1) Have a section in the opening post detailing Sabrina's schedule, commitments, goals (and their deadlines, if applicable), current concerns (such as the risk of Madoka contracting, and the current consensus on how pressing it is--perhaps with QM hints in this regard, for the sake of preventing player paranoia from spiraling out of control), and ideas for solutions (whether or not they're good ideas would be left explicitly ambiguous, but so long as the ideas were supported by at least one or two other posters, it would qualify for the list). This would serve as a reference for players to use whenever needed, as well as a convenient way for players who are aware of everything in it to refer players who aren't to.
There
is, in fact, a link for Sabrina's day planner. It doesn't cover everything, but it also covers "what has happened so far", and what is planned going forward.
2) Divide up the voting period into two distinct sections. The first: players discuss what to do, create votes/plans and refine them, as well as give some kind of reasoning for the choices in said plans (in the same post). The second: Firn makes another post in the thread which includes each of the plans proposed (and, if reasonable, the reasoning behind his/her plan), and then opens up the actual voting. For the ease of access for those not coming into the voting period immediately, the latest "voting selection" post by Firn would be threadmarked, and that threadmark would be deleted when the vote is closed (or when the next chapter is posted). For clarity's sake, an explanation of this process and its rules should be posted in the informational posts at the beginning of the thread, and players who break these rules or ask about how it works would simply be directed to this part with a link.
Yes, I do plan on instituting vote moratoriums, but I don't entirely like the idea of myself having to do the vote summary. I may and probably will not always have the time to do so - it would be
nice if someone were willing to do that for me, but I don't feel that I can ask that.
3) What would be very helpful is including some context/info for the players at the end of each story post, explaining what the current vote would actually cover. This way, players wouldn't have to worry that anything not included in the vote would be a lost opportunity (like assuming that the current conversation with someone will end in the next story post). This would prevent some of the tendency for people to throw in a lot of things to a given plan (or ask/demand that something be included). If players express the desire to simply "skip ahead" or something (let's say a vote is explained to cover activities from 10AM-11AM, but voters feel like they should be able to just vote for the activities from 10AM-5PM), then it could be solved by simply having a particularly short new chapter covering the previously-designated events (in the previous example, the events from 10AM-11AM), and the designated time period to be covered in the next vote would cover the time period desired by the voters (11AM-5PM).
I've been trying to do the former, but I tend to leave it out when it seems obvious to me. I'll do better about that.
4) This suggestion is hampered more by technical difficulties than anything, making me hesitant to suggest it. But First Past The Post voting systems are terrible and very much encourage a lot of the negative practices you express frustration with. FPTP voting strongly encourages bandwagoning and building momentum as early and quickly as possible. It also strongly encourages forming into voting blocs (as few blocs as possible, at that), as well as hostile behavior towards other voting blocs in attempts to convince independent and/or undecided voters to side with them. Frankly, FPTP is probably the worst voting system there is in all criteria but simplicity. Ranked voting is just one example of a much better voting system. As I said before, though, this suggestion is the one most hampered by technical difficulties. I don't know if the vote-tallying program can handle anything but FPTP functionality. There may be a way to utilize it to facilitate ranked voting, however: by having each of the proposed voting plans have a name, and having voters cast votes based on just those names, and voting for their top two plans in order of preference, you could then effectively do a ranked voting system. For example:
It's a thought to mull over - ranked voting isn't currently supporting, but approval voting is certainly doable.
- Adfligo Systema. Our entire purpose is to break the system. PMAS is obviously intended to be a reconstruction of the deconstruction, the Gurren Lagann to PMMM's Evangelion.
- Heroes should act, from the opening post. We're intended to be going out and proactively fixing things.
- "Bad things don't happen for no reason."
- "You can tell your own story with the same pieces, right?", in the context of Madoka not liking how grim 40k was. The implication is obviously that Firnagzen is doing the same thing, using the pieces of PMMM to tell a story that he prefers, one that's less sad.
- Everything we do, from science to social, we're repeatedly rewarded for inclusion, teamwork, and idealism.
- I get insightfuls from Firn on posts where I note how our powers appear to be designed to reward teamwork and cooperation.
- Our powerset is a straightforward solution to the malthusian catastrophe that makes PMMM such a shithole in many cases.
- Madoka literally wished to make the world better. Ultimately speaking, the root cause of PMMM's horrible grimness is that it's a philosophical statement. that philosophical statement is that "Hope is balanced by despair". Everything in PMMM revolves around that concept. In PMAS, that's been explicitly broken by a Madokami-tier Wish, with us as its instrument. The entire point of the quest is to have hope without despair.
- Whatever nasty thing is talking to us in the invisitext, being WAFFy with our friend hampers its efforts.
- Kirika's change to having antimagic in PMAS. The universe is literally telling Oriko to not die. That's as far from dark as you can possibly get.
Vebyast's points are broadly correct here. PMAS
is supposed to be a
reconstruction, if you prefer the terms.
Perhaps, that's why I made a specific choice to use the term "mostly". And also keep in mind it took multiple OOC years to achieve even that small change.
The thing is, it
need not be easy. I delight in wordplay and hiding the answers in plain sight (and for the record, there are still a decent number you guys simply haven't noticed yet). I came into PMAS with a massive,
massive freewheeling plan, and I've been writing to that plan ever since, even with adjustments. Kirika's antimagic was one of those solutions I hid in plain sight, and to be frank I've been cackling over it ever since. It wasn't easy to
find, but the solution
exists.
That aside, it's not, and it's never been, about the
universe (or me) making life easy or giving rewards if the genre conventions are adhered to. As a general rule, the answers are hidden in the general direction of being kind, emphatic, and so forth. So continuing to be
nice tends to have you stumble over the answers, as
has happened before. Quite simply: the answers are in the direction of being excellent to people. They're
not in the direction of being Hard Girls Making Hard Choices.
Oh, and one more quote for you guys:
It's always been about people. Mami and Homura and Sayaka and Madoka. Kirika and Oriko. Masami and Hiroko.
Back to lurking then, I guess.
