Topic "Hors Personnage"/OOC Thread

I was curious about the fast advance comments for Edouard so I tracked all the faction marking and added the list to the caracter sheet :P

MC, would you say that Suzhen's dialogue so far, telling Vincent she wants to ally with him, wanting to share plans, is considered a Mislead Distract Trick? After all, she is trying to get him to reveal his plans in order to put a stop to them, (and also more immediately trying to protect Edouard and Toby)

Ah yeah, the rulebook tells that it could be used to convince of a lie. For some reason, I thought the move was used slightly differently...

A bit of confusion about "sessions"...

A while ago, TheVagrant and I had a discussion about sessions and what they meant. On my part, since the start of session move involves creating the storm, a "session" was the name they used to refer to a whole adventure. And as such, you begin withe the start of session move, you create a storm, you play through the storm and (hopefully) resolve it, and then the session ends and you go through the end of session move at that point. Basically, I felt that "session" in US was the equivalent of "adventure".

On his part, TheVagrant seemed to be wondering if the word "session" was not instead used in it's traditional form, i.e. getting together with a bunch of friends to play 2-4 hours. Therefore, every once in a while, we'd be generating new storms while dealing with the one(s) already in play, and invoking the end of session move more often, accruing more Debts that way...

Both point of views do seem to have their merit and drawbacks, and I was wondering what the other players thought of this. Now for this particular storm, I feel it would be better to continue it using my own vision of what a "session" in US means, but I was wondering what was the rest of the group's point of view on this is, and if you were willing to give a try with more traditional "sessions" (perhaps one per in-game day or so?) where we'd use start of session and end of session moves more often (basically creating more storms to interact with while still dealing with previous ones).

I'm also in two minds about this. As usual PbP gives rises to rather unique circumstances, as one session can last for months. Also, it is interesting to see more frequent session start and session end moves. On the other hand, I do like some milestone resolution of a current storm before starting on a new one, so for me if a session isn't defined merely by a storm, it should at least be defined by a milestone.

Perhaps this question is also becoming a bit more relevant now that we've reached the last one-third of the current storm (ie. discovered the initial problems, met and had conflict with the major players, now heading towards some sort of resolution soon), so it may be good to begin to seed some newer threads.

I'm definitely prepared to give the one per in-game day session a try.

Yeah, I’d definitely be willing to give the more traditional "sessions" method a go :D
It seems like it could add some extra chaos and urgency if things keep piling up every in-game day...

We can always be flexible between the two also.

I both like the feeling that thing are very interactive and fluid between the factions and think that its important to have moment of 'normal life" to skip some time and make us remember what we fight for in the chaotic parts.

Yeah, both have their merits and downsides, like I mentioned.

Right off the top of my head...

"Session" = "adventure"
Pros
• Rather straightforward and simple, keeps things easier for everyone.
• Allows for character "downtime" to take care of their mundane obligations (work, family, hobbies, etc.), especially in between "sessions" (which would help in keeping the game more or less up to date with real life).
Cons
• Archetypes with special start of session moves and/or end of session moves get to use them less often (for better or worse).
• Factions stats remain more static.
• Debts are accrued slightly less often.

More traditional "sessions"
Pros
• Archetypes with special start of session moves and/or end of session moves get to use them more often (for better or worse).
• Faction stats become more dynamic.
• Debts are accrued slightly more often.
Cons
• Slows down the game somewhat as new threats and storms need to be made from time to time.
• Possibility of making keeping track of threats and storms harder and possibly cause some confusion.
• Leaves less time for character "downtime".
• Possibility of making characters feel "swarmed" by the sheer number of plots going on.
• Players with slower posting schedules might feel left behind.
• Due to the nature of pbp, needs to find a good rhythm for "sessions".

Plus anything else I might have not thought of...

The trick would be to find the right balance. Perhaps instead of having a new "session" once per in-game day, maybe have them oncer per two or three in-game day, depending on how the previous threats and storms are going along, and with the occasional period of "downtime" to help character take care of their mundane obligations and keep the game more or less up to date with real life?

Thanks for reviewing all the pros and cons in detail. Yes it does seem like we can shift things a bit until we find a good balance. Like when the current plots in the storm seem to already be ongoing, some newer ones could be hatched.

Case in point, in our current game, in the first in-game day, there were a lot of faction moves, as new contacts were made, new plots were discovered. In the second in-game day, there was much less of that, because the bulk of the time revolved around making progress on each of these plots, so faction stats were largely static.

I'm all in favour of your proposal boss!

Sorry guys, I'M a bit busy with some IRL stuff, I'll get back to you as soon as I can...

All good!

Suddenly busy over here myself, no hurry!

I'm about to hop on a plane for my end-of-year vacation, part of which will still be relaxing through PbP. I'll be regular, but erratic.

Have fun on your vacation! :D

Have fun and relax.

Edit: seems I'm going to be relatively occupied in the coming days and weeks, so my posting frequency will probably drop as well...

Happy Holidays everyone! Special thanks to kalajel for running this game. No way to send you a Christmas present, so a big thank you here is all I can manage!

You have been busy in my absence... I have 46 pages to get through... glad to be back though!