The Shattered City: OOC

[yalenusveler]

Ladies and gentlemen.

I have a plan.

[Cronax]

Do tell?

[yalenusveler]

Well, we can either use thierri as a sacrifice to close the well. Which works, but it's kind of an unpleasant thing to do......or we can try to bind the various spirits INTO theirri, which has potentially unforeseen and unimaginable consequence, but will likely NOT kill him.

I am leaning heavily on option B. Now just how to stop a falling magus without resorting to the ludicrous.

[yalenusveler]

If anyone can get to me and has a halfway decent chance at a Nature aid another, that would be glorious. Maybe not enough to do any good...but hey..

[lostboy]

Nicolas' nature score is fairly rubbish, but I can chuck out inspire competance for +2 on anyone else who wants to try....

Anything we can help with arcana or religion?

[Cronax]

unforeseen and unimaginable consequence,

That doesn't sound good at all. Are we talking about turning turning Thierri into some sort of undead monstrosity, because I'm not on board for that.

[NeoTiamat]

Alright, pause for a bit.

The end of Book Three is beginning to look like a trainwreck. The entire campaign is not, on the whole, looking vastly better. This is largely my fault.

The long and the short of it is that the DMs have been continuing the policy, carried over from the Eye of Anubis campaign, of letting the PCs undermine each other quietly, and generally engage in all manner of furtive conspiracy and chicanery. In EoA, this seemed to work. In the Shattered City, it has not.

When Thierri jumped into the pool, this was due to player actions. I encouraged it and tried to arrange it for maximum plot effect, but instead of being epic it has come out feeling mostly arbitrary. This is the biggest example, but hardly the only one.

On the whole, this campaign lacks any kind of group cohesion. Frankly, this is the DM's fault. In the Eye of Anubis, everyone was at least roughly in the same boat as an expedition member, and you had a giant desert to keep you part of the party, like it or not. In SC, the DMs haven't done anything like this. We've tried to accept every concept that came along, gave a very, very vague unifying factor (you all live in the same house), and our attempts to try and bind people into the plot have been... lackluster, to say the least. We hoped that giving people individual side-plots that tie into the main campaign would help, but it hasn't. The end result is that when the PCs headed into the catacombs, we pretty much had half the PCs wanting to talk it out with the cult, and the other half wanting to fight with the cult. Things went down hill from there.

This is our fault. None of this, not a bit of it, could have happened without the DM's support and encouragement. All the players involved were just playing out their characters as seemed best, and I was the one who oversaw the whole, and frankly, was egging people on about half the time.

I screwed up. Instead of a nice, conspiratorial atmosphere, we've got what was (I think) a decent adventure spiraling into a narrative trainwreck.

So, here's what we're going to do. First off, no more PCs undermining other PCs. It's over and done with, gone the way of the Dodo. There's no open PvP, now there is no subtle PvP either. Secondly, complete amnesty for anything that's gone wrong due to PC infighting before. If I learn that someone is giving someone else a hard time over it, I will be upon you like the wrath of an angry Ravenloft god.

Thirdly, and this is something I open to everyone, but how do we improve group cohesion? How do we get everyone on the same page here? I screwed up, and I hope you guys can forgive me, but we're all mature enough to handle this problem.

Finally... not everything that's been going wrong can be laid at the feet of PCs undermining one another. I know the campaign is confusing, I know it feels directionless, I know that it feels like you guys have not had a clear win. I know, I screwed up there too. Just... I'm going to do my very damnedest to try and fix this in Book Four, so just don't abandon ship before then, alright? Give me a chance.

[lostboy]

Huh???

Is it because I'm not on AIM that much, that I have very little idea of what's going on?

I'm certainly not feeling its anywhere near a trainwreck......

But maybe thats because Im playing a vacuous drunk (who hasn't the slighteset notion of whats goign on either).....

[Nerit]

...What...?

If you have time, let's talk on AIM, Neo?

[Kaitou Kage]

I am not 100% sure of what's going on either so I'll just say this much.

Cyrus is the kind of guy who puts the needs of the group ahead of the needs of the individual -- unless that individual is his brother. To him, Darius's needs trump anyone else's, no matter what the circumstance is. As long as someone shows they're a contributing and worthwhile member of the group, he'll count you as part of that group.

Cyrus is a very martially-inclined man. As a result, the way he gauges whether someone's worth being part of the group or not is seeing how they fight at his side. If he feels you are a reliable combat ally, then he will count you as part of his fold enough to stand by your side in battle.

I know he's usually abrasive, arrogant, sometimes downright nasty. Perhaps I could do better showing some of his better side.

However, the majority of the PCs (and many of the NPCs) here have earned enough of his respect that he counts you as allies in some form or another, even if he treats you harshly. I apologize if I've put anyone out by his actions. I've generally been trying to tone it back since the beginning of the game. If anyone at any time feels like he's being too nasty without provocation, please feel free to ask me to rein him in a little more.

[Cronax]

how do we improve group cohesion?

That's the ten million gp question.

