The First Layer, In-depth Options

[shinyjiggly]

I would like the idea of Rasque being a human corrupted by the box, but the name "the shadow tribe" for the group that he came from doesn't seem to sound like it quite fits.
The idea behind it is fine, it just needs a different label to go by.
Then again, this is all just my opinion. You guys can disagree with my biased opinions all you want if you really want to and I won't mind.

Also, how plain/fancy looking is this box going to be? and wouldn't it make more sense for him to receive the box from somebody instead of finding it in the middle of the road and going "lol, awesome box" along with gaining all those abilities and dilemmas?
Maybe I'm leaning too close into slightly unimportant backstory plot that probably doesn't belong in this thread.

[bulmabriefs144]

Ooh, I like the idea of the box being desire.

Okay, so i condradicted my design. I said in the beginning that the main boss was the rtp monster from xp. But then I talked about Rasque, and I kinda like that better. Rasque is a human I think, or at least a "shadow tribe kin". Which idea do we like better?

I just kinda figured, inside treasure boxes is always what people store that's valuable to them, so it fits. Also, even if we're not using the Pandora name, its original idea was that when it opened there was despair, meaning some part of it must've promised that "hope" that was still inside (not buying the curiosity bit of the legend). Between the two concepts, it sorta popped up. We'd have to have an object lesson of this, by having a flashback of a former "lucky person" such as a poor guy who could barely manage by farming, ending up buying a nice city house then the treasure turning on him (gold turning into black smoke is a must), leading him to die on the streets (now he can't take care of himself, making him worse off than before).

I like the insanity thing. If he's promised power, sometimes it does make ppl change.

Grey/black skinned people sounds cooler. Dragon men are a dime a dozen, and you'd be half-expecting him to wield fire abilities.

This post has been edited by bulmabriefs144: Jul 10 2012, 05:05 AM

[MEands]

I would like the idea of Rasque being a human corrupted by the box, but the name "the shadow tribe" for the group that he came from doesn't seem to sound like it quite fits.
The idea behind it is fine, it just needs a different label to go by.
Then again, this is all just my opinion. You guys can disagree with my biased opinions all you want if you really want to and I won't mind.

Also, how plain/fancy looking is this box going to be? and wouldn't it make more sense for him to receive the box from somebody instead of finding it in the middle of the road and going "lol, awesome box" along with gaining all those abilities and dilemmas?
Maybe I'm leaning too close into slightly unimportant backstory plot that probably doesn't belong in this thread.

Yeah shadow tribe was kinda thrown off the top of my head. For some reason I pictured the Shadow Temple of Zelda and that's where it came from. I'm not opposed to Shadow Clan, but if we come up with a better name then I'm all for that.

Yeah I couldn't really think of a good way for him to find it, but I feel like it's really cliched to have the seemingly nice person who gives the hero something that is actually evil. It makes the hero seem gullible.

I just kinda figured, inside treasure boxes is always what people store that's valuable to them, so it fits. Also, even if we're not using the Pandora name, its original idea was that when it opened there was despair, meaning some part of it must've promised that "hope" that was still inside (not buying the curiosity bit of the legend). Between the two concepts, it sorta popped up. We'd have to have an object lesson of this, by having a flashback of a former "lucky person" such as a poor guy who could barely manage by farming, ending up buying a nice city house then the treasure turning on him (gold turning into black smoke is a must), leading him to die on the streets (now he can't take care of himself, making him worse off than before).

I like the insanity thing. If he's promised power, sometimes it does make ppl change.

Grey/black skinned people sounds cooler. Dragon men are a dime a dozen, and you'd be half-expecting him to wield fire abilities.

Idk about having a flashback, because the story of Rasque is already a flashback of the main heroes.

Grey/black skinned people? And I think we might need to scrap the dragon man idea.

Dang, how far are we going to go into the backstory? We have to remember this is still just a game and it doesn't affect the plot a lot. [Unless we can find a way to subtly imply that the rogue program has a part of "Rasque" inside of it. But that might get too complicated.]

This post has been edited by MEands: Jul 10 2012, 01:39 PM

[bulmabriefs144]

I dunno, he said "shadow tribe" so I'm trying to work out how this guy looks.

Perhaps someone gives it to him. Someone who had it turn on them, and wants nothing to do with it. Or maybe, they won't give it, and he takes it by force (they won't give it for fear of it causing harm to more people).

