jigokuooc | Plot/Event Feedback Post + open discussion!

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Recent Feedback Response

To start; an apology While this is a feedback on issues that have existed prior to it, we definitely feel most of this falls on us for how the mini event/"get to work" log was handled. Enthusiasm got the best of us and we threw out way too much with too little time for players (especially the large amount of new players) to really adjust to what we were doing or what was going in.

People who've been in the game for awhile know this was not a usual thing. Yes, the mini-event will usually have some major plot elements, but certainly nothing on the level of what we put in this most recent one and it was a mistake on our part to do so. It overwhelmed too many people, and pushed things too far and too fast, narrative-wise.

We don't intend to retcon what happened (it's honestly too late for that) but we do apologize for letting out enthusiasm get the best of us and assure we will be much more mindful of pace going forward. In fact, the crux of this feedback is about that: pace. Well, that and transparency.

Breathing Room This is going to be implemented in a few ways.
The most important is that we will not be having an app cycle in October. Applications will be essentially frozen until January 2023. A cap is also being considered, but we will see where the game is at the time we open apps again before revisiting that conversation, but for now, no new apps will be accepted for the next four months.
The Wasteland/Iron Bear/Haniyasu plot, the main plot, is going to be re-evaluated and made to be paced out over a longer period of time. Right now, we're looking at not closing it until November, and Toraguma's initial "we move out in 2 weeks" declaration will not turn out to be true, for IC reasons we can honestly pretty easily cook up.
We hope these two things give the game way more room to flex and for folks to actually find their legs beneath them in the game again.

Plot Info Dissemination We will start this by stating that while we have often played our cards close to our chest, it has never been the intention of the mod team to make the plot deliberately obtuse or impossible to decipher. Usually we only hold onto things if the reveal of said information is planned as part of another post. The most recent example of this is the bomb's nature being revealed by Toraguma in an IC post shortly after the mini-event.

That being said, this isn't a very tenable system sometimes, and this is one of those times where people were becoming understandably frustrated at the lack of ability to do anything besides reactive play, which is not what everyone is here for.

As far as character investigations and OOC questions go, know this: we will always tell you if you're going down a dead end. If you are on a cold path, we will let you know so that you don't feel like your time was wasted. That being said, not every question we're given is going to produce the most interesting answers. There is a certain level of player creativity that needs to be expressed to get to things, and this is a factor that is always going to be more impactful than character rank or their established CR in determining if the answer given will lead them somewhere interesting.

We are treading a fine line between allowing players to Find the Fun and guiding players where we want them to be, and it's hard to get this balance right. We like to think we've mostly done well with it, but sometimes things fall short of ideal. We never want people to feel like they're being railroaded, but we also don't want them to feel like they're completely lost.

We want to emphasize two things that genuinely help here, on the player end. First The Story So Far tag, and being sure to read up on what's happened before. These summaries cover the major beats. We also recommend reading other players' questions as they come in, to avoid retreading ground but also sometimes another set of eyes can find something others might have missed. Make the questions a collaborative effort. These are the tools players already have, but we are also want to provide more to that end.

We are open to suggestions on how to help with this process. Again, know that it is not our intention to lock plot information behind obtuse logic or NPC interaction or character rank or anything. None of those factors should be impacting folks ability to engage with the game's plot. We feel we're falling short of our own ideal here, so help would be appreciated.

Plot Transparency. This is less about game-wide plot and more about how things like player plots and smaller mod-run things are handled.

First, we want to put eyes on our brand new Player Submission post for substories and player plots. Previously, these were done through the mod contact page, mostly for the sake of convenience. Unfortunately, the comment screening in that post has caused big gaps in player awareness of what's going on, so instead we're moving all stuff related to player plot submission and subwtories to THIS page, so that everyone can see, and participate, in what's being planned.

You can also use this page to pitch ideas for your characters that you'd like mod help with. We used to do these through the mod contact page or DMs, but we want to move these to an open, public space so the process becomes more transparent and no one feels like anyone else is receiving special treatment.

