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

[expectaspectre]

I think part of this problem is also the tone of many of the wardens with regard to just, like.... not wanting to be cruel? Or perceived as cruel? Like the mission, as presented, doesn't really facilitate that and it kind of winds up with a prisoners-running-the-prison vibe. With it being a brand-new ship and there being no examples of a status-quo as people arrived, there's really been no REASON to find the situation one way or another; they're making it up as they go.

I think one of the problems is a lack of knowledge about exactly what the inmates have done. They're not inclined to be truthful (with very few exceptions) and there's no reason for them not to proclaim their innocence if most of the wardens are Nice People who Want To Do Right and Believe Them.

I think it needs to become BLATANTLY OBVIOUS, one way or another, that these are untrustworthy, destructive, murderous people who definitely deserve to be there before anything can really change. Without that, there's no real reason for (especially some of the newer) wardens to disbelieve/disregard their pleas for mercy/justice.

[counterstep]

yes! thank you. i think you've broken down the issue better than i did, and yeah. it's. like there's so much weight on not wanting to do the wrong thing on accident, that as babby lambs, the wardens have no concept of how much the inmates do deserve to be punished for stupid bullshit, probably even more severely than they are right now. and bucky's kind of the only one that doesn't care because he doesn't trust anyone anyway but all the wardens really want to trust each other and be able to trust (and gain the trust) of inmates.

[expectaspectre]

Yeah I talked more with you about this on plurk but: yes this

I also think that it's something that'll come with time/more incidents, but I doubt Bucky is alone in being capable of pushing back against the inmates more, I think it's just a thing where we need to progress a teensy bit further along in the overarching plot before we have REASON to

I mean Grace right now is a timid li'l insecure babbin but she's absolutely CAPABLE of dark, violent things, and her entire arc is learning to be proactive and stand up for herself against inmate manipulation and threat, so just speaking for myself I know it's absolutely on the table. I think it might seem like, at least ICly, because of the current environment people are averse to more outright punishment, but I don't necessarily think that a little IC conflict among wardens is a bad thing. Not that you should feel like you HAVE to put yourself in that position if you don't want to, and I know that's where you're coming from right now, so. I GET IT, IS ALL I'M SAYIN', AND I'M LEAVING IT IN A POST HERE FOR POSTERITY, GOSH DARNIT

[rank1]

I think it's definitely worth figuring out ways to "out" inmates' crimes more for sure. I'd hoped that reminders from the Navarch and Archie and the security levels would be decent clues, but if we have to make some tweaking to trickle out more information on that front, we can certainly look into that.

[expectaspectre]

I know that would be helpful to me, personally!! I have no knowledge OOCly of the other game/the other ship and how things worked and what went down, so speaking as somebody coming in totally blind, it'd be useful to provide a real touchstone reason for my idealistic Warden to treat the place as more of a prison and less of a, like, sleepaway camp for troubled youths

I can't speak for everybody obviously but I think for all the people who weren't around for the initial "here's the number of people you killed on your nametag" event to have concrete info to rely on somehow.

[rank1]

For sure! Personally, I really prefer a harsher ship –– and honestly, Travis has had more consequences/pushback/judgement laid on him in 6 weeks than my inmate on the other ship had in 6 months, so that's why I'm not terribly concerned. We're still in early times, we're finding footing, so I think it'll be important to

a) make it more clear to wardens what inmates are in for
b) open up more avenues/motivations for inmates to act out
c) ideally recruit more inmates so that wardens don't outnumber them
d) encourage more communication OOC so that it's clear that inmate players are looking for consequences and warden players are interested in playing hardball.

And if there's anything else we can add to that, we will.

On top of that: I did very much like it when Grace told Travis the fuck off for being flippantly conversational with her when he's a bad guy. She's fantastic.

[expectaspectre]

Thank you!!! I have to say I've had no issues with the mods or communication or ic/ooc divide and everyone I've played with and spoken to have been super welcoming and awesome. It's clear the amount of work that goes into making this game great for everybody in it.

and YEAH GOD she was SO confused, like "bro why.... are you talking to me like we're buds, what is happening, WILLIAM COME GET YOUR BOY" I mean it's always been clear that Travis is there to stir shit up and be A Problem so thank you for the opportunities he creates in that way, it's wonderful

[dealwiththe]

I think this is a very good point. I know Lucifer has already ICly had a discussion along these lines with Waver, trying to remind him that the inmates are all here for very good reasons, no matter how sympathetic they may be. Finding ways to make that more clear, as an OOC mechanic, might be helpful to some characters!

[expectaspectre]

Yeah, I think like, that's the question, isn't it? Because all the inmates have to do is go "Why should you believe someone as shady and hands-off and untrustworthy as the Navarch over me, someone you see and interact with and eat lunch with every day?" and yeah it's manipulative but.... I mean MY warden would buy it.

[dealwiththe]

Yeah! Some of the inmates are obviously going to be lying, manipulative shits and some will be very good at it, and some wardens are just not gonna be prepared to deal with that without arming them with some information somehow.

[saklas]

oh dawg i just wanted to poke in here like

no one ever pinned him for it but volk was an ice cold manipulative motherfucker playing the game as below the belt as he could think of

bad person!!

[expectaspectre]

No totally!!! OOCly that's the vibe i got from our thread, no doubt, like it was CLEAR that Volk was being hugely manipulative of Grace who was clearly insecure, it was GREAT

I had no issues with that, I don't want you to think that I did!!!! My issue is entirely with the mechanics, and it's easily fixed. If anything, I think Volk being a pushy li'l shit is just more incentive for some warden sometime to snap and do a Big Punish. Like if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. Obviously ICly all the wardens want it to be one big happy family where everyone agrees on the course of action collectively but OOCly i crave violence

[saklas]

venn diagram between "mother i crave violence" and "jail for mother for ten thousand years"

dawg volk's point of death is someone literally got TOO fed up

god actually dropping was a great idea i feel so easy breezy beautiful covergirl right now . the freedom