- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Yeah I read it that way too. Given that we weren't expecting any trouble, it looked far and away like the most urgent matter.
Dragon Ball: After the End
- Location
- Italy
i get it a bit, but we could have calmed him and explained later. Jaffur was sealed for years, Berra could have waited a few minutes to have things explained to him.
I remember that argument, but we had previously discussed if Multiform could be used to give Jaron a body, and we were told by Poptart that it wouldn't have worked by itself, but it could be used as the starting point for a spell.
I thought it was implicit Jaron wouldn't get a body by himself after that.
I had recently caught up with the quest though, so maybe it had been told months before and i remembered it only because i had just read it. Not sure.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Vote Tally : Dragon Ball: After the End - Sci-Fi | Page 1269 | Sufficient Velocity [Posts: 31706-31743]
##### NetTally 1.9.10
[X] The rules as they presently stand, but with explicit details on what exactly whose rules entail.
No. of Votes: 30
Total No. of Voters: 30
##### NetTally 1.9.10
[X] The rules as they presently stand, but with explicit details on what exactly whose rules entail.
No. of Votes: 30
KnightDisciple
Aranfan
Bakkasama
Beholderofwords
Bommelom
Callidus
Cariyaga
Conceptualist
Darkandus
Deathbybunnies
Geordiefan
Grigori
Jirachi47
Kaiya
Karnax626
LockedMind
Mathematicae
nkd1325
Pittauro
QTesseract
Quest
Terrabrand
The king Chad
TheRuisu
Thor
Thriceboiled
Unearthly Sight
Wiadi
wlowery
WorthyAlchemist?
Aranfan
Bakkasama
Beholderofwords
Bommelom
Callidus
Cariyaga
Conceptualist
Darkandus
Deathbybunnies
Geordiefan
Grigori
Jirachi47
Kaiya
Karnax626
LockedMind
Mathematicae
nkd1325
Pittauro
QTesseract
Quest
Terrabrand
The king Chad
TheRuisu
Thor
Thriceboiled
Unearthly Sight
Wiadi
wlowery
WorthyAlchemist?
Total No. of Voters: 30
Son. Of. A-
That's it? That is the ultimate upshot of this?!
Alright, I'll post the rules. It will happen tomorrow, maybe.
Ultimately, people listed a lot of reasons for why they were disappointed in the last update. Many threw away their chance to be given consideration by choosing to couch their concerns in salt and vitriol -- because that is the point at which I stop listening to someone. I did my best to address those capable of presenting their arguments calmly. And given the apparently unanimous consensus on keeping the rules -- I've even heard the same opinion from people who haven't voted -- we're changing nothing but the placement of the rules sheet. Apparently, this will prevent a similar meltdown from ever occurring.
I wish I shared your optimism, because what I instead have is a lot of exhaustion. Here is my concern: this will never happen again. I'm not very confident that what you've all proposed will achieve that. I'm willing to give it a shot, but my primary concern is ensuring that it will never happen again. I hope that this solution works.
If it does not, I will find my own.
The rules, again, will be up maybe tomorrow. An interlude from somebody else's perspective will follow at some point, along with a renewed vote on what Kakara will be doing as she wakes up.
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Cariyaga
Handsome Gentleperson
- Location
- United States
I hope this works, too.
I also want to apologize to you in specific for any part, however small or large, I had in worsening the thread environment.
Conceptualist
Best Mega Sceptile
- Location
- I'm on the internet. Duh.
No, I don't think that it would prevent a meltdown from occurring. I also don't think the problem was with the rules at all. I believe that, with the majority of the player base not knowing or misunderstanding why we no longer could win, we got upset at losing. Fundamentally, we didn't understand sorcery and what it was truly capable of. Thus, we screwed the pooch and called it planning for confronting the bad guy.
The blow up was a long time in the making, and ultimately losing the battle was the trigger. Not because people have been mad for a long time. But because we misjudged what we needed to do and what we needed to know.
Fundamentally, I voted to keep the rules but publicize them because having a clear and mutually understanding of the game mechanics is a good idea. The "lack of transparency" in the rules was just something else that bothered me at a time I was already mad, but not saying or doing much in the thread because I didn't have much of anything nice to say.
When it came up as an issue, I, personally, didn't like the fact that we didn't know how key portions of the game worked. From what other people said, I started with the mistaken assumption that nobody but Poptart knew what the game mechanics really were, and there wasn't anything anybody could do about it. Once I learned this was false, I immediately stated an apology for my earlier false assertion and requested that I be taught the rules, as the relevant statement on the front page says to do.
