[EVENT] The Rescue: FEEDBACK

[trpmods]

Hello all! As we near the end of our August event, we'd really love to hear any feedback you have! Feel free to leave it now or to come back to this post later on at any point after the event.

Comments are NOT screened, but anonymous comments are allowed and all IP logging is off. Please be civil and keep your comments to game- and event-related mechanics only (i.e., this is not a space to air grievances about anyone's actions during the event). You can certainly tell us you hated it, but we can't improve unless you tell us why, so any details you can give will be helpful!

If you feel uncomfortable commenting here, you can always reach out to a mod privately.

Thanks, guys, and we do hope you're having fun!

Comments

[in_extremis]

I AM HERE TO FIGHT.

No, actually, I think I do actually understand what you were trying to do entirely, so for starters I don't think I would have thought to do it at all differently. I understand why we are here, and I appreciate the effort, and there are plenty of reasons why this all should have worked fine. You have us plenty of context and direction to work with, and enough leeway and clear areas where we were allowed to do our own thing and help build this thing. That was a fine balance.

Structurally, I don't know if we were ready for it?
I'm sure you're very aware of this, but there has been a stark difference between the amount of OOC chatter and actual playing. So it's not for lack of excitement and engagement with what you were doing, but there seemed to be a lot of barriers to getting something actually on the page.

A week seemed to simultaneously be too long and not long enough. That probably has a lot to do with the variety of tagging speeds across the board, and usually that's fine and might have even been fine here, but because of the teams mechanic I think we were all being extra sensitive about each other's time and space, and making sure everyone had their chance. Meanwhile, because of the team mechanic, we were broken down along some unfamiliar lines, which forced interaction with characters we might not have played with before for no good reason which is good! But when I'm waiting to see if anyone in my team has the time to tag the important plot things and that's going slow, because I'm being sensitive, in any other situation I could reach out to someone outside of that team to goof off with and not feel like I was taking away from...plotting tagging time. Does that make sense?

On that same timing note, the day-long plot sections I think worked logically for...some of the Defenders (me exclusively, maybe), but the restriction for what anyone else could do in a day didn't feel right. And again, I don't know what about that I would have changed, because it was obviously hard enough getting that one activity done within the week we had to do it, but it did result in situations like, why did it take the Defenders infiltration team a whole day to fly over there? What was going on in that time?

Also, there has to be a better way to structure the mingles. Is that a normal DW thing? Are we supposed to use them exclusively? This is just mysterious to me.

This looks really long already, I hope it is not dreadful, I am sorry.

[trpmods]

No this is all great! This is excellent feedback and I actually agree with a lot of what you said. Honestly, the event was supposed to have one more section in the last part that I am cutting a bit because of what you said about it being not enough/too much with that week time frame. That is also why I am emphasizing the ability to back tag since so many people sort of missed things they were excited about. Tagging speed definitely would stall out one group as opposed to another and some groups moved fast (which made me have to accommodate their pushing forward of the plot) while others definitely had a slower go.

If I do this again I think for sure that the groups helped at least streamline what would otherwise have been crazy plotting conversations but ALSO separated some fast taggers from each other/interaction among existing CR. It achieved my goal of getting characters more mingled than they have been so far but yes. I think this is all very, very valid.

Thank you for this feedback! It was a first run and this is going to be very helpful to try and make the next one better! If it happens! Maybe! Definitely not when the other mod is on a half-hiatus, lmao (she was such a trooper, thanks Ali!).

But here, final question: would you want to see an event like this again? Not necessarily another rescue but an event with dynamic choices that evolves over a month?

[in_extremis]

I think in any other situation no one would have to be reminded that they can backtag, but because there was strict time limits on the decision making that had to be adhered to to make sure the next day could progress with those decisions having any effect, it doesn't feel like it's 'worth' it as much to backtag. Obviously, in practice its still just as much worth it to have those interactions and threads that we got excited about conceptually, and the same dynamic happens all the time when we're backtagging outside of the event, but it does feel a bit like a moment lost under this particular structure for some reason. This is a psychological issue.

