Bandari

[chipotle]

Allrighty, then. Bandari isn’t dead, but it’s on life support, and I’m trying to make a credible diagnosis. Most of it boils down to: I fucked up.

I may have built a stage people have shown interest in, but I did very little “writing and direction” afterward, hoping a couple active roleplayers who showed up around March and June would push things along mostly on their own. I can ascribe that lunacy to the general funk that I’ve been in for the past few months, but this doesn’t absolve me of blame. What happened, of course, is that said initial group of active roleplayers were essentially there ahead of the curve, and didn’t get enough feedback to stick around consistently. So, by August, the pattern things are still in had been set: 3-5 people connected most of the time, mostly standing around and fidgeting.

A few people have attempted to get plots going, to be sure. But they’ve mostly foundered. One was basically constructed to hang around the shoulders of another player who stopped showing up because he thought the premise of the MUCK was being violated when someone could be a giant and a shaman—a “problem” he didn’t communicate until a couple months after that plot ground to a halt.

While I think that particular player overstated his case and handled things in the worst possible way, his worry was legitimate. As much as I’d like it to be otherwise, there’s a tension between the setting’s focus on social roleplaying and what a lot of people like to do with giants: engage in wildly disproportionate power plays. I’m not talking about this strictly in the fetish sense, although of course that plays into it. The problem is that a substantial subset of the macrophile crowd has a “no such thing as too much” attitude. If ninety feet tall is good, two hundred feet tall is better. No, wait, magic control of your size is better! No, wait, magic control of everyone else’s size is better! No, wait, I can shift shape! Shift genders! Be both at once! Add a third! Shoot jets of fire! Be big enough to destroy cities with a single step! Level cities entirely with the power of my mind! EAT WHOLE PLANETS ARRRRRR cough cough—

Puzzlebox has the only workable solution to allowing this sort of character, I suspect: make everyone that sort of character. If anyone can do anything they want because that’s just the way the world works, the entire concept of “disrupting balance” gets all but thrown out the window. There are really only a handful of other ways to deal with this:

• The “See No Evil” approach: a generic setting—think Tapestries and FurryMUCK—with no enforcement of rules from a thematic standpoint. The resulting hodgepodge tends to work very well for scenes, but very poorly for plots. In a scene, two or three characters can figure out what they want to do and who’s in charge very quickly—and, yes, the BDSM overtone of that statement is intentional. The upshot is that people tend to come up with characters who are always in charge or never in charge in a given situation. When the fallen angel, the trickster god and the reality-warping psionic girl meet up, there’s only player negotiation to let them decide who trumps who. Sometimes that works but a lot of times it ain’t pretty.
• The “By the Numbers” approach: a system in which powers are essentially “bought” the way they are in more traditional roleplaying games. In theory, this can work really well. It’s my feeling that in practice this approach commits you to developing at least a rudimentary game mechanic system for conflict resolution. This isn’t a bad thing. Nor is it a good thing. It’s just a thing thing. It is, however, a thing that’s not as easy to do as you might imagine. I was a right bastard some years ago in criticizing a MUCK with a number-based character generation system, but the flaws were real. (I’m given to understand the approach they took was modified over several iterations.) I’m not opposed to investigating this further but I have a feeling that with Bandari it would be quite a trick, for the same reason that it’s difficult to have a pen-and-paper game system that handles both superheroes and “normals” with equal effectiveness.
• The “Just Trust Us” approach: try and describe a strict setting to begin with and try to approve only characters who fit that setting. Obviously, this is the approach that I took with Bandari. In theory, this can also work really well. In practice, though, it has two pitfalls. First, unless your character approval person is a real tough cookie, there will be a temptation to let characters through who probably really shouldn’t be approved—the biggest problem I’ve found in this regard is characters who simply aren’t very well thought out beyond the description. (And despite my description of myself above as a right bastard, I’m really not that tough a cookie.) Second, there’s no mechanism, beyond implicit trust, that prevents characters from going off into la-la land once they’ve been established.

So. A few characters did go off into la-la land, and a few characters who maybe shouldn’t have been approved were approved anyway. The latter one was directly my fault, obviously, although I suspect if I restructure the character request form in a way that forces people to think about their character history, why they’re in Bandari, and other things beyond the physical description it’ll reduce future similar problems. The former problem…well, that’s also my fault, in that it largely came from attempts to get roleplaying going.

So. While I came pretty quickly to the you can’t do everything yourself point in setting the MUCK up, I’m circling back to the you’ve gotta do a lot more yourself, kid point, and damn any perception of arrogance this might cause. I’ve been using “you don’t want people to look at it as your personal fiefdom” as an excuse not to get out there online and start pushing, and damn, that was pretty stupid, wasn’t it?

I’m working out a VDPA (“vaguely-defined plan of action”) for going forward.

