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Post by hszmv on Nov 23, 2016 3:40:42 GMT
So, yay... this is what I come back to.
TLDR version of my life: I work, do school work, and maintain a year and a half long relationship with my boyfriend, mostly on the weekends cause that's when I'm free. In addition, my computer is on the last legs of it's life and I'm trying not to cause problems by using it more than I should.
I'll be honest, I am a little burned out. I've been out of strong stories for a while and don't know what the next move is, largely because STO hasn't given me content to work with... not a big Time Travel fan and it is very difficult coming up with the new big issue of the fleet.
I would love to resume the Starbase, and would like to work with someone interested in GMing. I would also love to do a lot of things that we are not doing.
I can at best say that I can't be reliably active until after the new year. I'm in the final weeks of my courses and need to buckle down... and as soon as they are done, I'm off to Christmas in the California Mountains where the internet reception is spotty and I can't do as much as I would like.
I would love to support more ideas here, and quite frankly, I would love to take off the GM hat for a little while. The fleet's plots shouldn't becoming from me on high. I would like to also fill in the fleet admiral spot soon, and will need to get time to talk with Gery about doing that. Believe me, that has been a known issue well before it was brought up. If anyone needs me, right now my PM box here on the forum is the best place to reach me.
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limi
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Posts: 43
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Post by limi on Nov 23, 2016 14:51:30 GMT
Moderation is important. Especially in a topic like this, the moderation and careful pruning of posts that are inflammatory or not at all related to the topic at hand helps to keep things from exploding into a knockdown slugfest where one side is just lashing out. I've seen it happen more times than I can count, and I appreciate the guiding hand from the board moderators. Asking or demanding for something to be unmoderated is a quick way to delegitimize your thread for what I believe your purpose is, Chris, at least I figure it to be that way. Moving on. There's a lot of balance issues that get brought before the higher ups. Stars above know that I have pestered Geralyn quite a bit when I have an idea, or I'm considering bringing an aspect of Limi or another character into play. I run almost everything by her, to make sure that it's not absurd, that it's explained well and it won't destroy potential RP because it's, what did I call it Geralyn... "Stupid OP bullshit?" . And that's just me. Coordinating a group of roleplayers requires a careful touch, especially so when you're dealing with a group that is roleplaying as a group that has a very strict and expansive set of rules, such as being in Starfleet. And if you ask me, the fleet rules don't go far enough in some cases. People get away with a lot, which I'm capable of overlooking, but I don't think would be considered canon allowable behavior. There's a line between where we want to allow people to play how and what they want, and where things are too "bullcrap" to be allowed. And I think they've done a good job straddling that, to allow enough life and creativity into characters that we don't feel hammered every time we sit down to RP, while still remaining reasonably close to canon. I think Geralyn's done a pretty good job of that and, in my experience dealing with her, has been classy when bringing up something I've needed to trim out or fix. So I'm not sure why there's hostility aimed toward Geralyn in your post. We do definitely need to recruit more, we need to find a way to breathe life into our daily RP hub so that people can hop in and find people doing stuff. But that's not something one or two or three people can just up and do. That's a concerted effort. That's fleet members and officers alike getting together to do stuff. As I mentioned before, I had a run with Academy where there were weeks upon weeks upon weeks where I had people telling me out of session that they wanted to come by, wanted to sit in, wanted to participate but then never did. Or they didn't want to roll a side character as a cadet to partake in Academy. At the time, I didn't have 15 hours a day to recruit for Academy. I posted stuff on the forums, I posted stuff in RP crossover when I was on, I even went to some of the other fleets in the Armada looking to extend Academy RP to them so that we'd have more cadets to interact with. And still, I had my wife and Kiso as the only two cadets showing up time and time again. Don't get me wrong, I very much appreciated their devotion, but that's a pretty abyssmal showing considering the support I had out of game time by people who "wanted to RP in Academy." A lot of that fault I'm going to point toward people wanting to play something new, with something old. That being their already established characters. I didn't mind having guest characters, but the amount of players wanting to bring their established characters by to guest lecture or help with Academy compared to people who