Change, Part 1: Caller Automation

[Random McChanse]

This is the first in a series of articles that will closely examine fundamentals of the RoH experience that have not been discussed to this date as they have been so deeply ingrained in tradition that I think people never thought to question them. Why do they need to be discussed? Well, it is clear that as of the past year or so the flow of new players into RoH has considerably lessened, and so has participation in regular RoH dueling. We have made many strides in the past year towards creating interest in the duels and drawing new players in: the Tour (an idea of mine from a year before) was given official sanction and had a very successful run; players became much warmer and accepting of new players then when I started; and the adminstration, in concert with RDI, took strides to bridge the gap between the two communities. However, it never seems enough: if there's not a team league or major event going on, daily attendence in the rooms is greatly reduced. This is a major problem, for I differ from the official stance in believing that the duels are the major "hook" for new players into RoH, as they are what separates us from other FFRPG communities. Then what is keeping new players from coming into RoH, or those players who always seem to be present in the leagues or major events from playing regularly? This is what I intend to seek out in these articles.

This first article, as the title says, is about the automation of certain roles of the dueling community that we have come to expect from callers: namely, the adjudication and posting in the chat the OOC results of each round, i.e. the "(th/th 2-1 Random)" part. There was much discussed regarding this topic when I first introduced the AIM dueling bots (Golems), so I shall say this first: by no means would I want the position of caller to become obsolete. Rather, it would be transformed: a caller would now have much more of an RP/supervisory role, where their main tasks would be encouraging RP, supervising the bot, and acting as a play-by-play announcer (similar to how round descriptions are done now) as the bot would solely return OOC results of each round. There are three main reasons why I think this partial automation would make RoH more accessible:

1) Availability: as was mentioned in the original Golem discussion, having RoH available 24/7, even if duels without a caller present were unofficial/unranked, would both ease the introduction of new players into RoH (especially in a more comfortable environment without the social pressure of being an outsider to a tightly-knit community) and would allow people to engage in casual duels if they felt like it outside of the official times. Furthermore, if a caller was able to be in a room outside of official hours, they could supervise ranked duels then, much like team league referees can call duels whenever they're available.

2) Speed: I mean no offense to my fellow callers, being one myself, but we all know that if we want to keep our descriptions creative and interesting, we must take more time to think and write these descriptions, which becomes increasingly harder as we are calling more duels simultaneously. I would hazard a guess that a single duel with a human caller that is adjudicating more than one duel takes about 20-30 minutes on average, most of which is spent on waiting for the caller to post the results once both players have sent them in. With the Golems, I have almost never had a duel last more than 5 minutes. This means a lot to new casual players, who would much rather not spend a big chunk of their RoH night waiting for duel rounds to resolve.

3) Replacability: As we all know, the hardest part of being a caller is knowing a discipline's matrix to the point where you can instantly know the result of two moves as soon as they are in, and know generally how you're going to describe those moves. The "round checkers" built into the FC interface alleviate this difficulty to a degree, but even then it is difficult to handle multiple simultaneous duels quickly. Also, a certain level of trustworthiness is required of callers, as it is their responsibility to fairly call duels and report them for the standings. However, the new caller that I propose is much more of an RP-focused type, and is thus more replacable by a responsible RPer if one is not available than the current role of caller is. Duels would still be unranked without an actual caller present, but their main roles could be fufilled in their absence.

I daresay people will have much to discuss in relation to this article, and I invite them to post their opinions, suggestions, and comments below. I know what I've said is controversial, and that's my intention: I think RoH needs to take a step back and consider the game without tradition coloring our perceptions, and if that requires me to be a devil's advocate let it be so. RoH has been around for the past 15 years, but that doesn't mean it's a perfect system.

[G]

*My First thought, and pretty much only thought, even without reading the entire proposal.

I will never, -Never- advocate automated calling. I refuse to take the human factor out of this game.

* - I am speaking for myself, not for the RoH as a whole, but I am willing to bet that my view on the subject of automated calling will be common.

Now, to add my nitpicking.

a caller would now have much more of an RP/supervisory role, where their main tasks would be encouraging RP, supervising the bot, and acting as a play-by-play announcer (similar to how round descriptions are done now) as the bot would solely return OOC results of each round. There are three main reasons why I think this partial automation would make RoH more accessible:

The only thing this does is stop the caller from adding (TH/LC, 1-0 Gnort)? This isn't a big deal at all and does not need to change, at all. As to supervising "the bot" It's much easier to just have the caller use the great caller tool that's there.