If you have world-building, IC game history, or other similar types of IC questions, please ask them on the FAQ rather than on the Mod Contact page. This allows for all plot and setting related questions to be visible to all players. We have updated the Mod Contact page to reflect these changes.

We would like to emphasize that we cannot control, and have no intention to control, how players disseminate information on their own plots. However, if either the player with the plot or we as mods feel the plot in question could impact anything outside a small circle of people, we will strongly encourage players to actually make use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes, or at least for a heads up. We do hope this helps with the transparency issue.

On our part, small side plots run by the mods themselves will now be a matter of public accord as well; we will make use of this post to host them and will make the OOC process more transparent than it has been before.

Our hope is this increased transparency will lead to less feelings of FOMO or other anxieties associated with seeing plot things pass one by without feeling like one had a chance to impact anything.

Use of the OOC Comm/Discord issues. This is two fold because it kind of relates back to the same thing, even if they don't seem attached at first.

Namely, we'd like to see players making more use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes. On our part, this means throwing up an OOC plotting post for every major IC log now, mingle/mini-event/main event/etc. On players part, while we certainly can't make anyone do anything, we would like to see more player plots fleshed out on the OOC comm (and the previously linked Player Submissions post) vs doing so on the game discord or plurk.

Furthermore, it should be understood that our helpful Discord Mods (Eski, Dany, Fii, Min, and Caitie) are not game mods. The job they volunteered for is to help run and organize the Discord, and should not be approached about game issues, including about where and when people engage in plotting.

Future Issues Another thing we want to emphasize is we can only act upon what has been presented to us via official contact methods. Unless the issues are brought to our attention via these methods, we may not be aware of them at all.

We are grateful for the folks that came forward with feedback about the issue, but the scope of the issue wasn't realized until we were informed about player sentiments in other places. Even if it's something seemingly as little as feeling as if your question wasn't answered well, just please let us know via official contact methods. We want this game to be a fun and engaging experience for everyone.

Please feel free to discuss things below. We mentioned we're open to suggestions about better means of handling player investigations/questions, but we're also just open to discussion about all of this in general. We want people to feel like they can have these discussions without it boiling over into frustration.

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

I think what confuses me a little bit about the rank system as it is now is that it's an IC reward for OOC activity. I sort of came in thinking something like this:

A. I've been very active in the game so my reward is I get plot information and opportunities that I can use for my character as appropriate to them. (OOC activity gets an OOC reward.)
which leads to:
B. My character has demonstrated through their actions in their faction that they are worthy of authority and privilege, and so they have been granted rank up/gifts/powers. (IC activity gets an IC reward.)

Instead it feels like:

C. I've been very active in the game, so my character gets rank/gifts/powers, regardless of the content of that activity, which hopefully will open up opportunities for my character. (OOC activity gets an IC reward, which, granted, is very common/standard in DWRP, and very easy for mods because they don't have to judge threads for actual content, just numbers.)

I imagine some of the frustration around the lack of information (or difficulty in following it) is that people might spend a lot of time engaging with the main plot IC or getting their characters invested in their faction, only to discover that there's no guarantee it will have any IC payoff. Ideally it results in threads that can be turned in for rewards points and then rank, but there isn't necessarily any OOC payoff in that, either –– rank does not position your character to get more opportunities OOC. Rank then feels like an opportunity to help orientate new characters and say NPCs are friendly to yours, and maybe a smidge of bragging rights, rather than something with intended narrative weight.

(... Or so I get the impression now? I genuinely don't know if being a three-star comes with personal relationships with faction leaders and information about their going-ons, or if that's just the result of highly ranked characters having participated in enough plot stuff over the months to have learned it and they just happen to be highly ranked, or... I don't know! Do mods automatically give higher-ranked characters more information about the faction leader and goings-on? If not, do newly ranked up characters make up their own dynamic with their faction leader? I have no idea!)

