IHS vs Video Chat Campaign, the Future of Primus, Shock and Confusion

I've been mulling this over a fair bit now. I only just noticed and watched roughly the first 13 minutes of the first Primus Campaign video chat episode, mainly to learn all I could before that game started proper. I stewed this over in a boiling pot, and amidst checking and rechecking my reaction, I decided it would be best if I didn't hold it in until the original campaign finally restarted--as that would not be a mature way to handle it--and that I should just react now. I then decided that, out of the comments section on Youtube, the PM and the ISH thread(dubbed for "insert subject here") and starting a new thread, I figured the latter out of all of those was best. Mainly, I was deciding which of those would also be most likely for getting a response and being as public with it without going past the "circle", and also which of those would be most appropriate for the scene I was/am likely to make. Because, frankly, what I heard made me very angry and confused, which I'm toning down at length. In addition, another reason this for this post is gauging how much of my anger is caused by my confusion or vice versa, and how much of each is warranted.

So here's what's been said in the video about the original campaign, as proverbially cut&pasted by me: "Originally, the Primus campaign was not going to continue. The reasons why are varied, many, and I'm not going to share them with you. For various personal reasons, we were going to discontinue."

Unless there were things unspoken that I should have simply assumed, and unless there was further discussion privately with the members of the group now involved in this splintered campaign of the original Primus campaign, the furthest the discussion on the subject of the continuation of the original Primus campaign has gone is only as far as the "Insert Subject Here" thread. In my eyes, it wasn't nor was it showing any signs of dying. And then it just jumped straight to what was said in the video.

Was it ever officially dying, even within our circle? The way I heard it, it was on hiatus, which I considered a promised return, except on indefinite suspension. In addition, this new campaign, just the way it was suggested in the ISH thread, has now happened, without any follow-up in the forum. Now I wouldn't feel any more than a bit upset at being uninformed that said thing was happening, except we're also contending with statements of the original campaign's discontinuation. Because this is the case, I've begun to have some dangerous thoughts in regards to player consideration(if not in general, then mine in particular) as it relates to the direction of the campaign, and the knowledge surrounding said direction.

 I'm passing the ball. There are at least four people who can pick it up, maybe no more than that. I'm expecting someone to do so.

As well as i can understand it, Rory, it angers you that nobody notified you, and how it seems to suggest that you were insignificant as a player.

Sorry for trying to reiterate you, but you really spoke in a rather complex manner there, and i just want to make sure i read you correctly before i continue.

Do i?

EDIT: You know what, i can speak my own mind.

Going back and reviewing the ISH thread, i count at least 4 players that demonstrated interest in continuing the campaign. 3 seem to have been cut off.

Arch's posting was a bit confusing. I didn't quite understand what he meant as to the criteria, and i do prefer to give the benefit of the doubt on such things. You, Rory, assumed the worse and responded accordingly, as i then tried to distill the heart of the matter - the criteria for being chosen, and asked Arch for clarification. His response was, and i quote, "The criteria were already outlined really. Webcam, mic, willingness to appear on the show.", which made me think maybe it had been some kinda miscommunication that there was some other point that was beyond our control. Still wanting to be absolutely sure, i then specifically outlined my concern, while also stating my willingness to shell out some money for a webcam if i were to continue. Not addressing my main point - which i took to mean it was unwarranted after all, Arch simply said not to spend any money as he hadn't decided anything yet.

Fast forward a few months, and here we are. I can say with certainty that i received no message and saw no piece of information about the campaign continuing, either here on on the Google Groups Forum. I will admit the possibility that there may have been something about it in the 3-hour+ long Imperium Discussion Stream a week ago, but even if so, i would think the players here deserved better than being expected to magically know about it and attend. Maybe i'm a strange person, but i don't count Twitch or Youtube as valid messaging services. Maybe Youtube would be, despite it's wonderful habit of constantly hiding your inbox from you, but i received no notification there either. I checked.

