returnjourneyooc | STATE OF THE GAME

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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!

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Activity: Describe the activity. Is it for wardens or inmates?
Location: Where is it located?
Frequency: When and/or how regularly does it happen?
Availability: Who can notice this activity? Is it observable to everyone, or is it for wardens or inmates only?

im having fun!

@ mods
PLEASE FEEL FREE TO PUT DOWN HARD BOUNDARIES AND HARD "NOs," WITH ME, VOLK IS TRYING TO MAKE THE NAVARCH'S LIFE HARD AS A STATED GOAL BUT FIRE IS NOT TRYING TO MAKE MODS' LIVES HARD I PROMISE. I WILL ALWAYS WORK WITH YOU TO TAKE THE LOAD OFF IF YOU NEED IT, JUST SAY THE WORD. i like to play characters that do this, the only time this relationship gets toxic is when people lie about what they are or are not ok with me doing [eyes slide over to my old game]

i also wish we had more original character slots :(

i could stand 2 events a month, also, but see immediately below for my pace vs everyone else's lol

@ playerbase
please tell me if my pace and/or volk's intensity/character themes and general confrontational nature is making things bad for anybody. he's supposed to feel like he's enjoying being a bully, it's not me i swear. the game i was in previous to this (for 13 years) is one of the fastest games there is even though DWRP as a whole is way slower than back before we all had kids/jobs/etc. there i was actually a medium-slow player and here im afraid i might be overwhelming :(

im also clashing a little with my ooc conception of the setting and some other people's, i think - i tend to think the peregrine & the barge & settings like it aaaaare, lawful neutral at best, & that generally the challenge of a warden is to try to do good despite

a) a system that is actually kind of frustrating and restrictive &
b) inmates that are inmates, being at turns both violent and conniving & manipulative AND genuinely terrified, sympathetic, or being damaged by said system

WOULD LOVE TO HEAR PEOPLE'S THOUGHTS ON THE MATTER

this is leading i think to some meta-level thread-steering that i don't enjoy doing or doing TO people. i'm not getting bleed - there's no emotional component bouncing from me to volk or vice versa - but i find myself, hmmm , rather than just communicating ooc with other muns when i think volk is right or wrong, (ratio 1:3) ive just been trying to narrate harder to try to get them to come to the conclusion on their own and then getting frustrated when they don't pick up the signs or agree with me

anyway this has made some stuff hard and im going to be better about not doing that.

Edited 2022-03-05 23:20 (UTC)

Activity: A semi-regular, semi-organized movie night aimed at allowing wardens to de-stress from a stressful job, socialize a bit and potentially share bits of their cultures with each other. Maybe just throw popcorn at each other. Any wardens are welcome, presumably not all will be there on any given night, since the inmates probably shouldn't be left totally unsupervised for a few hours, they can swap out if there's enough interest, Lucifer won't have to be there every time so ~~Grace~~ the others can have some fun time without him :P Also a different person can pick the movie each time (Lucifer will pick the first one) - they can set up a rotation or whatever if necessary. A good chance to have characters talk about each other's worlds a bit!
Location: The theater in Warden Command
Frequency: idk once a week or once every couple of weeks probably, it doesn't have to be set in stone
Availability: Starting out as a socialization opportunity for wardens only, but hey if eventually somebody wants to figure out a way to bring along an inmate as a reward for good behavior or something why not. Also Lucifer would not try to keep it a secret though he obviously won't be talking it up to inmates, so...if you think your inmate character would reasonably know about it or find out somehow, GO FOR IT

This is really quick while I'm on my half and we'll see if I have the energy come back and elaborate more later tonight but an issue I've run into a lot with the sort of meta-read of the setting + trying to reconcile it with playability is, like

An inmate can have any read on the setting they want, and whether it's valid or something obviously way off base they have to overcome, they don't icly have any choice about it. Which DEFINITELY can have its own hurdles, but there's at least a very solid reason to keep them there. Whereas if a warden is repeatedly hammered with "everything here is bad and you are part of a corrupt/shitty/etc system", or things that make them doubt whether their windfall is some kind of trick, there's no cushion for keeping them here — and especially since wardens are likely to care about that kind of thing, it becomes this ooc wall of "my character either has to avoid or completely shut down the concerns of someone trapped and frightened/angry, or I have to grasp for whatever straws can maybe keep them from voluntarily leaving"

Or like, fixating on the system, which can be fun and viable, but not long term unless the goal of the arc is to see it be a failing effort or change the game radically

I don't know that I think there's any Right Or Wrong way to play it, I don't have A Solution, but this is a quick two cent explanation of why at least I specifically also kind of struggle to engage with this

I'm going to reply to you from my own journal (hi it's Jenn lol) because I do the bulk of the NPCing. I am also going to talk a little generally in spots so other people can understand where I'm coming from with my approach to them. (So it's gonna get long.)

