No fiction this time, just all report stuff.

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The Great Jedi War is over.

Now, there's a lot of things to sort out. Halc put up a survey not all that long ago, trying to gauge response and feedback, that sort of thing. We had a decent amount of responses, and for the most part people were happy. The average score for people's happiness with the DC's running of the War was a 4 out of five, which is pretty decent. It's not where my perfectionism wants me to be, but I learned long ago that there are some people who just can't be made happy.

As a corrollary, there seemed to be a trend of members from higher placing units scoring the war higher than those who were not in winning units. I suppose that is to be expected some.

At any rate, I did see a few items brought up in various surveys that I thought I would address.

I'll try to break them down for ease of reading.

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The Comic and Storyline

Most people really liked the comic, as it brings a visual element to the storyline and makes it more accessible to tose members who aren't inclined to bother reading through a wall of text to get the gist of the story. That was always the intent, so that worked out as a success, albeit a rather expensive one.

Some people weren't huge fans of the IDScan events. That's okay, not everyone has to submit to it, but it was an easy event that literally anyone could submit to. You didn't need to buy a video game or have any particular skill with the written word to be able to win at that event.

There were some concerns about the story. A couple people really didn't like that it was almost predictable. Well, when the story has been building for almost three years, that's almost inevitable. The way that the DB fiction was going, there was a need for a showdown with Odan-Urr, and we needed to deal with Michael Halcyon in a conclusive manner. And let's be really honest, a war with just Odan-Urr fictionally would have been a walk in the park (no offense, guys... for a new house, you killed it). There is an overarching plot line, and the wars are big points in that.

Some people have said that they'd like for us to see the Brotherhood not engage in any incidental warfare... meaning that when we band together to kick ass, we don't take pot shots at each other while we're there. That's a cool idea, but terribly unrealistic. Venture into IRC for a few moments, and you'll see how even without magic powers and with a gulf of distance between people, we still have a lot of snark and vitriol between units. That's not something that the DC encourages (far from it, to be sure), but it's just a byproduct of having clans and houses...there's going to naturally be some rivalries, and there will always be those that take it too far.

Also, as a tangent to that, we have tried to unify and take on a common enemy, but it seems that no other club is capable of showing up, agreeing on terms, or matching us ont he battlefields in any meaningful way. That's a big part of the 'why' behind the experiment of House Odan-Urr: If we can't find a good enough enemy, we'll just have to make one. :P

Another concern about the comic/storyline was that the story centered on DC members. We did have a heck of a lot of cameos in the thing, but people wanted to see more meaningful interaction. I can appreciate that. But let me show you the dillemma.

The comic for the war was scripted last august and began artistic rendering in december. At the time when the artist started drawing, i went to the Consuls and Quaestors, the people who had cameos in the comic and asked them to make a committment to me that they would fight hard and stay in their positions until the end of the Great Jedi War. Of the six Dark Councilors I approached, all Six were able to stay in position. Of the 8 Unit leaders, only Three remained. Which put me into an awkward position... I had to run to the artist and make him make adjustments (Further increasing the cost), or retcon why an older retired (and often RL-owned and unable to participate) member is representing their unit in the comic.

On top of that, we all ove our characters in deep ways. We're protective of them, how they are portrayed, and know their nuances and flaws better than anyone. Inclusion in the cmic means that we will be writing them into their story, and they will be a part of it... and in ways that we can't exactly come to you with the work and ask if it works because it could grant an unfair advantage to those people. Further, we have tried that in the past.

I'm going to single out Bloodfyre as an example, because he knows that I love him. DUring the Vong War, Raken and I went to Beef (and Korras) after Raken wrote this badass story and how Bloodfyre and then PCON Korras would react to the War, and how it would affect the Brotherhood's actions during that war. Raken gave Beef one of the coolest lines in that war ('These are the burdens of men...') and so forth. Beef was ecstatic with how Tarentum was being used right for once, and how he was getting some cool face-time, Raken was pleased, I was happy. Three months or so after the War, there was a new Consul in Tarentum, and they had told us in no uncertain terms that the way that Tarentum was portrayed in the Vong War was so very wrong and the 'exact opposite of how they would have been'.