Basically, if the system is going to stand as is (and it can! It's certainly far easier to mod!) then I think there needs to be some explicit definition of what rank does and does not do so people don't come away from it with the impression that it is, essentially, an earned story role.

I'm just tossing out some thoughts here, but I think since it's a yakuza/organised crime situation and not a military, the reason for the loose interpretation of ranks is that it is not a hard, set in stone chain of command.

Ryouma having 3* influence in one area he personally has a lot of influence in might get him somewhere in one plot but in other areas he will get nothing no matter who he is because his rank doesn't carry the same weight with every NPC or situation he deals with. In fact, his rank and visibility has been such a hindrance to him personally gaining information that he has had to adjust and delegate information gathering to other characters because he doesn't have the skills or people just know his stupid face. He tried to use that influence to get information out of Kaberou twice and it didn't work, but another much newer character was able to get really useful stuff because he had a better skillset, which is cool!

A reason why characters with no rank or low rank getting highly sensitive missions might be that they have a good skill set for it or because a faction leader might want them to prove themselves. This is not an uncommon thing in this genre and a lot of these genre flavour things make things more interesting, in my opinion.

This is mostly what I'm thinking when the mods are suggesting that people get creative about how they access information regardless of what rank their character has. If something doesn't work, you can always try something else and ranks shouldn't be necessarily seen as a requirement. Setting up "must be 2 stars to apply" type missions sound nice but would probably end up gate keeping a lot more people than it encourages.

That being said, the Department of the Enma probably DOES have way more of a chain of command, so it might be interesting to come up with more faction flavour to flesh some of those things out specifically?

Just gonna drop a very enthusiastic agree on this, an event calendar would be extremely beneficial for players.

It's not just the availability, I think knowing event start timelines with more specificity would be super useful for not getting overloaded/overwhelmed and pacing ourselves, which was the most common complaint.

The struggle of all being working adults with hobbies.

Adulthood is overrated tbh

Hi, mods. Thank you for taking the time to write this feedback post!

I think slowing down would definitely help a lot. A lot of players in the game tend to be on the slower side, and it takes time to understand, organise, plot out and then thread out plot-relevant threads where information might be shared between characters. My memory is really bad but the general feeling in this game has been a log/EMBER/tdm/something every 1-2 weeks, which is a decent time ICly, but in that amount of time most people probably get maybe 4-5 tags into each thread they've had. If we move to 1 big log per month, of course we also run into the risk of people feeling like there isn't much to do in between ... I think it's worth trying to see what happens?

I also enjoyed what you mods had done back in the tower log to choose players to be involved in plot, and I feel like this should be employed again. It would give everyone a fair chance to be involved. You opened up sign ups, had people make a case for why their character would be useful and why the faction leader should choose them, and then RNG'd to pick who gets chosen. Additional chances (+1/+2 etc) can be given to ranked characters, and people who can provide evidence that their characters have been investigating or involved in the lead up to the plot (e.g. had discussions with other characters to form theories and mentioned providing this info to the faction leader, or going out to do some snooping around themselves).

This definitely seems reasonable from an IC perspective, and I appreciate that logic.

However, I get the sense that the OOC frustration is largely because it feels shaky, inconsistent, and difficult to work with as players. That player vs. character thing is a pretty significant distinction to the reason people want more clarity.

Put it another way, it's totally fine that A, as a low-rank character, would still be picked for a mission owing to having a relevant skillset that B, a high-ranked character, does not.

But when B's player is trying to find opportunities to involve B in the plot, and they're investing heavily into ranks because they believe it will push B into central plot focus whether B wants it or not, it will be very frustrating for them to be passed over for A and left with nothing, especially if the reasons why are never articulated or clarified.

I think advanced planning of things like this would help a lot. It would probably cut some of the surprise and suspense, but there's the rub- we're playing a game for A's player and B's player to have fun, we're not scripting a drama for HBO. OOC satisfaction/fun/engagement necessarily outweighs IC consistency and narrative flow.

+1/liked/upvoted/undersigned/retweeted/reblogged/replurked/re are the champions my friends.

