The All About Dreamcasting Thread

[ourchair]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Okay, Doom and I discussed some points and here are the two points where we differ, and that's not surprising because they are controversial proposals.

PROPOSAL 1: A season of Dreamcasting will begin with a thread where everyone who wants to participate, names three (3) properties they would like to see in the game. If a participant names a property, then they are beholden to use one of those three properties for the next round that they moderate... as is S.O.P when they win.

If a participant wants to name a property already named by another participant, they must choose something else instead. It doesn't matter anyway, because whoever named what doesn't matter. This serves as a laundry list of potential rounds and ensures there is variety.

In execution, that means even a game season where only four people participate, there are 12 possible round ideas. The actual purpose of this structure, is as mentioned, to ensure variety, so that we don't go monotonously scraping the bottom of the barrel or whatever.

It's a complicated sounding mechanism, but its really very simple. It also plays off the fact that people want to see rounds they wouldn't ordinarily cast themselves.

So for example Doom says, "Scalped, Fantastic Four, Northlanders." Ourchair can't pick any of those so he says, "DMZ, Desolation Jones and Civil War," Now, Ellis lovers like Moony must now resort to something else. If each person won once, then that's a maximum pool of 9 possible properties, instead of say, the old ways were everyone just wants to see the Avengers, and nobody gives a rat's *** about Godland.

However, Doom's counterpoint:

I think this kinda takes away the surprise of what the next round might be or possibly sway the vote of the round to someone who might not normally win or doesn't have the best cast just so we can get to the next round.

For example: Bluebeast says he's gonna do a Dark Avengers round. The current round is Runaways and Bluebeast cast Malcom MacDowell as Chase Stein. Now while that idea is toally ****ing awesome and you know it----it's obviously not the best cast and people are voting for him just so we can get a Dark Avengers round.

Valid point, but I'm hoping people aren't that silly. What do you think?

PROPOSAL 2: When the moderator specifies a cast, you may not add new characters to that cast, unless you kick someone out. In practice this means that if I named a Justice League round with the core seven, you can't say, introduce Booster Gold without having to kick say, Green Lantern or Wonder Woman out.

This is to prevent people from taking a round and going crazy with it, by trying to cast the entire damn franchise or property to the point where it just devolves into unappraisable mess.

Doom's counterpoint:

Hmmm. That I'm not too crazy about. Mostly because I've seen rounds that require me to cast someone that I feel may not work in a story or film adaptation.

Case in point: Superman Round. How many people cast Metallo or Parasite? I never asked for them to cast them because I thought they wouldn't serve a purpose in my film. But others are tempted to cast out of pure fanboyism.

I think Doom misunderstands me here. You CAN cast obscure characters, you just have to kick someone else out. The understanding is that you've swapped someone else out for someone more important to YOUR Dreamcast.

If your fantasy Spider-Man film needs to have Beetle as an important sidestory villain, then you CAN. You just gotta get rid of someone else, with the implicit understanding that either a) the character isnt in your story or b) Isn't too important enough to you that the actor who plays him is set in stone.

To wit:

This probably isn't as useful a rule for rounds set to have small casts, but it's a common instance for people to set a cast and then someone casts 17 characters, which I think is kind of insane. So, this is a rule built mostly to keep people from going overboard past a cast that may have already been big.

(Like, I don't want someone to do an Avengers round and set Cap, Thor, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Black Widow, Hank Pym, Wasp, Hulk, and then suddenly people are casting everybody else who has been an Avenger, just cause THEY CAN.)

Subjectively speaking (and on a minor point) I think it is also difficult for people to really be expected to assess multiple sprawling casts, especially when you consider that most people's brains break down after the first nine characters. Worse, some rounds have seen people going I like Big-*** Cast A, but I chose Big-*** Cast B because of Arbitrary Deciding Factor that really doesn't say anything about why one wins over the other.

So what do you think?

Kindly structure your responses.

