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This is going to be fun.  :guilty:

 

 

The great mask of meta-gaming has arrived (and taken by Echelon, darn)!

 

I'm curious: what, in your opinion, makes it a 'mask of metagaming'? It won't allow Echelon to use OOC knowledge.

 

Oops, I meant bunnying.

 

The terms...

 

Awesome statistics by the way, Lorax!

Edited by Toatapio Nuva
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Why thank you.

 

In my opinion, the most interesting table I pulled out of the data was this one, about which masks are used more by toa of which gender.

 

image.png

 

Healing, sensory aptitude, levitation, water-breathing and translation are all favoured for female characters, while down at the manly end of the table we have strength speed, teleportation, flight, accuracy and crazy physical stunts. It seems that, despite everything, the females still get the passive powers while the males take the brawny masks. The glaring exception to this is the hau. Why? I have no idea.

 

Interestingly, the trend is reversed for our Dasaka characters. Over on Kentoku, the males' masks are: ruru, ruru, iden, huna, tryna, hau, kadin, while the females take on the pakaris, calixes and sanoks. Read into that what you will.

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As for how to get players into participating in a plot, all I can say is something that cropped up in my meeting with a few friends this evening.  We were talking about writing, more specifically what makes us as writers want to develop our craft.  What I mentioned, and also seemed to resonate with others at the table, was how I found myself feeling best about my writing and truly wanting to hone my craft when I was pursuing something of my own volition, not having it shoved down my throat.  As you can see I fit perfectly into public education based on that statement. :P  Anyways...  

 

(Kughii Commentary, please understand this is simply my POV and not meant as a personal assault on any players

 beliefs or feelings.)

 

For bringing a character into a plot there needs to be a couple of things in my mind; the first and foremost being recognition that this is a game and played for fun (supposedly).  If players aren't having fun, aren't getting the joy of "bouncing off each other," as Veef put it so eloquently a few days ago to me, then the interaction is invariably going to fall to pieces and players will drift off to the next thing that catches their eyes.  Keeping in mind the player needs to actually want to participate, and that they want to have fun while participating, seems to be the key.  The story, adventures, rewards, and memories are all secondary to those main facts.  They have their place, and are very important (who wants to go through a near death experience to have their character rewarded with nothing but a pat on the back), but the focus needs to stay on the game and the players' interaction with those stories as a game. If the story doesn't appeal to what the player considers fun or exciting then, well, the story is never going to really get rolling.

 

Take, for example, the beginning of the 2013 Arc (or as I've started calling it, Book 2 Chapter 1).  The story of the six akiri leading their villages  into mass civil warfare is a compelling and intriguing idea on the surface.  The mechanic of giving six chosen players complete control of an entire region/faction and resource rich locale was, again, a really cool idea.  However, the large majority of players seem to prefer, as a trend I've noticed, more open and explosive conflict than the shadowy cold war type espionage and sabotage that happened during the beginnings of Chapter 1.  As for myself I was a pig in mud, since I love riddles and games with puzzles.  However, the reason I was enjoying the Chapter 1 arc so much when others seemed to be wallowing in disappointment was because I was having fun and seeking plot involvement actively.  Many wanted those upfront chaotic and straight up aggressive conflicts where swords clashed and powers filled the field with landmines of mana just waiting to trip PCs up and just simply were not getting them in a staff organized format, which in Book 2 seemed to be the only way players felt capable of having serious interactions.  We, and I say we because I too felt similarly, wanted large and powerful villains like Heuani to throw our PCs against and eventually, after several grueling encounters, defeat in combat.  Unfortunately, things stayed in the cold war stage and those villains, which should have been entire nations, never came into full being.*  So, what happened?  Players got bored.  Players got mad.  Some players seemed to feel that a split between "veterans" and newcomers had occurred, and all the power shipped off to the veterans.  (I won't speak on that subject, since it's been covered by several other wonderfully written commentaries by other players in the past.)  Once we as a whole lost interest in the plot, lost the sense of fun we were relying on it to provide, Chapter 1 fell to pieces.  Players drifted off, did their own things, and felt unheard until Chapter 2 rolled around and presented something new, fresh, and potentially fun (along with a promise of more conflict either between clans or races).

 

A final issue I want to stress in my belief of the subject, and again this is entirely subjective and no more than a commentary to what I have seen in this community and in my experience playing games with many, many people: players are responsible for their interaction and integration with plots.  This goes back to my discussion this evening with those friends about what makes us tick and itch to be better as writers.  Getting criticism or mass critique without actually asking for any can be a real downer, and so can gratuitous and false praise.  What we found made us tick was when we actually wanted to pursue the craft, wanted to feel the pen coursing along page after page and slowly, surely, getting better.  We enjoyed critique the most when we were ready to seek it out.  In this way, rather than waiting around for somehow to hit them with a cold bucket of interaction in a form they despise, players of a game need to seek out the interaction they desire, create the conflict and tension that brings about the resolution of their fantasy,

 

For that is all this game is: a beautiful fantasy.

 

------

*Having Ishi diffuse and mislead a goodly portion of the tension during the Monorail Bombing was probably a horrible decision on my part.  There was a ton of potential upfront conflict that didn't happen (and this community seems to enjoy conflict), and instead everything went very much behind the scenes, causing plenty of player vs. player trust issues and "he said she said" behaviors.  For my part in that occurrence, however small or large it truly was, I apologize.  

