Unforgettable [Event add-on to: Ierefal]

[Kanorie Lyanuw]

[DISCLAIMER: I do not condone acts of terrorism in real life, nor do I pretend to poke fun at them with this RP. I live in a country where terrorism has been active for over 50 years, and is currently threatened by Islamic terrorism. Please, don't bash on this event for that reason.]

Trembling paws held the small pliers firmly as a small fuse was diposited within a phial ful of some kind of oily liquid. Crude shards of sharp, twisted metal surrounded a dark granulous material, which was protected by an orb of black glass. On the darkened, mouldy table, a few more artifacts, some wrapped in oily linen, some disguised as a mail package, rested beside the item the fenki worked on.

She carefully stuffed the opening in the explosive device with a handful of rivnak fur, gently pulling the fuse through it before she wrapped the orb in a grey cloth, painted especially to be disguised as a chunk of wall or a rock.

The sewers were especially cold that night, but not as smelly, thankfully. The end of the warm season was nearing, and the heat that once made the dirt rot and smell was now gone. Holding tightly onto her bag full of danger, the fenki skimmed about the tall corridors, dodging an arangma here and disappearing from the sight of a rogue there.

The darkness engulfed Hydlaa, only breaking in the occasional spots here and there by some oil lamp burning, and of course around Kada-El's. She hid behind the barrels against the building's wall, waiting until the two Enkidukai in charge of the Hydlaa Guard in the Upper District stopped chatting and went on patrol.

Skipping from roof to roof until she got to the walls, she quickly ran across them, reaching the gates leading to East Hydlaa and quietly observing the Grotemeys' shop. Seeing as they were probably off for the day, and that no guard was around, she let herself slide down the wall behind the tent and quickly darted through the passage.

The area around the library was deserted. A light coming from one of the windows in the building meant either Jayose or Arion were, again, pulling an all-nighter. Luckily enough, she knew better, and stuck her body to the wall surrounding the library. Past the Order of Light guildhouse, around Ad Libertatem, and there she was. She licked her lips before giving a wide grin, gently tapping the bag full of explosives and malicious artifacts. As she placed them against walls, strapped under tables and hidden underneath benches, only one thought went through her head.

"Whisper bless, overlings. Whisper bless."

[OOC Notice: The artifacts used will be books acting as props, with a somewhat detailed description of them. Not all of them will be exclusively explosive devices (included but not limited to): different effects will be described by the in game books, left before the festival. Please, do not bash on my game character when she drops the books: it is merely an OOC move to illustrate the effects better.]

[Rigwyn]

Wow, this looks like an awesome start! Good Luck!

[Kaerli_Stronwylle]

[OOC remarks here since there's nowhere else on the forums to put them that's logical.

1) Basing an event around planted items and then OOCly dissuading people from interacting with them is railroadish.  That is my main problem with the way the event was RPed.
2) Planted props are good.  Well hidden planted props are better (although there are some meta issues with hiding items in the mechanics).  However, the one under the stall next to the entrance from Hydlaa, well, could have provided a point of contact, or some sort of IC presence for that matter?  I had no clue how to RP with such a thing.
3) Making an event organizer OOCly think you're not going to derail the RP and then derailing it might not be such a great idea.  It may have been better had it not been raised in gossip at all!  (Either that, or a more persistent notification.  A single post in gossip isn't going to help much as we aren't online 24/7!)
4) This is a mild nitpick, but if you want to say someone of low skill can't do something, be more specific.  Terms such as "low" and "high" are relative to one's own skills, and to the global meta as well.  Using either a threshold level, or a mention of Circle ranks, would be much appreciated.
5) As Danow mentioned, the timing was very disruptive to Ierefal.  Timing it for near the end of the event would have been both much more apropos and much better for effect/drama.  As it was, other people had almost no time to RP with it!

Otherwise, not *terrible*, and not a total troll either.]

