Yaaaay for being back. Step 6 garnered the most views to date since our initial post, charting a record 300+ views in the first day. It’s obvious you all missed us!

We missed you too! Because of the deep interest you all have shown, we are currently looking at more topics and issues to cover once our list of Ten Ways is done. If you have ideas, send them over! We can always be reached at mark.truman@gmail.com and james.bronaugh@gmail.com.

On that note, we had only a few posts this time commenting on Step 6. We aren’t sure why you all were so quiet, but we still had a few gems. Here’s our favorite comment for Step 6.

In Canada, 3 months of no report puts an officer in the black, and makes for an automatic election – not a VoNC, but the mandate to simply run the election for that position. The person currently in is welcome to re-run, but everyone in the Domain will know that the reason the election is being run is a failure to report.

As well, we do not give Prestige for officer positions unless a report is filed that month – this includes our National officers (and in fact, the Nationals do not get Prestige if they are late with a report, unless they have given prior notice, or have a definate emergency).

We also got rid of MC Loans a few years ago – our ST’s ability to create NPC’s is based on their ST level, not the member’s personal MC level. This seems to have leveled out the playing field, and settled the “being ST just to get more MC” problem. – Indrani

Wow. The more and more we talk about Canada’s Cam, the more we think it must be a nice place to play! It’s probably cold though. We don’t like the cold.

Regardless, Indrani has highlighted a few ways that they are way ahead of the US Camarilla…and probably a few other affiliates. We aren’t sure what’s keeping their good ideas from getting implemented, but it needs to change!

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It isn’t often that we get a full-throated rebuttal of our ideas. Decker provided such on this step and it’s a worthwhile read. Here are a few clarifications and additions based on his well-thought criticism.

Why Promptness Matters from STs

Over all this not a bad idea. Infact, it’s more or less already in place, with the exception of the automatic VoNC. Reporting is important, but for Storytellers, there are more important factors. Is the game they run one that is enjoyable to their players? Does it contribute to the Chronicle as a whole? I can easily forgive a Storyteller for missing a report or two. Coordinators are a different matter because prestige is awarded solely in reports.

Obviously we can all understand failing to file a report. While they are simple, easy, and fairly short, real life can get in the way of getting your report in exactly on time. However, STs who fail to file a report are usually only a step or two away from failing to do other parts of their job as well.

Think of it as a variant on the broken window theory. When we are on the lookout for STs who don’t file reports, we catch the STs who are starting to slip on the job overall. Those same STs will eventually stop taking care of the approvals database, fail to write plots for game, and perhaps even stop showing up.

In addition, many STs don’t actually care about the prestige they are earning. Taking it away isn’t a punishment for most of them. If not filing a report can get you kicked out of office, you make filing the report (and other parts of your job) a priority.

What We Want From Attendance Records

This information if compiled would honestly tell us very little useful information in regards to the Camarilla, other than patterns and tracking holistic game attendance which
I agree could be useful on a global/national level but does not provide a great deal of useful information on lower levels.

Each region has it’s own flavor, preferences, and staff. Even within that however, domains have their own flavor, preferences, and staff.

I do not mean to be offensive but you seem to base much of this idea off how a single area does things, as in my Region, it has been quite some time since it was requested in any ST reports that attendance be reported. – Decker

We don’t truly need attendance data for each game to be evaluated, measured, and acted upon. Obviously, growing 20% a year may not be the standard each game should be held to. Sometimes, domains are quite old by Cam standards and may not see that kind of growth…because they’ve got an established player base that isn’t all that interested in recruitment.

But nationally we need to get some data that tells us how our game is faring. Attendance is the best indicator of that. In addition, it would help us divide up our time at conventions and featured games to make sure that we are addressing the needs of each region, nation, or venue.

Yes, we do base our posts on what we see in our region, but that’s not a valid excuse for failing to implement changes elsewhere. If you aren’t currently tracking attendance in your region, it would take a single email from the RST to drastically change that situation.

Metrics? Yes, we say!

McDonalds sells the most hamburgers in the world. They consistantly make a good profit and have exceptional market share and brand identity. This does not mean that they have the best hamburgers in the world.

Metrics work for a field where success is determined by the financial status of the company.

In the Camarilla, Metrics are of limited use, unless we want to define our success solely by our attendance numbers.

As an additional note, I personally have frequently observed in companies that use Metrics, those who are held responsible for the results, attempting to skew the results as they know that Metrics often are over relied on and used to determine the quality of their performance, regardless of the actual results.

The result of this is rather then focusing on how to create a successful company in terms of customer and employee satisfaction as well as finacial viablity, management focuses on achieving standards usually set by those who have not ever performed the job. Often, different groups of management are held responsible for different aspects of Metrics and without exception they will focus solely on achieving their Metric, often at the expense of other fields. – Decker

Decker paints a picture of our idea gone horribly awry. No one here at Save the Cam wants anyone to lose their elected position based solely on how many people fill out a survey or attend a game. But we do want something we can measure, something we can hold up and say “We’ve made some progress this year!”