 

[ourchair]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

And on a final note, whoever wins the Superman round gets the lead for the next round. I'm just trying to set the rules in like I always promised I would.

 

[Ultimate Houde]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

On the second point, I agree with Ourchair. Namely, in the GI Joe round, Bass casted a huge mess and people voted for it, mainly because it had a bunch of actors that everyone knew. While I casted the cores and didn't get a vote because my names didn't match with Bass' huge list.

It's a way of keeping things even I feel.

 

[Random]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Okay, Doom and I discussed some points and here are the two points where we differ, and that's not surprising because they are controversial proposals.

PROPOSAL 1: A season of Dreamcasting will begin with a thread where everyone who wants to participate, names three (3) properties they would like to see in the game. If a participant names a property, then they are beholden to use one of those three properties for the next round that they moderate... as is S.O.P when they win.

If a participant wants to name a property already named by another participant, they must choose something else instead. It doesn't matter anyway, because whoever named what doesn't matter. This serves as a laundry list of potential rounds and ensures there is variety.

In execution, that means even a game season where only four people participate, there are 12 possible round ideas. The actual purpose of this structure, is as mentioned, to ensure variety, so that we don't go monotonously scraping the bottom of the barrel or whatever.

It's a complicated sounding mechanism, but its really very simple. It also plays off the fact that people want to see rounds they wouldn't ordinarily cast themselves.

So for example Doom says, "Scalped, Fantastic Four, Northlanders." Ourchair can't pick any of those so he says, "DMZ, Desolation Jones and Civil War," Now, Ellis lovers like Moony must now resort to something else. If each person won once, then that's a maximum pool of 9 possible properties, instead of say, the old ways were everyone just wants to see the Avengers, and nobody gives a rat's *** about Godland.

However, Doom's counterpoint: Valid point, but I'm hoping people aren't that silly. What do you think?

I agree with Doom, you're making that a little too complicated than it needs. And the Surprise factor plays a big part for me. People should definitely make suggestions on next round, but I don't think we should really put that much restrictions on choices like that.

PROPOSAL 2: When the moderator specifies a cast, you may not add new characters to that cast, unless you kick someone out. In practice this means that if I named a Justice League round with the core seven, you can't say, introduce Booster Gold without having to kick say, Green Lantern or Wonder Woman out.

This is to prevent people from taking a round and going crazy with it, by trying to cast the entire damn franchise or property to the point where it just devolves into unappraisable mess.

Doom's counterpoint:I think Doom misunderstands me here. You CAN cast obscure characters, you just have to kick someone else out. The understanding is that you've swapped someone else out for someone more important to YOUR Dreamcast.

If your fantasy Spider-Man film needs to have Beetle as an important sidestory villain, then you CAN. You just gotta get rid of someone else, with the implicit understanding that either a) the character isnt in your story or b) Isn't too important enough to you that the actor who plays him is set in stone.

To wit:So what do you think?

Kindly structure your responses.

I understand, you just don't want casting to go crazy. I say as a rule you state how many need to be cast and maybe some wiggle room for supporting character/cameos. For example, you must cast the big 7 from the Justice Leagues, plus one villain, and up to 3 other characters, You are free to swap characters. Or to make it simple just say 10 castings in all, 7 of which are required. Because adding certain characters can help shape to feel and direction of the movie and adds an original touch. But I don't think that you must immediately sacrifice another character. Just give it a ceiling

 

[bluebeast]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

I'll just be glad in the fact that I was part of this conversation. And I do like the proposals they make sense.

 

[Langsta]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

 

[DARKKNIGHT]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

While I don't like the idea of their being set rounds at the beginning of a season, I do think that there should be some way for participants to have a hand in what the rounds will be. Maybe have the winner of the last round propose a few choices and then let the participants vote on the best one. And just for clarifications sake, is this Dreamcasting based solely on comic books/graphic novels or are we going to bring books, movies, other things into the mix?

 

[ourchair]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

And just for clarifications sake, is this Dreamcasting based solely on comic books/graphic novels or are we going to bring books, movies, other things into the mix?