You can imagine how frustrating that was.

As a result of things like that (No, this was hardly the only case), we've had to reduce and streamline the way we use clans and houses in the fiction and by proxy the comics, because we don't want to step on toes, don't want to cause any bitching. We also don't want to give coveted face time to people who won't be in the position (or even active) during the actual event. And yet we still want to include more people in the stories so as to give everyone a familiar face and a vested interest in the stories. The amount of prep time required makes it excessively difficult.

But there is a high point: there are some people who got featured who weren't positioned leaders... Shadow and Dash stand out strongly in mind. Why were they included? Because the story had spots for them to be included. And these are people who have been around for a good long time, are pretty reliably active, and have readily identifiable characters.

We learn a lot from the Wars. The execution is hard, the event creation is a tightwire, and rules are always tested. So, here's what we learned for the story/comic: We'll have to focus less on who happens to be in charge at the moment and deal more with the people who are always around. So, if you want to be featured in a comic, hustle up, make yourself known, be consistently active...and make sure your wiki article is accurate and up to date.

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Gaming

I don't know what it is about gaming, but it seems that gamers are more concerned with testing the rules and playing things out to any possible advantage than any other area. We joked during the war that if the rest of the club was the same way, we'd have to specify exact margin sizes, paper sizes, font sizes, language, spacing rules, and host a link to a grammar/spellcheck program for each and every fiction event. It's a chuckle now, but it gets frustrating.

Because of this constant 'try to break the rules without breaking the rules' mindset, we always see adjustments to the gaming rules (the Rites of Combat) after just about every vendetta. Sometimes, people search out a loophole at the beginning of an event and start exploiting it. In the spirit of fair play (and in order to preserve the event), Fremoc, Korras and Halc will sometimes have to adjust the rules mid event. This happened in the last war, with Kir having to adjust on the fly.

This isn't the way we'd like to do things, but it is sometimes necessary.

And as an aside, it's almost universally the people who are trying to game the system who end up doing the whining about it.

Some people wanted to see more of a Ladder-style gaming set up. That's cool, but something that is kind of hard to do in a war, when participation points are terribly important. We've kinda made the jump to where skill is weighed much more heavier in Vendettas like the Rites of Supremacy, and that's where we will typically run gaming ladders like that.

There were also some concerns that the 'Elimination' event unfairly rewarded people who had more platforms than others. Also, a concern was raised that we had people who would only play one game (out of the 8+ we have officially supported) and that this focus and refusal to venture away from that caused significant stress and gave some an unfair advantage while still staying wthin the rules.

So what did we learn? We learned that Free-for-all matches should never have two members from the same unit in them, period. We learned that we had to specify 'hopping into #dbgaming and leaving right away' classifies as dodging matches, since they could just be looking to see if who they wanted to play were online. These things have already been changed on the RoC, so I'm just pointing things out. Also, we may try for some kind of mini-ladder int he next war. We're also looking at varying events a bit, breaking events into platform styles and awarding them as events in their own right, as opposed to lumping all the games into the same event. That would still fall under the whole 'more platforms = unfair advantage' thing, though, so nothing is set in stone.

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Fiction Events

The comedic event was considered a nice change of pace and was pretty well received.

There were quite a few people who did not like the 'write this character's story' events. Some people thought we needed to have given more background information, and experience told us that if we had, we'd have just as many complaints about 'limiting creativity'. Such is event creation in a War.

There are a couple of reasons why we chose to do more neutral territory on the fictions however.

First, we figured that those people who wanted to write their own character had not only the Comedy event, but they also had the huge run-on event. We reasoned that this would give people a decent chance to write their character's reaction to and involvement int he war.

