I’m writing this on my Tumblr account; and once again I feel more comfortable writing it here than I do writing it straight onto my LJ. Bit weird really since I’m only going to put it there anyway.
But it seems that posting this sort of thing straight to LJ is a little out of my comfort zone. Weird.
Anyway, that’s not the main thing I wanted to say. I’m not sure how to express what I want - need - to say.
Basically, what it comes down to is this: I decide to do something and spend a few months working on it, I ask for support from the people who will be affected and get nothing/very little. So I get disheartened about it. Then I try and get things going anyway and get responses which dishearten me further, and make me wonder why the fuck I bother doing it at all.
Examples:
London Mortals. Game threatened with folding, I ask for player input and get more *visitors* attending discussions than players on the VSS. I hold discussions about the VSS and nothing actually gets resolved (I blame IRC partially for this). I have soft RP sessions that people tell me they enjoyed, but making premises that will get them to turn up is bitch-hard, and near-impossible some of the time.
Cardiff Geist. Trying to get the game running. We put forward the idea of running a new system, closer to tabletop, and immediately get the response of “but that doesn’t give me enough XP”. I put forward arguments, suggestions of changes, and get very little response. There are around 30 people on that Wave discussion and not even 10 in total have responded to the two votes on the Wave. Individual players seem keen, but there’s no general desire to help out, it seems.
Edinburgh Vigil. Trying to get a game up-and-running, but people don’t give input. I ask for input on the wiki, via email, via turning up and telling me (I’ve been making notes at each discussion) and despite a lot of people being interested at the start, there’s not been a lot of people turning up. And in the one session where there was a lot of people, that was the first discussion, and half those people never turned up again. Now, I’m aware that there are good reasons why some of them didn’t, but for others… well, it makes me wonder why I bother. And then, when I go and ask about stuff that I asked about three months ago, I get mixed responses - though that was entirely fair, and I have no complaints about that. But one of the player responses when I told them about it did make me wonder why the hell I’m bothering.
Free Council wiki. You know, when Björn and Kath asked me if I could set up a Mysterium wiki for them, I said “Sure, no problem. I should maybe do one for the FC as well.” So I did. It’s sitting there, ready and waiting. There’s a problem though. That problem is that the players need to buy into the idea, and we need to create it ICly. You know something? The Mysterium - the librarians and book-readers - are further ahead in having an IC wiki than the technophiles of the Free Council. Sound ridiculous to you? Does to me. Can I do anything about it? Nope - I can’t get anyone to do anything, and I’m not a tech-mage.
Free Council. Actually, let’s expand that last one. It’s not just the wiki thing. It’s the FC in general. Getting the FC to do something is like herding dead cats who’ve been cybernetically enhanced, brought back from the dead with necromancy and programmed to systematically ignore you and hate you at the same time while burning you to death with their necromantic laser eye-beams. Well, maybe that’s a bit extreme, but you get the idea. Some of it is for good reasons. DataWraith is busy with London stuff, for instance. But for this reactionary Awakened movement, the FC does nothing. Nothing at all. And when I try and get stuff going, it goes nowhere. I can see why people have quit playing their FC characters because of it. Hell, I even fully understand why some FC characters publically left the FC before being retired. When people leave your Order because nearly every other character in it does nothing, then something’s wrong with the people in the Order…
Ok, so I’ve had my rant. Maybe I won’t put it on LJ. Or maybe I will, in a few days or something. Who knows?