I wasn't here for this tower log but it sounds like exactly what I'm talking about with regards to "Transparency OOC of why and how characters are chosen IC."

"While this is a feedback on issues that have existed prior to it, we definitely feel most of this falls on us for how the mini event/"get to work" log was handled."

Factually no. The rushed event has been a major focus, but it's also caused other issues to come to light that have been noted and criticized in the past. There's been enough plausible deniability that I personally thought was individual moments of "that's weird", but in retrospect I realize were parts of a bigger underlying issue. I know people have made crit in the past that has been ignored.

I'd like to emphasize that, with regards to the rushed event, it really can't be understated how unwelcoming it has been to many new players. So many newbies I've seen have no idea what is happening, how to get involved, what events even lead up to the current plot, what's even expected of them as members of a given faction, and how to establish a CR base to get any foodhold in the game. That's a major concern.

The rushed event has also meant that players who are slower-paced (which this game has a lot of, see the 8-comment AC) or international players who rely on backtags, either have to rush themselves, or sit things out, or drop older threads to stay current. None of those three options are appealling.

"People who've been in the game for awhile know this was not a usual thing."

Waggles hands. While the Blood Storm event was generally paced more evenly (foreshadowed in Get To Work then all of June to experience the main event) the conclusion to it pretty clearly ran into scheduling issues and bumped up into TDM. Not the worst thing in the world but still an indication that scheduling is a prior issue.

On that note, while I was a randomized participant in the Blood Storm conclusion and enjoyed the log, it raises a different issue that I'll go into later.

"Applications will be essentially frozen until January 2023. A cap is also being considered"

~180 characters at time of comment, so yeah.

"The Wasteland/Iron Bear/Haniyasu plot, the main plot, is going to be re-evaluated and made to be paced out over a longer period of time."

The bounty storyline needs leeway time, so yeah.

"As far as character investigations and OOC questions go, know this: we will always tell you if you're going down a dead end. If you are on a cold path, we will let you know so that you don't feel like your time was wasted. That being said, not every question we're given is going to produce the most interesting answers."

True, in that event questions have gotten "this is a dead end' responses.
Please don't think that just because one person gets a question response in their inbox, they can't look to the side and see someone else ask almost the same question and get a different one.

One example is during Tanabata. All of Sutoku asking questions, many of whom have connections or are sneaky, and get hardly anything about Kaberou… And now a massive infodump about Kaberou comes to light that frankly contradicts what was said before?
Another example is this bombing event. Why does a Shuten lieutenant, who works closely with Jiro and has a direct professional line to something like the warehouse, ask the fire brigade about the warehouse fire and get nothing, but an Enma officer gets first dibs?
Why, in the July mini-event, did a newly-apped character learn about gyokuto's secret instantly, when that's been a mystery the entire game, and it says in the game's FAQ that yokai/mythical player-characters won't get special treatment from the game? https://jigokulogs.dreamwidth.org/47812.html?thread=6723012#cmt6723012

"We want to emphasize two things that genuinely help here, on the player end. First The Story So Far tag, and being sure to read up on what's happened before."

The summaries that go up after the fact, so people who would have wanted to participate have no idea what they missed until it's too late?

"We also recommend reading other players' questions as they come in, to avoid retreading ground but also sometimes another set of eyes can find something others might have missed."

Why do players have to sift through however-many comments, in the hopes that one of the responses is going to have what they want to know?

Why should so much basic intel be locked behind "ask the right questions" ? Isn't that so much more work?

I had been under the impression that questions were more for tidbits and side-stuff, but that has not been the case at all. Why did I have to ask what the video broadcasted to the entire city even looked like?

If the answers were consistent across the board, wouldn't it be easier to have an ooc event post of what you could find out based on your tier?
"A 3*** character could find out this: [...]
A 2** character could find out this: [...]"
etc.

By the way, speaking of rank influence, why was Tamamo behind the bombing of Shuten's warehouse, yet most of Tamamo, especially higher-ranked characters than the person carrying out the bombing, were completely in the dark?

