more defense force things

[swordfucker]

Hello again everyone! It's Defense Force update time. So, since last month's log only had a handful of small threads, I've been mentioning the last month or so that it seems like there isn't enough interest to put another log up this time. However, if I'm wrong and you'd like one, please let me know below! I can put one up if enough people are interested. Otherwise, here's the OOC rundown so we can work things out here.

Here is the gdoc showing the current members and any noteworthy links, like the most recent team assignments (minus characters who have dropped). If you see someone on here that's been dropped and I didn't catch it, please let me know so I can adjust things! Similarly, if your character isn't on the force but you'd like for them to be, let me know!! I can always find a way to have Guren approach them if they haven't heard of it, too. I'm going to keep things very simple this month just since I've been so deeply involved in doing things with this and I'm not sure how much interest there is for all of it, so...!

1. Teams? I'm wondering what you guys think of the three teams thing! It doesn't seem to be creating a lot of plotting, even with assigned leaders, so I'm looking for suggestions to how to better this for CR purposes, or if you'd like me to assign leaders without teams now, or etc. Maybe small groups as "squads?" Would that be too much? Let me know! I'd like to hear input by the 7th so that I can send out that information before the intro log.

2. Sparring partners? Just wondering if anyone needs me to do randomization for more partners again or if we're okay on that! Sign ups were a lot smaller the most recent time, so I wasn't too sure, but let me know.

3. Special assignments I super failed on these last time so I'm not going to do these as sign ups. It'll be more like, if Guren notices something that needs to be done that he can't do alone (or if anyone else does and brings it to him), he could approach your character and ask if they'd like to help, that's it!

4. Any other ideas? Is there anything else you can think of that would be a fun idea for me to do to help encourage CR, both within the force and those outside of it? Please let me know!! I love organizing these things but I'm not hearing a lot of feedback so I'm lost on what's fun and what's not!

5. IC Discussion topics LASTLY, since this is going to replace the log unless I hear a lot of people wanting it, mention below if your character would bring anything up in the meeting! ICly it will take place on the 2nd this month in town hall. Guren would go over his drugs again (which, I could create more of, if there's interest in that too!), offer them to characters, and go over topics like the siren attack, and then open the floor for discussion. Largely these meetings are in the hands of characters in the force, not him, he just starts it off. So let me know if they have concerns to bring up to everyone about the town or want to talk conspiracy theories about #FFFFFF together or so on!

Annnnd that's about it! Any and all feedback really helps, so thank you in advance. ♥ Same goes for if you have any OOC comments on me doing all of this every other month. If you want to speak your mind privately, my HMD is anon enabled and you can feel free to do it there!

Summary I'm just gonna stick this here in case any additional points are brought up in the next few days.
Teams/squads of 3-4 instead of big teams, they choose their own team captain icly/oocly, possibly having the squads part of larger teams, sparring/training sign ups being every other meeting (every 4 months) for more time to do things, defense force camping trip or some sort of outing for bonding!! a mingle log type thing

Comments

[parodeity]

tbh i think the three teams are maybe a bit too big atm to make plotting easy? so smaller teams would probably help out a lot, and making sure ppl who are team leads like intend to do stuff with it?

[swordfucker]

I was thinking about the size thing, so smaller squads I wondered if that would be easier... for making sure people intend to do stuff with a lead position I could do sign ups? but I'm worried there might not be enough people since they might feel like there's too much pressure when really it's just a casual CR thing

I wonder if making small teams and trying it just at that with assigned "team captains" and seeing how that goes would be? I think the smaller teams might help overall without me having to check who's interested in leads? CORRECT ME IF I'M WRONG

[parodeity]

i think smaller size would for sure help! tbh maybe you could split the teams and the teams could icly and oocly pick the captains? idk but for me with the large groups i've mostly noticed they're so big coordination stalls out, so i think smaller ones would be great

[messianic]

FIRST OFF THANKS FOR ALWAYS DOING THIS, YOUR HARD WORK IS AMAZING

but also i personally love the sparring thing because it's gotten me some of my favorite cr and can put people together who you'd never expect, but also to give people time to build that and also so you aren't constantly doing so much work, maybe it can be an every other defense force meeting sort of thing? or even once every third "meeting", or something like that.

Since I know you put a ton of time and thought into them, but also since people can just use the time in between to keep building on that sparring cr until the next match-up. SOMETHING LIKE THAT, MAYBE

[skatebird]

To piggyback off of the first suggestion, maybe you could have the 'main' teams (red, blue, yellow, etc.), split them into smaller subteams of 3-4 people every month, and then rotate? That helps prevent them from being too unwieldy to work with, but also encourages fresh CR every month.

