About Plots, Staff, Me, and You

[Nyr]

What retcons and doc changes have we pursued that were made silently, that confused players who have experienced things differently in the past, and perhaps fucked over their PCs?

The way elementals evidently respond to player characters.

Yep, we got tired of them being spammed up for awesome accents and treated like quest vending machines.

Then... why not set out some documentation on how they should be approached and used (with a staff and player version) rather than make sweeping changes behind the scenes? Why not at the very least let some sort of IC explanation leak out, or hint at it in future interactions with those elementals? If, in the past, you have dealt heavily with an elemental with one character, and then on a separate character, you have two entirely different encounters (one, evidently pre-change) with the same type of elemental, it is jarring and confusing and throws you for a loop. It's not a whole lot of fun.

Yep, magicker documentation could be better, or maybe that could have been publicized more.

Tuluki documentation.

If it's what we've talked about before (it seems like it is) then that wasn't a result of changes to documentation done silently.  The docs were always that way, they always said that, they weren't changed.  They might be in the future, but...we went over that already, no?  I just don't see this as an example of a retcon or a doc change that was pursued silently.

Heh, no, that's not entirely what I'm talking about (though I do have my own quibbles with that scenario as well, but we went over that). I do seem to recall that it was actually possible for what you assumed she was planning on to work in the reverse, in old documentation, but obviously I don't have access to that to prove anything. My issue with that was being OOCly forbidden from pursuing a plotline, rather than letting it resolve in-game. But I'm over that. It wasn't a big deal.

I showed you the old documentation.  It's still available.  We also didn't OOCly forbid it from what I recall and from what I read in the requests in question.  The issue was that documentation was breached and we rolled with it anyway, showing the results of what happens when that occurs.  If you want to go over it again please put in a new request.

What I am referring to is the fact that when these documentation changes went on in Tuluk, nothing the players who were involved did could actually affect the outcome at all. They could write in the little in-between details, but none of those mattered. They were essentially meaningless. So they were being carried along on a script, and there was nothing they could do to affect the outcome of that story.

It isn't about winning or losing - it's about feeling like you are a part of a living, breathing world, that actually evolves based on what you do -- and there were more than a couple PCs involved who should absolutely have been able to affect the outcomes, but were not, because "that's not how it's going to end up".

That's what I'm talking about.

Yeah.  I mean, we weren't going to put this out there in advance:

"Hey everyone.  We are going to wipe out several things in Tuluk, some of which you might like right now, some of which you will probably be really excited about.  We'll go ahead and spoil it all in one fell swoop:  because of PC actions that conveniently dovetailed into something we were going to do anyway, we are going to wipe out the Hlum.  You can help!  Next, because of backstory outside of your control due to this being a much larger game than just you and your characters, we are going to show the oppression of the Lirathan Order as it takes power once more in a different way.  I mean, you can be involved in this larger story, and you can do things, and your actions will affect what happens to YOUR character and possibly other PCs and NPCs but in general you aren't important enough to be the one to shift Tuluk as a whole towards what you want.  After that, we're going to have that background conflict come to a head at a major event, and once again, you can participate and have your character involved in this larger story, even if you aren't controlling the direction of it.  Then we'll wipe out both orders in one sentence.  After that, we'll slowly begin moving things towards Negean being taken over by the templarate and towards Uaptal, through acts of hubris (and several shrewd moves) being cut down by other noble houses.  So what do you think about all of this?"

Why not?  Partly because most of the general pieces were in mind, but the specifics were not.  Player action or inaction ended up shaping many of the specifics.  Another reason was that laying that out all of this would spoil any (assumed) enjoyment of being a part of a larger story that you don't actually know the end for.  If you are saying you wanted OOC player feedback to be taken into account for the plot direction of Tuluk, the only way that was going to work was going to be as it happened, and IC...not in advance, and not at the open request of staff.  We've never done that.

If you are saying you wanted PC input to affect the overall end goal of these larger world plot changes, that's fair enough to request or desire, but generally, this has also never been the case.  Rare is it that PCs are involved to such an extent that they shape the world's plot.  There are exceptions to this.  Thrain is a notable one.  Granted, different time (honestly, it was quite a different game).  Throughout the game's IC history, it is few and far between that PCs are even mentioned on history entries, even in passing as "oh, yeah, I was one of those people involved in that thing!"  Only recently have we delved into creating what we have called the "secret role calls" every so often, utilizing people that are great players to bring the world to life and make the world plot that will happen (due to them playing it) happen--and make that more enjoyable for everyone else in the process as it feels more like a real story.  The spies, for instance, shaped the world, but they (ultimately) were railroaded up to a certain point.  For instance, the plot was created with this HRPT endgame in mind, the PCs recruited to play the embedded spies, and we left it up to the PCs to do it.  If they had not succeeded, the world result would have been different, but not very different.  They were bringing an aspect of this larger plot and story to life by playing characters that were involved in it.  They had everyone fooled and it was fantastic.  They even inadvertently were the cause of the Hlum all being cast as traitors because one of them became a Hlum Consort.  Had they not done the things they pursued in-game (even if at the suggestion of staff), they would've had a much lower impact.  All of the killings and such afterwards (even of at least one PC that was just loosely associated with them) would not have borne out if they hadn't brought their roles to life and been the true traitors they were supposed to be.  

In the case of all of the recent changes in Tuluk and role calls and the like, the end result was a certain plot to affect changes that we, on staff, approved and desired and deemed an improvement to current situations.  Players were definitely involved and brought this stuff to life.  Because of the end goal (in this specific case) being in mind and planned out in general, the things that players could do for it would be to flesh it out.  Gith war, Allanak.  End goal:  gith get wiped out.  There were several paths to that end.  Tuluk reconstruction.  End goal:  one order, two less houses, no hlum, no governorships, and IC reasoning for changing all of the noble house docs.  There were several possible paths to that end (the plans did change over time) and player action was taken into account, but oftentimes we ended up waiting for player action a bit too long.  

If you think we should have a thread to discuss how players can be involved in larger plots like the secret role calls have been, or even just to discuss how these things worked in the past and how they can be improved, then I can create one and I will be fine with discussing that, as well as how PCs in regular roles can get involved.  This is already quite a derail from clan roles and economy, after all.

[Delirium]

you've said your piece, and I've said mine, and we agree in some areas and I respectfully disagree in others, but haven't felt it was worth arguing over.

I feel like you misunderstand a good bit of what I'm trying to say (and perhaps that's my fault, and it's also due to the necessity of being vague), but the thought of taking the time to try and wade through and respond to massive posts debating those finer points is honestly just exhausting. So, as I indicated earlier in this thread, I'd really rather not get into it.

[Nyr]

you've said your piece, and I've said mine, and we agree in some areas and I respectfully disagree in others, but haven't felt it was worth arguing over.

I feel like you misunderstand a good bit of what I'm trying to say (and perhaps that's my fault, and it's also due to the necessity of being vague), but the thought of taking the time to try and wade through and respond to massive posts debating those finer points is honestly just exhausting. So, as I indicated earlier in this thread, I'd really rather not get into it.

I understand.  I just don't want there to be that misunderstanding, I would like to go over it with you.  If it's not a big deal, okay--I'd just like to correct or clarify if there's any misunderstanding, confusion, or even resentment.