Training School Discussion

[crisisrain]

Before I begin I'd like to point out that I extend this discussion to those outside of BV and I actively encourage you to take part in this if you're interested in the training school! Sign ups will not be limited to BV members in any way, anyone is welcome! Don't be shy, all opinions are equal and we'd love to hear them! Apologies for my grammar fail today.

EDIT: You can go and express an interest in teaching at the school ICly over here.

Previously the training school worked on the system of teachers and students signing up, but nothing really came of it and nobody knew what sort of initiative they needed to take in order to make it work. To fix this there are a 2 main systems that could be put into place that I'm aware of (I apologize I am a little out of it lately). I'm gonna write them up and you guys can figure out which one would work best in Luceti. Simple enough, yeah?

The main principle of the training school must be put into the equation at all time. The point of this is to prepare characters for drafts, invasions, missions etc. To teach non-combatants how to defend themselves, to improve the combat ability of existing characters and even to supply those who are capable of fighting with an opportunity to spar against someone else. It can become another opportunity for characters to develop new CR as well if they assigned to someone they are unfamiliar with. And finally this doubles on another level as a beneficial chance for players to practise writing out fight threads, which can be intimidating to those who have never done them before.

Edit 2: This is of course not limited to physical means of combat, teaching magic such as damaging spells, healing, support and so on would be totally cool to do as well and encouraged (though cross canon spells are raised in difficulty to learn in Luceti, hence why we have filial spirits)! You could even teach someone how to make a molotov if it was IC for your character. We're not trying to raise an army here though, remember that this school is mostly for self defense against the third party. Be realistic about what your character can learn, play fair and if you're unsure of anything feel free to ask us or ask the mods.

So with our goal outlined let's discuss the best way to approach the school system. There are pros and cons to all of them, I'm not gonna highlight everything and there's no poll since I'd like to hear opinions people might have!:

1. Partner System Style
People sign up, then BV assigns them to each other. It's then up to the players to make the contact and plan things out, whether they do this in a thread, or via appointment post. Like with Hydra Social (which is effective might I add) there is always the problem that when someone drops and they were assigned to someone else then that person is left out, also with hiatuses, people forgetting and so forth this can often lead to nothing actually happening. It's based entirely on the drive and initiative of the players to contact each other and work it out. This is similar to the system the training school used previously.

2. Collaborative Log Style
People sign up and then we throw up a log once every month or two for people to actively log their threads with (which can double up as a BV meeting). Students can choose which teacher to tag based on their own interests and vice versa, people after sparring can also post to generate interest. Soul Campaign uses a very similar style for it's morning training logs. This style can either work amazingly if people tag into it, or it can flop dead instantly if nobody tags. The best way to prevent the latter is to inform people the log is going up beforehand with the OOC comm or even Plurk and to keep it regularly scheduled (excusing events and intros of course, which is why if we did adopt this style I would recommend it take place outside the app cycle month).

3. Combination Style
There's also the possibility that both these ideas could be combined together so that we can have regular logs and also encourage people to interact in their own time. The main downside to this is that it will put a lot of extra work onto the people running the training school and it could become very easy to loose track of what we're doing. Though we can always encourage people to put themselves out there anyway, we just can't control whether they actually do.

4. Something Else
I'm more than certain there are other ways out there we could make this work that haven't been thought of yet. If you do have a suggestion by all means post it! There's no right or wrong answers to how this can be run, it's all down to which we believe as a group would be the best method to approach it! In an ideal world we'd pick the best system and it would run beautifully, but this isn't ideal, there's always the chance it doesn't work and we have to fix it up somehow. That's why I think it's best we discuss this together and get all the possible issues sorted out in advance. Y/N/YYY?



Essentially, with any system there would need to be a list of people who have signed up. I personally think the previous sign up method should be reworked so that it's not specific to people being either "Students" or "Teachers". Instead we can have people list their current combat skills, the combat skills they want and whether they can teach others or or want to spar, then regardless of system used we can still match them up. Like blind dating, only less corny and with more violence. If you comment feel free to comment to other people don't assume it's just me you're talking to XD