CLOK BBS

After the events of last night I figured it might be a good idea to sleep before posting anything related to it.
I'm sure there are a number of us who are particularly miffed about all the dying and departing that took place last night, and I share those sentiments. However, I feel that a few points need to be addressed first before people pass judgement on the GMs and their actions.
1. PCs are not supposed to be able to win every fight.

What? We're supposed to be the champions of the land, the best of the best. Anything and everything should fall before us when we band together.

Actually no, I don't really feel this should be the case, and I'm sure a large number of us will feel this way as well. Conflict in Clok tends to resolve quickly, and those conflicts are usually things that require quick actions and quick thinking on the PCs part. This doesn't have to be the case though, there is no rule saying that there will never be an unwinnable situation, or that every conflict has to be resolved within one hour or even one day, so keep this in mind when large events take place and the odds are heavily weighted in the opposing force.

2. Making situations for PCs to not be able to win within an hour is really hard.

This is a point everybody should keep in mind when in group rp events. It has been pointed out that creating and executing these events takes days, weeks, and even months to prepare. If the GM wants to create an unwinnable situation for people so that it is drawn out over time, the easiest way is to just put a bunch of really powerful NPCs in strategic positions and pray that there aren't more than a couple ranged PCs with over 1k stealth. I think there have been previous attempts to come up with other ways of doing this, however, they didn't work very well if I remember correctly, and seemed to annoy the players even more than creating an unwinnable situation.

3. PCs don't have to know when a situation is unwinnable from the beginning.

You might be saying to yourself, well if the GM doesn't want us to win right off the bat, then they should just say so, or make it very clear that the situation is unwinnable by displaying the challenge.

The second part of this statement can be hard to present to the player base as a GM. There are a lot of pCs who are of the mentality that they are invincible, and extremely headstrong. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is how they wish to play their character. Coanid for example is highly confident in his skills, but he still dyed all the same last night. The fact is, when you place a challenge of unsurmountable odds in front of certain players, their reactions are not, "Welp, I guess I'll go back home...", it's, "Welp, this should be fun.". Which leaves us with the first part of this statement, having the GM tell us right off that the situation is impossible. The problem with this is that while it might sound fine and dandy, in practice it can detract from the enjoyment of the event. Having a random NPC of high respect come up to your group getting ready for battle and declare, "This situation is unwinnable! You're better off going back home.", can really deflate the enjoyment factor. What we all want is to win, and that victory only gets sweeter when it comes with hard work, determination, and a really awesome plan. I'm sure the GMs don't want to make us frustrated to the point of insanity, and this is really important for us to understand. When we go into an unwinnable situation and we discover that it is unwinnable with current circumstances, our responses should not be, how dare those GMs cause me to die and have to depart. Going into danger is not without its own risk, after all if there were no consequences for charging an opposing force, then where would be the fun. We would just go in, kill a few things, die, and repeat our actions. Instead it should more follow the lines of, "Well, I died, that was not fun, and we should probably adjust our plans accordingly.", or, "Wow, that was a really intense situation, perhaps I shouldn't participate until another plan is formed in which I have a higher chance of survival."

4. The GMs do not want to cause players to quit.

That event was really unfair. I'm going to quit because I'm sick of all of this ridiculousness.

I received this as a skype message from more than a couple of individuals last night, and I don't really appreciate this mentality as a player, nor as an individual who has an appreciation for the GMs and the hard work they provide to make Clok function. This sort of mind set will only serve to discourage the event GMs from organizing any future events, as they will always be afraid of unintentionally pushing players away from the game due to difficult situations. It can also further cause their creativity to become suppress, which can result in those GMs creating drab and uninteresting events in which every situation is winnable, and no thought has to go into a solution.

I hope people consider the points above before posting or speaking of the actions of the GMs with malice. We all want to have fun in Clok, and complaining with no constructive criticism doesn’t help anybody. If you do feel that there is something to complain about, be sure to do it with a reasonable solution or suggestion for the future.