This is an all properties Dreamcasting. Not limited to comic books at all. I see no reason to confine the thread to comics, considering that it would expand the scope of the game to prevent it from devolving into Round 20-30: Comic Books Nobody Has In Common.

 

[DARKKNIGHT]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

This is an all properties Dreamcasting. Not limited to comic books at all. I see no reason to confine the thread to comics, considering that it would expand the scope of the game to prevent it from devolving into Round 20-30: Comic Books Nobody Has In Common.

My thoughts exactly. Besides casting different types of mediums from week to week might help to keep things exciting.

 

[Zombipanda]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Hm. Interesting points, ourchair, but a couple suggestions.

In regards to the first rule.... My problem would be that if people pick the three properties they want to do, then have to moderate those properties, they aren't going to get to compete. The other issue is that you only get to twelve rounds (with four people) if everyone wins the same amount of times. What if everyone picks two or three properties, which go to a pool. Whenever somebody wins a round, they get to pick one property for the next round, and replace it in the pool with another property. How's that?

And for the second issue... It sounds like you'd get the exact same results from the moderator just pointing a cap on cast size. I mean if someone sets the round as Superman and the moderator suggests Clark, Lex, Lois, Perry, and Jimmy, and someone replaces four of these roles with other characters, that's really just the same as saying "cast limit of five". I'd say each moderator should set the parameters for cast. He might say a cast size of up to twelve characters for GI Joe, or like, six primary characters and two sequel characters for Star Trek.

 

[Dr.Strangefate]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

In regards to the first rule.... My problem would be that if people pick the three properties they want to do, then have to moderate those properties, they aren't going to get to compete. The other issue is that you only get to twelve rounds (with four people) if everyone wins the same amount of times. What if everyone picks two or three properties, which go to a pool. Whenever somebody wins a round, they get to pick one property for the next round, and replace it in the pool with another property. How's that?

I really like this.

 

[Victor Von Doom]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Okay, Doom and I discussed some points and here are the two points where we differ, and that's not surprising because they are controversial proposals.

PROPOSAL 1: A season of Dreamcasting will begin with a thread where everyone who wants to participate, names three (3) properties they would like to see in the game. If a participant names a property, then they are beholden to use one of those three properties for the next round that they moderate... as is S.O.P when they win.

If a participant wants to name a property already named by another participant, they must choose something else instead. It doesn't matter anyway, because whoever named what doesn't matter. This serves as a laundry list of potential rounds and ensures there is variety.

In execution, that means even a game season where only four people participate, there are 12 possible round ideas. The actual purpose of this structure, is as mentioned, to ensure variety, so that we don't go monotonously scraping the bottom of the barrel or whatever.

It's a complicated sounding mechanism, but its really very simple. It also plays off the fact that people want to see rounds they wouldn't ordinarily cast themselves.

So for example Doom says, "Scalped, Fantastic Four, Northlanders." Ourchair can't pick any of those so he says, "DMZ, Desolation Jones and Civil War," Now, Ellis lovers like Moony must now resort to something else. If each person won once, then that's a maximum pool of 9 possible properties, instead of say, the old ways were everyone just wants to see the Avengers, and nobody gives a rat's *** about Godland.

Valid point, but I'm hoping people aren't that silly. What do you think?

I guess it's not that I thought people might be that silly....but my counterpoint was a based on something like this happening before (not officially and I can't remember which round----but people were talking about the idea they had for the next round and I believe the most popular next round choice canidate won).

I was saying that to prevent this possibility from happening...why not just exclude that option alltogether?

And Zombi came up with a pretty good alternative:

Hm. Interesting points, ourchair, but a couple suggestions.

In regards to the first rule.... My problem would be that if people pick the three properties they want to do, then have to moderate those properties, they aren't going to get to compete. The other issue is that you only get to twelve rounds (with four people) if everyone wins the same amount of times. What if everyone picks two or three properties, which go to a pool. Whenever somebody wins a round, they get to pick one property for the next round, and replace it in the pool with another property. How's that?