The fact that we unanimously want to have the rules published is independent of the underlying issues that cause the blow up. It was an easy target for angry people to bandwagon on, but the idea of it being "one simple thing to fix this problem" is a fallacy. We want it to be done because, in my own opinion, it will let us understand where we went wrong. Something as simple as knowing the rules better can drastically affect how players behave.
I will be advocating and arguing for a more careful and somwhat paranoid strategy. I want to know how the numbers behind the mayhem work, as to better plan fringe cases and argue for or against things without relying significantly on emotional appeals. I haven't been a consistent, active participant for many reasons. But I am willing to make more time in order to try and win the war we just lost a battle in.
I feel that an environment where people's ability to understand the details of the situation is reliant on their ability to comprehend a public set of game mechanics is better than what we have now, and I think fixing the problems that caused the blow up is going to have to be something tackled in-story. By using the huge amount of mental shakeups and blow ups we went through and dealing with them in character, we would make a fundamentally more grownup person out of the child we have now.
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Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
While we may disagree on solutions, I'm gonna have to second Conceptualist here: I don't think the blowup was exclusively or even primarily about mechanics. I do think that making said mechanics more readily available should prevent blowups about them in the future, but I can't say that makes me confident that the thread will otherwise start being graceful in defeat. I don't think simplified mechanics would solve that problem either though, so I favor keeping the good & working system we have.
- Location
- Academy City
- Pronouns
- They
I would also agree that mechanics arent at fault, but I do think the publicity of the rules (oe rather, lack therof) bore some fairly major responsibility.
Ultimitaly, I think the issue itself sprang from the loss. Some people can't stand losing, but I suspect that was probably a minority, or at most a plurality, of the people upset. Fundementally, I think that the reason is that people care. Poptart writes some great characters, and I know I'm not the only one who strongly empathizes with Kakara. It's not a freindship, but it's not entirely dissimilar; it's that same feeling of kinship you sometimes get when reading good books, and you come to relate to the characters. When you see them get hurt, that hurts, and when it's someone you can't stand doing the hurting, that gets you more upset, and Dandeer totally qualifies here. In serialized work, you can't just continue to the next chspter, and go on until it ends, but under normal circumstances they still end up pretty fine. This leads me into what I beleive the culprit is, and why publicizing the rules helps: blame.
When people get upset, an unfortunate but natural response is blame. Blame itself is... not ideal, here, but it's mostly tolerable, and it's a price of doing business with human beings when stakes are on the line. In a book when something bad happens, the blame tends to go right onto the charachters, with the author as a distant second and largely harmless (people read during their ordinary life, far enough away from the author for any blame to run its course) - human minds are great at anthromorphising stories, so even if PastryMaster is the one controlling the charachters so that Carrot Wukong gets in trouble, they'll blame Reednad, the evil warlock who did it. This is a good thing. Role playing games also tend to have additional targets in the form of dice / rng; the fact thta the loss of an invested charachter is more personal is balanced by the fact that the dm can rightfully say, and easily prove, that really, he doesn't have it in for our intrepid carrot, that's just the way the die rolled. This is where our thread troubles began.
After the update dropped, things might have gone almost fine. Many, like me and the others still in this thread, could accept the result even if we didn't really *like* it, or could control our frustration. Others, like my brother, left the thread for a while because they wanted to acoid what might happen if they didn't. Blame starts, people start self flaggelating and some accuse others or go I told you so:; recriminations, but not enough to boil over. The decision not to vote break, while reasonable from a time prespective, could have been much better handled, and added to it. Ultimately, agency and railorading enter the discussion (they definitely would have anyway, but I dont think it would have been to the same extent), and when the blame heads the author's way Poptart is the only target. Instead of being able to point to the dice or the rules that are against them, it comes dosn to their anger vs how much they trust poptart as a GM, and when the answer starts to become the former to any real extent, a feedback loop forms.
Ultimately, I don't think this will solve the issue of salt and upset players. That's further up the chain, and will form before this comes into play. I do think however, that this will reduce the scale, and in combination with the effects of the modpost and (hopefully) some of the worst offenders leaving, nothing like that previous occurance will occur.
We also aren't limited to one option. We can have public rules, and rolls, and contact a staff at updates likely to induce salt, and we can learn from our mistakes. Even if this isn't a solution, it's part of one that's already largely in process.
