Conquest of the Horde

So, I'll keep this brief:

Some of you oldbys may remember Jungle Fever, an event I held WAY back when.

Now, I've been rolling the idea of the event back around in my skull. This is by no means a statement that I'll be doing this event again, but I am curious as to what people thought about this event.

While I, personally, felt that I did a lot of things right about this event I also know I did a lot wrong. I'd like to hear what people think.

So, if you participated do give me a tid-bit of feedback! Don't worry, I'm a big girl.

Signed with a loving hand,
The Management

Terrible.

Awful.

Leave this server and never return.

I am, of course, engaging in simple jest. Lets see, Jungle Fever. Oh, do I remember it. Ho boy, do I remember it. Most of these memories are fond, however. I remember the entire server converging on one location. I remember the random tidbits the staff threw in to increase the chaos. I remember my first character there, Gregg, battling an entire group of undead and being slain valiantly. I remember my second character to participate, Pops, burning a building filled with evildoers down.

Oh yes, I remember Jungle Fever. And you know what?

I think I always shall.



My work here is done.

...Wow, I need to rack my brain to remember all of what happened. I think I'll break this down into sections, with the only things I can think of right now.


OOC Behavior
I honestly cannot imagine how you kept up with all this and stayed sane. For that I give you major props. In my time on CotH, I don't recall an event so big.

However, you did have a deal of trouble with communication. I'd probably be ten times worse. Before it started, an aspect was setup where two guilds would be at war with each other, instead of working to end the madness. I was a leader of one of these guilds, part of a trio. My opinion, I felt, was forgotten when I took a much needed break. I came back, and it felt like my character was made lesser than the others, after all the work I put in beforehand. That my opinion was lesser because of the break--or, so I understood. I would have appreciated an update beforehand, and when I got back.

Perhaps my lack of voice was due to my shutting down from burn out and not talking to others as well. Which I would understand, people not wanting to talk to me.

Disease
Again, I can't imagine how long you thought on this. I'm sure it was as close to perfect as you could make it.

Maybe this is more feedback for the players, but it seemed like people took the concept and ran with it like they were role playing 28 Days Later. As well, its qualities were very quickly discovered and countered. I am unsure how that would have been prevented, or if anything constituted meta-gaming.

Perhaps further clarification and a more solid watch and enforcement on how the disease worked would have prevented this--if such actions were at all possible for the team.

Progression
To me, it felt like little active, fluid progress could be made. Perhaps it was because the town was so OOCly small, but no matter how many times players put the fires out, they kept burning through the whole event. Only once was there aid in the removal of corpses. I understand the want for the area to appear like a warzone, but frustration arises when a player cannot see they had an affect on their environment.

I also understand wanting to keep a story scheduled, spoilers held off, but players will wander and discover things you don't want to. I remember legitimately discovering the boat just off the coast with a team, and then being told that it had to be retconned.

Boss Fights
The only problem I had with these were the length: going on too long. Other than that, they were quite fun. Perhaps a tad schizophrenic and random, but I understand the want to keep us entertained and distracted from foiling your plots.


That about does it! All in all a worthy, creative effort despite its hiccups. A shame it didn't last longer, but the exhaustion is understandable.

I was only around for one day of Jungle Fever, but those hours were chaotic and GMs popped in almost by the hour to scold someone for their IC behaviour. I think the reason for this is like c0rzilla said, communication.


The idea is great and I do have a similar one which I am working on, only big difference is that it requires more death and a quarantine.

There are a few reservations I had with the event;


1: It seemed to branch off from what was advertised rather quickly. While I had read up an event post detailing a neat infectious rage-zombie esque disease which was going to be running wild, I saw these weird robots and abominations springing up as bosses. To me a much more likely candidate for such a position would be the infested members of the area; like a big angry ogre, or a team of crazed adventurers. It seemed like a pretty large departure from the original intent, or perhaps I had just missed that. I thought it was unfortunate, because it seemed to me like there was good potential for some good dramatics as well.


2: The event appeared to be largely focused around your character Marianna. While I understand that that character was indeed a big villain for you, it seemed to kinda appear out of nowhere, as did the DBZ fight with Navren at the end. That in and of itself seemed a little strange (as the players couldn't really participate, only watch what was essentially a battle of the awesomes from two GMs), but moreso to me was that the event seemed to suddenly be resolved with her death (which really cut the intended run-time of it down). I personally think players might have a bit of resentment to a GM involving their own characters in a storyline to that kind of degree, where their life or death can dictate if an event will continue.


