Not Exactly DMs

[SwordSaintMusashi]

OGR, if you'd like to PM me or catch me in chat, I'd be willing to discuss this idea with you.

[kid]

I believe I said about 15 times it's not Zelk's fault, and that she has no way around it, so no need to get snippy.
Regardless of that, I do stand by my analysis. A lv20 player who's a head of state drives a wedge in every adventure you wanna put out there. Period.

As for the topic at hand?
I think it was clear that I'm not in favor of player gaining DM-like powers.
And that if you want DM like powers you need to become a DM.

[danielmn]

Hey Shadow, since you're obviously used to the CR and ECL adjustments, maybe you could get with the DMA and offer some guidance to the dm's of alfa how to properly/ more properly make and adjust encounters. Or at the least I guess the DM's of BG. Be proactive and progressive and all. If you've the time, I know it is stretched pretty thin as is. Seems like we have a pretty heavy problem with what you've described; a problem there is a solution to.

[Zelknolf]

This is an ongoing conversation; training DMs, providing needed tools to DMs, and making certain that plots exist and trying to maximize people having fun / minimize people being enraged (under the awareness that it's never "everyone" or "no one" -- but you can certainly target "lots of people" and "relatively few people") is difficult and involves multiple admin, particularly because the shared trait of DMs who manage wide ECL spreads effectively is a deep and nuanced understanding of the rules, a detailed awareness of the servers' builds, and a high degree of proficiency with the tools, which we can't really give a little pamphlet out about.

I wouldn't want anyone to be under the impression that we don't constantly work here. I know that shad0wfax, SSM, and I spend a significant portion of the time we give to ALFA on just teaching stuff to people. We get far-from-ideal results because the ideal is difficult, not because nobody's trying.

[Brokenbone]

<SNIP>
For fuck's sake, what do you expect to happen when you throw works ending CR16+ shit at level 9-12 parties? Are they supposed to go get TPKd just so that a DM doesn't have to do a tiny bit of work to accommodate Teresa's inevitable involvement in an epic plot?

I've had a lot of fun with various named DMs from the post above... and am okay with scary potential TPK games. Definitely have seen single death sessions, have also seen double and triple death sessions. Thing is it's mostly been in the course of campaigns where I know the same 5-7 people will be there every week more or less. It is crazy that I have gotten to be in, for the sake of argument, two campaigns of approximately weekly frequency and durations of over a year in both cases. Some groups will gel a certain way, be isolated, bonded in a certain way etc. and the instinct to hit the panic button and tap high level help may not be there. If we aren't running crying to NPC Queens, Dukes, Lords, Knights and whatever, we aren't necessarily tapping PC heroes either. Might be timezones in cases, might be incompatible alignments, playstyles, whatever. Even if we do have adventurers who want help, in the context of a campaign it may be easier for single DM management to just have NPCs doing things "off camera" (i.e., fine you got the help of these dwarves or knights or whatever to do something OUTSIDE the castle, your intrepid adventurers are penetrating the dungeon UNDER the castle as the stereotypical special forces PC group).

Anyhow back to 3rd PCs, it's also possible that simple easing of things like 30d restrictions for moving turf could shake loose some players. Clear rule of no one brokering deals so PC 1 gets PC 2's funds or loots or else Heero will tar and feather them, or just set a universal punishment of vault wipe for every offence.

[SwordSaintMusashi]

Wrong thread, BB.

[Brokenbone]

You're right, guts of post were for this thread, tail end was for other.

[oldgrayrogue]

OGR, if you'd like to PM me or catch me in chat, I'd be willing to discuss this idea with you.

Absolutely SSM. I'll do both.

Oh and I'm totally with BB on SF's DM flame post. For such a crappy group of DMs I sure had lots and lots of fun playing in those campaigns. Second guessing DMs and rules lawyering or "challenge rating challenging" or worse plot challenging DMs is the absolute number one way to 1) Make that DM not want to play with you and 2) make that DM want to stop DMing, period. For pete's sake people lighten up.