Well, it is a corrupted code. So we can imply anything we want.

Don't be afraid of too much. We have a team here (I've done way more stuff just as a solo effort). The only real issue with the story being too big is confusion. Basically, a good video game is like a good book, you wanna flesh out characters and concepts, and not skimp anywhere.

I was under the impression that the whole gaining the box could be done in present-day, such as after a boss was defeated, the villain being thwarted since one of his minions is gone, decides to gain more power and grabs it. In another cutscene, he's using such power, and it sorta does a flashback there, to the very last person who used it. Yea, two flashbacks would be extreme.

[MEands]

Can't do too many flashbacks, that's gonna be confusing. Actually, that's an issue we need to address, how are we going to get this story across? Is it just explained in the beginning of the game through a cutscene? Do the players find it out by talking to civilians? Is it only hinted? Do you learn it through a game guide in layer 2?

Another thing I was thinking about. Whenever it is that the game glitches out, we need to make sure it looks believable, but not believable enough that an impatient player will quit the application before we have enough time to show that it's a fakeout.

[Sparrowsmith]

The players may discuss it with each other, or the townspeople, books, etc.
I would like to refrain from using flashbacks. The world building is optional, it's there to set the scene for players who want it.

As for coming out of the game, I still feel like a simple animation would be the best way to do it. Let the player sit back and watch in confusion.

[MEands]

Haha excellent. I love being confused by games but I much more love confusing others with my games.

Once we get to the part of needing the scene in the game, may I give it a try? I've been using flash for some time now, I think I could whip up something nice.

[Sparrowsmith]

I had you in mind

I dabble in flash/gimp/FL, so I can make short animations with music, but I'm not terribly good at it. If I'm better by the time we get around to it though I can certainly lend a hand.

[MEands]

Awesome I'm not too good with gimp and idk what FL is so the combination should work great.

Also, we've made significant progress and chnages to the plot, I think it's almost time we tell kayden that the "Story's direction" thread needs updating.

EDIT: Here, I've added notes about changes into the main post.

[Show/Hide] Layer 1

A group of somewhat trope heroes are standing nearby a castle/dungeon of some kind. [We've created more towns and areas, does this mean the players now start somewhere other than the final dungeon?] They are discussing an event which will happen soon, and even though they are not ready to take on Rasquel they have to go now or never [We are giving them the chance to level grind for special opportunities in this battle ie: being able to deflect his main attack]. They set off into the dungeon, encountering several puzzles and enemies over the course of several short games.[Wait, short games? Does that mean minigames?] While they appear to be stereotypical heroes, their mannerisms and behavior parody typical RPGs. They save prisoners from the dungeon, but openly admit they are doing so for personal gain. The prisoners are also strange, begging to be 'saved' even after being released. The heroes chalk this up to being part of their quest.
During battles we see them talking to one another, issuing commands and working as a team. This also serves as a guide to the players, as the heroes are already quite a high level, and have a range of abilities that compliment one another.
Eventually are heroes reach the boss of the dungeon, but time is of the essence. Just as they're about to take him down and save the land, everything stops, then cuts to black. [He uses the box to use his ultimate attack whick "crashes the game". Have we decided if this happens mid battle or after he is defeated?]
The heroes continue to complain. The game has gone down for the update. While they are all complaining, one of them leaves, saying someone is at the door. [Perhaps we should modify this part a little?]

[There's more written after this, but we haven't gotten that far yet]

This post has been edited by MEands: Jul 17 2012, 05:23 PM

[bulmabriefs144]

Fading to black might be too realistic, depending on how long it happens. Or it might be so commonplace that people think nothing of it (I have black fadeouts every other scene). An error message of some sort would be better (Especially in conjunction with a video of some sort).

Otherwise, I'm with you so far.

Let's flesh out the heroes by class, as we've talked about the nearby towns, backstory, stuff like that. I assume some of these sidequests/minigames are also there for backstory add-ons. I'll make a template, we'll just come up with something rough, and expand on that.

Hero Name
Class:
Abilities:
Personality:

2nd Char Name
Class:
Abilities:
Personality:

3rd Char Name
Class:
Abilities:
Personality:

4th Char Name
Class:
Abilities:
Personality:

(Two Outside Characters)

(However Many Programmers)

(NPCs)

Some of this should go in Character Design, but there isn't a sense yet that it's fully implemented, so some of the mains should go here.

