Well, castles move in straight lines, either horizontally or vertically, and can move any number of squares at once. Knights move 1 horizontal/2 vertical or 2 horizontal/1 vertical and are the only pieces which can "jump" across squares, even if occupied by other pieces. ...seriously, I have no idea. You can't even make the "they were playing checkers while everyone else was playing chess" joke here. It was more like we wanted to try playing chess and everyone else wanted "Let's Dress Up And Play Activism," while telling us that we weren't even competent enough for dress-up activism. Although it also felt at times like "Let's play school, I'm the teacher, you broke the rules and are too stupid for this so go sit in the corner with a dunce cap." (everyone else except sometimes Astraea towards us)
...also, common memory has it that the Blackbirds brought in their thing for roleplaying and war metaphors even when the group was just getting organized, and the Hondas and Phoenix seemed to be into it too. I mean, the Livejournal was named "Lancers' Hill" even before there was a group formally named Lancers, because the Blackbirds liked the theme of "a hill where everyone gathers to organize in the morning and survey the field before riding down to the battle" or something (not an exact quote). Even back then, we were like "...this is activism to get multiples viewed more positively, it's not a war," but we didn't say anything because we didn't want to be seen as disruptive. Though as we went on to discover, virtually ANYTHING would get us pegged as disruptive.
Why did they even HAVE titles? It was five bodies. How much management and hierarchy could five NEED?
The Blackbirds wanted to run Lancers like they ran their system, I think, where they had lots of departments, divisions, and choosing people to assign specific tasks to. But a) you cannot run a group of people with the resources and time of five bodies like you run a system of 80 people, and b) you can't run an activism group that way anyway! If we set up an activism group and tried to run it the way we run our system, we wouldn't expect it to do anything but fail!
Also, I think the page was set up with the expectation that once it was launched, people would join in droves, and then almost nobody joined because nobody could make sense of the goddamn Codex. Plus the "functionality" requirements, which would have scared us away if we hadn't been explicitly invited to join.
Anselmus: I kind of feel like, if you want to turn your activism group into roleplaying, go all the way, you know? Like don't just have knights, castles, and scholars, let people change classes to stuff like paladin and cleric and elven technomage and necromancer! Have campaigns every once in a while to fight Colin Ross or Elizabeth Loftus or the latest fictional MPD axe murderer (in stat form, anyway) to keep things interesting when nothing is happening. It still probably won't accomplish anything, but at least it has a chance of being fun.
Oh yeah, here's another one. Why were Lancers and Pavilion hosted on tanuki.cx? Because they were full of giant bollocks. *ducks*
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Date: 2019-03-16 09:35 am (UTC)Well, castles move in straight lines, either horizontally or vertically, and can move any number of squares at once. Knights move 1 horizontal/2 vertical or 2 horizontal/1 vertical and are the only pieces which can "jump" across squares, even if occupied by other pieces. ...seriously, I have no idea. You can't even make the "they were playing checkers while everyone else was playing chess" joke here. It was more like we wanted to try playing chess and everyone else wanted "Let's Dress Up And Play Activism," while telling us that we weren't even competent enough for dress-up activism. Although it also felt at times like "Let's play school, I'm the teacher, you broke the rules and are too stupid for this so go sit in the corner with a dunce cap." (everyone else except sometimes Astraea towards us)
...also, common memory has it that the Blackbirds brought in their thing for roleplaying and war metaphors even when the group was just getting organized, and the Hondas and Phoenix seemed to be into it too. I mean, the Livejournal was named "Lancers' Hill" even before there was a group formally named Lancers, because the Blackbirds liked the theme of "a hill where everyone gathers to organize in the morning and survey the field before riding down to the battle" or something (not an exact quote). Even back then, we were like "...this is activism to get multiples viewed more positively, it's not a war," but we didn't say anything because we didn't want to be seen as disruptive. Though as we went on to discover, virtually ANYTHING would get us pegged as disruptive.
Why did they even HAVE titles? It was five bodies. How much management and hierarchy could five NEED?
The Blackbirds wanted to run Lancers like they ran their system, I think, where they had lots of departments, divisions, and choosing people to assign specific tasks to. But a) you cannot run a group of people with the resources and time of five bodies like you run a system of 80 people, and b) you can't run an activism group that way anyway! If we set up an activism group and tried to run it the way we run our system, we wouldn't expect it to do anything but fail!
Also, I think the page was set up with the expectation that once it was launched, people would join in droves, and then almost nobody joined because nobody could make sense of the goddamn Codex. Plus the "functionality" requirements, which would have scared us away if we hadn't been explicitly invited to join.
Anselmus:
I kind of feel like, if you want to turn your activism group into roleplaying, go all the way, you know? Like don't just have knights, castles, and scholars, let people change classes to stuff like paladin and cleric and elven technomage and necromancer! Have campaigns every once in a while to fight Colin Ross or Elizabeth Loftus or the latest fictional MPD axe murderer (in stat form, anyway) to keep things interesting when nothing is happening. It still probably won't accomplish anything, but at least it has a chance of being fun.
Oh yeah, here's another one. Why were Lancers and Pavilion hosted on tanuki.cx? Because they were full of giant bollocks. *ducks*