Thankyou for this post Moonbeam, it helps a lot to know a bit more about whats going on in others minds. I have responses below in OOC tags. Obviously it naturally focusses on what I'm thinking, it would be great if others could chime in.
Moonbeam says:
I think most of this conflict arises from a couple of fundamental issues. The first is that not all players are looking for the same kind of experience. The second is that some players are reading the cues and signals provided by the GM in very different ways.
It has always been my read that this campaign was designed to rely heavily on investigation and putting together clues to decide the best course of action. I got this from the campaign description and from the depth and breadth of resource material provided, so that's the kind of campaign I was expecting. We started at level one, which signaled to me that we are going to be making slow progress and should be taking a thought-before-action kind of approach until we know more about this strange new world. I built a character for that kind of campaign.
OOC:
I'll be honest, I hadn't really fully considered the campaign on that sort of meta-level, being still fairly new to pbp
Similarly, I've been paying attention to various hints dropped here and there that, to my mind, suggest that regardless of who is being held in there, we're not yet ready to storm the Citadel and expect to live. Again, we're still just level one, and we now know that there are at least 20 Crows in there - quite possibly more - and most of them are likely to be significantly higher in level than us. In addition, we have no idea what their magical capabilities are. Just because they have been killing most magic users doesn't mean they don't have any among them, and we should probably give some thought to why they are holding the most powerful ones instead of killing them. This is the kind of thing I like to try to generate IC discussion about - it's certainly the kind of thing other groups I'm in would find fertile brainstorming material.
OOC:
This is probably where I'm looking at things through a fairly different lens. The big part for me in this is the open world aspect, which is I'm expecting there to be a lot of different hooks thrown out, but we explore them and interact in a very non-linear way. I also try not to really bring that sort of more meta thinking in to my role playing. So I'm seeing the magical vault I guest almost like a quest marker on the map in an Elder Scrolls game if that comparison makes sense - something to mark down to come back to later, as I think there are more urgent matters to attend to - similar to investigating the knife birds - the Frog people didn't seem to be in imminent danger, or I would have been more inclined to go that way at the time.
I do have my own thoughts about the overall metaplot and consider it. My theory is that
Yelnar's mother is being held and not killed as part of a way to coerce co-operation from Yelnar's father by the pro-Garand Dios powerbloc in the city. I think Athisa sent us to the Estates to "get supplies" in order to indirectly get us to resolve that situation and tilt the balance back towards the pro-magic side. I don't think its any coincidence that the Crows were waiting for us when we made land on the other side of the lake. I'm anticipating a lot of the overall plot play out as being intertwined in this War on Magic.
Yelnar just isn't a good vessel for that sort of discussion currently - his thoughts are far more personal and visceral at this stage, and I am trying to portray a slow change in that regard, which is why I keep bringing up his Strategy and Tactics lessons - I'm trying to portray someone who wasn't great at that stuff in a classroom setting, growing into someone capable of thinking more broadly as he's forced to do so out in the wild. The bolded bit above is something he has thought about, but he wouldn't be willing to share yet until he's been able to talk it through with his mother to confirm, as he'd be afraid of appearing like a fool.
But more to the point, it's the kind of thing that I think the GM put in there so that we would notice it and ponder what it means. And that would lead to us finding something important that would later help us in battle, or out of a tight spot. That's the whole reason that I'm always having Verrian try to get people to talk about these clues.
But I understand that not everyone finds this playstyle interesting. I'm really not trying to keep us out of action, just out of action that I am pretty certain will lead to a catastrophic result for the party. We are rushing into this raid on the assumption that the storm is a device meant to give us an element of surprise. I tend to think it's a device to demonstrate to us exactly how out of control the magical energies are outside of the wards, which will probably give us some more clues about what's really going on.
OOC:
Again, I'm not really viewing it in that meta a way. I'm more having Yelnar react to the information he has at hand, and I actually think RPM has done a brilliant job in feeding Yelnar's anxiety about his mother and making him feel that sense of urgency basically since he received the vision (I can say a significant amount of how I intended to play Yelnar changed at that moment - he was intended to be far more passive). It's not really a matter of the playstyle, it's an IC sense of urgency combined with a confluence of information and situation that suggests the time to act is now. I'm not really considering the storm as a particular sort of device, I'm reacting to the news that it made the Crows afraid and that it could be reducing their level of preparedness, providing an opportunity to take action.
Similarly, I don't think the magically sealed vault is a distraction that we are meant to put off until we accomplish the "real" objective of attacking the Citadel. I think it may contain something that we actually need if we're going to succeed.
I never intended my character to be exactly what she is right now in this party, but playing her as created and responding to some of the things that have happened have had this result. She's not looking down on anyone who disagrees with her, she's responding logically to very illogical actions and lines of reasoning. I get that that's a little overbearing. But I've been playing her that way because she's very alarmed at the cavalier approach we seem to be taking. Again - a clash of player expectations and interpretation of the GM's clues.
OOC:
I think this is where the disagreement stems from. You seem to be looking at it at a more metagame level and seeing illogic in actions that way, while I'm looking at the information we have at hand IG through Yelnar's eyes and seeing Verrian's actions as illogical, because she doesn't seem to acknowledge some of those reasons for acting more urgently. I think perhaps talking more through this stuff in this OOC chat is a more productive path - I've certainly gotten a lot more information form it. I think part of it we're sort of stuck in this what about this but wait more info cycle that we haven't really gotten at all to the actual plan part, which I think you'll find is a far more limited conflict than you're thinking. I suspect at this stage its more use the tunnels to sneak in, fight a couple of guards and break the prisoners out deal rather than a fully fledged raid - which admittedly hasn't really come out yet.
So I think what is needed is to see if we can all get on the same page, or close, about those things. And perhaps get a little guidance from the GM to help us do that.
OOC:
Hopefully the bove is helpful.
