at the moment as much. It's been a bit of a struggle on that front, and maybe its just that this type of character isn't where it's at right now. Though I have a few leads and hell who doesn't love a slow burn. I do have another character in mind that would be more likely to make a mess of everything. So I might give that a go!

That being said, I'm nowhere near as intense or archaic as this asshole lmfao so please by all means if anything is uncomfortable hollar at me. I adore terrible shit but sometimes that's not the jam for people, its cool.

Also, if something seems to be read wrong it may be 1. that HE is interpreting it wrong and my meta is reflecting that or 2. That I am actually interpreting it wrong and please by all means correct me, I have no problem with that.

As for the whole of the game, I love the setting. I'm torn between some of the accommodations being really nice and kushy which makes it hard to feel prison-y but also that there's such a limited amount of things for inmates to do that it makes things equally hard to navigate but I think that's coming from the mindset of a character who would usually rather talk to a brick wall than someone who isn't also Svartalfer LMFAO.

Mm, yeah I think that's it. Thanks mods for opening this dialogue and thanks everyone for your great input and thoughts.


OH -- I figured to add this: I think sometimes he can be intimidating cause he's so large, he's obviously old, he just carries himself as an imposing thing, but I don't mind him being put in his place, challenged on his ideas, or like ANY of that. I truly welcome it all!! If this helps at all.