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[personal profile] drydem
Alright, I have recently gotten into an argument over on bneunsc's journal(sorry bneunsc) over the werewolf game that I am invovled in, over the nature of an NPC that Bryn played. gollumgollum, one of the STs in the game, made a comment that things should be taken up privately with her and the other STs. Here is why I don't think that should be so, though I admit I was a little snippy in my criticisms.

The value of public discourse as a means of expressing dissatisfaction is tied up in the nature of public protest. Public protest is useful as a social tool because it gives certain benefits to the protestors, who are almost always without actual power to change things.
First, it allows someone to voice dissent without having to personally confront an individual with Authority(1). Confronting an individual with Authority one on one is not easy and is frequently unproductive. Public protest allows individuals without Authority to attempt to speak as one, granting them greater sway in a social situation. This can lead to change in the balance of Authority.
Second, public protest can cut away misunderstanding. By revealing more of the details of public opinion, public protest can make known the overall opinion of the group. By providing a forum in which complaints can be brought out into the open, a public protest can overcome the problems involved in situations involving Authority, specifically that communication across the bounds of Authority is generally limited, making those without Authority more likely to communicate with each other and doing the same for those with Authority. With private protest, it can seem that only a single voice is speaking against a certain problem, when that is only the most vocal individual.
I understand the argument for private addressing of concerns. There are concerns that can be addressed privately. But I believe in the value of public debate, when private concerns are left unaddressed. That is why I will complain publicly about things that I have seen unaddressed.



(1)Authority is used here as a shorthand for "possessed of an imbalance of power in a social situation." An imbalance of power is not necessarily bad, but is generally intimidating. i.e. In a conversation between myself and a professor about a class, the Professor has Authority. In a conversation between myself and W about the war in Iraq, W has Authority.

Date: 2004-06-21 11:20 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sarcastibich.livejournal.com
"That is why I will complain publicly about things that I have seen unaddressed."

Maybe, just *maybe* the things you have seen unaddressed haven't been dealt with because no one besides you was aware that they were concerns/issues. Perhaps if you had approached the "Authorities" with your concerns they would have given some rationalization/explanation or maybe even have addressed the issue(s).

Date: 2004-06-21 12:13 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drydem.livejournal.com
I have approached those with Authority(1) with my concerns in the past. I was told that I was wrong, that my concerns were false and that Authority declared that I had no right to complain about such things. I believe this was partly because the concerns were thought to be only mine.

(1) and I may be mistaken, but I think you mock me somewhat by using the term "authorities", if so, I do not appreciate it.

Date: 2004-06-21 12:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gollumgollum.livejournal.com
sigh. this is exactly what i was afraid of, and i wish i'd composed my response a bit better. to clarify:

one. i'm not against public discussion or protest, i'd just prefer that, should we have a public discussion, it be *public* for whatever group is involved. my problem with lj, for instance, is that it's still an in-group and still functions as carrying on discussion where some people can't see it (in the instance that it's friends locked) or don't know it's there (for all the players in the game who don't have/read/know about lj). carrying on that discussion here severely limits the participation of certain individuals without their consent and isn't fair to them. furthermore, i *did* try to shut down discussion on Bryn's journal because it wasn't fair to her--all she wanted to do was talk about how she had a good game and got to help resolve some plot, and in reply all she got was "the game sucks!1". it just didn't seem very nice or fair to her to be expected to deal with issues that don't have anything to do with her or how she's portrayed NPCs for us. she didn't build the character or the plot, and she handled both exactly how she was asked to.

two. there's a lot that's happened in this game because concerns or whatever have been brought up, talked over or argued with one or two STs, but rarely all three of us. when all three of us *do* get an email or someone talks to us, it usually comes as an attack or a snotty email of some sort because they've been bouncing around between the three of us, which makes it fairly hard to always get a straight answer. Mike, Eric and i are definitely *not* a hive-mind, and are working on making sure we double-check with the other two before giving out any answers because we've started having some problems with that. some of that's our fault, and we're working on that, but some of that's due to some mommy-daddying we've gotten from players. i don't mean to implicate you in any of this, BEn---i'm not trying to single you out as doing any of the above. instead, addressing things over lj is another way of only addressing things with some of the storytellers and not others.