"Again, know that it is not our intention to lock plot information behind obtuse logic or NPC interaction or character rank or anything. None of those factors should be impacting folks ability to engage with the game's plot."

Engage with it more than reacting it, you mean?

"Plot Transparency. This is less about game-wide plot and more about how things like player plots and smaller mod-run things are handled."

What? Player concerns were about the game-wide plot's transparency. The multiple events/incidents that occurred adjacent to the bombing were all part of the game-wide plot. Would you like to address that part?

"We used to do these through the mod contact page or DMs, but we want to move these to an open, public space so the process becomes more transparent and no one feels like anyone else is receiving special treatment."

So I have gone over the full response post a few times, and this is the part that hangs closest the the biggest issue in this game.
Everyone has noticed that only a handful of people get opportunities, get extra intel or perks, get IC-recognized authority regardless of rank or activity, or get major involvement in the main plot, and other people who try, or who are active and on-paper should have rank and authority, are given nothing. I'm not going to name names but everyone can see it.
You might think you're giving people perks and gifts, but I can tell you that multiple people who have been picked to be a mod "teacher's pet" have been deeply uncomfortable with their status, have realized that their wishes to be involved with the plot and community have been twisted into favoritism, and don't want to be singled out anymore.

Even in events that invited people outside of that circle have been structured in deeply weird ways. I'm going to use the Tower Expedition as an example. The teams were randomly picked, yes, and it was a result of player participation and work.
It still all came down to the rest of the game watching 8 people be the main characters.
In retrospect, I do not feel good about my participation. Even with player participation, the door should have been open for a wider effort. In-game victories, or defeats, in a game of 100+ people, need to be shared across the game.

"We would like to emphasize that we cannot control, and have no intention to control, how players disseminate information on their own plots."

I'm doing my best to respond to this productively, but I can't believe this. This is a mod response from a team who has clearly seen the crit about hidden information or information that's hard to find because it's scattered across random logs/posts and event question threads in two communities, and it says, "It's your problem now." Okay.

"On our part, small side plots run by the mods themselves will not be a matter of public accord as well"

Why?
Do you not trust people to infomod?
Why shouldn't events that affect the game setting and have ramifications for everyone be kept a secret?

"Namely, we'd like to see players making more use of our OOC comm for plotting purposes."

After people asked why the OOC community wasn't in use for plotting and there wasn't an ooc event plotting post for the bombing event, you mean? I'm sure you're not taking credit for someone else's suggestion, because that would be bad.

"Unless the issues are brought to our attention via these methods, we may not be aware of them at all.

We are grateful for the folks that came forward with feedback about the issue, but the scope of the issue wasn't realized until we were informed about player sentiments in other places."

You're lying.

I know for a fact multiple people have brought up crit, both to your face and in the screened post, and gotten nothing or gotten told "We'll work on it" and nothing has changed. There is no reason to believe anything will change now.

I think you need to take a long and hard look at what you really want a game for. Do you want to run a game for 100 people and give those 100 people a chance to shine? Or do you want a sandbox of 10 with an audience of 90? This isn't a question of "Yes, if they want to participate," because I see people time and time again jumping to ask questions or get interested in the plot or take their faction premise and run with it, and I see them get no-sold or stopped in their tracks, and only a handful ascended to the role of main character.

I'm not here to fill seats. Bye.

Absolutely. Surprises/twists don't work if that information isn't immediately disseminated smoothly.

Ie, I remember reading somewhere that the additional bombs were only in abandoned/empty buildings. I don't remember where, nor do I recall how that information was disseminated IC. But I've also talked to people OOC who had no idea that the bombs were in empty buildings, and that makes me go, wait, were they? Where did this information come from? I can't quickly reference this as there's no OOC plotting post with bullet points/quick links to where this information comes from IC or how characters might find out. I have to dig through comments between several network posts (some of which are faction locked), several logs, inboxes, questions threads, etc.