With that kind of in mind, final question: I would like to see something like this again, because there's a lot of reasons it should work and I did still have a silly fun time. I do think the scale of the idea has to be brought back to accommodate all of these issues with timing/balance, but it would be frustrating if the sacrifice in that case was the stakes. That might mean trying something similar over a single week with a smaller breakout group, instead of trying to craft something that fits the whole game into it. So structurally the same, but week 1 is group 1, week 2 is group 2 or whatever.

Something like this might alleviate the psychological issue because otherwise life is still goin' on.

[trpmods]

I like that idea. Thank you! This really is helpful and I appreciate it. I am also glad that you had a fun time despite the issues :) If it comes back then hopefully it will be even better.

[beholding_archivist]

I feel..... A bit torn about this.

On the one hand I appreciate the plot pieces of this event, and on the other hand I am bummed that of the four weeks of vacation I had that are now coming to an end and that I had hoped to use for RP I spent most of that time sitting on my hands and waiting for the plot to advance in hopes of finding something to thread out due to us being tied to our groups and the partially unlucky IC pacing of IC developments.

As part of the ‘Rescue’ Team, that for some reason did very little rescuing, but rather spent a day camping on the bridge for some reason I..... I admittedly struggle to figure out what my character has been doing these three days? There ICly hasn’t been.... Much? Wandering the hallways, finding the medbay/bridge, pressing a butting and engaging the Green Room realistically shouldn’t have taken more than a few hours. And yet here we have a large group of people presumably setting up random camps around the ship, sleeping, eating and taking bathroom breaks rather than like..... Heading back to base in the meantime? Explore more? Anything?

Of course it doesn’t help that my character doesn’t sleep, which makes it only harder for me to justify him sitting around idle in a place he knows he’s of no use. Can’t exactly push buttons on a space ship and hope to find the Agrii equivalent of Minesweeper or something....

It also feels that my group was.... A bit pointless? Most things it accomplished could be accomplished by staying at the shuttle bay and just let Defense do their thing. It might have made more sense ICly to stick together and send out more specialized groups to take care of specific tasks that would require in person presence...

Nothing of this is to say that I don’t appreciate the work you guys put into this. it’s also 4am and Im technically sleeping, but you know that thing where you just have to spill your mind...? As said, I like the plot development, but on a personal side I feel like I wasn’t able to contribute as much as I had hoped to simply because ICly being bound in place. And that bothers me a bit.

Unless they were literally physically trapped, characters should have had the freedom to move and change their locations/chosen agenda more realistically if you ask me... That flexibility is what I believe I have been missing the most?

.....also I won’t be proof reading this. Autocorrect and me being basically asleep may be butchering the legibility of this~ I still adore you people.

[trpmods]

You know! This helps with one of the HUGE issues I had with the game and couldn't figure out what was happening/how it was occurring. The time frame was necessary to not having people go too far too fast buuuut it also stopped activity when it shouldn't have. That is good feedback! Thank you! It will help if I do it again.

Were you interested in seeing an event like this again?

[beholding_archivist]

Oh, I see that the time frame was necessary for the entire decision thing etc. It just unfortunately translated poorly to the IC-side of things in a few areas where realistically a certain urgency should have been present and therefore hours of IC idleness just seemed... Odd.

But yes, I wouldn't mind seeing something like this again, and I agree with the notion of probably testing this on smaller groups in instances that aren't this closely tied together and dependent on one another.

As said I could well have seen this as one main mingle for the *base* with various smaller teams splitting off to tackle individual, more specialized tasks with the option of bouncing back, to give this more the feel of a coordinated thing of the characters figuring out which strengths would be best utilized where. ICly a more reasonable approach than two groups randomly running off and vanishing for days.

...can you tell that I'm rather focused on the IC-side of things? X)

[out_of_order]

I love big events like these, and this being my first on this game, I was excited to see how it would go. I also know it's tricky pulling off events that adhere to certain timeframes, and I think in all fairness, the week::day ratio was a reasonable amount to get things done.

