git ssb

How do we decide the "big picture"? The rules say:

First, brainstorm a simple overview of the history you want to play. If you were looking in a history book, this would be the one line that summarizes what happens, but leaves out all the details. It should be no more than a single sentence.

It also suggests some ways to have a discussion about our big picture, to refine it.

Is this something we would do as a git issue, or in a thread?

It seems as though I can respond to issues in my regular client (patchfoo) and (I hope) my response will show up git-ssb under the issue.

I don't know if that's the case in other clients, but starting the discussion as an issue and then continuing like this suits me.

@haileycoop, you said

let's just pick an example from the rules and focus on workflow

That works for me. Page 11 of the rulebook gives the following as an example big picture

Refugees carve out a new life in a distant land

I'm not particularly set on exploring that one, but if noone else is strongly opinionated on the topic it's a good enough starting point.

I would also like another title for our first game, alpha or not. There's just too much about refugess in the political debate in Denmark for this to be an attractive subject for me.

The image I had in my head was humans fleeing the Earth in large spaceships to avoid a planetary catastrophe like an impact event. I hadn't considered the current political climate, or that the game might explore the relationship between the refugees and another population. In fact, I'd imagined that the narrative might deal with isolation, since space is vast, and we have yet to encounter other species.

One nice thing about Microscope is that if we had gone with this summary, you could use a vote in the palette to rule out the kind of protectionist, xenophobic narrative that's so common around this issue. That being said, I have no attachment to the topic.

At my office, we use a similar process to this to decide what to eat for lunch. One person suggests something terrible, like McDonalds, and then whoever objects must suggest an alternative. Can you pick one you'd prefer?

One nice thing about Microscope is that if we had gone with this summary, you could use a vote in the palette to rule out the kind of protectionist, xenophobic narrative that's so common around this issue.

You're right, being brainwashed by the current political debate, I didn't think anout that. And even if we choose another big picture, sooner or later there will be other elements that I don't like. And the beauty of the game is that we can choose to explore other corners of the narrative.

I'm all in.

Ahh, I hope my proposed narrative doesn't colour the start of the game too much, then. The rulebook says to avoid preconceptions, and I still want to be surprised!

We still don't know in which direction the story will go, it was just that the words refugees and distant land evoked pictures of North African natives trying to reach Fort Europe by crossing the Mediterranean on a tiny inflatable boat. But please don't let my knee-jerk reaction influence our decision, there are thousands of ways the story could go — and I think we will be surprised.

I had a similar kneejerk reaction (Australia is currently doing awful things to refugees here) but I can see the value in pushing through that edge and avoiding preconceptions.

However, I think this seed maybe misuses the word "refugee" (which I believe points to "one who seeks refuge"). They aren't doing that if they are carving out a new life. I think the seed is pointing to the fact that they are fleeing some untenable situation. And for us, avoiding just the word "refugee" might make it easier to unbundle from some preconceptions.

How about:

Migrants carve out a new life in a distant land

It's sufficiently general I hope? There are other words like "escapee" that could also work.

(I know I'm the one who said "let's just pick one", but now I can see the wisdom in spending some time here)

hey I recommend y'all collect your game chat in a related channel to make it easier to find all the conversations In patchwork you go to the search box near top right and enter e.g. #storygame and then you're looking at posts in that channel and if you compose a message there it will join them

@mixmix these are issues from SSB Git... - will it get collected if we use a hashtag in the content of the issue? (I could test it I guess)

Also, is this causing a noise problem for users who follow us? Is that where the recommendation comes from?

@mixmix I created a new issue here: ssb://%bDE1AtDGY4Qd8V13G+aWIz1fHEmzmXKdnQfzX48FwD4=.sha256

It generated a post where the hashtag links me through to the channel, but the post was not collected into the channel

Gonna see if there's something already about this in the ssb git issue tracker

my bad - my client just shows issues as posts ! On me to fix that

I'm not sure that's just on you?

My Patchwork shows issues as posts too... seems like that could be a bit of a spam problem for everyone who is following someone who is actively working on issues in git-ssb?

I feel like it would be polite of me to find a way to not make all my followers have to read every git issue I post in

With the big picture requiring consensus, and it being the first step in the game, we ought to see about wrapping it up.

I'd suggested:

Refugees carve out a new life in a distant land

...but that's straight out of the game text. We can go with that (verbatim), or we can make some changes to any particular words if anyone likes. I suggest we mostly keep to the same structure, but maybe change some adjectives? Distant could be barren, refugees could be explorers? Or we can leave it as is (since this is an experiment).

I'm ok to proceed with anything, so whatever is suggested gets my vote. We can start on the palette once the two of you consent.

My vote above (which probably got a bit lost) was to swap refugees for "migrants"

Migrants carve out a new life in a distant land

I'll resubmit that, for reasons stated above

(I'll note here as well, that rules as written, bookend history actually precedes palette)

Indeed, I missed out on the migrants note. :+1: to that.

bookend history actually precedes palette

Thanks for pointing that out, I forgot about that step.

It being Friday, I'm going to go over the rules again this evening.

FWIW patchwork showed me this discussion as a post, and now I'm following along with interest in git-ssb :)

I'm good to go with anything that is suggested. For the alpha game I'm mostly interested in the game process, rather than the actual contents.