I'm interested in continuing.
I'm also interested in continuing, though I understand if the long wait between posts has demotivated the GM or other players.
I'm still interested in the game, I've just been wrung-out by non-game-related events. Life.
I've updated Oscar and I've posted in the Gameplay thread.
I mean, it's not just a question of interest. I'm also asking if people actually have time for this game or at least see themselves getting more free time in, say, the next week. In my experience, games with this kind of post rate are in the process of dying plus I know I'm going to be on vacation for a couple of weeks end of September, which seems like it has the potential to be the nail in this coffin. So is there something that is easily changeable that can help increase engagement? I'm typically on the lookout for if I need to update between Sunday and Wednesday (since Thursday is my IRL game and then it's the weekend). Would it be more useful if I tried to make that more of an every-other-day sequence to avoid that Thursday-Saturday silence block?
I believe my posting rate will improve somewhat as I'm finally reaching something like a "settled" status in the new house, but it will take some time until I reach the 1 post/day rhythm.
For what it's worth, it is usually easier for me to post tuesday-friday than saturday-monday.
I should be fine with whatever, although my posting rate has been slowed by even more tech problems (my wife's laptop went poof so she's using mine during the day) I can still post once a day quite cheerfully, or less if it works better for everyone else.
So it sounds like both Ahmad and Rani can pick up their posting, what about Oscar and Taryn? I'm not asking for daily posting, but things definitely need to pick up from what it has been. I think really what I'm looking for is
1) Not having to wait on any one character for more than 2 weekdays, whether this means that character is reacting to things addressed to them or the other characters are moving forward without waiting for that character's opinion/action.
2) Feeling like things are moving forward, which could be either the characters roleplaying with each other without multiple weekdays of silence in gameplay or the characters taking action that I need to respond to (which could also be an OOC comment of 'I have no ideas of what to do next' because then either I can make something happen or give OOC suggestions for possible courses of action).
Technically those could both be accomplished with just two players regularly posting, but it means more work for those two players. The more players who are helping, the less work each individual player has to do.
Either way, I'm fine with continuing for now if y'all can show me more of what I'm looking for in the approximately 3 weeks before my vacation (though I'm also aware this Monday is a holiday in the US). Which could mean continuing to roleplay with each other or maybe doing something like checking out the still-motionless-on-the-floor 5th body in the alleyway with you.
Honestly, as much as I'd love for it to be otherwise (especially since we're just now getting to the Mists), I don't think I can realistically promise a more reasonable posting schedule. Sounds like the better part of valor is for Taryn not to have gone through the portal after all. (Or maybe for her lupine nature to take full control?)
Either way, thanks for the game and I hope to play with y'all another time when I can put in the work.
Yes, I can commit to a mostly once-per-day posting schedule. I realize that I had a period where my posting dropped off, but I'm checking in regularly, now.
In this most recent instance, I didn't want to get too far ahead before Taryn got a chance to introduce her new PC. Not blaming; just stating what my reasoning was.
Well, again, I'm not looking for everybody to post daily but for the group as a whole to take a more active role in moving things forward. Silence is impossible to interpret, and to me at least, complete silence from four people reads as disinterest which is possibly the one thing I don't know how to engage with. Confusion, decision paralysis, feeling like you're at a dead end, etc, are all things I can try to mitigate if I know they're an issue.
For example, my opening post for CoM- I very explicitly asked for some details for people to respond to but also less obviously referred to the 5th body on the alleyway floor. In my line of reasoning, I was trying to give you an opportunity/prompt for some role play while also giving one detail that I thought people would definitely want to check up on after. We got some role play and then a fair amount of silence. Did that mean I was too subtle in that detail? Should I have been more explicit in some of the conclusions your characters might have come to, like that the neon sign might indicate a shop with either people or security cameras who might know what just happened, the graffiti looks like it might indicate this is part of a gang's territory, or even just going through your pockets might tell you details about the body you're now in (some of which you'd probably want to make up but I would probably also throw in some details for your characters to discover about their alternative universe self). Except that I feel like the more explicit I am with options, the more likely it is that you'll think those are your only options. This game is kind of a sliding scale in terms of how I could present it, and I'm willing to try different approaches if I know something isn't working.
As someone who has also GMed a PbP game, I get where you're coming from, and I wish I'd handled my delays better. Speaking only for myself, this was only the 2nd MotW game I'd played in, and the GMing style was different, so I often had to consider whether I didn't understand the rules or if it something unexpected was just a GMing-style difference. I'm not interested in hashing all that out, but on top of a general mental exhaustion living in a pandemic, whenever I had an issue like that, I chose to take a pause to think about it, and then I didn't come back to it in a timely manner. Like I said, I wish I'd handled it better.
*********
I wanted to add that I'm glad you added a comment about modern technology. When I think of the noir genre, I think of 1940s/1950s inner cities, so I would not have thought about security camera being ubiquitous. I wonder if we'll be able to use "the Myst" as something to counter that.
Yeah, makes sense. And just to be clear, I'm not trying to point fingers or lay blame. I'm just trying to promote understanding and open communication. Most of my knowledge of MotW comes from listening to a podcast rather than extensive experience DMing it and this is certainly the first time I've tried to DM a PbtA system in a PBP, so it's definitely been a learning experience for me.
I would definitely encourage you in the future to ask about unexpected things. I think one downside of PbtA in a PBP format is that it's harder to quickly hash out those kinds of details, but I'm open to trying it. At the very least, I can try to explain my reasoning but you might also end up making me change my mind. Related, my current plan for searching Bryce's pockets is to give you some items he'd likely have on him but if you were hoping to trigger an Investigate roll to get more directed information, I'm also fine with having things go that way. Information-gathering moves can be hard for me to figure out when they should trigger since I don't always know if you literally want more of a description of what you can see/tell just by looking around or if you're trying to trigger a Move and that's just how you're doing it.