three. public debate can be a wonderful thing, but it can also rip the game apart. i'd rather not factionalize this game any more than i feel it already is by starting a "the STs suck" "the STs are great and YOU suck" flame war. this doesn't mean i'm going to prevent you from attempting to have a public discussion, but as Megan's comment above makes clear, i have the feeling that it won't be pretty. it's very easy to start attacking people based on their views of the game or how they feel about the STs or whatever. it's very easy to attack the STs rather than getting anything constructive done. i just feel it would better serve people who want to continue in the game to talk to us about the problems they're having and try to work them out rather than by leading a massive protest, which is what you seem to be indirectly advocating.

(continued...)

Date: 2004-06-21 12:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gollumgollum.livejournal.com
(to continue...)

four. i can't speak for Mike or Eric, but i've ALWAYS tried to run my game with consensus rather than "well, that's just what happens." i like to throw chops as a matter of randomizing events, and tend to throw chops for noticing or remembering things rather than for combat. ask Bryan and Oz--we threw some chops, but most of their packing up was done cinematically. Tony and Curt's pack quest was done almost *entirely* chop-free. unfortunately, the game design isn't set up to be entirely consensus based. there comes a point where you can't be like "okay, monsters attack, let's all sit down and figure out how the battle goes and how much damage you take," without just throwing away the entire system. it would take away some of the edge, in my opinion, and those little (or big) things that controlled random combat provides--will Simon live or die? will Jared take a battle scar? will Alexia shoot someone in the back? i don't think Megan would ever have agreed to shoot Patrice in the back because it was a huge deal, and horribly embarrassing as a werewolf and as a player who was just trying to help. but we've gotten *miles* of plot out of it, plot we wouldn't necessarily have had were we doing this entirely consensus-based. and again, everyone understands how the system works--no one expects the STs to say "okay, True took ten health levels of damage when he was fighting Ryne in the circle, but since you really really like the character, i suppose he can recover instead of dying like he should have."

anyway, i'm getting off the point, which is this: i HATE STs who aren't willing to work things out, who go "i'm the ST, you can suck it." i've actively avoided trying to be Ms. Unapproachable Authority. this isn't the Presidency of the US, for crying out loud!1 i hang out and game and go to school with everyone in the game. and i've NEVER said "well, that's what the book says, even though it's physical vs. willpower and that's dumb, i think you're screwed." instead i've always tried to work things out. yeah, we have Authority, but i don't think it's nearly as imbalanced as you imply above. we still have to keep people interested in coming to the game. we still have to uphold our end of the agreement.

five. are you truly interested in working things out, or are you just interested in causing an argument? if you're interested in working things out, either for you or the game, go for it. but if your email from Saturday morning still stands, then i have to wonder at your intentions. please do this for the right reasons rather than for your own reasons.

to sum up, i have no problem with public debate, just as long as it's done in an appropriate place (say, the email list) and with maturity. if you want to start a flame war, well, lj is the perfect place for it, and as long as it's *your* lj i'll let you. but i'd rather see this worked out than argued to death.

take care,
-kate-

Date: 2004-06-21 12:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drydem.livejournal.com
I resent the implication that I am being somehow vindictive or attempting to start a flame war. I am interested in the game and if I think things would be addressed I might come back, but I am at the point where I don't see things getting addressed and am sick of being frustrated.
I don't doubt that Tony and Curt's pack-making and Oz and Bryan's pack-making were done with a great degree of consensus and co-operation. However, I have been stonewalled out of a pack for about 8 months now because of a lack of such consensus.
This came to a head on Friday. At the beginning of the game, I brought up the issue that it was incredibly frustrating to me, in a one-on-one manner. I was told that this thing that we have been trying to settle since the fall, would be settled after game, but until that point, I still would not technically be in a pack. Then, during the game, stuff was introduced(the curse) that made Simon actively avoid being involved in social groupings, thus putting off the pack thing for even longer. I've been very frustrated by this, because one of the primary aspects of the genre is the pack.
It's something that's frustrating to me overall and I feel like I've been continually swept aside, despite a great level of commitment to the game. I've driven from the East coast to get to game and was one of the only people to give prompt answers to renown information requests.