I really want to make it clear that the intended purpose of the Navarch and Archimedes are not to be full characters in their own rights (esp in Archie's case) or a kind of "CR" (esp in the Navarch's case.) They both serve different functions in play, which is intended to be:

- Archimedes is generally meant to handle quick concerns and questions, access to specific items (ie, "Hi, Archimedes, I'd like a repair kit for x item" or "Hi, my communicator got smashed" or "Hi, I need [item that is specifically for doing my job as a warden]") Some deviation from this is fine but I can't use him to soothe the vast majority of inmate concerns because that is literally the wardens' jobs, and it's more rewarding for inmates to go over those things with someone they can actually have longterm CR with.

- The Navarch is meant to assist wardens in their work, which is more esoteric things like facilitating inmate punishment, giving wardens access to crucial information (with inmate player permission), answering questions wardens may have about how they're doing in their job, or dealing with troubled wardens (Ie one who is on the cusp of demotion.)

I want to make it clear that characters can (and should) question themselves, wardens and what fairness/equity/etc are. I think it even makes sense as a deflection for them to temporarily fixate on the ship's system as the real problem rather than acknowledging any flaw in themselves.

However, I do think it's a pretty unrewarding path to take long-term, both because I am not interested in NPCing for frequent and persistent challenges to the core premise of the game to no benefit, and also because it is going to hit a wall, a very very hard wall. It may also be very hard to convince other players to engage on fighting the wall with you. To match your eye slide: we designed some things in this game to be more transparent because the total ambiguity of a nameless, faceless Admiral who has no rhyme or reason for why he picks certain people and has no accountability to any other body felt very hard to handle sometimes. That said, I cannot possibly answer 41 questions, the first two of which are made up of over a dozen sub questions. This is not a functional use of my time, and may or may not glean anything useful to Volk. If you'd like, we can handwave a variety of things, but I simply cannot NPC them all, and Volk will eventually have to accept the situation he's in so that you can get into the meat of the problems that made him an inmate, rather than the problems with the system he's temporarily in. Especially because none of this seems rewarding to Volk; he just seems more and more frustrated, and I worry about frustrating you in turn.

The problem with trying to make the Navarch's life difficult is also that:

a) The Navarch is not going to talk to inmates, the same way any prison warden isn't going to meet at random with prisoners, so it's just creating work for the wardens as a go-between. Some warden players may like this and like investigating the system, but everyone has to understand that I am not going to NPC out dozens of answers to challenges to the system that largely won't get changes, because we are not going to overhaul the game to address all those things. The game will change and evolve over time, yes, but two months in we're not going to gut it like that to make it more realistic to any specific character.

b) This is a setting meant to give characters challenges, new experiences and tastes of other lives. I like to think of it as a redemption isekai. We are not building a meticulously crafted open world beyond the Peregrine's boundaries, nor trying to tell a story about an idealized version of earth prison in space that follows the Geneva Convention and whatnot. Writing about the nitty gritty of the system is a lot of hours, discussions and labour for us to write a ton of stuff about how the system works in huge detail when we could be writing plots where characters get to see new things, blow things up, go on adventures, live other lives, etc.

c) As I said to you in conversation the other day, some of Volk's questions are technically answerable, and I could write out a full answer using alien jargon or excuses to answer "why don't we have a psychiatrist", but the real answer is just "because then we have to have NPC psychiatrists on board so mods can do more NPCing, people can handwave psychiatry, or someone has to play a competent psychiatrist and also be interested in playing it with you specifically." I am doubtful as to how satisfying this is for most players OOC and it is also not going to create much (if any) value IC. I understand that it may be frustrating to curve a character around legitimately good questions, but we are writing stories set in a cool spaceship, not writing a 1:1 observation on the reality of the situation.

Ultimately, I don't want to treat the setting like an escape room where the objective is to figure out how to get out, whether it's by unlocking clues talking to the NPCs or brute force. I want the setting to be a vehicle for telling stories about characters, and that means interactions between PCs who have ongoing CR and conflict and resolutions and all those things.

hey! I know I'm new, but I've been watching the game on and off since its inception. I hope this isn't in poor taste for me to answer!