I would talk about why i think that was, and how i feel about it, but first i think it'd only be fair to hear Arch's side of it all. I hope i'm not assuming too much by expecting we'll get that.

Sadly, I got it worse than you guys, because I was at Arch's stream and I asked Arch about the campaign, which he answered me with a 'wait till tomorrow, and tell me what you think'.

So I thought he was going to make an official statement about it on Youtube, and we would now know who would play and who would not, which would also be a totally valid way of informing us.

Instead I find out the campaign has been going for a while. I doubt he was aiming for it, but it felt worse than if there was no communication.

The moment Arch asked for mic, webcam and willingness to appear in video, I knew he was going to make it an 'online' show, which made my inclusion unlikely for various reasons. My answer to Arch's thread even reflects that.

That said, the reason most of us, me included, felt hurt about it was instead the lack of communication, that often shows lack of consideration by the part of those that knew about it. This creates a feeling of alienation that felt worse because we considered there was a minimum amount of respect between us.

Anyway, a single PM would have been sufficed, telling us who didn't get in but keep it a secret (i.e. not make a thread and so on) if that was the aim.

On the positive note, I'm actually happy that the campaign is continuing and finding it interesting. I'm openly jelly that I'm not part of it tho.

That's what I'm hoping for, K. The Primus universe isn't getting scrapped, that's fine. He's starting a new campaign online for his viewers, which is honestly great. People are being left out because they can't or don't gel with the idea of being on camera, but I would totally watch too, if only I wasn't part of the original campaign.

If the original were being put on hold, which I thought it was, I would love this new thing. But apparently it's been discontinued, and I'm feeling discontent because that's the case, unless I'm taking a liberal interpretation with the word "discontinued". I genuinely hope I am making a mistake(which I'll admit I am wont to do).

As you prooobably can guess no intent to hurt anyone was involved.  Between my deteriorating emotional state and the issues I was having that lead to no videos being produced for a period of time described as 'months' I just couldn't keep doing the campaign, it wasn't happening.  Keeping track of everyone and trying to mentally cope was not working.  When I discontinued the campaign the intent was to do so forever.

There was a colossal outcry for it to continue in messages and comments on the 'we're done' video I put up so I decided if I felt up to it I'd continue it but with an absolute maximum of 3 players.  That left me in a position I used to hate being in in WoW as a raid leader; choosing who goes and who doesn't.  My sister also put forward the idea of recording the actual session and doing that rather than me summarizing my own notes, which I was nervous about but decided it was worth at least testing the formula.  So I put up that post to see who'd be interested if they were willing to put in literal face time (my comment to K was literally that I didn't want anyone spending money on something when, at the time, I wasn't even sold on the idea).  The final list of candidates was 7 strong... and that was after a few people willingly bowed out.  I had no idea how to choose whom (since the current story arc was so strongly tied to Fierneceal I couldn't say 'well I had to bring blah because they're more important to the story... or to phrase this differently, each character was just as important to themselves, to the story, and to me).  I spent more then a week debating specifics and finally asked the 3 if they thought they could make it regularly.  They could.  So I thought (for a while) about how I could break the news to everyone and decided (apparently incorrectly) to say nothing for fear of hurting anyone's feelings or making anyone feel left out.  I was actually really happy Kolson's game took off so that everyone could keep playing together.  But... yeah that's kind of the story, boring as it is. 

Now... about 3 weeks ago I dealt with some things in RL and have been feeling a lot better ever since (some of you may have noticed I'm rather suddenly back on schedule with videos).  I wanted to go a few weeks full tilt to see if I could manage the current workload before adding more, but I seem to be doing okay for now SO... to wrap this up;

I always wanted everyone's stories in Primus to continue, but I wasn't sure of a good format until it occurred to me to ask if you guys wanted to do something a little less stressful (for me, at least).  Namely a sort of return to the forum format, but instead of an actual play by play more sweeping.  For example, I tell you the situation you find yourself in and you tell me what you want to do about it... not immediately but in terms of basically your entire plan.  Some dice are rolled and I tell you how well it went.  I would probably also implement a system I heard about at GenCon which I liked (summary: It's impossible to actually fail a roll, but the dice and modifiers determine how well or poorly you succeed at it).  So if anyone's interested in that I think I'd be down for it.

