Thoughts On A Hollow Victory...
Aug. 21st, 2006 02:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magicaddict...as I sat watching a four-hour IC session in the pub after Sunday's larp.
Did I miss a trick here?
Three years ago when I started, I distinctly remember there being one IC post-larp pub session. Now, each and every week, there are two, three, four separate conversations that happen between characters who may or may not have been present on the preceeding game. In addition, I have to assume that the number of IC MSN conversations has at the very least, not dropped between then and now. To whit, the game world has transcended time in/time out boundaries, and carries on in its own dynamic universe of player-created and multilaterally influential plot free of GM, ref, or scaffold-toting giant moderation.
Hang on, I think to myself, this all sounds very familiar.
It appears that one way or another, some of my points got across.
Looking around this brave new (or more likely rediscovered) world, I ask myself: Did I create the concepts I see now in regular use? Not remotely. Did I catalyse their inception/return to BLADES? Quite possibly. Am I pleased they are now (once again) in place and people can enjoy them? Very much so. Am I pissed off that continued criticism of my use of them prompted me to stop trying not six months before they became both commonplace and acceptable?
Ever so slightly.
I find the character I created to pander to these very criticisms is obsolete. A character that could not affect the world around him, by way of his being unable to physically or socially interact with it, I thought would cover all bases of acceptability. No-one could possibly claim that a character who never spoke to them or looked at them could be interfering with any roleplay they were engaged with or might be engaged with in the future.
Now I find that it was alright to do so all along.
Not only am I left feeling as though I slammed the stable door shut just as the horse managed to bolt, but I face the added dual annoyances of the horse having been mine and my inability to afford a new one. I have two dead characters, another who was more boring to play than statistical mechanics and another who's roleplay occurs exclusively in his own head, the only place I thought it was safe for me to do so without somehow getting anyone else's way, and now I find precisely what I dreamed of my dynamic characters being able to do happening for several hours every Sunday night and all over the MSN network 24/7/52.
Am I selfish to be wanting a part of what I spent my entire career at Bath trying to do and now has belatedly been accepted? Maybe I am, but similarly maybe I'm not, and regardless, this is my LJ and I'll cry if I want to.
Did I miss a trick here?
Three years ago when I started, I distinctly remember there being one IC post-larp pub session. Now, each and every week, there are two, three, four separate conversations that happen between characters who may or may not have been present on the preceeding game. In addition, I have to assume that the number of IC MSN conversations has at the very least, not dropped between then and now. To whit, the game world has transcended time in/time out boundaries, and carries on in its own dynamic universe of player-created and multilaterally influential plot free of GM, ref, or scaffold-toting giant moderation.
Hang on, I think to myself, this all sounds very familiar.
It appears that one way or another, some of my points got across.
Looking around this brave new (or more likely rediscovered) world, I ask myself: Did I create the concepts I see now in regular use? Not remotely. Did I catalyse their inception/return to BLADES? Quite possibly. Am I pleased they are now (once again) in place and people can enjoy them? Very much so. Am I pissed off that continued criticism of my use of them prompted me to stop trying not six months before they became both commonplace and acceptable?
Ever so slightly.
I find the character I created to pander to these very criticisms is obsolete. A character that could not affect the world around him, by way of his being unable to physically or socially interact with it, I thought would cover all bases of acceptability. No-one could possibly claim that a character who never spoke to them or looked at them could be interfering with any roleplay they were engaged with or might be engaged with in the future.
Now I find that it was alright to do so all along.
Not only am I left feeling as though I slammed the stable door shut just as the horse managed to bolt, but I face the added dual annoyances of the horse having been mine and my inability to afford a new one. I have two dead characters, another who was more boring to play than statistical mechanics and another who's roleplay occurs exclusively in his own head, the only place I thought it was safe for me to do so without somehow getting anyone else's way, and now I find precisely what I dreamed of my dynamic characters being able to do happening for several hours every Sunday night and all over the MSN network 24/7/52.
Am I selfish to be wanting a part of what I spent my entire career at Bath trying to do and now has belatedly been accepted? Maybe I am, but similarly maybe I'm not, and regardless, this is my LJ and I'll cry if I want to.
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Summary: It's a hazy line
Date: 2006-08-21 03:04 pm (UTC)To refer to my subject: the whole out of game roleplay issue is a hazy line between acceptable and not. Various people in various ways have tested the position of that line, sometimes we have discovered it's more inclusive than we've realised, sometime as you've witnessed things have over stepped it and there have been consequences.
What we have isn't a truly fleshed out 24/7/52 world, but it isn't a world who's existance is solely between Time In and Time Out - End of Game. I don't believe that either has ever been or ever will be the case, at least for the period since I joined the club anyway.
Undoubtably in pub, in email and on msn conversations have increased frequency, but I would say this is a trend I've witnessed change over five years, but that pace has increased in the last year or so. Did the debate that was sparked off around you have an effect? Undoubtably, but it's not a strictly new change.
