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Comments
But... would prose be an essay? Poetry? Figuring out ingredients in certain foods? And from what I've seen (mind you, not in charge of programs) it's interactive learning.
I don't think "essays" are fundamentally bad in every case. If you have a house that has writing as its main goal, then there should be writing requirements.
I think the primary reason why "essay" requirements have, rightfully, gotten a bad reputation, is that they are on one hand often very unimaginative from the side of the requirement-giver (hrm, we need some requirement about religion too, let's throw in an essay on a god of their choice), and on the other hand require the student to put in lots of time/work outside the actual game. It's not too dissimilar to what coding curing systems used to be like before server-side systems: some people enjoyed it, sure, but it was a significant time investment that was detached from the actual game world and entirely non-interactive.
That's why I think that apart from certain exceptions, requirements should be designed in such a way that they can be completed entirely or almost entirely in-game (and no, having your character sit in an office for two RL hours while writing your essay in Word doesn't count). So it's not really about "writing" or "not writing". It's about trying to keep writing at a level where you can cope with it on-the-fly by typing stuff in-game at live speed.
Sure, expecting a bit of preparation and some notes is perfectly fine, but it shouldn't get to the point where students spend more time working on their requirements while logged out/journaled/afk than in-game.
On a completely different note though: I'm kind of surprised how firmly ingrained the notion of having "requirements", "interviews", "ranks", etc. is in Achaea's houses. Including the new ones. Surely, that's not the only way an organisation can be run. I've never yet seen a house where, say, hierarchy is based entirely on housefavours. Or democratic elections. Or defeating your superiors in combat. Or bribing your superiors. Or where there are no ranks at all, but only equals. Or where people automatically advance in rank every year. There always seem to be ranks, to which you get by passing interviews, for which you have to complete requirements. As if that was some kind of written law for houses. I'm still hoping some of the new houses to come will dare to try some completely new concepts of organising themselves.
→My Mudlet Scripts
I would figure Virtuosi would and should do more actual writing (including formal-ish writing), whatever form that might take. But yes, prose is absolutely an essay. Poetry... something all its own. Definitely something I expect from the art house though. Your members hopefully like those things, and are encouraged to do interesting, creative pieces. But essays in most orgs are pretty much soul-crushing, both because the members of those orgs aren't as dialed into doing them, and because the assignments are almost never particularly inspiring.
I agree with the first part as well, but this for emphasis on another aspect of houses that deserves continued attention.
The thing I like about spoken lectures is that you should not write word for word anyway. I know I type pretty fast and some people probably type slow enough that typing everything up when you give the lecture might be a pain, but a good speech has an outline to tell you what order to talk about things, and you should know your stuff to fill in the actual details.
And if you know what you want to talk about well enough you don't even need an outline.
Then it enters the realm of active roleplaying, and if you're annoyed at writing 200 words of roleplay text, you... you... might want to... consider LARPing instead?
Any estimated timeline for Mhaldor?
@Nim I type so slow that most people would probably qq in the middle of any speech I gave.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
@Shirszae: you must train in mountains then and stuff!
Type out song lyrics as the song is playing. Play typing games. Have @Shirszae give on-the-fly lectures. Catch a fish with your bare hands. That sort of stuff!
Well, its not really that I type slow per se. Its a bit harder to explain, but the crux of the matter is that I get nervous sometimes.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Yeah, essays aren't inherently awful, just non-interactive. Specifically, it's a lot of work for something that, in all likelihood, very few people will ever read, and because someone eventually does have to read it, it creates work even for the novice aides or whatever who probably wouldn't be reading it if they didn't have to do so.
I tend to view Houses as factional expressions on a general concept, and essays are one way of fleshing out that factional experience*. They're the branches of a tree, I guess, as opposed to its trunk, which in this metaphor would be HR5, a sort of minimal familiarity generally speaking of this organziation's factional take on whatever concept. As such, they're great hoops to jump through after you hit HR5 because they're 'opt-in' mechanics evaluated by people who have developed an interest over time in that same kind of thing.
Houses are built they way they're built because they give you a reward mechanism for progress that keeps you playing; Achaea is still a game, after all, and any successful game requires some minimum of confrontation/conflict/challenge, no matter how simple/minimal that challenge may be. So I guess the reason you don't see a whole lot of different House progression structures is in part based on the limitations of the medium at hand. Nobody wants to be the House that tried and failed and lost a good deal of its active membership because of it.
*whereas lectures are a dynamic tool better suited for a broader understanding of a general topic, essays are a static tool that excel at fleshing out one idea in great detail without interruption.
I agree - another problem with essays, though, is that they tend to cover a rather specific topic, and it ends up that almost everyone's essay is the same, since it's less of a means of expression and more of proving you have a basic grasp of the house culture. It's great to prove that, but if you're going to channel player creativity, I think it's better if you have a result people are proud of - something that goes in libraries and stuff, and future novices can read and stuff. I think opt-in essays could channel that a bit more.
It's not even specifically limited to scholarly houses. There's an awful lot you could write on regarding combat as well.
The ideal case for essays are a tool of reflection or like philosophical/theological development of an idea. If they're ending up all the same where a certain requirement is involved, it's probably a requirement that a lecture or discussion would better handle.
They aren't about RP - they're a requirement for the OOC player to do the equivalent of schoolwork, and that is emphatically not why most people play games.
I literally don't think that anyone ever actually read any of the essays I wrote beyond Melodie, and that's because I asked her to proofread them.
Not sure why herbs are required, per se. If they pass a curing test and do some spars, that's what you really want to know, right? Who cares how much kelp they have on hand?
Guidelines might be OK but as a requirement, herb counting is kind of dumb. Will you be the one to fail @Iocun because he ran out of plumbum and never noticed?