In conclusion, I apologize to everyone.

Apologies accepted. A fair part of it was also me being an egocentric human to be honest, just like the rest of the humanity, so yeah, it happens.

And yeah, forum format is fine, although I'm wondering how it would work in the way you describe.

Also wondering how this no-failure rolling works in practice, because it sounds interesting to my gameplay-loving and storytelling-loving parts of my weird brain at the same time. Go figure.

That no-fail system sounds pretty interesting. Would you mind elaborating on it at some point? I'm trying so hard not to ask a million questions right now, lol.

Anyway, I'm up for giving it a shot. I've never done the "overall-plan-then-roll" thing before so I'll have to see how it works in play before I commit 100%.

I do admit I would have liked to be notified in advance of who would play the campaign for the show, even if I already knew I wouldn't get to. Nevertheless, I didn't feel hurt by this so that's why I didn't respond to this thread before.

As for restarting the campaign in a limited forum format, I would certainly love being part of that. And truth be told, I didn't expect to be involved in it anymore. I imagined that Arch may one day send me a PM asking me a few guidelines about Zeiss the character, but that's pretty much it. So learning that we could maybe restart our adventures, even if it is at a different pace, is quite the pleasant surprise.

There is still some assassins who need to be dealt with. *angry face*

As far as this new system, that seems fun and time-saving.

I accept your apology!

That's a reference, I won't tell you from where though. But I mean it. Thanks for clearing that up. Your mental health is more important than my desire to be entertained.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsqJFIJ5lLs

I hope interactivity isn't a trade-off. We can open a new thread and start a couple short examples and a summary of what to expect based on said examples, and just work it out from there.

I'll first use an example of the 'no fail' dice roll.  Let's say you want to climb up onto this pretty precarious ledge, and your Athletics roll is only a 3.  This means that you will, eventually, get up there but it will take quite a long time and you'll scuff your face and get a few cuts on the rockface and by the time you get there you're so worn out and irritated that you need a moment to rest before trying anything else.  And if someone was chasing after you they'd have ample time to catch up.

Another method of the 'no fail' rolls is to let you basically keep retrying the roll until it's high enough to make it.  This one's a bit more random (you COULD succeed earlier and easier, but you could also roll in the single digits 8 times in a row) but the result is sort of the same; IE instead of the 3 determining the above barely-made-it it'd be the fact that it took you (for example) 3 rolls to succeed, hence barely making it.  I kind of like the former better but both are feasible.


Now, the forum format I had vaguely in mind I can do a quick test of.  Let's assume a totally imaginary situation here; Javan, Rory, Higaide, Zeiss, and Kolson are all sitting in Irongut's Inn (owned by a local Ogre) together planning their next move.  It's about 11 AM on a Sunday and they just finished (insert random quest here) successfully and have received full payment for services rendered, but heard about a job one town over to the west.  The tavern is fairly bustling, quite crowded and loud, which helps to make your conversation difficult to overhear but also means you can't quite listen in on others either.  The current fare is poached duck with farro, and today the spiced apple cider is all they're serving drink wise.

Suddenly there is a loud BANG sound as the door leading outside is flung open and several heavily armed soldiers burst in, stalling the hubbub of the tavern.  You hear one shout in Common, "We're looking for the thieves who stole (insert item the party just took), no one is to interfere with our investigation under penalty of imprisonment!"  Naturally the bar-goers do not take kindly to this invasion of privacy and the noise goes up significantly as they begin yelling (drunkenly and otherwise) at the soldiers.

*ahem*  This is the part where you can post what you'd like to do and how and why and whatnot.  Now if I was doing this for real there'd be two threads active, right?  One is the IC thread and one's the OOC; OOC is for clarifying anything with me but, more importantly, discussing your actions together so as to not clutter the IC thread.  Though I suppose if you wanted to it could all be in one thread but the idea remains the same.

