TreasureTrap Forums

> Downtime is *not* in OOC time, it's an OOC explanation of what you'd
> like your character to be doing IC. The Referees read your description
> and tell you what your character did and this response is IC, ergo
> Downtime is IC.

It happens during OOC time, in the same way that I would email someone
what my charcter does with theirs in the time between interactives, and in
what way is that email really different to me walking up to them in
riverside and saying it ftf? or in the pub, or when i run into them in the
street.

> If you want to talk IC, face-to-face, do it in the Interactive. It's
> what they're for.

Umm, because:

a) the interactive is only a couple of hours long, you expect to get a
week's worth of communication done in 3 hours?
b) the character you wish to speak with may not be there, and if you want
them to be, this _requires_ at the least a semi-IC, and more usually a
peroperly IC agreement outside the interactive (in OOC time).
c) sometimes it makes very good sense that character X and character Y
will wish to talk with no-one overhearing, and with the activity going on
around the armoury, bar, and spaces in between there's no way to actually
physrep the nice secure officer we know the characters have.


Marcus

---
"Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage."
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Marcus Rich wrote:
<Cut>
> It happens during OOC time, in the same way that I would email someone
> what my charcter does with theirs in the time between interactives, and in
> what way is that email really different to me walking up to them in
> riverside and saying it ftf? or in the pub, or when i run into them in the
> street.

I can't disagree more with this. Downtimes have to be happening In
Character because they're about what you're character is doing between
Interactives and Adventures. If they're not In Character, whatever your
character says or does in them can't be real.

> a) the interactive is only a couple of hours long, you expect to get a
> week's worth of communication done in 3 hours?

No, that's why we have downtimes, to take care of the administrative
things some people feel their characters need to do. I still stand my
the idea that Interactives are for Interacting with people.

> b) the character you wish to speak with may not be there, and if you want
> them to be, this _requires_ at the least a semi-IC, and more usually a
> peroperly IC agreement outside the interactive (in OOC time).

This wouldn't be a problem if people stuck to having only one or two
characters, instead of the five-character-system (a primary, a backup
and three to collect experience points until they're powerful enough to
be interesting) a fair few people seem to be clinging to.

> c) sometimes it makes very good sense that character X and character Y
> will wish to talk with no-one overhearing, and with the activity going on
> around the armoury, bar, and spaces in between there's no way to actually
> physrep the nice secure officer we know the characters have.

That's what e-mail is for, to work all this out before you go into the
Interactive and finalise things. Or, in a shock suggestion, how about
having the conversation on an adventure?

Zoë
--
http://www.nobmouse.net ICQ: 30006397
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx
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"Dar" <dar.TakeThisOut@ebonheart.fsworld.co.uk> wrote in message
news:c83f3q$8jn$1@news8.svr.pol.co.uk...
> If anyone can't access it, try going to the dos prompt and running this
> command:
> ipconfig /flushdns
>
> Should fix it ...
>
> Also, I say again: sign up with your REAL name, NOT with an assumed
> name. Thanks
>

Grrrrrr, I still can't access darkening skies......
Could it be a network firewall issue Marios?

Ellie
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> I can't disagree more with this. Downtimes have to be happening In
> Character because they're about what you're character is doing between
> Interactives and Adventures. If they're not In Character, whatever your
> character says or does in them can't be real.

And so is what a character does in the time between interactives... Or
does the TT world go into stasis between Thursday at 10pm and Thursday at
7pm the following week?

> > a) the interactive is only a couple of hours long, you expect to get a
> > week's worth of communication done in 3 hours?
>
> No, that's why we have downtimes, to take care of the administrative
> things some people feel their characters need to do. I still stand my
> the idea that Interactives are for Interacting with people.

And what if aa character has a huge amount to talk about with specific
people, that can't be squeezed into 3 hours? Provided of course that the
relevant characters are in the bar...

> This wouldn't be a problem if people stuck to having only one or two
> characters, instead of the five-character-system (a primary, a backup
> and three to collect experience points until they're powerful enough to
> be interesting) a fair few people seem to be clinging to.