actually wanted to roll cadets and get involved in a new little once a week project was probably 20:1. I'm not going to sit by and work all week, writing Academy/Cadet based RP for 2 cadets and 30 officers who have stuff of their own to be doing. And I asked people that wanted to be involved to step down from the established character and make a quirky fun little cadet to just run around with that one night a week. I got nothing. So I stopped. I'm still willing to pick it up at a later date. I'm still willing to GM other things if it's something I can write for on a date/time that's good for me. I'll even accept part of the failing for Academy, but I'm not going to accept that I should have spent 2-3 hours a day more recruiting out of fleet, broadcasting and spamming channels to get new people inducted into fleet for everyone in the old guard of the fleet to ignore and not RP with. I can't count how many times during the first bits of our low here that I've logged into STO, found a spot on the Starbase, put together a small little story that would allow character to character interaction and then started broadcasting that I was available for RP. You know what response I got, Chris? From this fleet where someone always seems to be complaining that they don't get any RP? About 10%. There were days where I had been broadcasting my location and availability to RP every fifteen minutes for 5+ hours and then watched as people complained about there not being RP. Very few people took me up on it, and those that did... for the most part they overrode what I was doing to push something they were interested in. Which is mildly irritating if I'm the one hosting, but I remember working with whatever was going on. So I'll give you my solution as I see it. As a fleet, we need to get off our collective high horse. If someone presents an RP opportunity, get off your soapbox, get off your high horse and get in there and RP. It may require you to roll another character, it may require you to go places you're "Not interested in", but if you want to see activity begin to pick up, we have to be ACTIVE. That's the only way we kickstart things. Otherwise, the Storytellers will continue to die a death of atrophy and inactivity while most look on and complain about how there's not enough RP. No matter what anyone does to offer it.
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Post by firebringeraxel on Nov 23, 2016 19:03:12 GMT
From experience, the effort has to come from both sides. The GM's can't do all the work; it's a two way street. This here says more than I could say in a few paragraphs. The entire reason I burned out and stopped GM'ing for this game is because despite having a pool of players many times the size of the group's I play tabletop with now, I felt like only half a dozen appreciated any of the effort put forth and only that many were putting anything into their own involvement. The rest were just casual, half-ass, clingers-on. I've tried to run more events than I can count for this group only to have the same 4-6 people show up (If I was lucky), meanwhile the ones you always see whining about a lack of RP will be off somewhere ignoring the event(s) because it's "Not what they wanted". So now I play tabletop with those 4-6 people instead since I can focus my creativity on those people and not waste my time on the rest. I still occasionally get the urge to bring Hammerhead back and who knows I still might eventually; but right now, even after roughly a year of being away I still get a headache thinking about GM'in for this game.
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Post by norcaler on Nov 25, 2016 7:58:11 GMT
I guess we know now why KDF RP is dead within this fleet.
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Claudius
Member
"Take it easy."
Posts: 38
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Post by Claudius on Nov 27, 2016 0:25:18 GMT
I guess we know now why KDF RP is dead within this fleet. Yeah, as explained. A lot of people stopped showing up. We set up RP, and people show up for the first few sessions and then stop. Rinse and Repeat. And this problem existed long before Axel and me made RP for the KDF.
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Flynt
Member
I'm just here for the donuts.
Posts: 222
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Post by Flynt on Nov 27, 2016 1:26:20 GMT
I guess we know now why KDF RP is dead within this fleet. Yes, we do. Because the few people who were dedicated to making KDF-RP happen burned out in one way or another. At one or more times during the last four years: Norc left; I left; Claudius left; Axel left. All due to different kinds and sources of burnout. I also expect that the STO storyline has pretty much given the shaft to what most people think of with the KDF: being at war with the Federation and/or with the Romulans. Coming up with a different paradigm for KDF RP requires more time and dedication than I think the few RPers we have these days could manage. Norc's comeback story for Karag was great. How do we move on from that without redoing the same themes? I'm not sure myself, but I know it's going to take RPers to do it. Not Pathfinders. Not Guardians. Not Mentors. Not any other administrative or coordination role. RPers. Everything else is just noise.