Second, we wanted to level the playing field. We have a pretty good core of graders. That said, it is human nature to prefer reading about characters that you know already, and that would slant grading. By making the events about new and undiscovered characters, the submissions would have to be graded on their skill alone.

Third, we wanted to give you guys something different. It seems that every war, the fiction prompts are terribly similar. Write how your character does int he war, or achieves a military objective. If you've been in the DB for any length of time, you can see how that gets old and fast. Besides, to be really honest, a clever author could have written their characters into the story alongside the events in the event anyway. ;)

So, what did we learn?

Comedic events rock, and we need to make sure that we do them again. And splashing some more of the classic character development prompts in their would be appreciated.

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** Graphics and Multimedia**

There were a few biting remarks about the segregation of comedic and serious comps in the war. I can totally understand the point. The idea was to make it so that those who wanted to do smart-ass submissions could be graded on a separate platform from the others... making it so that a stick-figure hilarious entry would not be even on the same plane as an almost-professional quality serious entry. They might both be awesome, but for very different reasons, and we thought it was important to break that up.

Some of the criticism revolved around a line in the event rules about how 'stick figure lazy drawings' would not be counted for participation. For the record, we got a few stick figure drawings there, but they still counted (or halc can correct me). It was a poor choice of words. I'm sorry.

Multimedia and it's wide-open 'up to your interpretation' scope was well loved by some, and loathed by others. As with fiction, some people like having the goal clearly marked, while others feel that having it set cramps their creativity.

So, what did we learn?

Segregating the comedic from the serious is fine, but don't piss on participation with the rules. Also, we're considering setting the 'wide open' comps so that the unit leaders can come up with a pile of 'good ideas' for their members to chose from to help with those that prefer a bit more direction.

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Battleplan, Trivia

The Battleplan was loved by most, but concerns about the grading came up. There'll be more about the grading later on in the report.

Some wanted to see more wargame stuff throughout the war, with the example of Korras' last Obelisk Rite of Supremacy being factored in. We tried to do something very similar with the 'navigating the shroud' event in the Vong War, and that one was not terribly well received because of the space, the fog of war, and all that stuff. We'll be looking at press-ganging Korras into doing a wargame when next it is apporpriate.

Trivia was one of those things where people loved it or didn't care. We specifically released it at different times each week, so as to give people in different time zones across the world a better chance of getting on it first. Again, this was a farly easy event, and one of those that required no real special programs or skills (aside from google-fu) to complete.

We would have loved to have gotten another one of those codebreaker events going, but Orv was WTFOWNED by life pretty much the whole time before and during the War. So it wasn't a matter of us not wanting to host it, but more of a matter of not being able to come up with anything nearly as cool as it would have been if Orv were able to do it.

What did we learn?

People want a wargame. People want codebreaker. Pretty straightforward there.

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Grading and the Site

A common concern was about grading. People wanted to see deeper into why things were graded the way that they were, and see the winning entries, etc. Theres something to be said for that, but it's another one of those tightwire things.

First off, we need to make it a precedent that if you submit to a war event, that other people will see it. We haven't done that in a loong time, and we need to make sure that is understood going forward, so that we don't have people complaining that their work is being hosted (don't laugh, it's happened in the past) where people can see it. We also can explain who is going to be grading things, but that can set us up for failure, especially if a judge ends up having to sit something out because of extenuating circumstances. As one of the consistent compliments about this war was the fast turnaround, we have tried to get the grading done asap, and if a judge isn't capable of getting to it, we swap in other judges to get it done rather than wait until the original judge becomes available, holding up results.