Note: I'm gonna randomly pick four classes, if you guys wanna edit this, it's fine.

Hero Name
Class: Dragoon
Abilities: Jumping, Lancer Abilities, Effective vs. Dragon


2nd Char Name
Class: Priest
Abilities: Healing, Anti-Undead, Buffs

3rd Char Name
Class: Blue Wizard
Abilities: Water/Ice Magic, Air/Lightning Magic (no fire or earth)

4th Char Name
Class: Archer
Abilities: Multi-Attack, Effective vs Flying

This post has been edited by bulmabriefs144: Jul 18 2012, 01:49 PM

[MEands]

I think before we create the layer 1 characters we need to work on the layer 2 characters. This is sorta a backwards way, but we have to remember that the layer 1 characters ARE the layer 2 guys, just in more of a fantasized version.

This would be a good way to show their personalities. The cleric/healer is the more kept to himself/herself one, with no desire for the limelight, they prefer to help people. The tank is probably "that friend" who plans a lot of the events and the one that starts the plans. Perhaps we could show a somewhat trickster character, that in one point in the game, trapped his friends in a cave as a joke.

Also I had a question. Do we plan on playing as every character? Or just playing as the main party member? Or is it going to be a turn based thing where we use all of them?

[bulmabriefs144]

I disagree. We could have quick, stock personalities for the layer 1 characters (they're the people, only more "two dimensional"), but at the same time come up with more flushed out personalities for their real life selves. Sort of a rapid succession thing, where we hint at their core personality, while showing a mostly flat character online. Such that by mannerisms you can sort of figure out who is who, and then get a ton more backstory and character dev later.

Example:

Char 1 is overly talkative. (Layer 1)

Johnny Rogers who uses Char 1 has Tourette's or something and literally has trouble not talking, so he uses his character as a sort of filter to treat these tendencies. It doesn't appear to be working however, and now he's worse off than before. (Layer 2)

The names as well should be a sort of hint as to the real person, not so much that it's similar to their real name but that it suggests something of their interests that immediately becomes apparent from brief time offline. (Such as Gabby above for character 1)

Layer 2/3 could have some picture-quality graphics as well to further distinguish it from the flat nature of the game.

Mainly right now, we could probably get away with holding off on the personality part (as that does overlap), and focus on the nuts and bolts of the characters: what is their name, class, and abilities? Once we have a sense of who they are, moving on to layer 2 and who they are will be a bit less difficult.

Turn based with a party is easiest to actually do. If there was an easy way to get automatic battlers to use strategy (rather than just healing or attacking all the time), I'd say do it. But there really isn't. We should make it look like one party member is leader through clever use of dialogue (offering strategies, etc).

This post has been edited by bulmabriefs144: Jul 19 2012, 09:57 AM

[Kaust]

Yeah, I dug the idea of an error message too, its just got that meta twist (is it the game, is it real D: D: D: )

Can we please see one idea through? We're back to asking questions I asked forever ago (and yes, preferably the 'nut and bolts'; I did also specify a while ago that it was for the 'hard' details that people could actually work with that I started this thread).

So lets go with classes, in fact, lets just absolutely resolve one class. class, not character. The meleers probably the easiest choice (dont have to think up a ton spells) so lets start with him and the abilities he would likely possess.
First off he's going to have a range of attacks that will simply deal more dmg than his basic attacks.
He will have a limited amount of buffs, and they also likely wouldn't be able to target anyone else (he's not a support char after all).
Some AoE attacks, but these always make more sense to me with magicbased characters (control of elements and the likes) so possibly his AoE skills will have a smaller AoE (to account for the range of his weapon)

So for some examples;
Skill name: Berserk
Skill type: Buff
Skill effect: Drastically increases users atkspd and dmg

Skill name: Lunge
Skill type: AoE
Skill effect: User charges forward with weapon raised dealing damage to all who come in contact.

[Sparrowsmith]

[Show/Hide] story of layer 1 (which already has a thread -_-)

Awesome I'm not too good with gimp and idk what FL is so the combination should work great.

Also, we've made significant progress and chnages to the plot, I think it's almost time we tell kayden that the "Story's direction" thread needs updating.

EDIT: Here, I've added notes about changes into the main post.

