fhplotterywheel | Brainstorming Post!

Actually, I don't know about other people, but I would have a severe problem with a natural disaster plot. I don't like natural disasters, I don't think they're cool, and I definitely don't think it's something I want to deal with in a game setting.

I pulled characters during the flood plot for a reason, and I'll do it again if I have to, but I do not find natural disasters fun in any way, shape, or form.

Well, for me it's more about having a plot where we have to endure/survive. I'm quite tired of the "something bad happens and we save the day" plots.

But what purpose does "bad things just happen" serve besides making everybody angsty and emo?

Making people work together to survive/rebuild?

People work together to survive and figure out the BDEs already.

We already did something where most people were essentially helpless to fix the problem with the plague plot. Some people really liked the plague plot. Some people didn't, especially those of us with characters who are unspeakably frustrated by helplessness. Playing Steve Rogers when he can't help fix something is not fun, let me tell you.

And I tend to agree with Alanna that natural disasters pretty much are no fun whatsoever.

Right. We did one BDE where people were essentially helpless. As opposed to the dozen or so that were fighty in nature.

I'm not saying one or the other is right or wrong. I'm simply suggesting that we do something that might be fun for those who don't enjoy the fighty stuff.

This stuff about including people who aren't fighty in the BDEs keeps coming up and keeps coming up, and I'm not a mod so really I don't know what else can be done there because God knows they keep trying to include the people who don't like fighting and yet it keeps being the bad penny, but it seems like we've gotten off the subject, which is a plot where no one including nonfighty people can help solve or fix the problem, which I still feel isn't going to work out very well in practice. The aftermath I particularly think would be problematic; I've done picking throuhg the rubble and rebuilding after a disaster in RL, and it's a whole pile of not fun.

Re: General Brainstorming

wantstocheer.livejournal.com - 2009-05-13 19:58 (UTC) - Expand

Re: General Brainstorming

carsexual - 2009-05-13 20:00 (UTC) - Expand

I think my problem here is that I feel like the pendulum is swinging too far in the other direction. There's been so much noise about the non-fighters not getting enough to do that the fighters have been sidelined, which makes them twitchy, and makes people wonder if they should not bother apping fighters to start. I like BDEs where everyone can contribute -- but that means everyone, fighters included.

Playing Steve Rogers when he can't help fix something is not fun, let me tell you.

Heh. Try playing a woman who pretty much is her job and can't really work on the island. Soooooo much sympathy for you on this, Z.

During the plague plot the Steve and Jenny in my head were essentially punching the walls. IT WAS BAD.

And yes, I know that's my choice for choosing hero-types.

Re: General Brainstorming

bitten_notshy - 2009-05-13 20:40 (UTC) - Expand

Re: General Brainstorming

notyourpawn.livejournal.com - 2009-05-13 22:58 (UTC) - Expand

The problem with that is, for me, Fandom High is a place where I can unwind. Where I have fun. "Something bad happens and we save the day" is fun. "Oh shit a volcano just exploded and covered half the island in ash" is not only not fun but is also traumatizing.

Well, fighty stuff isn't fun for me. I know it is for other people and I'm not trying to say we should never do it again, but I would like more variety.

The catch is, fighty stuff is pretty easy to ignore. And it's relatively temporary. Over and done. A natural disaster? Not so much. The repercussions continue for a while and for people who don't want to play with it? Not fun.

I don't personally see how the aftermath of any island wide plot is different from the aftermath of any other. I mean, the aliens blew up the damn school and the entire summer was spent rebuilding it. People had to deal with that whether they liked it or not with no warning.

The way I see it, people get warning for BDEs and have the chance to take their character off island if they don't want to participate. And when their character comes back, they have to deal with the repercussions of whatever happened. I'm not sure how it would be different if what happens is an attack of killer termites or an earthquake.

Well, for one thing there's a pretty big difference between, "Oh, hey, there were killer termites, but they're gone now," and, say, "Half the island and all of your stuff are gone."