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Post by norcaler on Nov 27, 2016 2:41:35 GMT
I guess we know now why KDF RP is dead within this fleet. Yes, we do. Because the few people who were dedicated to making KDF-RP happen burned out in one way or another. At one or more times during the last four years: Norc left; I left; Claudius left; Axel left. All due to different kinds and sources of burnout. I also expect that the STO storyline has pretty much given the shaft to what most people think of with the KDF: being at war with the Federation and/or with the Romulans. Coming up with a different paradigm for KDF RP requires more time and dedication than I think the few RPers we have these days could manage. Norc's comeback story for Karag was great. How do we move on from that without redoing the same themes? I'm not sure myself, but I know it's going to take RPers to do it. Not Pathfinders. Not Guardians. Not Mentors. Not any other administrative or coordination role. RPers. Everything else is just noise. You hit the nail on the head and it applies across the board and not solely to The Loresingers. While it's great that we're getting logistical help up top, the greater problem is that the player base has shrunk considerably. Exodus has to draw from people outside of the fleet. Foundation was almost fully staffed by people who had zero connection to the fleet; I'd be hard pressed to consider it a Storytellers ship. Out of the four recruitments I participated in or saw happen over the last couple of months, two of them left within days of joining the fleet, so it's not just a matter of recruitment but of retention, as well. I do think, however, we might be turning a corner on giving people reasons to stay on in terms of RP. We still have a presence on DS9, we might be getting Starbase 146 up and running in the near future, and we've gotten TOS RP on that particular fleet holding starting up, which based on my admittedly sparse reading on the subject may make us the only fleet that can say that.
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Post by Geralyn on Nov 27, 2016 7:57:23 GMT
Yes, we do. Because the few people who were dedicated to making KDF-RP happen burned out in one way or another. At one or more times during the last four years: Norc left; I left; Claudius left; Axel left. All due to different kinds and sources of burnout. I also expect that the STO storyline has pretty much given the shaft to what most people think of with the KDF: being at war with the Federation and/or with the Romulans. Coming up with a different paradigm for KDF RP requires more time and dedication than I think the few RPers we have these days could manage. Norc's comeback story for Karag was great. How do we move on from that without redoing the same themes? I'm not sure myself, but I know it's going to take RPers to do it. Not Pathfinders. Not Guardians. Not Mentors. Not any other administrative or coordination role. RPers. Everything else is just noise. You hit the nail on the head and it applies across the board and not solely to The Loresingers. While it's great that we're getting logistical help up top, the greater problem is that the player base has shrunk considerably. Exodus has to draw from people outside of the fleet. Foundation was almost fully staffed by people who had zero connection to the fleet; I'd be hard pressed to consider it a Storytellers ship. Out of the four recruitments I participated in or saw happen over the last couple of months, two of them left within days of joining the fleet, so it's not just a matter of recruitment but of retention, as well. I do think, however, we might be turning a corner on giving people reasons to stay on in terms of RP. We still have a presence on DS9, we might be getting Starbase 146 up and running in the near future, and we've gotten TOS RP on that particular fleet holding starting up, which based on my admittedly sparse reading on the subject may make us the only fleet that can say that. And it's worth mentioning again, Foundation is on indefinite hiatus despite recruiting from outside the fleet, due to non-attendance, so the issue seems to also exist outside both Loresingers and Storytellers.
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Post by hszmv on Nov 28, 2016 4:48:40 GMT
What Gery said. RP isn't down just in the Storytellers. It's down across the board in a bunch of other fleets. One of my big pushes was to get us back to DS9 to show that we're active and involved. The problem of the Starbase system is that we don't see outside of it and are not seen.
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Post by Razgriz on Nov 28, 2016 21:21:24 GMT
Well, as someone who frankly has barely been here due to IRL and other games I know my input might not mean much but I'd at least like to add my perspective at least on why I'm not around very much.
When I first came to STO is was partially due to burnout on FFXIV where I am the leader of a RP community, in addition to dealing with the personalities there I also feel victim to the curse of 2016 in having my mother pass away this past summer, so when a friend of mine told me about STO I jumped into it looking for a new community and some new friends. I was tickled pink when I found out RP was such a thing over here as I love the Star Trek universe and was looking forward to making a character and telling some stories, wo when I was accepted into this Fleet I was very excited, and I'm sure if people look at my earlier activity you can see how gung ho I was.