[Show/Hide] Layer 1

A group of somewhat trope heroes are standing nearby a castle/dungeon of some kind. [We've created more towns and areas, does this mean the players now start somewhere other than the final dungeon?] They are discussing an event which will happen soon, and even though they are not ready to take on Rasquel they have to go now or never [We are giving them the chance to level grind for special opportunities in this battle ie: being able to deflect his main attack]. They set off into the dungeon, encountering several puzzles and enemies over the course of several short games.[Wait, short games? Does that mean minigames?] While they appear to be stereotypical heroes, their mannerisms and behavior parody typical RPGs. They save prisoners from the dungeon, but openly admit they are doing so for personal gain. The prisoners are also strange, begging to be 'saved' even after being released. The heroes chalk this up to being part of their quest.
During battles we see them talking to one another, issuing commands and working as a team. This also serves as a guide to the players, as the heroes are already quite a high level, and have a range of abilities that compliment one another.
Eventually are heroes reach the boss of the dungeon, but time is of the essence. Just as they're about to take him down and save the land, everything stops, then cuts to black. [He uses the box to use his ultimate attack whick "crashes the game". Have we decided if this happens mid battle or after he is defeated?]
The heroes continue to complain. The game has gone down for the update. While they are all complaining, one of them leaves, saying someone is at the door. [Perhaps we should modify this part a little?]

[There's more written after this, but we haven't gotten that far yet]

I don't believe they are starting at the dungeon anymore, but at a nearby town.
Short games refers to the serial nature of this project. I'm not sure if we're still doing this, but I thought we were going to release lots of 'episodes' rather than one long game.
So instead of countless hours potentially being wasted, we can crank out what we make as we make it.
The first game will introduce the heroes, contain some side quests and such, and finish at the dungeon.
The second game will be the players completing the puzzles and defeating the enemies.
A third game would be like the second, but with a boss battle at the end and then the error message.

The crashing should happen mid battle.

I think we can use a flash animation to show the introduction to layer 2. We see the error message get clicked away, then a mouse opens up a chat client and the group begin discussing things. We zoom out to see a pair of hands typing on a keyboard. We hear the doorbell.
"brb guys, someone's at the door."
We cut to outside the house, it's dim, we can just see to figures standing by the door.
We cut in a little closer, the door opens leaving us with three silhouettes due to the light.
We see the main character blink absently.
We see the two characters at the door grinning. They take out a box with a logo on it. A message box appears: "We got the game".
End scene.
The art work would be pretty easy, the animation shouldn't be too tricky either, and it conveys what's going on while maintaining a 'wtf just happened' motif.

[Show/Hide] about character personalities rather than building the classes

Hero Name
Class: Dragoon
Abilities: Jumping, Lancer Abilities, Effective vs. Dragon

I'm going to address some layer 2 stuff here too.
How about the characters chosen within the game represent a kind of ideal to the layer 2 characters.
IE The Dragoon character is very athletic, and chose a Dragoon class to represent that.
However, the super swordsman of the group could be an avid film watcher who WISHES he was an action hero of sorts.

2nd Char Name
Class: Priest
Abilities: Healing, Anti-Undead, Buffs

meanwhile the healer of the group is a bit of a clutz, always getting into little accidents, as such s/he is self trained in doing first aid (kind of a necessity) which let to him/her looking after the rest of the group as well whenever anything happened. When the game got released, they just picked what felt most natural.

Just some thoughts.

I think before we create the layer 1 characters we need to work on the layer 2 characters. This is sorta a backwards way, but we have to remember that the layer 1 characters ARE the layer 2 guys, just in more of a fantasized version.

This would be a good way to show their personalities. The cleric/healer is the more kept to himself/herself one, with no desire for the limelight, they prefer to help people. The tank is probably "that friend" who plans a lot of the events and the one that starts the plans. Perhaps we could show a somewhat trickster character, that in one point in the game, trapped his friends in a cave as a joke.

Also I had a question. Do we plan on playing as every character? Or just playing as the main party member? Or is it going to be a turn based thing where we use all of them?