A few days ago on BG I lost my internet connection while in a dangerous dungeon area with a group. I notified SF, logged back in and got immediately killed by spawns, as I expected I probably would. I even ignored SF's direction to wait until he was logged on to log back in because, frankly, I wanted to play and was impatient. SF gave me a tech res anyway, after checking logs to verify that I did not combat log. I was expecting to just be ported to BG or something. My PC would never have been in that area alone, and was only there because of a technical glitch with my net connection. But SF wanted me to try to make it out of the area alone, stood with me while I did (and helped a bit). My PC was resource depleted and almost dead when I finally made it out and I just rolled with it and the RP with my companions when I met back up with them, even though it sort of didn't make sense IC that my PC was left there alone. Could I have second guessed that decision by the HDM? Made some kind of big deal about it? Bitched and moaned about CR in those caves or whatever? Sure. But frankly I was HAPPY TO GET THE DM ATTENTION AND HAVE A LITTLE SOLO ADVENTURE. I was THANKFUL that the HDM of my home server took the time to 1) respond to my tech problem and 2) spent some time to DM me and have some fun with it -- together.

This little rant is actually related to my original post. We all need to seriously chill out and relax on the rules stuff. I have been saying it forever around here. The point is for us to have fun playing together -- player and player, player and DM -- not be in some kind of paranoid competition with one another. If giving a bunch of folks -- who incidentally probably have all been full fledged ALFA DMs or held Admin positions with uber meta access in the past -- some limited DM powers to hopefully improve the fun for everyone why is that a problem or an issue? I may disagree with them sometimes, but I trust SSM. I trust Zelk. I trust Wynna, and JLM and SF and Ronan and Lokan and Kid and all of them because they are volunteering their time to help me have fun and hopefully have some fun themselves as well. Sure my PCs get killed from time to time. But I see that as the trade off for playing in an immersive permadeath world. I mean as long as no one is clicking the kill button willy nilly what's the big deal, I can just reroll. I seriously don't want my DMs sitting there having to do math before they log on to DM me. Just come up with some cool stuff and lets play. In my experience the vast majority of ALFA DMs deliver, and in spades, if we let them.

[johnlewismcleod]

Thank you for that post, OGR.

[Zelknolf]

It would probably be wise to take a step back a moment.


How many public threads have we thrown around this month, and how have all of them gone?

Yeah, that's the fate of all of our forum threads. We wouldn't still be playing this game if we didn't all have passionate views about things, and we'd have already made changes if we all agreed. I had a moment today, though; I should be tickled pink this week. I got promoted at work yesterday-- a clear step up and now being one of the examples that folk in my old position would look up to, thinking "If I apply myself, I could have a story like that one."

Instead, I'm thinking about ALFA's firehose of fussing and fighting. There's more of it lately, and there's at least some degree to which I'm scratching my head about why. Some of it I can guess; some in-character situations that were clear no-win situations in the forum drama front. Still, I see a dozen people on at the same time most weeknights lately. That's an improvement. Our population is usually a scattershot of groups of 2-4 people with non-overlapping availability, all collectively assuming that there's only 10 real ALFAns, because that's about how many different people each one of them actually ever sees. I would think that we should be spending this time asking what we've done right to acquire that improvement so we can do more of it.

I'm not innocent in this, of course. I still feel compelled to join these discussions, because I don't want to be doing anything mysteriously or without my reasons being known. I'd rather if people agreed with me, of course, but I'll settle for them knowing why-- and then I promptly run out of patience and/or willpower and am swearing like everyone else, which itself just leads to faster burnout (which puts me farther behind on my work, which reduces available patience-- and in the end I'm just here loathing the notion of spending time with folk who I should regard as friends and making no progress on my work. I'd like to stop getting into such a position; I've been less than successful so far).



So in an effort to reel this in, while I once more (temporarily, probably and unfortunately) hold onto my senses. I think these last ten...ish... posts can be resolved by just trying to filter the emotion out of the messages. There's earnest well-meaning information and intention behind everyone here.

I think that the message behind shad0wfax's post is that he's seen some DMs take some actions that seemed obvious to him would lead to frustrations that those DMs later expressed. I don't think he wanted them to meet those ends, but is having trouble getting anyone to adjust their habits and/or outlooks in ways that would make them have a happier time here.