Speed: I mean no offense to my fellow callers, being one myself, but we all know that if we want to keep our descriptions creative and interesting, we must take more time to think and write these descriptions, which becomes increasingly harder as we are calling more duels simultaneously. I would hazard a guess that a single duel with a human caller that is adjudicating more than one duel takes about 20-30 minutes on average, most of which is spent on waiting for the caller to post the results once both players have sent them in. With the Golems, I have almost never had a duel last more than 5 minutes. This means a lot to new casual players, who would much rather not spend a big chunk of their RoH night waiting for duel rounds to resolve.

Creativity is limited by those who wish to be creative. As a caller for many, many years myself, I find that the responsibility of the actions is up to the Duelists themselves, rather than my colorful description of them. In effect, your caller Golem duels lasting about 5 minutes.. that's boring. What did it consist of, sending the moves, and the same style of regurgitation happens, each time a thrust hits a low cut, every time the call is "X lunges and strikes above Z's low strike." There's a severe lack of imagination there.

Honestly, more people come for the people interaction that just the dueling. Dueling is secondary to the RP and should always be that way. This seems to advocate power dueling where RP takes second seat to the matrix game. It should not be that way.

Replacability: As we all know, the hardest part of being a caller is knowing a discipline's matrix to the point where you can instantly know the result of two moves as soon as they are in, and know generally how you're going to describe those moves. The "round checkers" built into the FC interface alleviate this difficulty to a degree, but even then it is difficult to handle multiple simultaneous duels quickly. Also, a certain level of trustworthiness is required of callers, as it is their responsibility to fairly call duels and report them for the standings. However, the new caller that I propose is much more of an RP-focused type, and is thus more replaceable by a responsible RPer if one is not available than the current role of caller is. Duels would still be unranked without an actual caller present, but their main roles could be fufilled in their absence.

First "The "round checkers" built into the FC interface alleviate this difficulty to a degree, but even then it is difficult to handle multiple simultaneous duels quickly." I *strenuously* disagree. I really don't know the Duel of Fists matrix. The copy I have is difficult to read and doesn't even include the results if there's a feint involved. That Caller Tool is a godsend, and I've found calling 3 duels at once doing fists, which I have done, to be incredibly easy because of it.

Second "Also, a certain level of trustworthiness is required of callers, as it is their responsibility to fairly call duels and report them for the standings. However, the new caller that I propose is much more of an RP-focused type, and is thus more replaceable by a responsible RPer if one is not available than the current role of caller is."

Whoa, whoa, whoa. What you've *just* done there is say you don't trust our callers. I trust the callers to be more respectable and responsible than the random duelist who can create any two user names, using two webpages, using two flashchats and logging both characters at the same time to duel himself and win easily. It's a good thing you say it wouldn't be used for official duels, because the abuse potential is beyond anything I've ever seen from a human caller. And just because some RPers can be responsible does not mean that they all are. It's just as easy for a responsible RPer to use the tool as an irresponsible one.

An RP-focused caller? We really do have them. They're the ones being creative with new calls each round, trying to spice them up in each match. Not a generic RP caller that calls the same rounds each time they happen.

This entire automated caller really just reads as "Forget the RP, just duel" and "Let the caller bot call the same duels over and over." It doesn't seem to benefit RoH in any way beyond that. Even for un-official duels. I'd rather find a random RPer online to call my duel if it's unofficial. I've done it for people I don't know, or like. I've done it for Duel Masters, DoS, DoF, DoM, for official and non official hours. I've done it for IFL and TDL, and everything in between. You'll be hard pressed to find someone more experienced in overall calling than I am.

So, in short, Caller Automation takes the human factor out of duels, isn't creative or spontaneous, and leads to a great potential for abuse.

[Random McChanse]

I figured you'd say that , which is why I'd advise you to read the whole post, where I make it very clear that only the adjudication and recording of duels would be handled by the bot. The caller would still be necessary for RP, supervisory, and commentating purposes, and their presence would be required for the bot to record ranked duels.

[Charlie Nausikaa]

I disagree with the premise that RoH has seen a decline in new players over the past year. I think it's obvious that with the strengthened ties with RDI, we've seen a surge of new duelists both in IFL/TDL and in the RoH rooms. If anything I'm encouraged to see that the fundamental principles of RoH are still a draw to the role playing community at large.

