I stopped reading at this point because nothing that comes after is going to be something that I can engage with.

Here's the thing: you're making this personal and it's not. We aren't "punishing you". We're not in competition here, and if you think we are then I don't know that you and I can meaningfully engage. Please go back and examine the bolded sections and see if you can wrap your head around the fact that they simply aren't the case. We aren't punishing you and we're playing as fair as we know how. If you can't agree with that then I get it and that's fine, but I can't help you. If you can, feel free to post something new and I'll be happy to engage -- hopefully we'll be able to work something out that we're both happy with.

I suggest you read the entire thing, because I don't think you're getting the spirit of what I mean by punishment. The very next paragraph starts with this:

Punishing players for bad decisions is a time honored tradition for GMs and make games more interesting since automatically winning is boring, but those punishments need to be measured to the mistake to an extent, and unless someone does something spectacularly stupid there needs to be some chance of recovery.

What I mean by punishment here is giving the players consequences for their choices. GMs frequently enjoy doing this, and I don't begrudge them that. The term "punishment" is generally used in a playful sense in this context, not maliciously. I am also not begrudging you for what happened per se, but I do think that as a GM you and the others handled how you had the consequences play out is not conducive to maintaining a fun game for the reasons I spelled out. As such, I request that you take a moment to read the rest of my feedback, because it's intended to be constructive.
 
I was about to ask if we have a ready made Armageddon plan, just sitting around, waiting to be implemented.
Either way:
[X] Action Plan: Armageddon Initiative

(is it necessary to edit my previous vote for it to not count?)
To remove a previous vote, you need to do something like
[-] "Thing I voted for in the past"

Where "Think I voted for in the past" is replaced by whatever you voted for in the past (no quotes).
 
Personally, I approve of Hazou having a panic attack and vomiting off the side of the sky platform. :D

He needs more psychoses.
 
We always probably had tons of lurkers, who realized this was A) a fast moving quest, and B) a high bar of effort, and that it was always relatively fun to read about. That is, until now, at which point their outrage outweighed their apathy.

Yeah, pretty much. I have all kinds of stuff to do and normally I do that stuff instead of participating. Today I am putting it off and probably shouldn't be.
 
[-] Action Plan: The Great Reveal
Now we just need to find out if new QM policy of taking control is gonna let it pass. Or if it's gonna be implemented yet.
Any solid in-character explanations why EN would be better off a scorched wasteland?
 
Obviously staying around won't work for Hazou, but he doesn't seem like a quitter, and he still believes that he can be useful to the team.
Just not by being with the team.

He and Kagome are unfit for society. Thus, they leave society.
[] Action Plan: The Watchtower
does exactly this. Suicide doesn't help at all, but he would (correctly) assess that being with the team is hurting them more than helping. His usefulness has been primarily in his seal ideas, and he doesn't need constant contact with the team to get those. Maximum usefulness to the team while minimizing the harm that he can do.

They are unfit for society, and unfit for any sort of leadership or talking position as well.

Fair enough.
[-] Action Plan: Commit Suicide
[X]Action Plan: Hazou never speaks again.

I apologize as I am new to plan formatting, but my Action plan would simply involve Hazou realizing his words has killed his teammate, and endeavoring to not speak. It's like a vow of silence, if there is anything analogous in this setting.
 
I apologize as I am new to plan formatting, but my Action plan would simply involve Hazou realizing his words has killed his teammate, and endeavoring to not speak. It's like a vow of silence, if there is anything analogous in this setting.
Nah, he's fine at speaking. As long as everyone he's speaking to is willing to forgive every transgression and is completely trusted. So, basically only people from Team Uplift.

Also, not speaking would make it rather hard to share seal ideas in a reasonably efficient manner.
 
You can't suffer if you're dead :p
Except that's reasoning for the suicide plan.
We don't want just us dead. We want everyone and everything around us dead too.
Kagome may have some objections to blowing up his teammates. Unless we spare them? Do we want to leave them in the wasteland we create? Maybe we grant them this mercy as well.
Mercy to this entire, unliftable world.
 
The players will always forget something, or misinterpret something the wrong way, and we do that constantly.

We also tried to prevent things from happening again in trying all sort of ways and proposing different ways.

However, at some point, there are limits to the playerbase's capability and effort. We have shown time and time again failure to model the world and the characters around it. We don't read checklists in making plans. We left off contingencies because the QM decided to ignore it, and figured that we'll be fine without any contingencies.

The way this quest is set up leads to dramatic and extraordinary success, but also eventually unavoidable catastrophic failure, and there are absolutely zero safety net to help us avoid the later.
 
