[War_ooc] Okay, so...

[John Penta]

About this whole resurrection of WAR thingy.

I have confirmed:

Me
Buckley
Chris
Dylan
Iain

With Mike Downey as a maybe, it sounds like?

5. 6 if we count Mike.

Awfully small, but hopefully people can advertise? I know from last time
that I suck at that.

So, I'm going to lay out some stuff here.

First off, there are OOC tasks we need to know someone is doing. Not think
someone else is doing, but *absolutely know* that someone is doing them.
They're vital to the success of any resurrection. My neurotic
attempting-to-be-Atlas nature means I'd try to do all of these myself,
except that I suck at these tasks, said after having attempted to do them
all (except art, you don't want to see me doing art...ever...) for WAR last
time. I'm *interested* in about half of these, but the very reason I'm
putting these up here is because I suck and therefore should really not do
them.

What are they? Well, I'll set them out, each as a task area someone can
volunteer for, along with any potential issues/problems/whatnot that I see.
---
Web stuff - WAR's historic bane, along with advertising. Buckley suggested a
Wiki as our website - an excellent idea, but vandals and spam would be a
problem. A second question would be hosting - unless someone can rustle up
free hosting for such a Wiki (or a website), it'll take *real money*.:(
--
Advertising: Finding places to advertise is only part of the problem.
Writing a good ad is demonically hard - we're a niche thing no matter what
kind of setting we go for, but we still need new people. I mentioned last
night that I saw 6-8 people as a minimum size. Even if we have that now, we
still need to advertise - just so that we have enough people for when people
inevitably take a break/quit/get hit by a bus.

I will, for the record, continue my role as newbie-handler once they reach
us. I actually *like* doing that work, even as I see how others dislike it.

It might be a good thing if, somehow, we advertise off-web, maybe by means
of fliers and stuff?
--
Graphics and Art: Sort of in conjunction with the first two issues, we need
someone artsy who can do stuff like banner ads.
---

Next up:

Stuff we need to decide on by consensus. Not, dear God, by vote...by
consensus, because they're the building blocks. If we can't come to a
consensus on these, we'll never get anywhere with implementation.
***
First off, Setting.

If we're looking at everything, we may as well look at setting.

Personally, I've heard a bunch of ideas, from Napoleoonic-era WAR to Space
WAR. They all strike me as potentially fun in different ways.

Even for Modern or Near-future WAR, we run into the questions of work
required and just how much we can expect out of any playerbase in terms of
compelling, IC writing and decisionmaking.

I'm going to throw out my opinions as far as the general categories.
---
Historical WAR: Could be set in the Napoleonic era, the Renaissance, the
Medieval age, whenever. Specific work required really depends on the
specific era chosen, but in any event requires a *lot* of front-end
historical research. May, in truth, require some knowledge of languages
other than English in order to accomplish that research.

Quality of writing and immersion is my biggest question, though: In my
not-really-humble opinion, WAR was at its best when it was *immersive*. This
sometimes meant being tightly-researched, but just as often happened when we
managed to latch onto something and breathe in the atmosphere, even if not
all the details worked. Often it was a mix of the two: I remember really
being immersed in my character(s) when me and Chris were writing the
US-China summit. Tightly-researched, yes, but also hugely because of
atmosphere. Chris played his character to the hilt, and I honestly felt like
Williams throughout that whole situation.

Historical writing, in that sense, is *hard*. It's devilishly hard not to
play someone with modern attitudes and knowledge, just dressed up in funny
clothes. And yet if we don't pull it off, if we don't pull off all writing
characters with period attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, etc, it all risks
falling flat, leaving WAR coming off as a giant game of Risk.
---
Modern WAR: One variant of what I will call "WAR Classic", this is the older
version. Setting is Now, not the near-future. Saves us from thinking about
times, dates, and all that stuff, but risks are what Buckley usefully called
having too much information, and the problem of diverging so much from
reality, either immediately or over time, as to be inaccessible to newbies,
prompting restarts.

Near-future WAR: The other variant, this is what I tried to do with the 2013
scenario. Setting is roughly close to the present, but advanced ahead a few
years - 2013 was initially picked semi-arbitrarily, because it conveniently
meant a new US Presidential term and it advanced us 6ish years. The
information problem remains to an extent, as does the divergence issue...In
the case of the original 2013 scenario, I think we got lapped by reality
from behind - I certainly, when writing in 2007, never expected an Obama
Presidency. Or the recession.