Does anyone have any idea what will do that? Or are we stuck stumbling along without a clear picture of where we have been or where we would like to go?

Tell us what you all think!

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And while we wait for your comments, Save the Cam will return with “Offer Storyteller Training That Works” soon!

When we cast aside the problems that are hurting our game right now (XP Glut, Broken Custom Items, Faulty Appeals, and a Confusing Addendum), the way forward doesn’t become more clear. In fact, just the opposite. There is no way forward…because we don’t have a way to measure success beyond fixing the problems that make us crazy every game. Once those are gone, there is no way to envision what will help the club rise from “Not broken” to “Awesome!”

If the Camarilla was a business, this would be an easy vision to create. We would simply look at our profit/loss spreadsheet and talk about ways to make more money in the future. We could market to new players, improve our current staff, and watch the money roll in.

But we aren’t a business. We’re a fan club. A club with a unique environment that combines role-playing, networking, and community service. We can’t judge our level of success by our profit. And we shouldn’t judge our success solely by the number of people who put up $20 in membership fees.

So we propose a question that would help us measure our success:

Do members like being members of the Camarilla?

It’s a strange question to ask, we know. But think about it before dismissing it. Despite all the activity and effort people put in to being members, how much do they LIKE being members? Do they love it? Is the club the best thing that’s ever happened to them? Or have they slowly grown to hate it, sticking around because they’ve invested themselves? Or is it somewhere in between?

It’s time to mandate some ways of measuring this question. It’s also time to set solid, consistent goals that we can judge ourselves (and our leaders) against. Here are three ideas we have to mandate metrics that matter…with our all-important question in mind.

1. Measure the Promptness of Officers
It’s a sad fact of the Camarilla that most of our bad officers fail by simply underperforming. They don’t make bad calls, or rule in favor of their friends, or run stupid plotkits. Instead, they just slowly stop showing up for work and run down the entirety of the club.

If we want to create an environment that makes players like being Cam members, we should eliminate the biggest obstacle. Often failing STs are the first step toward general player disenchantment, as their approvals hang at mid or high and their regional prestige is misreported. And often the first sign of a failing ST is a lack of reporting.

We already track if STs and Coordinators are reporting. It’s time to put some teeth into that metric. If an officer fails to report for two months, we should automatically call for a Vote of No Confidence. It’s mean. It’s a bit snotty. But it would make lazy Coord/STs get off their butts and force bad Coord/STs out of office. After all, there is no reason that anyone should go 2 months without dong their job!

2. Create Simple Useful Member Surveys
Sometimes the best way to find out information is to simply ask. Yet, our Global Surveys are exercises in NOT asking. They inquire about canon, power levels, xp expeditures, but never ask if we like playing!

Surveys need to get simpler. We suggest the Net Promoter system, a type of survey that asks only a few questions and computes results my lumping responders into large groups. It may not generate as much data as our current surveys, but it will generate data that is useful to our officers in targeting problem areas and improving the experience of members. It also gives us a number we can work to improve over time!

3. Record and Publish Attendance at Games
Finally, the Camarilla exists as a disparate collection of Venues and Domains. There is no unified place that we come together every week to examine the health of the club. We all may know of a specific game that is doing well or poorly, but we have no sense of the national or global health of our Chronicle. Working with officers and getting member surveys will be a great start, but really there is only one number that should matter to us: How many people show up to play!

We suggest that RSTs begin to collate and publish the attendance data they receive every month from the DSTs and VSTs of their region. This information could easily be posted to a wiki and tracked over time, giving us a sense not only of which venues (Requiem, Forsaken, etc) are most popular, but also which Domains are thriving and succeeding. We already report this data and it would be easy to make the RSTs post it!

We think that game attendance is the single best measurement of how the club is doing. If you love the Cam and are deeply invested in your character and the stories your domain is telling, you make time for game. If you aren’t making time to attend, it’s likely something went wrong. It should be the RSTs primary goal to increase the number of people attending games within his/her region. Failure to do so should indicate that something ain’t right…

As the average member no doubt realizes, the Camarilla tracks an amazing amount of data every month. From prestige logs to character sheets, our “little club” probably crunches more numbers than any of us would care to admit.

We send out surveys. We record attendance. We record formal warnings, suspensions, and losses of prestige. We update character sheets on the CRD, the approvals database, and our personal excel sheets. We file approvals, appeals, and complaints. We stare at our books at 2 am, wondering if the next 10 xp we spend can go to the best possible use. And then we send in reports!

And yet, we here at Save the Cam are always left with the sinking feeling that nobody is actually getting anything out of this mass of data. We certainly aren’t establishing a metric that tells us if the club is healthy or not! It’s time to start using that data for something productive…and holding our leaders accountable for the way the numbers turn out.

For the past five steps, we’ve shown what we believe to be the changes needed to solve the growing crisis facing the Camarilla. The next five steps, beginning today, will now detail what we think the Camarilla needs to do to ensure a prosperous future.