I can't work my character towards certain information/plot points if I don't know that information exists, and it hobbles my play if I don't know something that my character reasonably should.

We'll take time to address most of this but we should immediately point out that "small side plots run by the mods themselves will not be a matter of public accord" was a typo, as it should say "now be a matter of public accord", and has been fixed. We're sorry for any confusion that caused.

I get what you're saying! And I think that that might be some of the confusion here:

But when B's player is trying to find opportunities to involve B in the plot, and they're investing heavily into ranks because they believe it will push B into central plot focus whether B wants it or not, it will be very frustrating for them to be passed over for A and left with nothing, especially if the reasons why are never articulated or clarified.

I feel like ranks give you more ability to have your character do stuff and be in charge and have responsibility but doesn't automatically come with the guarantee of plot hooks or information. I've always taken it to mean that your character has earned more trust within their faction, so in Ryouma's case getting the faction to back him on a deal when he's earned 3* is way more likely than it would have been if he'd tried to do it with 1* as the narrative is concerned.

There is probably no way to guarantee that just because a character has a certain rank that they're definitely going to get plot relevant information because that's hasn't been the purpose of them so far? That's why OOC activity = IC rank always made sense to me because the idea that your character is being active enough to "buy" more influence in their faction is exactly that: people see them out there and are more willing to work with them and not just because they're lieutenant so-and-so. Sort of the "I know a guy who knows a guy" type deal. If you have 3* a lot more people are gonna know you're the guy and you're trusted. I absolutely get where you're coming from how this can be confusing on an OOC level especially if you're new though, so it's a hard balance to strike.

I guess I'm hoping that this might help as a suggestion, if nothing else!

Stars only resulting in different treatment from the faction or different comparative authority across factions is a completely reasonable standard, and I strongly agree that this is a good way of doing things, it means the oldest and most-established characters won't monopolize the spotlight either. As long as it's well-articulated and consistent, that's totally fine.

I suppose what it boils down to is this: Whatever the OOC route to opportunities for participation in the plot, it needs to be clearly outlined, because as long as the process isn't visible it will feel arbitrary.

If it's not stars, that's totally fine. If it's stars on specific occasions and not on others, that's also fine. Hell, if it's just stars, I don't love that but it's at least impartial.

But it should be transparent, communicated when it's relevant, and consistently applied, regardless of what the answer is.

+1. Rank has to either have tangible, clear-cut meaning and purpose to players IC and OOC, or it's completely meaningless.

The way the system is now, anyone could have their crass and irreverent character slice-of-life it up and shoots the shit with people on Ember for a week and get enough points to buy them a rank; this would be by-the-books use of the system as-is, but it would look completely nonsensical IC for that character to have authority and influence.

However, anyone could have their responsible and driven character try to engage with the plot head-on and engage with the faction in earnest, maybe get enough points to get rank, and then encounter dead end after dead end because rank doesn't actually afford them access to anything.

Yes, I definitely agree that transparency and clarity will always be best regardless. Probably the best thing for it is for it just to be clarified based on what's happening. For example, if it's something like the bombing where it's sort of an information free-for-all and information hasn't necessarily come down from above to high ranking characters, that can be clarified on the prompt itself so no one is surprised that their faction rank isn't necessarily yielding information?

I also just want to toss out the suggestion of using reward points to buy in-game influence beyond the star ranks. Not only would it be a real, tangible way to say "hey look, my character has this much!" but in addition to star ranks it can be another way for a character to gain a foothold in the setting and use up a lot of those extra points a lot of us are sitting on and I think it could be really fun!

I still have sincere concerns for how the game functions, when situations such as Kaberou's work were quite literally told to me to be just a joke that the mods weren't interested in pursuing. This halted my own questioning, and left me even more confused when more information came out about Kaberou in later investigation threads at Tanabata itself, and then in regards to the raid on Kaberou's office.

