Brainstorm: The Next Evolution of Alfa

[FoamBats4All]

AFAIK? And I asked if I could join it, I wasnt allowed.

http://www.alandfaraway.org/phpBB3/view ... 05#p616898

Why do I have access to a group where im not welcome?

I suppose we should start a group forum. Though, barring objections, I'd like to leave it public viewing. Having the buyin be "Your toon's not a dirty sneaky dirtbag, and won't CvC the folk he/she interacts with" makes metagaming not really a concern for me.

And I'd say it's important to distinguish between poor fits of characters/timezones and unwelcome players. For the player to be unwelcome, we'd have to assert that playing a certain kind of character or living in a particular timezone somehow made you a bad person. It is of course ridiculous to make either claim (as some relatively-uncontroversial examples: everyone loves Loulabelle and Puny), so we won't.

Feel free to read or post, within the normal limits of conversation on ALFA's forums. If the times can be made to work on your end and you've got a good or good-leaning PC to bring within the level range (currently level 1 or 2; probably be a couple weeks before we include the level 3s), you can even join. I'm not going to try to cap the group size; I'm just going to ask for understanding of slower responses and the extra overhead as I try to include the extra people.

You were invited. I don't know what you're talking about?

[Darkmystic]

Earlier I was told I could not join and was not allowed to. Same with Adanu's campaign, he told me that im not allowed to join gaming under him. So as far I can see, restrictive campaigns.

[Zelknolf]

You were asked to not bring an evil PC to the campaign, because the minimum buyin was that the PC either be good aligned or good leaning. Rather than offering to bring a good PC, offering to have the existing one experience a conversion, or trying to negotiate terms under which you could play with that PC, you chose to complain that Rumple had shared such shocking metagame information (which was already public) and attempted to play the martyr for it.

This is very different from some sort of concerted effort of exclusion.

[Darkmystic]

Since you were so quick to tell me to leave I did not feel welcome and thus I didnt make an effort such as offering ideas if the character should change or if I should make another. Also, even if it is open information it doesnt need to be spread further by metagame context. You been one player to REPORT others for meta gaming yet you are fine protecting it?

Ontop of all this, instead of trying to convince me of anything else you are really focusing on making me feel unwelcome to your game, im not suprised the least.

[FoamBats4All]

What it comes down to is that you were invited, but you seem to want to uninvite yourself, then yell at other people that you don't feel welcome.

We've got some good game going on MS! Join us! No need for any of this.

[Regas]

This has devolved into a very strange conversation.

We have four mostly empty servers and folks who would play if they could but for rules on where they can play and DM. We're running out of folks to play with- Zelk, Foam, Darmystic, Veilan (acknowledging that you do have time zone constraints), come play the next time a campaign starts. No one is excluding you from playing, or preventing you from logging in and dming. I'm baffled at the logic here- that anyone regularly playing has no right to ask that the rules be changed to make it easier to play more. Zelk and Foam you do lots of work for ALFA which we appreciate but what is the point if folks aren't logging in to play? Why vilify folks that are playing regularly? I acknowledge that not everyone wants to play with everyone and maybe Zelk you don't want to join a new campaign that I or someone else is participating in. FWIW, Ronan's last campaign was open to anyone at the start and has regularly added other players. Do you think if we weren't here things would be better- that even fewer players and less activity would expand your options for play, expand the fun???? If OGR is the most DMed player in ALFA then God love him he must be doing something right- maybe we should be taking notes instead of attacking the value of his ideas because he's successful. This is not a zero sum relationship- more dming and more playing by one doesn't limit opportunities of others, quite the opposite. Activity begets more activity, we need activity, the servers are empty. Running other campaigns away from alfa because of our rules is indeed easy enough but it doesn't help ALFA as a community to splinter regular games away onto priviate servers. That is exclusionary, and it doesn't help us improve our activity.

In all the solutions the common thread is more dm effort- "the DMA should require HDMs to run server wide events catering to all players"? get real, what a wonderful way to drive off the HDMs!!! or.. "I think DMs should cater to players who don't join regular games and want to play by themselves"? really?? Then pick up your dice bag and make it so- go DM the folks who you deem worthy! But...IF You want to bring old players back- give them a regular game. Most of our members past and present have jobs, families and precious little time to devote to hobbies. Normal people want to get together with friends and play, and have a good time. Sending a pm to inactive players announcing new campaigns with details of when where and who ect would I think be much more meaningful then adding more mail runs. The problem with mail runs is our servers are empty. You want a virtuous cycle- run more sessions, get our numbers up, improve opportunities for folks to find others to connect with IG. Setting up barriers that prevent the six people left who actively DM and the 15- 30 odd people who still log in from connecting is just silly.