Short of doing anything realtime, rounding up people to actually play things out, especially for a journal game, is very difficult. There are many variables, unexpected occurrences. I think the way you anticipated things to go through worked out well enough, it's just that for some reason a lot of things didn't translate from planning to print, so to speak. Planning was done on three different fronts, across Plurk, DW and Discord, and while that makes things a little chaotic, I don't think it went too badly, but it did need its own bit of moderation. By that I don't necessarily mean the Mods themselves, but it's something players can definitely try to handle. I think the main concern is we don't want to come off as bothersome, especially when people may be busy or feeling under the weather, etc, but friendly reminders seem to work well enough without putting anyone on the spot. It's a game, after all, and people aren't having fun, what's the point?

I LOVE to play things out. I guess I'm also more used to having more direction from a GM to fill in the blanks, not only because I don't want to make it appear like I'm biased when I NPC things, but also because I don't want to step on any toes by way of expectations/ideas that may be established for NPCs or settings. Also, I just like the chance to play with others, mods included! You've made a fun and intriguing setting here and I just wanna interact with the NPCs! XD

Also I'm sorry that I probably ask a lot of weird things but I have weird characters that have certain experiences and I just basically follow their lead in what they'd think about doing. So all my questions for possible actions aren't completely left-field, as crazy as some of them may sound. I think Cal's my sanest character.

I have to agree with the others in regards to the time allotted for each day's activities between parties. I completely understand why but it does make it frustrating when there's a lot of dead space for things to be done. I don't know how long each 'day' is set for outside of Agra 10 and those days were pretty long. I did think the decision-making aspect was interesting, but save for perhaps the defender-side's ship upgrades/machine creation options and those in hero control watching home videos, would not take as long as a day to be done. It's a careful balance trying not to over-plan but also trying to not weigh down people with the things they can do.

I think...for future large events like this, maybe it would help to break things down, not particularly or exclusively by IC teams, but also in terms of OOC activity. Maybe have a separate option for people who might not be able to play out things right away to have most of their character decisions be covered through OOC planning, and those who are able to and/or want to, to play things out. If it's not too time-consuming, maybe even have those who are just doing the short version to offer certain parameters of what they're okay with consequence-wise, what they're doing, etc, and then craft a summarized outcome for their character based on the choice they made so that if/when they are able to play again, they have something to work off of. This is just a suggestion! I was on a game a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away (not actually a SW game) that did something like this, and it worked out rather well.

I love you guys and all our players, and I look forward to whatever else you have planned. I...realize I typed a lot so I hope it makes sense. If there's any need for clarification or if I just went off topic- I do that, let me know!!

[trpmods]

This is really great and I like the advice. Thank you! I hope you had some fun and I really do love Cal. But yes, thank you! This is excellent if we do this sort of event again. Thank you!!!

[out_of_order]

Oh, I did have fun! Am having fun.

♥!

[wearingthestars]

I'm super impressed with how much work went into this event, and the impact of it all, as well as how it fostered a whole lot of communication. Those group discords are really fun/helpful, I'd love if we could have a whole game wide one in addition to the stuff we do on plurk for that sense of community :)

I agree that we did a lot more talking/planning than playing for various reasons, life stuff included. If we continue with events like this (which I'd like to) I think we would get better at it, it suffered a bit from the learning curve, and everyone sort of getting to work with new people.

I don't really have specific 'if THIS had been done differently' suggestions, I think it was all done really nicely, just new for us in general, though the one thing I can maybe offer is that being sort of trapped in one location/group, and the whole urgency of everything made it difficult to think about threading out anything not event related? That would have been difficult to work out logistically in this one obviously, but sort of having the option to do something light to help balance things out. The meme helped a lot with that OOC.

But yeah, I liked it, sorry I didn't actually DO as much with it as I wanted to. I was very ENGAGED, just not very...active? Super impressed, really looking forward to more!

