Pubmeet 2014 This last meet was a very good experience for us. We didn’t have a hard sell to push, such as in previous years when we were adding mechanics that would in some players’ opinions restrict their game. Nor was there serious grumblings about recent GM’ing decisions. Even Darak was laid back though I suspect this may have been due to the short course of medication he was on. In other words we were there to present nice stuff to a bunch of gamers over a truckload of beer. The main drive of this pubmeet was to flesh out what we are developing which for the non-phoenix players, i.e. for those without Nexus accounts, details can be found in the other article in this issue. The main issue raised during the debate was on the subject of Characters, specifically on the conversion from scientists and officers when character mechanics are introduced. There were two points of contention: Having too many characters will be a pain in the arse but lots of scientists are useful for maximising bonuses over multiple research bases. Having new skills available but capped out characters, i.e. question on re-skilling. The premise in the first point is that by amalgamating lots of skills into one scientist, though making things simpler removes some of the flexibility of shuffling the scientists around especially where the scientists is being shared between multiple affiliations. If other skills were added then it could spell the end of this practise according to some pessimists. We weren’t quite sure what to make the issue. Was it a good enough reason to keep hundreds of extra and largely pointless characters in the game?

Darak is currently unmoved by the plea for free re-skilling as it sets a dangerous precedence insofar as any future expansion of available skill sets sends the masses clamouring for another call to re-skill. He is of the opinion that characters have developed and benefited from the skills they have developed in Phoenix and should not be able to change them. He does however concede that the conversion should allow capped out characters to at least be able to keep developed skills even if this breaks the cap rule at the time of conversion. The counter argument is that the new skills would have been chosen as they were more useful and as a result they have already lost out.

The debate though was based on too many unknown quantities to be much more than a hat tip to a future storm if there are too many constraints on the conversion. It was very clear that a few wanted to ignore any previous training and only convert their experience pools and apply templates to these pools.

While I am not sure what will happen with scientists I suspect that we will probably do something along the lines of converting experience and removing all their skills but giving them ‘training pools’ based on skills they have paid for so that they can learn skills without incurring the stellar cost. How this will take into consideration more points than the character cap will allow I have no idea. I do know though that we will think a lot longer and harder on the subject further down the line.
The other thing that came up which was something of an eye opener was the demand that items that have infrastructure values be made general knowledge when added if it seems reasonable that such an item be general knowledge even if added to the game through a special action. There was quite a lot more to the pubmeet but in general the following pretty much covers everything:

What Happens at a Pubmeet?
From my (KJC’s) point of view, the weekend is divided into two distinct parts – beer and socialising on Friday followed by the business end on Saturday. Saturday is further split into a presentation followed by around 6-10 hours of ‘quiet chats with the GM’ by various groups.

Beer
Friday is my favourite part because it’s a chance to chat informally (not that the private chat’s are particularly formal) while guzzling beer. It’s a time to hear rumours and listen to the in-game events that have entertained during the year which may have nothing to do with the results of special actions. There is generally a lot of cross-affiliation banter as small groups form around somebody delivering anecdotes. There is often a bit of baiting and trash talking. I may let slip a few points about NPC’s or drop a few hints on ideas for the coming year. Players also use this time to debate tactics and motives with some epic fails being laughed off or lamented.

Fast food is ordered and consumed to soak up some of the beer.


Here’s the leader of the DEN (Dave) enjoying a traditional Dewiek snack.

Presentation
Saturday normally starts, in terms of official business, sometime in the early afternoon and typically goes through design and development documents already handed out. It is at this stage where glaring oversights are pointed out (if they exist, not that they every do, nosireebob) and players get their opportunity to require a zillion caveats and additions to the proposed designs while repeatedly expounding on over-complications in the design.

While we aim to have the presentation take at most a couple of hours, this has turned out to be up to four or more depending on how often and far we are led off the beaten track. The longest presentation was when there were two distinct mechanics camps with one faction favouring open attacks anywhere while another favoured draconian restraints based on exorbitant stellars fees leaving a lot of middle ground to argue over. From this came affiliation relations, charters and related mechanics.