Of course, that sounds like a lot of work each month! So obviously don't take it as a demand (or actually do, i order you to cater your organization to my needs) because that's a lot to ask of another player! Or alternately, shuffle the subteams every 2-3 months instead.

[parodeity]

actually spacing out sparring more would help me to i think :|a

[swordfucker]

ooh I like that idea!! picking their own captains seems like a fun point of analyzing their group situation and going from there, I like that.

how does groups of 3ish sound?

[swordfucker]

weeps from my secret cave where I am held captive by kei

but honestly I think the idea of red/blue/yellow teams doesn't have too much to offer just yet, but I think I'll keep that in mind for the future!! for now it seems like a great idea to do groups of 3-4 and rotate them every meeting like I've been rotating the bigger ones because that sounds fun and like great work

or I could rotate them every other defense force meeting (4 months), so which sounds better? 2 or 4 months?

[swordfucker]

aww pushes you I AM HAPPY TO...

but omg I like that idea a lot!! I put so much thought into them that spacing it out would help me, too LMAO so!! every other defense force meeting would mean every 4 months I open sparring partner sign ups again and sort those out. Is that better, or is every 6 months better? I feel like the latter might be too long, so I might try the 4 month thing and do it next meeting, then.

[parodeity]

i think that works! most for four? like, four is the upper limit of doable for a thread so i think that size would be good :|a bc then team breads could be a thing

i mean threads but i'm mobile and not backspacing

[messianic]

YEAH FOUR MONTHS SOUNDS PERFECT that's plenty of time to get cr going for the sparring and also makes sense i think icly for characters to start looking to expand their sparring practice SO.

THAT SOUNDS PERFECT TO TRY

[swordfucker]

no it's team breads now, guren is actually gordon ramsay and he wants to find chroma's best chef

but yes 3-4 sounds like a good number to me. I think I'm going to start looking at existing members and trying to work that out, but I'll keep hearing input from anyone else who comes in until the 7th! so however I end up doing them will go out on the 7th.

I had another question I was going to ask opinions from people but I forgot it just now and I'm so mad at myself, I'll reply again if I can think of it LGDFMLG

[swordfucker]

THANK YOU CAL I'll try that out as long as it sounds good to everyone else/as long as there are no differing opinions!!

[parodeity]

i think swapping the teams out we can try two months to start? :|a and swap to four if that feels too short

[parodeity]

tossing in my two cents to say that sounds good to me!

[swordfucker]

I'm liking that idea, too!! thumbs up, that's how we'll try it first and I'll always leave room for feedback so if it feels too fast I'll hope people let me know so I can adjust!

[withwisdom]

I def agree with Lucy on smaller teams, maybe have like multiple small squads for each district that can rotate shifts (squad one does morning, two afternoon, three evening, as an example) On my end I unfortunately didn't have a lot of time OOCly to do much with Zelda as a lead because RL stuff kept coming up, so that's my bad on that -- I think smaller squads will make plotting things easier though since rounding up a group of several people can be a challenge.

In addition to the existing sparring, I was wondering if training match-ups could be a thing? As opposed to sparring that's more just focused on battles, training could be more focused on teaching a skill. Though again I'll admit I'm speaking from the perspective of not having a battle-inclined character.

Laaastly as far as building CR in the force, maybe there could be some kind of outing for the force? One idea I wanted to do with my group, but unfortunately never got around to oocly organizing it, was to have a camping trip. Something where the whole force could come together, maybe with some discussion included, outside the typical town hall? Maybe even throw in some haphazard monster attacks and what not.

[swordfucker]

I'm leaning really heavily towards trying the small squads thing! teams of 3-4 is sounding good right now (with most being 3 if possible, 4 is a little harder to thread), and please don't worry! I know it was hard to work with which is why I brought it up, it definitely wasn't your fault!

Also for the sparring thing-- I may have worded it poorly, but it's definitely not meant to be battle focused! Originally I created them as student/teacher sign ups, with sparring as a side option, but that was a mouthful and I sort of rolled it all into one. They're meant to be training over sparring, with sparring as a definite option. I could definitely name them training match ups instead of sparring to help get that across, though!! I think splitting them up ended up confusing people in the beginning since a handful missed signing up for one to sign up for the other and didn't realize.

but omg camping..... that's such a cute idea honestly, I'd love that. If anyone else is interested in that please let me know here so I can work on arranging that during a week where it doesn't look too plot heavy!!