I'm honestly a little concerned by this line:
getting frustrated when they don't pick up the signs or agree with me

Setting aside discussions of ic/ooc bleed, this sounds like exactly what you mentioned above:
the only time this relationship gets toxic is when people lie about what they are or are not ok with me doing

You want Volk to hit certain character beats in how people react to him. Instead of communicating that, you seem frustrated when it doesn't happen organically. However, people just want to play their characters IC-- that's what you're doing, that's what everyone's doing. People can't know you're trying to do a certain thing if you don't say it.

I hope this helps!

no yeah absolutely and im kind of, aware of this? I definitely am not clever enough to play wardens i think, the only time i can manage it is when they're good at compartmentalizing or extremely rigid-lawful

i guess my WANT is to go as hard as i can and trust people to tell me when i need to walk back

but

a lot of times with a character it's not a single thread, it's a buildup of many things you dont realize is leading to a struggle with a drop until it's already happening :/ which means i need to balance better and check in more with what the other mun is feeling. good call

i think volk might be leaning more on warden-inmate collective organization rather than "LEAVE RIGHT NOW YOURE SHITTY" and maybe i can use that to my advantage ? ? ? we will see ??

Also, this - the overall warden atmosphere is V E R Y different once you jump in which is a culture shock for me. so far i dont think any wardens actually think the system is shitty, except former inmates william and loki. they think the system is good and that inmate complaining is just mouth noises coming from guilty criminals

that is an odd adjustment, and frustrating as someone who was kind of planning to play a grey-inmate only to find out that there are no grey inmates lol

oh hi! no its all good!

your first point is exactly right, this doesn't come naturally to me and is something i need to work on ;-; in the future i plan to be better and to find a way to be less afraid of an ic fight becoming an extremely real ooc fight

second point oh boy yeah im being a hypocrite, huh. good call. i need to cut this tendency off before it gets worse and be open about my feelings and just deal with whatever happens tbh. ninety percent of the time people are cool!!!! ;;

Oh you replied before I could edit in, lmao, big flashing neon banner, I don't know nothin about playing inmates and these two cents are 1000% shit as it relates to my individual experience (just as a general disclaimer unrelated to your reply)

MORE THOUGHTS LATER HOPEFULLY

hey dude i'm just popping in to say that by and large, most of the characters, wardens and inmates alike, are coming from settings where the baseline for prison is so much fucking worse than this. we have several period characters or characters who grew up in period environments and also literally NONE of them have seen how it works in practice, besides william and loki. there have been multiple wardens discussing their suspicions on this front, whether they trust the system, etc (i myself have participated in like 3 or 4 conversations about this), but of course the wardens aren't going to talk to the inmates about it. especially not volk, who you give an inch and he takes a mile.

speaking for myself as a player here: you are blurring ic/ooc and it's actually making it actively unpleasant to play a warden bc now i have to worry that i'm going to get judged about my ooc values for shit my dumbass devil hunter does. this is deeply off-putting.

glad I could help!

Another thought, feel free to disregard, but while I have you here-- When I was backreading through the comms I came across some of Volk's questionnaire. While I understand the thought process behind them and how it's IC for Volk, I kind of wonder the long term how fun it is to play for everyone else.

When I've modded games, I didn't want to give all the plot info to people when they just asked directly. I wanted to foster plots and let things unfold out of player initiative. Volk's current method of trying to reach the Navarch isn't very fun for other players; it doesn't give them anything to do, and it doesn't give you anything interesting to bounce off as a player.

I think some kind of player plot where Volk tries to contact the Navarch, that allows other players, both Wardens and Inmates, to respond as more than passive observers / messengers, would be a good way to give Volk something more meaty to chew on, so to speak.

Thank you for outlining the intent behind those characters-- and thank you for indulging that short thread with Loki and the Navarch because it would definitely have been Real Hard to keep him from leaving without that reassurance that shit isn't going crazygonuts.

One thought: I think there might be something to be said about a balance between the scifi and the fantasy of the game. None of it is hard scifi, obviously, but compared to the barge, the Peregrine is a lot more structured and LOOKS very scifi, so I think we have some players leaning into that Realness a bit more than ever happened on the barge...which was very nebulous and therefore easier to go "whatever I'll just do this who cares" with. I think ultimately for playing in a dollhouse collaboratively, it's generally better to have the setting be mostly agreed upon, but the more rigid you are about how the dollhouse functions, the harder it is to move anything around inside.

