After Action Review

[SecretStamos (Joshuu)]

Summary (a quick, 2-3 sentence summary):
After-action reviews (AARs) are a form of debriefing that soldiers use to figure out things that went right and wrong during the course of a mission. Since rounds sometimes leave little time for players to discuss the good and bad, I think we could benefit greatly from implementing a similar thing into CM. We all enjoy it when we're playing with and against competent players, and I believe dedicating some time to reflect on noteworthy rounds could be of benefit in achieving a higher level of teamwork.

Benefits (How this will benefit the server and game as a whole):
It would help show players what went well and what went wrong in a round. If a player told a squad leader that his unannounced grenade toss caused an issue, perhaps the squad leader (and those in attendance) would learn to use better communication when throwing grenades or firing weapons. Similarly, if a squad had exceptional teamwork, talking about it could inspire and teach other players how to work better as a group. People would have to focus entirely on constructive criticism.

Details (Description of how you think this would work, the benefits, etc):
There's three different ways we could go about this:

1.Forum-based AARs
Have a section of the forums dedicated to reviewing and discussing past rounds. While this would be one of the easier options, we'd have to somehow differentiate between rounds by naming them. This might be a good idea in my opinion, as it would give the players an area to archive stories and it would allow players to look back and learn from older rounds, even if they weren't in the round themselves.

2.OOC-based AARs
Find a way to encourage players to discuss previous rounds during the time between rounds in OOC. People sorta do this, but it isn't really effective at all because it can get off-topic and the time between rounds is short.

3.IC-based AARs
Arguably probably the most interesting way to implement this idea. At the end of the round, all the players get put into a room and discuss the round as if an actual AAR is occurring. This would be a lot of fun, especially after a marine victory, and would be a nice IC way to end a round while teaching the players lessons learned. The downside is that dead players/aliens will either be left out or would have to be revived, and it wouldn't make much sense if the marines lose. Some serious thought might have to be put into this form, but I think it has the most potential and would facilitate a lot of nice RP.

[Anon McAnon]

Forum based is the only way it'd work. OOC would get distracted by a cat and IC would get overrun by xenos/ignored because it wouldn't be fun waiting for 20min to write a paper when there's xenos to kill in the next round.

[Lostmixup]

This would literally only work through the forums honestly.

[Pillow]

It sounds interesting

[apophis775]

By the Gods... I knew I'd never escape AAR's for long...