3: A quick remark on OOC behavior; I recall some disagreement when it came to the final fight, after the boss had been dispatched and Veretta had been exposed and killed. The thing I think is important to get out of this is that you don't put your big bad out in the open-- 'cause people -will- mess with them, and kill them if they have enough people on their side. I personally don't see how the encounter was meant to end any other way, since while perhaps more cinematically appealing, the villain slinking off after puling the attention of the armed mob just usually wouldn't work in reality.


Finally I as well heard about some problems with communication, mostly being that I recall two Steamwarriors present at the time who were not allowed to use their prestige abilities, one explicitly being told that they could not and another never being given the chance when there was promised one. I also recall that while two guilds were meant to head some conflict, they were presented with what was actually very little substantial reason to do so; to try and question and figure out the situation they were given was perfectly logical, opposed to forming vendettas as intended.

Anyways, those were my personal issues I saw when participating (usually as a deranged townsfolk). Take it as you will.

I think as Rigley said the event was much more different than what was advertised, and I personally wanted to see more out of the plague than what came out of these sideplots. It seemed a little strange too how it ended, and the resolve. The big bad got killed and then the next morning POOF, everything got despawned. We had no chance to rp out how the plague ended or the cleanup. I do remember Rigley and I talking back and forth about a possible cleanup event where we hunt down the last victims and pretty much stab them with the cure. The cleanup just happened so quickly, cutting out any opportunity to rp.

I did like the event but I also felt like it was more about the felsworn and demon hunters and to be honest I'm not sure if I expected that to happen, or the event to be about that specifically.

I enjoyed the event a great deal, but there are a couple things I would change should it ever happen again.

The mass murder:

I would be terrified to become infected because your RP ended right there. Players went around and killed others for the sake of killing them. After a while no one wanted to become infected and the only things were had were NPC infected so there could be a killing fest. Any attempts to try to restrain the infected were put down by a larger group that just wanted to stab and slash. This put the largest damper of the event. Sure, it was well and fine if they just made throw-away characters for it, but if anyone wanted to do lasting RP and got infected...well...you would have to have logged off and not back on until a cure was found unless you wanted to die.

That was just a bit silly in my opinion.

The second thing! [No fancy title for it]

I did enjoy the cramped space, oddly enough. It gave off a more urgent sense. Having it so large scale across the whole of STV would lessen the danger. I would have liked it, however, with a bit more interaction RP besides fighting was there. For example:

A group of players go out into the jungle to find some herbs in order to find a cure. Depending or not the resources available to them or if they had any medical professionals around, they might be able to make a breakthrough, even if it only worked for an hour. It would give off a sense of accomplishment as well as spice of up the RP if an hour later, said person suddenly went crazy again.

Other stuff

I think it also lacked in the fact that anyone could easily get out when they wished if there was a mage nearby. There was no sense of being trapped unless a friend was sick and you wanted to protect them, or if you just wanted to help.

All in all it was a good event, I wish it would have lasted long or ever allowed for 'clean-up RP' where the players helped the bruisers clean everything up and fix it up.

(11-07-2011, 08:02 AM)Reigen Wrote: [ -> ]I enjoyed the event a great deal, but there are a couple things I would change should it ever happen again.

The mass murder:

I would be terrified to become infected because your RP ended right there. Players went around and killed others for the sake of killing them. After a while no one wanted to become infected and the only things were had were NPC infected so there could be a killing fest. Any attempts to try to restrain the infected were put down by a larger group that just wanted to stab and slash. This put the largest damper of the event. Sure, it was well and fine if they just made throw-away characters for it, but if anyone wanted to do lasting RP and got infected...well...you would have to have logged off and not back on until a cure was found unless you wanted to die.

That was just a bit silly in my opinion.

I'll put in my own thoughts on this.

Having the infection turn you into a lethal psychopath is perhaps not the best course of action. Perhaps it unhinges your mind, makes you... a looney. But not necessarily one that would attack others. Sure, some people can roleplay their infected as ones who run over to kill everyone. Or, they can roleplay their infected as having lost any ability to control their emotions. Or ones that think they're rocks.

Make it just screw with the mind. It doesn't necessarily have to be 'KILL EVERYONE YOU SEE'. Because as Reigen said, this just makes it so playing an infected will get you killed. Let us GMs play the psychopathic murdering infected. Don't make the players forced to lose their characters too.

