RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Writer's Block Vanguard 19 talk thread.

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Captain Sammitch said:
Actually, projectile weapons - mass drivers in most hard sci-fi - are pretty good small-scale weapons in space compared to directed-energy weaponry. They are comparatively tiny, taking up only a fraction of the weight and space laser weapons of equivalent damage potential would (it's only a hundred years hence ). What's more, since it would require a lot more armor to protect against the kinetic energy of a mass driver than it would take to dissipate the photonic energy of a laser beam (again, assuming extensions of existing/theoretical tech), and a bullet can deal equivalent damage drawing on a mere fraction of the energy required to operate a laser, mass drivers would seem to be the more efficient weapons - particularly in the vacuum of space, where there would be no drag to impede the velocity of a projectile, and hence no diminishing of its kinetic energy over distance.

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Cowgirl Jack said:
Yeah...few people realize I'm one of Grimm's alt IDs...

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I've fooled you all.

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Danny said:
I stole a spaceship!

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Captain Sammitch said:
Actually, projectile weapons - mass drivers in most hard sci-fi - are pretty good small-scale weapons in space compared to directed-energy weaponry. They are comparatively tiny, taking up only a fraction of the weight and space laser weapons of equivalent damage potential would (it's only a hundred years hence ). What's more, since it would require a lot more armor to protect against the kinetic energy of a mass driver than it would take to dissipate the photonic energy of a laser beam (again, assuming extensions of existing/theoretical tech), and a bullet can deal equivalent damage drawing on a mere fraction of the energy required to operate a laser, mass drivers would seem to be the more efficient weapons - particularly in the vacuum of space, where there would be no drag to impede the velocity of a projectile, and hence no diminishing of its kinetic energy over distance.

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Holy shit, it's The Indestructible Man. All this time, and I didn't pick Sammitch as an alt ID.

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Zuh?

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Prometheus said:
BTW, Euro...just out of curiosity...I named the ship The Eurostar because, A) he was the first metahuman/member of that team's legacy, and, I..uh..thought he would have been dead by now. You know, if not fallen in a blaze of glory in the war, then, of being well over one-hundred years old. Or, was it all a flashback? Just curious...

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First half a flashback, second half the present, altough with the setting you have created, how can you tell if a thing is in the present, the past, or the future? Reletively speaking, moving in space is also meaning you move in time.

In any case, at first I, too, though of creating another character as Euro should have been dead, then I though what it is just needed for the story is that he is BELIEVED dead. As for why he is still alive, well.... just move on with the story.

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Eurostar said:

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Prometheus said:
BTW, Euro...just out of curiosity...I named the ship The Eurostar because, A) he was the first metahuman/member of that team's legacy, and, I..uh..thought he would have been dead by now. You know, if not fallen in a blaze of glory in the war, then, of being well over one-hundred years old. Or, was it all a flashback? Just curious...

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First half a flashback, second half the present, altough with the setting you have created, how can you tell if a thing is in the present, the past, or the future? Reletively speaking, moving in space is also meaning you move in time.

In any case, at first I, too, though of creating another character as Euro should have been dead, then I though what it is just needed for the story is that he is BELIEVED dead. As for why he is still alive, well.... just move on with the story.

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"Maybe we just need to restructure. Try different tactics. Like...let's take a look at what things are preventing posts. Not external things, like school or work or social stuff, but what is it that we do to each other that might hurt postings."

"What about the actual stories? Ignore the aspect of some people wanted JL-style and some people wanting a different type of group. The actual stories -- are they presented in such a way that it's hard to create a follow-up post? Do we need more structure? less structure? Is there not enough freedom to just write? Or is there not enough structure to base a post on?"

"The way I see it, writing is like water -- it needs a container to keep stuff from spilling everywhere. In the other hand, you don't want it so restrained that people can't navigate their way towards writing a post?"

"No, I think it might be a real concern for the stories. is there enough in someone's post for someone else to carry on with it? It's something I've been wondering about my own posting of late."

"I agree. And part of the problem is that I don't know HOW to continue the story. I mean, if I was the only one writing it, then fine. But having to include other writers adds a complicated factor. And I think part of that evolves from little or no preplanning. Obviously, we can't do too much preplanning. but having NO plan is hurting us

"Let's take a look at no. 19 as an example."

"DEADLY FLYING ROBOT ANIMALS. How can that NOT be lighting everyone's fire?"

"Yeah, but it's hard trying to figure out what needs to be done. I mean, obviously, you put a bunch of robots in front of bree and leslie, ass-kicing will begin. We know this. But after the fight...what next? I find myself writing more and more fight scenes, which isn't too bad, but it gets draining."

"See, that's part of the problem, IMO. It seems to me like all people want to do is write fight scenes. Nobody wants to tell a story, they just want to write a big fight."

"I think that's why preplanning will help. Understand that I NEVER want to go in a story knowing the end. We should never plan that much. But we need a set-up. We need a better understanding of WHO will be involved...WHAT goals, objectives, primary and secondary, etc etc etc...and what do we want to get out of each story? Like I said, I don't want so much information that there's no surprise. I'd just like enough so that by looking at this pool of ideas and goals, i can do stuff off of that info...and I'd know that everyone else is getting their info from the same place."

"How would you recommend implementing these ideas?"

