Post by Rodimus Prime on May 18, 2008 16:46:54 GMT -5
Fireblade is in the process of being wrapped up, so we'd like to go over the things that went well with it, and the mistakes that were made which can be improved on to make the next big battle less strenuous.
The first improvement was made partway through the battle, by putting all battle-threads into a subboard. This is a very good idea, and we're going to be using it next time.
Among the mistakes is a lack of OOC and IC pre-planning on the part of the attackers. Now, part of the problem here is that we wanted to avoid dictating to too many people where their characters should be during the fight and what they should be doing (with the exception of some key components, such as Hellbender), while actually RPing out, "You be here doing this, you be there doing that," can get rather tedious (especially as such a thread would call for a lot of members). An OOC prep post, similar to what we did prior to the Mesa Battle, may help, and we'll be trying for that. Also, there will be more good guys in this battle, leaving a smaller number of bad guys with no one to pair off against.
Another downfall that's particular to the DZ-3 plot is the fact that many of us are running a lot more characters than we usually do. There's not really much we can do to avoid this until DZ-3 is over and the alternates have all been shuffled back home, but we're considering creating a 'background combatant list.' This way, you don't have to be actively posting all characters in order to claim they're participating in the fight. It's possible for some characters to be in the background, generically fighting (and taking generic damages) when they haven't stepped forward to take a significant role in the scene. Does this sound like a doable suggestion or not?
And now, I'd like to turn things over to everyone else, to bring up both things that went wrong and how we can avoid them, but also to point out things that went right and to talk about what you liked about the battle. Please, let us know, so that we can improve our process for the next big fight.
The first improvement was made partway through the battle, by putting all battle-threads into a subboard. This is a very good idea, and we're going to be using it next time.
Among the mistakes is a lack of OOC and IC pre-planning on the part of the attackers. Now, part of the problem here is that we wanted to avoid dictating to too many people where their characters should be during the fight and what they should be doing (with the exception of some key components, such as Hellbender), while actually RPing out, "You be here doing this, you be there doing that," can get rather tedious (especially as such a thread would call for a lot of members). An OOC prep post, similar to what we did prior to the Mesa Battle, may help, and we'll be trying for that. Also, there will be more good guys in this battle, leaving a smaller number of bad guys with no one to pair off against.
Another downfall that's particular to the DZ-3 plot is the fact that many of us are running a lot more characters than we usually do. There's not really much we can do to avoid this until DZ-3 is over and the alternates have all been shuffled back home, but we're considering creating a 'background combatant list.' This way, you don't have to be actively posting all characters in order to claim they're participating in the fight. It's possible for some characters to be in the background, generically fighting (and taking generic damages) when they haven't stepped forward to take a significant role in the scene. Does this sound like a doable suggestion or not?
And now, I'd like to turn things over to everyone else, to bring up both things that went wrong and how we can avoid them, but also to point out things that went right and to talk about what you liked about the battle. Please, let us know, so that we can improve our process for the next big fight.