*****
As for using the Mist, it depends on what you mean by "using" it. It's its own independent force that can't be directly controlled, but if you use your powers in public it might automatically cause people to coincidentally look away just as you start flying or make people viewing video footage assume it's fake. It won't actually change the affects you have on the world though. The Player's Guide gives this example:
While trying to get answers from a violent gang of cultists, for example, if you beat them up with your ancient bronze staff and you all end up getting arrested, they’ll report “This freak came at me with some weird metal shaft!” If you do so by turning your arm into stone, they’ll say, “That crazy son of a b#&!& hit me with a brick!” However, they will still be injured, for real, and forensics may be able to tell if they were hurt by bronze or stone. This is to say the consequences of your Mythos powers are very much real. Just because the Mist covers up all perception of the legendary aspects of your actions doesn’t mean you will not be held responsible for them.
You also won't necessarily have to deal with cameras everywhere. In the case of the alley, whether or not there were cameras was not something I had planned but it seems reasonable enough that there might be cameras if you wanted to check them. Things that aren't described are in a quantum state until they're asked about. I might just give you a flat Yes/No answer about if it's there, but if I don't have a reason to push it one way or the other, I might just let the dice decide. Though if you want to know about a detail, it's better to also mention why you want to know it since that better helps me decide what move if any is applicable.
All that makes sense. I'm not necessarily thinking in terms of triggering a Move, though. More that I'm thinking of the general actions to take, and if they obviously trigger a Move (or if you determine that one is needed and ask for one), so be it.
Regarding searching Bryce's corpse, mainly Oscar just wants to find and take any ID Bryce has so that the police don't find it and have that tool to potentially link him to our PCs. Oscar has no idea what sort of relationship they had with Bryce in this world. If he finds anything else useful, great.
As for seeing what's at the end of the alleyway, it's literally just that. They are (at least Oscar is) trying to flee the scene, so any dark alleys or crowds of people or waiting taxicabs is something worth knowing about.
Tired from a weekend full of traveling. Tl;dr either the bar or pizza place can have back doors if you want. It’s unclear to me that a back door is really any better than the front door
@Rani: What were you attempting to do with the roll? I need to figure out if a roll was relevant and therefore you have to deal with the consequences of a fail or if there wouldn't be a roll like with Ahmad's one and I should just ignore it.
Try and work out what happened, that we've taken over the 'lives' of the people on this side.
Right, but how were you trying to figure out what happened? Just thinking isn't going to do anything since you don't have their memories.
A combination of Rani's knowledge of how magic works and logic. It shouldn't take a genius to realize there bodies have changed, which suggests we've moved into the ones already here and are basically possessing them (double awkward for Rani).
FYI, I'll be going be on vacation starting on Wednesday Sept 22nd and I'll be out for about 2 weeks during which I don't plan to be checking games.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Given that I'll be leaving for a couple of weeks in a few days, I probably won't make something happen to push things forward right now. If y'all want your characters to do something before I leave, feel free to do so. Otherwise, I'll push things forward once I'm back.
FYI, there's some stuff going down at work taking up a lot of my time. I'm still here, but it may not be daily. Sorry.
Rani's comment about "original intent" makes me feel like there's some misunderstanding about what's going on.
My understanding of Rani's intent was that she wanted the Hatters to leave. She rolled a mixed success on Convince and I chose to have them "give in a little, but protect their own agenda." In this case, their agenda is to not get in trouble with their boss by saving face. So if she wanted them to leave, she would need to make it look like they "won" the confrontation. Since she rolled Convince, I assumed her intent was more about them leaving than making them afraid but saying she's sticking with her original intent makes me think it was more about the fear than getting them to leave.
In contrast, Ahmad's focus seemed to be more on making them afraid than making them leave, hence the Hit With All You've Got. That will give them a fear status but they won't run away until the fear status is high enough to reach some threshold (what the threshold is will depend on the threat). But then the fact that they're afraid could give you a bonus to doing something else if it makes sense that other action would be affected by them being afraid. So Ahmad giving them some kind of Afraid-1 status could be used to give Rani's Convince a +1 (in this case, it's still a mixed success, so it doesn't make much of a difference).
So is Rani's "original intent" to make them leave (in which case the cost is letting them appear to win the confrontation) or is it to make them afraid, in which case we can make it a Hit With All You've Got and she needs to pick an option like Ahmad did from this list:
On a 7-9, choose 1:
- You take cover or secure a superior position. If you don’t choose this, they can impose a status on you. If they are a PC, its tier=their Power.
- You get them good or get many of them (+1 tier).
- You control the collateral damage.
- You hold the target’s attention, if possible.
- You gain the upper hand. Take 1 Juice.
Yes, I can commit to a mostly once-per-day posting schedule.
So, I've done a terrible job with this commitment. Apologies. I've still been checking regularly, but finding motivation to contribute has been a struggle.
With apologies for how this will leave the game with only two players, I'm going to bow out. I gave it a go, but I don't want to continue this game. I hope there's no hard feelings.
Yeah, I think it's been a bit of a general struggle to keep this game going for everyone. As such, I tend to think it would be best if we called it here.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
While I'm sad to read this, it's probably for the best, yes. No hard feelings at all on my end.
Thanks everyone—it was a pleasure to play with you.
Well, that sucks, but such is games. Have fun.