Date: 2004-06-21 12:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ancientwisdom.livejournal.com
I'm a bit bothered by this logic, BEn. In your game, when I was uncomfortable with things, I would speak with YOU privately, mostly because I respect you as my friend, I believed that you would listen fairly to my concerns, and that I could do much more to fix a situation by talking with you directly rather than doing things that might be embarrassing, uncomfortable, or annoying for you in a public forum. And this always WORKED -- I don't feel like I ever had a problem in your game (or most others that I've played in) where talking with the ST directly wasn't the best possible route.

When I was playing in your game, I didn't think of you as an Authority, I thought of you as my freind who was putting a lot of time and unpaid volunteer effort into trying to do something cool for me, which I really appreciated.

To turn things around, as a ST myself I feel like for whatever "Authority" I may have as a storyteller, I'm also devoting an outrageous amount of time and energy to try to give something cool to my friends and to people who (in some rare cases) I don't even know at all. As much as I might be an Authority, I'm also an unpaid VOLUNTEER making some pretty major sacrifices to give something to other people and creatures.

As such, if you had a problem with my game, I would hope that you'd come to me directly to express dissatisfaction, so that I could try my best to DO something about it and make the game better for you. I think I'd feel a bit hurt and betrayed if you started venting about my game on someone's live journal without talking with me, because I'd be very embarrassed (as much as I may be an Authority, I'm also a creative person, and the game is a creative project that means a lot to me, and if you started venting about it somewhere public without talking to me, it would hurt my feelings because I'd feel like you were criticizing me and my creativity WITHOUT trying to collaborate with me to make things better).

For what it's worth, I feel like you pretty much always come to talk with me or other changeling STs when you have a problem, and that we have a really great creative relationship. The same was generally true in reverse when I was playing in your game -- I came to you with problems because I fundamentally TRUSTED that you would value my input and work with me.

The only situation where I can imagine not trying to talk about dissatisfactions with an ST is in a case where I really don't TRUST the ST to value my perspective. This was the case for me in some OWBN games that I travelled to. There are a lot of OWBN STs who I don't trust (though there were many others, like Shawn, Ryan, Mike, and Brenton who I did trust). I don't trust the STs of the organization as a whole, and that's the biggest reason I stopped playing.

I guess I can't speak for everyone, but I know that if you were venting about my game publicly without talking with me, it would hurt our friendship because I'd feel like you didn't like me, and most of all I'd feel like you didn't TRUST me to value your ideas and opinions. I hope that you do trust me, and I hope that when you have a problem with the changeling game you'll come to me or someone on the ST staff rather than first venting publicly. For whatever "Authority" storytellers have, we also have very human feelings and emotions, and we're voluntarily taking a lot of extra stress on our shoulders to try to do something fun for us and for everyone in the game.

Date: 2004-06-21 09:07 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drydem.livejournal.com
I would rather speak about this in person.

Date: 2004-06-21 10:35 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)
Funny that...

Don't you want to drag out whatever concerns people may have with you in this public forum so that they may freely protest without fear of being intimidated by any authority they may perceive?

You wrote a civil letter to the Staff about quitting the game.

I respected that.

Then I learn that you immediately jump into a passive aggressive fit on the lj of someone who *does* like the game. So much for respect.

I waited for you at the resturant. I thought we were going to talk.
When you didn't show up I figured that it could wait. Why in the hell would you be the least bit intimidated by me?

I was at least amused by the degree of personal venom I garnered:

"the logic is that if Mike doesn't follow the rules in the book, then we can't succeed at anything."

Ooh. A straight out attack on my integrity.