Nim said:
As an organization that wants people readied to defend, we do think it's necessary they start maintaining a decent stockpile. No, the intention is not to be anal-retentive about it (I handed out minerals and tattoos to fill the gaps in the requirements of the last person I tested but shh... >.>) but we're concerned with making sure that the newbies have an idea of what they'll need to help them start out in the arena.
Edit: but I do agree, which is why I'm going ahead and make sure the proctors aren't out to fail them on technicalities like that and help them along instead.
@Sarapis I could have told you that you didn't like essays
@Kaden: And the slippery road starts...
I don't type very fast either, mostly because I can't always remember the words I'm looking for, so I have to take a quick look in a dictionary. But between a very slowly typed in-game speech and a pre-written speech where new paragraphs appear on your screen in ridiculously fast succession, I'd still much rather take the former.
People pre-writing lectures and then delivering them in-game by copy-pasting way too long paragraphs in too fast a succession tends to be a huge pain. When people come up with their texts more on the spot however, they typically deliver them one sentence at a time in a reasonable tempo, which I find much more agreeable to follow.
→My Mudlet Scripts
The reason given for the herb count, is so you are prepared for combat when you finally graduate. I guess the idea is, you finally get to fight, and are not going to think about cures. If you keep the character for months or years, that small amount you are require to have won't last long, but it gets you through the first few hunts. For the newb, it means a lot of effort that is simply work, and not fun.
The problem comes in when one person breaks their butt to buy every single one of the cures required, and then overhears a conversation where someone else gets the cures handed to them. Or someone else gets told about a good place to bash over the clan talk, but then the directions to the site are actually given in a tell you don't get to hear.
@Kaden: Will you test them on arena locations as well? (actually that'd be a good spin for a geography test, but still...) My point was that it's great if you tell them what they need, but a Mojushai exam once required me to have a shimmering orb. I did. I passed. I almost never keep one anymore, since if a thief wants to steal from Nim, she's all like bring it on!
When writing a test requirement, think about what metric you are testing, and how it makes sense to test that. Maybe you have, but I just see no reason for it... especially if it's a combat house. Throw them in the arena a few times, they will very quickly learn the value of curatives if they spar lacking a few!
@Unad:
To be honest, it does sound more and more as if you simply don't like requirements in general.
That's perfectly understandable of course. I don't like completing requirements either, which is why I never really alted. But it still leaves me curious about how you'd personally run a house.
And no, this is not a mere rhetorical statement, implying that a house can't run without requirements. It's honest curiosity about how a (I assume?) new player would like houses to work.
→My Mudlet Scripts
I don't think it's necessarily a "slippery slope" to not be super rigid about requirements, especially novice requirements. The reason behind house advancement isn't to create super Achaeans who are absolute masters of their chosen sphere, but to provide a sense of purpose and growth that keeps them motivated. Sure, that sense of growth may be reduced a bit when people start to realize they can pass any interview without even trying, but it's generally rather easy to see if a student gave a honest effort or not.
Personally, I've barely ever failed a student in their early interviews, unless it was extremely obvious that they were just fooling around for the sake of it. I don't actually remember ever failing someone there, but I might have forgotten one or two cases. If they answered a question wrongly, I'd tell them where to look up the answer or explained it to them myself and allowed them to re-answer. Those early interviews were, to me, never actual tests but merely meetings to ensure the novice knew certain things afterwards, even if they didn't know them before the interview.
Interviews for more advanced members were a whole different thing however. When it came to things like post-HR5 advancement or so, I was perfectly willing to be as tough and rigid as I liked. At that point, you're dealing exclusively with players who enjoy house advancement and succeeding in completing difficult requirements, since it's entirely voluntary there, so I might as well make it challenging for them. I don't think there was ever a danger of a "slippery slope" leading from simplifying things for novices to also simplifying them for advanced members. At least not for me.
→My Mudlet Scripts
Totally different things, thought. Its quite possible to have great timing with a pre-written speech or performance, and have horrible timing with something you are coming up with on the spot. In both cases, you just need to know how to pace yourself, add variety to what you are doing/saying, etc.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
Nah, arena locations aren't really that important. We're not trying to teach them everything like the old houses. There aren't any anti-theft requirements, etc. You also have to remember that we have to deal with the newbies that come in and we were told to keep our early stuff newbie friendly. So we put that in partially because some curing systems go crazy when you're missing herbs and also because just tossing them into an arena would be like trying to train someone to shoot without guns.
Edit: @Jamethiel. What @Iocun said. I'm not going to pass you if you walk in without any of the materials but I'm not about to fail you either because you actually had to eat a herb or two while hunting or because your boar tattoo decided to be fickle. Ideally the proctor would be correcting mistakes and helping the newbies procure what's missing instead of just outright turning them down.
@Shirszae: Sure. There are people who manage to deliver pre-written text very well. It's just that for people who are unexperienced about it, bad delivery tends to happen far more often with pre-written texts. When writing on the spot, some level of pacing happens automatically, due to the time it takes you to write. It may not be perfect pacing, but it's generally more or less fine. When copy-and-pasting pre-written stuff, you need to pace yourself much more consciously.
→My Mudlet Scripts
@Kaden: S'how I learned. Also @Nellaundra and then you and @Iocun beating me five hundred times. Still, I think you're missing my underlying point, based on the curing system statement.
I'm not saying they don't need to get curatives, I'm saying they will have to whether you require it or not.
Nobody tell @Jules about the book requirement for the Outriders...I mean seriously 6 pages?
Unless each page has a minimum requirement of characters, thats quite pretty easy, as you just need to pace whatever you write around 6 pages.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.