But yes, what you will find is PC's having conversations outside of the game, dicussing events, discussing plans with each other and forming relationsips. Occasionally there will be conversation with those characters who are the GM's puppets, the A-G command, the captain of the ship, Johen, Lord Havelock.
What you won't find is a tavern full of NPC's to chat to, or anyone out of that small group of characters defined in the campaign world. You might converse with a local guard commander in an email, but not with any of the non-PC guards who form the rest of the barracks except when you see them in game. There won't be any hidden treasures to uncover, any items bought from a suspicious man in an alley (unless that man has the grinning puppet master that is a GM behind him), but there won't be any drunken brawls, or muggers in dark alleys to cause your untimely deaths on the boards either.
Pure IC gain of powers must come with realtime IC risk, else it's not larp - even if that risk is merely what earns you the money to go buy something from a shop. That doesn't mean your PC can't cement a friendship with someone else's PC who you have never seen in games, but shares your interests, while your character sit in an IC tavern, the two or more of you are portraying in an email.
Is the world we have the world you want? I don't know, last time we talked your world had to be absolutely complete.
Can you find a TL now that you can enjoy? I hope so.
Have I made the point I wanted to make, well only you can tell me.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 04:18 pm (UTC)In the absence of a tavern full of NPCs, a shady black market dealer and hidden treasures to uncover, we instead have IC pubmeets, Coventina Inc. and the possibility of lurve on the horizon for various different characters. This is the void that I thought I was trying to fill, adding my own content to supplant the lack of it worldside, and I see it happening now, but this time I'm not the one doing it, and it seems you don't mind.
The world we have in TL now is far from what I would enjoy, but as several people have said rather self-deprecatingly to me, it's better than nothing. If working through frustration that has driven me to tears has got it no further than people accepting that nothing is what they had before, it may have possibly been worth it, but it shouldn't be like this. I shouldn't need to quit amid a hail of negativity in order to make people entertain notions that I may not be entirely wrong, and possibly even a few percent right. Nor should anyone else. While the OOC portion of TL sits in this bracket, it'll never be something I truly enjoy.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 05:22 pm (UTC)I have been involved in IC dicussions, I've been involved in that sort of thing from before you joined the society. In fact I'm sure I never said that was a problem, though feel free to find a quote from me where you feel that infact I did. Plus should a person choose not to be involved in the IC dicussions, a person may miss out on the roleplay (which if it was an issue for them, they'd find another way to be involved), they wouldn't however find that everyone was suddenly more powerful because of a downtime event that they weren't involved in. There's quite a difference, and an important one too.
In the absence of a tavern full of NPCs, a shady black market dealer and hidden treasures to uncover, we instead have IC pubmeets, Coventina Inc. and the possibility of lurve on the horizon for various different characters. This is the void that I thought I was trying to fill, adding my own content to supplant the lack of it worldside, and I see it happening now, but this time I'm not the one doing it, and it seems you don't mind.
IC pubmeets date back some time too, and the whole IC shops issue has only been possible with the existance of a money system. Of course trading items has happened since they're have been people capable of doing so. From my perspective that may have been one of many voids you were trying to fill, but because you seemed to desire to fill them all at once, not in isolation, it was hard to see it as part of your intentions. These things aren't new, they have been around the entire time to some extent, it just seemed in your desire to have the shade pubs full of NPC's you missed the PC's sitting together and chatting in the well lit one.
I don't want to offend you or go back into the same kind of spiralling arguments. Look, what your hail of negativity caused was everyone to have the kind of dicussions in a public and permenant (until you delete the comments should you choose to do so) place, that they'd been having down the pub and in small groups for a very long time. The big debate wasn't even in response to your quitting, your deciding to quit came out during it, or at least that is how it appeared to me. You were the catalyst for the debate at the time, but not the progenerator of it.
There was a genuine desire to make TL better, which included making it more enjoyable for you. People, myself, included did agree with some of your points and your ideas. However because you yourself demanded you get all you want or none of what you want, and refused to consider compromise or a development of the individual parts we agreed with seperately from the whole it became clear than there was no way to progress. All those people didn't comment just to tell you, you were wrong, they came to debate the issue at hand. The outcome of which is the outcome, but any blame or praise for the results is everyone's responsiblity, as it is the outcome of everyone's input.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-22 09:51 am (UTC)It is entirely possible that someone may come out of the downtime roleplay sessions more powerful - if they have convinced someone to power them up for free or a favour some other time; if they have entered into a temporary alliance of convenience and are sharing their own powers to make each other stronger in the ensuing missions - and those who don't join in are potentially missing out. I'm sure you were doing this before I turned up; I never thought of myself as the saviour of Bath larp, but instead as someone who thought these thing should be in place and didn't see them anywhere (indeed, saw them being ritually beaten with a length of scaffold). So I started doing them, and got slapped down.