I understand situations where a modteam has to operate on the fly, and doesn't have something fully written. I could also understand a lack of interest in getting in to nitty-gritty, but this is a crime game about connections and businesses, with an NPC clearly coded as important to keep tabs on, so I admit I don't understand the choice to tell me it was a dead end, when a simple "we're still working on that!" could have sufficed. I would also expect a crucial NPC for the kidnapping plot, like the financier of Sutoku and parent of the abducted, would have had details hashed out ahead of time. And the one lead I was given, about the moon rabbits arriving "soon", never...happened this month? I wouldn't expect it to be next month, either, so I truly don't know if my clue is a dropped thread.

Obviously this is just one example from one stretch of plot, but it's the most direct example of my experiences with the game.

My broader question is thus...how are we meant to interact with story prompts, besides react to them? Our actions with substories especially feel too loose and without weight; there's no way to thread out a resolution to the drifter, or the magpies, and have any of it impact the game in a meaningful way. How are we meant to interact with situations like the celestials, or NPCs like Jiro, who lost souls might theoretically have more contact with than the faction leaders? And then there's other things getting a much larger mod response- like, where and how the heck did the Dandelion raid factor in to any of the plot? What is the status of that, is it concluded, was it directly involved in the bombing or just timed alongside it?

This would be a cool idea and maybe worth adding to the rewards page, honestly.

Though I think it'd be important to ensure that expectations were set and calibrated appropriately for what exactly the rewards for that might be, both IC and OOC, first. Otherwise it's just another avenue for people to maybe feel like they misused their points.

Anyway I'm fully a quarter of the comments on this post so I'm gonna shut the hell up for now.

Me again!! Another idea I had!!

Maybe for IC questions and information, mods can do what they did with the gambling outcomes in Tanabata? Good luck, ok luck, shit luck etc

Example:
CAPS: "Megumi wants to go into the back alleys to investigate some smugglers. He's going to use his sexy shadow powers to do so and he might interrogate some people. How would he fare?"
Mods: "We've left it to RNG and he'll have good luck, so he's going to find out [important plot point!!]"

or! "Megumi rolled a 'shit luck' so he'll be attacked and find nothing, sorry fam"

wrt dandelion i hopefully can explain that.

months ago, maybe about two months into the games life, i approached the mods about a death drop plot to take place around october in a PM. they said they were down. in our interaction, i asked when they would like me to touch base with them again, and they said they would prefer september. at the beginning of september, i contacted the mod account again, and around a week later they came to me with a plot that included having aerith publicly executed in what they described as a ritual kill that would be broadcasted. i backed out of this plot, and after some back and forth, i asked for them to include the rest of the players who had commented to the dandelion employee roster to the reworked plot. they agreed, and what came of it was the raid.

icly, the interest in aerith and the shop came from the fact she gave ringo a flower during tanabata. oocly, it was essentially a thread for getting the plot i asked for done.

as such, i hope this clears up the confusion regarding it. if not, i can share caps; all of this happened over PM, so i am very much able to do so.

I was gonna try and back off the post because I've been all over it, but I did have one other point to address.

"That being said, not every question we're given is going to produce the most interesting answers. There is a certain level of player creativity that needs to be expressed to get to things, and this is a factor that is always going to be more impactful than character rank or their established CR in determining if the answer given will lead them somewhere interesting."

I can respect this approach. I GM tabletop games, I've employed it myself.

The trouble with this idea is that without adequate hints and a willingness to work with players on finding those solutions, this stops being a fun puzzle and starts being a purely arbitrary guessing game.

This is probably the only one of these points that has been a point of frustration with me personally, and it has come up multiple times for me. I've tried to investigate events and ask questions, and rather than being rewarded for my efforts, I just hit a giant NO and, without further guidance, am forced to guess randomly at what I was "supposed" to be paying attention to or else give up entirely.

Van has explained most of my complaints pretty concisely. But I wanted to add a few more thoughts.

"We would like to emphasize that we cannot control, and have no intention to control, how players disseminate information on their own plots."

