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We (well, the more active players, not myself) were VERY paranoid. Admittedly, I was kind of so myself in what little I did (bugging Dana for reassurance of what you would do with knowing where we live), but us being paranoid was most certainly a thing. An irritating thing. Sorry for that, I guess.

Right now my biggest irritation is that more of you are not following me on Twitter. What's up with that? Where is the love?

Connor Fallon wrote:Right now my biggest irritation is that more of you are not following me on Twitter. What's up with that? Where is the love?

Derail: Not yet. I'll get around to following each and everyone of you for life once the activity dies down a little and I can stop speedreading like mad to keep up.

Rerail... About the paranoia...
It did affect everyone... I personally set off the biggest fight we had here because of that... I'm not even sure if and where I should address what led me to that... I don't think I explained the reasons behind it outside of PMs, so I suppose there are people who are still confused as to how that post came to be... I think I'm ok with explaining it openly, if you guys want to know that is. Players and GMs alike.

You don't have to bring it up if you think it's resolved happily, but if you think there's a lesson to be learned for next time, that's fine.

Connor Fallon wrote:Right now my biggest irritation is that more of you are not following me on Twitter. What's up with that? Where is the love?

Qara and I have been stalking you for weeks. XD I don't have an account though.

Tom wrote:You don't have to bring it up if you think it's resolved happily, but if you think there's a lesson to be learned for next time, that's fine.

Well... I think I will... Well, Sicon disclosed the secret chatrooms. So I see no issue in talking about that anymore.
I learned about the first one. I was offline when they made the conference, then while catching up I saw the forum posts mentioning some discussions that went on in a separated chatroom... Ok. I was annoyed, but I was offline at the time.

See, I played most of the game being one of the planners. I read everything, and tried to polish every idea. If I didn't post everywhere it was because I felt I had nothing of value to add... Still. I was in on everything that went on. Then I created the chatroom. I don't regret that. It's the contribution I'm most proud of, tied with Don's Refic. But it gave everyone the tool to go behind whoever's backs they wanted. Again, I was offline when they did that... It was ok. I was a planner. I would be called in for the next session, they trusted me. They had told me they trusted me.

Then Eli had a plan (I already asked her, she's ok with me mentioning it). She called me and I told her to consult with everyone else. It was the "I'll act as a double agent" plan. Well, she did. They went into session in the secret chatroom while I was online. And didn't call me in. Eli relayed the conversation to me, of course she would, I was the first person she contacted about that idea! But, apparently no one who was in the chatroom was willing to take the initiative to invite me in. Eli herself, because as she told me, she had been invited and didn't create it, so she felt like she didn't had the authority to do so. I did respect her position, after all she was still doing what she could to keep me in the loop, even if she felt she couldn't link me to the discussion. But still, there where others online. They could have made a consensus if the unanimous leader wasn't around... They all shared the secret, after all. And I was supposed to be one of the trusted people to be there.

I snapped. I felt so betrayed about that that I wanted to go on record calling names and ruining every single game secret I knew or suspected. My original draft was worthy of a permanent ban from Rule 3 breakage alone. And the fallout was gigantic. Even after filtering down many times, I was still accusatory. I hated myself for having that post up, and hated myself even more to do that post without soiling everything they had planned... Hell, if I was going for it why make the post about me and not wreck everything they denied me access to? I knew what they were talking about, after all.

The irony does not escape me... It's in the logs... From the day I was offline... They created the chatroom and the first thing Qara says is that I can be trusted to go into that room... And no one called me. No one PM'd me so that I could be aware when I got online. They all had the time to do so during that session while I was in fact sitting in the main chat doing nothing. It was really hard for me to read those logs.

And I made them feel betrayed by me when I did that. The feeling of paranoia had split us so much that, while they made me feel betrayed by not calling me in, I was still someone they trusted... When I did that post they all felt like I was attacking them out of nowhere. I can't compare and say things like "I was more betrayed than you!", it does not work like that. But at the time when I wrote that?

When I get to these pitfalls I press my own Reset Button. I vanish to never come back... I don't stand up to these situations... But this time I did... And doing so, the whole fight, I was hurting so much that I somehow ended up sending an email to Dana, crying for help because I didn't know who else to ask! Thanks for your reply on that Dana... I managed to sleep that night thanks to you... Just knowing that you had replied made me consider not leaving... Perhaps I was wanted here after all. I remember saying goodbye to Eli that night with "I don't know if I'll be here tomorrow." I guess you all know the rest, Scarab mediated everything back to a certain normalcy... I did talk about this over PMs and still don't know why I logged in the next day... Somehow I'm still here, and I'm still friends with everyone. And I'm sure very happy for that.

