However, the attitudes Global brings to the table now are almost as destructive as the original problems. It’s strange that they have made decisions that benefited almost everyone…yet no one is happy.

The truth is I agree with every point you guys have made. I don’t necessarily agree with the reasons or the proposed solutions, but I agree with the points.

My point was more of with anything planned that is meant to be on a large scale, you can not really design it well unless you take things to extremes, really test out the system. In the case of your website it is a small pool of people, who only have their words as influence.

The cam by contrast has thousands of people acting as judges for rules that then affects everyone (at least nationally) in some way. Then you add to that that the average Active Cam member has 4+ years of prestige and exp in many games…you have some odd stuff going on.

From a new members perspective there is one large issue, how do I make a useful character? For most players in the domain I am in this seems a non-issue. I understand their perspective, I cannot make anything that others do not have and that they are better at. All I can do is add “Character” or some flavor, perhaps some spice that has been lacking, there is no way I can truly be useful as a character coming in.

As for viability in Combat…don’t even bother.

One issue that needs to be addressed in all this is that there is something lacking in games with so many powerful characters. A sense of urgency and dread. If an NPC is created to challenge and truly strike fear in the hearts of the majority of a venue, the new players have no chance.

There are other issues, but that there are few things forcing dread and competition down the throats of the characters, they simply can take on most anything that comes their way, and seem ok working together for the most part…even when they suffer a bit for it.

I have seen this in long games, few risk their characters much, few try and create waves…until end of game comes (reset of the world)…then the games get fun again.

In video games we can see this, specially in ones with persistent worlds and where there is a real loss potential. EVE coincidently is the best example of this. There are very few wars between the top player corporations in that game…too much is at stake. Even if characters come back, the loss of money in that game is the primary peace maker.

Though I can imagine that they can change this buy adding enough things to render old things less useful, all this makes is an arms race and a lot of cold wars.

Too much like real life for me, once you become comfortable with the character you no longer take huge risks.
Thus the “fun” of safe risk taking Vs. reward of improved whatever becomes smaller and smaller specially as that reward gets smaller and smaller.

You visited Save the Cam before joining the Cam? How did that happen?

You argument seems to boil down to this:

Save the Cam is flawed for the same reasons the Camarilla is flawed. Both try to establish a static pattern, but end up creating a dynamic system to defies the order that is originally imposed.

Not a bad point.

However, I would argue that there is a key difference between the Camarilla’s shared participation and Save the Cam’s enabled commenting. While James and I are influenced by what people write, in the end these are our ideas. The core, key beliefs remain the same.

Currently we have 6 steps outlined. Those have not and WILL NOT change. Yes, the details may get a bit messy at times, but we strongly believe that taking action on the 10 steps is key to improving the Camarilla and retaining the members that matter.

Are there Problems with the Cam?
Yes

Are there problems with the way this website/issue is presented?
Yes

Do both share the same set of problems?
In some cases yes, in others no.

Let me explain:
Minds Eye Theater in my opinion was intended to work with 10~50 people in a game, with about 30 people on an average game night for big groups 7 for small groups. Typically gaming groups survive 2 or 3 years. This was the idea of average gaming Troupes.

In reality, these games have ranges of 10~150 people in the larger games a 50 person night is considered really light, off campus or online gaming is rampant and people turning in proxies is relatively common. Also these games just seem to go on and on.

So what is the problem??? The Cam, created house rules to improve participation in “club activities” the long term effects where not thought out. There was a lot of increased activity and involvement.

Your Website has the intention to get the ball rolling in a constructive way to correct issues with the Cam using 10 points. However, you have combined issues and as comments have been added and points of view adjusted, what is written is still the same.

So in essence the long term effects of the commentary where not thought out.

The issue we see in the cam is that the richness of characters, far outweighs the designs of the game. That the balance of the game it totally out of the scope of the design of the game. That the culture of the game is not very conducive with the games.

On this Board, I find it hard to comment on some of the core issues because of the combination of issues. For example in step #2 you basically attack all the mechanical issues in the game. I feel each of these issues…EXP awards, Prestige Awards and the draw system while intertwined should have separate commentary points…unless you are simply trying to comment on what needs to change.

Yet it seems you have not thought out the last four issues, and are reserving those for new ideas, such as Matrixes on officers.
All in all I totally applaud your efforts and would be more then happy to comment and offer what I can from the perspective of a new member just walking in and testing the waters, as well as that of an experienced gamer who has thought of many of these issues before.

We see a lot of the issues now going on in the Cam with MMORPGs, they are bigger then imagined, the ideas that it would take years to get to the top level, or kill the big end game bad ass are now known to be wrong. That people are better networked then imagined and so on.

We can learn from them and adjust as needed.

I rather like the idea of a MC/CC pool. (Membership/Character Class pool) The idea being that a player who wants to play in a venue can invest some number of their CC points into their character in that venue, which grants their bonus. If they prefer, they can invest all of the available levels in that venue. (Some may argue against this. Please do.)

Should the character be worth the good death award, the invested points are freed instantly. Otherwise, there should be a cooling down period, or something. That way, killing a character means the number of powerful individuals drops for a while at least, creating a power vacuum. I don’t see why those points couldn’t be freed into another venue, either.

Maybe after some amount of time, the pool refreshes, regardless. A little thought into that approach would keep people on their toes. They would not have any way of judging a character’s power level OOC, unless someone starts to blab.

A trickle over time of invested CC would allow player to experiment with more powerful characters in other venues. This also keeps things on their toes. (I suppose one option would be to free up a level of CC upon increase of MC. This would provide two levels to the player.)

Note that MC may provide a pool of CC that needn’t be identical. If MC rewards became 20xp, flat, but the available CC was 1 1/3 times MC, the system would be quite similar to the current for one character, but tone things down.

If a player pops up to a higher MC, it makes little sense to make them automatically gain the full fruits on their characters. Instead of every ST needing to find out, only the one over the affected character would have to find out. In that sort of system, the character’s CC would be more important than a player’s MC, and the approval levels on their sheet should reflect that.

(If the points from achieving an MC increase could only be applied in certain ways on existing characters, such as into power stats and another ability based on type, we could avoid some of the irritating story bending that such experience dumps currently cause. Say, abilities for mortals and magi, renown for werewolves, and merits for vampires, as an example.)

Shifting systems would need a grandfather clause of some sort, of course.

The Italy situation sounds great, actually. If we can fix the draw system, then that would really be far better.

The idea was that high MC members would have learned to be responsible players over time, and that they would know how to contribute to a game rather than putting their own interests first. We were stupidly naive to believe that volunteering could teach anyone anything, but it did seem a more reasonable way to distribute power levels throughout the game than some other options we’d heard of.

Your English is great! We look forward to hearing more from you in the coming months! In fact, you should pop on over to Step 2’s page and tell us about the lower amounts of XP you get in more detail.

I’ll follow you in the future with great attention, thank you!

p.s. sorry for my poor english, I hope you could understand something…

Federico Moschetti
IT200410299
ANST Mortals
CC Rome