In some ways, these posts are harder to write than we originally believed. It’s easy for us to point to deep and obvious problems and urge the club to act on them. It is much harder for us to paint a picture of a Camarilla where these kinds of problems never arise again.

Once again, thank you for your patience. We hope you enjoy the next few weeks of posts. Please continue to show your support by commenting, debating, and arguing with us. We value your contribution!

And we’re BACK!

Our sincerest apologies for our lengthy absence, but a DST election, the removal of the Arb Board, and the resignation of the NST and SW RST have kept our Cam Lives quite busy! Sometimes there just isn’t time to work on a grand manifesto with all the changes going on around here. We promise to stay reinvigorated and finish up the next 5 steps in the coming weeks.

Anyway, on with the show…

Talking about the appeals process got people fairly fired up and the news about the Arb Board only seemed to intensify the discussion. Here’s our favorite comment from Step 5:

Thinking about sanctions, we can always take a page from our federal courts. Translated to the Cam, that means you’d risk sanctions if you do either of the following:

* You make an appeal or give information for an inappropriate purpose, such as delay and harrassment

* Your appeal is not based on an existing rule or a non-frivolous argument for the modification, extension or reversal of an existing rule or a non-frivolous argument for the adoption of a new rule.

Bascially, any time you waste people’s time for no good reason, you should be sanctioned. – Terrie

Awesome! We love the clear, concise guidelines. For those of you who wondered what players should be sanctioned for, look no further than Terrie’s awesome summary. Now…does anyone have a list of what STs should be sanctioned for?

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It’s been more than a month since the original Step 5 post, but there is still plenty to clarify and review!

The Clearly Wrong Standard
We had a good deal of discussion about the need to reevaluate the current appeals system. Some people believe that even the “clearly wrong” standard is failing us:

I have been involved in appeals, both as an officer and as an appealing member. Both sides were awful. Why?

1. The club assumes that officers are doing their job well. Why does that make sense? Officers are just as likely to make mistakes as anyone else, and those mistakes are much more visible since they are making a lot more decisions of substance than the average member. Why are they presumed to be infallible? Why is the appealing member wrong until proven right? – PS

Eric C was ready with a solid analysis of why the “clearly wrong” standard is the only one that works:

PS,

1. The standard for reversal under our current system is that the decision must be “clearly wrong”. And while this is harsh and sometimes unfortunate, it is the only standard that will work. Any other standard become purely discretionary which only exacerbates some of the most critical problems with Appeals, namely the sheer number of them and the good ol’ boys network. We know that officers are fallible, the appeals system is a recognition of that. This the same standard that applies to the judicial decisions on appeal. Judgments rendered by a judge or jury must be clearly erroneous to be overturned. Any lesser standard invites chaos. – Eric C.

We totally agree with Eric. Many people forget that the reason we have an appeals system is for the very reason that PS describes. Officers are fallible and occasionally make mistakes! However, it’s vitally important that we empower STs to do their jobs and only reverse their decisions when they do something that is obviously against the rules AND had a significant impact on the game. Holding STs to any other standard will just paralyze them with fear…

How Sanctions Will Affect STs
In fact, some of our posters thought that sanctions would actually do exactly what we were trying to prevent…

…STs should never be subject to penalties for their decisions unless they were facilitating cheating. We want creative, spontaneous STs, not conservative rules hardliners who are afraid to actually do anything for fear of facing a disciplinary action. – Ben

We agree, Ben. We don’t ever want STs to face sanctions unless they’ve done something truly awful like facilitating cheating. In fact, we see sanctions as a tool that gives STs back their ability to be creative and spontaneous because players won’t appeal without fear of being punished for BS appeals.

The system right now doesn’t reward the kind of STs you are describing….
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In closing,

Save the Cam will return with “Mandate Metrics that Matter” in the next 48 hours…

In an Ideal world, there would of course be no need for an appeals system. STs would never make rules calls that were inaccurate, unduly harsh, or biased. People wouldn’t cheat, mistakes wouldn’t be made, and when they were, everyone would agree how they should be rectified. Perhaps on occasion, an appeal would be needed due to a legitimate difference in opinion between a player and an ST, but it would be handled quickly, everyone would be respectful, and the Chronicle would move on.

Save the Cam is of the opinion that this is not an ideal world.

In the Real World, the appeals system is needed. And at the moment, it’s aggravating as hell.

Firstly, appeals take forever, often leaving a character’s fate in Limbo for weeks or months on end. Even worse, appeals can take so long to be reviewed that are actually denied on the basis that too much time has passed. Often it is asserted that it would ruin the Continuity of the Chronicle if characters were resurrected or important scenes were retconned. Sure, STs will try to do something to compensate the wronged player, but in the end they were cheated out of their appeal because the ST didn’t get to the appeal in time.

In addition, appeals are rarely investigated thoroughly even if they are dealt with in a timely fashion. Very rarely are all parties involved contacted, leading to the appeal being judged by the persuasiveness of the applicant’s argument (and/or his ability to Bullshit the ST). Upper-level STs have no incentive to dig through the messy situation surrounding an appeal, so they take what information they’ve been given and do the best job they can without opening the nasty can of worms that lies at the heart of every aggrieved player’s complaint. In the end, it’s rare for the ST who made the decision being appealed to even have a chance to defend the decision.

