11. HMD Meme

[k_squared_mods]

☑ HOW'S MY DRIVING MEME

All of us have those moments where we are uncertain about our characterization. Sometimes feedback is the best medicine! So, step on up and post your roleplay accounts and the games you have them in. Let others come by and tell you how you're doing and let others know what you think! Give legitimate reasons and not just "I love you!" Save that for our monthly love memes.


     » Anon is enabled but do not abuse it!
     » Don't circlejerk.
     » Flaming will not be tolerated, play nicely!
     » Remember to give critique


If there are any problems, please report them HERE and we will take care of it as soon as we can.

!PLEASE READ: There have been instances of anon bullying & threats in both the HMD and Love memes, so we wanted to stress how important it is that you bring this to us if it happens. Don't ignore something just because you think it's "too small" to bring to us.

Also, please be considerate of the players browsing this meme! Try to limit the amount of graphics and sparkle texts you use while commenting to others! 

**The basic formatting of this meme was borrowed from hmd_me

Comments

[shirouchan]

This may turn out kind of hard to pinpoint or confusing, and I apologize if it does, but I wanted to be able to give you some crit, and this is all I could come up with. (That's a good thing. :|)

I can't say anything about Nathaniel's characterization because I don't know the series, but I have no doubt you play him well. Even so, he still caught my eye in a a negative way recently. Suddenly, he had a few (two?) logs with the animus, but I had no idea why or what they were about, and I wasn't interested enough to check them out because it was, well, only Nathaniel.

I was pretty surprised when I found out that it was such a big deal, and that a sole character was making such an impact on his own. Once others were allowed to contribute, it was more interesting, but it still had a distinctly exclusive feel to it. Because the deed was done, no one else in game could actually do anything except talk to someone who had done something. I wouldn't be surprised if a good portion of the game never even noticed anything was up. The animus' announcement was probably all that really alerted anyone they should be paying attention. Even then, characters couldn't do anything about it.

I don't know your future plans, which may just blow all of this away and make me look stupid, but I feel like I couldn't even call that an RP plot because it was all one guy doing things that only affected one guy.

If that makes any sense at all.

[death_begins]

No, I totally understand all of this! There's actually a bunch of stuff that went into this- eh, plot? And it had all been building for awhile.

So- IC things first! Basically, in the wake of Ekpyrosis take 1, Nat lost a bunch of his CR- which, I expected him to, and was my fault for just letting it happen and not reaching out more with him, but it left me with little to broadcast and nobody he could really trust. He sort of hid from the world for awhile, but did the whole revenge plotting thing and had actually been working on figuring out a way to take down Aelia for... several months now- actually the plot was set in motion way back when the first event ended and Aelia gave Nat a book detailing Ekpyrosis that sort of got him started on the path. Long story short, since then he's been hermited because of the first Ekpyrosis event and plotting out revenge against Aelia. We handwaved him summoning Thalatte, and he's been trying to compile different magics from different worlds so that his next summoning would go better- unfortunately, he's the type of character who wouldn't just straight up ask for help, so when he did it publicly, it was in some roundabout ways. This post, for example, was made with an ulterior motive of trying to identify some magics and abilities that people had to see if they could help him contain the Animus in his circle. But yeah, I do feel like I played this post as far too secretive and didn't really get what I was going for.

I can give you more links to individual threads he's had in the months since then, but I'm pretty sure that the concern is more of the fact that the whole big plot seemed so sudden ICly and there wasn't really much involvement with the rest of the game, when it was supposed to be a big deal. There's a few reasons why it unfolded this way- and believe me, I wanted it to be big and loud and in your face and involving the whole way through (haha just ask Siren how many times I pp'd her going BUT REALLY HOW ARE WE GOING TO ALLOW FOR OTHERS TO BE INVOLVED?), I just got caught up in a few snags.

We spent hours trying to throw ideas around at one another for how to involve other characters, but the situation that it involved (the summoning and attacking), we felt would be too hard to manage if it was basically Nat opening a tunnel into the Inner City and having an 'everybody attack at once!' thing. With the format of the log that would be, it would either be bogged down by how many people would be tagging into one thread, or really uncoordinated with everyone attacking Aelia in a different thread. Plus, due to Aelia's power and the city's reluctance to strike against the Animus, it wouldn't have worked ICly. We wanted to pull off something that would involve people, but not something that required a lot of waiting around for 50 other people to tag. So a big fight log was out.

Nat wouldn't have ICly outright asked the entire city for help, because he anticipated resistance and people wanting to stop him, and he is a secretive character by nature, hence the post several months ago that didn't... really lead anywhere. And, hindsight is 20/20, but I didn't realize until after the fact how exclusive it all looked when we were trying our hardest to make it inclusive, and I should have just bent his character for the sake of everyone helping out, but... I didn't and that's on me.