My impulsive side is ever at odds with my rational side, but even as i spewed out my frustration in the post, i knew in my head you couldn't have done it do diss anyone. That would have been maybe the Archengeia from the Mirror Universe, but not you.

I'd be down with that forum thing, sure. I'm curious to see how that no-fail thing will work out.

Btw, the K from the Mirror Universe is probably an affable lovely person, just saying.

Javan would probably use Knowledge Politics 10 to remember something the authorities did recently that left the people angry and wasn't solved to satisfaction, then pass the information to Zeiss, and help him with Deceit 10 if we choose to start something. Otherwise, Javan would just stay out of line of sight as he stands out like a sore thumb.

Hmm. Okay. I think I'd just have to dive in. As for the separation of OOC and IC into different threads, I'd suggest that they each have their own sub-archive. Even then, each thread would have to be tagged as OOC or IC with a prefix part of the thread title.

OOC threads would be placed in their own archive, with the IC thread archive right alongside that, while everything else in "Current Adventure" would be moved to "Campaign Archives" to keep site navigation simple.

The OOC thread for the then-current IC thread could be stickied at the top of the IC archive.

Alright, I'll give it a shot.

Kolson avoids eye-contact and generally tries to make himself as inconspicuous to the guards as possible while Zeiss enacts his plan and he'll ready an action to use the Exit Materia if things get too out of hand.

Question: What does the path out the back look like? Would we have to go out through the kitchen cause I can think of one epic adventure that started that way.

Checks:

Javan successfully remembers an incident not far from here where the local constabulary was basically owned by a small yet effective gang that had claimed the town and its nearby trading routes.  The guards at this town were less then popular and between them and the gang itself lead to the Sho military becoming involved.  Javan passes this info to Zeiss to use in his speech, which has an almost immediate result of the tavern goers (many of whom are in fact ex-adventurers and/or mercenaries) to swarm the soldiers.  The soldiers quickly find themselves totally distracted and on the defensive, utterly unaware of the party at this point.

Kolson, thinking ahead, recalls that there is in fact a way out back through the kitchen.  He overheard in an earlier conversation with the barkeep that there is a larder as well which connects to a local cave network that could lead the party out of town if need be.

Looking for the appropriate moment, Zeiss slips through the crowd to rejoin the rest of the party who are on their way to escape the inn. Unsure of where exactly they should go, he simply follows them, hoping they knew what they were doing.

This system does seem preferable to the previous forum format. As Kolson said to me, this allows a faster pace combined with a narrative that focuses more on characterization.  We could also do all the minor knowledge rolls into the OOC thread, like the one Javan asked for. Unless the others would prefer to see more of this "no fail" method in action, I think we know what to expect.

Alright then, just for funyuns. I'm actually going to stick around and see if I can control the crowd.

Rory swallows a mouthful of whiskey(which he probably already paid for) and slams the bottle on the table--sloshing some of the drink as he does--and rises from the table, bellowing a heady speech.
"No one here wants to comply with your finger-pointin' an' stick-pointin', you key-swallowing iron-clappers! Came in here looking for a fight, didja? You can arm each of yourselves with as many a pike, sword, and knife and magic draught as you wish, but you still gotta pick your battles! Stiff drink, and testy disposition make for all the stronger, an' we got a whole heck of a lot o' both in us, and numbers to boot! Now, ask yourselves if you be felt the kiss o' lady luck this mornin', an' make your move: toward us, or toward the door."

Rolls: http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/4614133/
First roll is for Intimidating the soldiers, 24
Second is for to raise the morale of the crowd. This will be either the second Intimidate roll shown(31), or the Diplomacy(20), at your discretion.

Higaide goes with the party out the inn, so as to better honor Rory's sacrifice of making himself beacon for the soldier's attention.

Yeah, as Zeiss said, I'm definitely sold.