But the appeals system isn’t broken because STs aren’t working hard enough. It’s because the appeals system is over-run with appeals that should never have been made in the first place.

In our litigious modern era, filing an appeal is synonymous with filing a lawsuit against an offending party. Some people pursue lawsuits to stand up for their rights or to seek vindication for real wrongs gone unpunished by the law… And some people sue McDonald’s for making them fat. In the end, no matter how much we might like to hope otherwise, there are people in this organization that use the appeals system as a socially-acceptable way to throw a temper-tantrum. They file them when anything they don’t like happens to them, legitimate or not.

Why do these people choke the appeals process with these frivolous, pointless, selfish appeals?

You know the answer: Because It Costs Them Nothing.

The reason that the US Government isn’t totally and completely overrun with “McDonald’s makes me Fat” lawsuits is that filing a lawsuit costs money. You need a lawyer and the costs, for most people, that cost probably outweigh the benefits. There are tons of people who still file useless lawsuits, but the barrier to entry is high enough to keep the system from being deluged.

In the Cam, however, there are ZERO costs for filing an appeal. Yes, you may have to spend a few minutes writing down what happened, but you don’t have to hire a lawyer, drive to the courthouse, or even fill out any paperwork. All that’s needed is for you to type out your complaint into an email that you send to the appropriate ST. From there, the entire burden of work falls to the already overworked ST staff.

So before we worry about getting STs to report back promptly with fair decisions, we need to reduce the number of “bad” appeals going through the system. If we ease the burden by imposing a cost, it’s possible that the STs might be able to handle all of the appeals more smoothly.

Obviously, we don’t want to cap the number of appeals one player can file or make appeals cost extra money. While both of those solutions would reduce the number of appeals they are too easily abused and/or would cause lots of hurt feelings. What is needed is a system that rewards good appeals and punishes bad ones in a subtle but real way.

Thus, we suggest implementing a second element to the traditional Appeal overturned/upheld ruling: Sanctions.

Every time an appeal is filed, the ST who views the appeal would decide if that appeal deserved sanctions. Rather than just rule on the decision in question, the ST overseeing the appeal would decide if the appeal demonstrated bad behavior on the part of the ST or player. This ends up with 4 possible outcomes:

• Appeal Accepted, No Sanctions = “This appeal has demonstrated that the ST made a legitimate mistake that impacted your character significantly. We are overturning this ruling, but the ST in question did his best and we trust their judgement in the future.”
• Appeal Accepted, Sanctions = “This appeal has demonstrated that the ST made grievous mistakes that disrupted the game. Not only are we overturning the decision, we are recommending the ST in question for a strip of prestige/loss of positions/etc.”
• Appeal Denied, No Sanctions = “Thanks for filing this appeal. We understand that there were some legitimate rules decisions, but they were all within the STs purview. We are upholding his/her decision.”
• Appeal Denied, Sanctions = “This appeal has no basis. The ST in question made his decision based on clearly written guidelines of the Camarilla. In addition, you have been argumentative with the ST staff and provided vague answers to pointed questions. We are upholding the STs decision and recommending you for a strip of prestige.”

Of course, any of these outcomes COULD happen at any time in our current system. STs are well within their rights to discipline players who are disruptive. However, by making the sanctions element a required decision for each ST, we empower them to enforce a cost on bad appeal simply because they are bad appeals!

Talk to your ST staff today. Tell them you want them to punish players who abuse the system and make our STs jobs hard. Tell them you want our STs to focus on plot and approvals and setting, not on answering the complaints of players who won’t let go…

Our apologies, but for a few days “Real Life” reached up and swallowed us! Great thanks to all of you who came by the site this week to look at Step 4 and offer your comments. Remember, if you know someone who wants to see the Cam be a better place, send them our way!

There was a lot of great discussion about the way the addendum functions. Here’s our favorite comment from Step 4:

The bottom line is this: We want an addendum that reads like a settings document with relevant rules alterations, not like a list of patch notes from an MMO.

No one is going to say that the ST staff have not put in herculean effort to get us this far, but each step relies on each other step. Broken draw mechanics lead to xp glut to compensate. Broken draw mechanics + xp glut lead creative players to write and get approved custom mechanics to add even higher bonuses. Broken mechanics + xp glut + bad custom mechanics leads to patching as more and more loopholes are found and fixed.

We have to fix the base problems, then the more esoteric problems will be easier to handle. – Eric C.

Yup, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. Every step in the Save the Cam plan relies on other changes to be made as well. Changing JUST the addendum does nothing, but once we work in Steps 1-3 we can start using the addendum for it’s original purpose: Putting us all on the same page mechanically! Thanks, Eric!

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Step Four was largely quiet on the global lists and here in the comments. We assume part of that was due to the raging conversation on the lists regarding PC death that sprang from last weeks raging conversation about approval levels. Yay list traffic!