Speaking of results, here's some insight as to how things are graded:

At the end of the event, the judges go through and read/look/watch every submission, flagging the ones that they think are really good or deserve a second look. After the first pass, they do a second pass, grading those flagged submissions on the grading categories explained in the event description (typically 'quality', 'Grammar' and 'realism'). Each judge does this independently, and then the final scores are added up and averaged before placements are determined. There is naturally a fair bit of subjectivity in the 'quality' category, and this is why we have three judges doing any given event...it helps normalize the scores so that if one person just didn't like something minor, the piece isn't tossed into the trash summarily.

So that's how we graded the events. There were spreadsheets somewhere, but the only reason that people would really want to start seeing those is to nitpick and snark off about the graders themselves, which is counterproductive, considering how the averaging method negates bias in that regard. All we'd have is 'Why did Xxx get a better subjective score than me, that's dumb, the judges are dumb.'

The site was coded pretty much single handedly by me. I am about the furthest thing from a coder that exists, and yet there it is. A couple people questioned why it was done by me when we have a Seneschal staff. Fair enough. As I mentioned before, Orv has been terrifyingly busy with RL work, and his DB time has been spent working on PHPifying the site and working on issues that plague the site as it is. Whenever I can take some of the work off and handle it myself, I try to do just that. I'd rather Orv fixes the join form, makes the new member distribution code actually work right, or even work on the backend for possessions before i make him do something that I can do well enough.

I'm sure some would say that Orv has staff capable of doing the site as well. Which would be all fine and good, if they were fulltime coders and not clanned. Whenever we're dealing with Vendetta events, especially GJWs, we have to be very secretive, because we don't want anything leaking out to any clan and generating an unfair advantage (a common theme that you've probably seen in this report alone). So the cool dudes working with Orv can't get in the site and see events before they launch, because even if they didn't sneak peeks at stuff, people could say that they did, and then we're in all sorts of sticky situations.

Stuff we learned:

Host winning submissions, and say who the pool of potential graders are for each event. Also, I don't suck completely at coding, even though I hate it. We need to train more DCers on ACC stuf, so they can grade faster at the end of the war.

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I wanted to give some respect to some people.

First off, Benevolent Taldrya Whiner. The great Hatted one manaed to participate in 34 out of 35 total GJW events, and scored MVP out of the war, being the person who had earned the most amount of total points for their unit. He also scored a promotion to elder for that and his long-standing work towards the wiki, coding consulting and a bevy of other things in the five years since his last promotion.

Next, big respect goes out to Wuntila. Pitching in when his Consul had limited time, he still managed to keep Arcona in high gear and helped propel them to a GJW win. He lead frm the trenches, participating in a big pile of events himself.

Huge thanks go out to Halc, who was an integral part of getting the war events together, organized and graded. Helpful doesn't even begin to describe it. Having done a vendetta solo makes me more than acutely aware of how much help it is to have someone who knows what's required during a GJW and is willing to get in there and do it without needing to be told what to do.

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Rewards

Aside from the Seals and Novae (which have already gone out), we will have the traditional fleet/armed forces points for the Unit Leaders to use, and a couple other things that we're currently ironing out the details on. We'll also be working on Award Robes and Sabers for winners as well. Watch for word from your Consuls or Quaestors for details on all the cool parts.

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After Wars, there's usually a season of change. Some people are ready to retire after a war, and this one is no exception.

Jonuss Rai stepped down from Quaestor of House Odan-Urr, ceding the throne back to Ji, the founder of the House.

Zandro Has decided to step down from Consul of Arcona as well, having also written his character's death in the Arconan Runon for the War. We will be accepting applications for the position of Consul of Arcona until the 14th of November.

Methyas has also had a bevy of real life situations making claims on his time to draw him from his position. As such, applications for Consul of Clan Naga Sadow are also being accepted until the 14th of November.

If you are serious about taking the position, you will already know about all the things we are looking for in a successful application. Make sure you include a 30-60-90 plan as well when you send them to Halc and I.

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Well, that's probably more than enough stuff to read for one report. Hopefully, it wasn't too boring. If you need anything, let me know on IRC or in email. Thanks again, and have fun.

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