Personally, I believe the game is an addition to the community that enhances role play. The role play isn't a side show. It is the show.

Taking time between rounds, gives players time to role play out the round. This shouldn't be about how many duels you can get in within an hour. And, from what I remember of the bot, it was vastly more unreliable than any of the callers in the forum. The caller tool makes it perfectly capable to call quickly, be creative with rounds, and be accurate.

When Swords was its busiest, there was a caller who would take up to an hour to call one duel. Did that stop people from dueling on his night? Absolutely not. His night was actually one of the busiest. Why? It became a night of fun role play and that's what people are here for.

Having hosts present, encourages role play. There are many, many examples of this -- Imp and his trouble-making, Teagan and her enchanted rings, etc. Many of us callers pride ourselves in trying to come up with ideas that enhance the role play during our particular shift. Also, hosts are present to help welcome and guide new players. And if the argument is that a caller would still be present then even some sort of "24 hour/7 day a week" benefit is gone as well.

With the admin team making clear that they are trying to encourage role play within the forum, I see it unlikely they'd go along with an idea that in effect discourages role play.

[G]

Personally, I believe the game is an addition to the community that enhances role play. The role play isn't a side show. It is the show.

Taking time between rounds, gives players time to role play out the round. This shouldn't be about how many duels you can get in within an hour. And, from what I remember of the bot, it was vastly more unreliable than any of the callers in the forum. The caller tool makes it perfectly capable to call quickly, be creative with rounds, and be accurate.

I want to focus on this, because of it's accuracy. For those who don't know or realize, the duels were created as "A supplement" to RP. The RDI was first, and some people wanted to fight as well. Well, dice fighting sucked and took the actual skill out of it. So the DoS was created to assist the RP factor. So, the Duels should Not be the initial focus. The duels should back up the RP

[G]

I figured you'd say that , which is why I'd advise you to read the whole post, where I make it very clear that only the adjudication and recording of duels would be handled by the bot. The caller would still be necessary for RP, supervisory, and commentating purposes, and their presence would be required for the bot to record ranked duels.

This really, then, is no different than what the callers do currently with the current caller tool. The only exception is that the duelist send the rounds to the bot instead of the caller.

[Random McChanse]

I disagree with the premise that RoH has seen a decline in new players over the past year. I think it's obvious that with the strengthened ties with RDI, we've seen a surge of new duelists both in IFL/TDL and in the RoH rooms. If anything I'm encouraged to see that the fundamental principles of RoH are still a draw to the role playing community at large.

While I agree that those emigrating over from RDI have been great in increasing RoH's player count over this year, I'm looking for ways to appeal to people outside of the freeform roleplaying community, which RoH will have to appeal to in the future once the FFRPG sites have exhausted their potential. And I must make it very clear that I do not consider IFL/TDL equal to RoH in these critiques, as they are very different from RoH in the way that they run things, and in their very purpose: the team leagues are based (imho) on competition in the games over roleplaying, while RoH has been, and is continuing on the path of, roleplaying over competition. The fact that the major spikes in RoH activity have been during periods where TDL or IFL is running, or when a major RoH event (like the Madness, Duel Master, or Tour) is running, only solidifies my opinion that the games are the "hook".

Personally, I believe the game is an addition to the community that enhances role play. The role play isn't a side show. It is the show. Taking time between rounds, gives players time to role play out the round. Having hosts present, encourages role play. There are many, many examples of this -- Imp and his trouble-making, Teagan and her enchanted rings, etc. Many of us callers pride ourselves in trying to come up with ideas that enhance the role play during our particular shift. Also, hosts are present to help welcome and guide new players.

As I said to G before you, hosts are in no way made obsolete by my proposal; they will still be necessary for all of the reasons you just gave, and more. Players who wish to roleplay between the rounds can still do so before sending in their next move; if necessary, the bot could be hardcoded with a waiting time to give an incentive to roleplay. Given that our culture ostracizes those who don't roleplay during duels, I think the social pressure would do the job without any tweaking necessary.

As to your bolded statement, I think that opinion comes from the fact that the majority of the community are more roleplayers than gamers; I am one of the few people that stuck with RoH this long solely for the game, not for the roleplaying. Part of this imbalance towards roleplayers lies in the fact that, as I've been told, the RoH duels were largely stagnant in terms of really new ideas until the last couple of years; playing the same game for a decade, especially a relatively casual game, would likely make one stay for the roleplaying. However, I feel the duels have a great deal of potential in appealing to gamers like me who don't normally roleplay or write storylines, and I think that RoH is currently stepping away from that potential.