Or perhaps the madness could take its own creative route. Rigley actually made a druid who tried to "murder" but he only knew healing spells. So he'd just come up to you and start tossing heals all over. I wonder how other non-combat characters would act?

But I must agree that the behavior and personality shift should be dictated by the player. Perhaps the plague should have some biological component that we wouldn't leave up to debate, like running a high fever, or extreme hunger (that could possibly lead to a craving for any flesh you can come across. That'd be like a stereotypical zombie outbreak, though).

That brings me to the new topic: What would people like to see out of a disease?

I won't force the disease on people. I long ago decided that. People are unwilling to play an infected when forced to do so and often needed to be policed.

I think something that inhibits decisions would be interesting, combined with some sort of fever or extreme hunger. It'd be like the brain's clouded, you have some urgency to relieve this need, and you have some decisions to make to get rid of it. Like as mentioned it'd be like what most people would imagine a zombie outbreak being :v

I think OOCly there should be some warning though, like whispering "Hey, my character may possibly try to bite you." The biting would be a rather obvious way to spread infection.

(11-07-2011, 09:34 AM)Wuvvums Wrote: [ -> ]Or perhaps the madness could take its own creative route. Rigley actually made a druid who tried to "murder" but he only knew healing spells. So he'd just come up to you and start tossing heals all over. I wonder how other non-combat characters would act?

There was also an infected Draenei paladin which was holed up in one room and tending to a room full of others infected by healing them with the light (since at the time it was given the attribute of being able to mostly contain the aggressive behavior). I think only Xigo and perhaps a few more of the 'save the Draenei' group found that bit, though.

Then again by the next day he was just a corpse in an empty room. So it didn't have a lot of time to be visible. :B

I'm rather drawn to the idea of a disease that causes sporadic damage to one's personality. It would allow for people to play characters gone fully homicidal or simply people who are struggling with madness.

Still, it loses it's 'zombie' feel a tad if you don't make it at least quasi-deadly.

(11-08-2011, 04:32 PM)Rosencrat Wrote: [ -> ]I'm rather drawn to the idea of a disease that causes sporadic damage to one's personality. It would allow for people to play characters gone fully homicidal or simply people who are struggling with madness.

Still, it loses it's 'zombie' feel a tad if you don't make it at least quasi-deadly.

Then don't use the 'zombie' feel. Players don't want to be zombies, because being a zombie gets you killed unless people start breaking character to circumvent the diseases, or breaking character to find reasons to avoid killing zombies.

Alternatively, NPC zombies. PvP is inherently a drama-fest in RP.

(11-07-2011, 09:41 AM)Rosencrat Wrote: [ -> ]That brings me to the new topic: What would people like to see out of a disease?

Perhaps something that spans over the day rather then a few hours and something that can be held back but never fulled cured until the end?

This can allow for players to find 'temporary cures' that can either slow a stage or revert them back one stage, though never allowing them to go lower then stage one. For example!

Stage 1: General sick feeling, coughing/sneezing 4 hours
Stage 2: Vomiting, dizzy spells loss of consciousness 4 hours
Stage 3: Odd thoughts, loss of emotions, blankness 4 hours
Stage 4: Lethargy, cravings for food, normal emotions regained 4 hours
Stage 5: Extreme emotions, outbursts, the need to take out any small detail on anyone 4 hours
Stage 6: Madness [Depending on the character on how sever it is. Anywhere from voices to psychopathic killer] 4 hours

Each stage lasts about four hours as a transition. It wouldn't be "Oh, I hit the four hour mark in stage one, TIME TO SUDDENLY PUKE". It would more be, "After four hours, the sickness starts to progress and starts to cause stomach illness and vomiting."

As for allowing temporary cures or 'setbacks'. Say the medical expert players, after an event or so, make a chemical X that doubles the duration of the infected players, but they can only do it in Y amount of players. Those injected with X would have the transition time be 8 hours per stage instead of four hours.

Same situation, only with cure Q. X amount of players can be injected with cure Q. Say a player was at stage 4. After getting injected they would take 4 hours to descend back into stage 3, then another four hours to get back up to stage 4.

This allows for more interaction between player groups besides "Oh look, infected, Killmurder!" Players can play insane murder infected, or those who are struggling to retain sanity. It also allows more player/GM interaction with mini-events during it and whatnot.

At least, that's something I'd like to see/participate in.