The responses seem to be trying to defend friends against the tone more than the content. This series of situations ending poorly sounds to a lot of folk like a scolding, when to the speakers these events all seemed like pretty-clear successes (and why would we want to scold someone for success?).

My own post before this was to try to illustrate how easy it is to turn the same sort of phrasing we're seeing wielded around on a speaker. Branding another player as "the bad one" or trying to just blanket classify people as wedges to prevent play is both destructive and likely reciprocated (it's just as easy to say "you're a bad writer" as "this context makes it impossible to write" -- but will either produce better situations or better authors? Of course not; it'll make everyone dig in their heels and refuse to change, and then everyone's less happy).

[Xanthea]

I would think that we should be spending this time asking what we've done right to acquire that improvement so we can do more of it.

I don't think it's a big mystery. There's been more DMs around lately.

[kid]

Well, Zelk posted before I did so first...

Congratulations on the job bump

As for OGR's post...

It is a lovely post.
Even if I don't share the sentiment.

I trust a few that have shown themselves to truly not see ALFA as a form of competition.
HEEGZ, Lokan, JLM, OGR, to name a few off the top of my head, in no particular order.

Others, less so. Some I don't even trust their intent, other I do trust their intent, but not the implementation of it.
People still file complaints against each other, still view others actions as intent to destroy their game, and ruin their fun, etc. As long as that's present we can't have something like this without fallout.
Certain players refuse to be DM'd, others agree but secretly plot to undo their respective DMs...
Still too much silly shit to just assume we're all adults.
So as long as that's present, giving players DMing powers selectively is just going to increase that gap and mistrust, not decrease it.
At least, that would be my guess.

You can say we -should- trust each other, but even if we should, we don't. So... dunno.

And again, gratz Zelk, feeling of achievement is fun, a few bucks in pocket (I hope) even more so.
Good on you.

[Analogkid]

[Zelknolf]

I would think that we should be spending this time asking what we've done right to acquire that improvement so we can do more of it.

I don't think it's a big mystery. There's been more DMs around lately.

This doesn't typically result in increased activity, though. We've got some striking examples, yes, but it's easy to forget the DMs who just can't get people to show up to a session or who DM some folk who then abruptly stop playing-- they tend to not reach many people (or at least relatively few people who are still here tend to have been reached) and tend to not DM for very long.

Good sense would say that it's because DMs are individuals, and it's the actual person (not the nebulous concept of the DM) making a difference, which is of course what I actually meant in the quoted bit there. Figuring out all of what the successful folk are doing different seems valuable.

[Brokenbone]

Say, know how in BG, the floaty names over most NPCs heads are white, floaty names over most guys with more dialogue (usually static-granters) is yellow?

Mightn't a third color be thrown in, to reflect NPCs with the "anchoring / voice throwing" behavior switch thrown? Just generic nobodies like nameless guards, citizens, stuff like that, if concerned the named guys (merchants, bartenders, priestly or government type guys) should never be used without DM status. This sort of ties back to the idea at its simplest of minor animation, right? An NPC who gives a group maybe a reason to explore in some particular direction. Yes it may still be all the "same old places" like the Cloakwood or Tempus Tears at night, but some hobo raving about losing his lucky rabbit's foot along the shores of the river, and people sort of setting themselves a DC 30 search roll for a completely unrepresented and nonmagic item, hey, it's maybe better than the normal thin excuses for "gonna bash goblins cuz they're there."

This doesn't have to involve XP self-grant or peer-grant at all, that's another system (or a unique power item) and may not need doing. Maybe groups will write rumors of their mighty deeds and share their fun that way, or PM an after action report to patron DMs, if they had fun. If that results in "way to go here's 100xp for your initiative" fine. If that results in "way to go sounded fun" (and 0xp), fine too. In theory, DMs give out 10xp attaboy/attagirl awards when they feel like it, see something that seems clever or gives 'em a laugh or whatnot, if they see that say, OGR motivated a group for a two hour wander at the behest of Hobo-man, the "vitality" / "spice" would probably be appreciated, whether or not a XP/GP "tip" is given.

Cool thing about experiments is you can turn 'em off if they suck.