Had I been called in? The whole secrecy protocol would probably continue... I didn't like it, but I wouldn't have been pushed over the edge and probably wouldn't be the one to set off that time bomb. But... maybe it would still be me... I can't really know that.

I don't like what I caused that day... And I don't like bring it up again now... But, getting these tears off my chest does give me some more peace... Hopefully I can stop being tormented by those memories soon. And yeah, I do realize my motivation is quite childish and egotistical... It does not make it easier to accept, I just think I understand myself a little bit more now than I did before that day.

So, I guess the lesson was, #AdellWasRight.
Seriously, the guy's been about honesty from the beginning.
And yes, I was in the wrong. I should have approached things differently. It is my only regret in this ARG. that I didn't stop to think about the consequences of my actions.
That said, I think that the lessons I learned that night are invaluable. They helped me become a better gamer, and a better friend.
In the future, if I'm ever in situations like that, I hope I take some of Adell's wisdom, and Scarab's patience. They are invaluable, and I wish to be more like them.

The original intention of the first chat was really to have a fast, multi-way PM about what to do wit that letter. I said we should probably get Pixie, but the discussion sidetracked us and before anything else happened we talked to a compromise about declassifying one level and revealing the info to the players themselves. We set that up at once, figuring we would just tell everyone who had been left out of the first everything about it in the second. However, before we got very far into that one, the GMs pretty much outright told us not to keep it up, so we dropped it and posted everything on the forums for the world to see.

We hadn't really had any intention of doing anything with the first chat, but people had requested we keep the logs classified until the end of the game, which we did. Then next time it was used for anything serious was eli's double agent plan. I was told a secondhand outline of the plan by Qara, and didn't know a whole lot more. I told them to move to the chatroom so that the plan could be logged for people later and so that they could get other people, me included if I had input, into the talk. However, I ended up getting distracted by real life about a minute in and pretty much left them to it. If anyone tried to tell me about Pixie's involvement, I probably missed it. I would have given my consent to let him in if I had known. It was more a communication failure than anything else. It wasn't as if we just let eli in on the spot. We put the planning session on pause for almost an hour while we slowly contacted everyone involved to get the unanimous consent we needed to let her in. I would have asked about Pixel as well at that time, but Qara when she first told me hadn't had much time to do anything more than outline the idea since it was late.

It really was just a chain of messups and oversights that turned out really badly for everyone involved, and one that I'm sure we all regret. I don't think any of us ever intended to do that to you Pix. Sorry.

Okay, tangent, to add another petty one to the irritation pile (As really, there wasn't anything major.) I found it amusing that many of the Metaguards were given more tropes than some of the main ARG characters. Like freaking Moriarty and Don Juan.

Connor Fallon wrote:Okay, tangent, to add another petty one to the irritation pile (As really, there wasn't anything major.) I found it amusing that many of the Metaguards were given more tropes than some of the main ARG characters. Like freaking Moriarty and Don Juan.

Why I stopped talking about it very quickly when I realized how out of hand it was getting.Oh well. We have plenty of tie to get to it now, and I think I'm finally getting used to doing TvTropes edits.

Connor Fallon wrote:Okay, tangent, to add another petty one to the irritation pile (As really, there wasn't anything major.) I found it amusing that many of the Metaguards were given more tropes than some of the main ARG characters. Like freaking Moriarty and Don Juan.

Metaguards seem to be a very self-centered breed. That's why I pride myself with having only two tropes by the end. I am so awesome.

WackyMeetsPractical wrote:

Connor Fallon wrote:Okay, tangent, to add another petty one to the irritation pile (As really, there wasn't anything major.) I found it amusing that many of the Metaguards were given more tropes than some of the main ARG characters. Like freaking Moriarty and Don Juan.

Metaguards seem to be a very self-centered breed. That's why I pride myself with having only two tropes by the end. I am so awesome.

I feel like a meme picture would be warrented here. LESS TROPES THAN THE OTHERS, BASK IN MY HUMILITY

WackyMeetsPractical wrote:

Connor Fallon wrote:Okay, tangent, to add another petty one to the irritation pile (As really, there wasn't anything major.) I found it amusing that many of the Metaguards were given more tropes than some of the main ARG characters. Like freaking Moriarty and Don Juan.

Metaguards seem to be a very self-centered breed. That's why I pride myself with having only two tropes by the end. I am so awesome.

Its because we will all eventually become raging monsters bent on homicide.