With the admin team making clear that they are trying to encourage role play within the forum, I see it unlikely they'd go along with an idea that in effect discourages role play.

Their new approach is what I'm afraid of, and is what in part precipitated me starting these articles (which have been a long time in coming, but I didn't want to offend anyone with no reason). What the recent announcements have said to me is that the admins don't consider the game to be enough of a drawing factor for new people, and so they're moving their focus away from the one thing that makes us different from any other FFRPG community. Their change in focus is understandable; they've been trying to bring in new members using the game for a while now, and their only true success has been with RDI, so it's natural to want to appeal to the roleplayers. That's why I think we should examine the traditional infrastructure of the system, to make sure we aren't missing anything that's keeping the game from attracting new players.

[G]

Quote:
With the admin team making clear that they are trying to encourage role play within the forum, I see it unlikely they'd go along with an idea that in effect discourages role play.


Their new approach is what I'm afraid of

You're afraid of the Admins approach in encouraging RP? I have to respectfully disagree. The RP is why the RoH is here, not the duels. The duels just assist in the RP. If people were here only for the duels, all you'd see is people in the room, and the caller going "X TH, Z LC, 1-0 X"

There's an IRC room that it's just like that, except the caller actually does the RP for the players. We had one of those guys come here, I personally dueled him, and according to Billy, he said that our way was too complicated, he said Imp was Droll as a caller. And basically insinuated that the fact that the duelists were supposed to describe their moves was crazy.

[Random McChanse]

Personally, I believe the game is an addition to the community that enhances role play. The role play isn't a side show. It is the show.

Taking time between rounds, gives players time to role play out the round. This shouldn't be about how many duels you can get in within an hour. And, from what I remember of the bot, it was vastly more unreliable than any of the callers in the forum. The caller tool makes it perfectly capable to call quickly, be creative with rounds, and be accurate.

I want to focus on this, because of it's accuracy. For those who don't know or realize, the duels were created as "A supplement" to RP. The RDI was first, and some people wanted to fight as well. Well, dice fighting sucked and took the actual skill out of it. So the DoS was created to assist the RP factor. So, the Duels should Not be the initial focus. The duels should back up the RP

Just wanted to clarify on the origin of DoS; it's always been my understanding that DoS existed before the RDI, perhaps before Q-Link. The RDI just picked it up as a good, easy-to-learn yet hard-to-master combat resolution system. Otherwise, I think someone would know who created it, considering we have good records on the rest of the histories.

I figured you'd say that , which is why I'd advise you to read the whole post, where I make it very clear that only the adjudication and recording of duels would be handled by the bot. The caller would still be necessary for RP, supervisory, and commentating purposes, and their presence would be required for the bot to record ranked duels.

This really, then, is no different than what the callers do currently with the current caller tool. The only exception is that the duelist send the rounds to the bot instead of the caller.

Yes, except the bot can call unofficial duels whenever the caller is not in the room, and is much faster at adjudicating (even with a time delay). I think these would be pretty significant for new players. I will grant you, however, that the current system allows available callers to call ranked duels at unofficial hours, and I suggest that be implemented for the time being.

[Random McChanse]

Quote:
With the admin team making clear that they are trying to encourage role play within the forum, I see it unlikely they'd go along with an idea that in effect discourages role play.


Their new approach is what I'm afraid of

You're afraid of the Admins approach in encouraging RP? I have to respectfully disagree. The RP is why the RoH is here, not the duels. The duels just assist in the RP. If people were here only for the duels, all you'd see is people in the room, and the caller going "X TH, Z LC, 1-0 X"

There's an IRC room that it's just like that, except the caller actually does the RP for the players. We had one of those guys come here, I personally dueled him, and according to Billy, he said that our way was too complicated, he said Imp was Droll as a caller. And basically insinuated that the fact that the duelists were supposed to describe their moves was crazy.

I have no problem with encouraging RP, but their tone led me to believe that they're doing so at expense of advertising or adding new features or events for the game. The fact that Del described the roleplaying as the "hook" for new players, rather than the game, is evidence of that approach. I could just be paranoid, however.