BUT! I will say that the whole event thing didn't... exactly go as I had planned it to. Since we figured that we couldn't be very inclusive prior to the attack and couldn't be very inclusive during the attack, I thought that hey, let's do something big as a fallout so people can still be involved with the city collapsing while still giving Nat at least something of a victory.

That was supposed to be the glitch event (which was... supposed to be a 'grab bag' event, but I guess communication lines got crossed somewhere?). I had thought that there was going to be more of a mod announcement going 'this is why the glitch event is happening', or even an IC animus announcement going 'hey aelia's dead, now the city is tweaking out what do'- just something to let people know that I had planned it so that this event could be a fallout of the plot that people could partake in, but it was never really mentioned. I had also originally intended to make an OOC post before Nat summoned anything, just to let people know what was up and hopefully plot some things out that way, but I was advised against putting the post up.

So basically, the whole thing kind of fell apart. I thought a lot on how I could try to include the other players- there's a few people I agonized endlessly at about this- but in the end, the 'fallout' glitch event was less geared toward my plot idea and sort of just came off as an unrelated event... and even then, the whole thing came off as something much smaller than I had originally intended (which was one of the reasons I wanted to use that OOC post, but it just didn't... happen that way >>). Still, ultimately, I agree that it was more of a 'this is what my character is doing alone by himself with no chance to be helped, and this is how it affects everyone else'. And that's totally on me.

Honestly, I should have canceled this when I realized that I could only be inclusive with the fallout, but I wanted it to be fun! I wanted to make a bit of a splash with a character who was having a hard time in-game and to stir things up again.

SO ALL OF THIS HAS BEEN ME EXPLAINING MYSELF, but I will think a lot harder before trying to do anything big and game impacting later on. Thank you for your feedback! I do appreciate it, and I am sorry that it came off that way. :C I hope you don't mind me tl;dring at you, omg. ._. THIS POST GOT LONG

[mellowyellow]

Haha, that's fine! Knowing what was up like this helps put it into perspective for me. I had no idea the plot was in the works for that long, nor that that post was at all related.

I think I do remember a mention somewhere that the Glitch Event was fallout from what Nathaniel did, but I don't think there was a way for characters to know that (a lot of characters can't even sense stuff like the resulting energy explosion), so it was treated as just a wonky event.

Next time, I'd say probably go with the OOC post that you were advised against! Don't cancel a plot just because you hit a snag. I wasn't saying you should do that at all! Go to the OOC comm and ask people if they can help out. Coming up with ideas to make things inclusive WITHOUT having to bend characterization is part of what OOC communication is all about.

Wracking your brain to come up with all of that on your own takes a lot of the fun out of it. D:

[death_begins]

Yeah- and I should have been clearer OOCly- or at least in brackets or something that he was trying to make allies to rely on, but it just didn't occur to me (partially because I was like 'well this isn't happening for awhile, there's time to be super into building for the plot later').

And excuses excuses, but man, I did have a Natpost written out asking for help, and I wish more than anything now that I'd have thrown it up. :C It just got endlessly postponed with all the amazing events that were happening, and then it was too late. I really had no way of letting people know ICly that the glitch was a fallout because Nat was- well, dead at the time, but- yeah, I should have figured out a way that it would have been at least somewhat more stressed (I originally thought it was going to be in the event blurbs on the calender, but no such luck!)

But yeah. I'll try to network more OOCly next time! And probably try to gather more of a CR network with a character before attempting to pull off something that's supposed to have a lot of relevance.

[mellowyellow]

It was a cool idea and makes for interesting possibilities later on. So definitely don't apologize that the plot happened, at least. You really have put together quite a few big plots in the past and handled them extraordinarily, so the very fact that you're moving things along at all is awesome.

So I'm going to end this with, I really need to tag Rome or Yuca with Kida.

And that's that.

[rainbowcrow]

I... really wish I'd known more of this before.

I was hoping that it would end up more balanced- that it would be obvious that Nat Did A Thing, but without like... making a whole event solely about one character?

I don't know- I'm sorry that it didn't go as planned.

[lifelink]

What, no! You guys were amazing <3 Communication lines just got crossed somewhere, it's no big deal. I love what happened in the plot and our threads to pieces, I just find that I'm kicking myself for not trying to devote more energy to making sure that it was more involving and, like you said, less making the event solely about him. I feel really bad that it came off that way to other people, and it wasn't my intent at all. :C :C :C

[rainbowcrow]

Dude, your life's had like twenty things going on at the same time for months. Also, you're not the only one responsible for the plot, so if it came off the wrong way, it's not because of you. :C

Ah, I just wish we'd been able to do it earlier like we'd discussed, it would've been easier to open it up more.