I feel like this is when you take up arms and RESIST! They outnumber you? Good! More for you to kill! I'll admit I was preatty blue about missing out on getting slimed, but, I play CLOK to play. Spending an hour waiting for a Rez is just so depressing for me :(

I would also say, for me as a player, there was no way of knowing we would be rescued. The entire group was massacred under the feet of infested. Who would have thought they would drag us out? Maybe it's meta thinking, but, that's how it went down. I do t feel too bad, I got to load up folks on the wagon and shortened the time to get them up a bit, but still. Getting slimed opens possible RP Windows I wish I could have been apart of.

I appreciate these points being brought up.

PCs certainly win the majority of fights. The vast, vast majority. I do think it's a bit much for them to assume they can win every single one immediately, however. Sometimes you might have to step back and take some time to reassess, come up with alternative plans, or just ... not win. You can't expect to win them all.

Well, you can. But you shouldn't. Nobody signed a contract, player or GM, saying that the players must win and handily solve every event within the day, or win every fight that they muster and prepare for.

Yeah, sometimes if a situation looks impossible ... it might be best to assume it's impossible. Sometimes things happen and we don't want the PCs to resolve it within the hour (or day, or week, or month). I'm sorry if some people find that to be frustrating or unfair. But hey, think about the GMs: We constantly see our poor NPC antagonists fail mere moments after they start their nefarious plans. Let us get a few wins in, eh? And use it as a character-building moment. How does your character handle defeat? How does your character deal with the idea that they might not be able to solve this one? How does your character struggle with admitting that sometimes the world gets a little worse instead of getting a little better, despite their best efforts?

On the brighter side, after all this talk about impossibility, defeat, losing, and so on ... consider the current state of Tarueka and environs. See any infested activity there? I don't. What does that mean? You did it! You drove the infested out of Tarueka. You pushed, they pushed back, you pushed back harder, they cut their losses and left. Sure, they congregated elsewhere and geared up for a followup attack (and destroyed that followup attack handily), but don't let that make you forget the initial victory that led to it.

Sneaky's fourth point is true: We don't want to drive anyone to quit. We don't do any events thinking, "Ha, this will stick it to them, and they'll get frustrated and leave the game." That would be terrible, and self-destructive. Why would we run a multiplayer game, then run off all the players? We, or at least I, do want to keep players on their toes and have them come off the worse party in a conflict or event now and then. But then remember, you all did win the initial fight. You drove the infested out of Tarueka. That people gave chase and chose to try and strike the infested again in their obviously massive-fortified fallback position was their own choice. I can see that, after the morale boost of the initial win against the large forces in Tarueka.

I hadn't actually known about the infested being completely gone from Tarueka. That's pretty awesome to have been part of such a large victory.

I also think taking part in these events like last night is discouraging because if you do have to depart, the annoying working off part. Some will say "oh it doesn't take long." Well, to those who grind a lot it doesn't, but not everyone grinds a lot, and not everyone has a lot of time to play. I think Jasan's suggestion on chat would help with this, and I hope he posts it here.
It would be even better if an event could be scaled better to fit everyone, maybe not all the time, but some events where the lower skilled actually play a big part would be nice; instead of oh I helped, but blah is so much stronger etc.

*no clue why I put skype, but I ment chat. lol I fixed it.*

I worked my depart penalty off in five minutes or less.. that's not a large amount of time spent, the losses you get for it are laughable and borderline gracious.

I'm sorry if that's insulting.

I actually really enjoyed this event. This was one of the times where we players had to lose, and even if I hadn't said anything, I think the corpse situation would have resolved itself. It opened up a new RP option for me, though. Something I never considered.

Now I'm not sure if my actions were lore-friendly in any way, but it worked out in the end and no one kicked me in the shin for it. Sometimes you need to lose so you know you're not amazing at everything.


And we did win at Tarueka! We beat up like 3 broodmothers AND a giant worm, and that's victory to me.