Kman's Kronicle Talk

[VemuKhaham]

Here you can freely discuss the latest Kman's Kronicle, ask questions about the Kronicle, and so on.

Right now, I'm especially interested in continuing to talk about improving the Kronicle. Topics could be:

- Variety of elections and awards (Out-of-Campaign Talk Award? Splitting the Highlights Award into Best Scene and Best Roleplay Awards? Other suggestions?)
- Nomination posting formats
- What exactly should we put in the newsfader for this elections' Highlights winners?

[TheUdjat]

Okay. My suggestions for the Kronicle's voting system.

Categories:

• Best Scene - This can be an extended series of posts involving multiple people. The credit goes to the game's DM and the game itself, and any prominent characters involved (if it's just a particularly good dialogue between two characters, for instance). A nomination should include the game name, DM, players involved, links to the relevant posts, and a brief summary of the events.
  
  
• Best Moment - This is limited to a single post, or even a single line within that post. It can be narrative or dialogue, but it must be in-character. Credit is given to the poster. Nominations should include game, the poster, the character, and a little background to understand the moment's relevance. A link, too.
  
  
• Best OOC Moment - Something humorous, usually, that is said OOC as it relates to a game or the events transpiring in the game. Can be part of a post or in a community forum, as long as it pertains to the game. Should include poster, relevant background information, and a link.
  
  
• Most Memorable Character - A new category I thought of; we create a lot of characters on this board, so why not nominate the one you find most interesting? Note that this is not a 'Best Character' category (too subjective), but simply one you find interesting and memorable. Nominations should include game, character, player, links to particularly good moments, and a summary of the characters deeds and development.
  
  
• Best Game Summary - Still kinda dislike this category, but I can't think of how else to do it. Doesn't feel like it rewards a game based on its own merit. Anyway, nominations are not made for this category; rather, a DM submits a summary of their game's recent events, and this is voted on.

For the Best Moment, Best OOC Moment, and Most Memorable Character, a player cannot nominate themselves.

Thoughts?

[Yakumo]

I like most Memorable Character a lot, I think it should implemented.

[TheZebraShakes™]

Yakumo really likes it when people give him credit for all of his characters.

I'm not too sure about the game summary thing either in terms of being reward worthy. I mean, I did write my summary, but in doing so, I was mainly doing it so that new members or lurkers or whatever the case, would have something to give them a quick glimpse as to the overall plot of the game so they can have some means of determining whether or not they would be interested in following along or potentially joining in if a spot should open up.

I can't see this as being a constant catagory, as not enough games are likely to open up or even stay open in between Kronicles. I think that quick overviews of the game should be less of a contest type thing, and more of a nice gesture on the part of DMs to provide others with the very essentials of the games, and maybe they can update from time to time, providing the more current events in the games so new readers won't struggle with the burden of having to backtrack for fear of missing something integral to the plotline.

If I haven't done so already, I'll post up this section of threads in the "Helpful links" thread I made in the Getting Started section if anyone should preview that first before perusing the rest of the site.

[Yakumo]

Harsh, I actually think there is at the very least two characters more memorable than my own in all the games I play. But I have to agree, the Summaries shouldn't be so much a contest as an 'update' or a look at the campaign as it is currently and developing.

[VemuKhaham]

Perhaps a little explanation is in order for the game summary elections. The first elections were meant to cover everything from the start of the game till the moment of the election in terms of what has happened in the game. There was preciously little space (about 200words) to write such a summary, so especially those DM's running games that have been going on for some time have taken to writing up a static general game impression instead of a dynamic game events summary.

From now on, if you all think there is merit in this election, game summaries will be about what happened in the game between last and next election, a 3 month period. As such, 200 words provide room for a quick overview of everything that has happened. This both allows lurkers and others to get a general impression of a game as well as it allows for an election in which the memorability of past events (as related in the summary) in the games are judged.

The only reason I see for why this is not suitable for an election is because there is an indirect link between the actual judged item and the voters. This indirect link is the summary. But remember: the election is about interesting game progression, not about a beautifully written summary by the DM.

I still think that all that is what makes it a very worthwile election, and the best thing to approach capturing an actual election between games. Perhaps I should rename it for clarity: instead of Best Game Summary Election I could name it Best Game Progression Election, or something.

As for the other suggestions by TheUdjat, I like them, including the most memorable character, but there's a small issue with it. Would every election contain all characters ever made? Cause if so, we could have one character constantly winning, until finally some new character is made that is even more interesting than any in the great stockpile of old characters that we have. Or would there be an election between new characters made during the time since the last election? For then, there might be times when there will be very few nominations, if any at all.

[TheUdjat]

Re: Game Summaries... I kind of think we need both. A section in the introductory area with a summary of each game's premise, plot, mechanics, etc. might be nice for newcomers, though this is supposedly available in the Campaign Status section. I always understood that game summaries were to henceforth be updates, but I still think it's weird to vote on them. I'd rather just include them as a courtesy/publicity thing, sans voting.