Connor Fallon wrote:Okay, tangent, to add another petty one to the irritation pile (As really, there wasn't anything major.) I found it amusing that many of the Metaguards were given more tropes than some of the main ARG characters. Like freaking Moriarty and Don Juan.

I feel that does make sense on some level, though, for an ARG. The players are setting the drama (see above) so they would have more tropes.

Bear in mind this is my first ARG ever so maybe it isn't actually that way, but it makes sense to me. For the record, I don't have any tropes on me.

As for the nasty secrets situation, shout out to Scarab for releasing the early cut of Make Metaguards out of You to calm that down. That was a clever and well-done thing.

Connor Fallon wrote:Okay, tangent, to add another petty one to the irritation pile (As really, there wasn't anything major.) I found it amusing that many of the Metaguards were given more tropes than some of the main ARG characters. Like freaking Moriarty and Don Juan.

Yeah, I noticed it too. We didn't interact with them much at the time I was mostly in charge of the character sheet. After that, I dropped out (just got tired), and it went downhill from there.
My intention was to make another pass through Susie and construct the page as I go along when it ends (which is now). Also, I still have to make a proper picture of Brad, with the bunny ears, as I promised.

Now, about paranoia. I'll say it again: my actual irritation here was that the Cabal didn't act as expected. It took us WEEKS to understand that the actual actions were expected from us, not them (even though acting was in their interests), but I don't regret our paranoid gambits that much. If there was an actual secret society bent on destroying reality... well, let's just say that my paranoia was pretty downplayed.

Connor Fallon wrote:Okay, tangent, to add another petty one to the irritation pile (As really, there wasn't anything major.) I found it amusing that many of the Metaguards were given more tropes than some of the main ARG characters. Like freaking Moriarty and Don Juan.

Portion of that does have to do with the fact that we weren't repeating tropes from their actual character pages from their respective stories. That ended up with...not a lot of tropes to mention.

eli_gone_crazy wrote:So, I guess the lesson was, #AdellWasRight.
Seriously, the guy's been about honesty from the beginning.
And yes, I was in the wrong. I should have approached things differently. It is my only regret in this ARG. that I didn't stop to think about the consequences of my actions.
That said, I think that the lessons I learned that night are invaluable. They helped me become a better gamer, and a better friend.
In the future, if I'm ever in situations like that, I hope I take some of Adell's wisdom, and Scarab's patience. They are invaluable, and I wish to be more like them.

I was never made aware of the chat until after the game was over, and had I known more about it I would have tried to put my foot down on it for sure, but ultimately I can see that my constant ranting about honesty at least had an effect on some of you guys :3

Adell wrote: was never made aware of the chat until after the game was over, and had I known more about it I would have tried to put my foot down on it for sure, but ultimately I can see that my constant ranting about honesty at least had an effect on some of you guys :3

Heck if you'd been there I wonder if half of the arguements would ever have started in the first place

Connor Fallon wrote:Right now my biggest irritation is that more of you are not following me on Twitter. What's up with that? Where is the love?

I'm following you now Connor, are you happy now? <3

I second Connor's irritation. My Twitter follower count determines my self-worth you know. Same as the amount of facebook friends I have. WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME?!?!?!

But here's another minor irritation. When Quixote was at Tripky's inn after he's abandoned it, and only found some broken SD cards and a few illegible business cards for "Mann Photography" you guys spent nearly an HOUR asking Don questions about the business cards, completely ignoring the mysterious blue shards until I finally had to speak through Don and tweet "I've learned all I can from these cards".

I do appreciate the thorough questioning and hunt for details, but you had me pulling my hair out a bit on that one.

That reminds me of narrated games like Alan Wake where sometimes Alan just has to straight up tell you, "I couldn't go that way."

How about the lack of smart phones among players?

BlackWolfe wrote:How about the lack of smart phones among players?

I was irritated because I had a smart phone but there weren't any echoes in the phoenix area

Heh Tom, did you ever watch Yahtzee's review of Alan Wake? There was a line akin to, "Most games will have you walk into a room and see a smelly dog, with a camera angle that lets you see the smelly dog, but Alan Wake has you walk into a room, then suddenly loudly narrate SUDDENLY I SPOTTED A SMELLY DOG IN THE ROOM and then zoom right into the smelly dog."

Game still rocks though.

Alan Wake is fantastic.

Back on topic, we wish everyone could have had a smart phone, but you can't win them all, I guess. Getting publicity for Layar was a goal of ours, so we couldn't just cut the requirement.