unforum

[Arana]

[META]Forum vs. Chat - a humble plea

[krystyn]

I totally agree, Arana. In fact, it's something that is often an epidemic of any game, especially the two you specifically mentioned -- ilovebees and the Beast.

It takes some practice and mindfulness, but eventually (with enough prodding, heh), people will hopefully think to come here and post.

I can't be in IRC whilst at work (I could try a workaround or two, but my machine is such a POS as it is, that I am loathe to give it too much to do at once), so on Wednesdays until I get home, I feel a bit anxious. Similarly for Saturdays if all I have to come back to at my computer is 40 screenfuls of IRC backlog, and maybe 6 new posts on the forums.

It'd be even more super awesome if people could contribute more actively to the wiki (and strengthen other resources, like imbri's quiclinks, Scrappy's blog, Rowan's diagrams), and then do some wacky quibbling over the finer points here.

Thanks for posting this, you non-ninja spider, you!


ETA: There are some people who will resist posting anything in the forums, and it's often better to just let them be. As long as the general trend is to encourage high signal posts here, let the IRC bunnies be hippity hoppity in the ether to their hearts' content. Until people realized that the Sleeping Princess' puzzles weren't going to solve themselves, or with a single individual, a lot of us had to fight to get people posting solutions and explanations for ILB at the forums. For a while, there was an absolute dearth of people relating their live-call-with-Melissa/SP stories, here. It made me sad inside, like a clown. Not a zombie mime.

[Phaedra]

You make a lot of really good points, Arana, and I too miss the speculation and discussion and analysis that happened here during ILB.

However, as far as those sorts of discussions, I don't think you're missing it because it's happening in chat; I think you're missing it because it's not happening quite as much as it did during ILB. IRC is not at all conducive to any sort of complex or extended discussion, the way the forum is, simply because the medium lends itself to short sentences and interruptions and all sorts of other things that make it inconvenient for long explanations or multi-part points.

LCP has a lot more content twice a week than ILB did. In ILB, we could quickly absorb what happened each week, and then spend the time between updates spec'ing and overanalyzing and debating out little hearts out.

I don't know if you've noticed, but most of the forum stuff for LCP is trying to be streamlined simplifications of the information. I think for a lot of people, they need the time between updates just to absorb and digest the content.

So I don't think it's a case of the good discussions going primarily to chat -- I think it's a case of there not being as many to start with.

That said, on update days most of the info does tend to get disseminated in chat, and there's a good reason for that -- chat is real-time. It's a race to find cards, so people don't want to bother with posting stuff on the forums because they are too busy 1) absorbing all the new info themselves and 2) looking for cards.

There's a definite element of competition in LCP that was absent (or at least played down) in ILB. It's always fun to get the solve, but in ILB, the competition wasn't as intense because it didn't result in extra poker chips, so I think people were willing to take more time.

So, I'm afraid the primacy of IRC on update days is unlikely to change, unless the nature of the game itself changes.

That said, maybe we can try, collectively, to make a more concerted effort to add stuff to the forum when we find it?

[MageSteff]

As a matter of not wanting to miss anything that might happen, I tend to log any room I happen to be in. Perhaps a request to have those who are present during the first couple of hours after an update post the chat log as a downloadable text file might help others see what was discussed in the first hour or two after the update. Not a perfect solution, but at least it will help those of us who have jobs and commutes that keep us away from the computer at these critical times (or have systems that can't handle the strain of having chat programs running) have something that can be redacted later to clarify any missing bits.

[aliendial]

Yesterday was my first time to see the update it live, and as rose suggests I think there was some content missed last week that got added to the load, so a LOT happened. Much more than past updates. People were chatting with characters as new cards appeared. More chat and something unlocked on another character. There was stuff going on everywhere, all within a fairly narrow time frame.

Yesterday it really did take some time before people went back and posted, in large part because they were still hanging out in poker looking for characters to talk to, scanning their poker buddy list, talking in IRC and (in my case) doing actual work at the office. And 5 minutes later something would unlock on another card and open things up again. People would then check the character cards all over again. I was THERE for the afternoon session and I missed most of it. I don't know how some of the players managed to do all that at once. So, much as I could have used forum posts myself, there was so much going on I can understand why that didn't happen very well.

I think the biggest shortfall was that, with all that content, nobody went back at the end of the day and catalogued all the new items for the forums as they have in past weeks. As long as you check the character cards you will see it all, but nobody captured the sequence of events and all the unlocks. (The wiki did, of course, but I meant the forums, where I too get most of my information.) When I finally saw everything this morning it was all out of sequence, but I finally understood what the heck had been going on when I got booted from the table where Svetlana was hanging out.

[RPGgame]

I agree that the forums should be used more. I could def use a continuous knowledge of what is going on. I was on Jewish Holiday and will have to do it again this week for tues and wed so I was shocked I got to play in something. but anyway keep posting here.

[rose]

So what would be useful on the forums? Is just a link to an update enough or do you want a short summary as well? I have been a bit concerned about spoiling things for people.

Do people need/want a running summary or narrative?

As for spec, I keep trying but no one answers.

For me spec is solving a puzzle, the puzzle of what a character will or won't do in a situation and what will happen next....like.. predicting that kerry would be working for someone and possibly part of a Neo -Nazi gang...or predicting something totally wrong... Ok - i am still holding out for Johnny Deuces to be an undercover cop or an informant....

I also feel that posting spec is like making a bet at the track. You have to make your choice, publicly in a sense, and see if you are right or wrong. Anyone can say later, oh yes I knew that those three horses would win the trifecta, but it only counts if you have the tickets.

[Astald]

[ZaZen]

I agree with what Astald said, sometimes many of us can't be in on an update day and I know things go so fast the forum allows you to soak it all in. And I to would like to see a sort of play by play sort of like was Astald said at the end. Well now I'll go let my head asplode from the major update yesterday

[Arana]

[krystyn]

[Phaedra]

OMG SVETLANA=CORTANA!!!!111

(They rhyme. Duh.)

[CoffeeJedi]

[SuperJerms]

Well, as far as the puzzles go, we probably will have a record of progress on the forums anyway. Often, puzzles are complex enough to require a place to write out info, post pictures, etc.

It's just that we haven't had many puzzles like that. Most of the puzzles are figuring out names based on small or large hints and crossreferences in story updates. It's more trial-and-error with every variation of name and theme we have available than a outright solve, so a forum post isn't gonna help much there. So far, the only tough puzzles we've had were the two fairplay ciphers (from the live event and Polaris' page) and the two russian morse code puzzles on mueller's page. Each of those was fairly well documented. In the case of the first fairplay cipher, the forums had everything found in IRC, and just about as quickly as we had it there.

[krystyn]