1. Look at the way Puzzlebox has separated out its wiki and its LiveJournal (i.e., what’s used for what), and see about creating a Bandari community here if it seems to make sense—to discuss where we are and where we might be going in terms of plots.
2. Get a harassment policy in place. I wish it wasn’t necessary, but—and I’m sure this is something all MUCK wizards learn quickly—a couple bad apples can drive a greater number of “good apples” out of the barrel.
3. Start working out a few plot ideas myself. I’d be curious hearing how people—particularly Puzzleboxians (?)—work out bigger plots, assuming they do that kind of planning. In my ideal world, everyone would have a character who has their own agenda and acts based on how they want to reach their particular goal, but in practice, I’m concluding a lot of players—even ones who can be pretty good in RP—need to be shoved out on stage.

Point #2 is causing me some current personal angst, because of the few active players, a couple seem to be unable to even grit their teeth and be in the same room with another character. MUCKs with two dozen locations and only one central meeting area don’t have the luxury of “no contact orders,” and while the bad apple in this case has definitely been irritating, I’m distinctly unhappy at the feeling of being backed into a corner over this. (While I know Asperger’s Disorder is the fashionable malady to claim among fandom, my suspicion is that said “bad apple” may actually suffer from it, as his social skills aren’t lacking in the crabby unsocialized fannish fashion but rather in a kind of spooky “I don’t understand the difference between compliments and criticism” fashion. Of course, as my ex-roommate tacit observed long ago about another student at New College, understanding why someone irritates you doesn’t make them less irritating.)

As some concluding rambling thoughts, if there’s a lesson I should have drawn from the Giants’ Club on FurryMUCK, it’s that if I accept that I can’t please everyone all the time, I have a better chance of pleasing a number of people most of the time. If I manage to move forward and put in the effort I should have been putting in to meet people halfway, things can probably be put back on the rails.

Of course, that requires that a sufficient number of players meet me at the halfway point, too, and that’s going to mean getting people to be a little more willing to check in and see how things are going. I suspect an LJ community can help with that, presuming it becomes active. (It is, in fact, created now, albeit empty: bandarimuck.)

Comments

[kareem.livejournal.com]

I read a book once, called The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. (http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099450259/qid=1102382072/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl/026-0943416-0998033) The main character and narrator of the story has Asperger's. If your apple is anything like that, well. Y'know.

As for getting people on the MUCK, why not advertise? The electronic equivalent of flyer bombing could work. It's crude, but it'll certainly get peoples attention. If you've got an appropriate web-space, or forum where yout think that would be possible, I don't see the harm in using it. There's no worry of quality, since the advertising can be your torrent and the character validation your sieve.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

We do advertise, although it's been a while. I think I'll wait on getting a revised character request process put together, and until I get a bit in the LJ community going, before doing another round of advertising -- but another round of some sort will definitely come.

[lhuhikwdwoo.livejournal.com]

As the individual being referred to, I will note I do not consider my case overstated. I've never dealt with puzzle box, but I did spend a few years on a world of darkness IRC channel set.
---Simularities to what I see here
everyone clustered to one to two communication areas(there, one main channel, an ooc channel, with private scening channels, here the main bar, and whereever the focus of a scene decides to go)

a premise that starts with everyone supposedly being on the same power level unless they deliberately choose weakness(there, a fixed limit on points with no cross over between being enhanced mortal, vampire, werewolf, mage, and later, other things, here, old worlder vs shaman vs giant vs spirit)

a set of social constraints that frowns on someone doing certain activities even though they are well within the abilities allowed(there making a spectacle of one's self in a way that would either get on the five oclock news, or produce a back lash among the mortals who in theory shouldn't even know they are not alone. here giants going around and destroying bandari, or forcing the british to respond with artillery, old worlders with victorian sensibilities. Not sure if the shamans have any real constraints to worry about, outside of their individual tangle of spirit obligations)

the type of players being drawn upon(there a mix of folks out to gain the most powerful character posssible, roleplayers, sceners.-these two being different in that the sceners didnt care about continuity, just in making things go perfectly for them for in any particular scene- and socialites that where there to get on top of the pecking order. here much the same, but the vehicle for powerful characters is based on height and to a lesser degree spirit potence, not number of dots in powers, skills, and stats.)

---differences
level of structure and organisation(there one tyrant of head gm, who gave a limited few others specific types of authority, usually for refereeing combat, or handling one of the supernatural types she herself didn't understand well that was desired by one or more of the players, as well as very well defined and activity promoting form of awarding experience and very frequent meetings for dealing with specific problems as they arose between the gms and refs, here as noted an oftentimes absentee head gm, one primary sub gm, with the expectation that once a critical mass of active players is reached, the muck will live)

the background and what constitutes power(there a modern city infested by hidden vampires, werebeasts, willworkers, ghosts, faeries, oriental vampires, mummies, and those who hunt them, supposedly trying to avoid notice while playing various forms of shadow games against eachother, here a victorian company colony with shamans, giants, spirits, and expatriots, with no clear overall objective except to be there and slice of life stuff.)

the potential for many rp interaction areas
(there everything was done in the favored meeting place of the vampires, or in temporary channels around places where a gm or prime mover of an rp would favor. here a number of already defined rooms with the potential to, if needed, say a room was someplace else altogether, or to create new temporary rooms, if the existing rooms where inadequate.