I am aware (as I said in the original post "brave rediscovered world") IC pubmeets were also nothing new, but in my first year there were none. In my second, two or three. In my third, I had attended one before I walked out, and IC conversation post-game was becoming more commonplace. Now they happen every week, without fail. This is a void that has been filled. A shady pub full of NPCs was dreamed up to cover the fact that I saw no indication of PCs in a well-lit one doing more than noticing each other and moving on. The world seemed to stop at time out.
Had I attempted to fill one void after another, given all the voids I perceived when I showed up, I'd be trying to fill them for the rest of my natural life. I started roleplaying in a way I felt was what I wanted out of it - maybe it was too big a leap, but I wouldn't have been here past the second or third larp had I not taken it. Though several people probably think it's I shame I did, I did, and I was not the first person to eddy the waters - as you yourself repeatedly state, I was creating nothing new with what I did.
During the course of that debate, I was accused of social and pastoral discrimination, had my writing style criticised (as opposed to critiqued), was accused of theft of intellectual property, and metagaming, and now you tell me that people didn't come to disagree with me. It was blatant and obvious, but every time I pointed it out, people jumped sideways slightly and came out with some variant of "no, you're getting me wrong". Strange that, how I continually got people wrong, how every opinion I formed was incorrect.
How nothing I said was right.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-22 10:26 am (UTC)"...in my first year there were none...". This is wrong. In my first year there was one.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-28 02:10 pm (UTC)Look at the end of the day all I can tell you is my intentions behind asking you those questions and statements I made in that long debate. Which was to try and bring an end to all the Blades related negativity both on the boards and in your LJ because I didn't feel it was doing anyone (yourself included) any good, and to hopefully reach a point where you could enjoy TL.
All I can say is what I was trying to do, and what I thought I can do. I can't change how you interpret my actions, I can't make you believe me, and I can't speak for other people on this matter. In the same way as you can see from my comments above I clearly interpreted the above post in a way different to how you intended it. For example, I never registered the fact that you 'took pains in the original post to point out that I was not potentially creating anything new, rather revamping what was there' in your entry. In the same way I regularly felt you were reading something different to what I wrote in that original debate. You saw me 'jumping sideways', I saw you heading off at a tangent to what I wrote. Honestly I suspect there was a bit of both from both sides, because I feel that's how all these kinds of debates/arguments end up.
I personally don't feel that your negative behaviour should have brought any change, because it was negative behaviour. That's just me. All I wanted to point out in the comments, is the debate that was had, did almost certainly bring about change, but that I felt change was just as likely to have been an outcome if the whole thing wasn't negative. I didn't see how you benefitted from feeling it was a hollow victory, and I was concerned that that impression of yours would only create more negativity in future.
Look honestly I don't want to annoy you, though I do react, but mostly because I hate the feeling someone is forming false opinions of me because of a misunderstanding. So I can't leave it alone when I probably should. Ideally I'd want you to really enjoy yourself next year, and ideally I'd like to not get into this argument once more, because it seems to get us nowhere. I'd also like to avoid generally arguments with you in future, but seeing as our viewpoints on some things are diametrically opposite I'm not sure how feasable that is.
So I'm proposing the following: pick a time and a place, we can go to a pub together, I'll buy you a drink and we can hammer this all out. It would be nice if we can put this negativity behind us, and move on, so we can enjoy a mutually shared hobby together. If you don't want to fair enough, I just wanted to offer it.
Anyway I hope you have a good rest after the Gathering, and a good week.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 03:06 pm (UTC)I feel very little would be solved by having a drink together, for as you yourself pointed out, we seem destined to never agree on matters. Any deliberate attempts to sort it out are therefore probably going to end unsuccessfully. The fact you see that we always disagree, yet keep resolutely slamming your point home every time I post something contentious in my own webspace in an attempt to make me see your side of things, suggests that this is what you would do if we were talking face to face.
What can be gained from this? Deeper understanding of each other? Mutual respect for each other's standpoints? Miraulous changing of my opinion as I finally see what you've been trying to do for the last thirty or so replies to my LJ, and proclaim how you were always right and I was too blind to see it?
I'm sure you would anticipate a long discussion with me as little more than a string of disagreements, just as I would. I may not particularly like you, but I don't hate you, and have no desire to expose you to the brain numbing chore of repeatedly stating your point to someone who doesn't, and probably never will, agree with it, however it is made.
I'd rather agree to disagree and leave it at that. If you feel happier having made the offer, that's your perogative. It very neatly put me in the position of having to accept or appearing surly and stubborn, so it probably had a positive effect.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-31 05:11 pm (UTC)I assure I had no alterior motives to make you appear one way or another, I just don't think like that. Still, your right I'll make a promise never to get involved with a dicussion about this or anything similar to this topic again. It would lead to no good.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-21 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-08-22 09:08 am (UTC)