However, here are a few clarifications and ideas that sprang from the comments:

Killing the National Addenda
Jesse Robbins summarized the need for a National Addenda quite well in an early comment:

The needs of the US chronicle are not the same as the needs of an affiliate. The National addenda allows the NST of a country to make some limitations to what is, and is not permissible based on the needs of the nation in question. This isn’t a question of consistancy, but a question of practicallity. – Jesse Robbins

Well said, Jesse. While we will continue to disagree that a National Addenda is needed, your argument summarizes well why each Affiliate will maintain a strong interest in keeping them around. Thanks for participating!

However, why does the line stop with Nations? Don’t Regions or Domains deserve the same courtesy? Size isn’t the issue, since many affiliates are the size of US Regions. Why do we only allow Nations to write their own rules?

The only conclusion we draw is that somewhere along the line we decided that those lower levels would lose a bit of autonomy in order to create a sense of consistency. Venues, Domains, Regions can’t make up their own rules because it would kill the idea of the Camarilla completely. We would dissolve into chaos.

Consistency, in this case, should trump practicality because the addendum is about providing a unified game for us all to play. Approval levels may differ by Region (or even VSS!), but the rules by which we play the game should not change so radically. Allowing Nations to continue to set their own rules perpetuates the mentality that MY story should trump OUR story.

The BP Vitae Limitation
Some part of the discussion has concerned one of the examples we cited in the addendum as a poor band-aid.

Jesse Robbins nailed this one as well:

The limits on Blood Spend are a direct result of players pursuing BP at the expense of everything else. Even with less xp, it would remain an issue. Not to mention that the Oath of the Bloody Hand would become vastly more powerful than it already is. So less xp might negate the high BP characters, but if I can get to BP 6 as an Invictus, then I can get a Geth to bump me to BP 7 and Oath to BP 9. Then I swear a Bloody Hand and all of a sudden I can spend 20 Blood and get a +40 to a physical test. Which means that I will likely have a better staking pull than any currently existing PC possibly could. How much did all of this cost? Less than 200 xp total.

This is an example of a “Band aid” which is actually a good fix for balance. The problem with wanting to get rid of the Band Aids is that you might remove a lot of skin with it. – Jesse Robbins

Eric C fired right back, citing the +15 rule as an already worthwhile fix in the addendum:

Your reaction exactly demonstrates the point of this entry. Here we have two different rules, one clearly superior to the other, but they are both in the addendum, causing confusion. Then again, i would argue that needing a rule covering maximum bonus available on a roll is directly demonstrative of some of the other points of this blog. Namely that between xp glut and custom mechanics, and bad base draw mechanics, we are seeing dice pools that can only be described as silly.

Simply, the addendums, all together, should not be harder to use than a single supplement book. Essientially, the addenda should be eligible to be titled World of Darkness: The Camarilla Fan Club, with national addenda as nothing more than minor appendices or charts in the back. – Eric C.

Great discussion you two! It leaves us wondering….why isn’t vitae covered under the +/-15 rule? Is there something special about it? Global Staff? Any answers?

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In closing…

Save the Cam will return with “Step 5: Streamline the Appeals Process“ on Monday morning!

If you sit back and think about it, the Addendum is sort of a microcosm for the Camarilla itself.

One one hand, it’s genius. Without it, the idea of a Global Chronicle would be laughable at best. There would be ZERO consistency from game to game and players would live in constant fear of “House Rules.” The Addendum, in a way, represents the Global Chronicle that makes the Camarilla such a wonderful and unique club.

On the other hand, it’s a mess. It has rulings, additions, approval levels, and guidelines that confuse new Cammies and overburden experienced players. It’s a user’s guide to the Camarilla written by rules lawyers who hold accuracy to be far more important than usability.

We have to give the MST’s office a great deal of credit for improving the quality of the Global Addendum over the last year by making it more specific. Monthly updates, color-coded edit tracking, and defined terms go a long way toward creating a document that the Cam can actually use.

However, the Addendum hasn’t yet transitioned from an obstacle to a tool at the local level. New STs struggle to understand it. New players barely know it exists. And for all PCs, the constant struggle to deal with the ruleset we have creates endless numbers of appeals. With the Rules FAQ out of play for almost 2 years, the Addendum is the only place to turn for guidance…and it’s not adequate.

So here are a few things we think could help:

1) Stop Using the Addendum as a Band-aid
Let’s look at a line from the Addendum that has always confused and befuddled us:

Physical augmentation with Vitae is limited. When a character spends vitae to add to physical test pools the applied bonus from that Vitae can be no higher than the natural unmodified Attribute or +5, whichever is higher.

Good god, why? Why are we so limiting Kindred who are BP 6+ in our chronicle. Is it because we have like…a million of them? Oh yeah, it is.

If you want to look at the problems the Camarilla has faced in the last 3 years, you need to look no further than the Addendum and the changes enacted within. If something is different from the core books, it’s because there was an obvious problem that the MST staff tried to fix.