[withwisdom]

I see now! I didn't sign-up for the sparring because I didn't want to hamper an rng partner with a character who can't fight, but with that clarification I'll be sure to put Zelda's name in for the next time around.

and yes! I wanted to actually do it in August with Zelda's team but well, the Siren plot happened and it was pretty hardcore so it felt odd to propose that after the intensity. But I figure this is a good chance for new people incoming to get a jumpstart on some CR building.

[swordfucker]

I'LL WORK TO MAKE IT SUPER CLEAR in the sign ups next time! especially since it's open not to just defense force characters. We're going to be trying them every other meeting, so the next sign up will be in november, but if you want I can try to stealthily find someone that guren can nudge zelda at in the meantime just since you had to miss it!!

but yes gosh, every team captain was kidnapped and I laughed lGFMDSLG but no I definitely understand. I've been wondering for the past month if I should go smaller teams but I had no idea how that would be taken so I'm super glad people are down for that

thanks again for your input!! I am really digging the camping/outing idea and I can probably bug the mods for a throw in thing to make the mingle more than slice of life, so I will see if anyone else has thoughts! either way I'll definitely try to time it at a not so busy plot time.

[thriftea]

yeah, i agree with the others re: smaller teams! i think less people will make it easier to keep in contact/coordinate things.

also, if you're going to keep team leads, maybe contact people before assigning them as team leads? i haven't been online as much as i'd like to be due to rl factors (mainly b/c this is the busiest time for my line of work), so i wasn't able to plan anything for ochako's group. :'c going forward, i think it would be best to hash this part out ooc-ly before the list goes up!

all in all, though, i think the defense force is a ton of fun, and thank you again for keeping everything so organized!! you really do a great job!

[swordfucker]

Smaller seems to be what everyone's agreeing on!!

And I'm sorry about that!! Last time I put up a disclaimer to please let me know if you didn't want to be one since I wasn't sure how many would sign up for wanting to be one, but it still ended up not great— this time though I'm going to have the smaller squads/teams work out a leader among themselves icly/oocly, so I think that should make things easier on people. but let me know if that still sounds like it might have issues!

Bell Alarm

[youwillbeunequaled]

All of the above is sounding good! \o/ (and another +1 to trying smaller teams, and 4 months between sparring signups)


So, OOC-ly I've not gotten around to doing anything with it, but--

Tonbokiri and Minato will take care of finding bell(s) to use as an alarm system in town. If anyone else has made headway on this, please let me know, though!

IC-ly I would like to have this done-ish the last week of August. Which is already past, oops. But if I PM the mods and it's ok by them, hopefully it's something that can be brought up at the meeting as being almost there. (And Cal and I can just thread it out back-dated or something. oops.)

OOC-ly this is something that has been... months. So it's on my list of get it done already!! stuff to do. XD

[swordfucker]

That's totally fine!! I know that the Akechi player was actually going to message me about this since it was mentioned that they were trying to move this forward and having some trouble, so maybe I could throw him into the mix here? Since Guren technically told Akechi and Kyrie to help with this job back in May.

[youwillbeunequaled]

Fair enough!

Before I message the mods we'll just sort out who-all is involved, then!

[swordfucker]

I'll let you know what I hear when they message me! They said tomorrow, so if you don't hear back in a couple of days, just poke me again so I can remind them.

[youwillbeunequaled]

Sounds like a plan! o7

[skatebird]

rattles ash's cage bars

Anyway, I think every two months is a good balance! That's long enough to let everyone get really into the possible CR without dragging things out.

[tendershepherd]

Just gonna also say that smaller teams would work well. Depending on how you want to break them up too, there's 32 people on the force, so maybe have 10 groups of 3 and then the remainder forms a group of their own. That.....ought to be enough to cover the whole town, I'd think?

Sorey would 100% be down for special assignments.

I think there ought to be some kind of IC discussion about the Siren Attack. Largely because like, despite being a defense force, some ppl might feel like they're not doing enough. Twice now the town has been attacked and the defense force didn't attempt a whole lot of prevention. Granted, of course, there's only so much they can ICly know anyway since we're all also trapped in the town like everyone else. But still, it might be valuable to start talking about ways to prevent further attacks. Even if it's a futile effort by design, at least there was an attempt? I hope that makes sense....

Also thank you for all the work you do with these! You're amazing! Defense force camping trip sounds fun to me.

[swordfucker]

The exact number of teams will depend on how I work them out! Since it's more than RNG, I put thought into how they'll work. But basically teams of 3-4.

Also there will be an IC discussion! But since the last time there was a huge attack no one used the IC log I put up, and I don't hear a demand for it now, I won't be putting up a log unless a handful of people express interest in it. So it'd be a handwaved thing.

And no problem!! ♪