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[NJW2000]

Yay, more players! wanna join a union, skymarshal?

[SkyMarshal]

I'll pass.  There's not much a union would be good for in this setting, imo.

[Ozarck]

I'll pass.  There's not much a union would be good for in this setting, imo.

Never underestimate the power of identifying the redshirts.

[Urist McCoder]

I think the union is an interesting idea even if it just means I know that instead of running The person next to me might help me not die (so what if it's wishful thinking.)

[Ozarck]

I think the union is an interesting idea even if it just means I know that instead of running The person next to me might help me not die (so what if it's wishful thinking.)

I think it's useful jut because it's funny. Keep it up.

[Lenglon]

I think the union is an interesting idea even if it just means I know that instead of running The person next to me might help me not die (so what if it's wishful thinking.)

You underestimate your teammates. also, you overestimate the union.

[NJW2000]

He's a pretty damn busy guy, so does anyone know what rolling system PW used for Dead Man Running? Just didn't want to bother him... 😏

[Lenglon]

There needs to be a public discussion about the basic right of a player to control their own character and how certain leadership individuals have been attempting to micromanage the players under their command right now. This has gotten out of hand. also, I'm not going to be accepting a single PM on the subject, and anyone that tries it will have their PM reposted in this thread as fast as I see it. RC's most recent ones have crystalized this issue for me.

I am currenty very angry, but I'll try to keep this simple and clean. Leadership players are attempting to micromanage people to the point that the individual players have no right to choose their own fate anymore. That is wrong.

I am expecting a counterargument based on teamwork / performance.

I don't care.

The problem is the teamwork / performance argument is correct in of itself. a team that is nothing but the leader's sockpuppets will generally perform better, with no conflicting actions or waste, always having a plan, having perfect coordination etc. however it's not any fun for anyone but the leader, because nobody else is actually getting to play the game.

And then when players go off the rails, no matter the results, they get lashed out at. case in point - look at what Flint did on Snapdragon mission. As a veteran player, he decided to follow his own judgement and do what he felt was correct. He constantly focused on the objectives and the well-being of the team. He didn't take any actions that risked harming a teammate in any way. and in fact he was one of the most effective people on-mission. Yet because he chose to act on his own he was berated and there was a major OOC shitstorm over it. He was punished post-mission with a minor token deduction. and in general people were mad at him for... playing his own character and not spending the entire mission babysitting. EDIT: bad example.

that was wrong, and it's just one example among several.

There is no way to IC justify doing something that gives worse results, but here's reality - games aren't fun when you aren't allowed to play. and that's what the current level of micromanagement is doing.
yes, it's not at the point, yet, of people actually conceding their volition to make actions for their own characters. but that's what's being pushed for, and those that try to maintain control of their own characters are being berated and penalized by those in leadership positions for daring to have independent behavior.

[Unholy_Pariah]

Oh look, it's not me wanting personal freedom and enjoyable gameplay today.

[Xantalos]

Perhaps y'all should join an organization intended to support the menials to ensure that this doesn't happen.
A ... what's the word I'm looking for ... confederacy?

[swordsmith04]

I'm not going to argue with you, because I personally happen to agree, but I have to object to your example, in particular your assertion that Flint was penalized when I was handing out mission pay for Snapdragon - I very explicitly judged actions and results as a player, rather than my character, and chose OOCly to not penalize either of you. (How exactly is coming out of a mission with 7 and 8 tokens when the maximum paid was 9 and minimum 5 being penalized, anyway?)

And of course my character berated him for going off on his own when the entire planet was hostile and he was the most well-armed character on a mission with several new characters. Did I ever actually order him to return, or tell Steve to shock him if he didn't obey my commands? No, I didn't. The one shock order I gave was when I interpreted him as attempting to destroy the objective, and that was a conditional that never actually occurred because I misunderstood his intentions. Don't use Snapdragon as your example, because I tried to play that as hands-off as I reasonably could, and we had the permadeaths to show it.

[Lenglon]

hm? I guess I mixed up the conversation and the tokens. sorry swordsmith. Let me just strike the example out, it's probably unnecessary.

Oh look, it's not me wanting personal freedom and enjoyable gameplay today.

Yes, it's the same issue, but I'm trying to keep it a lot more civil of a discussion than that one became.

[Xantalos]

While being reprimanded for going out of line might be getting a bit excessive, I dunno, I've found that the actual consequences for breaking the rules aren't as severe as one would expect, as the guy playing the character who's probably broken the rules the most out of all of us by this point. That might have changed since my last stint of fuckery admittedly, but a lot of it is bark, not actual bite.

[Lenglon]

Xan - so verbal abuse is perfectly fine and acceptable, so long as their character's stats or bolded actions aren't affected? I don't agree with that, at the very least once it bleeds over from IC into OOC it pretty much instantly becomes a problem. and sometimes it's excessive in IC as well.

The reason I kinda want to use Snapdragon as my example is because of the OOC shitstorm it stirred up, even though it was in the end about nothing. It was quite seriously the mildest example of someone going off the rails I could find, with them doing everything right. That's the kind of thing that, around mission 5 or whatever, would have been commended. The kind of behavior we wanted and gave extra tokens out for.

Try re-reading the soundworm mission sometime, with the level of micromanagement and coordination going on in mind.
the thing was a giant clusterfuck wasn't it?
yet wasn't it also an awesome read?
what about SC putting in the effort to play Jim as properly antagonistic and anti-team? wasn't that awesome? wouldn't that get shut down SO FAST in the current environment?

[Xantalos]

I don't really know in all honesty since my experience of ER for quite a while was 'wait to revive after dying' and I've caused so much damage in my deaths I don't even mind temporarily being banned from amps, especially since I can work around it for what I need to do eventually. I dunno about your situation, all I can offer is that IC should stay IC.