Good question on the MMC vote. In thinking about it, I think the best way to do it would be to make it sort of a 'Hall of Fame' of the most memorable characters ever, rather than a 3-month cycle. In fact, I think we should limit it to characters that are inactive--any game that is closed as of the voting date. That kind of helps to draw interest to some of our old legacies here on KMAn's, which I'm all in favor of.

It's also kind of sad to think that the other categories are only limited to current games, since there's so much cool stuff that has happened in the history of KMan's.

Maybe I should make a montage.

[VemuKhaham]

Okay, I'll go with the elections as listed in Udjats post, and reluctantly scrap the Best Game Summary election. Hopefully even then people will continue to update Game Summaries and read them.

Just to gauge interest, would anyone appreciate an election about Best Game at all? It would not be solely based on the summaries but on everyone's collective knowledge about what has transpired lately in every game. Summaries can be helpful but are not the ultimate criterium.

As for the two elections of Best Scene and Best Moment, I'm considering merging them into one Highlights Election in which, kind of as before, both scenes and moments can be nominated, so that both types will battle for 1 award. However, there will be different rules for nomination formats and such to keep the distinction. The reason is that I do not want to stretch the amount of nominations too thin and increase the amount of awards too much, and the actual difference between Moment and Scene is minimum at best.

And I'm still not sure about the MMC vote. I actually want elections to be about new stuff, otherwise the election will just end up being a slow accumulation of old characters that people like. It's like the Oscars for Best Actor since the start of the Movie Industry awarded every year. We'd probably end up with a select few characters being awarded every election, or being forced to look for other characters cause the "best ones" have already won so often. If a MMC election is to be, I'd like it to be about newly created characters, or if necessary, about characters that are active at the moment of the election. If I hear nothing, the elections will be about all active and newly created characters, and I will allow an opportunity for inactive, old characters to be nominated in the first election.

Once these issues are finalised, I'll create threads for these debatable elections so that nominations can be made. I'd like to do so ASAP so if I hear nothing I'll proceed with my own best judgment. In the meantime, remember your nominations until the threads are opened and put them up then.

[TheUdjat]

Aug 29, 2008 12:30:53 GMT -5 VemuKhaham said:

Okay, I'll go with the elections as listed in Udjats post

Really? 'Cause no offense, but you don't seem to be doing that at all.

I stand by what I said before. If you want people to nominate a single person, the best way it's gonna happen is in a 'Best Moment'. I think this is fairly distinguishable from a 'Best Scene', in that if a moment doesn't have it's own category, people will 90% of the time choose a scene instead. Scenes are more memorable and cool, largely because they involve everyone... and you will be stuck with the same problem you had before, where there's no single rper being nominated.

A character hall of fame rules for a number of reason:
1. Gives due credit to great past roleplaying.
2. Shows off the old games, making use of our vast and considerable archives of cool games.
3. Shows what concepts worked, which could inspire future characters.

But mostly, to me, highlighting new characters only will give a false impression that the only memorable characters are new ones, which seems silly to me. Maybe this is another that could be split up (though you hate that), into a sort of hall of fame and a 'best new character'. But personally, I think a character is best judged after they've been played, rather than during. And 3 months is just not enough time to decide if a character is memorable or not, given the speed of Play by Post.

Having only the first election include old characters is like saying only one character from the past 5 years of gameplay is worth getting elected, which is craziness.

Comparing the Oscars to Kman's is also bizarre. We don't have nearly the same pool of games as there are movies, nor actors as there are characters, and we're even using a quarter of the timeframe. I'd prefer it as a hall of fame, per sports, which does choose from every athlete, ever.

But, honestly, I've said all this before and I'm probably not gonna change my mind. I'm curious what other people think.

[Edit: Modified, accidentally left the rest of Vemu's post.]

[TheZebraShakes™]

Maybe with the characters, we can nominate a handful each time, providing a few segments or scenes which reflect the character's overall goodness, and then we'll have an election with only those handfuls of characters and then the winners will be honored in the hall of fame with a description of what made them worthy of the prestige, that way we can still use all of the old characters, but the pools that we select from won't be able to be repeated, so we won't be able to keep reviewing and nominating the same characters.

Though how we form the pools would be something to work out, it would be kind of lame to pit all of the characters from one game up against eachother, but maybe we'll just draw from three or four games from a similar time period and we'll keep going with about five or so characters each election until we run out of characters and then it's time to move on to another three or four games, that would give every character ever made on Kman's a chance to be selected, though it would require some research on the part of those who would like to elect and participate in the voting.

That's the thing with these nominations, if we are going to go and compare this to the oscars or something like that, we really can't, because if you are a part of the voting team for those types of awards, you are expected to have seen every movie or at least to have some grasp on what the hell you're voting for. Here, that's impossible to expect of everyone. There are plenty of games that I haven't read and characters that I am unfamiliar with, and I expect that the same applies to nearly everyone who is a part of this community. That's not to say that we don't appreciate the works of one another, it's just a matter of whether or not we have the time to read every single thing posted here, which we don't.

