What amazes me is that the viewpoints of the players who are forced to deal with the Zuma regularly by dint of proximity are so consistently ignored, dismissed, poo pooed, or outright attacked on these forums. The point of the Zuma, presumably, is to add something to the player experience and hopefully not solely to provide some GM with a toy to play with for his own amusement. Given that fact, I would think that player feedback would be taken seriously.
I recognize that the natural reaction to criticism, especially when said criticism is not always delivered in a constructive manner, is to become defensive. However, this tendency also leads those who are being criticized to dismiss *all* criticism as invalid, when that's not the case. Clearly the manner in which the Zuma are run is a source of increasing frustration to the players who are having to deal with them. I would think that a review of why this is the case might be in order, along with some honest consideration of how the experience could be improved for everyone involved. After all, what's more important, the plot or the players? It sounds to me like the Zuma are losing the players. When players start throwing up their hands and talk about deleting their characters out of frustration, something isn't working. This is the point where I, as a GM running an RPG for some friends expressing this level of frustration, would be engaging in some serious introspection and reconsidering my entire campaign.
The problem is that no one that is complaining seems to want to offer an option to fix it that isn't one of the following
- Make them so weak we don't really need to worry about them
- Revel everything so they are completely game-able and we never set a foot wrong
- Make them do nothing but send nice RP's
Poll