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Admin Chatter
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#481Well, I know I'm not AG, but I cannot help but answer. I bought FF12 the day it came out and I already have a few minutes shy of 40 hours on my mission clock, plus I am at level 28. This, tied with a weekend horseshow is the primary reason I've not been very active on the site as of late.
Why does FF12 rock?
1. While there is still a major story being told, it is not dominated by single member of the party, IE no plot domination by a Zidane/Cloud/Tidus type, though the standard young thief boy and standard lead is available. Of the six characters, no single character dominates the arc, and characters are interchangeable at any time, so long as they are not involved directly in combat (IE targeted by a spell, attack, or special ability)
2. Rather than tedious button pressing though long levels of leveling up, foes can be seen on the map to be hunted or avoided, plus the gambit system lets you program your character's actions so you aren't tied to an active timer, or turn based system. My party is set with HP -
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#482Okay, I was working on the finalists for the quest, and there are a couple that I question being within the criteria. I need to ask you guys to take a look at them, and let me know if you think all of them pass. If you have doubts about one, *please* let me know your rationale. PM me or post it here, I don't care.
The definition:
Mythic/ Historical These are characters the players will never meet, but their existance has
impacted the world. Even if they were not real (or were not quite what the legends pain them), they have made an impact upon their world. Think King Arthur, Merlin, Alexander the Great, Cesar, Noah, and more. -
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#483All I know is that Ajax is the coolest thing EVER as far as webpages go. -
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#484In response to Ria's post up...
IMO... given the definition:
Mythic/ Historical These are characters the players will never meet, but their existance has
impacted the world. Even if they were not real (or were not quite what the legends pain them), they have made an impact upon their world. Think King Arthur, Merlin, Alexander the Great, Cesar, Noah, and more.
these might not be appropriately Legendary/ Historical
http://www.strolen.com/view.php?node=quest&act=4
Taran Silverhand, the Wanderer
He just srikes me as a PC uberman, rather than a historical/ legendary
Archibald Ganse
He is technically historical, but he comes across as more of a historical footnote or trivia question.. than an important historical.
Corvius Haereticus
I know I voted highly for this and it is a nice piece... but does it really fit? Yes it is minorly historical. Is it that important?
Do any of the rest of you think they are coded incorrectly?
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#485I think the context of the writing and how they make it "historical/mythic" that should weigh quite a bit.
If it is told with the attempt to make it meet the category, give them the benefit of the doubt.
We are hurting a tiny bit for submissions this round anyway.
(didn't see that post when I put up my nonsense, didn't mean to ignore it) -
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#486If I may say so myself, I think you guys are a bit harsh in your quest acceptance criterias. Some of those peeps go to great lengths to partake of the quest and well, speaking from my own experience: Getting the door slammed in your face for whatever reason is not very encouraging.
This was a very personal observation and not meant to entice anger or anything.
So, if you want my advice: Prior to the ending of a quest, every author whose entry does not qualify should get 3 days notice to change his submission. This way we: 1) Show the proper amount of respect to the author and his work and 2) Avoid hurt feelings and 3) get enough entries to really qualify as a successful quest. -
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#487
Yes, I understand the FFX reference... Speaking of FF, AG, have you played FFXII yet? I've heard it's really really good
Sorry Cappo, but unlike Scrasamax I have not tried FFXII. Would love to though!
But I HAVE tried Gears of War! 5/5
Ohmahgawd! I love that game! Post apocalyptic tactical third person shooter! No fresh ideas, but a rather exhilarating borrow from such prominent sci-fi films and games such as: Fallout (the COG warriors DO look like the brotherhood of steel), Pitch Black (the Kryll), Half-Life (Some of the beasties), and so on. Great game for your XBox 360! (Nope, the forum game I am going to host has gotten little or no inspiration from the game, except boost my eagerness to GM such a game ;))
I have also tried "Lego Star Wars II" (with my son). 3/5 Faintly amusing!
And I have tried Saint's Row. 3.5/5 (Yet another GTA clone, but a good one). -
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#488I have yet to play Gears of War, but I definitely will now do so! -
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#489Re AG's suggestion- That's a good idea, and will be put into effect for the next one. As it happens, this time around, there's only thirteen entries, and I can't really see what good disqualifiying any of them will do (and I know there is some disagreement about some that may or may not fit), so I think I'll let it slide this round. I'll try to get the finalists up tonight. -
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#490I am back!
...and I really, really miss the filter that reported which URLs are spiders, and which are real people! -
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#491I have surfed around a little.
On Alexa, I have noticed Ria's page is almost as much visited as the main Citadel. Applause goes there!
Had a peek, found some neat posts and survival guides. This one I liked most: "Artifacts that are found in pieces should be left in pieces." Says it all.
