My thoughts on this event will focus more on the back-of-house work, rather then presentation, as that is what I feel I have more of a relevant context to critique and praise.
1. What are your first impressions or thoughts?
When the antlion arc was first pitched, I raised concerns regarding the events too-simple premise and claimed it would "bore" the playerbase. Whilst I feel my original criticisms held weight, I also believe how this arc was executed does well to highlight some of the unexpected strength of the narrative team, whilst also shining light upon a few glaring flaws that need to be addressed.
2. What did you like about it?
The arc was very open-ended (though I do not know if that was by design, per se), which allowed for player involvement to have real, meaningful effect. During the arc, the CWU's player-led preparations acted as the lynchpin for most of the event. That lynchpin being the thumpers. Their placement, and the restriction self-imposed to only have a few, left a very glaring weakness in the combine's underside that both combine and anti-citizen players had to play off of. It was a very good piece of organic story development. Additionally, later on in the event, the rebel strikes against the Nexus, thumpers, and Overwatch forces allowed for a drastic shift in the balance of power, leading to where we are now. An unprecedented change in the status-quo.
3. What did you dislike about it?
I'm not gonna touch on the antlions themselves, but rather the short-fallings I feel are present within the narrative team and higher management that were largely revealed during this arc. The current stance of management/coordination seems to be very Rule Of Cool, with quite a few uncomfortable precedents being set during this arc. The largest being the Server Director's decision to override the /checkcrime limit rule for the sake of a story-relevant rebel strike. Is this a good decision? I personally cannot say for sure. It allowed a massive story-beat and a strong attack on the Nexus to occur, at the cost of forfeiting the sanctity of the ruleset. If players can be selectively elevated above the rules to tell a story, what does that say about the order of the server? Should the Director have that authority in the first place? These are questions that I feel, have yet to be properly addressed by the management team.
Secondarily, the ending of the arc exposed one of the weaknesses of both management and the narrative team, and it's an issue that has been practically ubiquitous throughout all of Willard's operations. Communication. The Creative Team, Narrative Team and Management (I reluct to call them a team as it seems to majorly be the efforts of one person (Then again, I am not omniscient)) seem to have trouble relaying expectations to one another. The initial document provided for this arc, which I read over, being part of the creative team, is majorly lacking in constraints for those not clued in to the original vision, and leaves much to be wanting regarding overall guidance. This resulted, in this arc, in many GMs simply not leading events due to lack of creative direction. If RedHot or RAD-X was not online, things would begin to lose coherency. We saw this in the final event, where RAD-X's doodoo dogwater PC resulted in him crashing, and the event losing the majority of it's direction. I'll write my thoughts on bettering this in the next section.
Thirdly, I feel that this arc over-relied on what I like to call GMB, or Game Master Bullying. This is entirely my own bullshitted term, but in essence, what it describes is GMs using heavy-handed methods to achieve larger directional goals, losing all subtlety and immersion to achieve them. Whilst this is technically a valid method to achieve narrative goals (this arc for example), I feel it's an overly crude method for what is supposed to be the Creative Team. Emphasis on Creative. A few notable examples of this GMB activity are things like the admin rebels pushing the Combine Triumph Checkpoint at the early stages of the arc. And later on, the deployment of the VX-Gas to the slums. Which I felt was handled horribly. These methods left the hand of the Game-Masters glaringly visible to players. It removed that feeling of organic growth which I feel, in a collaborative writing environment like a roleplaying server, is essential to it's quality and it's fun. When events happen out of the will of the writer more then of the coherency of the story, I have to ask the purpose of the story in the first place? Why not do away with it and simply present these challenges as what they are, road-blocks set to players by GMs.
The question is rhetorical, of course, and a bad question at that. We do not present narratives as facades for gameplay challenges, but instead, supply these challenges to add weight to a narrative. In that case, then, when you poorly handle delivering these challenges, when you strip the connection between gameplay and narrative, when you over-rely on GMB to get what you want, you defeat the ultimate purpose of providing those challenges. We shouldn't have spawned bugs this arc because it's dangerous for players. We should've done it for a narrative reason, leading me to my fourth critique.
Lastly, The Antlion Hive, during this arc, felt vastly underrepresented and directionless. We saw bugs, yes, but we did not see the Hive. I am unsure as to what it should've been represented as. I am torn between having it be characterized, this malignant entity made more then the sum of it's parts. A single entity, with individual antlions feeling like nothing more then a limb of this one combatant. And a simple force-of-nature, this overwhelming tide that, more then being directly combatted, can simply be withstood. Like trying to wait out a storm, rather then fight a foe. Either of these options would've been very impactful, I feel, and lent well to contributing to the overall atmosphere of the server (though I feel the atmosphere was done well, already). However, throughout the course of this arc, it felt more-so like the bugs were utilized as a tool for GMs to punish behaviour they deemed out-of-character for this arc, with little to no IC reasoning for these actions. We can see this in the isolated and targeted nature of the antlion incursions. They won triumph, then left so that players could transit between Victory and the Slums. Not because of any IC reason. Antlions were not present during the Vort freeing of the final stages, despite it being set inside their hive, so as to not affect the conflict between OTA and the Rebels. Again, not because of any IC reason. This is GMB in it's purest form, and to use it on what is meant to be the main antagonist of the arc, I feel, removed a lot of weight from the arc as a whole. It doesn't feel like there are stakes when you know that the GMs won't deploy bugs right now, because of some OOC reason or another.
