Empowering players

[Pyra]

I am not berating the staff. I am voicing a concern. I have had fun and enjoyed all my time in LC. This is an observation, and I hope to stir discussion. I know summer is a slow time.


In the past, we've had an assortment of plotting techniques. Some Alpha plots were ran twice at different times, taking a few hours to reach the end of the installment. Stuckers running into the Cafe Gasping about huge spiders coming from the gym... the blob.. Random, probably less love-craftian things. The Giant (illusionary?) Hawk, which old old players might remember.

This continued for awhile, Strange happenings at parties (spiders), Odd characters like Sally or Jocilyn harris (staffers in disguise, still with staff powers/ equipped VP's). Fun times, but still.. we've got a stick with a carrot hanging from it. The first expedition, the Witch house.

I'm not going to comment on the Rocks and the Italian guys.

Then we had the age of expeditions. The Island series, Something's eating Oliver White, more spiders, Hades..

And dispersed though these plots have been Beasts, Creatures, Beetles whom harm students.


A large number of these, are staff initiated. These are not all the plots that have occurred for certain, and I have not participated in all of them.
As we move later, many of the plots were Player -driven-. A player thinks up a response, contacts a plotter, things get worked out and the next installment happens. Oliver and Arafel probably have more to say on their experiences here.

In the past, the idea of 'empowering' players has arisen. Lending the tools to start and formulate plots. I've in the past, requested to participate. There's some road blocks. One of them is my/a personal roadblock, I get side tracked, discouraged, lazy; I lack the initiative to run something. (weather it's because I work, I run 3 tabletop games, ect, many people have this. they offer to help, but never take the first or second step.)

Another block I've seen is resources. In the past, we had item/tome outlines, plot submission forms, VP applications. We also had @assist, @idea, @storypoint, @page, email.. There were so many channels that ideas and players got lost in the turn around. Staff have quit, staff have gotten sick, staff have had to leave the game despite wantings to stay (<3 HG Wells.)



What can we as players, we as staff, we as a community do to get the ball on plots, Lovecraft, Expeditions, tomes, TOMB!, game building going again?
I don't feel like waiting for things to fix themselves. How do we empower ourselves?

I plan on renewing the plot series I wanted to do. I'll need staff help for that.
John Baxter's player is planning a camping trip, and I congratulate him on that.

Staff may help the game along.. but it's players that make the game.

[Oliver White]

I feel compelled to write something... although I'm not sure what to write. I can write some very positive things about staff and players, and I can write some very negative things about them. I think I'll plot the neutral course.

The day to day staff who build and code our world and handle the brunt of player requests do so with my great admiration. But the fact is that they are not plotters. Plotters in this game seem to be somewhat cursed. We don't have any major active plots, because we don't have any majorly active plotters.

This bothers me to an extent, but I'm taking a "wait and see" attitude. Staff have said they're finishing up 4 or 5 major systems (combat, magic, insanity, dreams) and then the game leaves beta (seems odd to say it goes gold when I've been playing 2+ years), and those individuals toiling away at systems can devote energy to building Lovecraft. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt, because I know they're hard workers and they truly want to build the best game possible.

As for player empowerment. While staff want us to tell our stories, I'm going to reiterate that this game, unlike other Skotos games, has a unique premise. It's a horror game. And horror comes from discovering the unknown. And discovering that that unknown is bigger and more powerful than you, and doesn't give two shakes about you. Players telling Lovecraftian stories like that face 2 challenges. First, your enjoyment hinges not on the plot (because you know the horror), but rather watching others experience the plot; hence you're acting more like a plotter than a player running a plot. Second, most such plots require much staffly magic. Which, given our staff population can be difficult. In the past I've tried to tell a little ghost story involving the library, which ultimately went no where because I couldn't get the staff support I needed at the time I wanted it.

Arafel's plot involving the beetle, the tentacle monster, and Professor Fletcher, for quite a while was done with very little "true" staff support. Some of her special effects were manually done and involved much conversing between me and her over various chat lines. ("Oliver, open the manhole cover now!" "Ok, close it!" as my alt ran around in the sewer opening and closing manholes, while Oliver hung out with the crowd giving Arafel feedback on what we were doing/planning.) It was a bit insane. That particular "player run plot" concluded because a staffer took over and essentially ran it.