Except that's reasoning for the suicide plan.
We don't want just us dead. We want everyone and everything around us dead too.
Kagome may have some objections to blowing up his teammates. Unless we spare them? Do we want to leave them in the wasteland we create? Maybe we grant them this mercy as well.
Mercy to this entire, unliftable world.
My base plan (which I'll extend later) is basically to go into exile with Kagome, and make the improvements to the implosion seal that we've discussed. These should let us destroy about half of the Elemental Nations in one bomb.
 
Nah, he's fine at speaking. As long as everyone he's speaking to is willing to forgive every transgression and is completely trusted. So, basically only people from Team Uplift.

Also, not speaking would make it rather hard to share seal ideas in a reasonably efficient manner.
Just write it out, I don't find efficiency to be particularly important with seal ideas, as long as it always get curated by someone with common sense.
 
If there is one thing I wish the QM's had done differently its not in this update, if they could have seen that we were slowly starting to misinterpret his charectar I would like it if they had confronted us with this either in or out of character so that we realised that we were on the complete wrong track.
It honestly didn't occur to me that you were misinterpreting him. Many (most? all?) recent plans have had a line saying "Keep Kagome-sensei from killing anyone". It seemed like it was pretty clear.

The alternative would be that they accept that Hazou being his own character runs both ways. Its unfair to simultaneously ask us to completely understand there universe and at the same time prevent us from fully applying our knowledge of our own. If Hazou needs inspiration before he can apply our ideas then by the same token he should dismiss plans that are going to inevitably end poorly.

It's a tricky balancing act between the players' agency and Hazō's agency. We probably don't strike that balance perfectly every time, but we have done the best we can and played fair throughout. You'll note that during timeskips and events that aren't covered by the plan we've generally had Hazō make safe but unremarkable choices. It's only when the plan is in effect that Hazō makes really powerful choices, for good or for ill.


You know what they say about glass houses. Go back to the bolded sections and realize that using aggressive language and sarcasm is not unique to us, so you shouldn't get the right to ignore someone's post they put work into because they used wording you didn't like.
The 'Amusingly' was sincerely meant. As to the rest, there's an enormous difference between a couple of untargeted comments and the very large amount of personally-directed things we've been receiving. As to not engaging with the rest of the post, I was very clear that I wasn't engaging because I disagreed with the fundamental premises so nothing productive would happen. I was also very clear that I would be happy to engage with something not based on those premises.


You should seriously consider reading one of the many other quests on this board and seeing how other QMs do it. Might help you get your head around it.
I've read some of them. My primary takeaway is that most quests do not use complex plans the way ours does. That's fine, and it's up to the players -- if you all start voting in one- or two-line plans then we'll do our best to run with them. I suspect that (a) when running under a one-line plan Hazō will do things you disagree with far more often than he does under the current plans where we have a clearer picture of your intent and (b) there will be just as much upset.

What I mean by punishment here is giving the players consequences for their choices. GMs frequently enjoy doing this, and I don't begrudge them that. The term "punishment" is generally used in a playful sense in this context, not maliciously. I am also not begrudging you for what happened per se, but I do think that as a GM you and the others handled how you had the consequences play out is not conducive to maintaining a fun game for the reasons I spelled out. As such, I request that you take a moment to read the rest of my feedback, because it's intended to be constructive.
Okay, went back and read it. You're correct that it was clearly intended as constructive and was well thought-through. Thank you for it. There's been enough rage being thrown at us that I was too quick to dismiss something that started with the assertion that we were "punishing" the players.

You have valid points and I'll talk about them with the other QMs. Velorien has gone to sleep so that will part of the conversation will have to happen tomorrow, but I think OliWhail is around now.
 
Okay, went back and read it. You're correct that it was clearly intended as constructive and was well thought-through. Thank you for it. There's been enough rage being thrown at us that I was too quick to dismiss something that started with the assertion that we were "punishing" the players.

You have valid points and I'll talk about them with the other QMs. Velorien has gone to sleep so that will part of the conversation will have to happen tomorrow, but I think OliWhail is around now.

Another successful instance of the CCnJ. Forget Skywalkers, CCnJ is our greatest invention! :p
 
Which just means, that like any other human being, Kagome's subject to a bias. In this case the "exploding of dumbbutts" bias.
No, it just means Kagome expects to be able to get away with it. Which is true, since Jiraiya and Shikaku would do everything in their power to cover it up.

His bias, if anything, is that he doesn't expect people he trusts to betray him. Like Akane.
 
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