If everyone only has one or two characters, there'd be no life to the
system... The removal of big NPCs as heads of churches/guilds etc has made
it necessary for the players to fill these positions... As it is, the
player base represents the churches to a reasonable extent (about 50-60%
of churches are represented), the mages are quite popular at the moment,
but other guilds are less so (the alchemists have a collection of
non-primary characters as do the scouts). Whilst it can be argued that
it's not necessary to have all the positions filled by a PC, having only
30-40 PCs in the system (assuming 2 each for 20 people attending
interactives) makes it hard to justify that these are the only ranking
persons in the entire city of 10,000.

It's worth keeping up to date, characters only get XP for interactives
they attend, the best you can manage otherwise is 3XP per week if you
monster dilligently, and the two situations tehre are that:

a) people put those XP on their main character to level them up faster b)
if someone monsters every single adventure, they _deserve_ that extra...
talk all you want about externals not being to make it and I accept that,
but TT is still primarily a student society (hence the membership of DSU)
and should be run primarily for those still studying at Durham who want to
make their universtiy experience positive.

> That's what e-mail is for, to work all this out before you go into the
> Interactive and finalise things. Or, in a shock suggestion, how about
> having the conversation on an adventure?

How often is an adventure party composed of the characters who ned to talk
in interactives... not all that often...

and excuse me, but isn't email "downtime" communication and thus in
conflict with your first point?

certainly charcters X and Y communcating via email is no dfifferent from
riverside in that the people who don't attend don't find out what's going
on... the practical difference is minimal, the only valid point being
Tom's one that he hears things he doesn't _want_ to hear... but the
argument that riverside conversations excluse people does not justify
doing all of that by email.

Marcus

---
"Pride is all very well, but a sausage is a sausage."
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Whoa whoa ... I don't want this to be the christening of the forums. No
arguments: let's see *if* they work before deciding if they should work.
Everyone recognises they have pros and cons ... only way to be sure is
to test them.
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Dear Ellie,

>Grrrrrr, I still can't access darkening skies......
>Could it be a network firewall issue Marios?

Nope. I've been getting through fine.
Marios
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Dear Ellie,

>Grrrrrr, I still can't access darkening skies......
>Could it be a network firewall issue Marios?

Can't get through either, at the moment.
Marios
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Dear Dar,

>Whoa whoa ... I don't want this to be the christening of the forums. No
>arguments: let's see *if* they work before deciding if they should work.
>Everyone recognises they have pros and cons ... only way to be sure is
>to test them.

I think the debate left the grounds of forums 3/4 posts ago.
The forums? We should use them and see how it works out.
Personally, I think they'd work best as a 'bulletin board' for
the various guilds - one way conversation from guild head to guild.
Good place to stick the guild charter/rules.
I'd like to see them as 'low-use' utilities so that:
(i) refs don't have to trawl them continuously to keep up
(ii) players don't have to trawl them continuously to keep up
(iii) the society can't be accused of being complicit in
people chucking their degrees away.
Marios
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Marios Richards wrote:
<Cut>
> (iii) the society can't be accused of being complicit in
> people chucking their degrees away.

I don't think the society could ever be accused of this. It's not the
society's fault if someone wants to spend more time using a computer to
talk to people than they do on their degree. You're going to get
obsessives no matter what and the society already does enough to deter
people from throwing their degree away by stopping society events for
the exams.

Zoë
--
http://www.nobmouse.net ICQ: 30006397
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx
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Zoe J. Robinson wrote:
> Marios Richards wrote:
> <Cut>
>
>> (iii) the society can't be accused of being complicit in
>> people chucking their degrees away.
>
>
> I don't think the society could ever be accused of this. It's not the
> society's fault if someone wants to spend more time using a computer to
> talk to people than they do on their degree. You're going to get
> obsessives no matter what and the society already does enough to deter
> people from throwing their degree away by stopping society events for
> the exams.
>
> Zoë

Alas, I suspect that our best is not good enough on that score. We do
what we can, but as you say, some people are cursed with degree-suicide
tendencies.

