The Day of Thunder

[Kaijarisuigyo]

Ask.

[Otomo Akutou]

Where'd the character concept come from?

[Doji Hikaru]

I was a bit low activity this game, so I never spent time with Kai, but I really enjoyed the concept. Did it play out more or less how you hoped?

[Kaijarisuigyo]

Where'd the character concept come from?

The main inspiration is probably Neil Gaiman's Sandman, mixed with his Anansi Boys, a bit of Gunnerkrigg Court and many other books, graphic novels and mangas about mythical creatures and dreams.

Idea was to have a character that would be consistent with the dream setting, while being alien enough to exist outside the Empire hierarchy. Because the last thing I wanted was to deal with factions and status.

I actually made the cards you can see there first, to help affix the concept in my mind, and only after designed the sheet to match the cards (hence why it makes little sense, with a bit of Iai, a bit of Horsemanship...).

I was a bit low activity this game, so I never spent time with Kai, but I really enjoyed the concept. Did it play out more or less how you hoped?

Not. At. All. The fact the concept effectively required Kai to constantly explain her version of "dream logic" shifted her toward a chatty storyteller role almost immediately when she was more thought of as a mysterious character who shows up, helps, and disappears once again.

It wasn't necessarily a bad evolution. But that meant crashing hard against the wall of her player not necessarily having the writing abilities required to strike the right balance of poetry and understandability, especially in English.

[Nanzi Ai]

I enjoyed our encounters. she was a unique concept.

[Shiba Kumori]

Kai was great! She was super helpful in getting the mask off of Kumori.

Hope you had a good time!

[Anjing]

Very interesting character concept. IC Anjing had no idea what to make of her, but OOC your theming makes total sense!

What did the whole Blue Lotus Village end of the world situation look like from her perspective? Was it quite different given her dream ties?

[Jiyo Sora]

FORM QUESTIONS INBOUND!

ONE OF WHICH YOU'VE ALREADY ANSWERED!

1. Biggest curveball Kai threw you?- COVERED
2. Biggest curveball the game threw you?
3. Favorite moment?
4. Biggest missed opportunity?
5. Any secrets Kai has that never came up?

[Togashi Satsuki]

Very much enjoyed the character concept!

I don't know if Satsuki was the first one to speak to Kai as if she was a revered spirit or not though, but at least she didn't think Kai was some delusional person. Also loved that you brought in the flavour of the Four Guardian Beasts, it's one that I like a lot myself and have tinkered with myself for L5R just because I enjoy it a lot.

What does the future hold for Kai though?

[Ryoshun Yukara]

I very much enjoyed her unique perspectives.

How did Kai feel about running into someone who was willing to argue back in dream logic, and do you see her as having any future aspirations to proceed to?

[Hantei Genji]

I liked our interactions!

Sadly RL didn't allow me more. Still, a fun concept

[Kaijarisuigyo]

Hope you had a good time!

Oh, I don't intend on doing PBP LARP ever again.

Yes, I couldn't help but be unnecessarily dramatic. Sorry.

Sadly true though.

The thing is, it's not that this game went bad. It went far better than most actually. There were tensions, there were even some meltdowns, but, at least from my point of view, all incidents remained manageable.

However, that's the key. You shouldn't exit a game thanking Cthulhu it didn't go completely apeshit. That should be what was expected from the start. Not an exception with drama as the norm.

It's simply too nerve wracking to go into one of these games knowing that every interaction could possibly blow up out of proportion. That every moment you could get into a fire or start a fire yourself.

Me retiring from PbP is not a sudden decision. I wanted to attempt one more game while in full possession of my faculties to make sure the issues I remembered weren't minor inconveniences blatantly exaggerated by a darker state of mind at the time. Sadly, the experience had shown that not that much.

Don't get me wrong. I heartily approve of this very game acknowledging these issues as issues, issues that could be solved, and should be solved. Not some ineluctable side effects of the format that should just be tolerated. It's very much a step in the right direction.

