Folks, I hear you, and you all deserve a better and longer reply than I can give you at this minute.  I ask for your patience until tonight when I can explain myself in greater detail.

You are actually much closer to the game you want than it may seem.  You did not waste any time or effort designing a team arrangement.  And, even if I have botched this completely, it is very easy to be solved.

Just give me until tonight, my patient players... :-)

Also, you've listed an NPC as "Bluebird the Beacon". Keep in mind that in PtbA games, there's only supposed to be one of any given playbook. I don't mean that in the sense of two of us can't be Brains, because obviously we are. But I mean the player characters are the only members of that playbook in existence. There might be other characters who don't seem like they belong out there fighting crime because they aren't strong enough, but only Jubilee is The Beacon. There are almost certainly other kid genius super scientists out there, but only Octopus, Counterforce, and Steel Ninja are The Brains. Things like that.

And, of course, yeah, you're kinda micromanaging things that don't need to be micromanaged in ways that are utterly baffling to the rest of us.

Arc: As cool an idea as that is, that would have been a thing from a year prior, wouldn't it? Or are we deciding that this is a year after the flashback, but only our first year at the super school?

More was meaning it as something to play off of in the background. Just a little more substance and fun to work with here. Not meaning an actual play through situation.

My patient players, I now have a little time to try and clean up the mess I have made here.  I will spend what time I can tonight fixing what I can.  And then I will continue tomorrow and onwards as long as it takes.  Let me see what I can do.

First, don't worry about posting IC for now.  There are answers to your IC questions and continuity but there will be time to clarify them.  I think it is more important for me to salvage the team assignments.   And I believe I have not presented the teams as best as I might have.

As I see it, no one is really protesting the need for multiple teams or the need to (when possible) avoid duplicated playbooks whenever possible.  I believe the problem is who is currently in what teams and how that was decided.

I can guess how it must feel for me to have asked you to actually plan your ideal teams, to get your advice and post your suggestions.  And then to arbitrarily and seemingly ignore those heartfelt comments in favor of some strange team makeup of my own design.  It could have appeared that I was almost mocking the efforts of the players who have so far demonstrated the most enthusiasm and effort for the game.

Also, my abrupt placement of less (so far) present and active player's character in slots openly desired by the more invested and robust players might seem almost insulting. It is as if I am rewarding the less productive (so far) players and almost punishing the most passionate players.

Both these examples would seem to be death to a game.  And I have spent too much time and effort on this game (as have you) to destroy it.  So please hear me out.

The excellent team roster suggestions made by you players were not a waste of time, nor will they be unused.  In fact, the final makeup of the teams will probably be almost exactly as y'all described them to be.  There's a study that shows that if you say something, you might do it.  But if you write it down, that is, actually define and structure it, you actually have a better chance of achieving your goal.

Your team composition ideas are a guide map, a beacon.  It is a standard that all can read and work towards.  And I think you will get pretty close to the teams you designed but not quite YET.

I read the discussion about the teams and who should be on them.  I liked it!  I thought the ideas make very good sense!  And, if I were a player in this game, I would have enthusiastically pushed for the player-made team breakdowns.  And I would have been just as perplexed as most of you if my GM didn't use what seemed so popular.

So why didn't I offer the team roster I would have fought for as a player?  Well, it is because I am not a player in this game.

I am your GM.

And let me explain what that means to me.  It means that I have power over the game that players don't have.  And that demands a responsibility to be fair and impartial.  No, it is not being the President of the US or the Pope.  But it is still a measure of obligation.

And, for a time, I have to treat everybody equally.  It is a bit like being the judge of a talent show.  It may be obvious that some acts are going to work out and some aren't.  But they still get their two or three minutes on stage.

The discussion about team memberships was robust and productive.  Everyone who commented seemed enthusiastic.  And no one actually critiqued the choices.  I know I liked them.  From all of that, one might assume that those who didn't post either liked the ideas or wasn't particularly perturbed by them.  But it could be that absent players simply didn't have the time to respond or couldn't find that particular discussion in this hot spaghetti mess of a game (this messy forum with its endless threads approach has more strengths than flaws.  That is a discussion for another time but the forum can be hard to navigate).

So that means that the team discussions and suggestions, while obviously popular and well-thought out, didn't reach the confidence level of an actual vote.
Does this mean that we need to have a long and formal vote to decide team members, made even longer by the fact that some players are very slow to respond than others?

In a sense, yes.  But it is not as bad as it seems and the process has already begun.  To speed the process up, I outright declared starting memberships in teams.  That is, starting but NOT final memberships.  And then I offered that players could simply swap with other players for team slots.

In short, if you players are in agreement, y'all can simply swap (and swap again if needed) characters until the teams are exactly what you, as a group, want them to be.  Or, at least, you can reach as much compromise is possible with so many players and preferences.  This could be done in a day.

I'll type that again, just to emphasize.  By talking among yourselves, you can swap members into the teams you want quickly and democratically without involving me at all.  Swaps can continue until no pair of players want to swap any more.  YOU have the agency to decide where your character is headed.