[Zai Awakidey]

Well, I personally liked this concept and makes a change to the usual quite relaxed plotlines! But then I'd like to have attended Ierefal as haven't before.
Sucks I wasn't around for it.

[novacadian]

Why someone would want to play the Boston Bombings on their day off was beyond my understanding. The first blast had me thinking that at least those affected had agreed to be so. After the second blast it was ctrl-Q for me. The forceful nature of the rp (godmodding?) seemed beyond the pale. What a great way to ruin a potentially great event. Guess it will take a trip to the library to learn the lore that took me there in the first place. Hope no one blows up Roled's event.

[Raikana]

For me there is no much to say. I left the event as soon as I saw that the festival was ruined (but i roleplayed your bombs with honesty). This has been not respectful and Kaerli has raised some of the main motivations. PS is made of many people; doing RP here does not mean: "I do what I want". You have to respect the RP of the others and INTERACT, not DESTROY. There are no excuses for that behaviour, for me, the only excuse would be if you are really really young (and I hope it is true, otherwise...). Do you realize how many people worked so hard for weeks? Anyway, I must say it left me really sad, and I was not the only one to feel that sadness. The event is rescheduled but it will not be the same. A last thing: i'm gonna totally ignore this RP in the newspaper; i hope this regrettable act will be soon be forgotten.
Edit: I would change the title of this thread to "forgettable".

[Taya]

My opinion:

It 'could' have been a good and creative way to encourage RP and improve the event. But it wasn't due to how it was handled.

1 - This should have been coordinated by checking either with the players behind the event or with the GM team.
2 - Should have let the people who had planned things get to do what they planned first. Then maybe have blown things up around the time the event would have wound down naturally otherwise.
3 - Labeling your IC explosives as OOC was... I don't even know what to call that. It's practically denying people a means to even try and RP avoidance of the situation.
4 - From what I heard, people became aware of events and you decided to go AFK instead of responding to them to give them an IC chance to lower the impact of what happened. Now fair enough, we all need to go AFK from time to time, but hijacking such a big event and then dong that in a manner that prevents people from RPing against your intentions, and then also making comments in gossip that you couldn't be bothered to write the books better, when on the other hand we have people who spent weeks in preparation... This just feels disrespectful. Seems like you used other people's effort and work to launch some spur of the moment idea without any real thought.
5 - If you want to use an event like this that other people set up and then try to make yourself the centre of attention, when people offer constructive criticism, try and be a bit more positive about how you react to it.

This really could have been good, if you'd handled it differently.

[Volki]

I actually had this idea when I first saw the Ierefal thread.

Only reasons I didn't go through with it were this being my first week of school and the recency of the Boston Marathon attack. I would have coordinated with the Ierefal event planners, though, and I assumed Kanorie did that. I'm surprised she did not.

I want to remind other players that if you don't like the way a roleplay is going, just say so. And if you're the event-planner and something happens that you don't wish to, stop whatever is happening from actually happening. People will go along with mass retcons.

I've seen this same thing happen so many times. But it's always been dealt with immediately. Complaining about it after the fact is not helpful.

Also, to Kanorie. If you're going to be AFK before conducting an event, just don't conduct the event. I know this is a game, but when you put that much effort into it, you can't take a break to eat. Grab your food, take it to your desk, and don't leave unless you have to pee. You have an obligation, so fulfill it.

[Kanorie Lyanuw]

@Volki: I did take the food to my desk to eat, and I was eating through the event, silly.

@Novacadian: Also, I didn't know about the Boston bombings or it being the day off or whatever. You do know not everyone lives in the United States and can know about EVERYTHING happening there, or when it's their anniversaries, right? And your post is so filled with butthurt, it gave me a rash. Accusing people of godmodding is so childish, it sparkled my maternal instincts. When you have a better remark to make, I'll reply like an actual adult.