[lhuhikwdwoo.livejournal.com]

----where ivory and steel went wrong
step one, some of the sub gms, in order to keep the setting believable would be create characters more powerful by an order of magnitude than the normal player characters. originally these were intended to take backseat to regular characters. in actuallity, they came to become the characters most often used by those sub gms.

step two, for whatever reason, gms came to the conclusion that others could have those powerful characters as well on a limited basis, on the premise that they would not be abused. It took awhile but get abused they did. At this point those that wanted to on top of the social heap, also had to have powerful characters to compete, as did the perfect character types. This left those hoping to play normal characters high and dry as unless one of the socialites could gain something by allowing a plot line or rp idea to go foward, they would just sit on it, preventing it from going anywhere thanks to both their social position on the channels, and their in character ability to thwart activities.

step three, eventually in order to challange those with powerful characters, the gms introduced uberpowerful characters, causing bit of whining on the part of those with powerful characters, making the normal characters now irrelevent unless they were needed for some specific bit role in something their betters wanted to have happen. Also this insured that those that weren't 'IN' had go elsewhere if they wanted to do anything outside of getting on the goodside of one of the in crowd.
this is where I started fading in and out, staying mainly due to friendship with two of the gms and one of the players.

step four, the head gm finally awards an uberpowerful character to some she fell in love with, and that player inspite of restrictions, tries to turn the channels into his personal adoration cult. that very few went along with it, caused him to use that character, and the head gm's love to harass non cultists out of the channels.

I was not there for the head gm to finally blow a gasket and do the "I'm taking my marbles, and going home" routine

---What I have seen that lead me to suspect bandari was going down the same road, that lead me to fade out, then not return except rarely, and then to stay away.

increasing amounts of exceptions to the world logic given, giants with power, old world giants, mini giants to get around the idea of no old world giants.

a racheting up of power levels in response to demonstrated power levels on the part of those not 'IN'

a partial mistake on my part, the appearance that a character was there only to serve the roles desired by a sub gm, one that on the surface made him look blind and incompetant. It was later shown that the trouble makers would have been under his radar, if they had been sufficiently careful.

an unwillingness on the part of those that wanted to go through types of scenes and rps that violated the world logic, to do those rps elsewhere so that they could happen, but not force others to respond to them. there where a few instances where it was desired for Xecheq to end up getting big, so I had that done off muck for one to three day one shots. on muck on the other hand, in one case it was desired for another character to get big, and so it happened, on muck.

[chipotle.livejournal.com]

From my standpoint you read a standard of realism into the setting that was never there in the first place. Bandari's theme is explicitly described as pulp adventure, and "steampunk" is mentioned more than once. This is the world of Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard, with more than a little of Disney's "TaleSpin" and Phil Foglio's comic "Girl Genius" thrown in. The wiki explicitly mentions The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen on the CharacterTypes page. It mentioned it when the page was created in March, so it's not as if this wasn't there from the very beginning.

While I'd like to think there's a "world logic" to Bandari, it's not the kind of logic that prevents pretty fantastic happenings and creatures. Yes, I've stated that I'd like to keep such things relatively rare. And, yes, I know that when you allow for such things at all, a lot of people will attempt to be "rare," and that makes such things, well, less rare. But Bandari is, by nature, a town which is going to have a wildly disproportionate number of "rare" people. And there's absolutely nothing within the established constraints of the setting that prohibits nine-foot-tall rabbits or magically-created giants. Or steam-powered mecha, fantastic submersible pirate boats, or commercial airship lines. (All of which were, in fact, mentioned by people with respect to Bandari at various points in the past six months or so, even though none have come to fruition.)

As I said, I don't think that your worries were baseless. Some of the quickies run were things I wasn't real comfortable with. Generally, nobody bothered to talk to me about plots before they were underway, though, and sometimes the input I gave was disregarded. No, I don't want size-shifting to become commonplace, magic shouldn't flow like water, and I don't really want "power fights" like are somewhat unavoidable in a free-for-all setting like the FurryMUCK Giants' Club.

Having said that, the occasional "violation" is not a slippery slope to Victorian Dragon Ball Z, and I don't expect that there won't be Europeans messing with magic, normals occasionally getting enlarged, giants occasionally getting shrunk, and what have you. The point was never that such is impossible--the point was that such should never be casual. I want to prevent "my magic is defined as what I can pose" type characters, not all weird and whimsical events. And by and large, I don't think the magic has become casual, any possible faux pas in quick plots notwithstanding. In my opinion, Bandari is suffering something of an imbalance right now, but it's caused by too few players and too little conflict. And, when it comes down to it, too few active giants, not too many.

Lastly, you seem to imply that I was playing favorites with allowing plots. I'm simply going to reiterate that I gave you one of the most potentially important characters in Bandari's setting. You would have been at the center of the most major plot on Bandari to date. I get a lot of accusations of elitism based primarily on perceptions of my "fame." It'd be nice if people were more willing to judge me on my actions instead.