You might ask, what if someone on the team I want to be on doesn't want to swap with me?  The short answer is that won't happen as often as you might think.  And, there is no real difference in the teams except who is on them. So people aren't really swapping teams, they are swapping team members.  If you can't swap to your buddy, there is still a pretty good chance your buddy can swap to you.

Also, if needed, specific team size can be adjusted.  I believe that teams as small as four members or as large as seven members can work.

While you are mulling all of the above, let me give you some more info.  Up to now, I have asked practically nothing of would-be players.  And why not, up to now, I haven't been able to offer anything but optional free-form IC threads.  So how could I really ask for more?

But as soon as team assignments are even roughly decided, I start doing the hard work of critiquing characters and assuring rules compliances for playbooks.  And, after that, the real posting (using the full ruleset of Influence, Team, Moves and the rest of Masks) will begin.  At that point, a certain amount of timely participation will be expected for each player.

What happens to player that can't maintain the required level of posting?  Well, I don't dismiss players for lower levels of participation but I do move their characters 'off-panel'.  Here's what that means, less-active characters will be removed from their current team with some simple plot contrivance.  Those characters will be placed in the not-yet-announced and no-need-to-be-created-yet inactive team.  This will open up a slot in the three main teams.  Once removed to inactive teams, the inactive character will not be able to reclaim their spot on the main teams.  They will have to earn a new place on the active teams.

What is the takeaway from the above?  Inactive player characters are moved from the main teams, making a slot open for the remaining active players.  Over time, the active teams will thus probably shrink from three teams to two, improving the odds that a PC will be with their friends.  I don't intend to advertise this game so we will likely lose players than gain them.

So if you are thinking that your character is losing out to a character played by a less-active player, rest assured this is almost a certainly self-correcting problem given just a little patience and time. :-)

In IC terms, while the teams are being sorted out, I intend that all PCs are together and interacting as they will.  We can worry about Influence and Relationships a little later.  And, again, I will clarify the confusion I caused about the IC threads once we get this team roster kerfuffle sorted.

So, let's get to it.

Who wants to swap?  Here's how that could be expressed.
1.  You may want to swap teams with a very specific character 'I want to swap with Character X'.
2. You may want to swap to another team, 'I want to be on Team A'.
3. You may want not a swap to, but a swap away from, a team, 'I want to be anywhere but Team A'.
4. You may be utterly indifferent to whatever team you are currently on.  If so, please make that known.  This will make swapping and team building so much easier, 'I will swap with anyone from another team'.

The only stricture is that we want to avoid duplicate playbooks but duplicated characters can still swap teams, directly or as part of a complicated multi-character swap.  It all works.

Remember we swap until no pair of players wants to swap anymore.  So, for each iteration, if you don't have the options you want, you might next round of swaps.

So, let's get started.  By this time tomorrow, we could have the team structure discussed earlier and approved by the players.

I will stop here and post more tomorrow night.

List your swap requests below... ;-)

Okay, this seems like an unnecessary step, but here's what needs to happen to get us back to where we were:

1) Ghost-Spider swaps with Jubilee
2) Max swaps with Midnight
3) Ricochet swaps with Skorpio
4) She-Hulk swaps with Stone Cold

So we'll need all of the above to chime in and say they approve of those moves.

For Max, I approve.

For Stone Cold I approve  :-)

The problem that I see with swapping is, what about inactive players at this stage? Skorpio hasn't posted in a while, for example. If her player doesn't respond any time soon, can Ricochet just move in per Max's proposal, or is she locked out?

Though I suppose since they have different playbooks, we can just add Ricochet without moving Skorpio out just yet.

Also - does Arc want to be in our team? I wouldn't say no, and he did interact with Jubilee, so that may work out well assuming she's still with us. Still, it seems worth asking if we're otherwise trying to move back towards our initial idea.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:51, Thu 03 June 2021.

If Skorpio is maybe not here she should be the 6th character in a team, otherwise we risk screwing a team over - the proposal to move her to team 3 is not great since they may also be missing Citizen V who hasn't been on in a week and is the only one still without a playbook.

Not sure how this got estimated to be done in a day when it needs 8 approvals and not everyone is here every day.  It took 3 days to get 2/3 of this last time.  The explanation for it took 1600 words so it's obviously not simple.

The way the teams are assigned was the right thing to do if it was done a month ago.  It no longer makes sense now that we have 140 IC posts.

In reply to The Watcher (msg # 11):

It really sounds like all this was a lot of words for "let's annoy the players and then let them use the assignments we all chose already." All we needed to do was figure out how to place the players who haven't chosen a spot yet. To repost what we already had:



Updated information beyond that suggested we put Gateway and Resonance with Octopus's group, which leaves (of the active players) Steel Ninja, Arc, and She-Hulk. Citizen V, Midnight, and Skorpio have been absent for a week or more.

My first thought was to put the two most recently active of the inactive players in with SN's group, then pick a spot for Skorpio in case she comes back, or just kinda leave her dangling until she does and can pick a spot herself. That would leave SN with a team of three active and two inactive players, though, which would suck.

