The Return Journey (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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returnjourneyooc2022-03-05 05:37 pm
returnjourney) wrote in returnjourneyooc2022-03-05 05:37 pm
Entry tags:
STATE OF THE GAME
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!
no subject
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.
I don't think he's necessarily super unique in that regard compared to the rest of the cast
i wasn't trying to say he's unique or special. that was just the explanation for why he would be exceptionally harsh, especially compared to others. since you mentioned william though, he has actually been plain on the network on how poorly inmates were treated on the last ship, and that gives strong ic cause for a lot of wardens to be more careful because no one wants to make things as bad as they were on the other ship. william also isn't going to be as harsh either. 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.
has anyone expressly told you they aren't interested in engaging with heavy stuff at all?
no. while i expressed my anxiety with that, i know there are some plot beats that people are trying to get in with the current situation in-game, and since it would affect that, 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.
I do think it's your responsibility to manage that part; it's unfeasible to ask players to minimize their characters' reactions and opinions so that you can play Bucky to his max, just as it would be unfeasible for you to play Bucky completely hands-off just so inmates can do something wild without having consequences.
i don't disagree. i'm not asking people to change for my character, and i'd never want them to. my writing about it is expressing my feelings as a player, not a criticism of other players/character. i'm laying that out so people know what's going on for me right now since it's related to the current state of the game. it's a catch-22 for me/bucky from ooc and ic perspectives.
re: horror game, that was a more extreme comparison than i really intended, so i'm sorry i expressed that poorly.
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
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?
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.