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Form 369 MAG: Magical girl requests for further information forms

Started by Anastasia, August 26, 2011, 12:25:15 AM

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Anastasia

I'm fine with redoing that entire bar scene if everyone feels it was an unmitigated clusterfuck. Assuming no one objects I'll run with that Thursday.

Brian, do what you need to do. You're a fun player and I'd rather have you play, but if you feel overworked or overstressed? I completely understand where you're coming from. You're welcome if you want to play. Sometimes the first session is rocky and it wasn't helped by the DM being sick. Don't beat yourself up over it. If you really feel you can't 'cause you're taking it too seriously, then take some distance. I'm completely okay with that, I'd rather have you relaxes and happy than stressing over a game. This is supposed to be fun.
<Afina> Imagine a tiny pixie boot stamping on a devil's face.
<Afina> Forever.

<Yuthirin> Afina, giant parasitic rainbow space whale.
<IronDragoon> I mean, why not?

Halbarad

Planning-wise: the best setup I can see is for Eliza to head in and do the questioning, Jane in the bar for backup, Anastasia inside and invisible as a safeguard. If Brian's still willing to give another session a go, Katarina with Eliza, since she can get the non-combat specialist out in a hurry if something goes wrong.

Marley's sword is a bit too big to be inconspicuous, and for Kunia, giant woman is noticeable. >_> If they want to be nearby, maybe in a truck or something else that offers some concealment.
I am a terrible person.
Excellent Youkai.

Iron Dragoon

Quote from: Halbarad on September 20, 2011, 01:14:28 PM
If they want to be nearby, maybe in a truck or something else that offers some concealment.

I just got a mental image of Kunia replacing the Rock in 'Faster.'
This is not the greatest post in the world, no... this is just a tribute.

Dracos

We don't have a truck?  Or rather I was assuming we were walking places.

Anyhow, truthfully if we're going like that, why don't Marley and Kunia just go check out other bars?  I'm still not clicking with the need here to be inconspicuous, but whatever :)

A group of 2 and 3(4) that meets back up in an hour.  You check out expected contact/bars, we check out abandoned areas, potential hiding places.

*shrugs* If we want to have Marley and I standing by shooting the shit outside, we can though.
Well, Goodbye.

Dracos

Amazingly awesome Magical Girls to Appear tonight!

In Geneva, one night only!  Get tickets now, be there at seven thirty or kunia will sulk.

*Yammers aloud to remind*  I'll be there anyhow :)
Well, Goodbye.

Dracos

Worldsetting yammering: Magic is <5 years old.  Effectively aside from flashy lights, should we generally expect most non-nazi folks to have no/little fucking clue what's going on when we start shooting lightning from our finger tips?

*DARTH LIGHTNING*
Well, Goodbye.

Anastasia

Autopsy for later reference.

Reason of game death: Drama, people dropping, generally was a false start. Things just didn't gel.

Drac, go ahead and old game this whenever.
<Afina> Imagine a tiny pixie boot stamping on a devil's face.
<Afina> Forever.

<Yuthirin> Afina, giant parasitic rainbow space whale.
<IronDragoon> I mean, why not?

Iron Dragoon

This is not the greatest post in the world, no... this is just a tribute.

Dracos

Yeah sulk on this.  Next time, let's not get as many folks?  Cuz seriously, we quit with more folks than Looming ran with.
Well, Goodbye.

Brian

Trying to be objective, the number of people was an exacerbating factor, but the underlying issue was a lack of mutually agreed-on direction.

Not to point fingers, but:

IC., we didn't have any reason to be a cohesive group.  An NPC 'boss' would have been ideal to step in and stop the inter-party bickering from disrupting the game without making us suddenly snap together as a team; narratively, it would have been ideal to have such a leader, who could die off on mission 3-4 after we've bonded.  We'd get to snipe/argue, and still have a very good excuse to stay in a team until we learned to get along better.

This gives us an NPC that the GM can use to railroad us (with a very good IC reason; he's a superior officer) through the first mission or three to establish a pattern for how they should go before his graceful 22 caliber retirement.

Unfortunately, this did go counter to Dune's ideal of having less GM interaction, so while it might have helped, it wouldn't be a solution we could apply here.

Admittedly, I ... did not realize Dune was aiming for 'minimal GM involvement' until the game started. :(

I think ... one of the bigger issues was that expectations weren't cleanly communicated across the board between all players/the GM (by which I mean, most of us weren't communicating very well with the others).

In the first session, I started to realize that Dune wasn't going to be that 'hands-on' in terms of guidance.  Sensing a power vacuum, I tried to fill it, approaching the situation not just as a player, but as a GM (myself).  I started looking at the plans and approaches and trying to figure out the optimal approach not just for us as players, but that would be easy for Dune to handle.  So, I was trying to fight tactical considerations, narrative concerns, and (more importantly) what everyone else wanted in my plans.