My second thought was to have SN swap from Brain to Outsider as he was mulling over earlier, then fit him and the other active two into the two existing teams. That does mean one team would end up with seven members, which is a heckin' many.

Yeah, the moves I recommended earlier would give us:


As you mentioned, Citizen V, Midnight, and Skorpio have been absent for a bit. So that would leave Team 3 down to 3 people if they don't return. The easiest solution would be to have someone from one of the other teams move over to Team 3 to leave 2 teams of 4 and one of 5.

Well Arc and She-Hulk are Novas which people wanted to avoid duplicate playbooks. Also She-Hulk posted yesterday just not in that IC thread.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:50, Thu 03 June 2021.

Oh shoot, forgot that She-Hulk was a nova. In my mind she was a brute because she hits things really hard :)

Arc and She-Hulk, have you guys worked in particular background ties or had significant IC interactions with people you would like to be on a team with?

I don't have any preferences when it comes to a team.
However, if someone else says "I really want her to be on our team", then you can move She-Hulk to that group.

Okay, how about this:


Basically moved Gateway and Resonance to team 3, and swapped them for Arc and Skorpio. From what I remember Gateway and Resonance wanted to be together, but didn't have any specific ties to anyone else in Team 2. Also, this gives the advantage that if we have lost Skorpio, Midnight, and/or Citizen V, we're still good with Team 2 and 3 having at least 4 people.

That's really slick, I completely missed that arrangement possibility. What do the folks involved think? Personally, I'm for this setup.

Looks fine. I'm good with whatever.

Okay, I'm going to update the team list below with those who have approved of the proposed changes (or had no preference) that would get us here by putting a * next to their name:


For everyone else, please post here and say you agree or disagree with the team setup.

Being Octopus myself, I also give my excited agreement in this character body. :P

I'm good

Updated:


This message was last edited by the player at 18:20, Fri 04 June 2021.

I make the following observations...

1. The above is our GM-mandated starting configuration
2. Those in red have not logged into this game this month
3. Player assignments can't be changed without player consent
4. Player consent is lots easier to obtain from players that log in :)

Therefore, I suggest that the quickest way to get us to a more optimal configuration is to figure out swaps that avoid waiting for consent from less active players.

Meanwhile, I have (finally) finished reading (or at least skimming) the IC prequel thread.

Resonance is an Empath, and likes to be useful.  Characters who want to be befriended, or are at least friendly or benevolent, are optimal teammates for her.  Characters who aren't are not optimal teammates for her.  That is both a character preference and a player preference (appropriately enough for a Meta).  Character vs. character unfriendliness is not the type of roleplaying that I find rest or relaxation from.  No offense intended, it is simply not my own personal preference.

Therefore, I add to the above observations...

1. The above is our GM-mandated starting configuration
2. Those in red have not logged into this game this month
3. Player assignments can't be changed without player consent
4. Player consent is lots easier to obtain from players that log in :)
5. Resonance prefers to be on a different team than Citizen V, and will not be willing to swap to the same team.

Therefore, given the five observations above, how can we avoid swaps involving inactive players, minimize total number of swaps, and maximize desired groupings?  :)

At a quick glance, here is one possibility:

Max swaps with Arc
Ricochet swaps with Ghost-Spider
Octopus swaps with Steel Ninja

This requires the approval of only six active players, maintains the same gender compositions, maintains playbook uniqueness within a team, and results in the following:


Thoughts?  Your feedback is welcome.  :)

That leaves Jubilee and Ricochet separated. What about moving Jubilee into Counterforce's team? They'd be five, with B2 and C2 both being four. Not counting the quiet ones, that is.

I think you're worrying too much about someone that hasn't posted in two weeks and doesn't have a character class.

I think Citizen V will be fun if she's in-game.  Just enough drama to keep things interesting.

Some folks might not mind that type of drama, but that is not the droid that I am looking for, so that is not a swap that Resonance will agree to.

Jubilee sounded quite flexible, but I suspect Ricochet would need to persuade the GM, since her suggestion wouldn't be a swap between consenting players... :o

My proposal was designed to propel us to a quick and guaranteed approval.

Hmmm.  Suppose that we really wanted to get those five together, quick and guaranteed.  That implies that they would need to swap into Hearts.  Sigh.  Resonance the Empath was made for a team called Hearts... :(

OK, to create that fivesome, here is one way to go:


Note that this requires eleven(!) active players to agree, rather than just six.  But it still avoids depending upon any additional consent from less active players or from the GM.

At a glance, four swaps could get the job done:

Counterforce -> Octopus -> Steel Ninja (three-way swap: three Brains)
Arc <- She-Hulk <- Max (three-way swap: two Novas)
Ghost-Spider <- Resonance <- Richochet (three-way swap)
Leviathan <-> Gateway (two-way swap)

The result:


Note that putting those five together changes the overall gender balance, if folks care about such things.

Thoughts?  :)