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I find that a lot of the problem with the Mata Nui Civil War idea was that it ended up causing a lot of bad blood between players that spilled over in to the rest of the community.

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"I serve the weak. I serve the helpless. I am their sword and their shield. If you want to strike at them, you must go through me, and I am not so easily moved."

zsUPm2E.jpg?1

 

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I agree with Kughii's post, with this addition.

 

Everyone was all so serious mode

This was quite a big factor, I think. A large portion weren't playing to have fun. They wanted to... Win. In an unwinnable text-based RPG. Or at least, the bad blood fostered by the attitude to win as opposed to having fun was spilling over to the rest of the player population.

 

Of course, we can compete and have fun. But during that period, the serious mode made it so... Stressful in a bad way. No fun.

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I think the easiest way to get a character into the plot is to put them in an awkward or uncomfortable situation. I did it to myself by accident when I made my character a skakdi and tried to settle in Ta-Koro. Get out there, push your boundaries, take some risks, and see if they pay off. Chances are, they will. This RPG is a an adventure, and since you can't die... well, you should be able to enjoy yourself no matter what.  

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I think the easiest way to get a character into the plot is to put them in an awkward or uncomfortable situation. I did it to myself by accident when I made my character a skakdi and tried to settle in Ta-Koro. Get out there, push your boundaries, take some risks, and see if they pay off. Chances are, they will. This RPG is a an adventure, and since you can't die... well, you should be able to enjoy yourself no matter what.

Just to add on the last point, the characters can die, but only if

 

-Foolhardy things

-Foolish risks

-Being a big prick by metagaming, insulting, repeated violations of rules etc., necessitating staff intervention(SERIOUS stuff here)

 

And even after all that, the player still has to give permission (unless it's punishment by staff)

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OK, so the essential difference between the Chapter One Mata Nui Civil war that was a train wreck (monorail wreck?) and the upcoming Kentoku Civil war that seems to be going so well at the moment is..?

I have no idea.

 

But it's better than folks sniping at each other from Skype chatroom to Skype chatroom.

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Hmm, wonder what the statistics are for anxilia as of currently, I'm fairly certain they have likely seen a decrease.. and oh how I would love to claim one of those masks on syvra, but then that would remove one of the key focal points of my rp on him, that being his anxilia. Not a sacrifice i feel is worth it.

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There are five of them, all on Toa. By power, they are:

 

Matatu Akaku Tryna Arthron Huna

'Genders' of the anxilia? If memory serves me right from the ones i have rped with, three of those are female... Also are any of the anxilia users actually female toa, because once again if memory serves me right they are all male, but i could be wrong.

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OK, so the essential difference between the Chapter One Mata Nui Civil war that was a train wreck (monorail wreck?) and the upcoming Kentoku Civil war that seems to be going so well at the moment is..?

 

As someone heavily involved in the former, I think I'm quite qualified to chime in on this. :P

 

There is a big difference. When the Koros were at each other's throats, the tension was forced and artificial from an IC perspective. But from an OOC one, that quickly grew to not be the case. No matter how objective you tried to be, when you were an Akiri, you were pushed into this mindset (like everyone else) that you were going to be at war. And similar to writing a PC, you didn't really want to lose. But when it's an entire Koro, that's magnified a million times over; you are controlling a whole village, and when another village strikes, it isn't like how it was last season. Last season, no one controlled the villages; a strike was just a cool event that happened to stir things up.

 

Under the Akiri system, it was a lot more involved and personal. And as a lot of people are aware, that got really tense, really fast. It became a game of politics and backroom dealings, not the BZPRPG.

 

The Kentoku Civil War is a lot less directly personal, which is ironic, because from an IC perspective it's incredibly personal. But the tensions are more real in-game, and out of game, a lot less so. It's clan warfare, not city-state warfare. The Koros are very established, and some people feel strongly about them. Kentoku is a lot less so, and the involvement is a lot more spread out. It's more like PC combat than a game of Civilization. We've learned our lessons from the first time around, and we're not going to repeat those mistakes.

 

My two cents. :P

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On this eve, the thirtieth anniversary of that first colony, many are left to wonder; is the world fast approaching a breaking point?

 

 

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Female Akaku on Male Toa of Magnetism

GreiskXCyrena

 

On a serious note:

Male Matatu on Female Toa of Crystal

Female Akaku on Male Toa of Magnetism

Female Tryna on Male Toa of Plantlife

Female Arthron on Male Toa of Lightning

Male Huna on Female Toa of Air

Notice that the Anxilia are all opposite gender of their wearers?

Edited by Norik Of Celtania
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Great work on that census, Lorax. I do love me some statistics!

 

And yes, Kray said it perfectly. I found the Mata Nui 'Civil War' IC tensions contrived and OOC tensions damaging. The situation in Kentoku, on the other hand, is completely believable, and the conflict will be out in the open rather than secretive and underhanded like the Akiri stuff was.

sig_panel_bzprpg.pngsig_panel_profiles.pngsig_panel_flickr.pngsig_panel_steam.pngsig_panel_n7.png

 

 

 

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OK, so the essential difference between the Chapter One Mata Nui Civil war that was a train wreck (monorail wreck?) and the upcoming Kentoku Civil war that seems to be going so well at the moment is..?

 

I've dumped a lot less bodies in the marsh this go around.

 

-Tyler

SAY IT ONE MORE TIME 

TELL ME WHAT IS ON YOUR MIND

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