rooms!

[Damon]

Okay guys:

1) No one's saying homogenize the rooms. If you look at the list Kai put up, which is kinda a list I like right now, it's VERY diverse. It just cuts out the chaff.

2) No one's going to drag you kicking and screaming into 20 person scenes. If you wanna do a 1:1 scene, as I'm doing right now, there will be plenty of rooms, plenty of night/day/now iterations, and unlimited temporary rooms.

3) This isn't about group play vs solo play. This is only peripherally about maybe-we-can-get-more-RP-going. This is primarily about: we have 20 rooms and about 8 of them are redundant.

Also: maybe it's too early to have this convo. Maybe we need to settle down over the recent shakeup first, because honestly? It kinda feels like people are taking their OMGGGG over all the recent chaos and displacing it over here.

[HDub]

I don't actually have a problem with there being more rooms, because as someone who is not familiar with the city itself, having those options available (even if I don't choose to use them), adds a lot to my understanding of an area. Having these rooms, as a player, actually lets me narrow down the types of places I am looking for and gives me a springboard for my googling and research of the setting. Many of us are improvising a cityscape, and what we know of Denver comes from the fact that we role-play in imaginary Denver.

Even when they are sitting empty, I feel like they add flavor to the game because it lets people who are not familiar with the area know that something is there that they had no idea to even begin looking for. Having a room for it, and a dedicated space for it, is different than reading about that on Wikipedia or a travel guide.

*edited to clarify

[Damon]

All right -- I think there's obviously enough resistance right now that maybe we should just shelf the idea. I might bring it up again in 6 mo or so, if it's still an issue. In the meantime, I can deal with 20 rooms without freaking out -- but it seems like the idea of 12 rooms is causing significant anxiety and distress.

[tithe]

I'd rather not eliminate or smoosh things. I like having a broad choice of rooms. As someone with little to no interest in Denver IRL (coastal snob, sorry), seeing the room names which are already there w/ the attendant little descriptions (like 'this includes Aurora, Parker, blah blah') helps force me to wikipedia different neighborhoods etc. of Denver and try to figure out its actual flavor or an interesting hook.

There are an awful lot of system specific rooms, none of which (except for possibly the Chantry, possibly) get a lot of use. I like having them in the chat-room who's online list as options because it grounds me in the supernatural Denver(s) we've created and, let's be honest, they're all kind of cool. Thus: I would keep them all too.

The thing that makes scenes accessible is a sense of being welcomed into them by the players involved. That has nothing to do with the number of rooms there are to choose from and all to do with open tags or communication OOC via the OOC room or AIM or whatever, so however peripheral the issue or whatever, I also think it's kind of a non-issue.

But if rooms were going to eventually be sacrificed I would vote for the DD and the Foothills, Resort Areas, and Northern Colorado rooms, with the latter three being smooshed into one maybe. Aren't all of those rooms basically "the rest of Colorado, not Denver"? Isn't that more the purview of temporary rooms? But then it might be nice to have their descriptions somewhere for those who aren't up on Colorado geography or culture. I've never really understood the appeal of the DD. If somebody wants to roll dice separate from their scene transcript or doesn't want to roll in the ooc for whatever reason they can make a temporary dicing den, y'know? I can also see a case for smooshing the 16th Street Mall room into the Downtown room (as long as like... it was added to the description?), but I say that because of all the rooms I think it is the one I am inspired to use the least, so my "eh, whatever, smoosh it away!" is totally biased.

For the record, I'm not 'OMGGGG' about the recent 'shakeup.' I'm more in the headspace of 'Oh! Well, a lot of that really sucked/sucks'

But my opinion on room eliminating would be the same anyway for above reasons. To simplify:

1. I like seeing a lot of choices.
2. The choices I see help me choose the mood of the scene I wanna play and also gives me inspiration to look into Denver and figure out more cool things. So it all adds flavor, on this end. That's why keep them. Heck: I would really like it if more iconic-type locations were mentioned in the room descriptions, just to help with the Wikipedia-ing for all the non-Denverites (what is this Shotgun Willies thing? It sounds WoD as heck).
3. When the chat's busy, it feels pretty full. When it's not busy, it feels empty. C'est la vie.

(grins) I know like a thousand posts were posted while I was posting this but I wanna post too so there.

[Jacqui]

I actually quite like(d) Kai's list of suggestions, that seems like a reasonable mid way to me in giving some consideration to cutting out what's not strictly necessary and keeping what is/has meaning/feels necessary for the IC-verse as it stands.

Also ! - I like the idea of a room for the Rockies.

But - we can always pause discussion as Damon mentioned and come back to it once dust has settled. Maybe folks can wander in and throw back ideas and in the to and fro between now and later when/if we come back to it we'll find some mid point.

Or not, I mean it's all relative to what the general consensus is. Ideas are good, in a nutshell.

[Samael]

I just wanted to clarify really quick: I wasn't trying to necessarily imply that I thought we were about to be forced into larger scenes or anything. I likely picked a little too much from the original stated reference in Damon's post in the other thread about so many people off in their own personal scenes and went in a wrong direction, and I apologize for that.

I also wasn't trying to carry over any anxieties anxieties over the changeover into this; I think that this was just spirited but healthy debate about the issue. I think we all have very strong views on the topic and that's totally fine! I think we also did a good job of staying pretty respectful about it--and again I apologize if I came off as attacking or defensive, that was not my intent but I can absolutely see where they might have been viewed as the case. Debate is good and even passionate debate is, as long as we don't take it personally.

As a side note if we're not tabling (and if we are that's cool): one I can totally for sure agree with is 16th Street Mall; we have Downtown which works just fine for that. And I can definitely see moving Richthofen if it's just not in the right physical location.

[Damon]

Well -- I'm honestly cool with waiting for things to settle down a bit, particularly since we don't even know what's going to happen with VtM right now. But if people are cool with some of the more minor changes now, then I'm all for it too. So maybe cut out 16th street, since it's already part of Downtown, move Richthofen and FQ out from their nested status, and possibly drop a 'burb or two?