Resignation
Posted: Thu Jan 04, 2018 4:07 pm
Never in my 15-year micronational career have I put so many hours into something I enjoy so little.
Having spent an entire day checking references and crunching numbers in a hair-ripping attempt to bring the Batavian Front to some sort of conclusion, the prospect of doing the same thing for Floria, Keltia and whatever new fronts might yet open is simply too much. Active hostilities in the War of Lost Brothers have just entered their third Earth month, and by my estimation the war may not even be at its halfway point.
My intended 'organic' style of refereeing was intended for a much smaller conflict. Instead I find myself presiding over easily the most geographically-expansive war in Micran history (at one point I counted six active fronts) which, if it isn't already, will doubtless become the longest too. In hindsight, perhaps I overestimated the willingness of participants to play the game in holistic terms, building up a progressive picture of the war beyond their own little roles. Instead there are persistent grey areas in the official consensus which participants, perhaps haunted by the adversarial model of previous recwars, don't consider their preserve and leave me to resolve; not so much out of laziness as unthinking instinct. For a small war I could manage the workload, but this is no small war.
Ultimately, nobody gets paid to do their thing here so we're all limited to what we enjoy. And while I have enjoyed elements of this war, the proportion of narrative frisson to brain-melting technical work in my role as adjudicator has steadily shifted in favour of the latter as the war becomes more exponentially complex, its economies scale up and small, narratively irrelevant aspects suddenly become essential to address lest they escalate to game-breaking levels.
I apologise for leaving you all in the lurch like this, but I can't go on doing something I literally dread. For the sake of those of you who still have a interest in the war, I think it should go on - either with a new judge, or some system where the participants can collectively decide its course (hints of the latter have been demonstrated already).
Many thanks to those who tried to help me make sense of things - I'm only sorry I wasn't up to the job.
Carry on.
Having spent an entire day checking references and crunching numbers in a hair-ripping attempt to bring the Batavian Front to some sort of conclusion, the prospect of doing the same thing for Floria, Keltia and whatever new fronts might yet open is simply too much. Active hostilities in the War of Lost Brothers have just entered their third Earth month, and by my estimation the war may not even be at its halfway point.
My intended 'organic' style of refereeing was intended for a much smaller conflict. Instead I find myself presiding over easily the most geographically-expansive war in Micran history (at one point I counted six active fronts) which, if it isn't already, will doubtless become the longest too. In hindsight, perhaps I overestimated the willingness of participants to play the game in holistic terms, building up a progressive picture of the war beyond their own little roles. Instead there are persistent grey areas in the official consensus which participants, perhaps haunted by the adversarial model of previous recwars, don't consider their preserve and leave me to resolve; not so much out of laziness as unthinking instinct. For a small war I could manage the workload, but this is no small war.
Ultimately, nobody gets paid to do their thing here so we're all limited to what we enjoy. And while I have enjoyed elements of this war, the proportion of narrative frisson to brain-melting technical work in my role as adjudicator has steadily shifted in favour of the latter as the war becomes more exponentially complex, its economies scale up and small, narratively irrelevant aspects suddenly become essential to address lest they escalate to game-breaking levels.
I apologise for leaving you all in the lurch like this, but I can't go on doing something I literally dread. For the sake of those of you who still have a interest in the war, I think it should go on - either with a new judge, or some system where the participants can collectively decide its course (hints of the latter have been demonstrated already).
Many thanks to those who tried to help me make sense of things - I'm only sorry I wasn't up to the job.
Carry on.