I think playing as every character is preferred. Puzzles that can only be solved by cycling through each character and doing certain things with them.
I imagine a heavy item that has to be moved in some way, briefly opening a door which gives access to a lever which opens the main door. You choose a character to do each part of the puzzle and then act it out. You carry a rope way above the heavy item, tie it to a rock or something, then toss the rope down to the player below. Depending on which characters you pick, the dialogue changes each time.
The rope is then tied to the object, the rock is pushed off the edge and a pully system lifts the object.
etc etc

I think the classes is an excellent way to show personality.
Layer 2 may have an archer. They love archery, and they are an ace with a bow, but they didn't choose an archer in Layer 1 because archers in games "are nothing like real archers" and they wanted a class that was better suited to their skillset.
Displaying a character's priorities, their doubts, what threatens them, what their goals are, and how they deal with the aforementioned, are excellent ways to develop them.

Reason for edit: These are not hard details.

[thatbennyguy]

[Show/Hide] post about characters personalities

Hey guys, I'm back!

I'm thinking, that since this world is supposed to display many tropes and cliches, because it's Layer 1, then we can just rip a few characters from The Grand List of Console RPG Cliches, because people will be expecting that. The whole concept, in my mind, is that people should be expecting this to be a completely normal RPG, until their whole world crashes down, and then they are thrust into the real world. So the Layer 1 should have the completely trope RPG characters.

e.g. something like this:

Char 1: the protagonist fighter
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Motive: Hometown got destroyed, is the chosen one, has to defeat the evil lord and save the world. Comes from a poor family, with a single mother, and his father is actually the bad guy.

Char 2: the princess summoner
Gender: Female
Age: 15
Motive: Rebelling against royal parent, and is in love with the hero

Char 3: best friend
Gender: Male
Age: 16
Motive: He is actually much cooler than the protagonist, and is always supportive of the protagonist, no matter what.

Char 4: Big tank
Gender: Male
Age: 35
Motive: A big tough guy who is actually a real softy. Leads to comedic situations





Or something like that

Reason for edit: These are not hard details.

[shinyjiggly]

[Show/Hide] post about chars

I don't know exactly why, but I don't really like the idea of resorting to following a list of cliches.
I get that it's supposed to feel a little corny because it's a game (within a game (within our game)), but we should be able to subvert most of the uninspired tropy tripe and still be able to convince the player that this layer is fairly lower in depth than the other layers.

Also, a specific playable protagonist probably wouldn't be best for an online RPG. Usually they give some options for player types and classes that are somewhat balanced, but all have their individual types of perks.

As some others have said before, the people behind these characters originate from layer 2, a layer with much more intimate depth than layer 1. This should be inferred through character interactions and other forms of in-game communication. This also includes character-specific tactics and choices.
So while HoTtIeXXX1234 may have chosen the fighter class, his personality could very well be much different from what the player would infer from the avatar that is shown. How does he like to play?

In short: Create a well-made mask but hint about the face behind it through gameplay and dialogue.

Reason for edit: These are not hard details.

[MEands]

[Show/Hide] post about organisation of layers

If layer 1 is too generic then we won't be able to get any people to play the game. We still need to make it different and appealing to an extent.

I like the idea of hinting at the people but not directly showing their personalities. Now that I think of it, I don't act the same way I do normally when I'm online.

If we're still doing episodes how many should we have? Sparrow, were you saying we should have 3 episodes for layer 1 alone? That seems like a lot.
I feel like if we're going to have episodes we should have 3, and each episode introduces a new layer. Not where we show a new layer at the end of the episode, because that would make the player angry. We could do it like this
Layer 1: Beginning RPG-game's crash and the players escaping to the beach and finding the "end" of the map, perhaps there should be a boss fight to end this?
Layer 2: The creation of the rogue program-introduction of layer 3 and the layer 1 game coming out into layer 2
Layer 3: Layer 3 becomes playable-end of the game

That's just an example, if you guys don't agree with it that's fine, just putting stuff out there.

Reason for edit: These are not hard details.

[Kaust]

As you can see I've edited your posts (don't worry, I haven't touched the content). I did it to make it visually clear how your jumping between ideas and how (even if their about things within the layer) none of these are hard details that the layer itself can be made from.
I mean cmon, this thread alone has been open for two months and we have gotten nowhere. And don't even bother contesting that, because even things we resolve, like the organisation of layers or the error message, are constantly being re-opened rather than actually focusing on one aspect and seeing it through.
I've tried to be as liberal as possible with this, because its work if its just people telling you what to do and obviously I want everyone to have a good time alongside making a good game, but as said we're getting nowhere and since I'm the project's director, its time I took a little responsibility and provided some direction.

