I'd like to start off saying I am excited about our game. My quiet recently hasn't been a ghosting, here, or burn-out or anything in that category or adjacent to it. I have plans. I want to see how each of you through your characters react to those plans. I know whats in the case, who it belongs to, who wants it most, and I have ideas for lots of other people who want it. One of them might even be tied tangentially to some of your characters!
Having said that, I had a lot of thoughts in my head for this post, and this post was becoming a book. I won't do that to yall because it all boils down to this: I'm having a hard time keeping the game rolling. As of the last time I posted a GM post we had five players and characters: @Stoic playing Boris, @Ndreare playing Roc, @High Command playing Black Swan, @Icosa (Max) playing Emi, and @Pursuit was awesome enough to rejoin us with Whiskers.
I was slow on the post myself a couple times. Most obviously this last, huge gap. It feels like every post, though, one or two of you is struggling to get a post up for whatever reason. (I'm not pointing fingers. It happened and is what it is. I neither mean nor want to make anyone feel bad about it).
This did affect me in the following ways:
1a) With less players than most games on the site, I felt like if I don't give each one of you the chance to post it might cause problems for the group in play.
1b) I'm not giving you the opportunity to get in and have fun like everyone else.
2) I'm ruining everyone else's fun by not continuing the game in a timely fashion.
3) Tangentially related - I feel like I'm slacking / being a bad GM by posting in my other games as a player when I have five players waiting and relying on me to post in this game. It ends up affecting my ability and excitement to post in other games.
Again, none of this is meant to make anyone feel bad or place blame. It's what I felt as it was happening.
Now you know what's been going on with me, and although I won't vote in the poll, I do want y'all to know I want to keep going. Do you? I hope so.
If we keep going, this how it will be. It will also be my last chance. I let the group down the first time, but this time I feel like it was a combination of factors. If we keep going at this point and it doesn't work out I will shut it down for good because I don't want to waste anyone's time that could be better spent somewhere else! If we don't keep it going, then this was the final hurrah. I won't attempt to ressurect IZ3 again on the forum. I may or may not try again at GMing but that's on me, not on any of y'all.
If we keep going, I'm sticking to my "two week" rule (it had become three week a couple times). Sundays will be my post day. If I miss Sunday because I'm out of town, I will post monday. I understand some of you may have real life situations pop up at times, so the Friday before my cut off I will ask whoever may not have had a chance to post if they will be able to get one in. If they need an extra day or two for when their schedule frees up, that is ok. But that is that, next post is going up.
An example of how this would work using this week:
I post Sunday 10/17.
Friday 10/29 I see one of you hasn't posted. I will ask if you think you can get it in this weekend.
- That player says yes, and they do, so I post between then and Sunday 10/31.
- That player says yes, and they don't, so I post Sunday 10/31 and do my best to account for what their character is doing.
- That player says no, so I post between then and Sunday 10/31.
- That player says no, but they know they have free time Tuesday 11/2. I give them the opportunity to post by 11/2. Whether they do or not, I drop the post Tuesday night 11/2 (or Wednesday afternoon 11/3 if their window of opportunity is later than my ability to post).
- This does not affect my "two week" rule. Whether the post is dropped on 10/31 or 11/2, I will intend to post again by 11/14 as if I had posted on 10/31.
Finally, the "two week" rule has always been more of my personal goal than any kind of expectation for y'all. I'm not trying to make things confusing. This is just how I will do things going forward. Also, this does not mean we can't post weekly! I will post as quickly as y'all can match me. But I will not make y'all wait on me if we continue.
This is all to alleviate my conflicting feelings highlighted above. It isn't mean to be any kind of punishing reaction or the like. If I have clear rules for myself to follow, and everyone is aware of them, then I don't feel bad about it. The flip side of the coin is, if we do continue playing and it ends up not working out then at least I did everything I could and it wasn't meant to be.
Well, dang. After cutting back I still ended up with a wall of text. Let me know where we stand. I will not be accepting GM EP for last quarter, but I will look into our post rates to see if I can get y'all some EP.
End of message!