Maybe it's just a magic dollhouse and maybe PCs get exasperated by it being silly sometimes and then they move on and we keep playing barbies.

Events will likely help propel this along as time goes on, I think, but a slight attitude shift towards "it's magical realism and the reality is focused in the CR not the setting" might help chill things out a bit. Idk how we do that beyond y'know, talking it out like this, but that's my two cents.

hi jenn! some of this is reiteration but i appreciate making it public because its valuable. bullet points 🔫☝‍️

- totally get this abt the navarch and archie, am trying to think exactly how to thread the needle IC. its possible that i might start posting my archie toplevels as a general summary of volk's concern rather than him poking in fascination at the fucked up owl for ages and ages.

- similarly, his 41 questions are all nitpick nonsense and im comfortable with just saying "he got an answer and it begrudgingly satisfied him" with no further interaction with the list or detailing

- i totally am here for this ethos of the game and although volk feels like he's trying to kick it to pieces, it's how he's reacting to being extremely offended that he's here lol. if he was a warden he'd be more or less just as ferocious defending his interests from the other side

- mr volkhov is a person who uses his insanely high standards and ability to browbeat people in conversation as a weapon, and to me its just kind of an interesting kind of terrible and shitty person to be, but it sounds like it IS having a splash effect ooc. i need to brainstorm about how to more or less put a cushion between his ic knife-throwing practice and actual ooc people. in completely practical terms it is something i WANT to do but don't know how to rig up yet.

- how do i do this. hm. i'll get back to you on what i can make work. maybe i will start putting [heres why hes wrong] flags in my narration, or like ... hm

- i like that he's just a mean ball of spikes that could be in a utopia and still think he's living in hell because his brain is broken. i dont want to soften him....... i intend strongly to either cushion between IC and OOC or switch him out (which sounds like a PA threat but playing him is less important to me emotionally than not breaking the game that my friends made, i will not feel bad if that is how i end up doing this)

-howww do i do thisssssssss hm. problem problem problem solve... im going to think and circle back, thank you for your thoughtful response tho

oh i also think its on volk's end he is designed as an insane perfectionist that loses sleep and health trying to make everything he can control make perfect sense and beating himself up trying to knock down things he cant control

dude thank you for speaking up to me about this, seriously. i am going to take this to heart and think about what to do. i might need to just swap volk out, he's fun but maybe he's bringing out the wrong stuff in my playstyle and if that's hurting other people that's way more important to me to stop than anything else that i could have as a factor for consideration

seriously thank you, communication is hard

nyeah, im thinking about what next... it might be that im just barking up the wrong tree with this combo of character and setting, a complete control freak that has problems with meticulously micro-managing the things around him to the point where he exhausts and hurts himself might just be a weird toothpaste and orange juice combo here

penitence suggests letting inmates in being used as a treat for good behavior. 'dont stab anyone this week and you get to watch the fast and the furious'

(she doesn't know what the fast and the furious is. or movies. but u get the idea)

!! i just reread his comment (look today was long) and noticed it's in warden command; i don't think inmates can be in there? but maybe they can do some kind of SIRE equivalent or some point, idk. something to think on

Edited 2022-03-06 01:19 (UTC)

Not to speak for Carolyn, but William and Loki are definitely seeing this as an improvement upon the previous system, so they aren't really in a dramatically different boat (lol) than any of the other wardens. They wouldn't be here if they were. Loki's skeptical and has gone to seek reassurance, and I'd like to leave it at that for the time being rather than stress testing the setting's premise, if that makes sense?

I do want to add that I think your tagging pace might be contributing to your overall stress about all this in addition to putting some pressure on other players that I don't think you're going for. It might be worth it to slow down some more, do some more day-to-day things, etc. Not full SOL or anything, but I think sometimes Volk comes off as if he's trying to speedrun the metaplot and it's requiring an awful lot of thought and effort from everybody involved to manage that.

