Idea Post!

[livebait]

Hello Aather! In the interests of making Aather the best game it can be, we'd like to toss around some potential ideas for what you'd really like to see in the near future!

Since the game has been running incredibly strong for over 3.5 years now (///), we want to make sure we're keeping things bright and engaging, while still staying true to the game as it is and what's made it what it is.

We've had more open slots recently largely due to a lot of characters moving to Happy End or Legacy after being played for several years, and game turnout is a little lower lately (probably also because some of us have been doing this game thing for longer than we've lived in any one place in real life, I don't know about you); and we've also dropped down to a bit of a quieter pace that's a better fit for the playerbase at the moment—but some of these are fairly big changes functionally! so we want to make sure we can continue adjusting and growing the game to fit that.

The mods have some ideas for things we want to do in the future (and I'll make note of some of them in this post!), but we'd also like to hear:

❥ Game or event ideas you'd like to see! Games that we ran two years ago you really liked, or just "a secrets game" or "a costume game" or anything like that. Things we haven't done in a while you wanna see again, or things we've never done that you have a good idea for.
❥ Plot hooks or directions you'd like to go in. "I want to find out more about why there's always a tree in the Ring" or "I want more helping Personae break roles" etc.
❥ Elements that would help you or your characters be more engaged!
❥ Other things that would be cool—quests? Abilities? Themes? Laser beams for Burupya?

At least for this post, we would really just like to hear ideas and suggestions—nothing will be definitely going to happen and someone might have an idea that you don't think would work for you, but that's okay! We are also not looking at making any changes to activity/game structure & functions at the moment—just gameplay, please!

For now—please help us with suggestions about what you'd like to see and we will do our best to make some things happen! If you have multiple ideas, please feel free to leave them as separate comments if they're about fully different things.

Thank you as always for being such a stellar playerbase, and please do always feel free to come to the mods in private if you have questions or concerns or suggestions or pictures of kitten paws.

Comments

[glorious]

We actually had a big Darkness infection plot waaaay back in the Cove, and I'd definitely love to see something like that again so +1 to that idea.

(and also +1 to more Darkness plots in general!)

[livebait]

TRYING TO REFRESH THINGS is hard but yeah I think that's a good concept 'w' I wanna do something with itttt.

[glorious]

Thursday sounds like it'll be pretty good day actually, so I'll mark that on my calendar and adjust as needed. ♥

[idkmybffnirvash]

If you sign up to play, you have to run another team's room. Natch.

[simple_not_boring]

A++.

[simple_not_boring]

Paying attention to this thread.

[idkmybffnirvash]

No, but in all honesty, I think it would help to have a pool of helpers that can be magically called upon. I know that Saro always taps me for Dorian, so it keeps the pressure off of her. But if someone is going to plan a strategy game or what have you, then having someone around to simply copy+paste would be really helpful all around. I can't think of many people who would say they can't help, but there might be a level of shyness floating around? I can certainly make a lot of games, and even if I'm not with it enough to play (as it does happen), I don't mind monitoring since that's hardly anything with three teams or so.

[selfequipped]

I'm going to straight up say that if we have a darkness event (or events), I'd prefer to move away from fighting-based events, in part because a lot of these fighting events require players to be located at a certain place at a certain place for a certain number of hours. Inevitably, these types of events cut people out. That isn't to say that darkness fighting is bad. Giving characters the visible satisfaction of kicking ass is important!

But for big events, I'd like stuff like ... back in the day, there was a mosquitoes bite people with darkness event. And what I liked about looking back on it (I'd been temporarily out of the game at the time) was that it was self-directed. Players wrote the characters darknessed/dealing with darkness on their own terms. I think plots like this, with some directed mingles, would be really successful with the state of the current player base.

Again, that's not to redirect things from fighting. Fighting should have some payoffs in these plots, too, and have a place, but I think plots that play more with intrigue can be fun. Having darkness mimic people, having darkness affect personae, etc.—I think these can have some amazing long-term playoff.

[takeabow]

What I always run into with the like... keep people from being hurt in games thing is oocly i want my characters to get hurt, and other characters. pretty much nothing irritates me more than something that's advertised as a trauma/intense game and for there to be no deep consequences involved, so it's one of those things that certainly requires... balance? ic needs vs ooc needs etc

[glorious]

An idea I had just now so no idea of how feasible it would be but!: on the Darkness Personae, maybe more plots involving that potential line of mimicry? I'm thinking along the lines of Darkness Personae being something along the lines of Slenderman, who is without any real identity and comes from an ill-defined (and unconstrained) mythos; though any sort of creepypasta could maybe be used since so much of creepypasta is built through memetic power in a way that could be fitting for a Darkness' attempt at mimicking a story.

[glorious]

On the shyness note, maybe it would help if we had a spreadsheet of potential helpers and their timezones that gamerunners can look through and poke people from? I usually see gamerunners making open calls for helpers, but maybe having some sort of system like that where helpers send out the call that they're willing to help might...help.

[idkmybffnirvash]

I think there are two separate issues here, so I'm going to split them apart. First, I feel you on the frustration with something being advertised as trauma and not successfully pulling it off. I enjoy my bit of drama, too! However, game runners may have an idea but the execution doesn't go over well which I can't blame them for. I think that can be fixed in bouncing an idea of someone. I wouldn't want to impose it as a rule, but it might be something that should be looked over twice, especially if someone is going for that trauma game label. I think people get shy of engaging deeper topics and pressing buttons, because there is that line . . . ? Like I would enjoy more games with deep hard issue conversations that may be tense and even conflictive but not traumatic in the same way as losing an arm.