Dan
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daniel prebble wrote:
<Cut>
> Alas, I suspect that our best is not good enough on that score. We do
> what we can, but as you say, some people are cursed with degree-suicide
> tendencies.

In which case, no amount of society-closure short of disbanding the
society in its entirely will stop them. The society can do only so much
before it has to step back and make the person involved be accountable
for their own actions.

Zoë
--
http://www.nobmouse.net ICQ: 30006397
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." - Groucho Marx
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Dear Zoe,

>> Alas, I suspect that our best is not good enough on that score. We do
>> what we can, but as you say, some people are cursed with degree-suicide
>> tendencies.
>
>In which case, no amount of society-closure short of disbanding the
>society in its entirely will stop them. The society can do only so much
>before it has to step back and make the person involved be accountable
>for their own actions.

I'm not sure. A lot of being on the Exec is prodding people
along to events and trying to make sure we get the numbers to run
things - generally this involves hassling people to turn up for stuff.
That's not an issue when people would otherwise be doing some other
form of recreation, but if it's cutting into time they might otherwise
have spent working, then you have to question whether you should be
pushing them to play instead of work.
Equally, there's a level of complicity in allowing people to
bury themselves in the Fantasy World of TT to avoid having to think
about their academic responsibilities. Had anyone been obviously
ditching their degrees in favour of TT while I was president I would
have been inclined to ban them (for all I know, people were and I just
wasn't aware - sorry, I mean the document didn't reach me) until their
grades picked up. Both on compassionate 'think of the degrees'/'how
much their parent's have spent on their degrees' and the pragmatic
'someone will eventually spot the pattern of drop-outs and come and
kick the society's arse'. That, and woefully depressed people rather
bring down the atmosphere.

Another thing, I'm not sure I mentioned - if Treasure Trap
takes up so much time / week that it's not really possible to
patronise other societies/events then we'll end up with a very inbred
crowd. A large percentage of the people brought who go to a society do
it because a friend goes along - if people who go to Treasure Trap
only have time to go to Treasure Trap, then they won't have friends in
other societies to maybe pull in over time.
Of course, that's another point that comes back to the
passing/failing of degrees - as everyone's probably realised in the
run up to exams - short of being the best person in the year, it's
extremely useful (bordering on necessary) to maintain friendships with
at least a few other people in your lectures.
Remember, people are resources, like XP.

The above argument - about TTers going to other societies -
convinces me, more than anything else, that it might be a good idea to
have adventures/interactives on alternate weeks and gatecrash other
society do's whenever possible.

Next year, hopefully I'll have the time to actually implement
some of these plans. Along with crashing the usual geek societies, I
want to see what the Improvisation Society is like, skip along to the
Philosophy/Psychology Societies to pick fights, shout 'Wanker!' at a
DUS debate, laugh at the Conservative Future society, intimidate
Compsoc with a slightly raised voice, try to persuade the Israel and
Islamic society to offer joint membership, ditto Diccu and Pagansoc. I
think I'll skip the Boris Johnson Fan Club though. Too boring.

Marios
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Marios,

I can understand where you are coming fromon the issue but at the same
time, and somewhat callously i must admit, it cannot in any way said to
be the society's fault if members failacedemically. I understand the
appeal of a paternalistic view but I think ultimately, we are a society
that enjoys a hobby. You are buying into the view that we are all some
homogenous whole destined to all like each other.That simply isn't the
case. The society's job is to provide events. It does this, above and
beyond that it should be the friends of an individual who is neglecting
acedemia who actually inform and help that member.
I counter, if said obsessive individual, who spent too much time on
the hobby and thus had difficulties with studies, were to be banned from
the society then it would cause them more harm than good as it would
isolate them from friends when they need help the most.


In conclusion, I can understand the appeal of the 'nanny-society'
syndrome, but I do not think it can be held as the society's
responsibility or duty to take action over the issue. As a final point,
I feel that it is everyone's right to make mistakes with their life,
or otherwise how will they learn?


Dan (actually less-caring than Marios?)
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