A few honest ideas:

A re-evaluation of the VP system. As it is, it doesn't work.
Older players need to find creative ways to share things. There's a reason Evie's complaining that Oliver's frog's on the loose. I purposefully let him out into the world hoping that new players run into him and ask questions. I don't know if it works or not, but I've a few more ideas to release my props out into the world without them being hoarded in someone's private room.
Not the most popular of ideas in the past, but I think that more feedback from staff on our assists would be nice. By this, I mean, if I file an assist on a plot or plot related item/idea, it would be nice to know that it had been looked and or considered, or at least forwarded to the appropriate staff. My desire to contribute to the game wanes dramatically as weeks pass with no feedback.

[Willow]

Thanks for the thoughts and ideas and for just identifying 'hey this isn't cutting it'. Every LC player has an opinion (I know you do!) and we want to see it or hear it.

Here are some thoughts I have. They are random and my not add to things Pyra and Oliver already said as I am still a bit addled from the crawling virus ilk.

Getting Good Feedback
I really appreciate the constructive manner in which Pyra and Oliver posted...yes, not everything is working well or we'd have more players and more horror, right? Yes, people can get very emotional over these things not working right, so when we get 'this sucks' feedback it is hard to do much with it but share that person's emotions. When we as a community work on constructive feedback like 'This sucks, here are some reasons why from my viewpoint I think it's not working, here are some ideas on how we could improve it'. To help people have a place to come together to discuss this type of stuff we started the Community Development Meetings (CDM's). While staff have pretty much always provided the topic, we are open to you choosing the topic. For example, we're ready to schedule July's CDM. What do you want to talk about? OR instead of talking, should we have some CDM's where we DO stuff?

Do More Than Just Talk
What I mean by 'DO stuff' is that there are a lot of projects out there to complete or forward, many of them meant to give the players something to do - to empower you to accomplish fun and horror on your own without a staff crutch. Should we pick a project every so often and those who attend will help contribute descriptions, ideas, test, etc?

For example, we had slated that July would be an expedition to the Island where samples could be collected, brought back to the science club morgue and experiments run. While staff can provide the results learned, Murphy's Law states that if we come up with five samples and five experiments on those samples, we'll get wind of 'I wish this had been done instead'. So instead of staff guessing what players would like, we could have July's CDM be early on in the month and we can work through

1. what samples should be found regularly on the island (water? plant life? animals?) Those attending can help with descriptions if the items don't already exist, they can explain how they'd expect to get them and transport them.
2. what experiments do you want to run? Are there any spells that come to mind? Then we can work through creating at least one of those experiments for spells (with the help of present staff).

I'm just thinking that if maybe we work through some things together that the knowledge gained from 'this is how we go from idea to stuff in game' might empower us all.

Is this a turn-off for people? Is it worth a try?

The LC staff, while keeping those last few base systems in sight (combat, justice, etc) would like to turn our focus on story and game content...no longer just 'gee we need some tools to do this', but now 'gee how do we use these tools we finally have to put neat things in game'.

We want to put the horror in LC as much as you guys want it. I think a major hurdle for most eager players who want to become VP/staff is that they aren't prepared for the challenge of channeling their ideas through to complete things in game, at least not on their own. But if we're all able to pitch in a little it's a lot easier to raise that barn.

[Oliver White]

Just don't have the CDM on a Monday or a Wednesday and I'll come with a whole lot of ideas. (Or have it in the 2nd half of the month and make the expedition be in August.)

The one thing I will publicly say about the island, is that I honestly think that the tools for doing what Newland did should be available to resourceful players. Maybe it requires access to forbidden places or items and skills at levels not easily attainable, but we should be able to do what he did, if we were so inclined.

[Willow]

Agreed on the 'anything an NPC can do a player should be able to do better'.

Just to clarify in summary format, Newland opened a portal and attempted to call upon a Cthulhian god-like-thing, right? That's what you're referring to?

And will shoot for a Tuesday/Thursday/Friday meeting. Weekends are usually so iffy for people, especially in summer ('Hey, the weather's great, let's go...').

This coming Thursday evening I have slated to install the new 'PC offices' section of Edwards Hall if anyone wants to help point out all the errors and inconsistencies I am sure to introduce into the new rooms. It'll be between 7 and 10 pm CST.

[Oliver White]

Agreed on the 'anything an NPC can do a player should be able to do better'.

Just to clarify in summary format, Newland opened a portal and attempted to call upon a Cthulhian god-like-thing, right? That's what you're referring to?

That's pretty much what happened. I tried to find the summary/story of the event that I wrote which was published on the old website, but my google-fu ain't what it used to be. And I don't have a copy on my computer anymore. That would be a good thing to retrieve and post again.