Hey John,
This thread is the first time I've heard about an OOC dialogue started with Tiberius' player, which I definitely think was a good step to take, but the fact that it hasn't come up in any of the other discussions I think speaks volumes. Some if it about him, to be clear, but that goes back to what I see as the central point. People who aren't involved on the OOC side of things are going to respond to the IC side, and if that starts causing OOC fun issues, then talking about it OOC is a good plan.
And if we're excluding OS from this, then what I'm hearing is that the issue was the Shattered Vales. So we're down to talking about one realm joining that you weren't anticipating, who again was not in the loop on the OOC discussions. Going back to Tim's comments that made me start talking on this forum thread, I'm failing to see how one realm jumping on outside of what was expected turns something from being a perfectly fine IC conflict to an OOC fun-killing conflict, which is again where I come back to having reservations about the entire approach on this.
I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who agrees we should have looked at the OOC side a little further, but even with hindsight I'm not clear where the line between the IC and OOC aspects of this starts. And if I can't figure it out, in hindsight, with the kind of diplomatic experience I have, then I don't think it's likely we're going to have broad agreement on this, and we're going to end up with Titan intervention on all kinds of stuff, just because people have different interpretations of things.