Private Chats
After the presentation has broken we (Darak, Emma and I) depart for the quite front lounge of the hotel where we hold private chats with the factions. This gives the opportunity to discuss matters that need fleshing out and are otherwise unsuited to PM’s, special actions and emails. Often these are ideas on how to develop the affiliation or faction though may have foreseen snags or are currently impossible within the game mechanics as they stand. They may be requests for advice or a better understanding of a series of events in the game. It is here that we often hear anecdotes that cannot be told in public.
While these normally conclude around midnight we have found ourselves still chatting into the early hours. At some point though we discover that people have stopped wanting to talk to us.

The Rest
While for us the weekend is Phoenix, for others it has grown to mean so much more to the point where players often arrive midweek and set off back home on the Monday morning. In some circles, Thursday is the new Friday and it is on this day that best deals are struck freeing up the rest of the weekend for other matters. These now extend to board games, roleplaying and for a few players, finding somebody to fix and update their laptops (it’s handy that the game is dominated by tech-savvy people). Reconciliations, cake and skulduggery can all be found over the course of a weekend.

Blackpool
If the idea of hanging around a hotel for an entire weekend seems stifling there is always the town to visit. Blackpool, tourist Mecca has a lot to offer with its recent and extensive town centre redevelopment, new tram service, vast number of bars and nite clubs and of course the Pleasure Beach, Tower and Piers but to be honest most people only leave the hotel merely to get a quick bite to eat or smoke a fag. Apparently some wives are incredulous that people have been attending for a decade and have still to see the sites. That said, on many years the weather has been so horrendous that only the brave and foolish would consider abandoning the comfort of the lounge chairs.

Origin of the Phoenix Pubmeet
Back in the old days at the height of Play by Mail gaming when letter writing was an art or at the very least a necessity, computers were silly money and even national telephone calls cost a packet, the opportunity to meet fellow gamers and discuss at length plans for the coming year was invaluable. That it was in a pub conveniently situated next to a train or coach station was a happy bonus. People would turn up, chat, wave around sheets of paper much to the bemusement of the local patrons and many would drink copious amounts of beer before staggering across the road back to the station. These were often player organised in pubs around the country, usually London or Birmingham and rarely attended by KJC staff. Kevin, when he did attend would be bought large numbers of drinks, make lots of promises and invariably forget them or more likely discover that what sounded trivial turned out to be a coding nightmare once it hit the programming department.

Back then Quest meets ruled, though some dual gamers also brought along their Beyond the Stellar Empire data with them. Despite this, there was growing interest in BSE players forming their own pubmeet. The problem was a few drunken hours were insufficient time to broker all the trade deals and treaties with various factions along with the sharing and correlation of exploration and investigation data accumulated over time, especially for those that could not attend the regular player organised pubmeets. What was really needed was a weekend. The first pubmeet weekend was announced for early May back in 1999 and as there were quite a few players around Bath this was chosen as the venue (that and it was organised by players). It proved to be a resounding success with a small hoard camping out at David and Emma Bethel’s house. Enthusiasm was running high so much so that players wanted a second 2-day event in the same year. By happy coincidence Danny’s girlfriend (who remembers Danny?) worked at a local hotel which opened during the season but was prepared to stay open for a weekend after the Illuminations finished. This was to be the first of the Blackpool meets at the Sutton Park Hotel on 5-7th November 1999 and we have been there every year (as far as I recall) every since. So much and so little has changed since. On the one hand the average player is around 15 years older and most now have kids though a few lucky ones have watched theirs bugger off. Some factions at the height of their glory are now dull embers while others are firmly in ascendance. The hotel has switched owners and gone forever is the jukebox and Jolene while casually smoking cigars in the comfort of being indoors while an in-game enemy has a rant at you is also a thing of the past.