Notes on Step 3

Although we will probably never again have as many hits as we did for Day 1, Save the Cam is still going strong. We have started to see people searching us out via Google and links from other blogs. If you like what we are arguing for, please post us somewhere (your blog, your local list, your local forum).

Here’s our favorite comment from Step 3:

[...] as they’re available to the cam at large, can we get a page set up here to anonymously post any custom mechanics that we know of, from our own or other sheets? I ask for it to be here because I think it’s in the sprit of peer reviewed custom mechanics. I don’t think it breaks ST confidentiality. If so, I’ll give you two of my own devotions; Fear Given Form and Decoy.

Of course, logging in as myself, I’ve just inadvertently told you which player has it on their characters. Curses. – Jon Argles

Thwarted again, Jon! You can head over to the Broken Mechanics page to view the custom mechanics from Jon’s devotions. If you think they are super awful cheese, let us know!

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A Mention in the NST Report?

Not a day passes that the very highest levels of the club do not talk about ways to make the game better and more fun for the players. Ideas are always welcome, so long as they’re constructive. Sometimes, the answer is “yes, we can do that” (publishing custom mechanics, in the works from Global currently, for example). Sometimes the answer is “We’d love to, but we can’t do that right now.” (XP changes) – Jon Herrmann, NST Report

We can’t help but wonder if our ears should be burning. If so, we are flattered to see the NST taking interest in what we are doing. Thanks for reading and talking about us on the lists. We love to see National and Global officers involved in the discussion!

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There was quite a bit of conversation about certain parts of Step 3, and very little about other parts. It seems that the players generally agree that we should release custom mechanics and that Global seems prepared to do so soon. That makes us here at Save the Cam very happy.

As for other issues that have been brought up to us, here are some clarifications and comments for your reading pleasure:

Why Use Mark’s Fetishes?
1) We needed a specific example to make our point
Talking about “Broken” mechanics without examples wasn’t going to win anyone over. We might all know they exist, but it’s important that we identified specific items/powers so that you, Dear Reader, might understand what WE think Broken means.

2) Publishing other player’s custom mechanics without permission is in bad taste
We feel that it would be a betrayal of the public trust to post mechanics as examples without consulting the player. Mark’s fetishes are good examples of how the process can go wrong, but are examples that expose only us to your criticism.

3) We wanted to put to rest the idea that we are “whining.”
We are fully capable of playing the game as it stands today with our mid-level MC, 2 years of XP, and broken fetishes. Neither of us has been “screwed over” by the MC system, nor have we lost to higher MC characters. In fact, James is Prince of the Albuquerque Requiem venue! Save the Cam is about fixing the game so that we ALL can have fun. The current game isn’t fun for either of us because of the problems we are outlining, not because we can’t get our way IC or don’t understand how to play in the Cam.

The 100+ Email Thread on General-OOC
If you haven’t read the thread and care about these issues, go and read it now. If for some reason you aren’t on General-OOC, we can forward you the thread. David Sauter, long time Cammie and hero to the Rules-Advocacy List, had this great email that summed up our argument for why the CRT would be better for everyone:

Two major improvements:

1) Shift the baseline. Right now a lot of players put up competely
unreasonable things because they know they’re going to be modified by
Global et all – but if they start unreasonable enough what gets
approved is still broken. If they start at a fair and balanced level
(coming from the CRT) then the final products will be far closer to
reasonable than letting the player design that same baseline.

2) Veto, some negotiation, not outright advocacy.

The local ST’s would get veto power over it (as they always have) and
some room for negotiation but not the outright advocacy level of
arguing they participate in currently. When the baseline comes from
Global and not the player then Global can draw a line in the sand and
say ‘you’ve pushed this far but no farther’. They can’t do that if
the baseline power is broken to begin with.

… and both of these mean far less work for ST’s since they are no
longer the first line of defense against broken mechanics as they are
now. They are rather player advocates for mechanics coming out of
Global. A much less stressful place to be.

David Sauter
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And his fiancee, Jessi Hixon, provided another system that would work just as well to get mechanics out of the hands of players:

Try it this way.

The AMST Rules runs the CRT. All applicants to the pool team of the
CRT must pass vetting by global, receive x number of nominations from
the membership for the position and have x amount of experience as a
Storyteller. The AMST makes assignments for rules writing to this
pool based on their individiual capabilities, workload and expertise.
They have a brainstorm list to work as a team on sticky stuff. All
rules go back past the AMST Rules before going back down the chain.
This spreads the workload without giving global the sole power to hire
people that only think the way they want people to think, gives the
general population a hand in deciding who their rules writing gurus
are, and still has someone acting as the person in charge.

We know our cheeseweasels. They’ll eat up every single writing gig
with relish and a smile. The turn around times on mechanics
production will be awesome if the AMST Rules balances workload with
personal needs of the team appropriately. The list for this pool will
actually have some of the best structured and least vindictive
academic arguments in the Cam’s plethora of list communications simply
because rules monkeys are generally analytically minded bullshit
repellant personalities who have been called every name in the book
six or seven times and had the same arguments six or seven times on
Cam-Rules and its variants over the years. The need to rehash any of
that will be nill.

Woohoo. Go Jessi and David.

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Finally, there have been some calls, in public and in private, for Mark to lead by example and retire his fetishes because they are broken. While, ultimately yes, we consider the fetishes to be good examples of cheesy custom mechanics, we feel that just retiring them defeats the purpose of what “Save the Cam” is advocating. The stance of “Well, everyone should just play nice” doesn’t work and with a club this size it never will. There are already systems in play to rid the Chronicle of horrible mechanics.

So, in light of that, rather than Mark just “playing nice”, we’d suggest anyone who considers Mark’s fetishes to be an affront to God and Man should contact Mark’s direct ST, Mike Gearman at mithras@jyhad.net and let him know. That way, if Mark loses his fetishes, we can at least know the system works.

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In closing…

Save the Cam will return shortly with “Step 4: Get an Addendum that Works“