Really? Which book? So, the Sorcery rules from the PG aren't WoD? Or is it that I just owe you a justification each time I use something that surprises you?

Say, speaking of that - what book did your bullshit godess and *your* reincarnated demi-god come from Ben? I'm curious about the citywide powers and chop-less effects that people tolerated in your changeling game.

Hell, everything I took was straight out the books. Blame White Wolf if you need to be a victim. That goes for anyone who can't cope with a little innovation on the part of the Staff.

Virtually every game I've attended in the last year has played fast and loose with rules in order to craft a story worth being part of. Often, I've been happy to suspend in order to have a good time. I've certainly never thrown a tantrum over a blog over any of them.

I can't belive this shit. I *haul ass* from Indy every game. Kate and Eric and I spend *days a month* trying to craft a game worth contributing to. And with no game fee as a rule, nobody is buying our sweat.

I work on our game. I invest in it. So I'm angry at this sideways attack on my character and the game I help run. Next time have the courage to make it to my face.

Fine. Go to a different game. Vote with your feet. Enjoy. Save your vitriol for them when they can't seem to find ways to validate you in every way.

-M

Date: 2004-06-22 01:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drydem.livejournal.com
Alright, I'm going to respond to some of this here and hope you check to see this. I am sorry that I failed to properly check my frustration and anger. My civil letter was an attempt to do just that. I failed, my frustration got out and I am sorry that it came out the way it did.
When I said that you don't use rules out of the book, it was a comment that was far too specifically meaningful in my head and totally lost that meaning in the writing of it. There was a moment when we(those in the battle with Rain) were told that we had no justification in recognizing the power and were metagaming if we did. Things not from the "Laws of the Wild" book are not things that the PCs can respond to, (because we have no justification in knowing about them) thus we are unable to succeed against them. I did not mean to insult your integrity, and I am sorry that it came across like that.
And also, if people were only "tolerating" my game, I would have liked to hear it. Which I think a public discourse on the subject might have brought out. I wish I had known how you felt about my game, I am sorry that you did not enjoy it.
Fundamentally, I suppose I am sorry for how all of this has happened, I suppose I let my frustrations build for too long and when they got out, I could not hold them back.

It was sent to me.

Date: 2004-06-22 04:14 pm (UTC)
From: (Anonymous)

I took your comment as it was said. So, if we're at an understanding, I think we're cool.

As far as "people were only "tolerating" my game" goes, that's *not* what I said.

I said that people, me included, were frustrated by an entity that seemed invulernerable to non-predesignated forces and possesed of seemingly unlimited powers. I think that's relevant to this. You made some shit up that you thought would be fun as a villian. You took liberties with the rules for purposes of plot. Fine. I don't object to that as a rule, but I feel it's more than a little hypocritical to flame me for doing something similar.

Most of the time I had fun at your game. I really don't care that you used "mega-wooj" to make the villian a real threat, I just felt kind of side-lined when it came to dealing with it. And, if you'll recall I *did* chat with you about how to get more involved with the game. To the point of trying a new, more "plot-friendly" character.

In short, I did enjoy your game. But I really thought that it was hypocrytical to attack me on lj for doing something similar on a smaller scale, and it made me angry.

I don't consider this to be the end of our friendship and hope that you don't.

In the future, just please come and chat with me. Even if I feel that I cannot in good conscience change to acquiesce, I will still listen and you can at least vent your feelings and hopefully feel better.

-M

Date: 2004-06-21 12:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ancientwisdom.livejournal.com
[continued]

Please note -- I'm not trying to criticize you, especially because I'm completely unfamiliar with the werewolf situation you're talking about, and I haven't read any of the thread on Bryn's post. I'm basing my comments strictly on what you've posted here (I'm bothered by the idea that not communicating with storytellers to collaborate on creative solutions should be unproblematically compared with "public protest" in a more political sense, where it is extremely valid for holding paid public officials accountable to fair standards). In short, I completely agree with your comments about public protests in a political sense, but I think that games are a very different context, and I think your assertion that STs are an Authority, while true in some senses, is a bit extreme, especially given the volunteer nature of what most STs do.