This is a really good idea and I think a readily accessible pool of properties for people to pick helps twofold:

1. A pool of properties available beforehand helps people like me who take a while to build casts....find the perfect headshot...crop pics...write up casting reasons...etc., a good heads up on possible properties I need to cast. Instead of giving me 10 days to come up with something---I now know that I very well may have to come up with a cast for Dark Avengers and Fables. Giving me more time to plan and cast ahead of time so that when/if the round comes up, I'm not scrambling for time and submitting a property I'm not too fond of but submitted it anyways due to deadline restraints.
2. The pool of Dreamcast possibilities can serve as a list of comics, books, movies/TV shows, etc., that people may want to go ahead and get familiarized with before the round is upon them and now they can't play because they have no background on the property. If I decide that I'm gonna throw the Luna Bros.' Sword in the pool and people haven't read it yet...instead of not participating...they have time to go and track down a TPB volume at the bookstore or watch the DVD seasons or whatever.

So in short....I likes it.

PROPOSAL 2: When the moderator specifies a cast, you may not add new characters to that cast, unless you kick someone out. In practice this means that if I named a Justice League round with the core seven, you can't say, introduce Booster Gold without having to kick say, Green Lantern or Wonder Woman out.

This is to prevent people from taking a round and going crazy with it, by trying to cast the entire damn franchise or property to the point where it just devolves into unappraisable mess.

Doom's counterpoint:I think Doom misunderstands me here. You CAN cast obscure characters, you just have to kick someone else out. The understanding is that you've swapped someone else out for someone more important to YOUR Dreamcast.

If your fantasy Spider-Man film needs to have Beetle as an important sidestory villain, then you CAN. You just gotta get rid of someone else, with the implicit understanding that either a) the character isnt in your story or b) Isn't too important enough to you that the actor who plays him is set in stone.

Ok....now I get it. I misunderstood you earlier.

That I have no problem with. I can understand cutting out Jimmy Olsen in order to accomodate Mercy. It makes sense to exclude Gwen Stacy if you plan on your story revolving around MJ AND her friend Liz.

I understand, you just don't want casting to go crazy. I say as a rule you state how many need to be cast and maybe some wiggle room for supporting character/cameos. For example, you must cast the big 7 from the Justice Leagues, plus one villain, and up to 3 other characters, You are free to swap characters. Or to make it simple just say 10 castings in all, 7 of which are required. Because adding certain characters can help shape to feel and direction of the movie and adds an original touch. But I don't think that you must immediately sacrifice another character. Just give it a ceiling

To piggyback on Random's thoughts:

We don't want to get cast crazy. And that's why we have always had a cap on how many people to cast (although I think some people still go over). To my knowledge the cap has always been 10 characters. Anything more and it's just too much.

I think the general rule of thumb (this phrase even funnier after seeing Boondock Saints) here is that moderators need to really take a look at who their core cast choices are. While doing the Superman round, I knew that there were going to be people who want to cast Bizarro, Metallo, Parasite, etc....but I also knew you couldn't have a Superman film without a few key personnel. So I made those people my core casts (at least 5) and left it up to the individuals on who they wanted to have as their supporting cast (no more than 10).

While I don't like the idea of their being set rounds at the beginning of a season...

Do mean in terms of property choices or number of rounds?

I think the golden number of 12 rounds per "season" was because after 12 rounds....the game tends to die off due to dwindling participation numbers and events going on in the real world (we get a lot of players in the summer because of school breaks, but once school starts up again...those players now have other priorities when they get on the internet).

Plus....after each season, a small break occurs and people get to recharge. When the game starts back up you now have more new properties to dreamcast as well as an opportunity to go back to previous properties already done and do them again.

 

[DARKKNIGHT]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Do mean in terms of property choices or number of rounds?

Property choices.