Sometimes these fixes are not only effective, but great for the game. Take Rule U.1.04 that limits modifiers to a +15 for most pools. That’s a great rule because it limits the effect that Super Friends (OOC friends teaming up from different covenants) can have.

But some fixes, like the Vitae cap above, really just paper over basic problems. Got too many BP 6+ characters? Cut down on XP, don’t just neuter them in the addendum. We could have addressed the issue of XP when this problem first cropped up, but we chose to do nothing but add a line to the Addendum that means one more rule has to be remembered in combat.

Before anyone adds anything new to the Addendum, the question “Is there a way I can fix this for good?” needs to be asked and answered.

2) Separate the Addendum into THREE parts
Once we remove everything in the Addendum that can be fixed some other way (XP reductions), we still have a decent amount of material that standardizes the game. In order to make it usable we need to break it up into three parts:

An FAQ – Answers from the AMST Rules that are supported by core materials via specific citations and references.

Addendum – A list of Approval Levels.

Errata – Changes to the core material made by the MST.

The FAQ is for people who have common questions about the rules, especially New STs. It will list answers to common questions, NOT rulings from the MST. Rulings supported by the MST should go directly into the Errata document. This document should be made available at ALL games.

Thus, the Errata is a set of standard rulings and the FAQ as an explanation of oft-confused material. It’s important that our appeals process reflects this! If an ST makes a ruling, such as “Mist Form Can’t Fly,” and neither the Errata nor the books contradict him, then that ruling should be upheld on appeal. It doesn’t matter what previous STs have ruled or what the RST of some random region thinks. ANY changes to the rules must be in the Errata to be enacted in full. Precedent means nothing in the Cam.

3) Stop Using National Addenda
If you want to play in the US, you need a copy of the US Addendum. If you want to play in the UK, you need a copy of the UK Addendum. Why? Do the laws of physics change once you enter the British Isles or arrive in Manhattan?

While we understand that the US and UK differ in a lot of ways, this is another level of paperwork we don’t need. The Addendum should be an MST generated document, but it should have input from the NSTs of both countries. If the NSTs can’t convince the MST Rules that a specific clarification should be in the Errata document, then consider the MST to have ruled that that item is up to local ST discretion.

Obviously there may be some shifts in approval levels (Bruja in SW America at Mid instead of High) and there may need to be a document that explains those very few changes. But for the most part, the MST needs to run this Chronicle in a way that lets new players join without needing to read a Tax Code sized document.

It would be a pleasure to hand a new player the Errata and say “For right now, this is all you need to worry about. These are the changes the Master Storyteller has made to the rules for our chronicle. Once you run for VST, you probably need to read through the FAQ and Approvals document. Until that time…your VST has all the answers you need.“

It’s time to make that day happen. Let the MST/NST/RST near you know that you think these changes are not only possible, but essential!

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
US2002021140

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“

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let us introduce you to Killing Joke.

Killing Joke is a Werewolf who hunts Shartha. He is in play currently, and belongs to one of us (Okay… Mark.) Nothing on Killing Joke’s sheet would be considered out of place for a Cam werewolf. He has a Strength, Dexterity and Wits of 5, but nothing really reeks of The Cheese.

Until you flip over to the Custom Fetishes section. Killing Joke has several fetishes, including:

• Pistols that add +5 against NPCs for 1 Essence.
• A Tattoo that heals 5 lethal with no draw.
• Swords that ignore all common defenses for 1 Willpower.
• A Talisman that allows him to declare full defense and still attack. This works every round for a scene. No, that’s not a typo. Every round. For a scene.

All of this cost Killing Joke (i.e. Mark) 24 xp. Total. For all four fetishes.

How did he acquire all this cheese? Through something we like to call the Poorly Written Fetish Creation Rules. (If you want to see the full mechanics for these fetishes, see our Broken Mechanics page where we are documenting all broken mechanics we can find.)

These rules allow you to create simple cost Merits that literally produce more power than Gifts if you take disadvantages that “even things out.” So long as your fetishes are built using these poorly written guidelines, they mostly get approved. Remember, ALL of the above Fetishes are approved for the sanctioned chronicle.

We shudder to think of all the approved mechanics out there left solely to the STs sense of mechanical balance without ANY creation rules. Like custom devotions and custom bloodlines. As bad as the fetish creation rules are, at least they have SOME guidelines.

If rumors are to be believed, there are more mechanics and special items out there designed by the players than there are in the sum of all published materials. If a fraction of them are like Killing Joke’s fetishes, our minds balk at the notion that this game is anything like the developers intended it to be.

So why are these “debrokens” so prevalent? Why does every high-powered character in the game, regardless of venue, tend to have something like these fetishes on his sheet?

It’s not because these players are trying to cheat and powergame. It’s because we encourage this behavior by letting them write their own mechanics.

The approvals process does not lend itself well to general ideas. If you want to get something approved, you better have the mechanics done before you app. This creates a strange attitude when it comes to custom mechanics. Rather than think about their custom approvals in terms of story, players focus on how they will derive the most mechanical benefit because mechanics require the most thought.