Unfortunately dealing with my mother's passing and other IRL stuff pressed upon me and when I wanted to have STO as an escape for some RP I found that for all of the resources and people present most of the RP here seemed to be centered around Bar RP at Quarks or the scheduled ship RP's which I didn't feel right to just suddenly interject myself into. I wanted to get involved with a Starbase thing, but there was no support for it and so day by day my enthusiasm waned and finally when the new patch for FFXIV came out I just kinda ghosted
As a fresh face to the game and this community but not to RP I can say it was very...disheartening. Now I own up to my inability to get into a scheduled RP or only having so much patience for my character to be sitting in a bar and chatting with randos, but I feel like the lack of initiative for anything beyond I believe the two scheduled ship RP's and the odd Runabout with no one seeming to have any desire to come up with fresh stories or interactions not necessarily overseen by a Narrator, coupled with the misuse of such a darling resource as the Starbase which could be the hub for so much was very disappointing.
Now, like I said I know I haven't been the most active person around here and if expressing myself gets me flamed out of here then so be it, but I can see so many people have passion for playing here and that in turn makes me want to say "hey I've still got some energy"
My life has calmed down quite a bit, and with that I can afford to dedicate some real time to doing creative things for this game. So I volunteer myself and my experienced storytelling brain. I don't think I can be a full on Narrator if I could even be considered for such a position. But I am intrigued by the Starbase Admiral IC post. I've been a GM most of my life in one way or another and one of the things I do even in FFXIV is scour the game and create missions for my players to participate in IC and forment some interaction and storytelling that way. I will gladly offer myself for that position and try to generate some RP fuel using the resources we have available.
I know it is presumptuous for someone who's barely here to offer themselves for any kind of even token leadership position, but seeing the passion for playing and the desire to see something grow around here has lit a bit of a fire beneath me and I hope I can at least be forgiven for talking out of place.
Just, let me know if you need anything. I'll be around to help as I can
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Post by norcaler on Nov 29, 2016 3:10:56 GMT
Razgriz brings up an excellent point. As I mentioned upthread, two of the four recruits I either brought into the fleet or saw get added to the fleet in recent memory quit almost immediately after they joined; one of whom is a member of another fleet in the armada now. A fleet that happens to be a lot more active than us or the other three (10 guesses as to who that is). Yes, thankfully Avalon's player base still shows up when it's held as does Exodus' and they're the only crew that RP's outside of the Saturday session as those characters. Midway had a bizarre hiccup tonight even though I know its crew is among the most active players in the fleet and I know there's an interest in TOS RP outside of Mondays with a few of those players.
And that's what the fleet looks like right now; RP ships, good ones, but once a week sessions nonetheless. Social RPers either go to Quark's or the 26th Fleet's starbase. KDF RP is 99% non-existent everywhere. People have left The Storytellers because other fleets can provide the things that they want that we also can't give them and maybe it's long past time for us to fix that.
Maybe instead of lamenting on what we no longer have, we should focus our efforts on what we do have and look to expand upon it. I don't think we're getting Starbase 146 back, not the way it used to be to say nothing of being a hub like Starbase 381 is. I don't think putting a new fleet admiral in place is going to rejuvenate the 146th for the same reason. I don't think we're resurrecting the KDF and frankly neither does Cryptic in my opinion. Maybe the way to go in the short term is focusing on growing Avalon, Exodus, and Midway. Have designated social nights for each ship or alternate sessions for the "night shift." Maybe a long term goal is to build up Starbase 8, which is what we've been calling the Fleet K13 Holding. To my knowledge, only one other fleet in the game has considered using that holding as a TOS social hub and those efforts appear to have stalled. Before anyone says that TOS is another "faction" and wonders why that'd have a chance to be successful when KDF failed, keep in mind one complaint I saw about a willingness to RP KDF side that I haven't seen repeated in this thread so far is that a lot of people don't feel comfortable RPing in a Klingon setting. It's too different from what they're used to, requires too much knowledge of the lore, and so on. TOS, on the other hand, is the original Star Trek and while everyone's knowledge of every episode varies from player to player, at least everyone knows how to play a human or a Vulcan or an Andorian. Plus, because the AoY Expansion gave every account a new character slot, chances are there's a number of roleplayers out there who created a TOS character and don't know what to do with them.
TL:DR version: focus on what works and look into opportunities no one else is trying, like the TOS hub.
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Post by Chris Winters on Nov 29, 2016 3:37:57 GMT
Exactly, Norc.