Obviously, some of the obovr is supposition; I took a small sample from each group that I knew, and then assumed each sample was completely representative and used that to create a universal solution, which is a famously reliable strategy that has never given a bad result before.
Ultimitaly, I think the issue itself sprang from the loss. Some people can't stand losing, but I suspect that was probably a minority, or at most a plurality, of the people upset. Fundementally, I think that the reason is that people care. Poptart writes some great characters, and I know I'm not the only one who strongly empathizes with Kakara. It's not a freindship, but it's not entirely dissimilar; it's that same feeling of kinship you sometimes get when reading good books, and you come to relate to the characters. When you see them get hurt, that hurts, and when it's someone you can't stand doing the hurting, that gets you more upset, and Dandeer totally qualifies here. In serialized work, you can't just continue to the next chspter, and go on until it ends, but under normal circumstances they still end up pretty fine. This leads me into what I beleive the culprit is, and why publicizing the rules helps: blame.
When people get upset, an unfortunate but natural response is blame. Blame itself is... not ideal, here, but it's mostly tolerable, and it's a price of doing business with human beings when stakes are on the line. In a book when something bad happens, the blame tends to go right onto the charachters, with the author as a distant second and largely harmless (people read during their ordinary life, far enough away from the author for any blame to run its course) - human minds are great at anthromorphising stories, so even if PastryMaster is the one controlling the charachters so that Carrot Wukong gets in trouble, they'll blame Reednad, the evil warlock who did it. This is a good thing. Role playing games also tend to have additional targets in the form of dice / rng; the fact thta the loss of an invested charachter is more personal is balanced by the fact that the dm can rightfully say, and easily prove, that really, he doesn't have it in for our intrepid carrot, that's just the way the die rolled. This is where our thread troubles began.
After the update dropped, things might have gone almost fine. Many, like me and the others still in this thread, could accept the result even if we didn't really *like* it, or could control our frustration. Others, like my brother, left the thread for a while because they wanted to acoid what might happen if they didn't. Blame starts, people start self flaggelating and some accuse others or go I told you so:; recriminations, but not enough to boil over. The decision not to vote break, while reasonable from a time prespective, could have been much better handled, and added to it. Ultimately, agency and railorading enter the discussion (they definitely would have anyway, but I dont think it would have been to the same extent), and when the blame heads the author's way Poptart is the only target. Instead of being able to point to the dice or the rules that are against them, it comes dosn to their anger vs how much they trust poptart as a GM, and when the answer starts to become the former to any real extent, a feedback loop forms.
Ultimately, I don't think this will solve the issue of salt and upset players. That's further up the chain, and will form before this comes into play. I do think however, that this will reduce the scale, and in combination with the effects of the modpost and (hopefully) some of the worst offenders leaving, nothing like that previous occurance will occur.
We also aren't limited to one option. We can have public rules, and rolls, and contact a staff at updates likely to induce salt, and we can learn from our mistakes. Even if this isn't a solution, it's part of one that's already largely in process.
Obviously, some of the obovr is supposition; I took a small sample from each group that I knew, and then assumed each sample was completely representative and used that to create a universal solution, which is a famously reliable strategy that has never given a bad result before.
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- Location
- Australia
This arc has been going on for a long time. Then we finally started ending it when we unsealed Jaffur. It was very much a "the long awaited moment is finally happening" thing.
The reason the meltdown happened was because Dandeer pulled out three Super Saiyans out of her ass and won. The audience expected these multiple RL years of work to conclude and for that hard work to pay off with a win, only to get slapped in the face and beaten into the mud at the very end.
It doesn't matter that it wasn't Poptart's fault, that they had no choice but to ensure that what happened in the story happened. It was still a crushing, massively demoralising defeat after labouring so hard for so long to win. That's ultimately the biggest reason why the meltdown happened. It was made worse by the fact that there was nothing building up to it or hinting at it, nor was there adequate explanation for how a single person could be that powerful. It was easy to point at the GM and say they were being stupid with how they handled their villain, even if it was ultimately the players' fault for not actively seeking out that build up or explanation prior to the battle.
Being able to justify things by pointing at the rules the next time this kind of thing happens will help, but only a little bit. If multiple years of work end in total defeat and people feel like it was solely because the GM was being unfair, regardless of if the GM was actually being unfair or not, then there's still going to be another meltdown.
