Selah

For the record:

I'm sorry I gave the appearance of throwing a bitch-fit in my last post. However, it does not invalidate anything I said in that post. Except possibly that last paragraph ending in "bite me". And even that just needs taking down a notch rather than eradicating altogether.

This is my livejournal. From now on, I will say what I like in it. If you find that you are finding out that opinions of mine are not flattering to you, that's tough. If you think I'm wrong, call me on it and tell me why you think I'm wrong. Livejournal might not be the best communications medium in the world, but it is still a communications medium, where ideas can be put forward and exchanged freely. I'm not going to censor anymore. It's stupid.

That said, I do not want anyone's stance on things like whether we run Affils on the Mage-alternate Sundays after cholten99 finishes his 7th Sea scenario to change just because I'm angry. I said I would stand by the majority vote, and I'm sticking to it. I do understand the concept of years of investment in a game, though I've never played one long enough to know about it first-hand. My aggravation should not be a deciding factor on anything.

However, I don't think that kind of investment is fair. I think that corone has called the shots single-handedly for far too long. Things revolve solely around his crazy schedule, or did until I started running random things mid-week. Even the mid-week stuff we've been doing previously was based solely on when corone had a free moment, and while he's a good gamer and a friend, he's also got the most idiotic schedule known to man and it's not fair to have last minute chop-changes based on the availability of any one person. It's the 7th Sea rule, after all -- if one person has to sit out, the game goes on. Take the Forsaken session we ran Thursday, for instance, when dodgyhoodoo was feeling too crappy to play. We played anyway. It seriously affected the plot because the character he chose was kind of central, but we played anyway. While it kind of sucks, corone doesn't always have to be involved in mid-week games. Neither does he have to continue running 7th Sea on that Sunday if majority opinion states that we should have a hiatus. More to the point, the decision on that should not be based on who throws the biggest hissy-fit in support of their case.

If majority vote comes down in favour of the juggernaut (and it is; anything with that much impetus behind it can't help but be, and it's not necessarily anyone's fault but let's call a spade a spade), I'll find a way around it. lokean is moving down here in September, and I'll see if angusabranson wants to be involved. That at least gives a wider group to encourage a more natural dynamic. It might not be in time for this year's Dragonmeet (which, if I'm honest, I was really hoping for), but it'll get done regardless. It would be a pity, though -- I have rebuffed corone about this game in the early development stages for reasons that are entirely my own, and not all of them are necessarily fair, but I really would like his input on the finished product. I would like to see how Mark and Kat, who sometimes get a little stuck on new systems, deal with the Caltrops System. I would like to see what kind of a character Simson or cholten99 choose to play. In a game designed to weed out twinking and encourage group co-operation, you need a large group to get the full sense of what the players can actually do. But all the same, if majority vote is against me, I'll do it without the rest of the gang.

Other stuff will probably follow. Stuff has been bugging me for months but I haven't felt I could vent here because people don't like this as a method of finding out what I'm thinking. I think that has to stop now. Apart from anything else, most of the time I have to really think about whether what I'm saying here is fair. That's not going to happen if I express these opinions to someone's face; censoring between brain, fingers, keyboard and "Update Journal" button is a lot more comprehensive than that between brain and mouth.

Shit, Meet Fan

I'm very, very torn here.

On the one hand, I would so like everyone to get along. I realise that my request to borrow the Sundays normally set aside for 7th Sea is causing problems among the group -- well, between me and corone, anyway. I also realise that no one wants a bitch-fight on LJ or, worse, on their mailing list. My instinctive reaction to situations like this is to back off quietly and let things go on the way they have.

However, I am not going to.

The reason I have asked for the 7th Sea Sundays has been gone over time and again, but I'll repeat it anyway: weeknights are full of faff and tired people, no one wants to game on Saturdays except possibly cholten99, and no one can make Mage weekends except the people who have already pre-tested Affils, and they don't want to stop playing Mage just yet. The idea of pre-testing Affils instead of Mage came up last Sunday and no one was enthused. The problem with the plot as I've done it for Mage is that it's long-running and has no good break point on the horizon, whereas 7th Sea has already had a break forced into it by dint of cholten99's scenario; breaking into that weekend is technically less disruptive.

I don't think any of this is unreasonable. I don't want to break into people's weeknights any more than I already have, or try to make Kat, Mark or Simson give up their free Sundays or anything else like that. I simply want to make use of a natural break point in 7th Sea so I can have a convenient date to do a full test run of something I want to publish. This seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable request. In my opinion, it's far more reasonable than asking people to stop following their normal faffing instincts or rearrange their weekend schedules on my account.

It's a pity that this is becoming personal. However, I am going to call people on it when they're not being fair. When corone suggests that Mage 'often pushes 7th Sea aside', I will state quite bluntly that Mage was only held on a 7th Sea weekend once, and the only reason that happened was that corone thought he would be busy that weekend and I would have run BESM if Musashi hadn't died mid-Mage the week before -- it's not unreasonable to want to resume a game that got called on account of mourning for a lost pet. Any of the other points that I don't consider fair or reasonable, I'll point those out too. Because frankly, I've had enough. No one gets listened to, so they've stopped talking, and things fester. That has to stop. If I'm the one who has to look like the bitch and get it started, fine. At least it encourages some honesty for a change. Whether anyone else will take the opportunity is anyone's guess.

*sigh* However, it still doesn't stop me wanting to hide under the duvet for the rest of my life. I hate confrontation sometimes, no matter how necessary it is.