magicaddict | What The Fuck???

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Current Mood: Moderately Peeved

What The Fuck???

WHAT THE FUCK????????

Guess we'd all better be really careful not to mention anything negative even in mission reports any more, if it's no longer cool for characters to be nasty about other characters in any written medium.

You know, like they are to mine all the damned time.

It was a report. A biased, non-egalitarian, single-opinion report (like all of the others were), from a character who had had a nightmare all weekend at other characters' hands. What in the world did they expect? Rainbows and fucking unicorns?

Would it have been any better had Tony posted it rather than me? I asked if he'd be up for that, and got told I was fine with it (every word of it, from the creator of the system and GM of the game in question - how d'you like those onions?), just to wait until the debrief had gone up.

I swear on my soul that I put aside any OOC feeling I had, and wrote Meek's side of things as Meek and not me. It's a bad write up. Get over it.

Gerrard gets bad IC press every time he goes out, but I don't go whining to the committee that I'm being victimised OOC. Should I start? Is that the assumption we're supposed to make now?

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I suspect skins are feeling a tad thin at the moment - it's been quite a while since
1) that particular group of characters had their arses handed to them. When you've got someone HL, you get used to them wading through enemies, so any fuck ups they make are fixed easily by application of a bit more brute force. So suddenly coming up against SUCH a brutal game will have brought them back down to earth with a bump (I anticipate this happening with Pro on Sunday). And then, not only was it hard, but they failed. To not only fail, but fail and then be explicitly told from all sides that the failure was their fault. Egos will have been not just punctured, they were just blown up with heavy duty artillery.

2) We've had such harsh demotions handed out, without some sort of semi-OOC cooperation/volunteering. To be fair, we haven't had a high level game where the stakes were so high for such a long time as well, but then, they get it wrong and are handed IC repercussions for it - things which these characters haven't been in the firing line for for years. So that would be the artillery shell taking out their pride as well.

So, right now, you have a lot of hurt, and I suspect those in question unwilling to level it at the system's creator. (Although I'm incredibly glad he was the one to run this game. I don't think any other GM would have managed it without a flounce from the people involved if this is how they're reacting to a single mission report.) But they'd like to level it at someone. And then you stroll in presenting the perfect target...

Which, frankly, sucks of them. They shouldn't be doing it. They should be putting on their grown up pants and accepting that LARP is reactive; it does not owe them a win, and should they screw up, they will lose and get consequences, and when you get to high level, the stakes are proportionally bigger. And throwing toys out of pram is freaking ridiculous. *hugs*

For what's it's worth, I liked your write up of Meek's report, and it's the kind of thing I'd want to see more of where possible after games. I made a point to email the committee to that effect. It might help combat some of the MMO style interaction as well, if it both helps to improve how players consider their interactions with NPC's and for GMs to put more effort into creating NPCs that can be meaningfully interacted with.

I suspect Helbling right that's there almost certainly a lot of thin skin sensitivity resulting from the games that's been brought up by the debrief, and I completely agree with her that you should not have been used as an outlet for that.
I'll admit the debrief greatly annoyed me for some of the OOC tone, and the thought processes behind it, but my response has been to raise proposals to address some of the underlying system issues. As irritated as the debrief has made me I still enjoyed what you wrote, and I don't see any reasons why others shouldn't be able to keep IC and OOC issues apart either.

Edited 2013-10-21 15:49 (UTC)

So as to avoid confusing you, I have moved the post to Mission Reports, mostly as a compromise sort of position (and not just because I love my Admin buttons).

Yes, of course it would have been better in the debrief as comments from the GMs.
It is post game feedback, quite clearly - posted with the debrief and providing critique from the GMs/Crew point of view of the actions taken.

It should have been posted by the GMs, as appropriately presented feedback on decisions, with appropriate repercussions or just clear comment. If nothing else, in context with the great effort the GMs have clearly gone to to explain their reasoning and present points appropriately, it could have been taken in the spirit it should.
It shouldn't have been posted by someone who just in the short time I've been back on the boards and in the club has been grinding their axe heavily in the direction of an unspecified group of older players, which because it's unspecified we'll all assume we're part of, and being openly insulting face to face of new characters older players produce because they don't meet your specific criteria of what makes a good character.

Can I just confirm what you seem to have said above that the spiel was entirely written by Tony?
Part of what I've been trying to clarify has been what extent GM approval existed.

As an aside, I have spoken to Tim and he was expecting the repercussions and isn't... not sure of the phrase... isn't too concerned and understands? Yes, probably right. It's taken the PC in a new direction. Certainly he isn't angry about any of it.
I haven't spoken to Adrian, but can't imagine him being bothered, probably amused, maybe disappointed Orchid didn't get into more trouble.
I haven't spoken to Marcus, but he's had demotions for G'Mord before and been happy to embrace the roleplay.
I haven't spoken to Ryan and Reno, and can't make any guess really.

To reiterate what's already been said. We received Meek's report, thought that it seemed entirely legitimate and IC as what was going through Meek's thoughts after the events of the game and gave the OK to post it. Perhaps we should have posted it ourselves as part of the debrief? If that would have caused less upset then I'm sorry and I'll try to remember that for future reference.

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