On the Discord discussion.
TLDR: As I said, I didn't initially want a cabal, was careless and laid the groundwork down for a cabal anyway and it was too big to cut down IMO, so I decided to control the flow of info better and make sure everyone was working off the same knowledge instead.
The arguments for and against were ones I considered for a long time. It literally took me months to decide to make a Discord. Ultimately, my decision making stems from a few simple realities of Rhunrikki's existence.
1. The quest was planned, idea-stormed and rolled for in a separate Discord. It got so bad that I was quarantined to given my own specific channel to do all that stuff in.
2. While I do a lot of stuff on my own, I did and do go over mechanical balance before releasing stuff in public with other people.
3. I got so used to it that I let a few long-term spoilers and mechanic plans through sheer lack of forethought. The mechanics stuff are largely moot as they've been changed since then, but the point remains that I spoiled stuff.
4. I swore those people to secrecy, as I said, but I can't remove the possibility of them acting on that info subconsciously when making plans. No one's perfect, and honestly swearing people to secrecy felt like a bandaid.
These things stand in stark contrast to my historic decision not to run a Discord to prevent Cabal-ism from coming to the fore. I felt like both a hypocrite and like I had cultivated exactly what I didn't want to happen.
So I believed that my options were to go cold turkey on Discord, or try and control what was there and make it work under my own terms.
I chose the latter, mostly because I can't keep my mouth shut sometimes and like having people to bounce balance against. I think if the number of people I did those earlier points with was small, say like 5 at most, I could have just asked them not to vote for the sake of fairness, but it had grown well beyond that point. Quite a few people already came to that server specifically for the quest.
If I redid this quest, gone back in time, I think I would have gone for the other idea. Have like 5-7 specific people to be my idea council who literally are not allowed to vote, plan or contribute to any plans in the thread. But that isn't what I had. So I decided that rather than have this hodgepodge mess of stuff hard to enforce and poorly enforced rules I'd just commit to a Discord to keep a lid on things. Cold comfort, but I've been much more diligent there, and for good or ill I have been consistently keeping WoG posting between here and there the same so that everyone has the same info to work with. The most spoilery I get now is the Patrons, who at best see narrative bits a few days before release and see me balancing the numbers of the final systems I've designed before release. I think if I updated sooner and kept things closer to chest then I can make it fairer still, as the longer I delay the more time I give people on Discord, which I'm committed to doing, but yeah.
Basically repeating my own point when I first made the Discord here honestly.
So I do get the criticisms, but as I said the cat's out of the bag IMO. I'll do my best to keep my WoGs the same on both platforms, but I can't do much about the long-term planning. If not my server then it may very well happen in someone elses at this point. >_>
Patreon is more me committing to it because fuck it, I've already gone and decided to make a Discord.
Um, in terms of less heavy stuff #Rune-Ideas
Hoarfrost: Added, future Rune.
Dilligence: I'll add it after making sure it isn't a duplicate of anything. Should be fine though.
Oh and Cultural Overview: The Northern Ranger should be up soon, a bit of something to digest in between updates.