Yes, it's not normal to have most of these games end up with the GM and some players completely mentally shattered, to the point it sometimes takes them years if ever to fully recover. To have horror stories about GM sent to the hospital and not a single word anywhere on how to help preventing that from ever happening again.

However... I don't actually believe there will be changes in the short or even middle term. The community is old, has been tolerating these issues for so long they have internalized them. Some will fight to their death for their right to suffer... or make suffer.

Because, let's accept it, not everyone is nice, and, in particular, not everyone is nice all the time. The potential for cruelty is within each of us, and sometimes, we, and it's a we that of course includes me, become monsters, enjoying doing harm, even at a subconscious level.

Barriers are not only there to protect us. There are also there to protect others from who we are on our worst days.

[Kaijarisuigyo]

What did the whole Blue Lotus Village end of the world situation look like from her perspective? Was it quite different given her dream ties?

I'm not exactly sure I understand the question. But she sure did find most people were operating within the wrong framework of thoughts, like thinking in terms of up and down in a world without gravity. What felt weird to most, she just shrugged of as being irrelevant as per dream logic, like how you can instantly just teleport to another place, time, location in a dream.

We sadly didn't get to interact much in a productive manner, but she was something like a polar opposite of Makime. As in, the idea that numbers matter was completely absurd to her. One hero would always be stronger than ten, a hundred, a thousand, a million nameless soldiers.

2. Biggest curveball the game threw you?

I knew Kai was mechanically bad. I'm unable to make an optimized character, especially in this format. Even if it's not as acute as before, I still haven't fully gotten over my fear that, if a character is "too strong" and end up winning events with a huge margin, I'll have to deal with possibly quite toxic sore losers.

Fear of course not helped by the fact I have nothing to oppose to the complaint I could be loading Sakkaku's dice. Because it's true. I could. I don't do it, but I definitely have the technical ability to do so.

Thus, it's just simpler to bring in a character that's way under the average power curve. Avoid drama, or at least drama I have to interact with.

But I didn't expect Kai to be as outclassed on every aspect, thus completely cutting her off of any subplot with rolls tied to them. Basically, as soon as die needed to be rolled, and people were emotionally invested in it going right, you'd be better calling anyone else, even the duck.

3. Favorite moment?

Making the cards. I would log in the forum, have my anxiety rise up apropos an actual or potential source of OOC problems, and then exorcise it by designing a card. There was something soothing about the process. Allowed me to think of the setting and its possibilities without my mind instantly jumping to everything that could go wrong with the game.

4. Biggest missed opportunity?

Too many to count. Basically, I kept myself in a safe and secure spot, isolated from potential drama, by fleeing from any potential interaction with the plot. That worked to a degree. But also meant Kai only had very indirect and minor impact on the main plot, through ricochets.

There's a definite irony than an explicit support character like Ayumu was in the end more hands-on about things than the grand and spectacular White Tiger.

5. Any secrets Kai has that never came up?

Destiny... I mean, Kai Has No Secrets.

For like five minutes during character creation, I thought that Kai being an incarnated spirit should be a secret only revealed at the most dramatic moment.

Then I realized that just wouldn't work well in that format, where other players need to know things about your character to be able to build interesting interactions. So I just put all my cards on the table right from the start.

What does the future hold for Kai though?

No idea. Didn't even write goals or anything like that yet. Not sure I will honestly.

For all purposes, her life begins now. A blank page after a couple of years where her existence had been entirely driven by the urgency of a world in need of saving.

Maybe something about storytelling. I ended up being quite committed to these "we tell tales of heroes to remember we can be great" bit.

How did Kai feel about running into someone who was willing to argue back in dream logic, and do you see her as having any future aspirations to proceed to?

Was fun. The angle "rational logic versus dream logic" had been overused by this point. But "dream logic versus dream logic" was still fresh.

[Kaijarisuigyo]

Also, thanks for all the thanks...

And, a complaint, of course. Because I'm always complaining.

But there definitely should be more of these OOC talks, even through a quick PM exchange ("Good for you? If so, good for me. Liked stuff. Was a bit confused by stuff2 however.", "Good for me, thanks for thread. Really liked stuff3. stuff2 was...") about what people liked and didn't like about a particular interaction during the game proper. Having a one month delay between the moment something happens and reactions to it, whether positive or negative, can be wild.