I personally love the PW style of play. I have very fond memories of rp and adventure, especially in alfa NWN1 with persistent play. I miss the random rp and adventure, and the occasional surprise dming that came along with it; and, I still want to log into our PW and enjoy it. I also like Campaign style play and very much enjoy it as well. I don't want to see ALFA throw out our PW format. But our servers are empty- I am suggesting we look to try and encourage campaigns 'cause that's what's left. The servers are all empty as I post this and they will be empty until the next campaign group logs in to play. I'm not suggesting we change our rules to try and be more like a campaign venue- I'm saying since we've become a campaign venue , why not change the rules.

[Heero]

Guys and gals, the weather is changed and Im switched back onto the brown stuff. The Jameson. Tonights the first Ive been in it and Ive mayhap indluged too much (or perchance not...) which has me listening to a great song, Journey's 'Don't Stop Believing' (seriously, why is it so dog damned awesome? i feel as though I should be ashamed for rocking it)...

...le dang, where am I going with this?

Oh yeah!

Dont stop believing.
Hold on to that feeling.

Street light people? Woah woah oh oh ooooohhhhh!

[Regas]

Join a campaign ya damned drunk

[Heero]

Ok, just one more thought which comes to you from me from from Bon Jovi:

Youve got to hold on to what you got. It doesnt make a difference if we make it or not. Weve got each other and that a lot for love, so lets give it a shot! Woooooaaah! Were half way there, woah oh, livivn on a prayer!

[Mick]

Another one came to my mind:

Sadder still to watch it die, than never to have known it. For you, the blind who once could see...the bell tolls for thee.

[Heero]

Are we brothers from different mothers, you and I?

[Ronan]

IMO OGR is the most DMed player in ALFA because he's in the right timezone, is fun and easy-going to play with, is willing to roll new PCs to join campaigns, and is willing to grind a bit to get PCs up to an acceptable level.

[Zelknolf]

I'm not suggesting we change our rules to try and be more like a campaign venue- I'm saying since we've become a campaign venue , why not change the rules.

And I'm saying that if you're happy with that, then you should make ALFA's infrastructure reflect the new play style. Stop making me maintain a persistent world if it's not going to be persistent-- say it's dead, run your games on the campaign instances you're asking for, and let me go. Trying to negotiate this so that someone else is still obligated to do work for no benefit is just cruel.

[Regas]

I am still hoping the two venues are not mutually exclusive. I am hoping driving more activity through campaign play helps get more folks involved persistently. I do think lately all we've really had is campaign activity. I admit I don't know much about what goes into keeping this place running... I know you and others continue to improve the place which we all very much appreciate. I may be mistakenly assuming you and others would like to join in on games when you don't really want that. If you are doing what you do as tech person for alfa really for the persistence aspects of play I doubt anyone wants to take that away from you, I certainly don't. I'm sorry you feel like you've been excluded though- again I can't speak for everyone but I don't think most of the folks left would want to exclude anyone from games.

I still think the answer lies in trying to get more use out of the resources to get people in game and playing. I don't think we've hit some magic point where no rules along these lines can ever be changed without destroying ALFA's ability to be a persistent community while facilitating folks playing in multiple campaigns.

Far from wanting to call it dead though, the suggestions were to help drive interest and activity.

[Veilan]

Meh, rather than engaging in more argument, I'll just snip out something I can agree with:

I am still hoping the two venues are not mutually exclusive. I am hoping driving more activity through campaign play helps get more folks involved persistently.

I, too, like both styles of play, and had the most fun when I was involved in a campaign - that happened against the backdrop of a living, breathing world in which other campaigns happened as well as ad-hoc stuff. Nothing hinders campaigns to happen (and to borrow an argument, nothing hindered people to log in and play campaigns in the past), and unless you have dynamo DMs it is the more realistic format. However, those campaigns should happen in adherence to a common frame of rules and standards to guarantee that desired mutuality, and the possibility of mobility between playstyles and even campaigns (yes, there are benign reasons to do - an old campaign ending being the most obvious).

What we should strive for is my wanted, vaunted virtuous circle of styles and preferences cross-fertilising (shut up, gutter minds) each other's playing experience. That does need some groundrules to keep some, shall we say, excrescences in check, and as we have seen, any "facilitation" by deluding our initial common framework has brought more separation rather than integration. It certainly has not brought new people or engendered people to return who signed up for ALFA's original vision - so, let's be more inclusive, instead of making this a strawman competition between "campaign" and "PW".

In my experience, Ronan provided a good example of this to me - I never had any delusions about being included in his campaign, but he made a symbolic and very much appreciated effort to at least involve my character on the fringes, giving me the illusion of a living world that had story and progression still, and making me log in quite regularly in hopes of getting some breadcrumbs from the table of the OGRs among us (I love you bro, but you set yourself up for it :p). With Ronan, I was treated to a feast instead (even if it nearly was of my character's brain)... leading me to believe that yeah, once again, more people (players and especially DMs), and more people making an effort at spreading the love and inclusion, likely would be the answer to our woes. I am not sure we are currently doing very well on either aspect.

Cheers,