Thus, these “debrokens” might begin as ways to make a character more unique, or give him a trick or two that no one will suspect, but they become ways to bypass the ceiling imposed by Canon. Because we have soaked ourselves in XP, players write their own rules into the game so they can truly max out. And they largely take an adversarial role with the ST staff, pushing for powerful items/abilites as hard as they can because they believe their vision is always about to get gutted.

This is needless. Players shouldn’t be writing the rules that they will be using to accomplish their goals, even if someone else reviews them. It’s like letting energy companies write the laws that govern pollution and convincing ourselves that the legislators who approved/denied the laws were really in control the whole time.

We will admit that things used to be a bit worse. Custom powers have not always been as regulated as they are today. In fact, the Global Settings Review board took a stab at reviewing ALL custom powers in an attempt to weed out what isn’t reasonable. But we have to face the facts. While the GSR may have removed some of the most problematic powers, it certainly didn’t remove all “debrokens.” It’s not clear exactly why the GSR wasn’t effective (at least to us), but it’s obvious that there are plenty of debrokens left in play.

Fixing this isn’t easy, but at least it’s less messy than the XP problem.

A) Release ALL custom mechanics immediately via a Custom Mechanics Sheet from the MST’s office and update it frequently with newly approved mechanics.

We’ve heard this will unbalance game play and make people upset that everyone knows what Custom Cheese they have. But the sad fact is that this information isn’t secret. Players must show their sheets, with custom mechanics, to their VST. They must explain their custom mechanics to the VST of any domain they visit. They must send their sheet to any location they proxy to and they must accept that while that sheet is in the possession of that VST it’s most likely getting passed around the room for people to see what the out-of-towner has for Cheese.

The info is already out there….just not completely. It’s time to pull back the curtains and expose those shadowy mechanics to the light of day. Plot, story, and fluff surrounding the rules should be left out. We don’t want to know who has these powers, and if rumors are to be believed, there will be too many powers for us to even begin to figure out whose are whose.

By exposing the rules, however, we set a standard for transparency and fairness. All players will be able to see the mechanics that have been approved and can cry foul when they see truly broken, over-the-top stuff. Right now we can’t have a conversation about how well the GSR worked because everything is so secret. If the MST staff would release what is out there, we could congratulate them on a job well done…or lambast them for not living up to our expectations.

B) Create a Custom Rules Team at the MST level to write mechanics for players.

It’s time to let STs with more rules and mechanics knowledge determine what is “balanced.” Neither of us has any experience in game design or mechanics. It’s insane that we are asked, as VSTs, to judge how something fits into the global chronicle. We do, however, know members who have extensive experience in this field.

The MST should create a team of 3-5 of these members to oversee all custom approvals called the Custom Rules Team (CRT). Any request for custom mechanics should be sent to them AFTER the player has cleared Global based on story alone. The CRT will then look at what other custom mechanics have already been approved and respond with mechanics they find balanced and appropriate for our chronicle. The STs who approved the story concept will give it the once over and the player will get the custom mechanic. If the players or STs don’t like what the CRT has given them, then the usual negotiations occur…with the CRT’s mechanics as the baseline, not the player’s.

Thus, the normal ST chain doesn’t need to worry about the balance of the power and what possible sources of abuse could occur. Instead, they can treat the approval just like they would any other and focus on how it fits into the story of the character and their local venue. The Domain, Regional, and National staff would no longer need to conjure up game designer experience to do their job with approvals and they would get to treat each application the same, regardless of it’s original source.

In addition, the CRT could reuse custom mechanics. You want to teleport? Great, then you get “Basic Kindred Teleport Power” with a different name. We would see greater consistency and focus on repeating rules sets. Since, these rules sets would be published, we could see players repeating powers with different flavor texts, arriving at similar results via different roleplaying paths. In the end, new players would feel comfortable proposing ideas even if they don’t understand mechanics and older players wouldn’t be tempted to game the system by trying to pass things by STs that shouldn’t be approved.

Why do we continue to let players write the system mechanics for their own powers? We aren’t sure, but we believe it’s probably just out of inertia. These changes are less upsetting to most than Step 1, but will probably be met with more resistance. People feel that they have something to lose when their goodies are revealed to the Global Game.

But everyone should realize that we need to play with ONE ruleset. Barring minor changes from venue to venue, everything should be out in the open and on the table. Plots, backgrounds, IC interactions should be secret. Rules shouldn’t be.

From the comments and page views (2,500 yesterday!), we can see that this site is getting some attention. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to look at this project and offer your thoughts. You rock!

Here’s our favorite comment for Step 2:

The arguments against diverging from Canon hold no merit, because a little while back, it was announced that there are more custom powers and bloodlines in play than in all of the published books combined.

We’re not even *close* to Canon, not in setting, nor in rules. We’re not in the same ballpark or the same league; we’re not even playing the same sport.” – Ben

Yep, Ben. We agree.