For instance, in the last series of elections for best scene, a lot of it was just "eh, whatever" to me, as I've never followed any of those games except the Hammanuva one that KMan put up there and that's only because I was a part of it. As much as I would have liked, i just didn't have the time to go back and review every single scene submitted. I guess it's good that most of them came along with brief descriptions, but as in the game summaries, there's always that writer's subjectivity that you have to watch out for and then you're more inclined to pick from the things that you are actually familiar with.

That's just something that I've been thinking about. It's not really a huge problem, but we can't expect these things to be completely fair or anything just on account of the fact that people will go for what they know and leave out things that could potentially be far better just because they are unaware of their existence.

[TheUdjat]

Hey, when's it time for our next issue? Should be coming up soon, right?

[VemuKhaham]

True, true, should be coming up at the end of this month, but sadly, there is nothing, at the moment. I've not been able to put myself to working on it, hardly even had to time sometimes to update in the games I'm in, and there have been no submitted articles or anything, not that there has been much encouragement.

I think we're going to have to postpone the next issue.

[TheZebraShakes™]

Unless there are others out there willing to make contributions. What are some topics that we could cover. I'm not exactly sure of how we go about putting together something like this, but if I had a topic, I could work on that.

[VemuKhaham]

Well, we can still get something up, if we pool our efforts. If there are multiple people willing to contribute a small article, I could add them together in the next Kronicle. People can just PM it to me in the next few days.

Topics could be of many kinds. First, there could be articles about what has happened on these boards the last three months. I don't think new games have started (though Fangor has launched a new adventure in his series), and I believe we've attracted no new posters, and once again things have slowed down, which is in touching contrast with the last Kronicle. Another way to find topics is simply by looking over the list of threads and discussions in the general boards.

There's been several people with personal stories going on, the most recent being of course Kman's grand day, and reports on those are always welcome. Pics are great too.

Besides these, I welcome any non-forum related articles that could be about anything that might interest people around here, such as game-related news (of games being run with groups at home for example), or simply short fictional works, probably mainly fantasy related.

Then, I might try to run belated elections, but that would involve some time for people to nominate, and I'd have to consider the changes made in the rules.

[K Man]

I'll see about getting some pics from the wedding up for share soon, everyone and their freakin' brother (sometimes Cousins too) are bugging me for them. Of course, heading to a cruise in two weeks doesn't help either...but it will give me more pics to use. I'm happy to help, even if my pocketwatch says otherwise.

[TheUdjat]

I could write an account of the wedding (and my whole trip, actually), but it'd be a kind of outside perspective.

I do have some nominations in mind, which is one reason I brought this up. Menatkhufu and Yakumo, in particular, have been very stellar roleplayers in WotL. I've liked a lot of the developments in Dark Sun, as well (particularly Furni and the Skeksis-Per-Wadjet dynamic).

There are other things, too. It's been a little slow these past few months, but there's still good roleplaying going on, and it ought to be recognized. And I even updated the Active Character Roster!

I could do a Venusian Skies update, too. I haven't written much on here, but there's a tabletop group in my area that might get to run through a beta version of the campaign, and I'd love to report on some of that in the future.

Lastly, I'd be glad to share my NaNoWriMo efforts on here when November is up. It'll be rough and kind of embarrassing without much editing, but what the hell?

I think Shakes needs major commendation for keeping her game active all this time, too, when so many others are dying or slowing to a halt around here.

[VemuKhaham]

Alright, I agree that the past period of roleplay deserves a chance to get nominated etc too. I should open the nomination threads, and give people the chance to nominate events since the last Kronicle of August 1st. But I think it's best to decide that next Kronicle will be somewhere around New Year, a nice time for one too. I feel a bit bad that I couldn't get the last Kronicle up, so let's try to make up for that next time.

According to proposals, I'll open a Best Scene, Best Moment, Best OOC Moment and Best Character Award.

Finally, the Best Game Summary will still be open as a category, but there will be no award as people (sadly ) don't seem to think it suitable for one. DM's are encouraged to submit summaries so that a good overview of games can be given in the Kronicle (as in the last issue).

And of course, PM me with any articles you'd like to submit for the next Kronicle. Anything is appreciated!

I'll try to update the rules and Hall of Fame sections accordingly, but it will require some work and time.

[VemuKhaham]

Done opening the election threads. If someone can sticky this thread and the actual Kman's Kronicle and Hall of Fame threads, that would be greatly appreciated, cause all the election threads will drown them. Hopefully everything is according to wish and clear, otherwise let me know.

Thanks for all the patience and help in designing the new elections.

[VemuKhaham]

Just a reminder, now that the boards are alive and somewhat busy again, that the elections are accepting nominations, and I just know that there has been good rp and such going on here the past months. And DM's, I know you're just dying to write up those game summaries to share recent game events with others on the boards. Don't let it go unnoticed! I myself will try to put up my nominations this weekend.