Unlike EoA where everyone had an absolute, concrete goal from the start of the game (journey to the tomb, find the eye), the very nature of an investigatory game means our long term goals should be needed to remain secret, or there would be no mystery to reveal at a climactic moment.

In hindsight, which is not terribly helpful, I think we should have designed our characters and back-stories communally so they would be more tightly interlocked in motivations and have a higher degree of group loyalty. It would have detracted a little from the first chapter's 'getting-to-know-each-other' theme, but would have helped things in the long run.

I think 'trainwreck' is an over-dramatization. There are certainly problems, but I don't think they're insurmountable. For starters, I think we need to settle on one or two, simple, concrete, tangible long term goals which everyone in the party can get behind achieving.

Possibilities:

Bring back Death

Bring Justice/Vengeance to whoever klled Death

Save Thierri

[Kaitou Kage]

I agree with the idea of the end goal but I'd take it a step further and say we need a clear means to the end, too. And a better set of circumstances.

In EoA we had the clear goal: Get to Har-Akir and find the Eye, then bring it home. We also had a clear means to the end (get on the caravan and go) and circumstances that supported it which all together brought more group cohesion.

Here we've got some 9 or 10 separate PCs. Most of these PCs have no connection to the others (exceptions being Cyrus/Darius and Lia/Tomas), they're just thrown together in one house and suddenly they're all trying to save the city together. I've wondered more than once exactly why all these people are working like this. It feels unrealistic and kind of contrived and I think that's part of why there's a group breakdown. The glue that's supposed to hold us together is literally nothing more than we all live in the same house.

Most games that have strong player cohesion have either a shared vested interest, a shared origin, or a shared outlook. In EoA we had a shared interest in not wandering off into the desert. In some games, characters knew each other before, or they're all after the same target and have to stick together like EoA had. Other games, characters just have the same outlook and similar motivations (they might worship the same god or allied gods, for example). In SC we have however many individuals, all with completely different outlooks, completely different motivations and completely different vested interests.

I might go so far as to say some characters are only really interested in saving the city because that's what the PCs are supposed to do. If it weren't for them being part of the game like this, the character probably wouldn't be involved in what we've done so far. I'm not attacking anyone's character creation. I'm just noting that the motivation for saving PaL is much stronger in some characters than others -- so this is clearly not going to work for group unity.

So instead of just "Bring back Death/Save Thierri/Bring Justice," I think we need to have a clearer path on how to reach the end. Those are good goals but that alone isn't enough to keep us together without the means.

We're three chapters in and I'm still not clear on what we're doing or what we're supposed to be doing other than having a vague sense that at the end of the game PaL will not be shattered anymore (for better or worse). First we're running off to a ship, then we're headed out to a remote village because of the plague. If you ask me, we're well past the time for setup and we should already know what we're supposed to be looking for. Even if it means you infodump on us next chapter, it's better than us flailing around with some vague "save the city, save Dementlieu" idea in our heads.

[DocBeard]

ICly if anything is going to get these guys to open up and start communicating, its a setback like this.

OOCly, on the PC end, I think we could improve things by communicating more with each other. We're not all at a table and we don't all share everything Neo tells us.

Like, I think you guys would have been more accepting of Tomas's decision to charge if you guys knew that I had gotten a good look at Poincare's ritual and realized she'd been misleading her posse about what it was supposed to do. His priority became stopping the last grave hound from empowering the thing.

Well, I'm assuming she mislead Anne-Marie. She could have just been psycho. Either way the ritual was a pretty straightforward necromantic empowerment thing that didn't have much purpose outside of giving Poincare an army of the damned.

And, frankly, we've heard Anne-Marie blame the PCs for being stupid and not tell us what the heck is going on twice in a row already. The whole reason Poincare had her there, I'd wager, was to slow us up so she could finish the ritual before we interrupted.

I've obviously got a different play style than the majority of the group and it seems to be grating things. So lets talk about it, fight about it, whatever. But if we get all of our crap on the table and really discuss things, I think it'll relieve a lot of the pressure on the DM to juggle this stuff.

Thanks to Nerit for helping me make my final point a bit more clear there.

[lostboy]

No offence Doc but if Tomas had behaved any other way, privy information or no then you would'nt have been doing him justice. Thats what Paladin's are for afterall...

And Kage yes I really hate Cyrus as a character but again that's the point in him isnt it? He's self righteous, arrogant and fully convinced the world only works in line with his world view. The fact I detest him means you've done a great job playing him.

I'm sure Nicolas is annoying and his humour is less than appreciated at times, but then that's exactly what I'm trying to go for. Nicolas is the unwelcome comedy relief that occasionally proves he's not entirely worthless.

So yes lets have a little more cohesion and working towards the same goal, but don't anyone dare apologise for playing their character, or try and tone them down. Afterall if we all just got along and played generic 1 dimesional d&d characters that grunt a lot, hang out in taverns, and have no long term goals except killing stuff and looting every dragons nest between here and Ulan Baator we would all have given up and gone home by now.