There were a few complications, some surely caused by the server moves:
- Some pages are missing their header, frequent are quotes and the like turned into question marks.
- the Countdowns are all dead
On the Gamewyrd, our category is Error.How comes that? -
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#492Dang, Ria! How do you do that? -
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#493Ria is an underground webpage gangsta.
Gamewyrd fixed. Thanks. -
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#494I think it's my large collection of con pics and the aforementioned survival guides. I actually have some more stuff I'd like to get up there. I haven't actually looked at it since the server move, so at some point I'll have to go through and fix all of that. Don't know when.
And it still blows my mind that I get that much traffic. -
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#495Any of this stuff do you want somewhere on the frontpage or something? Just throwing it out there since I was using it to figure out the shoutbox and why the main pages won't autoupdate.
http://www.strolen.com/guild/ssi_examples.php -
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#496Will be gone till Wednesday night at the earliest.
...and TSO frick'n ROCKS!!! -
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#497God, I feel like hell
and I should never have agreed to visit my relatives
Bluuuuuuaaaaaaargh
Well, guess it's time to fire up some Black Flag and get angry -
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#498So questing ideas? Anything we are short of?
What category do we need to beef up?
While we are on the subjects of "drives for new submissions"
Besides Sky and Ocean appropriate free-text (which I push for Questing subjects), we could have something between this quest and the next. This one is not a contest, just a "theme".
Science Fiction.
Now not just any science fiction, but characters, planets, items, ships, and toys from known properties. Now I am not talking about letting people slap up Kirk, Spock, Anakin, Luke or The Milenium Falcon. We would not accept that any more than we accept everyone trying to post Drzzt or StormBringer. But original characters from the worlds of Star Trek, Star Wars, BattleStar Galactica, Babylon 5, Firefly and Space 1999 (which barely meets the absolute minimum requirements for this). You know, big famous settings. Add to that big famous book settings: Ender's, Dune, and Niven's Known Space. These are things people are generally familiar with.
So why?, you are asking?
Well there are a lot of generic "tropes" or assumptions that we can use for most fantasy. You can leave a lot "unsaid" in a fantasy post and have the blank spots filled in by the "generic fantasy" template.
Science Fiction, as we are generally using the term, does not have default tropes. The problem with science fiction posts is that you have all this "stuff" that you would normally be able to leave "unsaid" - that you don't have to explain in a fantasy post - you have to explain and express. That makes Sci-Fi posts harder to do well.
Using "settings" that people are familiar with allows those Gaps to be filled automatically. They allow for instant depth. I can say "The Federation" and "The Academy" in a Star Trek inspired character's write up and the reader will have a complete (or near complete) understanding of what I am talking about.
Before we do this, we might need to add a few item categories (Firearm, Spaceship, Computer, Sensor) and a location and group additions (In System and trans-world).=, but nothing outragous or hard.
What do you all think?
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#499I am all for science fiction, but I want a no holds barred science fiction quest. If all sorts of restraints suddenly pop up, and I have to write a Klingon instead of, say that Dune Fremen character I had envisioned.
As a matter of fact I do not think binding us to a specific series or setting is any good at all. If we need boundaries, make them about the usual boundaries: NPCs -major or minor, Items-Transports, etc... -
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#500I dont think Star Wars is sci-fi. Its fantasy.
Anyhoo, I'm no good at Sci-fi, but I'll do it if I absolutely have to. Since we need more choices to compete with Sci-fi anyway, can I throw out...Religious Wars (Crusades/Jihads/Pogroms, and all that fun stuff)
and on a completely unrelated note, GO manfred, GO!!! ( :wink:). The ever-changing eyes are changing. :P
They LOOK upon you!
signing off. -
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#501You know I would do anything to get that T-shirt. :)
The quest voting develops well (for me at least ;) ), though more votes would be nicer.
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Speaking of that, as an aside: when I look at 'Users Logged In Today' during my evening hours, the count goes usually to 20-30 users. How are your numbers in this regard, just out of curiosity? (Oh, and where is AG with his statistical analysis of active users?) -
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#502AG, this would not be a quest, just a ... I don't know... theme of the month(?). Something more than just a challange. Something mentioned on the front page asking people to do them. No extra XP or anything and you could still do your everyday posts. (if they do have additonal more xp, make it pretty trivial +1 or+2 xp)
As to artificial limits, the concept would be to use Known Settings. The only restriction would be you could not use your own personal settings or settings from small obscure works (Like Donaldson's Gap Series or Boppers or Wildside). So you could do Klingons, or Dune Household swordsman, or B5 telepaths, Firefly Rebel, or Star Wars Rebel Fighter Pilots, or what ever. The point was to increase the number of sci-fi related posts by making it "easier" for the writer to do and for the reader to understand.