Work required? Mostly data-gathering and brainstorming, like what we're
familiar with. It's still significant, but perhaps not as much as the
historical or sci-fi variants. Quality of writing and decisionmaking: Well,
WAR has had its bright and shining moments up til now, but it's also had
its...Well, it's also had moments better left unmentioned because they were
nothing resembling quality, agreed? We can almost all pull out examples from
nearly 10 years of play, let's not get started. That said, there seems to be
a lower "barrier to entry" with WAR Classic (in either version) than I would
expect in Historical or Sci-fi versions. There isn't the issue of "attitude
gap", at least not to the same extent.
---
Sci-fi versions of WAR:

WAR in Spaaaaaaaace! (There, got it out of my system.:)) Or Cyberpunk WAR,
or whatever. Requires a shitload of work in terms of world-building. Some
can be accomplished in-play, but a lot would need to be accomplished before
we ever got off the ground.

Quality of writing and decisionmaking can pose as much problems here as with
Historical WAR, for much the same reasons.
***

Are there any other setting possibilities I've left out?

Anyhow...Yeah.

One thing this does set out for me is What WAR Is. Not in a setting way, but
in a general "mission-statement-y" way. You may not agree with everything
written, but I'm calling things as I see them. Including this really because
it's been on my mind.
---
WAR (which may or may not need a renaming) is a game, yes. It cannot hope to
be a simulation, even when it has simulation characteristics, and even
though WAR has classically been an excellent teacher of politics and
international affairs. Not a wargame, though it does include war, as seen
tactically, operationally, and strategically (and from a grand strategy
perspective). In many cases, much of the fun comes from desperately trying
to -avoid- the general war that will in many cases end the game. It is not,
strictly, a roleplaying game in the conventional sense. It may include RPG
devices - it could even include stats and things like that if players felt
so inclined. It does come imbued with a heavy dose of roleplay, everything
from action posts (combat and similar RP) to diplomacy to strictly social
scenes and character development, and players tend to play their roles, on
the best days, very immersively, like the best roleplayers.

WAR is as much the OOC surroundings as the actual play - the reality is that
the game only really works when players are active on an out-of-character
basis with other players, whether that be through instant messenger chatter,
IM chats of multiple players, or chatter on the OOC list. WAR players are
opinionated, yes; play often requires a thick skin, and the OOC
conversations and debates and such do as well. At the same time, though, WAR
is best played with the game full-contact, but with the players behind the
characters still able to be friends...of sorts, anyway. We may never meet in
real life to drink beers together, but the idea is that the game shouldn't
prevent the bonds of friendship forming such that we could if we wanted to,
or even if we just ran into each other and somehow figured out the
connection. The moment IC activity causes OOC sniping (or worse), we've done
something wrong. Not just one of us, but all of us. Just because we can ICly
be at each other's throats gives no excuse for that to carry over into OOC
terms.

WAR is not meant to be educational: We play for fun, not as a requirement
for any course. Telling a good story may occasionally beat out realism,
though (particularly in a modern or historical setting) we've found realism
to be extremely helpful to our endeavors. Nonetheless, WAR *has the
possibility* to teach about many things - and players should "come to the
table" willing to learn from play, both about the subjects at hand and stuff
not necessarily apparent. WAR can teach the attentive player much about its
subjects through the activity of play, and about many things not strictly
within our remit, whether that be human behavior (broadly speaking) or any
number of other things. Including, though this is not fully advisable, about
oneself. Or ar least certain aspects thereof.

WAR is about writing, though it is more competitive than most MUSHes,
MOOs, or most freeform RP of other types. We compete, and compete hard, but
there is no way to "win" at WAR - and trying to win like WAR is any other
game is not taken well. We compete in order to write a fun story -
ultimately a cooperative endeavor. This story may, or may not, have an end.
We're not sure. Finding out is part of the adventure.
***

So, summary of all this babble:

Go back and read my babble, dammit. You win no points by skipping to the
end.

We need people to volunteer for the OOC tasks set out above - multiple
people can do a single task, but cooperating in such cases seems like a good
idea, and in any case these need to be done.

If for some reason they can't be done, well...then we're a bit stuck, and
I'd be open to ideas on how to navigate out of the stuckness.

Setting, like I said, should really be decided by consensus - and no, don't
just go "I'll do what everybody else wants" and be passive-aggressive.
Silence in this case does not equal consent.

Regardless of whatever else, I'm kinda sorta claiming "ownership" of WAR,
insofar as that means -anything- (It doesn't, except that I might break tie
votes or something if we ever need to vote on stuff), because I basically
had both the idea to restart WAR and to actually dig out this list to use
for such a purpose.

Let's decide the setting of WAR, all that good stuff, then we'll figure out
GM for play purposes.

John
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