Re: General Brainstorming

wantstocheer.livejournal.com - 2009-05-13 20:09 (UTC) - Expand

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iamnotallgirl - 2009-05-13 20:23 (UTC) - Expand

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notyourpawn.livejournal.com - 2009-05-13 23:06 (UTC) - Expand

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wantstodirect - 2009-05-14 01:25 (UTC) - Expand

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once-a-traitor.livejournal.com - 2009-05-14 03:26 (UTC) - Expand

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wantstodirect - 2009-05-14 03:33 (UTC) - Expand

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once-a-traitor.livejournal.com - 2009-05-14 03:39 (UTC) - Expand

Re: General Brainstorming

joan-notjane.livejournal.com - 2009-05-14 11:53 (UTC) - Expand

I think we have to admit people have fun different ways. For me -- and I fully admit this is on the weird side -- a fight I know I'm going to win isn't all that interesting. I'll do fighty scenes, and they're fun the first time I get to play them out with a new character or from a new angle or whatever, but for the most part, if I know I'm going to triumph, why bother? (I also fast-forward past filmed fight scenes if the main character's obviously going to win. I'm special.)

THAT SAID, I do kind of agree with you but for another reason. A volcano exploding (or whatever) is a huge, semipermanent-to-permanent change in the game. Thus far, we've avoided having plots in the game that last longer than a summer, and even the long ones were on a simmer most of the time. I don't know if I'd find the game as enjoyable if we did devote six months to being about a volcano and the aftermath; I think there are other settings to play with things like that, and Fandom High is the place for random clouds of glitter.

Thank you, I think you made my point far better than I was managing it.

I don't know if I'd find the game as enjoyable if we did devote six months to being about a volcano and the aftermath

I'm not sure we'd have to. I think it would all depend on how it was planned. I think it could be done on the same level as the aliens blowing up the school a few years ago was.

Because I do agree with you that making the entire game focus on it for months on end would be boring. But I think a balance could be struck.

I think the difference when the school got blown up was that that was very limited geographically, which isn't realistic for a true natural disaster. But we could possibly do something like what Mylia is suggesting, with magic use limiting/channeling the disaster so its impact isn't all that great.

Oh I agree.

I'm not sure how or why anyone got the idea that I was suggesting we destroy half the island because I certainly never said that.

Limiting/mitigating is vastly different than fighting off a bad guy, IMO.

At the same time -- if we did something HUGE and EPIC and then swept it under the rug two weeks later, that cheapens the event, both in-game and its real-world counterparts.

Lots of people talk about how the plague had lasting repercussions. I didn't feel like it did. People got sick, Bart died, research saved the day, everyone was solemn for a week, and then people went right back to acting like it never happened. Which means we're using serious events as cheap drama, and that bugs me.

Re: General Brainstorming

wantstodirect - 2009-05-14 00:07 (UTC) - Expand

Re: General Brainstorming

notyourpawn.livejournal.com - 2009-05-14 00:32 (UTC) - Expand

Just to throw out suggestions, if there was a volcano going off, there are plenty of magic users on the island who could possibly work together to create some kind of magic or spell to change the lava flow or turn it into something else so it's not as time-consuming of a plot or that it doesn't permanently change the structure/design/landscape of the island all together?

Also, we could do an earthquake or something like that, instead. The flood BDE was pretty cool because everyone was trying to figure out how to save the island and the buildings/each other before it was revealed that it was angry sea people causing all of the problems.

What if it was more a magic-y sort of disaster to deal with? Like, the Valdemar books have mage storms that come in waves (which some of Karal's friends have already dealt with in game). The mage storms feel like earthquakes and mess with magical abilities (and things created by magic) but don't affect the mundane items. As the storms grow, they start having magic effects in small circles. Like, a rabbit gets caught in a circle and turns into some kind of rabbit-sized magic-mutant beast.

It doesn't have to be mage storms in particular, but suppose we did some kind of magic/sci-fi unnatural disaster plot? Dealing with it could be similar to the way characters would deal with a real natural disaster but it'd be more of a metaphorical thing than a real-life correlation. Would something like that be easier to deal with?

On a totally unrelated note, the rabbit example reminds me of something out of Cimorene's canon...

That does sound somewhat more feasible.

Natural disasters aren't ... hrm. 'Triggery,' if that's the right word, for me? But I agree with you in that I would rather the game stay away from things that go places like that. Not 'dark and serious,' but 'things that some of us might have very painful and very real experiences with, and ones we don't especially want to relive.'

This is why I was so upset about the plague. Watching someone get sicker and then die while you're helpless to do anything ... it's gut-wrenching. My family refused to place my grandmother into a nursing home, so we provided hospice care for the next several months. And it sucked. And it breaks people into little pieces, and you don't bounce back in days, or weeks, or months. And I come to the game not to think about things like that, especially not in a tidy, clean "and then in two weeks, everything is fine again" fashion.