When I say that sometimes I get to hear praises about something that happen in a game that was several years ago I had only heard complaints about so far, I'm not joking.

Not that the reverse, keeping complaints under wraps until they finally explode at the worst moment, is much better. Create a paranoid environment where you kinda assume people are just forcing themselves to interact with you out of politeness, not fun. Or, in my specific case, out of fear I would take Sakkaku down.

Cf all the ongoing talks about how to extinguish embers of miscomprehension before they turn into a full blown inferno.

[Nanzi Ai]

-~snip~

First off do what you need for your mental health and if retirement is the best choice do it, I know for myself I tend o be pickier with games and also I just have less time to share with games as I am working on other personal projects throughout the week.

I do think it is a bit disingenuous to mention a GM going to the hospital because that is an outlier not even close to the norm and a player that often has difficulty finishing most games, which is their issue and not mine to judge. Having GMed many of these games, yes they can be stressful but also very rewarding because we have a good community that tends to genuinely care about each other.

We have created a safe space that is fairly progressive and enjoyable and are there rough edges well yes but with twenty to thirty people that is to be expected. More importantly you provide a lot of complaints but I have yet to see clearly defined issues that you actually have outside of FOMO, which is easily rectified by the players and not the burden of the GM.

GM’s need to make sure what is pressing now is made available in a timely manner for content but unless they have an expansive team tracking every single thing for every player is not sustainable. It is an unrealistic goal outside of employing some AI tools to track such things, and if that is something you want, go for it but I didn’t appreciate how you made that the GM’s issue.

As for everyone being nice, more often than not most players are nice to each other it’s much rarer for players to be the bad guy with fellow players because it feels bad. As a resident conflict creator, I enjoy the conflicts that L5R specifically can create, but I know not everyone does and communication is important when going into that but I really just have to say I am not appreciating you just coming in and saying this community is trash and will never change, when it has changed immensely over the years I have been playing with them.

[Kaijarisuigyo]

I do think it is a bit disingenuous to mention a GM going to the hospital because that is an outlier not even close to the norm

One thing to consider is that, I, and others, don't operate over a perfect knowledge of what happened over the course of over a decade. And people generally don't talk about trains that were on time. So yes, it's very much possible this is a statistical outlier, whose actual explanation lies in reasons outside the game. Correlation, not consequence.

However, it's, rightfully or not, the one example that's quoted, to this day, by GM when they are venting about players' behavior. So I would say it's still a wound that hasn't fully healed. And won't heal as long as we dismiss it.

More importantly you provide a lot of complaints but I have yet to see clearly defined issues that you actually have outside of FOMO

Honestly, you are the last person I want to discuss this with.

Your behavior in Dawn 2 and 3 was very much not okay, made of effective bullying and harassment. You had decided on your own how the story should go, and would go to any length to enforce your views. No, genocide is not a joke. No, players basically crying in the OOC channel, or banging their head on the walls as you returned from vacations and attempted to undo all what they had done in your absence because it didn't fit your fancy, is not normal.

And that the community effectively turned a blind eye on that (so far?) is maybe the main reason I have little confidence anything will change.

You may be a pretty good GM. No idea. But you're awfully toxic as a player. My brain actually tricked itself into thinking you were someone else for about the first third of this game as it couldn't believe you were just allowed to run loose after so many incidents.

GM’s need to make sure what is pressing now is made available in a timely manner for content but unless they have an expansive team tracking every single thing for every player is not sustainable. It is an unrealistic goal outside of employing some AI tools to track such things, and if that is something you want, go for it but I didn’t appreciate how you made that the GM’s issue.

What the fuck are you talking about?

I'm talking about encouraging things like check-ins, so in practice adding a few extra threads, that can easily being shared from game to game, to the rules, so as to diminish drama on average, and thus alleviate the plate of the GM.

And you're twisting it to make it sound as awful as possible. Considering your history, I am inclined to consider this is not a mistake, but very much on purpose.