The second issue is getting rid of trauma games which I am not calling for. The IC motivation of Zen is different from my OOC stance, but I would like to see him rewarded in order not to burn him out. A new Personae can pop-up that is taken down by the heroes, or the Darkness becomes more connected with the traumatic games and the larger reward comes with leaning on Personae to help put everyone back together as well as trusting in each other to push off the Darkness and so on. There are ways to have games that fulfill OOC desires while also giving characters a way to feel successful at the end of the day by having stopped one entity that wanted to take their friend's head off. I think, honestly, trauma games might need to break free of the idea of being a game . . . At least, in the sense that some teams take home a memory for acting a certain way. There certainly is enough interest that we don't need that particular set-up to have people show up.

. . . I could keep going on, but that covers my points, I think . . .

[idkmybffnirvash]

Yes, that might be good. Or even having like mod-approved veterans who can help run or listen to ideas, a mini-team of helpers! I think the issue is finding a way outside of pinging on Plurk or posting in the OOC comm, though those are valid ways to reach a hand out.

[idkmybffnirvash]

Or the Darkness pretends to be your teammate . . . Oooh~ The scratching is coming from inside the tree house, dun dun~.

[soldieronwards]

I'm with you on making games shorter! Since observing some that have run long in the past I've been making a strong effort to keep mine under four hours, and it seems to be paying off pretty well. Hopefully we can push the standard to be a bit shorter...

[glorious]

I will +1 this as well even though I don't currently have a knight, because the idea makes me wish I did.

[selfequipped]

I kind of said this to Eastling, but yes! I like stuff like this for the darkness plot.

[takeabow]

Okay!

I THINK WE ARE MAYBE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE SAME THING CONCEPTUALLY! I don't disagree with many of your points and I didn't assume you were wanting to get rid of trauma games. BUT I'M SO TIRED I CAN'T ARTICULATE WHAT EXACTLY MY POINT IS. Like there are maybe one or two things that I don't totally agree with but it's a tangent and not salient to the point I was trying to make so! I just saw "keep people from getting hurt in games" and read that as "reduce the impact of negative things overall and/or reduce the ic context for negative things" which i am seeing now is not the point you are making so no worries!

[glorious]

find all 7 teammates

[simple_not_boring]

So, fights! I've been falling down on running regular posts -- I blame new job and shoulder dislocation but also my weak spirit -- but I'd like to get back into the swing of running Three's Cove/Wonderland style monster posts in some way. ICly, we'll work out a way to do this ( ^___^ ) but OOCly, what kind of timing and frequency are people interested in? Weekly/biweekly opt-in posts seemed to work well in the past, and I doubt more frequent would be possible, but is that about what people would be interested to play with?

Also, in Camelot we did a couple of experimental things, like MIDBOSSES (fights that last several encounters) and KEY ABILITIES for noncombatants in pivotal battles. How did people feel those went?

[yourewaitingforagate]

I HAVE NOT READ THINGS SO I AM SORRY IF THIS HAS BEEN MENTIONED.

But I would like to see more Relay-type plot events! ie: Smaller groups, contained to shorter time slots, that contribute to larger plot motions in a sort of rube golberg machine type way.

I know we've done some of this before, but in general for me I find that plot events have become really unwieldy as a player and for the runners as well. Basically, I'd much rather be put in a group of three-five people for a 1 hour intensively run thing that gets me somewhere and then get to sit back and watch three-five other people do something that's linked to that 1 hour thing instead of sitting in a group of 6-10 people for 2 hours doing an event that is both things combined.

I feel like smaller groups is a lot better for people to really feel like their characters are involved in the plot, and shorter time slots makes it easier for everyone who is very busy adults? Also if the time slots are shorter, it can be easier for the mods to tap out between groups. Especially if it's done in a sort of co-op feel where it's like Team A needs to hit the lever so the bridge is lowered for Team B to cross the river and then open the gate for Team C to storm the armory and do a supply drop for Team D to fight the dragon.

Each contribution itself is smaller, and there could be multiple threads going at once, but players and characters would get to feel they have more of an impact, and of course it can all get tied together at the end for epic massive boss fights or what have you. Essentially, I'd like to see plot events run more like games where each "round" is handed off to a different small group that effectively turns in their results and then sits out until the end.

[soldieronwards]

The idea of trauma events instead of games is an interesting one...although I don't think trauma games will go away entirely, giving people the option of running traumatic events to take up the month's slot instead is worth investigating!

[idkmybffnirvash]

Yeah, it's confusing because I made a comment more geared toward an IC issue in an OOC discussion post. But I wanted to give a good reflection of where one of my characters is as a touch base for what is going on ICly. To me, it feels like you have to balance both sides with Aather, because if we pandered to our OOC desire to maim and brutalize often then that would be a different game which creates a different feeling in characters . . . And those who are apped!

[glorious]

I really like this idea and would like to +1 it!

[takeabow]

:3 yeah fair. my comment was basically "this is a difficult line to straddle" so. what you just said! I'VE BEEN UP SINCE 5:45 OK