I think the other thing is that we shouldn't get too hung up on having a lofty purpose for adventuring. If you personally feel your pc wants to save the city, awesome, but another's motivation might simply be monetary reward (hell it was good enough motivation for Han Solo in the early days). But perhaps that motivation develops over the course of the campaign as your character grows. I can safely say right now Nicolas doesn't give a fig for the city, he's in it because its more interesting than sitting around doing nothing, being a sensualist forces one to crave stimulation (yes he is that shallow). But Therri is lost, death and plague are happening around him, I can see a realignment of his priorities coming on very soon, even for one as flaky as the poet.

Bottom line I might not be privy to all the detail Neo alludes to in making that post but my take would be to use the situation and develop our pc's forward naturally. For whatever faults people ascribe to the game I'm loving it, so hats off to all the pc's and especially Neo and Isy.

Of course I might be talking utter sh1t, so feel free to disagree. End of the day I'll go with whatever decision needs to be made to keep the game going.

[NeoTiamat]

It would certainly be nice if the players communicated a bit more. However, that refrain has also been sung more than once, both in this campaign and in the last one.

I would also like to reiterate that this is not any player's fault. No player is. If you have problems with this, go talk to me.

Unlike EoA where everyone had an absolute, concrete goal from the start of the game (journey to the tomb, find the eye), the very nature of an investigatory game means our long term goals should be needed to remain secret, or there would be no mystery to reveal at a climactic moment.

We're three chapters in and I'm still not clear on what we're doing or what we're supposed to be doing other than having a vague sense that at the end of the game PaL will not be shattered anymore (for better or worse). First we're running off to a ship, then we're headed out to a remote village because of the plague. If you ask me, we're well past the time for setup and we should already know what we're supposed to be looking for. Even if it means you infodump on us next chapter, it's better than us flailing around with some vague "save the city, save Dementlieu" idea in our heads.

In the end, I've gotten over-ambitious about this, and I am not nearly good enough to pull off the ambition. Moreover, I have a horror of railroading. So you end up with very compex, convoluted plots where the DM does not to do anything to force you onto the right path. Moreover, Cronax is right. This is a more investigative campaign, so if I tell you just what you need to do to get to the end... there goes about half the campaign. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, the way things are going, but nevertheless.

Well, I will do my level best to try and fix this in Book Four. I may not succeed, but I will try.

In hindsight, which is not terribly helpful, I think we should have designed our characters and back-stories communally so they would be more tightly interlocked in motivations and have a higher degree of group loyalty. It would have detracted a little from the first chapter's 'getting-to-know-each-other' theme, but would have helped things in the long run.

Here we've got some 9 or 10 separate PCs. Most of these PCs have no connection to the others (exceptions being Cyrus/Darius and Lia/Tomas), they're just thrown together in one house and suddenly they're all trying to save the city together. I've wondered more than once exactly why all these people are working like this. It feels unrealistic and kind of contrived and I think that's part of why there's a group breakdown. The glue that's supposed to hold us together is literally nothing more than we all live in the same house.

Most games that have strong player cohesion have either a shared vested interest, a shared origin, or a shared outlook. In EoA we had a shared interest in not wandering off into the desert. In some games, characters knew each other before, or they're all after the same target and have to stick together like EoA had. Other games, characters just have the same outlook and similar motivations (they might worship the same god or allied gods, for example). In SC we have however many individuals, all with completely different outlooks, completely different motivations and completely different vested interests.

I might go so far as to say some characters are only really interested in saving the city because that's what the PCs are supposed to do. If it weren't for them being part of the game like this, the character probably wouldn't be involved in what we've done so far. I'm not attacking anyone's character creation. I'm just noting that the motivation for saving PaL is much stronger in some characters than others -- so this is clearly not going to work for group unity.

Originally, when this game was still being set up, there was a great deal of back-and-forth discussion over how to hook all of you together. I believe on early idea involved you all basically working for Devereux as supernaturally-oriented private detectives.

The problem there is that this sort of things constrains PC ideas significantly. It's a kind of railroading, basically. “I will accept this kind of concept, and only this kind of concept.” Moreover, some of the players were making their characters months before the game started, and people were getting very into it. It is hard to say no to concepts when the people are already enthusiastic and excited about it, especially when in at least one case I was frankly afraid I would lose the player if I shot down the concept.

So in retrospect, we went with the broadest, least-intrusive form of grouping everyone together that we could think of. The hope was that motivations would be provided on their own, between us putting a question in the Questionnare...

12. Why do you adventure? This is the most important question. This isn’t the Menetnashte Expedition. There’s no desert to keep the PCs in the campaign. If the character says he’s had enough and hops on a train to Lamordia, then there’s relatively little to stop him. In the Shattered City, your character will need to make a choice to adventure. Why does your character make that choice? The easiest here is for him to be a committed altruist, for him to want to help others and stop the spreading darkness. But there are other options. Does he have a mission he’ll follow through till the bitter end? Or maybe it’s just the damnable curiosity which will lead you into adventure?

...And just generally pushing everyone together regularly. Obviously, this has not worked terribly well. Unfortunately, it's also a bit too late to go back and try and change all these character concepts, unless you people want to . Hindsight, as they say, is 20-20.