[trpmods]

That is also a super valid point that I didn't think about! You're right. All threads had to be specific to the event and move fast because of it. That is SUCH A GOOD INSIGHT.

I am glad you had fun though! This is great feedback.

[sinistral]

I feel incredibly conflicted about this event in general.

Firstly, I loved the choose-your-own-adventure kind of format, I think it was a creative framework to give structure to the event while still retaining the ability of the mod team to have a framework and not be overwhelmed in trying to deal with overly off-the-wall character actions (which, we all love the off-the-wall surprises, but sometimes they take a lot of energy in reaction). Sometimes reading the updates on my phone was the only thing keeping me sane at 3 am when I'm trying to walk a tech through rewiring an entire network cabinet over the phone, so thank you for crafting something fun and engaging!

Secondly, I don't know if maybe the teams were too big? I think they made logical sense for sure, but the moment a thread grows beyond two people, it can become a juggling game of waiting for tags, whose turn is it, etc. I'm not sure if any of that maybe bogged down the action — and I'm not sure there's a good solution for it either. I did participate in a game event once where the "teams" were organized according to OOC schedules for expediency of tagging, but that wouldn't work in every situation either.

Inspired by an idea above: to maybe accommodate players that don't have the time to thread out interactions in detail but do want to be involved and are heavily involved in the plotting, perhaps putting a little weight or recognition on network threads where characters are ICly communicating about/during the action might help? I don't know if it's a format people would enjoy, but I know sometimes it's easier to toss out a few lines of phone/text conversation than to write out a whole scene. Is that helpful? I don't know.

I think a lot of my conflicting feelings comes from the personal instances that surrounded the timing: I was all set to be all gung ho about everything, and then a tree fell on my house and rp just wasn't that important. Which, we're fine, everything's fine, everyone stop worrying please, but I think does serve as a poignant reminder to all of us that these past few months have been anything but "typical" and maybe we all overextended ourselves a little bit. I know I've talked with a few people who have been more excited about the plotting, but hitting a writing block in terms of actually writing the tags. Wish I could offer some solution for that, but I don't think any of us have discovered it yet. So please, don't feel bad for not having a ton of interaction in the event! It's definitely not a reflection of anything negative on your part, but more I think just life being life for a good portion of us.

[doubled_speed]

There is a chance that this was a touch too long. I mean, the plot was amazing. I have had fun. But at some point the whole thing for me became about planning and trying to figure out the best paths and more OOC development than IC. Which meant that now I'm just a bit burnt out.

I really liked that there was OOC plotting and IC interaction, but I'm worried the window on all of that MAY have been too short. Which I get is now a contradiction. But information gets posted Wednesday in the wee morning hours, and then teams had to figure out what they were doing by Sunday in the PM to give mods time to shape the next part of the plot. But with so much time on planning it became a lot harder to tag things in groups. Especially once groups got larger and it was a confusion of tag orders, people's schedules, things like that.

I love the players literally having an impact on things. But perhaps in the future there can be either a) less decision points, or b) more teams.

So I've seen this done in games before by an effective 'fetch quest.' People got to choose or be randomly assigned to another player who wanted to be involved in the event, and they were sent off to acquire X item in the wilderness. They couldn't come back for a set amount of time, so those two characters were really dependent on each other. But there was redundancy in case teams might fail or might WANT to fail. So you might have 20 characters. Say everyone wants to participate. So you have 10 groups of 2. Spread out that there are maybe 3 or 4 special things that need acquired, so each group is assigned to one of those three or four things.

They could have their own different complications on the way. They build CR. The can contribute to the whole or cower. And along the way each team might have one unique thing they might run into or decision that will impact the greater whole because there is something unique on their path that could improve life or give information or something.

It allows for a big thing where people can make choices and it can impact things, but there is less need for Mod plot-writing every week, and the players can take it at their own pace. Two or three people can more effectively turn in their decisions to mods if you want it to play out longer, but then they can still tag the sections that appeal to them more at their own paces.