Volk being high-strung isn't necessarily going to go away, obviously, but it could be lightened up, I think. Make it fun. Take your time. The game'll still be here tomorrow. <3

I think there are a lot of good points being made, I just want to add a bit from my own perspective. I think Volk starts to feel a bit fourth-walley at times, particularly in the way he consistently is trying to poke holes in the game setting, and personally I don't especially enjoy threading out stuff like that. Combine that with the fact that my character is from a canon that doesn't concern itself too much with detailed or consistent worldbuilding (often the answer in Lucifer is literally a deus ex machina), and therefore Lucifer himself can be pretty handwavey about things - he's just here like "yeah, I know, shit's weird. SHRUG"

In terms of perspective on the setting itself, I think Lucifer is aware that it's unfair (I imagine most, if not all of the wardens are), but again, he doesn't care enough to concern himself with addressing it because he thinks it can, in fact, work despite the unfairness. He's always worked within unfair systems and made them work in spite of that. And again, OOCly, we're all aware the system isn't gonna change so at some point we need to move on and try something else! It's always a balance, I know, especially when playing a character with proclivities like Volk's.

lol my tag speed is forever going to feel too slow ....... i like fast characters

no honestly at this point im thinking i just didnt pick the right guy TONALLY for what's fun for me and other people. which, you know -

i always think that if youre doing something long term you have to make every mistake at least once and this is one i have yet to make before :V

For sure! I was happy to, and I'm glad it was helpful for keeping Loki from leaving.

As for realism, that's really interesting insight! I totally get what you mean about sci-fi lending a more realistic feel compared to the barge, where magic meant you could have a lux 5-room mansion inside your cabin and whatnot. My mind was thinking more along the lines of living with some level of austerity, while more realistic, creates more reasons for characters to interact with each other; when you have a mansion for a cabin you don't need to eat in the dining hall because you have a full kitchen, when you have almost no material needs you never need to strive or make challenging choices (ie theft, bargaining, etc) about acquiring something. On the flip side, I felt it was more other-worldly to give the ship a very specific aesthetic and cleaning bot presence and AUTOMAT food thing rather than having a little co-op of characters who are immediately forced to cooperate with each other in order to accomplish largely handwaved tasks like making meals or maintaining the ship. Basically my thought was to trim realism where it discouraged conflict and emphasize realism where it encouraged interaction because that suited the Peregrine's vision of a team of funky heroes + villains doing some cosmic justice in the universe, whereas the Barge is more of a ragtag family that loves (or loves to hate) their ship.

And yes, absolutely events are gonna push this forward nicely! I really want to set a real tone with ports and simulations B) And talking along the way is good, we're gonna have a ton of fun.

yeah no that too - i am definitely not doing it on purpose but that's hhhow it's coming off, and in some ways how it comes off is the only thing that matters in rp? perfect intent doesn't mean much when things are very subjective

i think i might swap him out, he's a bad combo and i'm frustrated and other people are frustrated and there are ways to play with my friends that don't involve this hazard lol

UhhHHhhhh this feels much less important compared to Fire's concerns but I wanted to be sure to put this somewhere most people will likely see it.

Hi I'm Kelsey and I go through waves of inactivity and I am very sorry about it. I work a job that can be very physical and includes a lot of mental work and compassion fatigue and, well, I get very tired sometimes. Sometimes that tired leads to me doing bad tags or, more often, just not having it in me to tag at all. Also, currently, my wrist still hurts from being sprained so I do have to take it a lot easier than normal.

I'm p much always backtagging on threads, but I also try to jump into current things at the same time. I tend to work oldest to newest when I'm doing replies, but sometimes I go with what I can brain at the moment. I want to be really clear that this is never a reflection on anybody ooc or anybody's characters. Sometimes I just look at a reply and go "mmmm nope, can't get this going rn" and move onto another thread rather than not tag at all. It's not personal other than I am personally very tired a lot of the time. HOWEVER, we're getting more staff finally and I'm making an effort to not expend so much energy at work (thanks, sprained wrist) so things are looking up!

I'm always around on plurk and discord, literally almost all the time, so if you ever want to plan things ahead of time or handwave things, I'm geeenerally able to keep up with that, or will be able to tell you I'll come back to it when I can. I struggle a lot with people going "we should do something!" becuase that is easier when you are, uh, caught up and have a ton of energy to jump into something immediately, so really talking that stuff out can help significantly.

Uhh i think that's all i wanted to say lmfao idk i'm trying guys

Yeah, I think the balance in how the setting was structured is pretty solid! I think the issue is more how people are reacting and playing into it, a little bit. We could all stand to relax and wave fairy dust at some stuff and move on to the fun stuff a bit more, haha.

I can picture Volk fitting in if he was toned down slightly re: setting poking, personally, but if you don't think that's something his personality can manage, I totally get it. Whatever works for you, my dude.

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STATE OF THE GAME

GROUP ACTIVITIES.

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Warden movie night!

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