We all know how that worked out, and when it blew up in my face that badly, I got quite pissed off about it.  My fault on that one.

Moving away from suggesting the GM is somehow at fault (really, it's at least as much my fault as anyone else's), there were other issues that players had that they specifically did not communicate to other players.  While unfortunate, I feel it'll be more constructive to discuss those specifics in IRC.

I should have been more forthcoming about what upset me enough to quit in the first place, and maybe it wouldn't have turned out this way.

Not communicating those issues is not doing anyone any favors, and it's irksome that it's taken this much to make that clear.  Ce'st la vie.
I handle other fanfic authors Nanoha-style.  Grit those teeth!  C&C incoming!
Prepare to be befriended!

~exploding tag~

Dracos

Buried the game.  I might toss logs on later.  kinda sulky on it all.

Brian's right on that front.  I'd also say the tolerance on all fronts was o_O.  I was kind of O_o to the level of sudden 'Things didn't go my way, so I'm going to blow up/quit' that happened in both sessions.  Agreed it would've been better to communicate it.  Yes, it's easy to say that for folks unintentionally trotting over people's ideas/opinions but man did it pretty much kill much chance of understanding happening with that happening.  The end result was 'People are stressed' rather than 'okay, let's get our act together and find a solution that provides happiness'.

I know I was part of the problem on the first (and possibly the second?) blowup.  I seriously wasn't comfortable with someone stepping into a chessmaster role on the very first session of the game.  My character hadn't made any agreement to follow someone's guide and I generally as a rule don't go along with superspy antics in the face of simple challenge.  I was hoping really to just be able to keep talking with other players as the scene went on in a convenient fashion.  The threat level simply wasn't there from the setting side for me to see the necessity of it.  Even with the hind-sight that "Yes, there was a nazi waiting to try and kill us and the bartender might've helped him".  It being combo'd with trying to RP out an important character plot point (It's okay to kill civvies) was just too much to even react to, resulting in it almost getting glossed over.

I brought it up when we came back to the plan because it's really the only thing that bugged me a lot there: Someone speaking up and saying "No, your character isn't doing x, they should be doing y".  Sure, it might be needed to bring a plan together, but it does bug.

Second session I went along with the plan just to get us through (Which was an awesome 1.2 hours before I got to even say word, really.  Much appreciated Iddy breaking the plan to come give me a chance to play).  I assume by the time I talked with hal he'd already quit by the reaction, but it was real weird to basically go "Okay, others want this plan, I'll go with it." followed with "Majority want this plan...person who doesn't just quit o_O?"

Rushing was mentioned as one of the reasons, and I can agree there.  A laid back pace would've been nicer, but that wasn't the scenario we got.  We got a race with the Germans a city ahead of us (Oh, he's no longer even in the same city, and they already followed tried to block people from following them).  I know that's what I was picking up on when I pushed 'hey let's sleep on another transit setup', since it wasn't a static problem sitting around waiting for us to solve.  Perhaps one of those would've been better (Guy is stuck in prison, break him out/rescue him).

Personally, it bugged that I was literally banned repeatedly in planning from playing out my character while others were simultaneously going "Well, to my character it's okay to kill everyone, stab bartender in the back, spray blood all over the alley because it's part of the neat way my character interacts with the world".  In two sessions, Hans is the only non-player character who got even a chance to react to Kunia's strangeness, the rest simply taking it as perfectly okay.  Yes, I knew I was playing an oddball giant that didn't fit in with normal people.  That was part of the RP concept and it was kind of sad folks folks basically decided that "It's okay to freak people out by spreading blood all over, pointing guns in people's faces, and generally using violence to talk to the world, but it's not okay to be scary."  I don't think that was really fair of folks and at least left me less sympathetic when folks were silently meandering over being stepped on ("It's okay to tell me to stand outside for an hour, but not for you guys to wait for Jane and Kunia to finish an interrogation before stabbing this guy?")

Anyhow, it be buried, hopefully next time, more fun.
Well, Goodbye.

Brian

Read three paragraphs.

So much rage.

Stopped there.





Drac, we need to talk about this.  Seriously.
I handle other fanfic authors Nanoha-style.  Grit those teeth!  C&C incoming!
Prepare to be befriended!

~exploding tag~

VySaika

Apologies for my part in this, I think I missed a line in the first session's planning and I ended up compounding the confusion by repeatedly going "wait, but I thought..." and such. In general I have no issues with following along with someone else's plan, and was attempting to do such, but got lost somewhere along the way and derped.

Second session...eh. I missed it, dunno if my presance would have changed anything, but prolly not.
All About Monks
<Marisa> They're OP as fuck
<Marisa> They definitely don't blow in 3.5
<Marisa> after a certain level they basically just attack repeatedly until it dies
<Marisa> they're immune to a bunch of high level effects
<Marisa> just by being monks