[War_ooc] Monday morning musings (read the whole thing)

[John Penta]

This is what happens when people don't let me sleep 8 consecutive
hours like I like...Instead, I wake up every 2 hours.

I get talkative.

Today, my musings are about WAR.

Since I have a captive audience, I'm taking advantage of that fact.:)

Sooo, it looks like the great theological debate of WAR has reared its head.

Realism vs what may alternately be called playability, story,
loopiness, whatever.

AGAIN.

And naturally, mudslinging has occurred, and people have whined from
both sides, and feelings are hurt.

AGAIN.

The fact that we're dealing with a spectrum here, not a binary choice,
seems not to get through to many people.

Well, some facts that remain unchanged at the end of the day.

1. This debate will never be solved to anybody's conclusion.
2. I do not own the server. That's all Jared, our silent list-owner.
(He sets out very limited conditions, like no breaking the server. We
abide by those as good guests. Otherwise, though, it's all us. He
could well be dead at the moment and I wouldn't notice. I hope he's
not, but he could be.) However, I've easily been with WAR longest of
anybody currently playing.
3. WAR is thus, in a weird way, sort of (but not quite) 'mine'. I'm
happy when it's not mine, honestly. I claim no ownership, but I
realize that people wind up looking my way.
4. Debating realism vs whateveryouchoosetocallit drives away people,
which is BAD for the game.
5. Good, bad...I'm the guy with the gun. Or in this case, the button
that subscribes and unsubscribes. I don't use it much without at least
the tacit consent of others, but the option is there. And Lord, have
all sides in this debate made that finger itchy at times lately.

All of these line up to one thing:

Eventually, I'm the guy stuck settling this, it seems. But I don't
*do* coercion, unless I have to.

So if I may propose a compromise?

WAR is not particularly realistic - it's a policy game, yeah. Sort of.

But it's always, IMHO anyway, been intended as a game that mixes story
with policy in...not equal doses, but there's no set proportion.

The days of a half-page post needing footnotes and links are, so I
pray, gone. Not that those are unnecessary. Indeed, they have a useful
place. But they should not be needed in even most cases.

But good writing is never a cure for braindead policy...or vice versa.

It can make an iffy policy work, but the truly braindead shit...no.

Good writing can make a good (if hard to swallow) policy easier to take.

What does all of this add up to?

In my opinion - if you're looking for a game solely focused on policy,
this ain't it. I *like* having developed characters, thanks. I *enjoy*
that WAR has become open to non-politics types. We have a practicing
electrical engineer and a published author amongst us, as well as the
odd medical student. That's good. Not something we could have had in
previous incarnations, I think.

But if you think this is a game where writing can achieve anything,
you're also wrong. WAR has a finely-honed bullshit meter, and often as
not it can sniff out stuff that would make no sense at a mile upwind.

We have an uncanny record at predicting future events and "showcasing"
things that soon wind up happening in some form in real life. This is
because we allow stuff that is frankly a bit odd to happen. We've
scared the Secret Service (HI GUYS, WE CAN BET YOU'RE LISTENING!),
we've scared ourselves.

We've proven an excellent laboratory for policy and storylines.

It'd be sad if we were to react to recent events in-game with that changing.

So, a solution. Not a permanent patch, but something that should hold
for a while:

We let events that HAVE happened happen as they will. I despise
retcons. However, those events have consequences, which will be
enforced. Period.

In future...If need be, as seemingly the last neutral voice in our
eternal debate, I'll act as Arbiter of Reality, in addition to acting
as a GM. I'll confer with nobody - as conferring seems to spark
debates as much as, if not more than, it ends them - except when I
need information. My decisions will be mine alone.

I'll be happy to justify my decisions in private - but I'd prefer we
quit throwing mud at each other, which both sides have done.

It's tiresome to hear cries of the "Hyperrealism Gestapo", as was put
once. It's equally tiresome to hear that all realism is being sucked
from WAR by recent events.

Neither is true. Both make the accusers look like idiots. Paranoid idiots.

Nobody is out to get you, not from here. Nobody is out to suck away
your story, or your realism.

Get over yourselves.

No, this is not an invitation for long defenses - just let it go.
Let's just get back to writing.

And the next person to wake me up at 6 am...dies.

John