[MEands]

You can't really say we've got nothing done, just nothings practical. We do have a good idea of what we want right now.

So the game starts with the 4 players in the town before the dungeon correct? Okay, here's some 2am idea spam.

[Show/Hide] This is the beginning of layer 1. I through in some layer 2 info to show who each character is

A man heavily clad in armor stands in the middle of a bustling machine town. "Come on, what's taking so long?" he rants. This is Johnny, he's all about acting first, then making it up as you go, it's a wonder he's survived all the way to the final boss. A mage turns from the merchant they were previously occupied with, "Dude calm down, he'll be here soon." This is Maya, if it's not Johnny leading the group into trouble, it'll be her organizing an attack strategy, let's just say her plans usually turn out better than Johnny's. "Yeah but we need to go NOW! We're running out of time", Johnny protests. As they're speaking a cleric quietly walks up behinds them. This is Rosetta, she doesn't care much for the spotlight, she's perfectly fine with healing her friends and casting spells on enemies from the background. "You just have to be patient" the mage responds, "Why don't we check out some of the shops in town, I'm sure it could really help out once we get to the dungeon." The armored man grumbles, "Yeah alright, but we're leaving as soon as he gets here!"
The player is then given control of the armored man. The mage and cleric follow behind. There are various shops with various items that give you special abilities. Once the player has checked out all the shops in town (don't worry there wont be too many), it will trigger the event of the 4th party member arriving.
They exit the shop and notice a man in a bandana slowly making his way towards a woman. The armored man calls out to him, "[username]!" The man turns around startled, and the woman notices how close he is and backs away slowly. The bandana man is Kevin, thief class, if you want to put a personality on the face think maybe deadpool. "Hey guys..." he says, upset at his failed pickpocket. The armored man energetically shouts, "We're gonna go to the dungeon now!" "Oh yeah cool, hold on I gotta go buy something." The armored man is enraged, but the mage walks with him to the store. Now you can buy special equipement for the thief, and it explains his special ability [stealth and lockpicking, which is crucial to the dungeon's puzzle]. Once you return to the armored man you finally are able to go to the final dungeon. So you exit into the menu....

There ya go, I think we've got some hard details now. Tell me what you think, feel free to change whatever seems out of place.

[Sparrowsmith]

The episodes thing is to build suspense, intrigue, and a fanbase, while also lightening the load on us. Cranking out three games in a row, even if one is very short, is a difficult thing to do, not to mention interest will be lost between layer 1 and layer 2.
Episodes however allow us to end each one on a cliff hanger (maybe only two episodes for layer 1) and build up to something over time. RRR is quiet these days, but something like this could really garner attention and be groundbreaking stuff. We don't want people saying how great the game is, we want to hear how much they can't wait for the next installment.
My word isn't law, but if we don't release something soon after layer 1, interest will fade.

This is kind of off topic though (sorry Kaust) I just wanted to clarify.

MEands, I like it for the most part, but we could do with some added interactivity and 'game' symbolism. Perhaps a character tries to give something to another character, and the player is prompted to 'accept the item' much like in online games.
Then again, this could give it away too soon.

As for stuff we've accomplished:
-Scene setting town with lore near accompanying dungeon.
-Possible dungeon mechanics (siege, puzzle, boss).
-Levels of characters, amount of levels they'll earn in layer 1, how to preserve these levels into layer 2
-End scene.
-Group mechanics (I don't think anyone opposed of my whole group puzzle solving bit)

Stuff we've discussed which I think we need to pin down:
How to tell the story (I still think one of the characters being an avid RPer would help dupe the players into thinking layer 1 is the game).
leveling system.
Characters (personalities, goals, counterparts in layer 2... I really think this should have its own topic, and not the other characters thread.)
???? (I'm just doing these off the top of my head, there's probably more.)

I agree, we haven't done much, but it's more than nothing. We're planning a very long and extensive game here, but once we actually start releasing them, it should be fairly easy to do, and we can begin a program of releasing each installment (with buffers preferably).
We could speed up this process by being more bureaucratic.
After someone submits an idea, we respond whether we agree or disagree (a simple yay or nay will suffice) so that we can work towards something we all like. If an idea isn't liked by everyone, but is popular, then we can discuss it further to make the vote as near unanimous as possible.

I'm against being bureaucratic though as it stifles being able to bounce off of each other's ideas.

I wish I had more to say, but I don't at the present moment.