"Well, by default, we always end up with one 'leader' in each story. No. 19 is Danny's, in a way. So, the talk thread needs to address those questions. Let me think of an original example. Let's say I'm leading hypothetical story no. 20. I want a story where some assassin is targeting members of Vanguard. First of all, I need to address who's in the story. This one's fairly easy. we need vanguard, we need an assassin who's name's not Nimrod...we could also use people at La Perdita (police and what not), maybe even some secondary characters like the staff...I don't want VE cameos, because i think that would overbook the story.

"What do I want out of this story? Maybe...maybe I want to see Vanguard get humbled by an outsider. I want them to meet a threat that they cannot beat. So that's a goal. Let's make Vanguard bleed. That helps center a sort of theme. We need to have fights where we don't win. We need to tap everyone's achillies heels. And while I don't know what the ending will be, in order to make that humbling theme continue, it probably means Vanguard doesn't beat this assassin. He gets away. Like I said, don't go to much into the ending, but at least we know what kind of beat to end on.

"The information should create a sort of target for us to reach. The idea is that we should have a goal BEFORE the first post."

"I think it would also give newcomers an idea how to fit their characters in."

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Naturally, we'd like everyone's input on this.

Cheers,

Jackie,
Vangaurd Secretary

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Jlfgrimm13: next to no time to lay anything right now.
Jlfgrimm13: play. I meant play.
Jlfgrimm13: this is how tired I am. heh.
jaclynangelo: you have no idea how hard i'm laughing...
Jlfgrimm13: what a typo.

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Eurostar said:
I know I should stay silent over this, but I am too much of an asshole to simply shut up.

I think we have done a lot of mad moves lately, and a few good ones.

Among the good ones I consider:

1) The format of VE: well structured, easy to understand for newcomers, without too much confusing secondary characters, with self contained stories enough different one from the other, and an overall tone of aperture toward the outside, instead of being concerned only with internal relations.

2) The "mastering" of the VE stories: up until the last completed VE story, each issue has been carefully started and nurtured by one poster, that allowing total freedom but at the same time has intervened every time there was a need for a push so that the story would not languish. Same result we had for a VI story, the Danny VS Hal story, that has been the last one to be actively posted.

3) New posters coming (or long gone returning), like BF and Spam. New posters are the life of our game, without them the game is destined to die in no time.

Among the bad ones:

1) First of all, the worst one: the lack of direction for VI. It was mostly my fault: instead of a clear structured format like VE, I pushed for a long period of instability (the UN-ban period) that would have brought the team toward something different. Now, the change was not a bad thing, and was wanted by many, as the repeated destruction of the building and the business of Vanguard testify. But instead of starting with something new, I pushed for the clandestinity period, and as anything that is not clear, sculpted in stone, but very fluid, it has created confusion and lack of interest.
By the way, I think this is still the most important reason for which there is so scarce interest around Vi; in my opinion Mxy with his idea for the ending of the Murder story was on the right track, and the fact that his idea was rejected my a majority of people who DOESN'T post was baffling.

2) Lack of concern by "masters". I call masters what in the post by Jackie are called leaders, people who start the stories and then carefully accompany posters toward the end of it. We had good masters, and bad ones. Bad in the sense that one started a story and then, for any reason (any good reason, as this is just an hobby and shouldn't affect the real life of anyone) stopped to carefully direct and gently push the story in directions that make the posters wanting to post more. Both the three current stories show this same problem.

3) Pissing off of too many posters. Too many posters have been mobbed to the point they left the group (I am not referring to myself here): and losing any posters, even Speedy, in the long run is a bad thing. I know that different way of seeing at our private Universe are not easy to accept, I am the first that stiffen up when something appears that contradict what was stated before, it the greatness of TOMB, for example was the fact that there were people like I-Man and Prometheus, but also like LLance and Joker1.

4) The splitting of Vanguard. I can understand the motivation behind the splitting, and I also firmly believe that the spin off is fairly superior than the original, yet the splitting is, IMO, another one of the cause of the current bad trend. Too many characters to write, too much stories to follow, too less posters for any given story.


Said that, I think the main problem is the nature of the beast.
Our stories are not really stories in the classic sense, and they are not really round robin, too. Each poster has not a complete freedom over what happen next, given total respect for what happened before, because there are whole "worlds" that are "reserved" by people. Each character and the relatives, sure, some of the villains, too, but also whole categories: aliens are reserved by one, Mandelovia by another, the Manhattan problem by a third and so on. Now, this has both advantages and disadvantages, but the problem is that gives the sense of a big load of boundaries that can't be trespassed, especially by the newcomers. If you sum this to the fact that lately has been given too much importance to the quality of the story, the result is the current stalemate. No one posts because doesn't know what to post next.
In the old days no one was concerned about the outcome story, just by what his characters was doing in it. And so we had great stories, like Malvana's song, that were not great stories per se (try reread it, it's barely acceptable), but that were fantastic to PLAY (play, not write). To a lesser degree, the City of the Dragon story and Obsidian Illumination II were like it; not great stories, but with definitely fantastic moments in it, that were not planned in advance, but originated by the spun of the moment.

It's evident that the writing has given to us, everyone of us, a better grasp over the concept of storytelling, but I think that excellence should be reserved for solo or short-team stories.

For the group story we should lessen the emphasis over the story itself, and step back to more role playing. A good, simple idea for the beginning, and then let more freedom to roam. And the one that start the story should be entitled to push the story whenever it seems to slow down.

And, always, who posts is right, and who doesn't post is wrong.

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I didn't read that.

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I know I should stay silent over this, but I am too much of an asshole to simply shut up.

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Sig time.