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[Parisbre56]

((Nah, I don't like OOC threads, I think they make the game too... disconnected, too hard to read and understand, especially in a game where there is little to no roleplay.
And I think piecewise likes reading this and seeing all the talks in one place.

I think what WOULD be helpful to him would be someone taking all the action posts and quoting them, since that takes a lot of time. That way he only has to go through his PMs and match them to the actions. It's a simple yet time consuming task that provides the one doing it with no advantage other than moral satisfaction.))

[Xanmyral]

Hm... I can do that if liked. Not now though, have work soon, but if it helps Piecewise out then yeah, why not?

[Sarzael]

((Nah, I don't like OOC threads, I think they make the game too... disconnected, too hard to read and understand, especially in a game where there is little to no roleplay.
And I think piecewise likes reading this and seeing all the talks in one place.

I think what WOULD be helpful to him would be someone taking all the action posts and quoting them, since that takes a lot of time. That way he only has to go through his PMs and match them to the actions. It's a simple yet time consuming task that provides the one doing it with no advantage other than moral satisfaction.))

And, who does that, would send the quotes to Piecewise in a PM, right?

[Toaster]

Honestly, if he needs more time, he should reintroduce a cap on this game.  There are fourty one characters listed in his sheet (several of which I think are inactive.)  Even putting a huge cap on it like twenty and let the current crowd go down by attrition would make this less of a time sink.

[Sarzael]

Honestly, if he needs more time, he should reintroduce a cap on this game.  There are fourty one characters listed in his sheet (several of which I think are inactive.)  Even putting a huge cap on it like twenty and let the current crowd go down by attrition would make this less of a time sink.

Well, i would prefer there not to be a cap, but maybe an death time? If you die permanently, you can come back in hmmm a week? That would make players have to be more careful while reducing the actions per turn.

[Bigf00t]

Honestly, if he needs more time, he should reintroduce a cap on this game.  There are fourty one characters listed in his sheet (several of which I think are inactive.)  Even putting a huge cap on it like twenty and let the current crowd go down by attrition would make this less of a time sink.

Well, i would prefer there not to be a cap, but maybe an death time? If you die permanently, you can come back in hmmm a week? That would make players have to be more careful while reducing the actions per turn.

Honestly, I'm damn impressed that he is doing as well as he is, since about... page 350-ish I started to get the gist of just how hard is must be, with an inordinate number of turns having new players join!

I think if he asked damn near anyone in the game to help out, we would gladly accept, it's just a matter of if he wants the help.

@PW If there is anything I could do to help you out let me know, but I've just hit my 5 weeks of holidays from uni so I've got some time up my sleeve. The worst that can happen is I say no, although I'll say now that's pretty unlikely.

[Sarzael]

Honestly, if he needs more time, he should reintroduce a cap on this game.  There are fourty one characters listed in his sheet (several of which I think are inactive.)  Even putting a huge cap on it like twenty and let the current crowd go down by attrition would make this less of a time sink.

Well, i would prefer there not to be a cap, but maybe an death time? If you die permanently, you can come back in hmmm a week? That would make players have to be more careful while reducing the actions per turn.

Honestly, I'm damn impressed that he is doing as well as he is, since about... page 350-ish I started to get the gist of just how hard is must be, with an inordinate number of turns having new players join!

I think if he asked damn near anyone in the game to help out, we would gladly accept, it's just a matter of if he wants the help.

@PW If there is anything I could do to help you out let me know, but I've just hit my 5 weeks of holidays from uni so I've got some time up my sleeve. The worst that can happen is I say no, although I'll say now that's pretty unlikely.

Well, i got two months, so i could also help if needed.

[syvarris]

I'll throw in that I'd love to help if I can, although I don't see any way I could.

_{And no, I'm not just saying that in hopes turns might happen more often.  It might be a major factor, but it's not the only reason.}

[Toaster]

+1

[Sarzael]

I'll throw in that I'd love to help if I can, although I don't see any way I could.

_{And no, I'm not just saying that in hopes turns might happen more often.  It might be a major factor, but it's not the only reason.}

Nor do i, also if we help him he will be in better mood, better mood=Hints! and will have more free time for himself.
Still, we should see if he would like us to help before going further on this discussion.

[piecewise]

Alright well I've got about half of the posts for this turn done, but I figured I'd talk to you guys about the current state of things.