4. What do you believe can be improved for the next Arc when one arrives again?
Firstly, the precedents set by this arc are numerous and varied. They need to be examined, and resolved definitively. Can events result in PKs? Should player-led action be restricted for the good of the arc? Can rules be voided, if it contributes to the story in a meaningful way? Should we give anyone in the community the authority to override the rules? Should creative authority be concentrated into a few directing members, with others acting as stagehands, or should we work to ensure every member of the creative team could, if they were required to, run the narrative solo?
There are probably many questions which I can't think of that need to be addressed, regardless. The coming days, after the map-change, and the scramble to sort everything out, should be taken to reflect. Seriously reflect, with everyone responsible for running this event to do so. Take time to answer these questions, properly. Don't avoid them because they make you uncomfortable, or you might get accused of bias. Accept your flaws, and work to improve. This goes for everyone. Creative Team, Narrative Team, Staff Team, Management.
Flowery nonsense concluded, some of my opinionated tips to improve are as follows:
- Write a comprehensive guide to GMing the arc, with relevant restrictions and permissions listed. Ensure that, if equipped with this guide, literally anybody could properly direct the narrative. Reduce the reliance upon single individuals who won't always be available for narrative cohesion, whilst still allowing their creative authority to guide the arc they have designed.
- Change your mindset. Ensure that, when looking at player action, instead of thinking in OOC terms like balance, or fairness, or fun, we first think in terms of narrative consequence. This isn't a competitive shooter. This isn't a hardcore survival sim. This is a storytelling game. Things should be unfair, sometimes. Some scenarios shouldn't be winnable. To those that read this, and feel like this event slighted your faction, or that you were unfairly put on the back-foot, I would like you to reflect on your own actions, during this arc. Were you proactive in trying to combat its challenges? Were you thinking ICly, narratively, with the goal of writing a good story, or were you more concerned with "winning" a collaborative writing project? Scripts, guns, whatever. They're all tools used to service this one goal. Of telling a story.
- Ensure that, for serverwide arcs, serverwide involvement is possible. This arc was great for rebels, because they had concrete, narratively-relevant goals to strive towards. This arc was less-great for the combine, as their goals were vague and ineffectual. I don't think anything specific was written down in regards to them at all, but if I had to put it in words, the combine's goal was basically just "Stop The Bugs". With nothing more. In the future, it would be best to ensure that, outside of simply conceptualizing ways in which things could be shifted in favour of each faction, concrete goals are established to properly involve them. Goals that have set outcomes and consequences, goals that can, if achieved, have proper narrative consequence. Leave achieving the goals to the players. Do not intervene because you've planned for one outcome better then another. Do not spawn admin rebels to take Triumph, if the player rebels aren't doing it themselves.
- Avoid GMB as much as you can. I will repeat this, constantly, until the end of time. If players aren't acting in the way you want, do not try to get them to return to the railroad. Make a new one. Explore the consequence of their decision. Do not be afraid to have hours or days of downtime between events. So long as they're often enough, and the event has a solid atmosphere, the players will be fine with some downtime. Hell, they might even beg for it. Ensure events are logical, narratively-focused, consequential, and most importantly, they're natural progressions of player activity.
- One for Management. If you want your narrative arcs to have weight, do not OOCly veto the vulnerability of big targets. Or- at least, set that boundary at the start of planning. Properly communicate what the scope of the narrative can be. Work with the coordinators to ensure that the narrative can work best within this scope. And if, by player action, it falls outside of the scope. Don't retcon, try to work with it. Collaborate with your players, and your creative team, and every single enthusiastic, driven player in your community to make something great. Lore is nothing more then a reminder for something you can use in a story. To force it out, then, is completely backwards. Stop barring holds. Stop being afraid to go wild.
5. Any closing thoughts or words?
Despite what you might think, from this posts critiques being several times larger then it's praise, I do believe this event was a brilliant first step for the Narrative Team. I feel like they can build off of what they learned here to improve massively, and it's possible for everyone, players included, to take their experiences with this arc, and use it to improve their own writing.
I really, really am excited to see where the creative and narrative teams take the server in a few months. And I'm excited to see what will happen when that mythical V3 is released. See what we can do when we do away with the outdated restrictions of the past. New lore, new stories, new characters. A new perspective.
This arc was the symptom of change. Change for the better within the management and community as a whole. Change that leaves me with a hope that we can only get better from here on out. We have a real opportunity here, folks. An opportunity to do something absolutely amazing. Let's not squander it, now.
