https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrP5CBUScjw
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It's 3:45 am
You made me want to play it, I guess.
Lovely review, although I must add that having known your joyous voice from some less late-night ER talks, I expected the more monotonous intro part to be so on purpose, so that you'd burst into 'live' voice later on - which, obviously, didn't quite happen. Nonetheless, I liked the review very much.
Okay, now on to the elephant in the room - "micromanaging players by commanding officers". Since this is my debut mission in that capacity (apart from temporary team leader thing in M17), I feel that I'm at the forefront of who the accusation is aimed at ("J'accuse..!"), and, I guess, that is not baseless.
The issue, I believe, is two-fold (even if it's not quite the point initially raised by the discussion initiator). First, there's OOC part; second, there's IC part - or, rather, to be more precise, there is micromanaging that cannot be resolved in IC interactions (because the other player is absent, most likely); and there is 'micromanaging' that can be resolved via just IC correspondence.
This is a hard one. Are we supposed to 'command' someone's character when the player is not around? Sure, sometimes they can be allowed to slip into Shroedinger's Character status, semi-ignored by Piecewise and kept safe from actual mission shenanigans - but sometimes the mission is just that way that it cannot be done, either for character's safety or for the sake of everyone else on their team (because they have vital equipment/skillset/etc.). As such, I believe that:
- If nothing else, the character can be defaulted to following the assigned team/staying in the assigned place.
- If the equipment in case is 'quest' and not specifically their own, it can be moved on to someone else if needed.
- If the situation in question is dire enough that the character in question's activity (or equipment) is the only thing that can save said situation, then direct puppeteering might be enacted.
- If any of the above significantly endangers the character's life (more than doing nothing would), or, in less important cases, can cause significant loss of equipment, then such course of action should be avoided.
Reasonable enough?
Here both players are present and active, and micromanaging can happen organically, ICly. So - ...no problems here, I guess? Because I second RC's position that playing a 'renegade' character is perfectly fine, just as playing a 'bossy' character; everything can be resolved in IC disputes and, should it come to that, shanking in the showers.
IRL, there can be difficulties for some people to resist being bossed around, or some extra negative emotional feedback from such interactions. This being a forum game somewhere 'far, far away' on the Internets, I don't think that should matter a lot.
It should also be noted that while some people like to play 'leaders', and some like to play 'loners', some like to play 'team players' - with varying degrees of their own initiative. Are we to leave them to do nothing, or assign some tasks and ensure everyone feels that they're contributing to the team victory? Conversely, some times - rare times indeed - initiative has to be stifled (because reckless/endangering the whole team/just the characters themselves/something); and again, I believe it should be played out IC with full consequences of managing or mismanaging the problem ICly. Personally, I (OOCly, theoretically) resent the current inability to use shock implants; just non-black-out trickles would be a large enough argument to assert the commanders' position, while still allowing the rebellious characters reap the benefits of their freedom more fully (no sarcasm here - if there is no struggle, the accomplishment doesn't feel as good; and all this contradiction of "we have shock implants" and "they never use them on us" sort of damages the belief and feel of the setting - whereas the opposite would enrichen the RP part, I believe, as well as give the actual reason to resent their presence (or consciously choose not to resent)).
Finally, I feel that maybe a few words should be said in defense of Maurice's leadership (since it might have been what provoked Lenglon in the first place this time). While I'm trying to play him as a very assertive and determined commander, so far I've also tried to follow a certain hands-off approach (to varying degree of effectiveness). This might be relevant to current discussion by following: I've tried to avoid the accursed 'micromanaging' by giving orders and assigning tasks instead. I state an objective and leave the means to the person in question (a very military approach, in my personal experience) - and try to respect chain of command. (Though, to be honest, I've been giving more than a few suggestions or pieces of advice lately, which sort of defies that point. I apologise for that.) Given that we've been moving toward hybrid-paramiliatry organisation ever since the formation of ARM (remember that poll?), I felt that this was adding an additional texture and feel to the game experience, even if it means moving away from the HMRC roots.
(I'm still respecting individual initiative, though, as evident with Hasala's little detour.)
Oh, and lastly... M5 was utter disaster, part of which was because we didn't plan beforehand enough. I can't say how much some people being "anti-teamwork" hampered or helped the effort, because frankly, it was one of the most inconclusive missions out there. We just ran around, doing stuff, and failed - and yet somehow even got paid a little.
P.S. Is it just me, or do we need a sort of IC OOC thread?
To, you know, discuss things from IC points of view, but on a level/in situations normally precluded in the game? Because I think that was what Paris needed when he tried explaining his IC actions in OOC thread last time.
EDIT: Oh, 9 new replies. Yeah, funny enough, I agree with Devastator that that one time (M5) we totally botched the mission, and, by current standards (revolutionaries whose fight is involved in the bigger picture, rather than convicts ordered around) we probably shouldn't have been paid at all, or just a couple tokens at most.
M22... was a success, on the other hand. Non-perfect score, sure, but it's hard to have perfect score against an AoP even with a AoW, which they didn't have with them. Surviving it, I agree, was enough success on its own - because it was clearly an objective on the enemy's list, which we denied.
It's not that "the only way to fail a mission is to TPK". It's that that particular mission was a direct engagement with enemy forces, engagement which we won by bonus points (denying them their objective of TPKing us, surviving the ordeal) in a way of near-pyrrhic victory (MAD). Were it not about an engagement with UWM, it would have been graded differently, for example (e.g., I do believe that AoPs are non-renewable resource for UWM, for example).
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Topic: Einsteinian Roulette: OOC and NEW PLAYER INFO (Read 2495623 times)