@Taya: The IC explosives veren't labelled OOCly. They were labelled as "Do not touch!" so newbies wouldn't take them. I did go afk BEFORE the event started to make food, and brought it to my desk to eat it. I got mixed messages about this event, but the ones saying it was, while badly organised, well done, is far superior to the messages putting it down. I only care about the former, especially when they bring constructive criticism. Also, I tried to apologize to the organizers, got no reply. May they consider themselves "apologized".

@Raikana: You carebears getting up on my nerves But pretending a retcon on your side will make many players ask about why you didn't even mention it in your papers. While you're at it, if you're going to ignore all kind of events like this, why not just go ahead and stop writing?
PS: I'm not changing the thread's title.

@Kaerli: I did disuade you because I couldn't attend to your questions at that time and you were free to poke me again the moment you had seen me back. You didn't, and I didn't PM you. I did apologize in gossip about it. I did react nicely to the constructive criticism, but I couldn't tolerate the "whine whine whine" I was hearing from some people. Also, thanks to Cormah, Rheos, LigH and most likely some others who helped make it and joined in on the RP.

Those who didn't, while I know their names, won't be posted out of respect. I also promise the following Ierefal events won't be disturbed on my side, and beckon anyone thinking about it to hold it for some other event, and discuss it with the organizers beforehand. Thanks.

[Illysia]

You know, one solution to all of this is simply to create a festival type event where the actual focus is the story that interrupts the festival. I mean use the festival as just an IC excuse for the characters being in the same place but OOCly everyone understands from the beginning that they are putting their characters there to RP the "incident."

[cormah]

It seems to me like this whole rp was centered around one person, when people have tried to make comments against the action, giving reasonable descriptions, they have been met with frankly rude posts and comments with poor taste. I must congratulate the organisers of the Ierefal festival for remaining so dignified and not reacting to these provactive statements. I would like to make clear although I did roleplay the bombing event I do not approve of how it was enacted or how players were given no chance to prevent its occurence.

[Miranah]

I left as soon as the bombing started, thinking that it was a self-centered act of a troll or something. I find it hard to understand why such an "add on" wouldn't be announced in advance to the organizers, if the purpose wasn't just to be in focus and ruin the work of the other players. It seemed like both the organizers and the players running kiosks and so on had put effort in actually preparing for a festival, and not for a bombing. Such a shame, because it seemed like there was a huge amounts of players gathered there when I left.

I might be wrong; it might never have been the intention to ruin anything for anyone. I really hope I am wrong, but it doesn't make it better that it seems that Kanorie only post rude responses to those who actually try to be constructive or just wants to state that they weren't pleased with this happening.

Too bad such a fine event will have to be redone completely. I hope that the interest will be as big when it is redone on the 13th. I have a really good impression of PlaneShift so far, and this is the biggest amount of players I have seen gathered at one time, so I don't hope that things like this happen all the time when people are trying to arrange something.

[SpidaManz111]

Well, this was unforgettable as promised.

[Rigwyn]

There's two sides to the coin. One one side, there's the event planners and their desire to run an IC event and have an expected outcome. On the other is a player with an evil character who presumably has an IC reason to do such a thing and has a similar desire for success.

Should the evil character refrain from doing what he would normally do based on OOC information?

Should the players running the event have to accept a sub event that undermines/destroys their event and perhaps prospers at their expense?

We play two roles. We make our characters choose what they will do based on IC information as seen from their eyes and on their disposition. We also make choices as players in the OOC world that we exist in. There's a balance between letting your character be themselves and in respecting the feelings of fellow players. This balance is not black and white; it's mostly grey from my experience as the two overlap.

An IC terrorist event is doable in my opinion but only if it is role played properly and fairly. Again, one has to ask, "Is it better for my character to accomplish his goals, or is it better that as a player, I give my fellow players some space to accomplish their goals as I too would want the same from them?"

Better luck next time.

[Volki]

And this is why hardcore roleplayers shy away from PlaneShift.

I don't like how Kanorie uses the words "butthurt" and "carebear", but that's what some of you are acting like. This is pathetic. I have never seen a roleplaying community behave like this.

Now I'm going to pretend this thread doesn't exist.