Date: 2004-06-22 01:14 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drake-rocket.livejournal.com

I think what you are saying is rationalization for doing and saying things behind other's backs or through indirect forms of communication. It is in fact, not a good way of conducting friendships, or even civil relations for that matter.
And, forgive me, but I do not believe this has much to do with authority or the intimidating nature of it. I have seen a very similar situation in which you, along with Kate and Ryan, decided I should not play in Heather's D&D game. You decided this without me there to speak up for myself, and even without informing me before or afterwards in person exactly what you felt was the problem. Instead you sent an authority figure to inform me. This was very cold, impersonal, confusing and quite frankly embarrassing. It made me feel like a number of my friends had met behind my back to discuss what a difficult person I was. Or perhaps this isn't at all what happened. I'll never know because I was excluded, but it's certainly what it seemed like. This is the same sort of semi-public forum of debate, one that tries to no include on some level, the individual(s) who are being accused. You believe it to be difficult to be a single voice speaking against a certain problem? Try not having a voice at all.
And that is exactly what you do when you take issues such as these to semi-public forums like this. You don't give someone the right to even speak for themselves, face their accuser. There are many people I have problems with. I don't post innuendoes about them on my live journal. I either try to adress these problems in person or I keep them to myself. Your train of thought robs individuals of one of the most basic form of respect: a face to face truth.
As to being intimidated, I assure you, most people feel intimidated when speaking to certain groups of people. Would you like it if someone felt intimidated by your intelligence dismissed the notion of speaking to you on their own? Because they are afraid they will be outsmarted? Would that be a legitimate excuse in your book, to deny you the courtesy of addressing you with their problems? I would certainly hope not.
As to the game I think it is unfortunate we are losing you and I am sorry you felt so frustrated, but as to the STs not giving you back what you gave I say piffle, at least since I started. The garou STs divided up the players in the game. You were not even on my list and I went out of my way to put a long-term NPC in the game *solely* for your character because I understood you were not having as much fun as you would have liked. I discussed her, met with the player, built her, then finished and developed her with Mike who was to continue her development so as to craft an interesting story for *you*. I think you have gotten a fair bit more attention than the average player.
If you really truly did not feel yourself able to speak to Mike or have him as your ST then you could have sent the garou STs an email stating your reasons and requesting a different ST. That would at least been slightly more polite than going off on people who spend time and energy on trying got facilitate your good time. What is the accusation? That they failed in their attempt to provide a fun place to play? Now there is something to get angry about.
I like you Ben, and I really thought you added to the game. It's a shame that it didn't work out, but I don't think some of the things you have said as you stepped out the door have been kind or fair.

Date: 2004-06-22 09:24 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drydem.livejournal.com
It is indirect forms of communication, but it is very much not intended to be behind anybody's back. talking behind someone's back is private discourse and achieves nothing. A lot of that goes on, and I really wish that people would come out and say the things they whisper instead of simply complaining in private about it for the past few years.
I was trying to make a general statement about the value of public discourse here, specifically for use when private addressing of concerns failed. I have a frustrating tendency to wax philosophic about my life.
As for Heather's game, I was never comfortable with how that was handled. It felt somewhat underhanded and I still have guilt about that situation to this day.
As I said before, I am sorry that I was unable to contain my frustration. I did not intend it to come out, especially in the context it did.

Date: 2004-06-22 07:16 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gollumgollum.livejournal.com
hi. Mike. Eric. NOT THE PLACE.

can't we please try to work this out rather than doing exactly what i was afraid would happen?

thanks,
kate

Date: 2004-06-22 09:37 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] drydem.livejournal.com
my journal, not the place where you decide the tenor of the debate.

Date: 2004-06-22 03:14 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gollumgollum.livejournal.com
true, and my apologies. i was merely trying to engage in some peer policing among the members of my ST staff whose opinions reflect on me and my game by association. i've taken it to private conversation, and i apologize.

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