The reason the meltdown happened was because Dandeer pulled out three Super Saiyans out of her ass and won. The audience expected these multiple RL years of work to conclude and for that hard work to pay off with a win, only to get slapped in the face and beaten into the mud at the very end.
It doesn't matter that it wasn't Poptart's fault, that they had no choice but to ensure that what happened in the story happened. It was still a crushing, massively demoralising defeat after labouring so hard for so long to win. That's ultimately the biggest reason why the meltdown happened. It was made worse by the fact that there was nothing building up to it or hinting at it, nor was there adequate explanation for how a single person could be that powerful. It was easy to point at the GM and say they were being stupid with how they handled their villain, even if it was ultimately the players' fault for not actively seeking out that build up or explanation prior to the battle.
Being able to justify things by pointing at the rules the next time this kind of thing happens will help, but only a little bit. If multiple years of work end in total defeat and people feel like it was solely because the GM was being unfair, regardless of if the GM was actually being unfair or not, then there's still going to be another meltdown.
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Wiadi
Uncompromising Radical Leftist
- Location
- Something Clever
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Frankly as far as I can tell the accusations of unfairness came basically out of nowhere in terms of actual evidence. You really hit on it more with "the audience expected these multiple RL years of work to conclude and for that hard work to pay off with a win" - people felt entitled to a victory because of how much time things had taken & how invested they felt, despite (as has been pointed out) the distinctly limited amount of actual work that went into conspiracy prep. Upon not receiving that expected victory, accusations of unfairness became a convenient excuse to avoid acknowledging fault for the various oversights & missteps that led us to this point.
- Location
- Australia
Definitely. Poptart's a good GM. This is solely a failure on the players' part. It was all fair.
Bakkasama
There is always a greater fool
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/his
Eh, it was more the suddeness of the end of the fight, I think. We expected a vote and then we didn't get it and then there were several hours for anger and momentum to build before we got an explanation as to why. When we got that explanation, the lack of knowledge of the rules meant asking people to trust someone they were already angry at. The rules being explicit should help with the second.
The most important measure in the end will be for us players to learn from this and police ourselves better. Aim to calm people down so that things don't scalate before we get proper explanations and crack down on the first sign of anything similar happening again, with love.
The most important measure in the end will be for us players to learn from this and police ourselves better. Aim to calm people down so that things don't scalate before we get proper explanations and crack down on the first sign of anything similar happening again, with love.
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
Ultimately, I'm pretty sure this will solve any complaints about transparency. I also think that a lot of the "railroading" complaints stemmed from the lack of a vote midway, especially given the lack of information regarding how that was due to victory being impossible. I know my view on that did a complete 180 when you explained your reasons for not stopping there, even if I didn't agree with them.
I suspect, however, that serious losses will still lead to salt, due to high player investment. I further suspect that serious unexpected losses will lead to serious salt. I'm not sure what could even be done to prevent this, beyond overall restructuring of how some plot lines are handled. The lack of warnings that we were fucking up meant we had no real opportunity to course-correct on this, which is realistic for an intrigue-based1 plot, but... at some point you have to decide if you're going hard simulationist or if you're going to give the players opportunities to un-fuck themselves2, and given your policy on votes and complicated plans, I don't think the quest can handle hard simulationism. MFD is of course the obvious example here: whilst it's at the extreme end of the spectrum, the fact that extreme simulationism requires extreme planning detail makes it likely that medium-high simulationism requires medium-high planning detail, which would violate your core goals regarding voter participation.
1) To be fair, with the possible exception of MFD I don't think I've found a single quest that handles a high-stakes intrigue plot very well. Not one. I suspect that either the medium just isn't suited for it, or that people aren't suited for it, even if they enjoy reading about them.
2)As in some warning they're on the wrong path, not fiat rulings or messing with the rolls.
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So, I can think of a few things we can do to ensure this doesn't happen again:
1) Never rely on a single point of contact to receive all news/communicate with a group. If we had contacted other Seers, or been in contact with one of the investigators for the rebels, we almost certainly would have caught this stuff.
2) Always follow through. We did vote to look into stuff back during the big vote at the end of year 5 that would have caught this, but after the vote was nullified they failed to reappear later.
3) Always investigate our enemies and their abilities. Lack of information fucked us here, lets not have it happen again.
Or, put another way: never have a single point of failure, make sure things are actually being done, always seek out intel.