[Nanzi Ai]

I removed my post because frankly you are not worth it and now that I recognize who I think you are, I am glad you are retiring.

Bye Felicia.

[Kaiu Tai]

y'know, I'm logging back in to specifically say Kai's right there. There is a reason that we're ending game 4 with no other Crane. Nobody can stay in the clan that's been 'claimed' so thoroughly that a question to the GM about "what's up with this thing in the Crane" is met with 'let me check with Ai's player,' as happened somewhere near the front of this game. That is not normal or healthy for a game with this kind of factional setup. And I don't see it really happening with any other clan to the degree that folks are just plain driven out.

Also agree on check-in's. Particularly where there is IC antagonism. Seriously, that one isn't hard.

Was going to toss a PM at Kai at some point to note how much I enjoyed the quirky character and related to similar efforts to struggle a way to relevance with limited posting time and limited crossover with others' times. But since using a PM to say here "no, you're right" felt cowardly, so there it is.

[Canary]

y'know, I'm logging back in to specifically say Kai's right there. There is a reason that we're ending game 4 with no other Crane. Nobody can stay in the clan that's been 'claimed' so thoroughly that a question to the GM about "what's up with this thing in the Crane" is met with 'let me check with Ai's player,' as happened somewhere near the front of this game. That is not normal or healthy for a game with this kind of factional setup. And I don't see it really happening with any other clan to the degree that folks are just plain driven out.

Also agree on check-in's. Particularly where there is IC antagonism. Seriously, that one isn't hard.

Was going to toss a PM at Kai at some point to note how much I enjoyed the quirky character and related to similar efforts to struggle a way to relevance with limited posting time and limited crossover with others' times. But since using a PM to say here "no, you're right" felt cowardly, so there it is.

It's really not that weird to ask the person who's had the biggest hand in defining their Clan what their ideas about them are.

How about we dial back the OOC antagonism first. Y'all are on the warpath in post game and I am super done with it.

[Haka Tae-soo]

Been thinking for a long while on whether or not to post this. But I've mentioned this kind of thing in FA discord before, so I feel I really ought to step in and say something.

I'm in full agreement with Kaijarisuigyo and Tai on.... possibly all accounts here. And while saying this for a post removed shortly after posting is odd, I agree with Yumi on many things too, even if she may not have been as polite as she could have.

Issues, fights, stress way above what I feel should be normal or healthy, for GMs and players. Players fighting to 'own' the narrative or a setting. GMs catering to some and sidelining others, to different degrees in different games. Fierce competition, sometimes to a degree that I'd easily call toxic (not the case here, as this wasn't a competitive game). I've seen all that, and I've only been back to PbP games and part of this community since mid 2020.

Seen people being toxic, OOC and IC. Could be on purpose or not, but it's happened. Maybe things have improved here and there compared to 10 years ago. I hope they did. But some things definitely still don't feel ok. Won't keep talking about it here - Kaijari mentioned some things, sexism was mentioned by Yumi and in the OOC chat. Welcome to talk about that later and elsewhere if anyone wants to.

Seen things that look and feel a bit like cheating, too. Won't get into details, and some (or all) might not be actual cheating, only different players following different rules in the same game to do the same things. But it's happened. Might not be as much of a problem if the environment was all chill. Sadly I'd say that's less and less the case.

All that said, the worst part for me, which's making FA feel less and less as a safe and welcoming space over time, is that whenever someone brings up issues, the community's decision seems to be: kill the messenger; silence the message; or both. "Keeping complaints under wraps" even more, to use Kaijari's words. So much so that as I write I'm also wondering if that's what will happen yet again with this post.

So I really don't know what to say beyond 'the community does need change if it wants to be safe and healthy'. Kaijari's suggestions seem very reasonable, and as Tai said some are really easy to do. But even that seems to be met with a cold shoulder.

With all that, more and more I feel like Kaijari:

I don't actually believe there will be changes in the short or even middle term. The community is old, has been tolerating these issues for so long they have internalized them.

Sadly so.