wankgate | 250: this is the death wankgate has always deserved

yeah. mods basically forced the characters into that action, tho. it led to characters (and the players) arguing about it nonstop for several months over who cut down the trees.

everyone sucked but the mods probably should've come up with a better compromise that wouldn't paint targets on the backs of a certain group that turned into a drawn out conflict between characters and players, but they probably didn't anticipate people would be so catty about it.

the mods didn't force the characters into it. the players decided that there were obviously tons of resources to build a fleet of ships in a specifically resource-limited setting, and didn't bother checking in with the mods until they unveiled their creations.

mods had the choice of a retcon or ic consequences to ic actions, and went with the latter.

everytime i hear about this story about ica=icc i think it's one of the funniest and most harmless wanks, but obviously the people involved are still taking it very seriously lmao

+1

i was a bystander when it was going down and it honestly seemed like the fairest and best decision the mods could have made. instead of asking people to effectively forget a bunch of plotting, they turned it into an opportunity for player plotting around replanting trees and finding alternate food sources to make up for the wrecked orchard.

that would have been the mature and reasonable way of plotting around it.

sadly a handful of players didn't know how to be mature and reasonable, and just kept dragging the drama out to the point where it stopped being funny and just got kind of sad and awkward to watch.

it led to characters (and the players) arguing about it nonstop for several months over who cut down the trees.

i'm sorry you and your friends had a bad time but as an outside observer this is really funny to me

every time someone tries to put the mods in a bad light regarding this, it just comes off as people being upset the mods did the best they could when their players did something cartoonishly stupid

like, no description of the situation, even when coming from the side of the players, has ever not made the players seem really dumb

oh i know, that's why i also say the mods probably didn't expect the players to react the way they did. i know i didn't expect people to still be screaming about trees for several months. things got real weird.

mods did the right thing. give players an inch in a resource-limited setting, and before you know it they'll be building a WcDonald's and a movie theater

it was definitely stupid. i can't remember how obvious it was that the setting was that lacking in resources, since i recall the descriptions being very barebones. one of those situations that could have been easily avoided by reaching out to the mods for clarification, but we know that didn't happen.

i didn't mean to make it sound like i was putting all the blame on the mods. i recall much of hadriel's players being really unpleasant to deal with, so they have my sympathies.

oh sure, i didn't mean to imply you were blaming the mods either

i think they both did the right thing *and* probably weren't expecting players to be assholes about imaginary trees for months to years

tbh i don't entirely disagree with you, but i feel like they could've made better choices if they weren't giving players some benefit of the doubt not to turn it into a prolonged drama no one wanted. but i also thought their choice was good at first, then i saw it leading to slapfights that went on for months until players started dropping because of it.

da so why are you trying to spin this as an "everybody sucks" situation lol

because i think taking control from players by telling them where their characters got the trees from didn't really fix the issue. the players just doubled-down saying their characters wouldn't touch the orchard, and at that point it probably would've been better to retcon the whole thing or work out a different solution. it's been years so there's no point in arguing over what they should have done, tho.

everyone did suck, but the mods were mostly just naive in assuming everyone would have rolled with it in a mature manner, instead of dealing with batshit players.

because i think taking control from players by telling them where their characters got the trees from

where else were the trees supposed to come from

it was their game. they could make shit up.

doesn't excuse the players not communicating with them in the first place, but there were other ways of punishing them for it. there was no way that situation was going to end well, as people usually don't like having mods decide their characters' actions for them.

so the mods suck because they didn't want to change their setting on the fly (something that would have been unfair to players who were playing by the book) to make things easier on players who didn't know how to read

not to mention that the boat characters had made a network post bragging about how much smarter and more resourceful they were than the other characters, who were participating in the game event where they could earn boats from the npcs. it wasn't just breaking the setting, it was flaunting that fact and also insulting the characters playing by the rules

link pls

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-09 16:37 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-10 03:48 (UTC) - Expand

wow i'd forgotten about that post. i feel like that's the downside to games with all-powerful NPCs around, there are always going to be some assholes with characters who want to try to upstage or outright kill them.

Re: WORST GAME EXPERIENCES

(Anonymous) - 2024-04-10 01:08 (UTC) - Expand

nah, dumb players get dumb prizes. it's absurd to think the mods should bed over backwards for that sort of behavior.

+1 the mods genuinely did nothing wrong here. even if players did drag out the drama longer than necessary, that's still not their fault

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-09 15:24 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-10 00:53 (UTC) - Expand

from what i understand it's not the mods dictating their actions, but stating the consequences of it and the players not wanting to be responsible for a choice they made without running it by the mods and not paying attention to the setting.

i do agree maybe it could have been handled in a different way, but i don't also think the mod decision was a bad one. it might have been better for them to have found a compromise somewhere that wouldn't put anyone under a spotlight.

da in hindsight a retcon probably would have been the better choice, but you know what they say, hindsight is 20/20. i still think it's unfair for anon to say the mods suck for this though

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(Anonymous) - 2024-04-10 02:36 (UTC) - Expand

+1

it was a resource-scavenging game. if you're saying your characters have wood, they must have gotten it from the wood stated to be available. based on the wg link from when the wank happened, it was specified that the orchards were basically the only trees available. it is not a gotcha when this happens:

players: we have built big wooden things! using so much wood!
mods: okay so you used the wood that the setting gave you. so the wood is not available for things like being alive trees growing food.
players: no! we didn't actually use any of the wood stated in the description of the setting resources! it was different wood! from... somewhere.