I played a couple of my favorite Nancy Drew games recently; I suppose I’ll have to give them write-ups of some kind. Not yet! I’ve gotten myself embroiled in something much more serious.
That’s right. I’m in Pern fandom all over again.
I had a brief love affair with a few Weyrs last summer, then moved on to a couple others in the fall, but I wasn’t able to sustain anything. None of them were quite right. Now I’m over at Eastern Weyr and having a ball. It’s… er… well, it’s just the right size!
In all seriousness, it is the right size. With about twenty active members (don’t quote me on that), Eastern is manageable even for those of us who cut our teeth on the now practically outdated full-post style of PBEMs. I liked Arolos—honest I did—but it was simply too huge (possibly also too full of LCD writers, and BOY do I feel awful for saying that) for me to handle. Any time literally hundreds of messages can come through in a day, I’d say it’s trouble. I certainly wasn’t able to keep up with everything (even if it felt like I could barely get someone to do a vaguely interesting thread with me), and I very much doubted the BoD was. Moreover, in such a huge club with such a huge, devoted membership, it’s kind of tough to reward your players. I mean, let’s face it: rankers are rankers, and a big, shiny dragon beats just about everything. Sure, there are the Craftmasters, the Wingleaders, but there is almost no one who doesn’t want to be either Weyrleader or a goldrider. When there isn’t enough turnover in the membership, there isn’t enough turnover in the game. It reflects the social structure of the Weyr a little to vividly: a few very important people and a thousand scurrying ants. Situation only gets rougher when there’s no BoD turnover (and how often do clubs change their leadership by election these days?), either.
Eastern is small. Eastern is active. Eastern is full of interesting, capable writers. It’s like heaven for a geek like me. I’m still finding it a shade slow, but there are other little clubs out there that could use a boost. Okay, sure, it would definitely help if I had webbie duties or some other BoD-like position, but I’ve been so thoroughly screwed in those so many times that I pretty much hate to ask the fateful question: Can I help? How much fun is it to be an “Assistant Webbie” and do 100% of the day-to-day? Blecch.
The old itch is coming back, though, much as I hate to admit it. I want to take my compendium of knowledge (partially available over in PBEM RPG Resource-land) and turn it into a really well-run, comfortable Weyr.
Yeah, not gonna happen.
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!