 

[Victor Von Doom]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Maybe I'm not seeing what you're so apprehensive about? :?

It's not like we're saying that even though we're on round 2, we know for a fact that round 7 is gonna be Fantastic Four. We're saying that to whomever is leading round 7...here's several property choices for to pick from.

It alleviates the burden of trying to decide what to pick. You don't have to rack your brain trying to figure out what project to do......there's ideas already laid out before you.

 

[DARKKNIGHT]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Maybe I'm not seeing what you're so apprehensive about? :?

It's not like we're saying that even though we're on round 2, we know for a fact that round 7 is gonna be Fantastic Four. We're saying that to whomever is leading round 7...here's several property choices for to pick from.

It alleviates the burden of trying to decide what to pick. You don't have to rack your brain trying to figure out what project to do......there's ideas already laid out before you.

I don't have a big problem with it, I just think it would be better if the winner selects several possible topics and then the participants vote for the best one. That way there is still an element of surprise to the round topics yet they are topics that have widespread support and interest. The other method would work fine though...I'm just being stubborn.

 

[Zombipanda]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

I don't have a big problem with it, I just think it would be better if the winner selects several possible topics and then the participants vote for the best one. That way there is still an element of surprise to the round topics yet they are topics that have widespread support and interest. The other method would work fine though...I'm just being stubborn.

Well, if we have a thread dedicated to the pool of submitted properties, then the guy decided the next round can look there to see what people seem enthusiastic about. So, we'd have one game thread and a discussion thread going on at any given time. And at any given time, we'd have the same sized pool of ideas to pull from.

 

[DARKKNIGHT]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Well, if we have a thread dedicated to the pool of submitted properties, then the guy decided the next round can look there to see what people seem enthusiastic about. So, we'd have one game thread and a discussion thread going on at any given time. And at any given time, we'd have the same sized pool of ideas to pull from.

Why can't we just have a temporary thread for the sole purpose of voting on the next round, and then when we are done voting and a decision is made it can be deleted? Can you not delete these things?

 

[Zombipanda]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Why can't we just have a temporary thread for the sole purpose of voting on the next round, and then when we are done voting and a decision is made it can be deleted? Can you not delete these things?

Eh.... I guess so. It just seems like adding an unnecessary step to me.

To piggyback on Random's thoughts:

We don't want to get cast crazy. And that's why we have always had a cap on how many people to cast (although I think some people still go over). To my knowledge the cap has always been 10 characters. Anything more and it's just too much.

I think the general rule of thumb (this phrase even funnier after seeing Boondock Saints) here is that moderators need to really take a look at who their core cast choices are. While doing the Superman round, I knew that there were going to be people who want to cast Bizarro, Metallo, Parasite, etc....but I also knew you couldn't have a Superman film without a few key personnel. So I made those people my core casts (at least 5) and left it up to the individuals on who they wanted to have as their supporting cast (no more than 10).

Hm... I think this should come down more to the property being cast. If someone picks Superman as a category, the possibility for stories is wide open. Naturally, Superman has to be cast, but someone could (for instance) propose a Superman In Space! story where all of the traditional supporting cast is supplanted by a different group of characters. But if the choice is Superman: Birthright, the cast list is pretty much already set. I think we should have a healthy variety of both types. Determine the cast size and whether or not there are mandatory roles on a case by case basis.

 

[DARKKNIGHT]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

Eh.... I guess so. It just seems like adding an unnecessary step to me.

My main qualm is that how do we know that everyone participating is going to pick round topics that have broad interest. What if I want my three topics to be "Alice in Wonderland, Jonah Hex, and the Beverly Hillbillies." Those may not be topics that other people want to do. This means that votes could be cast not on the basis of how good an actual cast is, but rather what round they would rather see next time. Even if this doesn't happen my unpopular round ideas could keep others from participating leading to the decline of Dreamcasting that we saw in the not to distant past.

 

[ProjectX2]

Re: Dreamcasting 2009

I thought it had already begun and was going well... :?