I think it's ridiculous that you are blaming this on the players who come to you with ideas. If things such as the flower shop raid, Tamamo bombing Shuten, and the infiltration on Kaberou's office are the result of player plots, as you seem to be implying, then it is not up to those respective players to tell us. You are the ones setting them in motion and integrating them into the main plot of the game about Iron Bear; especially with the bombings, it is your job to tell us what's going on and how this has bearings on the rest of the story, not chalking it up to the player to explain a section of a mod post that was not explained.

If incidents are being incorporated into a larger plot, such as Tenkohime intending to hamper the entire Shuten clan, this is something one would logically think the higher ups of Tamamo should be privy to. If rank is not about receiving plot opportunities (which I agree should not be completely closed off to people with no rank in fact), and it's not about actually being informed in what is going on in the clan, or having a say in what is going on in the clan, then I'm not sure what it's for. The higher-ups of a clan ICly being told information that is kept from the non-ranked characters seems perfectly sensible to me, and then the higher-ranked ones could tell people as they wish, but OOCly everyone would still be on the same page. I especially don't know how this game can be said to be steered by player actions if they're not being allowed to have any influence, or being given any information to influence with.

Besides that, you haven't mentioned a single word about mod favoritism in who is getting plots and information, which I know some people have brought up to you as a problem. People have asked the right questions, had rank influence, and have still been told nothing while others are handed that information, the example with gyokuto and the bomb during this plot being praticularly brazen. You wanted to keep information close to your chest because it would be revealed in a later post, but as far as I know the gyokuto's elixir of immortality plot point has never come up, and the only thing Toraguma revealed about the bomb was that... it was definitely Tenkohime and Tamamo that did it, and not Iron Bear? Which the playerbase had already been led to believe because of Kate's role in the bombing, and the plot post already saying it was not Iron Bear. Effectively all it means is that mod NPCs got to be the ones to tell Shuten about Tamamo, rather than a player character who was actively trying to be involved in the plot.

It's gotten to the point where I have personally felt like it would be useless to even try and get involved with the plot, because I legitimately couldn't figure out how; on top of that, I know I'm not alone in thinking it would be useless to ask mods questions, whether that be because I know it would be useless, or because I was scared of how the mods would react if I wasn't one of their favorites. This problem with tone has contributed to me and others thinking we could not get anywhere, when apparently according to you all I had to do was ask a question differently, and it's my fault for thinking something has been a dead end?

adding in to second the investigations idea! since people tend to have questions near the top of the post anyway, having an area for characters to find things out ICly would be a great way to keep players invested and active even outside of the direct thread reactions/engagement. some of that would obviously come down to "if it's more fun, fill out the setting," but some of it would probably be a good way to divvy out bits of plot!

the plot share option is also fun. obviously you don't want to turn every thread into handwaving, but in a setting like this - where characters have valid reasons to want to investigate things and leave an impact of their own - it can be helpful to have a way to encourage that

I'm trying not to be all over this thread, but I have to +1 to the calendar idea. Even if it's just a static google calendar.

+1: as someone who tags very fast, i don't think it's a terrible idea to slow things down - there's been plenty of things i can engage on, and i haven't really "run out" of options there even at a quite frankly manic tag pace. i feel like in games where tdms are sometimes plot relevant - or at the very least games where they help flesh out the setting - they can run the risk of adding another "necessary log" to keep up with that month, and that can overload players pretty easily

-1: so this is a weird example, but i don't actually know if i agree with EMBER in specific here! even if it's a substory, it feels to me like engaging with ember threads is much easier than engaging with the more directly plot-relevant stuff. maybe the focus should be "one plot-relevant hook/event a month," maybe?

agreeing with win here! fully on board with the points sven is making further up as well, but i think the continued loss of momentum is a real concern even if sorting everything out is the bigger issue.

we can't handle another flood like the last app round, it'd snap the game over its knee tbh, but allowing a controlled trickle or just adjusting the rate of app rounds for a while might be necessary

Edited 2022-09-30 05:02 (UTC)

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