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As for the other comments and thoughts, we’ve read and thought about what you all had to say. Here are some clarifications for you to chew over.

Other Draw Systems:
Many commenters have noted that they aren’t fans of the 54d3 system. We understand that. In our local games, players both new and old love it. But we can’t say that what our players love everyone should love. If letting go of 54d3 is required to get a positive change made, we are prepared to make that “sacrifice”.

If you will note, the title of this step is “Reduce XP Awards and Get a New Draw System.” Step 2 is NOT “Use 54d3.” We won’t compromise on our goals (The Steps), but the methods of achieving those steps are up to the members of the Camarilla. We are not assuming that our analysis of the issue means that we can foresee a perfect solution, right down to the gritty details.

54d3 is one of many appropriate systems to raise successes and reduce XP. So are 10/3, 8/3, 8/4, etc. Some of these systems let you use fingers, tiles, and a single d10. Some of these systems are in the MET book already. While we love 54d3, there’s no reason we can’t use one of these other systems.

Therefore, consider us to be endorsing any new system that reduces the need for high die pools. If someone wants to stat our 10/3 or 8/3, we will be happy to post it on this blog.

MC Bumps:
Zach and others have been making some strong arguments AGAINST MC bumps. We think he’s right and we were wrong. Consider our proposal amended. We now agree that it should simply be MCx10 or MCx15 with no bumps. They aren’t needed and actually encourage bad prestige whore behavior as people work solely to get to the next “bump.”

Reducing XP on Existing Characters:
Many people have been supportive of the “Less XP” theory, but have wondered how it would work in our current system. Ben suggested a soft reset and we think that’s generally a good idea. However, it may be a bit jarring as people lose abilities and skills in order to “make weight.”

We got the following from Phil Hyde, Sheffield DST and creator of 54d3. It’s a great idea to consider if you think the “Soft Reset” moves too quickly.

Phil says:

It’s a logistical nightmare to take experience points off players; there’s lots of bookkeeping, and directly taking points off players causes the sort of hideous shrieking noises that would make invading Body Snatchers wince. If we do do it, we’re going to have to do it gradually.

So here’s a possible solution.

Phase 1: Eliminate the 40XP chunks (formerly the “Free Dot”).

• Nominate a future date after which the “Free Dot XP” (FDXP) will no longer be awarded.
• Existing characters at that date can keep all FDXP they currently have.
• New characters after that date are not granted any FDXP.
• Characters of players who hit what used to be the appropriate threshold (MC 3,6,9,12,14) no longer get the FDXP for those levels, even if the character already has FDXP for lower ones.

Upshot: Monster Characters stay monstrous. New characters are significantly lower powered. Ultimately, long-standing characters of players with high MC gain a large advantage.

Phase 2: Gradually reduce MC-per-XP from 20×MC to 10×MC.

• Nominate a series of five dates at six-month intervals, with significant advance warning; for sake of argument, alternate between the 1st of January and 1st of July.
• At each of these dates, the multiplier for “XP per MC” – which is currently 20 – drops by 2.
• This means that a PC’s experience total is effectively reduced by twice its player’s MC at six month intervals. An MC15 character loses 30XP in over each 6 month term, an MC4 character loses 8XP, and so on.
• This may send a character into experience point debt, which they must get past before purchasing anything else.
• At Low approval, a PCs may divest themselves of things they might plausibly lose, such as ‘forgetting’ a dot of a high-level skill or losing certain Merits. In return, they get back the experience points they initially spent on that item. Storytellers are encouraged to use these losses as part of an ongoing story.

Upshot: High MC players obviously bear the brunt of this, but they’ve done really well out of Phase 1. From a competitive point of view, they don’t actually lose their “lead”; they start ahead of players with lower MC than them, and end in the same position – just not as far ahead as they were.

Phil’s solution isn’t perfect. But it’s exactly the kind of thinking that our leadership needs to adopt to make the changes we are proposing. Thanks Phil!

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On a related note, several people have referenced things as “proposed by Save the Cam or “appearing on Save the Cam” that are actually comments, not posts. Please remember, we are not in favor of every idea that gets posted here.

For examples, we ARE NOT arguing for:

Ban on “people you know” approving applications:
This is sort of silly. There’s no way to determine who “knows” who and whether that relationship is strong enough to alter an approval. Nor is there any reason to believe that this “club of friends” can’t produce unbiased, reasonable STs. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the approvals system or general ST structure. If there was, you can bet your bottom dollar we would have recommended fixing that first.

The total removal of custom mechanics:
There is nothing inherently wrong with custom mechanics. Designed correctly, custom devotions, fetishes, imbued items, and rituals add a lot to the chronicle. Not only are they Canon, but they also add a sense of mystery and darkness to the game. Knowing everything your opponents can do, even just OOC, is not fun. We ARE NOT in favor of banning custom mechanics.

Also, we love the end of James Bond movies. Ya know, the ones where they reveal the title of the next movie. So…

Save the Cam will return with “Step 3: Stop Letting Players Write Mechanics” soon…