Still, getting new members is a big part of expanding on that, I think. We sure could need more fresh ideas anyway. If Zane is as excited to do "armada mixers" as I think he is, we might get another casual thing to support that puts us more out there, as well. Another thing I suggested to maybe poke our heads into was a little friendly ship rivalry between Avalon and Ex, maybe leading to more social hooks for people to hang their personal rp on, like .. heck, ship vs ship parrises squares games and other themes that just provide players with ideas of what to talk about after episodes. Common ground for both crews to interact on, other than just having the same CO sit above the Captains and refuelling at the same starbase. Those would also allow non fleet crews like freighters and whatnots to easily jump in, just by going "oh hey maybe we should have a match sometime too" without conjuring up hostility by accident or anything. Just providing the rough backdrops can IMO be a huge step towards encouraging casual shenannigans. At least they get more to talk about than what drink to order next.
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Post by hszmv on Nov 29, 2016 5:11:18 GMT
So my thoughts on this: 1.) First, we still have a great many fleet members who don't play on RP ships. I know I have locked myself out of all of them. 2.) Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the TOS station have a 20 person limit? We have run into problems with that before 3.) I've heard time and time again on DS9 that our presence was welcome change and brought some interesting change to BarRP. I think that is the thing we are not doing that needs to get done. 381 may be a social hub, but one of the problems I hear a lot is that if you are not part of the fleet, they don't let you into the story. That's not our way. I think if we provide the RP community in public some events that they can join... some things that are "Starfleet" but not "PewPewPew" we could bring in some fresh interest. 4.) RazGirl, calling you out for something you said. To whit: I know it is presumptuous for someone who's barely here to offer themselves for any kind of even token leadership position, but seeing the passion for playing and the desire to see something grow around here has lit a bit of a fire beneath me and I hope I can at least be forgiven for talking out of place. Just, let me know if you need anything. I'll be around to help as I can It is not a presumption on your part. We encourage it. It's part of our ethos. Got a story for us? Tell it! This fleet was designed so the people in charge are the role players, not us staffers. Really, at the end of the day, the Pathfinders were set up to moderate from an OOC standpoint. I as one of the big kahunas have no more ability to bring story to the fleet than you, a new person. I know I'm speaking for all three Pathfinders when I say tell us your story. If you'd like help or pointers or just a sounding board, I'm all ears. Feel free to message me. 5.) Keep in mind that we are now in the Holiday season and things get hectic for people in this fleet. Personally, I know I can't start anything big until after the New Year. But I'm going to be posting ideas in terms of missions and big story. I'd certainly like to dust off a fun enemy that hasn't been used much... Miller and I are both conspiring to do something since we are both cannot GM Avalon, so stay tuned for that.
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Post by norcaler on Nov 29, 2016 5:41:33 GMT
1.) They're still the only things in the fleet that happen in an organized fashion and are still the only things this fleet does better than anyone else. That's why we should open them up more to the rest of the fleet, not lock people out of them.
2.) 20 people wanting to do something on one of our fleet holdings would be encouraging and is as I've said something we should be encouraging because as I said no one's tried it successfully before.
3.) And yet Starbase 381's regularly drawing a sizeable number of people from both the 26th and outside at peak hours, moreso than Instance #1 of Quark's. I'm just saying, they've got the 25th Century Federation starbase social hub locked down and better organized than anyone else in the game and that's where roleplayers go if they're seeking that sort of thing. Believing that Starbase 146 can compete with Starbase 318 that way is foolish, in my opinion.
4.) Again, it's one thing to ask for people to tell stories, but Flynt said it best:
"Not Pathfinders. Not Guardians. Not Mentors. Not any other administrative or coordination role.
RPers.
Everything else is just noise."
And I hereby at this point voluntarily resign my position as Mentor and ask to be demoted to Narrator, so that I can focus my energies, limited as they are, on where I can direct them best, namely the Midway and TOS RP in general.
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Post by Geralyn on Nov 29, 2016 6:07:02 GMT
And I hereby at this point voluntarily resign my position as Mentor and ask to be demoted to Narrator, so that I can focus my energies, limited as they are, on where I can direct them best, namely the Midway and TOS RP in general. As per your request, you are moved to the role of Narrator, effective immediately. And thank you, so very much, for the time spent in the role of Mentor.
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