[FULL] OOC: Dichotomy's Age of Worms Redux [FULL]

[TiCaudata]

I posted in the IC thread before looking here.

I, like MN I believe, was of the opinion that while it was late-ish, the town ran deep into the night. Since he seemed to be on course with me, Erdolliel was largely following his lead in the remarkably fragmented conversation. While I generally pride myself on following multiple lines of talk that aren't necessarily in chronological order, I admit that I am pretty much lost from about midway through Erdolliel's rant.

Despite my views 90% of the time, I think an XYC ABC thing will work to smooth out the confusion in this case MUCH more quickly than trying to establish where we were, are, and are going through IC and OC posts. If we were in real life here none of this probably would have happened I suppose.

I tried to lay out some contingencies in my IC (thread at least) post, feel free to ask me if they aren't clear.

 

[o3caudata]

K.... so... um....

First, we need to know whether Erdolliel can shop tonight. If she can't, it's a freaking moot point and we're going to the mine office.

Since she would be either leading us directly to the mine office or abandoning us to our whims while we waited for her to finish, it seems to me that the ONLY thing missing is that fact.

If she can't, and Alustan says he has to leave immediately in the morning, it seems like we should have Di simply state it.... maybe like this:

"you won't be able to get anything in town at this our, and because of the urgency of my task, we'll have to wait until we get to the free city."

MAYBE, if she can shop, we will have to talk about whether she leads us somewhere or not. It's my opinion that the group WANTS her to shop as soon as she's able.

If we need to argue then, lets. but right now NO PC character even knows what they could say..... i feel like Di needs to accept that the PC's have, mostly due to our own vagueness, walked themselves into a corner than we can't get out of, and simply tell us what the options are available to our player characters....IC.

 

[michael_noah]

see, now i thought we had everything figured out? aren't we gonna go to the mine office?

the reason i didn't say anything in character is that none of the previous in character stuff made any sense in light of the new info...

 

[Dichotomy]

Well, there seems to be obvious hostility/frustration/confusion/something. I clearly have failed to take care of this adequately. I apologize.

I don't want to go through the stuff that was said or not said in order to explain what I was thinking. The bottom line, for me anyway, was that I just plain wasn't sure what you guys wanted to do. E.g. while o3's assessment certainly makes sense, I simply didn't know that was what you guys wanted to do. If you want, I can lay out the specific reasons why I was confused, but I don't think that would be helpful.

So, to respond to o3's request, here are options:
-Shopping tonight is OUT (unless you want to try something odd, like banging on shopkeeper's doors or the like)
-Allustan would have no problem waiting for you to buy supplies in the morning
-Allustan WOULD have a problem with waiting for you guys to check out the Whispering Cairn in the morning (which would take considerably longer than shopping); HOWEVER, if the group pressed the issue, you may or may not be able to get him to acquiesce

Do you need more?

 

[michael_noah]

That sounds like it. I wasn't asking for more explanation of what (didn't actually) happened before, etc. We were all just not connecting, that's fine. I'm just explaining why I wasn't really helpful in the IC post.

Official stance of the Party:

We are going to go to the mine office to rest, since we can't do so in town. We are going to shop in the morning. We are going to talk about whether we should press for time to explore the cairn. I will make an IC post to this effect, and just completely ignore all the other IC posts.

 

[TiCaudata]

agreed

 

[worthley]

This may seem counterproductive, but I suggest that all rules should stay as they are. I am in no way saying that the rules perfect the way they are. I am just saying, whenever it comes down someone not agreeing with the way a rule works, it makes the game come to a complete halt for two weeks. Recently I've notices that this has made me disinterested in the game, as I couldn't give a poo (edited: South Park style) about player A wanting only players with the use rope skill to be able to wear boots with laces. I care infinately about the story and game flow than I do about how rules work. I know I caused some of this with trying to understand how wizards get new spells.

I am unsure if this is a problem for anyone else. It has made the game hard for me to get excited about. I don't think that it would have been a problem if we kept the story going, but I think there is somthing retarded with us that makes it where we can't do more than one thing at a time. I am going to try to get excited about the game again, but from now on, I am going to ignore any arguments about possible rule changes. Also, instead of arguing for a week and a half of "where are we" I'm going to accept Di's statement of where we are in this game and accept it, instead of trying to figure out if it's a reasonable time to abuse the rule I just changed.

 

[Dichotomy]

I first wanted to note that it looks like m_n hasn't been on since we started Part IV, which I why I haven't posted again.

I second wanted to address worthley's concerns.

I agree that it has been annoying stopping the game. I also understand that it DOES make it difficult to maintain a high interest level when things bog down. I take full responsibility for the slow-downs. I will endeavor to 1) resolve any odd issues like the ones we recently had MUCH faster than I have been, and 2) to the greatest extent I can, keep the game going despite such issues. I think at least a good portion of our issues have been exacerbated by my own personality quirkiness (but I won't go any further with that).

I think part of the problem, at least with specific rules, is that our group has, in the past, used relatively concrete deviations from the RAW. I believe that m_n's discussions have mostly revolved around those specific issues. Part of the reason I think this has caused a bit of trouble for us is that most of these houserules were inserted into the group back when Ti wasn't really a part of it. I won't try to give some analysis other than to say that the group dynamic is different now, and the whole thing is further complicated by the fact that we are using the medium of PbP. Back when we had live sessions, we (generally) would see something we thought didn't work well, finish our session of play, and THEN spend tons of time analyze it (so play itself experienced little interruption). To some extent I may be putting the cart before the horse, but perhaps a solution is that (in the instance we have some issue with the RAW) we attempt to push on with the RAW unless and until we conclusively decide to make some change. I guess we will have to be flexible. But, as noted, I will try my best to prevent us from halting again.

Does that help at all?

 

[michael_noah]

So I'm confused. Are we using the rule changes we've come up with so far or not?

Backstory for the sake of completeness. I thought we all agreed to change a bunch of specific rules back when we played irl. Ti was not there, but I figured that since the rest of us agreed, he could perhaps suck it. As it turns out... I guess we changed a bunch of rules but no one actually agreed with it? In any case, I do actually like playing more than I like arguing about the rules, even if I spend more time doing the later. So again, I think I made my stance on all of the rules we've brought up pretty clear - I just want to know what the final decision is. And, if it's not to use the house rule for crafting, I would very much like to change my feat.

 

[Dichotomy]

I think the idea is that we are going to use the rules to which we've already agreed, but (please correct me if I'm wrong) it was worthley desire that we not change any more of them.

Yes?