If you played the related games, you could post up interesting characters or NPCs or other things from your campaigns. I have some Star Wars characters, B5 characters, and a host of Trek characters (and ships) from when I played these games. I am sure some of you have played them or done the preliminary work to play them. We might have stuff ready to go. -
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#503Ah, statistical analysis of active users! Did one in '04 and '05... Perhaps I should do one for this year too! -
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#504Do we like the idea of Themed Months? -
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#505I like the idea
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#506yes -
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#507No problem with that -
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#508Sure...
God, I have writer's blooooock -
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#509Heck yeah. Need a graphic for it. ;) -
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#510Now, does it seem only to me, or is it okay again to post short submissions?
I guess we have to thank Wulfhere for bringing that new format on board. We are getting cool little plots (and plots were always sparse to begin with). Yeah, sure, we could expect a certain length from some types of submissions, but our users have a habit of exceeding expectations, in the best ways.
With this all in mind, let me just wish to us all a creative and happy new year. Cheers! -
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#511It was always okay to post them. However, most people rate according to length. Have you noticed that longer posts, even those not so great, get bigger scores, than shorter ones? It comes from the perception that longer posts are more work and deserve more. To which I say, all it means is that it took longer to type.
(exception is when you have an epically long one, which people seem to get lost in).
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#512The way I see it the small plots are neat. Sure they will rarely bring in the big ratings, but all in all they ARE what people want. I will write epics for my personal gamers and sure, why not post them here, but they are so custom tailored that people can use only fragments at best and nothing at worst.
So that is it I guess. The epics will bring on the great scores, but no one will use them. The small ones will float around 3.0 - 4.25, but will be in demand everywhere! ;)
Oh, and thanks to Wulfhere but Scrasamax has done similar for a while with his encounter scrolls. ;)
Strolen: What about a "quick and easy" category that every post with less then 5000 characters is put into? If you could somehow have a "quick and easy" checkbox or category, GMs in a hurry could click "plots", then "quick and easy" and voila! Plots in boxes! -
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#513Well, if you look at most all my posts, they will fall into this small-medium size. Any epic can be whittled down to a more concise description while maintaining its useability. The only problem is it loses it beautiful prose and storytelling that is so entertaining. Things many people really, really enjoy. There is a need and want for both of them but I have always aimed towards the short-medium so would rather have a "verbose" category for >5000 than the other way around. Or an auto checker that I can count the words and make a tag for it or something.
The long ones, I think, are in the minority vs. the small-medium.
I would rather just leave it the way it is actually. I see no problem in having varying lengths. Perhaps I can add a wordcount stat to it though and it would be fairly easy to add a sorting option to define how long a post you are wanting to look at. -
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#514Long plots are pretty rare, and we have already two decent ways to deal with them:
- Issue a subtle warning at the beginning of the sub that it is a long one.
- Or, my current favourite, decompose a long plot into a scroll, where you have all the parts neatly at hand. You can have a summary of the plot, you can have an index, you can put them in whatever order you want, with links pointing the way to other information and alternative routes of development; so you can click around and explore the whole piece.
Scrolls are just cool! :)
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(AG: But if you really burn for something to make them different, you could create a "verbose" freetext, which could take care of the warning part, and serve the occasional masochist who would like to read all of our LONG posts. ;) ) -
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#515I really don't want to jinx it, but did you notice, that the Barbarian Horde is recently posting useful comments? I am not complaining, just amazed and glad. -
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#516true, but it may just be unlogged strolenites, revelling in ambiguity. -
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#517SO... anything going on here that doesn't have to do with StrolenCon? -
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#518I guess not.
Another period of less posting, this time filled with a hype. Downtimes are fine and natural, and happen with some regularity. We should declare "Official Days Of Rest And Reflection" for periods like this. ;)
For now, it's okay that nothing dramatic goes on... but we have contingency plans should the downtime take too long. -
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#519And the next quest is?
And why hasn't it gone up?
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#520Ah, I know the answer to this.
Murometz was in a chat with some other of us admins. I was there as was manfred and possibly other admins. He was eager to begin the quest, but manfred and I... well, we were lukewarm. If you study the quests you will see that they have been attracting fewer and fewer participants. We analyzed this and everyone of us had to agree that there were too many quests by far. They were exhausting and taxing us. There were other issues too. Manfred and I requested a hiatus between each quest, to let people recharge their batteries. In addition to this we felt the next quest had to be more... general than the previous ones. The older ones were too specific and uninteresting to really spark the creativity of the participants. At least that is what the three of us felt.
I think the next quest will be "War" and it will be launched on february the 14th.