[G]

I will grant you, however, that the current system allows available callers to call ranked duels at unofficial hours, and I suggest that be implemented for the time being.

By ranked, I am only assuming you mean like, Warlord vs Master At Arms. We had, at one point, a list of available callers who'd be willing to call during unofficial hours. I think that is temporarily off for now as we do a few changes. Anyway, there's no stopping anyone from calling duels at any time so long as people are willing. I've called uncountable unofficial duels in my day.

Aside from that, if you mean Callers calling official duels at unofficial hours, not gonna win that one at all. I don't really think you mean that though.

Also, any other assistance for dueling, such as practice duels against a computer, and a matrix for all 3 duels, are all found at www.duelingzone.com

There's not much need for much else.

[Karen Wilder]

You're afraid of the Admins approach in encouraging RP? I have to respectfully disagree. The RP is why the RoH is here, not the duels. The duels just assist in the RP. If people were here only for the duels, all you'd see is people in the room, and the caller going "X TH, Z LC, 1-0 X"

There's an IRC room that it's just like that, except the caller actually does the RP for the players. We had one of those guys come here, I personally dueled him, and according to Billy, he said that our way was too complicated, he said Imp was Droll as a caller. And basically insinuated that the fact that the duelists were supposed to describe their moves was crazy.

Taking time between rounds, gives players time to role play out the round. This shouldn't be about how many duels you can get in within an hour. And, from what I remember of the bot, it was vastly more unreliable than any of the callers in the forum. The caller tool makes it perfectly capable to call quickly, be creative with rounds, and be accurate.

When Swords was its busiest, there was a caller who would take up to an hour to call one duel. Did that stop people from dueling on his night? Absolutely not. His night was actually one of the busiest. Why? It became a night of fun role play and that's what people are here for.

Having hosts present, encourages role play. There are many, many examples of this -- Imp and his trouble-making, Teagan and her enchanted rings, etc. Many of us callers pride ourselves in trying to come up with ideas that enhance the role play during our particular shift. Also, hosts are present to help welcome and guide new players. And if the argument is that a caller would still be present then even some sort of "24 hour/7 day a week" benefit is gone as well.

With the admin team making clear that they are trying to encourage role play within the forum, I see it unlikely they'd go along with an idea that in effect discourages role play.

These are the key arguements here for me...

I cannot stand dueling someone who doesn't at least try to RP something. Personally, I loved old Fish (the caller Charlie is talking about), and so did lots of others. Sure, he was not fast.. but he was an RPer and encouraged RP in others.

If it weren't for Callers, there would be no (or very few) "Special" rings in DoF.

Many of our Callers (past and present) have been instrumental in attracting and keeping people around. If it weren't for Callers like Luth and Golden, I probably would not have continued playing after my first couple of visits to DoS.

This "Calling Bot" does almost nothing that the current system doesn't already do. The only thing it does allow is unofficial duels between two people when nobody else (who knows the matrix) is around. That's it. Anything else can, and is, already done by the calling tool or just someone knowing the matrix.

In fact, as Al said, the existing calling tool allows a Caller to function even without knowing the matrix fully.

Now, while I have been on record as not being too fond of overly-descriptive callers... we don't have that problem anymore. Yeah, the calls don't always match my RP... but without some kind of colour commentary, the game would become dreadfully boring.

[G]

Sure, he was not fast..

Not fast? I know people who're dead IRL who call faster than he did. But I liked Fish. And I liked the RP. Getting one of his rings and having it go 15 rounds, however... ugh. One duel took the whole shift.

[Karen Wilder]

I still remember the Challenge match I had him call...

He did the best job with the "Pomp and Ceremony" of it all.

The formalities... the announcements... acknowledging the Seconds and Ladies...

Haven't seen much of that in Challenges lately.

[Charlie Nausikaa]

I really miss those nights when Nych and Fish were calling. The pair of them would have me in stitches the entire night.

I still remember the Challenge match I had him call...

He did the best job with the "Pomp and Ceremony" of it all.

The formalities... the announcements... acknowledging the Seconds and Ladies...

Haven't seen much of that in Challenges lately.

He was. I think you really bring up a good point because I think a lot of callers have gotten away from that, myself included. We talk about how to bring meaning back to the titles and I think that's where it starts. We have to treat the challenges like they're special events.

Going forward, when I call challenge matches, I will make sure that I do concentrate more on those traditional elements.