As much as I hate to admit it, I think we can all tell that these posts are getting to the sort of size that I'm having a hard time managing it. I make mistakes, miss posts and forget to do various other things. I believe I have simply overextended myself; especially considering Perplexicon started as nothing but a test of a system for an entirely different game, something to do in my off time since ER wasn't busy. Now it takes up more then 3 times as much of my time. And it's not just the number of players thats the problem. It's the complexity of each post, the required digging through several sheets and tables, checking stats and doing rolls.  Unlike ER, which has relatively few rolls an is mostly centered around roll playing, so I can handle much more people in a much smaller, easier amount of time.

So, now comes the question of how to fix this. I like the way so many people interact together, but really the simplest way to do this would be to cut us down to like 10 people and have another wait list. That would put us back on one post a day at least.

I've thought of a variety of other things as well. Staggering the turns so it's 10 posts a day but still 30 people or so playing, which is fine as long as people aren't interacting much, but becomes complex when they do. Probably non-tenable. Getting help might work, but the unfortunate part of that is it means that whoever helps me can't play anymore because they'll have all sorts of inside information. Also I'm not sure how that would even work...they take 10 posts and I take 10? Hm. Doesn't seem terribly likely either. Or maybe a gameplay style where there are only 8 characters, one for each god, and they're controlled via  committee of players, like a gestalt entity or a robot with multiple pilots.  That would lead to some interesting situations, no doubt, of debates over exactly how to stab a man to death.   I can just end the game and give out the word list and everything for people to use as they wish, but that would mean losing my "wonderful gm-ing." Massive quotation marks  for emphasis. I dunno.

I do think that something needs to change though, because frankly, I'm not giving you guys as good of GM'ing as I'd like to. So, suggest away. Lets work out something everyone can agree on.

[ArchAIngel]

Cut it down by making it so that, unless you specifically say that you will be away for a while, being away for five turns makes your head explode and your stuff vanish into the aether. That should help.

[Dansmithers]

Cut it down by making it so that, unless you specifically say that you will be away for a while, being away for five turns makes your head explode and your stuff vanish into the aether. That should help.

Make it two.

[Xanmyral]

That would cut down on the list, but not sure if it would successfully make it easier on Piecewise however... Maybe if we include our character sheet in all of our IC posts in a spoiler might make it easier for him to find stats and items and so such, as well as quote all future actions in our initial IC post for ease of finding in one place. Stating your location above your post might help too, putting it in bold and so such. Something like...

[TEMPLE GROUNDS]

"IMMA SMASH YER SKULL!" Kill random dude.

Spoiler: Ran Domguy (click to show/hide)

Name: Ran Domguy
Description: Largely average
STR: 10
END: 0
DEX: 0
SPD: 0
POT: 0
CHA: 0
AWR: 0
WIL: 0

INV: Nothing

Having someone collect and quote all the IC posts for Piecewise in one place would help too, I bet, as mentioned previous, then people could make a link in their IC post that points to said post. Would require more work on our part, but might make it easier for Piecewise.

[Toaster]

Tough call.  I think the real question is this:  How attached are you to the world?  Back when it was an 8-man deathmatch, you knocked out 2-3 posts a day in this with ease.  Now, with the huge world and player list, it's suddenly overly complex.  You quadrupled the playerbase but also tripled the complexity, leaving you with 12x the work.  Something has to give.  I can see how the world would feel empty with fewer players, though.  I'd put out a few possibilities:


1:  Cap the players, somewhere between 10 and 20.  Cut anyone who hasn't acted recently, then let attrition whittle it down to the desired number.  You could tweak the number until you're comfortable.

2:  Shrink the world.  Honestly, it'd be a lot of pre-work and probably wouldn't actually help the time it takes you.  Would only really make a difference with a cap as well.

3:  Chuck the world.  Save it for another project (because it'd be a shame to put the work you put into it to waste) and bring back the arena.  Again, I'd still do a cap (maybe 16, since it's twice the old arena) and make the arena a bit bigger, then don't even try to do more than one post a day.  5-6 a week.  You could even save some concepts (the gods, occasional NPCs, some loot options perhaps) without completely losing the feel.


Really, there's no feasible option that doesn't involve a player cap.  It's up to you, and how much work you're willing to put in.  Hell, if you wanted to shelve the entire thing, that'd be your call too.  (We love it please don't do that)  You're putting in a herculean GMing effort, considering I don't think I've seen another RTD with over 10 players (at a time) playing, and you're doing TWO with over THIRTY players.