Bakkasama
There is always a greater fool
- Location
- Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Pronouns
- He/his
Become Big Sister Helicopter, the amazing pie juggler. Got it.
I was thinking more Kakara, Spy-Mistress Extraordinaire.
MfD has produced multiple saltstorms of similar magnitude. If anything, a study of that thread offers a fairly effective way to predict this thread's behavior from the moment Dandeer commandeered Yammar, Berra, and Vegeta.
@PoptartProdigy
This is something I've been curious for a while: how often does the outcome of the vote surprise you/How often are you able to predict the outcome of a vote?
I'm specifically curious about votes where there are a small-ish set of canned options (like the vote to check on Jarron rather than go spirit sayain or what to do after Vegeta ganked us), rather than open ended votes.
To clarify even further: I'm asking because I'm curious about how you go about designing the vote on an emotional? level. I often find it's pretty easy to predict how the thread will go on that kind of vote, but that's usually just a reflection of my own gut reaction after reading the update. I've been primed in a particular way. Given that you interact with the update in a very different way, I'm wondering if what seems obvious from the players' side of the screen is from your side.
If this comes across as accusative or salty, that isn't the intent (I'm worried that it could be read, in context of the recent saltstorm, as an accusation of you rigging the vote to fuck us over).
Honestly? Yes.
My read on the thread is that, atm, it's in a bit of an emotional downswing/exhaustion stage. That lends itself to mea culpas about our being sore losers*, but there have been threads where the players have lost before, and the visibility of the rules enforcing that loss has a large effect on the emotional impact. A visible bad roll that gets the main character killed produces far less salt than that same event where the roll is in invisitext.
*To be fair, these are not exactly wrong, just that I feel there is an element of overcorrection.
- Location
- Yes
Speaking of which, I PM'd Poptart about what rolls Vegeta Vegeta needed to gank Kakara. I'd argue that him succeeding is when the battle was lost. If he failed then it would be either Jaffur&Kakara vs. VV&Yammar or Jaffur&Kakara&Apra vs VV&Yammar in both cases with Dandelor working on breaking another mind control spell. With the gank succeeding it became virtually impossible to win.
It's only a rough estimate, but VV had about a 15% chance of succeeding. Even after being blindsided by the 3v3 fight, we had bad luck during the fight that cost us.
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
Well, the thing where we talked to Fren happened. She could have told us 'Dandeer is doing something big, and keeping anyone from looking at her lab'. I trust you had reasoning for not doing that, or even (because I don't trust my memory that much) having done so, but not calling much attention to it. You had options, is what I'm saying.
Well, it's been a week. Can I ask for the rematch now?
- Location
- Actually pretty lost
You're going to be thoroughly outvoted and do nothing but irritate Poptart, who has had quite enough aggravation from this quest recently. You should probably drop it, unless that's your explicit intent. In which case you should still drop it, but also feel bad about it.
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
I dropped it until Poptart had had time to cool off, which they asked me to do. I was also under the impression that people were mostly voting to 'stay the course' because the rules were at stake, not because they didn't want to try the 'trap vote'. And that you agreed with that assessment.
By the way, @PoptartProdigy, this is the omake I wrote:
I'd like to write at least one more omake for controlled willpower pushing, but I'd be sad if it couldn't affect the Yammar fight. I wrote two things already, just for that specific fight, and not getting even a textual nod to the cleverer strategies would be very disappointing.
HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
By the way, I noticed something hilarious yesterday, regarding the Lost Soul timeline: if we can collect the Namekian Dragon Balls, our best strategy may be to blow up Garenhuld and then wish it back. (I'm just not confident that we'd get them without, oh, having to steal them from Beerus.)
- Location
- Peterborough, NH, USA
@PoptartProdigy Question. What would we have to do to be able to do something like this but with QI since we can't use magic? I mean, being able to 'Nope.' QI attacks that don't totally outclass you seems like it would trivialize most fights, so I expect it to be difficult, but it takes a moment to prepare, and it's not as useful against a bunch of smaller attacks versus a single large one or a small set of medium ones. Our KI Control and Sensing are likely major factors, but if anything outside Social is our strong suit, it's those.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Making rules sheet today. Ask again later.
I'm not actually 100% clear about what's going on in that clip. Something about a ghostly face? I noticed a skeleton getting obliterated by a beam the size of a house.
I mean, you can pull that one off, but I really doubt that it's what you meant.